‘What a very strange idea, to want to look at yourself while you’re cooking.’
Annabelle smiled, lips parting to reveal large teeth. Marisa was reminded of the wolf dressed up as Red Riding Hood’s grandmother in a storybook she had owned as a child.
‘Are we sitting here?’ Annabelle pointed at the kitchen table, which now looked shabby and pockmarked with mug rings. There was a scattering of breadcrumbs at one end where Marisa hadn’t cleaned up properly after her breakfast.
‘Yes. Can I get you a cup of—’
‘Coffee. Black.’ Annabelle sat down, unwinding her printed Indian shawl from her shoulders. ‘Thanks.’
Although Annabelle didn’t much like it, the mirrored splashback gave Marisa the chance to assess the woman she already thought of as her mother-in-law. Under the shawl, Annabelle was wearing a white linen shirt, unbuttoned to reveal papery, tanned skin and a long goldnecklace threaded with semi-precious stones. Her pale trousers stopped just above her ankle and were frayed at the hem in a way that looked fashionable rather than ragged. Her hair was white-blonde, swept back into a chignon kept in place by a tortoiseshell clip. Her profile was that of a ballerina in repose: jutting nose, chin tilted upwards, taut cheeks and an alertness that suggested a woman used to being looked at. She must have been very striking, Marisa thought, but there was something that stopped her being fully beautiful, some sense of unease or defensiveness that you could just about make out in the vertical frown-lines between her eyebrows or the discernible clench of her jaw. It was as if Annabelle had learned how to be beautiful from the pages of a book but had never quite got the hang of it.
Marisa busied herself with the espresso machine, placing a cup under the nozzle.
‘Do you like those things?’ Annabelle asked from her seat.
‘You mean the coffee—’
‘Yes.’
‘I do, actually. It makes it all so easy. No coffee grounds to clean up and—’
‘I never think it tastes as good.’
‘Mmm,’ Marisa said and she felt like a child who had just been slapped down.
‘Sorry,’ Annabelle added, perhaps aware that she had been too brusque. ‘I’m sure it’ll be delicious.’
This was all it took for Marisa to experience a surge of hope. Perhaps she had read the signals all wrong – she had a tendency to do that; to misread people and to believe they were judging her – and perhaps she and Annabelle were going to get along famously. She imagined Annabelle saying just that to her impressive friends: ‘Oh, I adore my daughter-in-law. We get along famously.’ Perhaps they simply needed to get to know each other better, to learn the quirks and hidden charms of their individual behaviours. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
‘Here we go.’
Marisa set down two cups of coffee, each one on a saucer they never normally bothered using. The cups were white with blue rims. Jakehad bought them from a ceramicist in Cornwall, he told her when she commented on their prettiness. The blue reminded Marisa of the sea and the white was almost translucent, as if you were looking through a shell lifted up to the sunlight.
Annabelle took a sip of coffee, her mouth twisting as she did so. She gave the impression of having to hold her breath while she drank.
‘Thank you.’
Annabelle crossed her legs, leaning back against the chair, her hands loosely clasped in her lap.
‘So,’ she said. ‘We meet at last.’
‘We do.’ Marisa smiled. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to it.’
Annabelle looked mildly astonished.
‘Really?’ She grimaced. ‘I can’t imagine why. I shouldn’t think Jake would have had any reason to talk about me.’
‘Oh … no …’ Marisa slid into silence. She had nothing to say to this.
‘But there we have it. I suppose children never tell their parents what they’re up to. Not really.’
Annabelle placed the cup back on its saucer. It was still almost full. She left it untouched and Marisa knew that, however long she chose to stay, she was not going to drink any more.
‘Nice garden,’ Annabelle said, distractedly. ‘So,’ she went on, propping one elbow up on the table and leaning forwards, her face cupped by long fingernails painted a dark shade of plum that was precise in its tastefulness. ‘When did you move in?’
‘Two, three weeks ago? No, actually, maybe it’s been a month.’
Annabelle nodded.
