And there’s the problem, she thinks. The generation that did most to contribute to this mess is now in charge of tackling the apocalyptic consequences. Except to actually tackle it would mean admitting their own selfish ignorance in the first place. No wonder they want to look the other way. Pellets of anger lodge in her chest.
‘So why aren’t you doing anything about it?’ she says, her voice quickening. ‘The ten hottest years on historical record …’
‘… have all occurred in the past decade, yes, thank you, Cosima. I’ve read the same briefing papers as you have. But that’s not a reason to support a bunch of … a bunch of trouble-makers who throw red paint in art galleries and glue themselves to the road in rush hour.’
‘Orange,’ she corrects him. ‘Orange paint. And would you have said that to the suffragettes?’
He pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
‘It’s not the same thing at all and I don’t have time for this.’
‘Yeah, well, neither does the planet.’
He makes a visible effort to contain himself.
‘This is not the time or the place, Cosima.’
‘You brought it up, Dad. And you’re actually in a position of power to make the changes necessary.’
‘You’ve no idea,’ he says, staring at her like she’s a stranger.
Her mother called her stubborn as a child.
‘Cosima is the stubborn one,’ Serena would say in a tone of long-suffering forbearance. ‘You can’t get her to do anything if she’s set her mind against it.’
It is only now that Cosima understands the stubbornness was a final resort. If you’re never listened to, you have to protest with the only means left available to you. If your voice isn’t enough, you become immovable. Intransigence can be your greatest weapon.
‘Well what’s the point, then?’ Cosima says, her voice rising. ‘What’s the point of being in politics and barely seeing your family and abandoning your own dead sister if not to make some kind of meaningful change?’
He looks stricken. She refuses to feel bad.
‘Is it all just a fucking massive ego trip, Dad? Is it?’
She wants a reaction but he denies her even this and walks out of the room. She grabs the first thing that comes to hand and hurls it against the closed door. The pillow lands with an unimpressive flump.
She is angry when she goes back downstairs, angry when she sits with her siblings in the chapel, angry as she watches her father give a half-arsed eulogy, angry as she watches Fliss be buried in the family ground, angry as they throw clods of soil on the burnished oak of the coffin, angry that no one is saying anything that matters and angry – so angry – that the entire Fitzmaurice family is acting out a lie and even angrier that she doesn’t understand what the lie is; only that it exists in a collusion of silence and no one is strong enough to shatter it.
The next day, she makes an excuse about having to go back to school early for a lacrosse match.
‘Since when do you play lacrosse?’ Hector asks from across the breakfast table. His acne is a pink constellation across his jaw. She feels sorry for him. He’d be good-looking without the spots.
‘Started this term,’ she lies.
Hector sneers. ‘So butters.’
‘Did you want the butter, Hector?’ their grandmother asks from the head of the table.
‘No, no, Granny,’ he says, adopting his Polite Voice for Adults. Cosima snorts. ‘Thank you, Granny. I was just …’ He trails off.
‘Lacrosse?’ her father says, glancing up from his copy of theEconomist. ‘That’s great, darling. There’s a lot to be said for team sports.’
He is halfway through the plate of kedgeree Cosima’s grandmother still insists on serving every morning. Breakfast is treated with turn-of-the century formality: silver-domed bowls of scrambled egg along the sideboard accompanied by trays of sausages, tomatoes and undercooked bacon, fat congealing at the edges.
Serena has already been and gone. She picked at half a tomato and drank three cups of black coffee before announcing she was going for a walk. Cressida and Bear are still in bed.
Lady Fitzmaurice has eaten her regular bowl of porridge and prunes and has placed her spoon delicately on the side plate. Her cheeks hang like hollowed-out sails from the bones of her face.
‘Are you going?’ she asks Cosima loudly.
