‘You look a little tired, child,’ she adds. And onepapery-skinned and delicate finger, slightly cool, touches my cheek. The hopelessly receptive to kindness thing goes into overdrive and to my absolute horror, I find the tears are rolling down my face.
I’ve lied to Dan. He might hate me if he finds out. Scarlett is so sad. And I can’t help. And Lexi – right at the back of my mind, in the place I am trying to avoid, are thoughts of Lexi and whether I’ll lose her to her birth mother or not.
‘Turn your chair a little so you’re more hidden, my dear,’ says Miss Primrose as if nothing is happening. ‘Don’t want the whole village coming over to have a gawp.Rubber-?neckers, I think they’re called.’
She deftly rearranges the position of her chair so that she’s almost blocking me from view, because she, too, is tall, although her height has clearly somewhat diminished because of her age. She reaches into a beautiful little black leather handbag that looks as if it came straight from 1950 and hands me a sweetly smelling, freshly pressed handkerchief.
‘Use this,’ she commands, ‘much better at drying tears than those tissues.’
‘Better for the planet, too. Lexi would be impressed,’ I say, sniffling. ‘She’s very into saving the planet.’
‘Clever girl,’ says Miss Primrose. ‘It often astonishes me how the human race has lasted so long when we rape and pillage this beautiful land, but we can only do our best. Do you take sugar?’
‘No,’ I say.
She pushes my mocha towards me. ‘Take a little bit, it will help. There is a little sweetness in the chocolate that’s very healing. Patrick always knows what’s best.’
‘I thought it was Giorgio who figured out what people wanted?’ I say somewhat confusedly.
‘Oh no,’ she shakes her head. ‘Giorgio is an exquisite creature who enhances all our lives, but Patrick underpins it all. Don’t mind that slightly gruff exterior, he has a heart of gold.’
I take a sip of my drink and find that Miss Primrose has sliced and started buttering my scone. She adds jam and cuts it neatly into tiny little squares as if feeding a child.
‘Have some,’ she says.
And I do. Not even Dan talks to me this way. Nobody talks to me this way, but it’s nice.
‘You’re terribly sad, my dear. Do you want to tell me about it. I shan’t be offended if you don’t. However, I am a vault of secrets, so anything you tell me is safe.’
For a second, anxiety flares inside me and I look up at her, but her gaze is steady. She must have beenmovie-star beautiful in her youth because her face is a perfect oval and the wise eyes surrounded bymap-lines of wrinkles are still large.
‘No, everything is fine really, it’s just, you know, some days are difficult.’
‘Lots of days are difficult,’ said Miss Primrose. ‘So many days in fact, but we get through them. I sensed you had a sadness in you that first day we met.’
‘You see things?’ I said suddenly, perking up. What if she was psychic: she could tell me everything and explain that I was going to feel fine soon the way horoscopes did in magazines.Wear green and Tuesday is going to be your lucky day. By the end of the month everything is going to be fabulous.You won’t have nightmares, Scarlett will get pregnant, Dad will recover, Elisa will go back to Spain, you’ll think of amazing recipes and write the book in record time ...
I love horoscopes, I often read quite a few magazines until I get one I like.
‘No, I don’t see things in that way,’ she says and pours some of her aromatic Earl Grey. ‘I just notice things. I’m terribly old, you know. If you’re terribly old and you pay attention, you do see things. Sort of like Sherlock Holmes if he got to be very, very old and perhaps spent less time in 221b Baker Street experimenting with unusual medications.’
We both laugh.
‘You’re not what I thought,’ I blurt out and then I feel embarrassed.
‘Nobody is ever what anyone thinks they are,’ says Miss Primrose. ‘Now do you want to talk about it, because I’m a very good listener and I don’t discuss.’
‘Well,’ I take a nibble of my scone. ‘There’s so much going on with my family right now and I can’t fix it all.’
Miss Primrose eyes me. ‘No,’ she says, ‘tell me what’s makingyousad, not what’s making everyone else sad.’
‘It’s just something bad happened to me,’ I say once I’ve consumed my mocha. ‘You know when you are going along and everything is fine and thenpow, this litany of problems spring up out of nowhere and change everything.’
‘Ah,’ says Miss Primrose gravely, ‘I know exactly what that’s like. I’meighty-five, have lived through some of the hardest times of the twentieth century, I understand that absolutely. So tell me, are you keeping this particular pain of what happened to you all to yourself or do other people know?’
‘My family know.’ I backtrack. ‘I mean, it’s not all about me. My sister is going through so much, for a start. You won’t talk to anyone about this, will you?’ I say, suddenly anxious.
‘Not a word,’ she insists.
