Atonement Read Free

hollow cheeks, and there was something brittle in her reticence that suggested strong will and a temper easily lost. Merely floating the possibility of the role to Lola might provoke a crisis, and could Briony really hold hands with her before the altar, while Jackson intoned from the Book of Common Prayer ?
    It was not until five o’clock that afternoon that she was able to assemble her cast in the nursery. She had arranged three stools in a row, while she herself jammed her rump into an ancient baby’s high-chair – a bohemian touch that gave hera tennis umpire’s advantage of height. The twins had come with reluctance from the pool where they had been for three hours without a break. They were barefoot and wore singlets over trunks that dripped onto the floorboards. Water also ran down their necks from their matted hair, and both boys were shivering and jiggled their knees to keep warm. The long immersion had puckered and bleached their skin, so that in the relatively low light of the nursery their freckles appeared black. Their sister, who sat between them, with left leg balanced on right knee, was, by contrast, perfectly composed, having liberally applied perfume and changed into a green gingham frock to offset her colouring. Her sandals revealed an ankle bracelet and toenails painted vermilion. The sight of these nails gave Briony a constricting sensation around her sternum, and she knew at once that she could not ask Lola to play the prince.
    Everyone was settled and the playwright was about to begin her little speech summarising the plot and evoking the excitement of performing before an adult audience tomorrow evening in the library. But it was Pierrot who spoke first.
    â€˜I hate plays and all that sort of thing.’
    â€˜I hate them too, and dressing up,’ Jackson said.
    It had been explained at lunch that the twins were to be distinguished by the fact that Pierrot was missing a triangle of flesh from his left ear lobe on account of a dog he had tormented when he was three.
    Lola looked away. Briony said reasonably, ‘How can you hate plays?’
    â€˜It’s just showing off.’ Pierrot shrugged as he delivered this self-evident truth.
    Briony knew he had a point. This was precisely why she loved plays, or hers at least; everyone would adore her. Looking at the boys, under whose chairs water was pooling before spilling between the floorboard cracks, she knew they could never understand her ambition. Forgiveness softened her tone.
    â€˜Do you think Shakespeare was just showing off?’
    Pierrot glanced across his sister’s lap towards Jackson. This warlike name was faintly familiar, with its whiff of school and adult certainty, but the twins found their courage in each other.
    â€˜Everyone knows he was.’
    â€˜Definitely.’
    When Lola spoke, she turned first to Pierrot and halfway through her sentence swung round to finish on Jackson. In Briony’s family, Mrs Tallis never had anything to impart that needed saying simultaneously to both daughters. Now Briony saw how it was done.
    â€˜You’ll be in this play, or you’ll get a clout, and then I’ll speak to The Parents.’
    â€˜If you clout us, we’ll speak to The Parents.’
    â€˜You’ll be in this play or I’ll speak to The Parents.’
    That the threat had been negotiated neatly downwards did not appear to diminish its power. Pierrot sucked on his lower lip.
    â€˜Why do we have to?’ Everything was conceded in the question, and Lola tried to ruffle his sticky hair.
    â€˜Remember what The Parents said? We’re guests in this house and we make ourselves – what do we make ourselves? Come on. What do we make ourselves?’
    â€˜A-menable,’ the twins chorused in misery, barely stumbling over the unusual word.
    Lola turned to Briony and smiled. ‘Please tell us about your play.’
    The Parents. Whatever institutionalised strength was locked