Holding On Read Free

the rooms at The Keep had accumulated gradually, each generation adding, replacing, repairing, so that modern and Edwardian jostled with Regency and Victorian, yet all blended together in an entirely natural way.
    She stood up and wandered over to the washstand. She had removed the small china pot which had belonged to her mother, and the alabaster box which had once held her father’s cufflinks, and taken them with her to Dartmouth but she had left the looking-glass, age-spotted, in its battered mahogany frame. In this frame were stuck some photographs. To begin with she had simply forgotten them, although she had taken the silver-framed studio photograph which showed her father with Jamie standing next to him, her mother with Susanna on her knee, Mole leaning against her and Fliss sitting beside her. It was a charming portrait of a happy, normal little family and now it stood on the mahogany chest of drawers in her bedroom in Dartmouth. There, it did not seem out of place. Yet, for some reason, she had left these other photographs, familiar, comforting, important, stuck in the frame. Jamie was there, hands in pocket, smiling out at her; Susanna astride Fliss’s old bicycle, beaming proudly; Kit their cousin, kneeling beside the now long-dead dog, Mrs Pooter, an arm about her furry neck, Mole squinting out at her, a blurred Fox behind him.
    Fliss bent to look at the snapshot of her parents at Nairobi’s Ngong Racecourse; her father tall, confident, handsome, and her mother with a look which was almost censorious. Fliss bent closer. Did she resemble her mother? That look on her mother’s face had kept her and Jamie on their toes. Alison had expected great things of her children, and living up to her expectations had been something of a strain. Fliss was certain that her mother would not sympathise with her present fears. Had she not gone to Kenya with Fliss only seven and Mole barely a year old? Susanna had been born in Africa. Alison had been efficient, calm, competent; had she ever been frightened?
    Another photograph caught her attention. It was of her own wedding but not taken by the official photographer; those she kept in the smart album bought for her by Miles. This one had simply been stuck in the frame with the others. Fliss took it from the mahogany frame and studied it closely. It had been taken in the courtyard on the central rectangle of grass. She was holding Mole’s arm and they were laughing together. Susanna crouched beside them fiddling with her shoe, her bouquet of sweet peas flung down beside her on the grass. Miles was in the background, smart in his uniform, one arm raised, a finger pointing at some unseen companion. It was what her cousin Kit called his ‘. . . and furthermore . . .’ stance.
    For a brief moment Fliss was transported back to the June day, two years before; she could almost feel the sun on her back, smell the scent of the roses. The whole family had risen to the occasion, giving of their utmost, determined to make it her happiest day, showing their pride and love in different, special ways. Since Miles was a widower she had decided to keep the whole thing simple and quiet, just family and close friends, and it had worked very well. Susanna had looked so pretty in that strange dark, dusky pink; she’d been thrilled with the bracelet of delicately wrought silver and coral which Miles had given her. Fliss’s own dress was made of thick, cream, cotton lace, ankle-length, slender and faintly Victorian in style. She loved it and often wore it to Ladies’ Nights and formal parties. Mole, in his best Sunday suit, had given her away and later, the champagne having gone to his head, he’d given a most amusing and rather touching speech without a trace of his stammer. She’d been so proud of him . . .
    Fliss turned away from the washstand and sat on the edge of the narrow iron bed, her fingers unconsciously brushing the patchwork quilt, another of her