Just a Family Affair Read Free Page B

large but now seemed positively cavernous.
    One wall in the kitchen had been smothered in photographs. It was a veritable rogues’ gallery - Mickey dressed as a woman, the girls on a toboggan being pulled by Patrick; Lucy in a flapper dress for the Great Gatsby party they had for her fortieth; a toothless Georgie on the family pony. They were cracked and faded. Lucy took them all down carefully, annotated them as well as her memory allowed, and took them to a girl who specialized in photographic collages. The snapshots had come back beautifully mounted and framed in a chronological unfolding of life at Honeycote House. It was a work of art, but Lucy still preferred the slapdash version that had been stuck to the wall with browning sticky tape.
    Then she commissioned some simple cupboards in oak tongue and groove, held together with huge black hinges she’d found in a reclamation yard. The walls, once a cheery egg-yolk yellow, were now painted a calm and restful duck-egg blue. The ancient Laura Ashley curtains were replaced with a smart Vanessa Arbuthnott roller blind - the fabric had been screamingly expensive, but Lucy had got a remnant and made the blind herself, which had involved a fair amount of swearing. Then she’d treated herself to some new appliances. A new fridge, for a start, with a freezer that defrosted itself. All she’d had before was an ice box that got so full the peas invariably slid out every time you opened it.
    By the end of the project she was even more unsettled. There was no doubt the kitchen was stunning. Decluttering it had seemed to double the size and the light, but to Lucy it didn’t feel quite right. She felt faintly embarrassed every time she cooked in it, rather as if she had a new dress on that she wasn’t quite sure about. Everyone who had seen it had exclaimed how fantastic it looked, but she could tell deep down they preferred the previous incarnation, as did she. She sighed. She would get used to it. It just needed distressing; perhaps today’s celebrations would take the gloss off it and make it feel more lived in.
    Lucy felt as if she’d been treading water for ages, waiting for the next phase of her life. Surely it didn’t just fade into complete nothingness? She’d heard of empty-nest syndrome, but didn’t that belong to women of a different age - menopausal, grey-haired creatures with thick waists and no dress sense? Technically, Lucy could still have another baby if she wanted. She’d been barely in her twenties when she’d had Sophie and Georgina. This solution to her ennui had occurred to her in a wild moment when she’d folded all the girls’ baby clothes away one afternoon and put them in the attic, but she’d dismissed it fairly rapidly. If not a baby, then the traditional route for a dissatisfied, middle-aged woman was either an affair or an Open University degree. Neither of which particularly appealed.
    She checked the warming oven of the Aga to see if her pavlovas had dried out - three dense, chewy discs of meringue as big as dinner plates which would be piled on top of each other with dollops of whipped cream flecked with raspberries - madly out of season but now she had the facilities, she could take advantage of frozen fruit. That would keep the sweet-toothed brigade happy, while the rest could delve into Stilton or Brie. There was a whole one of each resting on a marble slab.
    At the prospect of the banquet to come, Lucy felt like her old self again. She sang as she put on the kettle, dancing round the kitchen in her striped pyjamas and bed socks, lighter of heart than she had been for months.
     
    Mickey Liddiard stood in the doorway of his transformed kitchen, smiling. His wife still did it for him. She could be sixteen from behind, and not much more from in front, to be honest. Lucy had never used anything more exotic than Ponds Cold Cream, but it had done the trick - her skin was smooth and glowing, her treacle-brown eyes unlined. Her tousled chestnut