Possession Read Free Page A

really is, Clare, I promise you: she’s ghastly ! Listen, we must talk about this seriously. Put the kettle on.”
    So I did; and we made a pot of tea; and now here we still were, staring unhappily into the fire. All this morning’s joy was draining out of me, and I felt defrauded and dull.
    “You’ve spoilt it all for me,” I complained, childishly. “Why did you have to tell me? It’s nothing to do with me. is it, what his mother’s like. And nothing to do with Sarah, either. She doesn’t have to like her mother-in-law, does she? Nobody does! It’s unnatural!”
    “O.K., O.K. I’m sorry, Clare.” Peggy saw that I was truly upset, and set herself to make amends. “I could be wrong, of course I could. I only met her the once, and you know what a cat I am. It’s just—I don’t know. She seemed such an odd, tenacious little thing, all eaten up with nerves—it made me feel quite jittery just to watch her. Still, never mind; perhaps it was her bad day. And, as you say, it’sSarah’s business, and no one else’s. Anyway, Pat will be thrilled; I’ll tell her the minute she comes in from school. I’ll tell her she’s invited to the wedding, shall I?”
    “Of course!” I said eagerly, my spirits rising as they always do when someone talks encouragingly to me, even when I know they don’t mean it, as I knew Peggy didn’t mean it now. I could see that her real opinion was still unchanged. “ Of course Pat must come to the wedding. She must be a bridesmaid; she and Janice must be the bridesmaids ; we must think of a colour that suits them both. Do you think yellow—a rather dull, goldy sort of yellow….?”
    Peggy is a kind person. At the base of her gossippy, cheerfully censorious nature there lies a bedrock of solid, unfailing kindness; and when she finds that her incautious tongue has hurt somebody, she spares no pains to repair the damage. So now, when she saw that I was trying to talk my fears to a standstill, she came loyally to my assistance.
    “Marvellous!” she agreed, with an enthusiasm disproportionate to the importance of the issue. “Or what about a soft sort of old-rose colour? It would suit Janice splendidly, with all that mass of dark hair, especially if she piles it on top of her head the way she had it for the concert. That sort of colour would be all right for Pat, too; I suppose you’d call her a vague sort of brunette. How lucky you are having two such definite- coloureddaughters. It’s always been my ambition to have children who are either definitely dark or definitely fair, and just look what I’ve got! Not that it matters, when one of them never looks in a mirror at all, and the other spends the whole of her ample allowance on making herself look like the cheapest little tart that ever crawled out from under a hairdryer….”
    I laughed. I knew that Peggy was only trying to atone for having upset me; to cheer me up by the time-honoured method of praising my children and belittling her own; and it did cheer me up. Not that Sarah is definitely fair; not really. She has grey eyes, and lots of long, straight, beigey-coloured hair, with occasional golden lights in it when shestands in bright sunshine or under a lamp. I suppose the sheer quantity of it might make one inclined to say ‘There goes a blonde’ as she passes; but really and truly it is mouse, and Peggy knows it. Peggy is a true friend.

CHAPTER II
    B Y THE TIME Janice came home from school I was feeling positively cheerful again; and Janice, too, seemed to have recovered from the morning’s shock. We began to speculate —cautiously, because the subject was still raw for us both, and fraught with unimagined pitfalls of emotion—about what Mervyn would be like. Sarah was bringing him home with her on Friday night, she’d said, and he was to stay till Sunday teatime. “Sunday teatime”—this in itself was a new note in our hitherto haphazard lives. When had any of the girls’ friends ever proposed themselves for