The Lake House Read Free Page B

saying to Mr Harris, his voice reedy with the strength of his feeling. “I’ve told you that before. As long as he needs it, there’s a place here for young Adam.”
    Alice became aware of a soft whirring near her left ear, the faintest breath of wind against her cheek. She glanced sideways at the dragonfly hovering in her peripheral vision. It was a rare one, a yellow-winged darter, and she felt a surge of old excitement. She pictured Daddy in his study, hiding from Mother in her Midsummer state. If Alice were quick she could catch the darter and run it upstairs for his collection, bask in the pleasure she knew the gift would bring, and feel herself elevated in her father’s esteem, the way she had as a little girl, when the privilege of being the chosen one, permitted inside the dusty room of science books and white gloves and glass display cabinets, was enough to make her overlook the horror of the shining silver pins.
    But of course there wasn’t time to go now. Why, even in considering it she was falling victim to distraction. Alice frowned. Time had a funny way of losing shape when her mind got busy on a matter. She checked her watch. Almost ten past twelve. Twenty more minutes and the head gardener would retreat to his shed as he did each day for his cheese and piccalilli sandwich and contemplation of the racing pages. He was a man of habits and Alice, for one, respected that.
    Forgetting the dragonfly, she crossed the path at a clip and made her furtive way around the lake, avoiding the lawn and the band of groundsmen sweeping near the elaborate fireworks contraption, keeping to the shadows until she reached the Sunken Garden. She sat on the sun-warmed steps of the old fountain and set the basket beside her. It was the perfect vantage point, she decided; the nearby hawthorn hedge provided ample cover, while small gaps in its foliage permitted a fine view of the new jetty.
    While she waited to catch Ben alone, Alice watched a pair of rooks tumbling together in the sea-blue sky above. Her gaze fell to the house where men on ladders were weaving huge wreaths of greenery along the brick façade and a couple of housemaids were busy attaching delicate paper lanterns to fine strings beneath the eaves. The sun had lit up the top row of leadlight windows and the family home, polished to within an inch of its life, was sparkling like a bejewelled old dame, dressed for her annual opera outing.
    A great swelling wave of affection came suddenly upon Alice. For as long as she could remember, she’d been aware that the house and the gardens of Loeanneth lived and breathed for her in a way they didn’t for her sisters. While London was a lure to Deborah, Alice was never happier, never quite as much herself, as she was here; sitting on the edge of the stream, toes dangling in the slow current; lying in bed before the dawn, listening to the busy family of swifts who’d built their nest above her window; winding her way around the lake, notebook always tucked beneath her arm.
    She had been seven years old when she realised that one day she would grow up and that grown-ups didn’t, in the usual order of things, continue to live in their parents’ home. She’d felt a great chasm of existential dread open up inside her then, and had taken to engraving her name whenever and wherever she could: in the hard English oak of the morning-room window frames, the filmy grouting between the gunroom tiles, the Strawberry Thief wallpaper in the entrance hall, as if by such small acts she might somehow tie herself to the place in a tangible and enduring way. Alice had gone without pudding for the entire summer when Mother discovered this particular expression of affection, a punishment she could have borne but for the injustice of being cast as a wanton vandal. “I thought you of all people would have more respect for the house,” her mother had hissed, white with fury. “That a child of mine