Toby's Room Read Free

well that young men had access to sexual experiences that girls like her knew nothing about. So why would he need to experiment on her?
    She looked back over the last twenty-four hours: saw herself coming downstairs in the red dress, sitting at the dinner table boasting about having an admirer. Had it seemed to him that she was moving away, leaving him? His reaching out for her had felt a bit like that. He’d grabbed her the way a drowning man grabs a log.
    By the time they got back to the house, she’d developed a headache, the beginnings of a migraine perhaps. She clutched at the excuse of illness and ran upstairs to her room, passing her mother on the stairs, but not stopping to speak.
    ‘What’s the matter with Elinor?’ Mother asked Toby.
    ‘Not feeling very well. Bit too much sun, I think.’
    That made her angry too: the cool, rational,
accepted
explanation which emphasized her weakness, not his. She slammed her bedroom door, stood with her back to it and then, slowly, as if she had to force a passage through her throat, she began to cry: ugly, wrenching sobs that made her a stranger to herself.
    Elinor missed lunch, but went downstairs for dinner, because she knew her absence would only arouse curiosity, and perhaps concern. Part of her expected, even hoped, that Toby would have made some excuse to return to London, but no, there he was, laughing and talking, just as he normally did. Though perhaps drinking rather more than usual.
    She made an effort, chatting to her father, ignoring her mother and Rachel, flirting outrageously with Tim, no longer the little schoolgirl sister-in-law.
Oh, no
. Looking round the table, she resolved that never again would she impersonate the girl they still thought she was.
    Toby didn’t look at her from beginning to end of the meal, but she made herself speak to him. Where the children were concerned,her mother was an acute observer, and though she’d never in a million years guess the truth, she’d notice the tension between herself and Toby if they weren’t talking and assume they’d argued. She wouldn’t rest till she found out what it was about, so a quarrel would have to be invented, and in that imaginary dispute Mother would side with Toby, and once more Elinor would be in the wrong. Somehow or other Elinor was going to have to get through the rest of the evening without arousing suspicion.
    After dinner, she suggested cards. She knew Father would back her up: he loved his family but their conversation bored him. So the table was set up, partners chosen and all conversation was thereby at an end. Toby dealt the cards, smiled in her direction once or twice, but without meeting her eyes. Or was she imagining the change in him? Even now a little, niggling worm of doubt remained. Was she being – dread word – hysterical? Her mother had accused her of that often enough in the past. Elinor knew that even if there were any family discussion of the incident she would be made to feel entirely in the wrong. But there would be no discussion.
    So the evening dragged on, until ten o’clock when she was able to plead the remains of a headache and retire early to bed.
    Once in her room, she threw the window wide open, but didn’t switch on the lamp. No point inviting moths into the room, though she didn’t dislike them, and certainly wasn’t terrified of them as Rachel was. She thought she looked a bit like a moth herself, fluttering to and fro in front of the mirror as she undressed and brushed her hair. It was too hot for a nightdress; she needed to feel cool, clean sheets against her skin. Only they didn’t stay cool. She threw them off, looked down at the white mounds of her breasts, and pressed her clenched fists hard into the pit of her stomach where she’d felt that treacherous melting. Never again. She would never,
never
, let her body betray her in that way again. A little self-consciously, she began to cry, but almost at once gave up in disgust. What had happened