Force Majeure Read Online Free PDF

to the family, Kay.’
    Luna clapped a comradely arm round Kay’s shoulder while Quint took her hand into a limp shake.
    Don’t let them –
    ‘You should go in,’ Luna breathed into her ear, ‘she’s waiting for you.’
    – get to you.
    She pushed at the door. The two child-women didn’t follow her but streamed abruptly back from where they’d come. Kay stepped nervously and respectfully into the library and the presence of the chatelaine.
    The-Lady, Azure called her, though she was properly named Flower-of-the-Lady in honour of some local legend. Kay expected her to be serene and blooming, like her name, like the Pre-Raphaelite half-beauty it suggested. No. She sat at the desk at the far end of the library’s huge central atrium, under shafts of coloured light that dropped from the glass-domed roof. She was writing with a fountain pen and didn’t look up as Kay entered. It was difficult to gauge her height or her age or even the colour of her skin. Her face was obscured by her hair, which fell in neat curls like woodshavings, an old-fashioned look that suited her narrow, meatless build. She licked her lips as she wrote. She had a tongue for catching flies.
    Kay crept steadily along the line of the carpet towards her while, either side of her, towering bookshelves stood in ranks, the perfume of oak and varnish mingling with leather and slow-crumbling paper. Though she didn’t dare stop to inspect them, Kay saw that the shelves weren’t uniform but each was carved with a unique and tactile design. The sense of organisation intrigued her.
    Captain Esteban propped himself up on a rickety chair to Flower-of-the-Lady’s right. His uniform looked only mildly less shabby than when he had crashed into the dirt the previous day. His raw red eyes and taut skin betrayed a hangover and lost love. He seemed to grin as Kay approached, though it could equally have been a wambling, seasick smile. There was another chair to the-Lady’s left, but this was empty. Two-thirds of an inquisition then, and nowhere else to sit. Don’t relax. Stand if you have to. Stay alert.
    She must have struck an unimpressive figure in her T-shirt and shorts, with her bare blue goosefleshed arms and legs on show, her dense freckle-archipelagos fully visible. There was a draught in the library but also a well of heat from somewhere close by. She hoped not to shiver.
    Without looking up, Flower-of-the-Lady said, ‘Stay there. I won’t keep you a minute.’ That made Kay crane round automatically for a clock. Overhead there were platforms and half-storeys, all swollen with shelves, but there was no hint of the time anywhere. Esteban – clearly as irritated by the promised delay as Kay, but worse at concealing it – groaned briefly and lowered his heavy head into his hands.
    Kay looked for the trace of a smile on Flower-of-the-Lady’s lips, but if there was one, it was well-hidden. Her pen moved patiently along the page and she didn’t look up. The skin of her face, visible below the heavy overhang of curls, was unmarked. Her eyes were wide and brown, floating up briefly to regard Kay before sinking down again into her work. They were humourless but not incurious. Kay stood stiffly with her hands clamped together over her navel and let time pass. Her skin was prickling from her embarrassment in the anteroom.
    Presently Father Christmas brought a cup of tea for the-Lady in a bone-china mug that didn’t shake or spill in his surprisingly steady hand. Father Christmas was black and blind and wore a scarlet frockcoat instead of reindeer skins but was otherwise unmistakable. Kay felt vaguely embarrassed to christen the newcomer this way, but his birdnest beard made her think of no-one else. She looked to the surface of the tea, which was milkless but swirling with small, dissolving lumps of butter.
    Flower-of-the-Lady’s pen moved. ‘Thank you, Luis,’ she said. ‘Would you be kind enough to fetch a chair for our guest? And perhaps some tea