La's Orchestra Saves the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

you can,” she said. “And if he doesn’t want to be with me, then I wouldn’t want him brought back.”
    Gerald looked awkward. “Do you want to divorce him?”
    “I suppose I’ll have to,” La replied.
    “We’ll support you in every way,” said Gerald. “His share in the business will be made over to you. I’ve alreadyinformed our solicitors. They know what the position is. I still control everything.”
    “All in good time,” said Richard’s mother. “He might change his mind. We can hope.”
    “No,” said Gerald. “We can’t.”
    La watched them. Of the two, she thought, I feel sorrier for her. A man can divorce his son if pushed to that extreme; a mother could never do that.
    SHE WENT BACK to the house in Maida Vale. A friend from school days, Valerie, a woman who had married a banker and who lived in a flat in Chelsea, came and stayed for a few days. It was a help to have somebody with her, especially an old friend. Valerie talked when she wanted to talk, and was silent when she wanted to be silent. She made no attempts at reassurance, but was direct and pragmatic. “Bad choice,” she said. “Bad luck. It could happen to anybody. It’s not your fault at all. It’s men. That’s what they do. All the time. He’s not going to come back—not after doing this. So you’ll have to forget him, I’m afraid.”
    “I suppose you’re right.”
    “Of course I’m right.”
    Valerie lit a cigarette. “And now?”
    “I want to get out of this place. I don’t want to live here.”
    Valerie looked thoughtful. “You could stay with us if you like,” she said. “We’ve got a spare room. I don’t see why youcouldn’t stay with us … for a while. Eventually we’d get on one another’s nerves, I suppose, but you could stay with us.”
    La laughed. It was the first time that she had laughed since it happened, ten days ago, and it felt strange; as if her face was cracking. “It would be like being back at school,” she said. “But different. There’d be a man drifting around.”
    “I mean the invitation. I really do.”
    “I know.” She stretched out and put a hand on her friend’s arm. “I’m very grateful. But no, I don’t think it would be a good idea. They … Richard’s parents, have offered me something, and I think I’m going to accept. They have a house they never use. It’s in the family. They said that I could have it if I wished.”
    Valerie blew smoke into the air. “Here in London?”
    “No. It’s in the country. In Suffolk. In a village there.”
    Valerie frowned. “You can’t go and live in the country. You can’t go and bury yourself out there. Suffolk. It’s miles away. For God’s sake, La!”
    “Perhaps I want to be miles away,” said La. “Perhaps that’s exactly what I want … now.”
    “What will you do?”
    “I’ll find something,” she said. “Go for walks. Listen to music. Talk to people.”
    “But everybody will be ancient.”
    La smiled. “There are people our age in the country. Bags of them.”
    Valerie was not impressed with the argument. “Yes, but will you understand anything of what they say? Will you?”
    “You forget that I come from a hill-top in Surrey,” said La. “From the top of a hill.”
    Valerie laughed. La had always entertained her, with her dry sense of humour. She loved her. She would go and stay with her wherever she was, she decided; on the top of a hill, in a valley somewhere, in a sleepy village with incomprehensible locals. Anywhere.

Four
    S TANDING BEFORE her new front door, with its peeling paint—it looked as if it had been olive green once, but had declined to grey—La thought, as might anybody who had made a precipitate move,
What have I done?
The answer was simple, of course; she had left London behind her, city and friends, without thinking of the implications. In a sense that was what she wanted: even if she still thought of Richard, and, curiously, still missed him—his absence was an ache within