Swimming Pool Sunday Read Online Free PDF Page B

stalked off, black hair streaming behind her. She’d apologized later, but Louise already felt slighted. And ever since then, Louise had always sensed, perhaps unfairly, that Meredith looked down on her, laughed at her, even, for leading such a conventional unchallenging existence.
    Since it was not safe to visit Devenish House without coming across Meredith, Louise had found herself seeing Ursula less and less frequently. Barnaby and Hugh were still good friends, but Barnaby often observed, ruefully, that Hugh was in less need of company these days. With Meredith there, the Delaney family had become far more self-sufficient than before.
    Daisy Phillips arrived at Devenish House slightly after eleven, reached the middle of the drive, and then stopped, stricken with sudden nerves.
    She had never been to the Delaneys’ house before. Her parents had only bought the cottage in Melbrook a few months ago, and they hadn’t really got to know anybody in the village. But Mrs Mold had told her to be sure to come to the Swimming Day, and said she would introduce her to everyone. Daisy liked Mrs Mold. She was a piano teacher, as well as the vicar’s wife, and she had passed by the cottage one day as Daisy was practising. Immediately she had come down the path and knocked on the door.
    ‘A pianist! In Melbrook!’ she had exclaimed. ‘What luck!’
    Daisy was going to the Royal Academy of Music in the autumn. She had spent most of this academic year in Bologna, studying with Arturo Fosci, and picking up alittle Italian. But then she’d come back to England, and all of a sudden there had arisen the problem of where Daisy should live. With her busy parents both working from their tranquil London flat, she couldn’t really live there and practise. ‘It was fine when it was just the school holidays,’ her father had explained kindly, ‘but if it’s going to be for several months on end …’ And then his mobile phone had rung, and he’d broken off to answer, and Daisy had stood waiting for him to finish, until he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘We’ll talk about it later, Daisy.’
    One of her brothers lived in London, but in a tiny flat with room-mates and no space for a piano; the other was travelling round the world. In the autumn she would be able to practise at the Academy, but until then, she really needed somewhere of her own, where the noise didn’t matter. For a while it had seemed as though she was going to have to find her own flat in London, or maybe rent a studio, and then suddenly, at supper one evening, her mother exclaimed, ‘Of course, the cottage!’
    ‘What cottage?’ said Daisy.
    ‘The cottage in Melbrook,’ said her father. ‘We bought it while you were in Italy. It’s very pretty.’
    ‘And tax efficient,’ added her mother. She took a forkful of baby spinach. ‘We don’t actually go there very much.’
    ‘We don’t actually go there ever, you mean,’ said her father.
    ‘We went once,’ retorted her mother. ‘Don’t you remember? It was bloody freezing.’ She shuddered.
    ‘Anyway,’ said her father. ‘What about it?’
    ‘Daisy could live there and practise to her heart’s content,’ said her mother. Her eyes began to gleam. ‘And if she was down on the employee roll …’
    ‘She already is,’ put in her father.
    ‘… then all her expenses would be tax-deductible. What about it, Daisy?’
    ‘You’ll never fit Daisy’s piano into that cottage,’ her father had objected, before Daisy could reply.
    ‘Yes you will!’ her mother had retorted. ‘Of course you will. That sitting-room’s jolly big!’
    ‘And so is a grand piano.’
    ‘Not that big.’
    ‘When was the last time you looked at one closely?’
    And so they’d argued all through supper. Daisy’s mother went and fetched the floor plan of the cottage and drew a grand piano into the sitting-room, fitting snugly next to the fireplace. Her father leaned back in his chair and roared with