The Burning Air Read Online Free PDF

that Tara’s level of consternation matched her own, and shot Will a triumphant look that missed its target. “I didn’t even know he was here. His car’s not outside. Are you sure he’s drunk?”
    “Yes. He’s had a whole bottle of port and started a bonfire.”
    “What’s he burned?”
    “Newspapers. He says he’s preparing the ground for tomorrow’s fire.”
    The vomiting ended with a series of bilious retches.
    “Jesus,” said Matt, his voice straddling disgust and awe. “He’s really going for it, isn’t he?”
    The conversation drifted away from food. Another bottle was uncorked. An ancient box of Trivial Pursuit was pulled out of a drawer but not opened. The grandfather clock doled out portions of the night.
    “I wonder where they’ve got to,” said Tara.
    “They?” said Sophie.
    “Felix said he was bringing a girl.”
    “
Did
he?” said Will, at the same time that Sophie said “Felix has got a girlfriend? First I’ve heard of it. Does Dad know?”
    “I don’t know if Dad knows. I didn’t know
you
didn’t know. Still, he must be quite taken with her if he’s bringing her down here.”
    “First girlfriend, at the tender age of twenty-nine,” said Will. Sophie and Tara glared at him.
    “Below the belt, Will,” said Tara. “You know he’s funny about his scar.”
    Will held up his palms in conciliation, and rolled his eyes at Matt in the vain hope of finding an ally. Matt studied the small print on his beer bottle: he still regarded MacBride familial bickering as a spectator sport rather than one he could participate in.
    “I wonder if she’s like the rest of his friends,” said Tara.
    Sophie hoped not. Since his mid-teens, Felix had lived entirely ironically, hanging out with a group who dressed anachronistically in smoking jackets or old heavy-metal tour T-shirts; held ironic Royal Wedding street parties; ate ironic meals; served fish finger sandwiches at dinner parties; and even went on ironic holidays to Butlins and Benidorm. The weekend would hold enough tension without some self-styled retro princess sneering at their beloved traditions and stonewalling their jokes.
    “What
do
we know about her?” pressed Sophie. “What’s her name, for a start?”
    “Literally, I don’t know anything more than I’ve told you,” said Tara. “I wonder what she’ll make of the old place.”
    It was a MacBride theory that a person’s first reaction to the barn told you all you needed to know of their character. Will, the only boyfriend Sophie had brought to the barn, had explored the whole place in silent wonder before giving the verdict: “This would make an architect cry. I
love
it. But then I knew I would: it’s such a big part of you.” Tara often said that one of the reasons she and Matt had lasted was that on crossing the threshold for the first time he hadn’t admired it, criticized it, or analyzed it, but had dropped his bags and let out a long cheer just to test the acoustics.
    Soon after midnight, Felix’s ancient orange Skoda (ironic) came to a noisy halt in front of the barn. Then the stable door opened and Felix was there, in a coat with mittens hanging from strings at the wrists and a deerstalker hat.
    The first thing Sophie noticed about the girl was her hair: long, matte, dark, and thick. It hung in a curtain over most of her face but could not disguise exquisite features, all eyes and cheekbones, the one-in-a-million perfect proportions of the cover girl or movie star. She dressed that part too, in slim trousers, heels, a thin white vest under a tailored, dove-gray leather jacket. Was Sophie being oversensitive to imagine that the girl’s beauty ridiculed Felix’s own disfigurement? He was trying to look casual, as though he had stunningly beautiful girlfriends to stay in Devon all the time.
    “Kerry, these are my sisters, Sophie and Tara, and this is Will, and this is Matt, and this is Jake. Everyone, this is Kerry.”
    For a second or two Felix let slip his