The Burning Air Read Online Free PDF Page B

mask of irony; when he looked at Kerry it was with the pride and adoration of a bridegroom at the altar. It was the first genuine emotion Sophie had seen cross his face since Lydia’s funeral.
    Kerry flicked the briefest of glances at each of them, then lowered her lids again and went back to staring at the floor. She did not speak, and neither did she look around her new surroundings. Sophie locked eyes with Tara for a second.
No
reaction to the barn was unheard of. There was already much to discuss.
    Felix closed the door behind him and bent down to as if to kiss Sophie, but instead plucked the wineglass from her hand and drained it. “Good bouquet, strong nose, lovely vintage,” he said, back to his usual self. “Sit down, Kerry, I’ll get you a drink. Bloody
hell,
it’s hot in here.”
    He shrugged off his jacket and Kerry removed her own. She wore no bra under her camisole, and Sophie felt herself blush on her behalf. Opposite her, Tara cringed while Matt and Will, both old enough to affect ignorance, began an earnest discussion about the best way to peel a king prawn while poor Jake shifted and pulled a cushion over his lap.
    Kerry said nothing for the rest of the evening. She answered any questions directed her way with nothing more than a smile. She seemed genuine enough, but let Felix talk for her. Was it true, then, that cliché about beautiful people not bothering to develop a personality because their looks did all the work for them? When Felix went to the fridge, Sophie followed him on the pretext of recycling a wine bottle and pulled the door closed behind them.
    “Well?” she said.
    Felix was too drunk, or tired, or delighted, to bother hiding his smirk. “What do you reckon? I’m punching above my weight, I know, but . . . she’s
amazing,
isn’t she?”
    “She seems very . . .” Sophie groped for the right word. Beautiful was too obvious, and wasn’t there an implicit insult there? Strange? Naive? Shy?
Rude?
“She seems . . .
sweet
. But does she speak?”
    “I’m sure you wouldn’t exactly be at your most loquacious if you had to meet an entire family all at once.”
    “Maybe,” she conceded. Will had been a little overawed at first, but then he had been very young. She couldn’t remember the first time Matt had met the family en masse, but she did recall that some of his predecessors had been dumb in the face of the MacBrides’ energy and solidarity.
    “So, where did you meet her, what does she do, how long have you been together, what kind of background is she from? I want to know everything.”
    “Christ, you’re
so
like Mum,” said Felix. “OK. In no particular order. She came into the shop about two months ago and we’ve been together since the night after that. She isn’t working at the moment. As for background, you vile snob, I don’t think she’s got much in the way of family. Not that I mind that, you lot are more than enough for one man to deal with.” Sophie smiled to herself; he’d paraphrased another theory she and Tara had come up with, an idea that they were drawn to people with sparse backgrounds because they were so easy to assimilate into the MacBrides. A competing clan might have proved an unstoppable force to the immovable object of their own unit. “She’s a riddle, wrapped inside an enigma, hidden inside a mystery . . . all lurking behind a fantastic pair of tits.”
    “Felix!”
    “I promise you, you’ve never seen anything like them,” said Felix. “They’re—”
    “Strangely, I’m not particularly keen to imagine your girlfriend’s breasts,” said Sophie, folding her arms across her own chest, very aware that milk had only temporarily restored to her the full breasts of her twenties. Not that Will saw them in that context anymore, not since long before Edie was born. She breathed through the reflexive surge of anger until she felt calm, then surprised herself by throwing the empty wine bottle into the recycling bin so hard