Why Aren't They Screaming? Read Online Free PDF Page B

Looking round the room she noticed a chest of dark wood against a wall. She went over and lifted the lid, discovering sheets, blankets and a worn patchwork quilt. She glanced at her watch and decided there was time for a bath before supper, then remembered that her luggage, including her soap bag, was still in the car.
    She returned to the landing and descended the stairs. The long table was now in the hall, laid with a white tablecloth and place mats for eight. Towards each end stood huge branching candelabra, precariously filled with candles ofassorted length and design – straight-sided, twisted, even a couple of red ones with paper holly leaves left over from Christmas. Each place was set with a quantity of large, old-fashioned silver, much in need of polishing. The overall effect was rather pleasing, like a stage set artfully designed to suggest careless grandeur.
    Loretta turned sideways to slide past the table and put her head round the kitchen door. The grey cat was now on the floor, she noticed, leaning with closed eyes against the lower oven door of the Aga.
    â€˜I’m just going to get my things from the car,’ she said. ‘Is there a short cut across the garden?’
    Clara tossed a heap of chopped vegetables into the saucepan and came to the door.
    â€˜You go out of the conservatory, across the terrace and on to the lawn,’ she said. There’s a gate in the trees that brings you out into the lane just above the lay-by. Leave your car there for tonight and you can put it outside the cottage when Wayne leaves. I’ll be delighted to see the back of that wretched Pan-Am.’
    â€˜
Trans
-Am,’ Imo called from the kitchen, her tone suggesting this was not the first time Clara had made the mistake.
    â€˜Oh, Loretta, don’t feel you
have
to dress for dinner.’ Clara’s voice followed Loretta as she stepped into the conservatory. She paused for a moment, wondering how to interpret this remark. It hadn’t occurred to her to change, but the way Clara had spoken suggested that it might be the usual practice at Baldwin’s. It was just as well, Loretta thought, that she’d brought a couple of dresses with her.
    Just under an hour later, as Loretta was outlining her eyes with a kohl pencil, the sky suddenly darkened. Through the windows Clara’s garden abruptly drained of colour, the multitude of greens turning to tones of grey as the sky filled with rain. When it came, the first fork of lightning briefly restored a washed-out colour, as though someone had let off a giant flashgun. Loretta drew back into the room, disturbed not so much by the lightning as by a sense of unaccustomed closeness to the elements; she had a heightened awareness ofher surroundings which was lacking in London, as though some sort of protective film had temporarily dissolved. Feeling a momentary yearning for the familiarity of her flat, she tried to dispel her unease by switching on the red-shaded table lamp which stood on Clara’s desk. It cast a deep, warm glow across the room and she relaxed in spite of the lightning which again disfigured the sky.
    She had already unpacked some of her clothes; she took down a drop-waisted dress of black and white silk from its hanger on the back of the door and slipped it over her head. Crossing to the mantelpiece, she took a pair of jet earrings from her jewellery box and fixed them in her ears. She wasn’t looking too bad, she thought, examining her reflection critically in the mirror; her bobbed blonde hair would soon need cutting, but there was a bit of colour in her cheeks and her eyes were less sunken than they had been for weeks. She applied a touch of lipstick, stood back, and decided that she’d do. It wasn’t that she minded being thirty-two, she thought, crossing the room to close the shutters; what bothered her was feeling a good ten years older, as she had since the start of her illness. Well, perhaps things were looking