Love Falls (34 page)

‘Who's Todd?' she asked, to show him that she knew.

‘Oh Todd, he's Lulu's . . .' Kip flushed and took hold of the bottle of wine. ‘I'm sorry.'

Lara handed him the corkscrew. ‘Do you think this wine's all right? Or is it terribly expensive?'

‘I hope so. Let's drink it all,' he grinned, and he began to twist out the cork.

They said nothing until they'd swallowed the first glass. It soothed Lara and gave her hope.

‘Are you longing to get home?' Kip asked gently as he poured a second glass.

‘No.' Lara was surprised.

‘It's just, you'd be gone today, wouldn't you, if Caroline hadn't  . . .'

‘Oh yes.' Lara took a gulp. The day after the Palio. And she remembered how desperate her father was to be home. ‘What about you? Will you be going back to London soon?'

Kip frowned. ‘A few more weeks, and then . . . yes, I expect I'll go to my mother's for a while  . . .'

Lara looked at him, and something about his doleful expression forced her up off the floor and on to the end of the sofa where she leant against his legs. ‘And then you'll be going to Kenya?'

‘But we could see each other in London,' he offered. ‘Before?'

‘Yes,' she agreed, although she knew they mustn't. ‘Where does your mother live?'

Kip yawned. ‘In Knightsbridge.'

‘Knightsbridge.' Lara closed her eyes. She could get the Piccadilly line all the way down from Finsbury Park, past Holloway and Caledonian Road, stations bypassed so mercilessly by the Victoria line, into King's Cross, a maze of black and petrifying tunnels, a place to be avoided at all cost. But the train would take her on to Holborn with its air of panelled sitting rooms and cigars, through Covent Garden – impossible to dissociate from the long-gone barrows of fruit and vegetables that used to roll across the cobbles. And then there was Piccadilly Circus, friendly and festive, and Green Park, which, unlike Finsbury, was full of the word park. Hyde Park Corner, and you were at the edge of Buckingham Palace. Would Charles and Diana be back from their honeymoon by now? And then Knightsbridge. The home, not of knights, but of Harrods, and very occasionally the Victoria & Albert Museum.

‘Knightsbridge,' she murmured to make it sound real.

‘In one of those crescents behind Pont Street,' Kip prompted, as if that would help, and she thought of the wooden floorboards of her own terraced house, the back door into the garden, the bathroom with its flower-framed mirror and rag rug. When you pulled open the fridge there was never wine and olives. Some milk usually, a wilting lettuce, and a half-eaten tin of Berry's food.

The record was starting over again, the arm swinging automatically to the start.
Love me or leave me or let me be lonely, You won't believe me but I love you only
. . . Kip roused himself and flipped it over and poured out the last drops of the wine. Lara's head felt thick and her limbs were heavy. She was amazed to find that she was sleepy, when really it wasn't long since they'd got up.

She pushed her legs down further, tucking her toes behind Kip's back. ‘Does she live on her own, your mother?' she asked, and Kip nodded.

‘Well, apart from me.'

‘But you're not really there.'

‘Well, no. Sometimes. In the holidays. What about yours?'

‘No. I mean yes. She just lives with me.'

‘Never anyone else?'

‘Not really.'

Lara had once asked Cathy why she and Lambert separated. She didn't know why she asked her. She didn't really want to know. Or at least she assumed she
did
know. They didn't love each other, that was all. But that wasn't actually the case.

‘Your dad was away,' Cathy had told her. ‘He was often away, doing research, but one time, you were about four . . .' Her face blanched at the memory. ‘I
saw
him. On Kensington High Street, standing in the street with a woman. They were all dressed up. At least she was, and he was hailing a taxi, holding the door for her to get in.' Just remembering, Cathy had begun to shake.

‘What did you do?' Lara asked, because she couldn't leave her standing there, suffering.

‘Well.' Cathy sniffed, and in spite of herself, she started to laugh. ‘I had an affair. With a friend of his. Someone who'd always liked me, and when your father eventually came back, from his research trip, he found the flat full of roses that this man, who was actually rather gorgeous, had sent round.' Cathy closed her eyes for a moment. ‘But your dad . . . he couldn't accept it. He knocked over every vase and bottle, smashed most of them. Stamped on them. Hurled the roses out of the window. I promise you it was as if he'd lost his mind. “I can't trust you now,” he said. “How do I even know if Lara is mine?” and he packed up everything that was his from the flat. “But you do it,” I confronted him. I was terrified. “You have affairs,” and you know what he said?' Cathy's face was blotched with grief. ‘ “It's different for me.” '

Lara had taken hold of her hand. ‘Was that when we moved to Scotland?'

‘Not long after.' Cathy's tears were sliding down her neck. ‘It helped.'

Later, when Lara went upstairs to say goodnight, she found her mother sitting cross-legged in front of her shrine, her eyes closed, her lips moving, her hands like lily flowers resting on the tops of her knees. He doesn't know, she thought, if I'm even his, and without waiting for her to finish, she went back down.

Lara looked over at Kip. His eyes were half closed but he was mouthing to the music. ‘Have your parents been divorced for long?'

Kip looked surprised. ‘Oh, they're not divorced. Papa's out here in Italy for financial reasons. Saving the family money. That's what Mummy thinks anyway. It sort of works, as long as everyone remembers never to mention Pamela.' Kip frowned. ‘I mean he comes back, once or twice a year, and then he always stays at home, at least I think he does.'

‘I mean doesn't . . . but?' Lara frowned too. ‘What about . . .' but she saw it was pointless to go on.

 

 

Lara was woken by the telephone. She was up by the second ring, stumbling over Kip's sleeping body, scrambling towards the desk. ‘Hello?' It was her father. She could tell by the way he cleared his throat, but for a moment he said nothing. ‘Dad?' she ventured and he told her then.

‘Caroline has died.'

‘Oh.' She didn't know what to say. ‘Oh no.'

‘This morning. Not so long ago.' There was the tiniest of tremors and for a horrible moment she thought he might be going to cry. But instead he lowered his voice. ‘Look I don't want to stay here. Ginny won't hear of leaving. But I need to get out. Get home.'

‘To here?'

‘No. To London.'

Lara felt her heart lurch. ‘Today?' She looked over at Kip who was still on the sofa, wrapped in Caroline's mohair blanket, his hair sticking up wildly at the front.

‘Ginny thinks we should sit with Caroline. She's sitting with her now. Listen. The train leaves some time around lunch. Can you pack up my things, and come and collect me and then we'll go on to the station.'

‘But I  . . .'

‘Who could you ask to drive you?' His voice was almost unrecognisable with hurry.

‘The man who cleans the pool? Or the gardener?' Lara had never seen either of these men. Did they come every day before she got up?

‘No. Lara. Listen. If you could ring and ask for a taxi. Ask them to come to the hospital. I'll be waiting in the entrance. At twelve.'

‘But I . . .' How would she find a taxi? Or if she did, could she speak enough Italian to give them the address? What was the address here anyway?

‘Lara?'

‘Yes?' Never before had he asked her to do anything for him. Well, he had once asked her to buy some sausage from the German Food Centre in London but when she arrived, flushed with success, it turned out he'd wanted a different kind of sausage. Smoked sausage in a jar. Not in a tin. The look of disappointment on his face had made her spirits plummet, and just thinking of it she felt them give way now.

‘Thank you,' he said. It was as if she'd already done exactly what he'd asked. ‘Goodbye,' and very gently he put down the phone.

Lara looked around her. All she could see were Caroline's things. Her magazines, her glasses, a packet of Silk Cut, a stray scarf curled over a chair. What would happen to them all? Would Caroline's family descend on the villa and take everything away? The hairbrushes and rings. The chiffon blouses. The hat boxes and shoes. Would they notice that her pink dress was missing? Until now she'd never known anyone to die. Had never actually believed that it was possible. Her mother's parents, her grandparents, were the only old people she knew. Apart from the Tibetan monks at Puruwala and the ones at Samye Ling. And they were timeless. Fearless. So prepared for death that they were joyful. Lara's grandparents were timeless too. Old since her first memory of them, but never getting older. She had visited them when she was small, and then again the summer after she came back from India, when the smell of the dog's meat boiling on the stove, the lights and liver, a pot big enough to feed a whole family of Tibetans, had disturbed her so much she'd gone out for a walk and walked so far and so distractedly that she'd got lost and had to be brought home by a farmer.

‘Kip?' She knelt down on the floor. It was already twenty to eleven. ‘We've got to collect my dad from the hospital. We have to get up. Can you help me?'

Kip turned over and buried his face in a cushion.

‘Please.' She shook him. ‘We have to catch the train.'

She left him and ran upstairs to Lambert's room. His blue dressing gown was lying on the bed, his books and papers in piles on every available surface.

‘Kip,' she shouted. ‘Please get up.' And then she remembered that he didn't know. She ran back downstairs and knelt beside him. She put her face close to his ear and as gently as she could she told him. ‘Caroline is dead.'

Kip turned his face to hers and opened one blue eye. ‘But Nicchio won. We kept her seat for her  . . .'

‘Kip,' she whispered, urgent. ‘I need to get to the hospital and collect Lambert. And then we have to get to the train. I promised him. He's waiting. Can you help me find a taxi?'

‘A taxi?' He stretched. ‘Round here, I don't think there is such a thing.'

‘Couldn't we call one?'

Kit shrugged. ‘I don't know. Do you have a number?'

Lara shook her head. ‘What if you went back to Ceccomoro and borrowed Pamela's car?'

‘No way!' Kip shivered in mock terror.

‘But I have to be there.' Lara felt her voice rising, out of her control. ‘I have to. In an hour!'

‘Bloody hell.' Kip recoiled. ‘Calm down.'

Lara ran back up to Lambert's room. I'll carry the bags out on to the road myself, she thought. I'll hitch into Siena. Why not? Lambert's pyjamas were tucked under a pillow, his handkerchief folded into a triangle on the bedside table. Lara found his leather holdall, surprisingly worn for a man who never travelled, and began to pile his books and papers in. She opened the cupboard and as carefully as she could lifted down his suits. She folded them, and reached up for his trousers and his shirts. In a drawer she found his socks, dark-grey and black, and beside them several pairs of white cotton underwear. When she'd laid them in, she looked around for anything that might be left. His hairbrush, his empty glasses case, his wallet, and pulled the holdall on to the landing. In her own room she tipped the contents of her drawer straight into her bag, snatching at the rest of the clothes on hangers, throwing in her books. She seized her hairbrush and her toothbrush and zipping everything up she dragged both the bags downstairs.

Kip was standing at the fridge. ‘I'm starving,' he said, and he pulled out a tall bottle of apricot juice and took a long thirsty slug.

‘Kip . . .' she began in protest and then she remembered. Caroline had died.

Next Kip pulled out a plate of sliced ham and a soft waxed packet of cheese. ‘Pass the bread,' he said, and he sliced into a round of mozzarella.

Lara seized the bread and held it high. ‘Only if you help me.'

‘You've got to see it from my point of view.' He reached out for the loaf. ‘What's in it for me?'

Lara frowned. ‘I . . .' But while she hesitated he snatched the bread.

‘You're asking me to drive you to the hospital, collect your father, take you to the train . . . Why would I?' He drizzled a thick slice with olive oil and heaped it high with ham. ‘Why would I?' He shrugged. ‘When I don't want you to go.'

Lara stared at him. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said, but all the same she felt like crying. It was already eleven. She could see the clock out of the corner of her eye. ‘I don't want to go either,' she pleaded. ‘But my dad . . . it's hard to explain. He has to get home. And I . . . I have to go with him.'