Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets - Cathy Kelly - Страница 35

Hugh threw the holiday brochures down on to the coffee table.

‘Well, at least look at them, Leonie,’ he said angrily.

She glared up at him from her position in the armchair, Harris, the Jack Russell, curled up in her arms.

‘I’ve told you, Hugh,’ she said, trying to be patient, ‘I can’t arrange a holiday right now. The girls are due back and they’ll need me.’

‘They’ve been gone for two and a half bloody months, they can cope without you for a week at least. Your mother can look after them,’ Hugh said dismissively.

Harris wriggled his silky little head and Leonie stroked his velvety ears. He looked like a little bat lying upside down, belly exposed, head lolling back and the bat ears hanging down. He had the most mischievous eyes, little pools of naughtiness.

‘They’re not kids, they can look after themselves, you know,’ Hugh continued.

She could feel the first stirrings of temper deep inside her.

‘I haven’t been away for a year and neither have you,’ Hugh went on. ‘Just a week in Italy later this month; maybe two weeks. It’ll be black with tourists in August but we’ll have a great time.’

‘I know it sounds lovely,’ Leonie began. It was hard when everyone and their granny were talking about summer holidays and you had nothing planned. But she hadn’t felt like taking a break with the twins away and Hugh’s idea that they should go away together had come at a bad time. The girls were due home next week and she ached to see them. Every day that passed was a day nearer to her hugging them and telling them she loved them so much. ‘I can’t leave the girls on their own now,’ she pointed out.

‘They’re happy enough away from you to last for a couple of months without you. They were only supposed to go for six weeks,’ Hugh said sharply.

That hurt. The fact that Mel and Abby had wanted to be away from her for nearly three whole months pained Leonie more than she dared tell anyone.

‘They may as well stay with us when we go to Charlie’s ranch in Texas this summer,’ Ray had said on the phone in early July when the girls’ six weeks was up. ‘They could learn how to ride and have fun. It’s only a few more weeks. Abby is blossoming. She’s doing so well, why not let them stay, Leonie?’

Mel and Abby had begged to be allowed to stay. ‘Please, please, Mom,’ they’d pleaded.

She had given in and then cried for two days afterwards, feeling betrayed by her darling daughters who wanted to spend time away from her. It was different with Danny. He was older and more independent. He’d announced that he was spending a month with pals backpacking around Europe and Leonie hadn’t minded. She’d worried and fretted, naturally, afraid he’d come to harm, or be mugged, or get mixed up with drugs or something. But he was twenty since May and it wasn’t her job to rein him in any more. Without him and the girls, the cottage was like a morgue. Penny was depressed and even Herman the hamster had gone into a decline, not playing on his wheel or anything.

Even the lure of Portofino in the sweltering heat couldn’t drag Leonie away from home once her beloved twins returned.

‘I can’t go now,’ she said reluctantly. ‘If only you’d thought of it earlier, we could have gone and come back by now.’

‘I’m down on the roster for holidays at the end of this month,’ snapped Hugh. ‘Anyway, that’s not the issue. It’s Melanie and Abigail. They’re not babies any more. You’ve got to let them go.’

‘That’s a bit rich coming from you,’ Leonie retorted.

‘What do you mean by that?’ he demanded.

‘Oh, come on, you don’t need me to spell it out, do you?’ she said, angry now. ‘You’ve got a twenty-two-year-old daughter and you wouldn’t let her make her damned bed if you could possibly do it for her! Jane is totally ruined, spoilt. You give her money all the time, even though she has a perfectly good job, and you run to help her at the drop of a hat. Look at that time she got a flat tyre going to a party and you left me sitting like a fool in the restaurant to rush off and change it for her! That’s not normal! My girls are still teenagers, they’re not even sixteen yet. You’re the one treating a grown-up woman like a little girl.’

Hugh was staring at her furiously. ‘I love Jane – ’ he began.

‘Tell me something I don’t know!’ shrieked Leonie. ‘It’s obsessive, it’s not normal. And then you accuse me of not being able to let my kids go. The words pot, kettle and black come to mind.’

‘You have no right to talk to me like that.’ Hugh’s face was choleric.

‘Why not? You think you’ve the right to say anything to me about my kids, but nobody is allowed to breathe a word about yours. No, not both of them, actually,’ Leonie said suddenly, ‘only Jane. Poor Stephen never gets a look in.’

The doorbell chimed at that instant. Hugh looked out the window and the stricken look disappeared from his face. ‘It’s Jane,’ he hissed. ‘Perhaps we can keep this argument to ourselves?’

‘Suits me,’ Leonie snapped back.

Jane waltzed in, arms full of bags, with the dogs dancing around her feet.

‘Hello, Leonie,’ she said, almost friendly. ‘I was out in Liffey Valley shopping and I thought I’d drop in on Dad on the way home.’

Leonie stared at the carrier bags. Five bags, all jammed with clothes. All purchased by a woman who still hadn’t paid her father back for booking her holiday on his credit card.

‘What did you buy?’ asked Hugh in his indulgent daddy voice.

Jane beamed and pulled out a lycra black dress that would have looked tarty on a nun. Leonie tried and failed to imagine Jane wearing it. Leonie could never figure out why Jane deliberately bought clothes that did nothing for her shape.

‘Bit revealing,’ Hugh said, eyeing the garment up and down. ‘I suppose you’re going to wow them at the office dinner in that?’

They both laughed conspiratorially.

‘Do you remember that last party when you picked us up from Buck’s and we were all plastered? And when you brought me back to Mum’s, you had to carry me up the stairs?’ Jane began.

She did that every single time they met, Leonie noticed: started a conversation designed to exclude Leonie. As if to say, Look at us, we have a history, we talk about things you know nothing of.

Jane chattered away on the ‘Do you remembers…’ for a few more minutes, shooting Leonie the odd sly glance of triumph.

Leonie picked up Harris again and cuddled him close to her. He favoured her with a couple of devoted licks.

‘What dinner dance?’ she said, attempting to be polite for Hugh’s sake. She couldn’t care less about any office dinner and thought the dress was seriously unsuitable for any professional occasion, unless the profession in question involved dancing sordidly around a pole on a stage in front of lots of drunken, drooling men.

‘We have a big party every summer,’ Jane explained, in the condescending tones of a professor explaining quantum physics to a three-year-old. ‘It used to be a barbecue but some of us complained that we wanted a proper do.’ She smirked. ‘We’re having it in the Great Room in the Shel-bourne this year. I can’t wait.’

Leonie would like to see those photos. The Shelbourne and black lycra hooker dresses didn’t match up in her mind.

‘I was about to make coffee,’ Hugh said. ‘Do you want a cup?’

‘Yeah,’ said Jane, sitting down on the couch and picking up the holiday brochures.

‘You going on holiday, Dad?’ she yelled after him.

The demon in Leonie’s head woke up. ‘No,’ she said sweetly, ‘your father and I are trying to pick a holiday together. He wants us to go to Italy but it’s a bad time for me.’

It was gratifying to see Jane’s cold little eyes widen in horror.

‘Maybe September,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve always wanted to drive along the Italian coast in a sports car. Your dad would love that, wouldn’t he?’

She felt marginally guilty for being bitchy to a kid, but then Jane was hardly a kid. She was a kid the same way that girl in The Exorcist was.

‘I don’t know if he’d like that,’ Jane said coolly. ‘In September, we always used to rent a cottage in West Cork. Him, me and Stephen.’

‘But you haven’t done that for years,’ Leonie said, ‘have you?’

‘Done what?’ said Hugh, coming back into the room with a tray of coffee-filled mugs.

‘Gone to West Cork,’ said Jane wistfully. ‘Oh, Daddy, can’t we go again this year? That trip with the girls was nice but to be totally relaxed, we need a week in Clonakilty or somewhere. Pub lunches, traditional music sessions at night, walking on the beach…please, let’s go?’

She looked like a child, Leonie thought. A child of divorced parents who’d spent years successfully playing one off the other. That was what Leonie had been afraid would happen to Mel, Abby and Danny when she and Ray split up: that they’d become experts at playing on both parents’ guiltometers, lowering their eyes at opportune moments and saying, ‘Dad would let me do that…’ Luckily, it hadn’t happened that way. But Jane displayed all the symptoms. The only strange thing was, she’d been almost an adult when Hugh and his wife had split up. And she wasn’t using her wiles to manipulate them. She only wanted to manipulate Hugh so she could have him all to herself.

Hugh was now considering a cottage in West Cork. ‘You could come then, couldn’t you, Leonie?’

Without Jane, it would have been an appealing proposition. Leonie was very fond of Stephen and would have enjoyed a holiday with him along. But not with Ms Spoilt.

‘I’d have to bring Mel and Abby,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘I thought it would be just us, Dad,’ pouted Jane.

‘Leonie needs a break, Janie,’ he replied lovingly. ‘Maybe the girls could stay with their granny for the week,’ he suggested.

Leonie stared at him coldly. ‘My family aren’t good enough for West Cork, is that it?’ she said, her earlier anger and hostility re-emerging.

‘It’s not that,’ Hugh said earnestly. ‘The cottage we always go to isn’t very big, that’s all.’

‘Renting a bigger one isn’t an option, then?’ Sarcasm dripped from every word Leonie spoke.

‘We always go to the same one,’ Jane said, eyes shining.

Leonie wondered what it was about Jane that made her hand itch to slap her.

Hugh said nothing, not a word about how of course they’d rent a bigger cottage, and what a fool he’d been to suggest Mel and Abby staying anywhere else.

‘Fine.’ Leonie dislodged a disgruntled Harris from her lap and got up. She ignored Jane and addressed Hugh. ‘Go to West Cork, Hugh. You need a holiday. I’m afraid I won’t be going with you. I’ll phone you. Sometime.’

She picked up her handbag and swept out as regally as she could.

Hugh and the three dogs followed her into the small porch. ‘Don’t be like that, Leonie,’ he begged. ‘We could talk about the holiday. The girls might not want to come. It’ll seem boring to them after a grand holiday in Boston.’

‘You’re amazing, Hugh. And I don’t mean that in a congratulatory way.’ She was wearing heels today so she was much taller than him. She stared down her nose at him now. ‘My children come first in my life and if you don’t understand that, you don’t understand very much about me. I wouldn’t dream of going on a “family holiday” without my own family. How dare you even suggest it. Goodbye, Hugh.’

She didn’t wait for him to speak, just opened the door and stormed down the drive. She raged against him all the way home. Other drivers seeing her on the dual carriageway must have thought she was mad, talking to herself and gesticulating furiously.

At home, she phoned Hannah, desperate to talk to someone.

Hannah was unpacking boxes in her new house in London and was delighted to be diverted.

‘I hate this house,’ she moaned to Leonie. ‘The kitchen is hideous and dark, and the hall looks as though it was decorated with blue paint left over from a 1940s mental hospital. I hate being on my own here.’

‘Where’s Felix?’

‘Gone out,’ Hannah said darkly. ‘Tell me your news,’ she added abruptly. ‘Mine is too boringly depressing.’

‘Join the club,’ Leonie said sadly.

In her misery, she told Hannah all the little painful things she’d deliberately never mentioned before. About how Hugh thought multiple orgasms were what happened to him when they made love three times. About the time Hugh had cancelled a date because Jane had phoned him with tickets to a rugby match.

‘The scheming little cow,’ Hannah growled. ‘You don’t get tickets like that at the last minute. She must have known before, she simply waited until he’d set up a date with you and then sprang her surprise.’

And Leonie spilled the beans about the night Hugh had brought her for a special four-month anniversary dinner in Thornton’s only to have Jane ring the restaurant in hysterics over some trauma. They’d paid the bill, left most of their main course, and Hugh had dropped Leonie at the DART while he hotfooted it over to Jane’s flat to comfort her. She’d never told anyone that: it felt too shameful, as if she was second rate and would never be first.

‘I mean, what did I do wrong?’ Leonie asked tearfully. ‘Where did I make the mistake with Hugh? I thought we were so good for each other.’

‘Don’t ask me,’ Hannah said. ‘I’m no expert on men.’

Leonie laughed, as if it were a joke. ‘Yeah, right,’ she said. ‘The stunning Mrs Andretti who’s the pride of the society pages with her gorgeous husband, the man she caught when nobody else could.’

‘I swear I only caught Felix because he’d decided he needed a wife,’ Hannah said fiercely. ‘He had everything else, he needed a wife. Now he’s got a pregnant wife, which is very useful for impressing TV and film companies who don’t want an unstable, drug-using party-goer starring in their multi-million pound production. They want a reliable family man with huge financial commitments who won’t wreck the budget by getting slammed in jail for doing too much coke in the loos at parties.’

‘What do you mean?’ Leonie was aghast at the anger in Hannah’s voice. It was like hearing that Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward weren’t the most happily married couple in the world after all. Felix and Hannah adored each other, for God’s sake. Didn’t they?

‘Nobody ever understands Felix, did you know that, Leonie? That’s what he said to me the other night,’ Hannah said bitterly. ‘Up till then, I thought that I understood him, but apparently not. He’s been wheeling me around in front of him at parties, telling every journalist he meets about his great love affair, and the reality is that he’s so happy to be back in London that he’s never home. We lived in Bill’s flat for two weeks and I never set eyes on either of them. We moved here on Monday and he hasn’t unpacked one box.’ Her voice quivered. ‘I’m the new publicity angle in his life, for God’s sake!’

‘You don’t mean that, Hannah,’ said Leonie, ever the comforter.

‘Maybe I don’t. If you need a holiday, why don’t you and the twins come to stay with me?’ Hannah suggested, brightening up. ‘Mel and Abby wouldn’t mind sleeping bags, would they?’

‘No,’ Leonie said, thinking that after a luxury holiday in the US, sleeping bags would be very low down the list of Mel and Abby’s idea of fun. ‘That’s lovely of you, Hannah. I’d love it. I’ll talk to the girls when they get home. Are you sure Felix wouldn’t mind us descending upon him?’

Hannah sounded glum again: ‘Felix won’t mind. He’s never here.’

When they’d finished talking, Leonie hung up sadly. She’d phoned Hannah hoping for comfort and ended up feeling scared for her friend. Hannah was normally so upbeat and now she sounded so down, so depressed, so bitter. It couldn’t be a hormonal thing. Men loved to blame every nuance of a woman’s mood on hormones, but that was way too simple. Hannah had sounded seriously depressed. Not for the first time, Leonie wished that Hannah hadn’t moved away.

She decided to phone Emma to cheer herself up.

Kirsten answered. ‘Hi, Leonie,’ she said when Leonie introduced herself. ‘Em’s upstairs. I’ll just get her.’

‘Hi,’ Emma said in over-bright tones when she finally picked up the phone. ‘Hold on, Leonie, I’ll bring the phone into the other room.’

Leonie could hear a door shut firmly.

‘I couldn’t talk in the hall in case Kirsten heard me,’ Emma whispered.

‘Why? What’s up?’

‘Kirsten’s left Patrick.’

‘What!’

‘Or rather, I should say she left before he threw her out. She had an affair and he found out about it. I think she was flirting madly with everyone for ages and Patrick must have noticed. They were fighting all the time and I didn’t have a clue why. But I guess she finally stopped flirting and actually did the bold thing with some guy they both know. Now it’s all over, between her and Patrick, I mean. She turned up here this morning with eight suitcases and her favourite pillow, saying the marriage was over.’

‘How awful,’ Leonie said, aghast. ‘She didn’t sound upset on the phone, but then, that’s the first time I’ve ever talked to her so I can’t tell.’

‘She’s not upset,’ Emma whispered. ‘I think she’s on tranquillizers or something. Either that, or she expects Patrick to storm up in half an hour and whisk her home, saying he can’t bear to be without her.’

‘Do you think he will?’

‘No. She’s really screwed it up this time. Patrick is a lovely guy but he won’t stand for that. It’s dreadful,’ she added reflectively, ‘they were great together. Patrick was perfect for Kirsten. He indulged her but he was always the boss. Still, if she’s living here, she can help me with Mum. She hates being on her own, so I’m spending a lot of time with her. Kirsten will be able to lend a hand, I hope. Then again, maybe not. She has to leave the house when Mum starts crying, which she does a lot now, poor love.’

‘Between you, me and Hannah, we’re a right threesome,’ Leonie remarked. ‘I’ve broken up with the man of my dreams, you’re struggling to cope with your entire family’s problems and Hannah is in the depths of despair.’

‘What’s wrong with Hannah?’ asked Emma sharply. She didn’t understand how there could be anything wrong with Hannah. Wasn’t she pregnant? What more could a woman ask for? Typical bloody Hannah – always wanting to have her cake and eat it too.

‘She’s a bit miserable about Felix, that’s all,’ Leonie said, instantly feeling guilty for even mentioning it. Hannah and Emma had barely talked recently. It was obvious that Emma couldn’t cope with seeing Hannah so deliriously pregnant. In turn, Hannah was irritated by the fact that Emma didn’t do something about having a baby of her own. It was up to Leonie to keep the peace between them, something which was increasingly difficult to do.

‘Why?’

‘He’s a bit useless when it comes to unpacking the boxes,’ Leonie said lightly.

‘Is that all?’ Emma sniffed. ‘She doesn’t have much to worry her, does she?’

Dispirited by both her phone calls, Leonie decided there was nothing for it: she’d drop in on Doug.

Putting Penny’s lead on, she walked briskly down to his house.

He emerged from his studio with tired eyes, his old jeans covered with paint.

‘Fancy a walk?’ she asked brightly.

He grinned. ‘Great idea. I’ll be ready in two minutes. We could do a few more miles on the Wicklow Way.’

The answering-machine light was flashing hysterically when she got home from the walk with Doug and the three delirious dogs. Hugh had left four messages, each more anxious than the one before.

‘I’m sorry, Leonie. We’ve got to talk,’ he said each time.

Talk to a bloody psychiatrist! she hissed as she pressed the delete button. The walk had calmed her down, although she hadn’t told Doug what had happened. He was very intuitive, so he had probably figured out that something was wrong. But he would never pry.

Hugh rang again that night.

Leonie was reasoned and calm this time, having regretted her earlier outburst.

‘I respect the fact that you have children, Hugh,’ she said, cutting off his ‘I’m sorry, Leonie,’ before he could even say it. ‘And in the same way, you’ve got to respect the fact that I have too.’

‘I do,’ he protested.

‘You don’t seem to,’ she said sadly. ‘I know that when people of our age meet, we have a lot of emotional and physical baggage, but we’ve got to learn to cope with that. I find it hard to deal with Jane and you, apparently, find it hard to deal with my children.’

‘I don’t,’ he repeated.

‘Hugh, you didn’t want the girls to go on holiday with us.’ Leonie couldn’t think of anything more hurtful than that. ‘We’re a package deal, Hugh. You get me, you get the kids too. It’s that simple.’

‘Other people’s children are hard to deal with,’ Hugh said. ‘The only child I ever really got on with was Jane. Even with Stephen I wasn’t great. I’m not good with kids.’

‘That’s a cop out,’ she said frostily. ‘I made an effort with Jane even though she hates my guts. You won’t even try with my children. How often did you want to come here and have dinner with us? Once, that’s all. You preferred to meet in town or at your place, and now I know why.’

‘Jane doesn’t hate you,’ Hugh said, still stung by Leonie’s remarks about his daughter.

Leonie lost her temper. ‘Wake up and smell the coffee, Hugh! She hates any woman who tries to take you away from her. Are you honestly telling me that she doesn’t?’

‘She’s sensitive about my dating someone,’ he said.

If it hadn’t been such a serious conversation, Leonie would have laughed out loud. Jane, sensitive?

‘Hugh, if you think it’s because she’s sensitive, that’s your business,’ Leonie said, resisting the impulse to say that Jane was an obsessive, manipulative, control freak who needed a sharp injection of reality to make her cop on. ‘I think we should cool things for a bit, step back and consider our relationship.’

‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘That’s code for breaking up, you know it, Leonie.’

‘It’s not. It’s giving us time to think. You need to decide if you want to date a woman with three children and I need to decide if I want to date you.’

There was a pause. ‘You’re very hard about this, Leonie.’

‘I’m not being hard,’ she said. ‘I’m being realistic. I actually worried over whether Penny would get on with your dogs. I should have been worried about whether you’d get on with Abby, Mel and Danny, and how I’d get on with Jane and Stephen. And, crucially,’ she paused, ‘how they’d feel about us.’

‘We can’t break up over something so silly,’ Hugh blustered.

‘It’s not silly and we’re not breaking up. We’re taking time out,’ Leonie pointed out. ‘I’ll phone you in a couple of weeks when we’re all feeling less emotional.’

‘But what about our holiday?’ Hugh wailed.

‘Go with Jane.’

When she hung up, Leonie thought about how she felt. Would she burst into tears and head straight for the gin? No. She smiled grimly. She wasn’t emotional at all. Hugh had been a nice idea: a lovely man to go on dates with, see films with and have sex with. But he’d been nothing more than that. He wasn’t the one to fill her with passion and longing. If he had been, she’d have been sobbing her heart out now. She’d have fought tooth and nail to loosen Jane’s stranglehold over him. And he’d have understood how much she loved her kids. He wasn’t the One after all.

She went into the kitchen and decided what to cook for dinner. Poor Hugh, she thought as she chopped up vegetables for a stir-fry, he’d never escape from the claustrophobic embrace of Jane. He longed for love and she’d frighten off any woman who dared to get close to him.

Hannah sat on a cushion on the sitting-room floor, carefully unwrapping ornaments from tissue paper. She’d unwrapped everything from the kitchen and had painstakingly put every cup, plate, saucer and bowl away, after carefully washing out the cupboards first. Now she was working on the sitting-room boxes. There were so many of them. How did she have so much stuff?

The front door slammed and the china she’d left on the floor rattled with the vibration.

‘Hannah!’ roared Felix. ‘Are you home?’

Where the hell else would I be? Hannah growled. I don’t know anybody, all my friends are in Ireland and I don’t have a car. Where am I going to go?

‘In here,’ she called.

Two hands appeared at the door, one holding a big pink gift bag, the other, an enormous bouquet of lilies.

Then Felix appeared, his handsome face lit up with a giant grin. ‘Pressies for you, my love. Because you’re the most wonderful woman in the world.’

In spite of herself, Hannah smiled. He strolled over to her, bent down and presented her with the bouquet. She inhaled the wonderful scent.

‘There’s more,’ Felix said, handing her the pink gift bag. Inside was a bottle of champagne which she held up and waggled at him. ‘I can’t drink, you dope,’ she said mildly.

‘That’s for me,’ laughed Felix, taking it from her. ‘The rest is for you.’

The rest was a bottle of Chanel’s Allure, one of her favourite perfumes, a box of hand-made chocolates that would go straight on to her already swelling tummy, Hannah grinned, and finally, a sliver of amber silk that shimmered as she held it up to admire it. A slinky, short nightdress that must have cost an arm and a leg. An arm and a leg they didn’t have. Since the backing had collapsed for the film Felix was supposed to be making in September, money was even tighter than ever.

‘Felix,’ she said, lost in admiration, ‘we can’t afford this.’

‘Yes we can, my love,’ he said, sitting on the floor beside her and nuzzling her neck. ‘We’re in the money again. They’ve approved a second series of Bystanders and the wages have gone mega.’

‘Oh, Felix,’ she said gratefully. ‘That’s fantastic. I was so worried about money…’

‘And about me, I suppose,’ he said ruefully. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I’m a bastard to live with when I’m out of work. I’ve been horrible, but I’m going to make it up to you. Forgive me?’

She nodded tremulously.

Felix began to pull her cardigan off. ‘Let’s see what this wonderful nightie looks like on,’ he murmured.

‘Felix, we can’t!’ said Hannah. ‘It’s still light. The curtains are open. Anyone could come up the path and see us.’

His laughter was rich and earthy. ‘Won’t that be fun?’

He dozed off afterwards on the couch, strands of blond hair falling across the perfect profile. Hannah never ceased to be amazed by his ability to sleep anywhere. He could doze off on a plane while she was fretting at the turbulence. He’d even fallen asleep on the Tube with her when they were only travelling from Green Park to Covent Garden. She covered him with his jumper and got up slowly to put the flowers in water.

Her eyes were soft with love as she gazed at him. She loved him, for all his moods and melancholy. It had to be the artistic temperament. The insecurity of acting combined with the soul-searching required for every role: it had to have a lasting effect on a person. That was Felix’s problem, Hannah decided. She had to learn to cope with that. You couldn’t be an actor’s wife and become emotional each time he became depressed. Other people might feel that they never quite knew where they stood with Felix, but not her. She was his wife, the one he brought flowers and love gifts to. They understood each other perfectly. Walking quietly so she wouldn’t wake him, she went down to the below-stairs kitchen. She was sure she’d unpacked a vase, but where was it?