Sophie opened the fridge to see a small covered casserole dish, a box of eggs, three and a half lemons, and several individual bottles of tonic water.
“Here it is,” she said. “And there they are, sorted. Now! Don’t they look lovely!”
“Hmm,” said Mrs. Scott-Ramsay again. “Your mother grows these, does she?”
“My mother grows everything. We only have a small garden, but she grows the most amazing flowers, freesias and lilac in the spring, roses and peonies in the summer, herbs all the year around; we even have a little vegetable patch. She says she was born with a green thumb. That’s what they call it back in Boston, apparently.”
“American?” Mrs. Scott-Ramsay raised her eyebrows in disapproval.
“Absolutely.”
Mrs. Scott-Ramsay snorted. “Still, it was very civil of her to send flowers,” she allowed. “I’ve always been fond of lilacs.”
“Me, too!” Sophie drew up a chair at the table and perched herself on it. “They’re so pretty, aren’t they! Look at that beautiful, amazing color! They’re just like …”
She stopped herself, becoming suddenly aware that since she had arrived, Mrs. Scott-Ramsay had looked neither at the flowers nor directly at Sophie herself, but instead was staring, fixedly, at a spot somewhere between the two.
“And the smell!” she added quickly. “Isn’t it just the most heavenly springlike smell you’ve ever imagined, like wrapping your whole nose in a silken sheet of gorgeousness?”
“It is a pretty smell,” conceded Mrs. Scott-Ramsay. “We used to have a bush when I was a girl in Lincolnshire, and it always takes me back. Well, we can’t just leave them on the kitchen table. Bring them in here.”
She struggled to her feet, and made her way stiffly into the living room. It, too, was a well-lit room, the afternoon sunshine casting oblongs of light onto the deep carpet and the substantial upholstered furniture. There was a portrait on one wall of a stern-looking man in military uniform, and on the mantelpiece beside the clock, a silver-framed photograph of two young women with hard faces wearing the fashions of thirty years ago. Sophie looked around at the rest of the room and felt in her heart a sudden sharp pang of sadness.
Most of the available wall space was taken up with books.
“If she thinks,” said Lulu a couple of hours later, gazing resentfully at the sinkful of remaining dishes and the soaking pan that had held the curry, “that if she stays out long enough we’ll get fed up with waiting and do the rest of it ourselves, then she’s got another think coming. Charlie, what are you doing at the dishwasher?”
“Inhabiting my own kitchen,” said Charlie, beginning to unload plates. “If that’s okay with you, please. She did do two loads, and it won’t take me two minutes to unpack these and start another.”
“Well, if you want to indulge the brat, on your own head be it. But you are not—do you hear me, not—to touch or even so much as look at the curry pot, okay? That’s all hers.” Carefully, she held the kettle over the dishes in the sink to fill it from the tap. “Do you want a cup of tea?” she said. “I was going to do the vegetable thing for supper, but we used them all last night, so I suppose it’s sausages and beans instead.”