Read Online A Cry from the Dark by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page B

probably spot-on, wouldn’t you say? I’ve got something on most of that day, so I wondered if you could lay on the tucker that first night.”
    Lay on the tucker, thought Bettina disgustedly. Mark’s Australian accent and vocabulary had got broader since he arrived in London. Probably he was hoping this would get him any Australian parts going. He was certainly not likely to get any English ones. Quite apart from anything else he looked Australian, with his enormous body, his jutting-chinned face, cleft chin, and his daunting air of healthiness.
    â€œI’ll be delighted to see them and give them dinner,” she said. “Will they come by taxi or will you bring them round?”
    â€œOh, whatever. I’ll see what I’ve got on,” said Mark, obviously determined to have some thing.
    Bettina had a day to prepare a meal, since she had no intention of meeting the visitors after a day spent toiling over her stove. She had never made a great thing of entertaining, though she was a competent enough cook. Feeling she would have enough emotionally on her plate that evening to need help with the mechanics of it, she rang Katie and arranged for her to do the serving and the washing up afterward. She prepared a casseroled carbonade, all but the bread topping, then went down to Kensington High Street and bought gravlax as well as some ripe nectarines to make a sorbet with. She also bought in some good wine—she usually bought Australian or New Zealand, but thought that would be silly in the circumstances. She surveyed her purchases with satisfaction when she got back to the flat: they would fit the bill nicely—something midway between the fatted calf and a Barmecide feast.
    Not, thinking of the former, that Sylvia was in any way a prodigal daughter. If anyone had been prodigal in their relationship it had been the mother.
    They arrived around seven, watched for from Bettina’s first-floor window. Mark drove them to Holland Park Crescent and then pointed them to the door. He had a genius for doing things in ways that got Bettina’s hackles up. But since he was not there to freeze she put him out of her mind and gave the visitors a proper welcome.
    That was very easy with Oliver. He had certainly gained a lot of weight since she saw him last: though by no means short, he was by now distinctly roly-poly, and with his good-humored, tolerant expression he looked almost Pickwickian. She hugged him with real warmth, and then shook hands with his companion.
    â€œIt’s so good of you to come,” she said.
    â€œNot good at all,” said her daughter. “It’s wonderful to be able to visit Europe with a companion to take some of the strain. Lucky it suits both of us.”
    She was spectacled, graying, but with a trim figure she had not let go to seed. Her stance was not exactly prim, but there was something of the schoolteacher in it—something that spoke of simple codes, firmly adhered to. Bettina felt she could probably respect what she saw, but reserved her judgment on whether she would like it. She was just sitting them down and preparing to get them drinks when Katie let herself in with her old key and bustled through. She was dressed in a dreadful old black dress, too short and tight, that she had used when, long ago, she had used to “help out” in grander houses than this one.
    â€œI’ll do the drinks,” she announced to Bettina. “This’ll be your brother, will it? What will it be?”
    â€œA beer will be fine.”
    â€œAnd you’re—?”
    â€œJust a family friend,” said Sylvia firmly. “I think I’ll have a medium sherry.”
    â€œCan see you’re not family,” said Katie, whose eyesight had always been poor. “And you’ll have a g and t, will you, Bettina?”
    â€œThank you, Katie,” said Bettina, smiling with her eyebrows slightly raised in her guests’ direction. When