Read Online Family Album by Penelope Lively - Free Book Online

on Radio 4, talking about the cult of youth.” Gina smiles.
    “And meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . Tell me more. Sometimes I think you hold things back.”
    “Of course,” says Gina.
    He turns his head to look at her. “Aha. I thought so.”
    “And anyway, I don’t know it all, do I? There were six of us. Eight, with them.”
    “And Ingrid. Nine. I take your point. But at least I can have one version.”
    Gina now looks at him. “Why are you so interested?”
    He grins. “It’s happy families, isn’t it? Everyone’s fascinated by someone else’s family. And it’s you, far as I’m concerned—it’s where you’ve come from.”
    “Ah,” says Gina. “I see. You’re after insights. Why I’m how I am.”
    “Nothing so vulgar. I just want the fuller picture. What you’ve got in your head.”
    “Oh, that . Untransferable, fortunately.”
    “When did everybody go? I mean, by when?”
    Gina reflects. “In dribs and drabs. Me first, in fact. But there was never a finite going. There were compulsory attendances. Christmas. Anniversaries. Their silver wedding. That. Oh yes, that.”
    “Some people I don’t see very well—they’re in the shadows. Katie, for instance.”
    “Katie was kind. Is, I suppose. I haven’t seen her for a long time.”

    Her present to them is a silver bowl, bought in the Saturday antique market. She went there specially, searching, two Saturdays running, and it cost more than she can afford. She will have to cut back for a while, though there is not much back into which to cut. Her student grant is rapidly eaten up, and the bit extra that she has from her parents doesn’t go far, and of course they can’t do more, not with Roger and Clare still to come.
    She has wrapped the bowl in blue tissue paper, with a little silver label that says “For Mum and Dad with love from Katie.” It is in her backpack, up in the rack, and from time to time she glances up to check—the train is crowded, someone might grab it.
    She is having to miss her best friend’s birthday party. Oh well. Can’t be helped. All the same, she thinks about this, right now, and that Mike, whom she is beginning to rather like, would be there, and so will Sophie, who also rather likes Mike. She tries to shake off this thought, and stares at the window, beyond which twilight landscape rushes past, overlaid by her own face—a small, worried-looking face framed in untidy curly hair, looking both familiar and profoundly unfamiliar. Katie is sometimes astonished to be twenty; part of her seems to be eight, or ten, or twelve, at Allersmead still, everything going on there as it always had. She can feel almost guilty, waking up in her room in the hall of residence—someone else.
    And now it feels strange, going back. Of course, she hasn’t really left—she goes back every vacation. But it is as though she were only there by courtesy. She is poised now for flight, in a year or so she will be properly gone—to wherever she is going to go, a job somewhere, a flatshare. Is this scary? Or exciting? She does not know. Her face, flying along beside her, seems uneasy.
    Everyone is coming, apparently. “Yeah,” Roger had said, on the phone last night. After a fractional pause, to which Katie’s ear was tuned. She knows Roger, she grew up with Roger. Oh, they all grew up together, but she and Roger were a unit. She knows his responses, his turn of thought.
    “Everyone?”
    “Yeah,” he said again. “Fair amount of aggro.”
    He had lowered his voice. She knew exactly where he was: in the hall, where the phone had forever been sited. There would be others within earshot—Mum and Ingrid in the kitchen. Dad in his study, maybe Clare somewhere.
    She sighed. “Paul?”
    “Yup. Not returning phone calls. Couldn’t be reached. Mum going spare. Then eventually a message saying he’ll probably make it. Probably. Mum very spare still.”
    “Sandra?”
    “A fuss about some do she’d miss. But she’s