acknowledge, it was Celia who had been a little too developed in that direction. The girl had done what she was told, helped with the little ones, and kept herself nice and presentable.
Susan Holden felt suddenly guilty, picturing eight-year-old Lottie standing at Merham station, her arms folded protectively around her brown-paper-wrapped bundle of clothes. In the midst of all the chaos, she had looked at Mrs. Holden silently, with those huge dark eyes, and then, as Susan began to chatter a welcome (even then the child was rather unnerving), she had slowly lifted her right hand and taken Susan’s own. It had been a curiously moving gesture. And a rather unbalancing one, too. And symptomatic of everything Lottie had been since: polite, self-contained, watchful, affectionate in a rather reserved way. Perhaps it was unfair to be so hard on the girl. She had done nothing really wrong. She was just going to have to adjust to Celia’s absence. The girl would be leaving them soon anyway, once she had sorted herself out with a good job. And Mrs. Holden did pride herself on her Christian sense of charity.
But then she thought about the way that Henry had looked at Lottie that time several weeks ago when she had hitched up her skirt to go in the paddling pool with Frederick. And Susan Holden felt rather complicated about her houseguest again.
C ELIA HAD A BOYFRIEND . I T HADN’T TAKEN HER LONG, Lottie thought wryly. There had been a lengthy gap between letters, and then she had written a breathless account of some awful trouble she had got into at a railway station and how this man, whom she was now stepping out with, had “saved” her. Lottie hadn’t taken much notice at first; Celia always was prone to exaggeration. And he was not the first man Celia had sworn was the one for her. Not even in the short time she’d been in London; there had been the man she’d met on the train between Bishops Stortford and Broxbourne; the man who served her at the café on Baker Street who always gave her an extra coffee when his boss wasn’t around; and there was Mr. Grisham, her shorthand teacher, who had definitely examined her loops and abbreviations with more than simple teacherly interest. But then, gradually, the letters were less about these men and the supposedly interminable evenings in with Aunt Angela and her awful brood and the girls at secretarial school, and increasingly about dinners at fashionable restaurants, and walks on Hampstead Heath they’d had together, and the general superiority of Guy in everything from conversational skills to kissing technique (“for God’s sakes, burn this before Mummy sees it”).
Lottie read and tried to decipher what was definitely the truth. For “monied family,” she decided, one should read simply “own house, with inside toilet”; for “absolutely gorgeous,” a face that didn’t resemble a disgruntled bulldog’s; and for “mad, simply passionate about me,” Celia probably meant that Guy had turned up to meet her at the times and places he said he would. It was hard not to be a little cynical—Lottie had lived many years with Celia by now and had learned the hard way that Celia and veracity were not always the closest of bedfellows. Lottie, for example, had heard herself described by her friend as having been rescued from a burning building during the Blitz, as a mysterious émigrée of Eastern European origin, and as an orphan whose parents had been killed by a doodlebug while celebrating their wedding anniversary with a dinner of smoked salmon and black-market vodka. She had not challenged Celia on any of these, despite becoming gradually aware of their provenance. No one ever challenged Celia; it was one of the things Lottie had learned at the Holden house. There was a feeling that doing so would be like opening Pandora’s box. In fact, no one even mentioned that Celia told fibs. The one time Lottie had mentioned one of these “untruths” to Mrs. Holden, Mrs. Holden
Susan Holden felt suddenly guilty, picturing eight-year-old Lottie standing at Merham station, her arms folded protectively around her brown-paper-wrapped bundle of clothes. In the midst of all the chaos, she had looked at Mrs. Holden silently, with those huge dark eyes, and then, as Susan began to chatter a welcome (even then the child was rather unnerving), she had slowly lifted her right hand and taken Susan’s own. It had been a curiously moving gesture. And a rather unbalancing one, too. And symptomatic of everything Lottie had been since: polite, self-contained, watchful, affectionate in a rather reserved way. Perhaps it was unfair to be so hard on the girl. She had done nothing really wrong. She was just going to have to adjust to Celia’s absence. The girl would be leaving them soon anyway, once she had sorted herself out with a good job. And Mrs. Holden did pride herself on her Christian sense of charity.
But then she thought about the way that Henry had looked at Lottie that time several weeks ago when she had hitched up her skirt to go in the paddling pool with Frederick. And Susan Holden felt rather complicated about her houseguest again.
C ELIA HAD A BOYFRIEND . I T HADN’T TAKEN HER LONG, Lottie thought wryly. There had been a lengthy gap between letters, and then she had written a breathless account of some awful trouble she had got into at a railway station and how this man, whom she was now stepping out with, had “saved” her. Lottie hadn’t taken much notice at first; Celia always was prone to exaggeration. And he was not the first man Celia had sworn was the one for her. Not even in the short time she’d been in London; there had been the man she’d met on the train between Bishops Stortford and Broxbourne; the man who served her at the café on Baker Street who always gave her an extra coffee when his boss wasn’t around; and there was Mr. Grisham, her shorthand teacher, who had definitely examined her loops and abbreviations with more than simple teacherly interest. But then, gradually, the letters were less about these men and the supposedly interminable evenings in with Aunt Angela and her awful brood and the girls at secretarial school, and increasingly about dinners at fashionable restaurants, and walks on Hampstead Heath they’d had together, and the general superiority of Guy in everything from conversational skills to kissing technique (“for God’s sakes, burn this before Mummy sees it”).
Lottie read and tried to decipher what was definitely the truth. For “monied family,” she decided, one should read simply “own house, with inside toilet”; for “absolutely gorgeous,” a face that didn’t resemble a disgruntled bulldog’s; and for “mad, simply passionate about me,” Celia probably meant that Guy had turned up to meet her at the times and places he said he would. It was hard not to be a little cynical—Lottie had lived many years with Celia by now and had learned the hard way that Celia and veracity were not always the closest of bedfellows. Lottie, for example, had heard herself described by her friend as having been rescued from a burning building during the Blitz, as a mysterious émigrée of Eastern European origin, and as an orphan whose parents had been killed by a doodlebug while celebrating their wedding anniversary with a dinner of smoked salmon and black-market vodka. She had not challenged Celia on any of these, despite becoming gradually aware of their provenance. No one ever challenged Celia; it was one of the things Lottie had learned at the Holden house. There was a feeling that doing so would be like opening Pandora’s box. In fact, no one even mentioned that Celia told fibs. The one time Lottie had mentioned one of these “untruths” to Mrs. Holden, Mrs. Holden
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