A Sky Painted Gold by Laura Wood

Author:Laura Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2018-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

Part Two

“There was music from my neighbor’s

house through the summer nights. In

his blue gardens men and girls came and

went like moths among the whisperings

and the champagne and the stars.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

CHAPTER

TWELVE

August, 1929

It has been five weeks since that first party and I have barely been home. At first I stay over at the Cardew House for the odd night, but soon I begin to disappear from the farm for three or four days at a time. Caitlin has renamed the blue room “Lou’s room” and each time I arrive there seems to be some new little luxury waiting for me – a silk scarf, some chocolates, or a new bottle of scent. Waking up in that big cloud-like bed – just as comfortable as I hoped it would be – I marvel at how lucky I am and, although I know it can’t last for ever, like Cinderella I am happy simply to enjoy the time I have at the party – every last bit of it.

The Cardews plan to leave Cornwall and return to London at the end of the month, which leaves me three more weeks of freedom. It’s strange that I think of it that way, I suppose, but I do – here, I’m gloriously free from reality, free from decision-making, free from all thoughts of the future. If there is one thing that the Cardews and their friends really excel at, it’s living in the moment. Why think about tomorrow when there is so much pleasure to be squeezed out of today?

Plans are rarely made, but whims are often followed. We burn the candle at both ends, and even at our most languorous and lazy – even when it seems we are doing little more than lolling about – I feel an electric pulse running through us all. Perhaps it is the weather, so hot as to make me feel feverish, but there is an undeniable energy about the place that crackles more and more intensely as the weeks pass. We are a powder keg waiting to explode.

And if we are all burning, then Caitlin is burning the brightest. She is always moving, always talking, always dancing. She is also thinner than she was when she arrived, and I rarely see her eat anything – although a drink is never far from her reach. I notice that Robert sometimes prepares food for her, quietly peeling fruit and placing it next to her so that she eats it, absently, without pausing in her excited conversation. It’s one of many small actions that remind me of Bernie’s word, delicate.

People come and go from the house, and Robert is away often, for days at a time, seeing to the murky and mysterious world of “business” in London. He comes back from these trips more tightly wound, more serious. As a result, I haven’t seen as much of him, but we are getting on a little better, our bickering only occasionally erupting into something more serious.

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