Daughters-In-Law by Joanna Trollope

Author:Joanna Trollope [Trollope, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction, C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 1451618387
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2011-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Charlotte’s mother was at her painting table, with a dahlia. Dahlias had fallen so far out of fashion, it seemed, that they were now on trend, bang on trend. At least, that’s what Charlotte had told her when she brought a bunch of them the day before, a gaudy strident bunch of them, orange and purple and scarlet and yellow. Charlotte had bought them, she said, in the flower market near their flat, which was apparently a famous Sunday flower market where you could also buy the world’s best bread, and coffee, and cupcakes, and Charlotte said she couldn’t get enough cupcakes just now, and Luke had bought her a whole box, and then a hat from the next-door shop because he said a hat would still fit her, however huge she got. And then Charlotte had burst into tears all over her mother and told her what Luke’s mother had said to her, and how she hadn’t been able to sleep the night after, and she still didn’t know whether to be more hurt than angry.

Marnie had, after giving the dahlias a long drink, laid a single yellow one on a piece of white paper in order to examine the extraordinarily precise structure of its petals. It was as if it had been made of origami, so symmetrical and deeply three-dimensional was it. It would be a challenge to draw it, but a pleasurable challenge. When she had had a long and careful look, she would put the dahlia into the special small bronze clamp that Charlotte’s father had designed and had made for her, and begin on the lengthy and exact process of drawing the flower before she painted it. She had been painting flowers since before Charlotte’s sisters were born. She had started because Charlotte’s father, although generous to a fault, had preferred to support her entirely, but had also acknowledged that she must, of course, have a life of her own outside the house and garden. Marnie, pregnant with Fiona, who was now thirty-five, had enrolled in a course that taught botanical drawing. She had been the best in her class. Charlotte’s father had been so very proud of her. He had also, Marnie was aware even if she did not say so, felt justified; if she had been working, she would not have had the chance to be the best botanical artist in her area. Would she?

Charlotte’s father was called Gregory, and he had been ten years older than Marnie, and a partner in a local firm of solicitors that he had joined as soon as he qualified. He was eager to have children but disappointed not to produce sons. He was extremely kind to Marnie after each of his three daughters’ births, and gave her carefully chosen special pieces of jewelry to commemorate the occasions—garnets, for Charlotte, which were possibly Marnie’s least favorite stone—but she knew he was disappointed. He never said so outright, but he was the kind of man whose conduct

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