Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall

Author:Araminta Hall [Hall, Araminta]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781780898247
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2018-04-18T23:00:00+00:00

The next day was Saturday and Elaine rang first thing to say she was coming into London and could she take me up on my offer and pop in for a cup of tea. It was slightly annoying because I had been considering visiting V that day, but Sunday was probably better anyway, so I said yes.

She arrived just after lunch, carrying no visible reason for a trip to London. She walked all round the house, exclaiming at every room. I realised that she was the first person, apart from myself and the builders and decorators, who had ever been upstairs since I’d moved in. It made me wish that I’d made an excuse and pretended to be busy, because surely V should be the first person to see her new home, not her sort of soon-to-be mother-in-law. But Elaine lingered in every room, running her hands over the furniture and opening cupboard doors, turning on light switches, and even once bizarrely running the taps. If she could have waited just a few more weeks, I thought, V and I could have shown her round together, which would have been a far more pleasant experience.

Predictably she wasn’t so keen on the garden, which was still a mess. I could see how much better it was going to look, but Elaine is one of those people who can’t bear to change things for the sake of it, or throw things away. There were always cellophane-wrapped plates in the fridge at her house, unfranked stamps steamed off envelopes in drawers and so-called scrap paper which had to be written or drawn on both sides before she’d buy any more. The motto Waste Not, Want Not was pinned by the clock in the kitchen, which was, I realised, nothing more than an early version of Kaitlyn’s wild horses, a thought both pleasing and disconcerting at the same time.

We sat at the kitchen table to drink our tea, Elaine saying she didn’t want to risk spilling anything in the drawing room. I had bought some fancy cupcakes from the deli and she picked at one, but didn’t seem to enjoy it.

‘So, you’ve really set yourself up here,’ Elaine said, looking round the kitchen.

The house felt vulgar seen through Elaine’s eyes, as I had known it would. You could have probably fitted her kitchen into mine four times over. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s a very large house,’ she said and the words hung in the air. ‘You must be making an awful lot of money.’

‘You know I am.’ I knew my face was red and it felt no different to being a child and having her tell me off for sneaking another biscuit.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever asked you, Mike. Do you enjoy the work?’

Remnants from my conversation with Kaitlyn floated back to me. What she’d said about selling up and moving to the coast had stuck to me like flotsam and I realised as I sat with Elaine that I didn’t particularly enjoy what I did. ‘I don’t know really.

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