The Birdcage by Marcia Willett

Author:Marcia Willett [Marcia Willett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2005-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Piers crossed the High Street, without glancing up, and took the stairs two at a time. Felix was waiting for him by the window.

He thought: It has come at last. It is now . . .

‘I changed my mind,’ Piers said, still standing near the door. ‘I thought that perhaps we’d better have that talk after all.’

‘You met Lizzie.’ It was better, Felix thought, to be direct: no stumbling about in a morass of pretended misunderstandings or apologies. ‘I hoped to prepare you but it never occurred to me that you were meeting John Clarke in the Luttrell Arms. It must have been rather a shock.’

‘Just a bit.’ Piers’ voice was brittle. ‘I made an utter fool of myself, actually.’

Felix frowned, surprised. ‘How was that? I guessed that you’d met or else you probably wouldn’t be here now but . . . did she introduce herself?’

‘Oh, no, don’t worry, she didn’t make the running. I introduced myself to her. I recognized her from that advert, you see, although I couldn’t quite place her at first, but when I realized I went dashing up like a dog with a bone, positively delighted.’

‘It was a natural enough thing to do.’ Felix kept his voice deliberately flat, aware that Piers was scorching with embarrassment, trying to remove the sting from his humiliation. ‘Of course, being Lizzie, she’d have been thrilled that you recognized her professionally. Success is rather new to her, I gather.’

‘I can’t say that her gratification is of paramount significance to me,’ Piers said angrily. ‘There are other issues which are rather more important.’

‘I quite agree,’ said Felix quietly. ‘I was simply making an observation about Lizzie’s probable reaction. This is the very last thing she wanted to happen, although she was so hoping to meet you at some point. From what she told me I gather that she lost her husband recently and the shock and the loneliness has made her introspective; going back over the past and trying to remember certain things. She decided to look me up, came down on spec and we met quite by chance in the memorial garden. I promised that I would explain her presence here to you when I saw you, so by the time you introduced yourself she would have assumed we’d had this talk.’ He gave a frustrated snort. ‘She must be feeling pretty confused too. I hope she was . . . intelligent about it.’

Piers was silent for a moment, apparently reflecting on their meeting. ‘To be honest,’ he said slowly, ‘she was. I . . . liked her.’

Felix stood quite still with his hands in his pockets. Aware of a huge liking for his son and great admiration, yet he remained where he was, waiting for Piers to make the next move. Finally Piers raised his head and looked at him.

‘Is she my sister?’ he asked.

Shocked and dismayed, Felix withdrew his hands from his pocket and held them out in an involuntary gesture of absolute denial.

‘Good God, no! Of course she isn’t.

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