The Whirling Girl by Barbara Lambert

Author:Barbara Lambert [Lambert, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cormorant Books

LATER, AS CLARE DROVE UP her lane, she sighted Nikki Stockton’s orange van. She didn’t see Nikki, until something hit her on the head. The woman was stretched out on a high branch of the old oak tree, that grin of hers hovering up there too. Less than anything just now did Clare, covered in chocolate, want to find Nikki Stockton waiting in a tree. Had she dropped by to relive the awful day at the dig? To make Clare feel worse by trying to make her feel better?

Nikki swung herself down from branch to branch, her wide gypsy-looking skirt poofing out around her like a parachute as she jumped.

On the drive home, Clare had wondered seriously, for the first time really, what on earth she was doing here. Her aunt was after her, demanding that she sell the house, and threatening legal action if she didn’t hurry. But even aside from that, how could she, Clare, have imagined succeeding in the project of living here? She was not one of those people who came to foreign places and bought houses and had brilliant insights and wrote amusingly of all the loveable local characters. She’d met two local characters, and they bullied her. She’d fallen in love with a man who tried to bully. Since then she’d been waiting for him to call.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for just dropping in,” Nikki said, picking herself up from the ground. “That woman who works for you was just leaving on her motorino; she said you’d probably be home soon, from your lawyer.”

Nothing for it but to ask Nikki in. “And look!” Clare said, “I seem to have this cake. Chocolate turned out to be essential, after meeting with the lawyer.”

“I can relate to that. In our experience the whole country is covered in legal documents two miles thick.”

She followed Clare down to the kitchen, but luckily refused a slice of cake. Clare would have hated her to see the mess inside the box. She made tea, and poured it into the castle-pattern cups, noticing too late that she’d given Nikki the mended one. Nikki didn’t say why she’d come. She sipped her tea and looked around the kitchen with bright pecking eyes.

“How’s the work going?” she finally said.

Clare had noticed ink stains on Nikki’s hands again. She pictured her in the archaeology lab making drawings of shards and fragments, then engaging in the magic of reconstruction that she’d described. She felt sick with envy at the thought that at least Nikki’s work must be going fine.

A loud knocking at the arbour door excused Clare from having to say anything about her own work.

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