The End of Summer by Charlotte Philby

Author:Charlotte Philby [Philby, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-30T17:00:00+00:00

Francesca

London, 17 September 2024, 12.15 p.m.

Fiddling with the bracelet Tamara de Burgh left me in her will, I chew the inside of my mouth and watch as Laura disappears inside the house to fix us a drink.

Sitting here now, it’s impossible not to remember my mother and father dancing to Prince at the New Year’s Eve party where, for me, all of this started. My mother. Johnny. And yet, that wasn’t true, was it? The trouble with Johnny hadn’t begun until later – and I would spend the rest of my life trying to atone for it.

Is it a coincidence that I spend my working days trying to fix other people’s broken families? If Hugo understands the irony of this then he never mentions it. But then that’s how we operate. If something doesn’t fit the version of the events we have constructed, we simply ignore it.

Even after we tried, and failed, to have a baby together, Hugo never resented Lily. At least not openly.

Looking up, I watch as Laura returns, holding two heavy crystal tumblers loaded with oversized ice cubes in a pool of dark rum, and, not for the first time in my best friend’s company, I feel a rush of guilt.

With a weak smile, I take one of the glasses from her extended hand. ‘I’m going to use the loo,’ I say, putting down the tumbler and standing without waiting for a reply, feeling my friend’s eyes on me as I make my way up the garden steps and into the house.

It is strange, I suppose, both of us fast approaching forty and still living in the same houses in which we grew up. But when your family homes are as exceptional as ours, it is hard to give it all up, to know where to go next. In spite of the painful memories these spaces might contain.

Besides, in my case I need to remember. I will never let myself forget.

Standing in the ground floor hallway, I try the door to the bathroom and hear the nanny’s voice calling out from within. ‘Sorry, we’ll be a minute! There’s another upstairs …’

As if I don’t already know.

‘No problem,’ I reply, hesitating before continuing towards the staircase.

Looking at it, I can’t remember the last time I went up there, and it is peculiar but perhaps fitting that, today of all days, I find myself drawn upwards with a sensation I can only describe as one of foreboding after the fact.

The sound of Violetta cooing as she changes one of the twins’ nappies recedes as I put one foot in front of the other on the sisal treads. Structurally, Laura has done very little with the house since she took it over from Paul and Marcia after they relocated permanently to Spain, in protest against Brexit, a few years ago. The telltale signs that this is now their daughter’s home sit side by side with Marcia’s tastes: interiors magazines neatly stacked along the top of a G Plan sideboard; a faux zebra-hide thrown over the sofa in the first-floor guest bedroom, the door to which is open.

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