Illusion: A murder mystery with humour and wit by Rachel Billington

Author:Rachel Billington [Billington, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2019-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

Scene Six

The terrace

Afternoon

‘I’m afraid it was only a picnic.’ Becka raised her hands in apology.

‘Where is Marcello?’ Inigo glowered at Keiko and Julie who had their arms round each other like schoolgirls.

‘He is upset,’ Becka took hold of a plate of cheese and stood up. ‘Tomorrow the men come to hook up the pylons.’

‘He could still cook us lunch,’ said Inigo in an aggrieved voice. He poured himself another glass of wine. ‘If I don’t have a proper meal, I drink too much and then I can’t concentrate so well in the afternoon.’

Lottie who was sitting across from him laughed sympathetically. ‘Self-control is such a balancing act. I’ve had a modest intake.’ She pushed away her empty glass. ‘Modest for me. It’s because I’m happy.’

‘Don’t be silly, Lottie.’ Inigo’s bad mood seemed to be spreading. ‘You’re never happy. It draws us together. Artists are never happy.’

‘Oh, Inigo, you have been at the bottle. Do you want to know why I’m happy?’ Lottie looked towards Ludo who was balancing wine glasses one above the other. He had already made a tower of four.

‘Certainly not,’ said Inigo. A streak of sun broke through the ceiling of vines over the terrace and lit his red, somewhat pitted face. Drops of perspiration rolled from the curls at his forehead. An admirer might have likened him to Bacchus.

‘That beautiful youth,’ continued Lottie, eyes still on Ludo now building the Leaning Tower of Pisa, ‘this morning acknowledged that he is my son. I feel as if I’ve just written Anna Karenina!’

‘That is a very tragic story,’ Keiko broke away from Julie and stared at Lottie with sudden interest.

‘You’re right. Some other masterpiece, then. A great novel. A happy novel.’

‘There’re not many of those,’ said Inigo gloomily.

‘Are you really Lottie’s son?’ Julie too, leant forward to Ludo. But she spoke at the same time as Becka who stood quite still, with a stunned expression and the plate of cheese in her hands.

‘No!’ she cried. ‘This is not the place!’ Perhaps forgetting the cheese, she stood over Ludo as if guarding him from malign forces.

‘Becka darling!’ protested Lottie. ‘I don’t mind sharing him. You mustn’t be a dog in the manger.’

Becka stooped even more protectively and the large cheese – a heavy local Parmesan – slid off the plate on to Ludo’s tower of glass to which he’d just added a fifth storey.

Shards of glass flew into the air, bounced off the stone table, tried to impale first Keiko and then Julie who both screamed in girlish fashion. Eventually, all the pieces landed somewhere or other, a few exploding far away on the stone terrace, glittering dangerously where the sun caught them.

‘You could have killed me!’ Ludo, smooth hands among the glass, looked up at Becka reproachfully. ‘Or I might have been blinded. I’d hate to be blind.’ He picked out the cheese, as spiky with glass as a sputnik. ‘It’s not as if everyone didn’t know about my birth mother.’

‘Is that true? Everyone knows?’ Lottie looking accusingly at Inigo.

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