Part of the Family by Charlotte Philby

Author:Charlotte Philby [Charlotte Philby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 35

Maria

She had a habit of watching the girls when she thought no one was looking, as if surveying their faces for a possible explanation. Sometimes I would look up from the dusky haze of the nursery, lit only by a small lamp the shape of a cloud, and I would catch one of her eyes, unblinking, through the sliver of space between the door and its frame.

‘Would you like to join us?’ I had asked one morning a week or so after I arrived, when I looked up to find her watching us in the living room, her fingers pressed tight against the bannister. Rose was on her back on a play-mat, her attention caught by the sound of Satie’s Gnossienne flowing in from the radio in the kitchen.

For a moment there was a flash of warmth in her face when I beckoned her into the room, and then she pulled back, a slight adjustment as she turned back towards the stairs, speaking over her shoulder. ‘Actually, I’m tired, I think I’ll go back to bed. I was just going to get some water.’

This morning, it was me watching her from the window of the girls’ room, making her way back up the road, away from the house.

She told me she was going to buy clothes for the girls who at two months were almost out of the first wave of babygros. It might have been believable, despite her eyes looking away from mine as she spoke, but I knew better. I knew it from the way she moved; the way she looked back over her shoulder as she walked away, that she was going to meet him.

It was curious how instinctively aware she was that she was being watched, even if she had no clue from which direction the eyes came. And how could she? How could anyone expect to know who is on their side if they have no idea whose side they themselves are on?

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