The Villa: An absolutely gripping family drama packed with secrets and lies by Clare Boyd

Author:Clare Boyd [Boyd, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture

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Their lunch was served on a long table under a stretch of canvas in the centre of the boat. Zara had prepared baguette and Brie and red grapes, followed by cups of strong coffee, a slice of Montélimar almond nougat and some dusty chocolate truffles.

Afterwards, Libby lay on the bench with her knees bent up, feeling the sun dry her skin, wishing she could feel relaxed like this every day of her life, wondering if Connor’s Costa Rican plan wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Nora offered them more coffee before pouring some for herself.

‘This is just as healing for us as I’d hoped it would be,’ she began. ‘What I’m going to tell you now mustn’t spoil your memory of it. I want you to keep it inside your heart.’

Libby dragged herself up to sitting. Her mum’s elbows were on the table and her cup hovered where her lips should be, but her head was turned. Her profile was a pale statue against the blue. She had never looked so beautiful. Libby glanced at Emma, perplexed, and Emma frowned back at her. Her posture was excessively straight, and her fingers rested on the edge of the table, as though readied to push herself up.

All manner of absurd possibilities ran through Libby’s mind: their father wasn’t their real father; they weren’t real sisters; Nora wasn’t their real mother; she was a man; their dad was a woman; they were Macedonian orphans; they were the children of child-killers.

Nora turned her face towards them. ‘I haven’t been wholly truthful,’ she said.

Libby’s heartbeat sent vibrations to her fingertips. They throbbed with hope. Nora was going to tell them how sorry she was that she had lied to them, that she didn’t have cancer after all and that she was checking into a specialist clinic for manipulative, self-obsessed nutters.

‘We don’t mind,’ she interjected. A psychotic episode was better than dying.

Nora continued. ‘I know Connor filled you in on some of the facts.’

Libby felt her mouth fill, and she avoided eye contact with Emma. The sun beat down on her back. Neither of them spoke.

‘Basically, it will be a ghastly, slow death, painful and undignified. I’ll lose all my hair. There’ll be bedsores and green-nylon-clad nurses, and I’ll be lying in an ugly hospital bed jammed unattractively in my lovely front room. Oh God, and one of those awful greying commodes, which will absolutely ruin my stylish little downstairs loo with the hollyhock wallpaper.’ Her hand brushed down her throat and she fiddled with her necklace.

A tiny bird fluttered onto the table and then flew up into an eddy of air. Libby wondered whether she should say something reassuring, but she couldn’t speak.

Nora continued. ‘My body will waste away until I can’t swallow food or even water, and finally my vital organs will shut down. I’ll moan and groan and pee down tubes and soil the sheets, and towards the end I’ll be high on morphine. At best I’ll talk maudlin gibberish and at worst cruel truths that will leave a nasty stain on our relationship long after I’ve gone.

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