For a second our eyes met and I saw hers unveiled at last and filled with spite.
“I could talk to my lawyer-” she began.
I began to laugh.
“That’s right!” I hooted. “Your lawyer! It always comes to that in the end, doesn’t it?” I yarked savage laughter. “Your lawyer!”
Yannick tried to calm her down, his eyes bright with alarm.
“Now, chérie… you know how we – ”
Laure turned on him savagely.
“Get your fucking hands off me!”
I howled laughter, cramping my stomach. Points of darkness danced before my eyes. Laure’s eyes shot me with hate – shrapnel, then she recovered.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was chilly. “You don’t know how important this is to me. My career…”
Yannick was trying to steer her toward the door, keeping a wary eye on me.
“No one meant to upset you, Mamie,” he said hastily. “We’ll come back when you’re more reasonable – it’s not as if we were asking to keep the book…”
Words like spilled cards sliding. I laughed harder. The terror in me grew, but I could not control my laughter, and even when they had gone – the screech of their Mercedes’ tires oddly furtive in the night – I still felt the occasional spasm, souring into half – sobs as the adrenaline fell from me, leaving me feeling shaken and old.
So old.
Pistache was looking at me, her face unreadable. Prune’s face appeared round the bedroom door.
“Mémée? What’s wrong?”
“Go to bed, sweetheart.” said Pistache quickly. “It’s all right. It’s nothing.”
Prune looked doubtful.
“Why was Mémée shouting?”
“Nothing.” Her voice was sharp now, anxious. “Go to bed!”
Prune turned reluctantly. Pistache closed the door.
We sat in silence.
I knew she’d talk when she was ready, and I knew better than to rush her. She looks sweet enough, but there’s a stubborn streak in her all the same. I know it well; I have it too. Instead I washed the dishes and the cups, dried them and put them away. After that I took out a book and pretended to read.
After a while Pistache spoke.
“What did they mean about a legacy?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. Cassis made out he was a rich man so that they’d look after him in his old age. They should have known better. That’s all.”
I hoped she might leave it at that, but there was a stubborn line between her eyes that promised trouble.
“I never even knew I had an uncle,” she said tonelessly.
“We weren’t close.”
Silence. I could see her going over it in her mind and I wished I could stop the circle of her thoughts, but knew I couldn’t.
“Yannick’s very like him,” I told her, trying for lightness. “Handsome and feckless. And his wife leads him like a dancing bear.”
I demonstrated mincingly, hoping for a smile, but if anything her thoughtful look deepened.
“They seemed to think you’d cheated him somehow,” she said. “Bought him out, when he was ill.”
I forced myself to pause. Anger at this stage would not help anyone.
“Pistache,” I said patiently. “Don’t believe everything those two tell you. Cassis wasn’t ill, at least, not in the way you think. He drank himself into bankruptcy, left his wife and son, sold off the farm to pay his debts…”
She watched me curiously, and I had to make an effort to keep my voice from rising.
“Look, that was all a long time ago. It’s over. My brother’s dead.”
“Laure said there was a sister.”
I nodded. “Reine-Claude.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged.
“We weren’t – ”
“Close. I gathered.”
Her voice was small and flat-sounding.
