Forever by Margaret Pemberton

laughing, dancing images on the screen and grabbed her shoulders.
    â€˜Gussie! Stop staring like that! Charles, I think she’s gone into a trance!’
    Charles Lafayette had been monentarily transfixed by shock. Now he pushed his brother away, seized his daughter and shook her. ‘Gussie! Gussie! ‘
    Slowly Gussie’s eyes focused on her father’s frightened face.
    â€˜Gussie, are you all right? What is it? Shall I call Dr Meredith? Tina, call Jim Meredith …’
    â€˜No …’ Unsteadily Gussie rose to her feet. ‘No … I don’t want to see anyone.’ Dazedly her eyes were dragged back to the now blank screen.
    â€˜Let me put her to bed,’ Tina Lafayette said practically. ‘Send Allie up with a glass of hot milk, Charles. I’ll give her two of my sleeping tablets and she’ll be fine by morning.’
    Slowly, like a sleep-walker, Gussie climbed the stairs to her room, holding on to the banisters as if at any second she would lose consciousness and fall crashing to the floor.
    Charles and Leo looked at each other bewilderedly.
    â€˜Gussie’s never been … histrionic, has she?’ Leo asked hesitantly as Gussie stumbled to her room.
    Charles Lafayette wheeled on him, his face savage. ‘Of course she hasn’t! We’ll have no such talk in this house! Gussie is perfectly normal. She’s over-excited, that’s all.’ He mopped his sweating brow with a large silk handkerchief.
    â€˜Sorry, Charles. I wasn’t insinuating …’
    â€˜Forget it,’ Charles Lafayette snapped. ‘Tina is right. What Gussie needs is a good night’s sleep.’
    He rang for Allie and ordered the little maid to take a glass of hot milk immediately to Augusta. While he was doing so Leo thoughtfully rewound the film aware that he had been tactless in referring, however obliquely, to the skeleton in the family cupboard.
    â€˜It was just about here, Charles. There’s Gussie dancing with Bradley,’ he said easily, trying to make amends.
    Unwillingly Charles Lafayette sat down and watched the re-run of his daughter’s party.
    â€˜There’s that friend of hers, Mae is it? There’s the Merriweather boy dancing.’
    Charles Lafayette’s fingers tightened over the arm of his chair. ‘There’s Jason Shreve,’ he said, ‘and there’s – My God !’
    Leo looked at his cousin in surprise. Charles’s face was ashen, his eyes incredulous, fixed, as Gussie’s had been, on the screen.
    Leo turned swiftly to see what had caused such an outburst of shock. Gussie was dancing with Bradley, her face radiant, her hair spilling freely down her neck. The Merriweather boy was making awkward movements with his rosy-cheeked girlfriend. Jason Shreve was chatting up an older woman who should have known better. There were other dancers that Leo did not know. All young; all carefree. All enjoying themselves. In the distance were tiny groups composed mainly of New Orleans’more sedate citizens, chatting, champagne glasses in their hands. A maid was circulating with a silver tray of hors d’oeuvres; a waiter could be seen opening a bottle of champagne. Charles was on the film, his back to the dancers, his head bowed to hear what the small, elderly woman he was talking to was saying. Under the trees a girl that looked suspiciously like Desirée Ashington had her back to the camera, her arms around a young man’s neck. Farther left, nearly out of the picture, another figure stood, watching intently, his face cast into darkness by the heavy foliage of the oak beneath which he was standing.
    Leo stopped the film and re-ran it. There was nothing, absolutely nothing to cause such an expletive from his usually carefully-spoken cousin. At the point where Gussie had choked on her words and Charles had blasphemed, he halted the film.
    â€˜What is it, Charles? I can’t see a damn thing wrong