Kehua! by Fay Weldon Page B

back. And Cynara loved
     Lola, though it was sometimes hard to remember.
    ‘Go,’ she’d said. ‘Go, if your Aunt Scarlet will have you, though I bet Louis kicks up a fuss. I don’t suppose you can do
     her much damage; she thrives on media attention.’
    Lola did not hang about. Within hours Scarlet was on the phone to Cynara saying Lola wanted to come and stay, and that was
     okay with her, but was it with Cynara? And Cynara was saying Scarlet should be aware that the letter from Help the Harmed
     might never turn up: why would a respectable charity take on a disturbed girl who wasn’t yet seventeen? They might take her
     money but hardly her. At which Scarlet felt so strongly on Lola’s side she quite forgot about Jackson and how she wanted Cynara
     to say no.
    ‘I don’t think you should call your own daughter disturbed,’ she said. ‘Frankly, Cynara, with all this D’Dora business I think
     we could fairly say you are the one who is disturbed.’
    ‘I am not disturbed,’ said Cynara. ‘You are homophobic.’
    They brought the phone call to a quick end. Alice had trained both girls to keep the family peace at all costs. Some families
     row all the time and are in a perpetual state of ‘not speaking’. Alice found this vulgar, and un-Christian. ‘If you can’t
     find anything agreeable to say,’ she would tell them, ‘don’t say anything at all.’ The family solution, if things got tough,
     was just to stay out of each other’s way for a while.
    ‘It’s not going to be more than a week or so, I suppose?’ Scarlet asked Lola, all the same.
    ‘Oh no,’ said Lola. ‘Days, I imagine.’
    Though in truth Lola too suspected that Help the Harmed had found out that she was not yet seventeen, and were delaying her
     passage until her birthday in three months’ time. There had been various text messages on her mobile from them which she failed
     to open. She was not really all that keen on going to Haiti.
    Scarlet had been shocked to hear Lola’s account of what was going on at home. Cynara seemed to have flipped her lid. Of course
     people should be free to choose the sexuality they wished, and Scarlet of all people understood the compulsion of sexual desire,
     but throwing out a husband and father against the daughter’s wishes, and moving in a lesbian lover was surely extreme. She
     would of course, now it was a
fait accompli
, give Lola every help she could. Lola was ‘difficult’, everyone knew: but then Cynara was difficult too. Scarlet had always
     believed she could make a much better business of bringing up Lola than her sister ever had. And, even if Lola did find out
     about Jackson, the girl wouldn’t tell Louis. She wouldsurely be on Scarlet’s side.
    Lola would have to use the raw upper grey alcove for sleeping, Scarlet warned. The concrete here was unpainted and gloomily
     greasy and it was quite a climb. The more congenial lower alcove, cosier, painted grey and pink, with the original cushioned
     flooring, was currently being fitted with safety rails. English Heritage and Building Regulations between them had negotiated
     for months with Louis’ lawyers over how best a compromise could be made between respect for the architect’s Brutalist vision
     and the survival of the occupiers. They had come up with a stainless-steel option of slim, elegant rails, which horrified
     Louis, but which Scarlet actually rather liked. Louis had no option, such was the bureaucracy and the legal cost of arguing,
     but to seem to accept the compromise graciously. It was within the bounds of possibility that the health and safety authorities
     could condemn Nopasaran as unfit for human habitation, if such was their whim. They had power to do almost anything, so far
     as he could see. So he had best be polite.
    Scarlet for her part could not see what the fuss was all about. The only real worry about the alcoves was the way sound travelled
     – you could practically hear the sound of clothes rustling as