Let's Dance by Frances Fyfield

the sight made Isabel choke with sadness. She knew by now that words reached Serena through a fog. She was merely mistress of a splendid, deceptive social façade which knew the value of keeping silent, fooling most of the people, most of the time.
    â€˜What do you do all day?’ Robert boomed. Serena laughed, imagining he had said something funny.
    â€˜Nothing,’ Isabel said.
    What a stupid, unobservant man he was, to produce this brilliant little son, the possession of whom Isabel craved with a passion of need. She had seen the boy as a baby, twice a year since, and each time the sight of his little bird bones melted her own. He knew it, rewarded it with his unblinking stare.
    â€˜You know what you do?’ Isabel said to him as they wandered in the orchard, taking in the last of the light, giggling as they mashed dead apples underfoot. ‘You make me broody. Broody as an old hen.’
    â€˜You look like a hen,’ he volunteered. The maggotsin the apples fascinated him. He looked at everything gravely. ‘Are we staying here tonight?’
    â€˜Yes, I hope so.’
    â€˜I’ll come in bed with you, then.’
    â€˜Only if your mother says.’
    Suddenly she liked the idea of her family. Blood was thicker than water. Robert and she would become friends. They would work out something for Mother. They would have civilized conversations about it, beginning now, this evening, when she would tell them Mother was mad, worsening fast, should not be living thus. She would ask Jack to stay. She would tell Robert what Mother had done to the food. It was simple: she would demand help and receive it. Not cover up any more.
    â€˜Have you got a daddy, Bella?’
    â€˜A daddy or a sugar daddy?’ she teased.
    He spread his thin arms. There was a blue vein on one wrist she always wanted to stroke. ‘A big man,’ he said, as if that explained everything.
    â€˜No, I haven’t.’ She thought of Joe whom she loved with such passion and who had not replied to her letters, and thought, no, he is a little man. So are they all, little men.
    The orchard was a satisfying distance from the house. No sound reached it until Joan came out to join them. There was about her a smug, conspiratorial air that boded trouble. But Isabel decided she did not dislike her sister-in-law. There was not enough there: doors open, lights on, no one definite at home. A big‘Halloo!’ yelled into the peaceful air made her squirm but caused no reaction whatever in Jack. He was collecting maggots into a matchbox.
    â€˜I say, Issy, there’s a rather nice man, Andrew he said it was, called to see you. Brought some flowers for your mother. Said I’d come and find you. What have you got there, Jack, darling? Put them down.’
    â€˜Andrew? Oh, yes.’
    Joan propelled them back towards the house. It was dusk and the sandstone walls had taken on a life of their own, glowing like a soft beacon. Isabel faltered in her step, arrested by a shock of affection and appreciation, punctured when Joan took her arm like a jolly school friend on the way back from hockey, a gesture of the camaraderie Isabel had never found in the days when her mother wrote to her and Joan was captain of netball somewhere else.
    â€˜He seems awfully keen, Isabel dear. He might have brought the flowers for you, but Serena took them, so I suppose they’re hers, now.’
    It seemed somehow obscene to explain in front of the boy that his granny had lost her love of plants and wanted her blooms to be
replicas,
unable to distinguish between the two except for the fact that one sort needed water and were a nuisance. Equally useless to explain to Robert that Granny would have limited interest in his baby; she preferred the durability of dolls. Joan squeezed Isabel’s elbow.
    â€˜Is this an old flame or a new one, Issy dear? Robbie says you had a lot of chaps around before you lefthome. I mean, this one looks a bit