Love Falls by Esther Freud Page A

clanking of the suspension and the odd eerie echo as they moaned, but it went on so long that eventually a guitar was tuned and voices raised and within a week, although they started spending whole nights in the boot, no one bothered to mention it at all.
    ‘Strangely quiet tonight,’ Lara and Sam would joke if there happened to be silence, and they’d set off to explore the town, invariably heading for the market to buy coloured thread with which Lara had taken to decorating people’s clothes. She embroidered flowers and leaves and rows of children holding hands and in exchange the passengers gave her Coca-Cola, or failing that, soapstone carved into religious charms.
     
     
    Kip didn’t call for her the next day. Lara never really believed he would, but all the same she got up early and spent much of the morning in her room listening for the sound of him, slouching across the gravel in his trodden-down shoes. Eventually, just before eleven, she wandered downstairs to where Lambert was working and Caroline was writing some kind of list and asked if anyone else was thinking of going over to Ceccomoro to see the wedding.
    ‘My dear.’ Caroline looked amused. ‘I thought you were entirely uninterested.’
    Lara hesitated, remembering how only a day or two ago she was. ‘Well, I sort of promised.’ She blushed, and Caroline with a slow smile went into the kitchen where Ginny was peeling the thin bubbled skin from roasted peppers and asked if she wouldn’t mind giving Lara a lift.
    Ginny was quite skittery with excitement. She climbed into the 2CV, forgetting at first to shut her door, then stalling the car as she attempted to reverse, so delighted was she to get a chance to talk about the wedding.
    ‘It’s like a fairy tale,’ she breathed, and Lara saw that she was close to crying.
    All the way along the road, past the stone lions and along the chalky drive, Ginny talked about her admiration for Lady Di. Lara kept quiet, her lips pressed together, fearful that she might betray her own ambivalence, wishing she could offer Ginny her place. But Caroline would miss her when lunch was to be served, and what would the Willoughbys say if she invited her in? Eventually they pulled up in the yard.
    ‘You know something?’ Ginny said. ‘I nearly didn’t take this job. I was planning to be there. To camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, but I couldn’t afford to, not really, turn down a whole month of work.’ Ginny smiled and shrugged her shoulders. ‘I would have done it though, if I could, for her.’ And, sniffing with emotion, she waved Lara away and began to turn the car around.
    The television room was dark, the stone floor covered in rugs, cushions from the sofa pulled down to make extra seats. Everyone looked up as Lara pushed open the door, some smiling, some startled, others as if they’d never seen her, or if they had, never expected to set eyes on her again. Carefully she stepped over lounging bodies, searching out a space, until she came upon a spare cushion, the empty flank of a sofa behind. It wasn’t until she sat down that she realised her shoulder was leaning up against Andrew Willoughby’s leg, and beside her, the nearest body was Kip’s. He looked at her and nodded, smiling just minutely, and then he turned and glanced at the doorway, where Lulu stood, staring at the space Lara had just filled.
    ‘Oh.’ She struggled to get up. ‘I’m sorry.’ But everyone hissed at her to shhhh and Lulu shrugged and kicked at Roland to move over so she could drape herself across the arm of his chair.
    Lara wasn’t late. Italy was an hour ahead, and the Prince and soon-to-be Princess were still to enter the cathedral. It was a beautiful day in London. Thank God, she thought, laughing at herself for getting so drawn in. But just the sight of London, of Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s, made her nostalgic and she found that she was missing her mother, as if she might be somewhere in the crowd. Unlikely as it