The House with Blue Shutters by Lisa Hilton Page B

didn’t know how to explain that Kevin’smum would think Aisling was mad, and that they just didn’t talk about who was English and who was not, it wasn’t important.
     He liked having a pool though, because only English people did, and when it was hot and there were no fucking PGs he could
     say ‘Fancy a swim?’ and they’d all troop up the hill and Aisling brought down cold bottles of Coke and cake, which everyone
     ate like it was nothing special, although he’d never even been in any of his mates’ houses.
    Richard pumped hard up the lane, swerving tightly around the gatepost, Rossi well in the lead, wasting Biaggi. Maybe Dreary
     Malcolm had that cool Monty Python with the shrubbery. He might try to neck with Caroline Froggett. She was a minger, but
     she was a girl, and no one at school would know she had spots.
    Claudia told herself that she felt like Tess when she discovers that Angel hasn’t read the letter. A jolly gel who introduced
     herself as Sarah had appeared with a note at breakfast time, and Aisling had martialled the household into acquiescence. Claudia
     knew she was being silly, she could perfectly well tell Alex at any time, if not today, tomorrow, but she had pictured the
     moment so clearly that it had become talismanic. Thwarted, there was a sense of reprieve, she still didn’t have to go through
     with it. Sébastien would be at his parents’ place near Biarritz. She wanted to call him, to have him come to claim her without
     explanation. Biarritz was not so far away, she could get a train, appear there and just refuse to move, lots of women did
     that, would do just that. The fact that Sébastien simply did not love her did not make him any less responsible. Surely they
     could work out some form of a civilized, mutual life?
    Claudia did not blame Sébastien for not loving her, she was even honest enough to question whether there was not, in her own
     love for him, some element of rankled pride, some urge to conquest, since he was the only man she had ever cared for who hadn’t
     cared back. She couldn’t blame him because he had never made a secret of it, never disguised the fact that he slept with other
     women, offered exactly what he had to give and never a promise of anything more. She had been convinced for a long time, for
     the first three years of their odd relationship, that he must come to love her, if only by virtue of propinquity, but when
     she had seen finally that this was not true, her bewilderment led to shaming jealousy, to the awful accusations in Paris.
    The evidence for her long self-delusion was confusingly positive. Since their first meeting, at a dinner party organized by
     Annabelle, who edited
Diréctions
, he had been erratically attentive. They had met about once a month, at first for weekends of bed at the flat in Paris, odd
     nights when he was in London for work, then trips to Italy, to the countryside in France, a magical New Year in Bruges. She
     had met his friends, had cautiously and over-casually (for one of the many irrationalities of their affair was its retaining
     an air of the clandestine; Claudia had not at first thought it in good taste to discuss with Annabelle the fact that she was
     fucking her star writer, and the feeling persisted long after Annabelle had been mollified), introduced him to hers. Sébastien
     was not rich, but he sent her presents, wonderful, surprising presents, antique books, a cashmere overcoat, tiny pots of truffled
     foie gras from Fauchon, a jam jar of water from the Grand Canal. He was lavish with compliments, he bought flowers andcooked dinner and read to her, asked her opinion on a paper he was writing or a lecture he was giving, he remembered her birthday,
     had dashed to London and held her through the night when her father died. They were intimate, made good stories of adolescent
     miseries, talked about difficult colleagues, watched movies grubbily on Sunday afternoons. His concierge knew her name. It
     was