A Charm of Powerful Trouble Read Online Free Page B

solitude.’ She pursed her lips and heard how dreadfully, falsely, grown-up she sounded.
    â€˜Your mother said you were interested in drawing. What do you like to draw?’ Without waiting for an answer she added, ‘You look awfully thin, dear, I think I'll make some toast.’ Em got up and stoked the embers of the wood fire into life and cut two thick slices of bread from a white loaf.
    â€˜Oh, I draw anything,’ Emma told her. ‘People, mostly. I'd like to draw you,’ she said recklessly, and Em laughed, delighted. ‘I'm no oil painting,’ she said.
    The toast was deliciously charred. Emma ate it and smiled at Em, who smiled back. Emma observed frankly her aunt's fine, long face and blue eyes. Her white hair was piled untidily on top of her head. They sat there eating toast and smiling and emanating goodwill for some time.

    In the afternoon Em went to have what she called ‘a bit of a lie-down'. She didn't close the bedroom door and Emma, prowling past on her way through the house, glimpsed her lying neatly and sparely on her bed like a package.
    Emma had the house to herself.
    She went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator to see if there was anything interesting to eat (there wasn't), and drank a glass of water at the sink, tipping the warmish liquid down her throat with her hand on the tap, her head tilted back and eyes closed. Out in the hallway again she paused, saw a door that was slightly ajar, pushed it right open and stepped inside.
    The room was shadowy. It was like being underneath the sea. Heavy red velvet curtains shut out the afternoon sunlight. Only a slit shone between them, but it was intense light from a world that promised solidity. Emma moved the curtains apart a little to let that world in.
    Two stiff old armchairs with a design of brown leaves flattened their shoulders to the wall. Between them was a long dark sideboard, gloomy and malevolent-looking. A patterned carpet, so thin it appeared to have grown embedded into the floorboards, filled the centre of the room. The only pretty thing was a glass-fronted cabinet full of china.
    Emma closed her eyes and took a breath. She moved without thinking to the curtains and buried her face in them to see if they smelled of redness; she expected them to be luscious, like a ripe plum, but all she got for her trouble was a nose full of dust and mould.
    She slid open a drawer of the sideboard and saw a tumble of old letters and photographs. She didn't leaf through them, though she was tempted to. She quickly eased the drawer shut again and it made a sound that caused her to hold her breath.
    On top of the sideboard was a collection of framed photographs, their glass frosted with dust. Emma saw a photograph they had a copy of at home, of her father when he was small, standing sturdily under a tree in short pants and a jacket. His long socks were in the process of working their way down his legs. Emma had often gazed secretly at this picture of him, talung it out from the collection of photos her mother kept in a biscuit tin. She longed to know more about him, but her mother had hardly ever spoken of him to Beth and Emma.
    He'd been a botanist, lost when he went out alone (as he often did) on a plant-hunting expedition in the Blue Mountains. He was never found; it was as if he simply stepped into the wilderness and it swallowed him up without a trace. Emma's mother kept a photograph of him in his bushwalking gear - khaki shorts and shirt and sturdy walking boots - on the mantelpiece.
    Dressed like that he had walked out of their lives.
    Emma tore herself away from the photograph of her father and picked up another one. It was a picture of a little girl of about eight with a woman who must be her mother. Emma rubbed her hand across the glass. The dust that coated its surface smeared, so she put her tongue to the glass and licked it. It was cool and thick-tasting. Emma wiped the dust from her tongue and licked again.
    They