L'Affaire Read Online Free Page B

Madame Venn is much younger, and also was the first to be rescued, and there we have more hope.’
    Kip’s stomach unknotted with relief. Kerry okay. He didn’t really care about Adrian. Christian Jaffe spoke again to the doctor.
    ‘Madame Venn is your sister?’ the doctor asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then you perhaps know who will be the appropriate person to make the decision – uh – decisions – in the case of Monsieur Venn? A member of his direct family?’ Kip had no idea, and it only came to him later in the car what the Decision might be. But Kerry would get better and be able to make the Decision for herself.
    In the car, the questions in Kip’s mind, as numerous as the snowflakes that hurled themselves against the windshield, almost cancelled themselves out, leaving an anxious blankness, a passive resignation as cold as a field of snow. Kip saw that the person in charge was him, Kip, there was no one else, but that didn’t mean he knew what to do. With their parents dead, he and Kerry only had one relative, an uncle in Barstow, California. She also had Adrian and Harry, but he, Kip, only had Kerry, though now he had responsibility for Harry, who would probably cry all night. What would they do? He looked at Christian Jaffe, grimly driving up the narrow winding road against the increasing snowfall and the dark, and he knew he would have to decide himself what to do.
    Presently Jaffe spoke: If there were people who should be notified, if they needed to be present, the hotel couldaccommodate them, or arrange it. ‘Their own doctors, perhaps, or their lawyer.’ But of course Kip didn’t know who those functionaries might be. Christian Jaffe suggested he look through Adrian’s papers. Kip said he would; but he knew he would feel funny about it.

4
    Maida Vale, London, W9. A pleasant first-floor flat in a large Regency house with white columns in front, overlooking an oval garden common to the rear. Large comfortable chairs in loose beige covers, the sofa faintly tea-stained on the arms, magazines and books stacked around in disorderly but readerly fashion, a small bronze sculpture, the potted plants of ornamental pepper and African violet neat in the window, a stereo, a BBC voice announcing the shipping forecasts, an indolent spotted cat, a slight rattling of the panes as the weather worsened. An English scene of mingled elegance and penury.
    Cruciferous cooking smells. Posy and Rupert are having dinner with their mother Pamela, as they try to do every so often since Pam has been alone, not that she demands it, she is plenty busy. Gammon, sprouts, cauliflower, and mash, the smelliest dinner in Pam’s repertory, theirs by request as it took them firmly and comfortably back to childhood, before the family trouble. They always asked for it, there being nowhere in London, now so foody, where you could get such nursery dishes. Pamela herself was foody and cooked out of Prue Leith and the River Café Cookbook , but in their childhood had only known how to boil things, and had had ideas about what was appropriate for children.
    Posy Venn was a large, beautiful young woman oftwenty-two with high color, a cascade of shining, unruly chestnut hair, English skin and ankles, and the air of slightly heartless confidence that goes with having been good at games, school, driving, amateur theatricals, her summer job as credit manager for a chain of boutiques, and everything else she had turned her hand to. Rupert, her brother, referred to himself as an ordinary mortal next to Posy. To others, they seemed very much a pair, both handsome, ironic, ambitious. Rupert worked in the City, not enthusiastically, and was the elder of the two by three years.
    Posy, although the younger, had moved into a flat with two other girls. Rupert, however, still lived at home. Though he planned to move out soon, inertia and the distraction of his new job had delayed this. Having him at home was all right with Pam as a temporary measure, though she had