Little Egypt (Salt Modern Fiction) Read Online Free

facing away from the door and she skirted the end of the bed to see his face. His eyes were closed, face sagging to one side, peaceful. The scar showed on his neck, shiny and raised and so much like a rasher that she almost expected the smell of bacon, but there was only the whiff of brandy and an empty glass on the bedside table beside a phial of pills. She leant very close to look and was startled to see his eyes open.
    ‘Icy,’ he said groggily.
    She jumped back. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I came to tell you that Cleo has had her kittens and I thought you might like one?’
    He drew himself up so that he was half sitting against his pillows, and patted the mattress. He was wearing a pair of Arthur’s pyjamas, dark red paisley, and his skin was the colour of raw pastry.
    ‘There’s one black and two tabby I can’t tell if they’re girls or boys and one dead, I’m afraid.’
    ‘Come here,’ he said and opened his arms. Isis hesitated. She didn’t want to touch the scar or to be too close to the smell of brandy and something else, stale and unappealing, but afraid of offending him, she leant forward awkwardly into his arms. ‘Dear little Icy,’ he mumbled into her hair and his arms were tight around her.
    ‘Isis!’ Mary came in with a tea tray on which sat a slice of date-flecked cake.
    Isis jumped from the bed, blushing hotly. ‘Cleo’s had kittens and I was telling Victor and saying he could have one,’ she said. ‘I didn’t wake him, honestly.’
    ‘Kittens! Whatever next! I’m sorry.’ Mary put down the tray. She swished open the curtains, her expression unreadable. ‘As if Captain Carlton wants anything to do with kittens!’
    ‘I will have to decline the kitten, I’m afraid. But it’s perfectly all right.’ Victor added to Mary. ‘She’s quite a tonic, don’t you know?’
    ‘We’ll leave you in peace,’ Mary said, and yanked Isis through the door. ‘Whatever were you thinking? Going into a gentleman’s room on your own!’
    ‘He’s my uncle.’
    ‘And him not well in the head.’
    ‘He didn’t mind.’
    ‘Lord above.’ Mary rubbed her hands through her hair causing it to stand up madly. ‘And where are these famous kittens?’
    Isis led the way to her room. Cleo was giving the black kitten a vigorous licking and the two tabbies were suckling. ‘That one’s dead,’ Isis pointed out.
    ‘That’s one small mercy,’ Mary muttered.
    ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ Isis knelt down. ‘Clever Cleo.’ She stroked the cat’s head, and she arched her neck for more.
    Mary tutted. ‘Well, you can’t keep them here for a start.’
    Isis clutched Mary’s sleeve. ‘ Please don’t drown them.’
    ‘They’ll have to come down to the scullery.’
    Isis scooped up the dead kitten, took it down to the kitchen, wrapped it in a duster and, muttering an apology, pushed it in the stove before Osi could get his hands on it.
    She left the kitchen quickly before the flames crackled round the little corpse. Now was the time to carry out her plan for the budgerigars.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered to the panicking birds as she dragged the cage across the hall to the ballroom. That the ballroom was a vulgar extravagance, out of kilter with the rest of the house, was Arthur’s oft stated opinion. In his heyday, before the twins were born, and in a fit of grandeur, Grandpa had had it built on to the back of the house, along with the adjoining orangery, but for years there had been no parties and no need for it at all. Now its tall mirrors were dull and spotted and the windows looked through to the broken orangery with its wizened fruit.
    Isis closed the door behind her and unlatched the cage. At first the budgies took no notice and then the blue one hopped through the entrance into thin air, and with a frightened screech wheeled out into the room on unpractised wings, clumsily looping round the ceiling and bashing itself against its reflections before finding a perch on the chandelier. The