The River House Read Online Free Page A

things to do with problem windows.’”
    “But, Eva, you haven’t got problem windows.”
    “I’m working on it,” she says.
    “Mum,” says Molly, “you’ve got to see my stuff.”
    Her display is in the second room. She pulls Amber and me toward it. I look around for Greg, but he’s met a woman from his
     department, an earnest woman with wild gray hair who lectures in Nordic philology; she has a daughter here. They’re having
     an urgent discussion about spreadsheets.
    “I’ll be right with you,” he tells me, but he shows no sign of following us.
    “Mum, come
on
,” says Molly. “I want you to see my canvas.” She has a look she sometimes had as a child, when she would tug at me, especially
     after Amber had arrived and she couldn’t get enough of me: intent, with deep little lines between her eyes.
    We go into the second room. Her display is in the corner, facing us as we enter—her sketchbooks and pottery piled on the table,
     and behind them the canvas, nailed up on the wall. I stare at the painting. It’s huge, taller than me, so the figures are
     more than life-size. I don’t know how she controlled the proportions, how she made it so real. It’s based on a photo from
     my childhood—Ursula and me and our mother and father, in the garden at Bridlington Road. I don’t know who took it, perhaps
     a visiting aunt. It’s a rare photo of all of us together, and we look just like a perfectly normal family. It was one of a
     heap of old photos that Molly found in the kitchen cabinet; she was hunting around for something to paint for her final A-level
     piece. “It has to be about
change
,” she said. “I think it’s a freaky topic. Change is totally random. I mean, it could be
anything.
” She was pleased when she found the photos of me and Ursula; she loved our candy-striped summer frocks, our feet in strappy,
     shiny shoes. The two of us would stand to attention with neat, cheerful smiles every time anyone pointed a Kodak in our direction.
     “Look, you’ve got parallel feet,” said Molly. “Amber, look, it’s so cute. In every picture their feet are kind of
arranged.
”
    The photograph was black and white, but the painting is in the strong acrylic colors Molly loves; our skin in the picture
     has purple and tangerine in it. The photograph may have made her smile, but the picture she’s painted has an intensity to
     it. She has quite a harsh style, the lines in people’s faces sketched in boldly, like an etching, so they look older than
     they really are; and she’s seen so much that was only subtly there in the photograph, that was just a hint, a subtext. My
     mother, her forehead creased in spite of her smile. My father, a looming presence, his shadow falling across us: my father,
     who was a pillar of the community, a school governor, a churchwarden, a grower of fine lupines—and I think how shockingly
     glad I was when he died. Ursula and me, eight and six, with our parallel feet in their shiny shoes, not wanting to step out
     of line. I see myself then, my conscientious smile, my six-year-old hope that if I was good, stayed good, everything would
     be all right. I wonder if Molly has brought to this painting some knowledge she has of my family. Yet I’ve told my children
     so little, really, even though in my work I always maintain that families shouldn’t have secrets. Maybe Molly’s gleaned something
     from the absolute rule I have that there’s no hitting in our family, or from the things I’ve said about marriage, the advice
     I so often feel a compulsion to give. “The very worst thing in a man is possessiveness. … Don’t ever imagine that you can
     change a man. … Promise me—if he’s cruel or hits you, that’s it, it’s over, you go straight out of that door.
Promise
me. …” “Yeah, yeah,” they’ll say, glancing at each other with a look of complicity, of There she goes again, indulging me:
     “We
know
, Mum, you’ve
told
us.”
    Molly turns to