Windfallen Read Online Free

names.” Frances raised a hand to her mouth.
    “Celia Holden. And Lottie Swift,” said Celia, who was doing something odd with her feet. “We live behind the park. On Woodbridge Avenue.”
    “The girls very kindly lent me their handkerchief,” said Frances. “I’ve made rather a mess of it.”
    “You poor darling.” Adeline took Frances’s hand.
    Lottie watched, waiting for her to offer some comforting squeeze, some reassuring pat. Instead, stroking it gently, she lifted it to her ruby mouth and there, in front of everyone, without even a hint of a blush, bent slowly and kissed it. “How awful for you.”
    There was a short silence.
    “Oh, Adeline,” said Frances sadly, and pulled her hand away.
    Lottie, the air knocked from her lungs at this bizarre demonstration of intimacy, dared not look at Celia. But then Adeline, after a momentary pause, turned back to the room, and her smile grew into a full-wattage beam.
    “George, I didn’t tell you. Isn’t this sweet? Sebastian has sent down some artichokes and plovers’ eggs from Suffolk. We can have them for supper.”
    “Thank goodness.” George had walked over to the men by the window and was helping support the curtain pole. “I wasn’t in the mood for fish and chips.”
    “Don’t be such a snob, darling. I’m sure the fish and chips here are absolutely wonderful. Are they, girls?”
    “We really wouldn’t know,” said Celia hurriedly. “We only eat at proper restaurants.”
    Lottie bit her tongue, remembering the previous Saturday, when they had sat on the seawall with the Wester-house brothers eating skate from greasy newspaper.
    “Of course you do.” Her voice was languorous and faintly accented. “How very proper of you. Now, girls, you will tell me, what is the single best thing about living in Merham?”
    Celia and Lottie stared at each other.
    “There’s not much,” Celia began. “In fact, it’s rather a bore. There’s the tennis club, but that shuts in the winter. And the cinema, but the projectionist gets ill a lot, and they don’t have anyone else who can operate it. If you want to go somewhere smart, you really have to go to London. That’s what most of us do. I mean, if we want a really good night—if you want to go to the theater, or a really top restaurant—” She was speaking too fast; trying to look insouciant, yet stumbling over her own untruths. Lottie looked at Adeline’s face, its smile of interest becoming just slightly blank, and she felt suddenly overwhelmed with fear that this woman was going to write them off.
    “The sea,” she said abruptly.
    Adeline’s face turned to meet hers, her eyebrows lifting slightly.
    “The sea,” she said again, trying to ignore Celia’s furious expression. “Living right by it, I mean. It’s the best thing. Hearing it in the background all the time, smelling it, walking along the shore and being able to see the curve of the earth . . . knowing when you look out that there is so much going on underneath it that we shan’t ever see, or know about. Like this big mystery, right on our doorstep. . . . And the storms. When the waves come right up over the wall and the wind blows the trees so hard that they bend over like grass, and being inside watching when you’re all warm and cozy and dry . . .” She began to falter, caught Celia’s mutinous face. “That’s what I like anyway.”
    There was a short silence.
    “It sounds perfect,” said Adeline, lingering over the last word, her eyes fixed on Lottie’s so that the girl blushed. “I am already so glad we came.”
    “S O HOW BADLY DID SHE DAMAGE THE VAN? D O YOU think they’ll bring it to my dad’s?”
    Joe pushed his empty coffee cup across the Formica bar, his expression serious. But then Joe didn’t really have any other expressions. His grave eyes, always peering upward as in deferential concern, looked out of place on that freckled, ruddy face.
    “I don’t know, Joe. It was only a light or