Page 107 of Old Money

“What did you expect, Alice?” she asks. “Sincerely?”

“Good question. I guess this seems about right.” I give a shrug. “This is how I’d act if you showed up on my door—not that you know where it is. Or anything about me.”

She lifts her chin, taking me in.

“The city, I heard. You do some sort of admin work.”

I feel myself blanch.

Holding her hard gaze, she gestures toward a glass coffee table and a pair of white sofas on the left side of the room.

“Shall we?”

I take the sofa facing the windows, and Barbara settles in the opposite one, her frame sharply backlit by the sun. She perches at a slight angle, one elbow on the back of the sofa and one ankle resting on her knee. I remember this—the funny way she sat on a sofa. On someone with less confidence, it would be an awkward pose, but it just made Barbara look cool. It made her look even more like Katherine Hepburn—a resemblance everyone noticed, and she always laughed off.

She waits, her jaw set and readied.

“Right then. You’re fine. Theo’s fine.” She lifts a hand. “Let’s have it.”

I open my mouth to give it to her, but instead, an apology comes out.

“I should’ve called first,” I say, my eyes drifting. “I’m sorry.”

Barbara drops her chin and looks at me from under heavy lids.

“Oh dear, we’re not going to do that, are we? Sit here saying ‘sorries’ to each other?”

It makes me chuckle, I can’t help it. All these details I’d forgotten: her scolding glare, her sharp propriety. The interior steeliness I’d admired, even as a child.

“No, no,” I say, composing myself. “ ‘Sorry’ is dull conversation. I remember.”

She gives me an approving nod, and it feels so surprisingly good that for a second, I want to drop this whole thing. For a second, I think Iwould, if it meant I could be her niece again. But it doesn’t look like that’s on offer. She didn’t even offer tea.

So, I suck in a breath and do what I came to do:

“I’m here to ask about the phone call,” I say, my face up but my eyes on the coffee table.

“When your mother was ill? Alice, I don’t know what Theo told—”

“What?No,” I retort, my back rigid. “Not the phone call Theo made to tell you your sister was dying. I actually donotwant to talk about that.”

“All right,” she says calmly. “Good then. Neither do I.”

I pause, gathering myself.

I hear seagulls. I smell my sweat. I see a glass coffee table, and a puckered face reflected in it.

“Your phone call with Patrick Yates. That’s why I’m here.”

I watch Barbara’s shadowy figure in the glass tabletop—still and silent, but something in it shifting. When I look up, her taut face has gone bloodless. She turns toward the wall, looking at the empty space where no pictures hang. The hollow room is so quiet that I hear the faint pop as she parts her lips. But no other sound comes out.

“Patrick Yates called you on—”

Barbara raises a hand, stopping me.

“You know what? I’m not going to ask,” she says. “I’d rather not hear your explanation.”

“I found out—incidentally. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy.”