Beautiful Lies Read Online Free Page A

door to berate him. Edward found these encounters diverting. He claimed that, by provoking the acceleration of blood through Lady Wingate’s coarsening arteries, he was performing a duty of medical care, but Maribel had no appetite for the old lady’s implacable irascibility. She hurried on tiptoe across the wide tiled hall.
    As she reached the stairs, the door to Lady Wingate’s flat banged open.
    ‘Mrs Campbell Lowe.’
    Maribel sighed. She stopped, one hand on the banister.
    ‘Good evening, Lady Wingate.’
    The old woman glared at her. She was dressed in a dark green velvet evening gown with a huge and rather tarnished diamond pin on the shoulder. The dress was low-cut, revealing a good deal of wrinkled décolletage.
    ‘Must you make such an infernal racket?’ she demanded. ‘I can barely hear myself think.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I tried to be extra careful with the door this time.’
    ‘Bang, bang, bang, that door, day and night. Anyone would think it was a pheasant shoot. I don’t suppose they have pheasant shoots where you come from, do they?’
    ‘In Chile? No.’
    ‘I told my son a flat was a modern abomination. A house, that’s the respectable way to live. Not all piled up one on top of the other like plates. We, thank heavens, are not the French.’
    Maribel said nothing. The old lady made a low whistling noise to herself and patted her velvet arms.
    ‘No husband tonight?’
    ‘Not tonight. There is a vote at the House.’
    ‘So I shall have the pleasure of being woken by him later.’
    ‘I am sure he will be very quiet.’
    Lady Wingate harrumphed, clicking her false teeth.
    ‘My mother would never have allowed my brother to put her in a flat. Not while she was of sound mind. She was of the opinion that only paupers and prisoners managed without stairs.’
    ‘Well. The world changes.’
    ‘The vote for women, now that would really have her turning in her grave. Silly old bat.’
    Maribel smiled. ‘I should be getting along. I am sorry I disturbed you. Goodnight, Lady Wingate.’
    Lady Wingate harrumphed again and did not reply. She stood in her doorway, seemingly lost in thought, as Maribel climbed the stairs to the first floor. As she crossed the landing Maribel looked down. The old lady’s door was still open, her shadow a grey smudge on the black-and-white floor. In all the years of their acquaintance she had never once invited them inside her flat and they had certainly never asked her upstairs to theirs. It was the joy of modern mansion blocks. They came unfettered by the tiresome domestic obligations of ordinary houses. Nobody in a flat considered themselves to have neighbours.
    She unlocked the front door and let herself in. Inside the lamps were lit and the grandfather clock ticked comfortably. Maribel paused, inhaling the warm smells of beeswax and applewood smoke. In the drawing room the fire was still burning. As she drew off her gloves and reached up to unpin her hat, Alice appeared in the doorway, a tray of supper in her arms. Maribel smiled at her and set the hat on a side table. It was a particularly pretty hat, purchased on her last visit to Paris, and the sight of it cheered her further.
    ‘Just put the tray here,’ she said. ‘I shall eat in front of the fire.’
    Stretching a little she yawned as Alice set the tray on the fender stool. She knew they had been fortunate. When they had first set up home in London Edward’s mother had warned them darkly of the difficulty in securing servants in town, declaring the whole business a sea of troubles, but Alice, though sometimes a little rough around the edges, had proved competent and obliging. She had been with them almost as long as they had been married.
    ‘Will that be all, ma’am?’ Alice asked.
    Ten years in London had done nothing to soften her West Riding accent. She had come to Maribel through an agency, and when she had first opened her mouth to introduce herself, Maribel had almost sent her away without an interview.