Julia Read Online Free Page A

telephoned when Magnus was out of town, and conducted cool, flirtatious conversations with Julia. Magnus undoubtedly carried on his affairs, but they had lost much of their power to wound Julia. They seemed entirely peripheral, taking little away from Julia and Kate. Still unpredictable, still sometimes frightening, Magnus loved Kate absolutely. Julia spent the nine years of Kate’s life in a homebound trance, superficially content. Once, at a party, she had heard herself say, “Can’t live for another person? Of course you can live for another person, I live for my …” She was on the verge of saying “daughter,” but saw Magnus staring at her, and substituted “family.”
    Now she thought: I’m going to start being myself, freely myself, and discover what that means. And if I go crazy that’s okay too.
    Julia stood at her bedroom window, the shades parted, looking out at the play area, filled with desultory children, and the green of the park beyond. She pushed up the window and leaned out, thinking
a woman on the verge of a new life leaned from her window.…
 The room was unbearably stuffy. The air drifting across Holland Park seemed cooler, more invigorating despite the warmth of the day. Unpacking her clothing, untying the books, Julia had felt damp, sticky, and oddly ruthless—the clothing could go anywhere, since the bedroom, like the entire house, was solely hers. When she put the box of dolls for the moment in one of the bedroom closets, she sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, feeling heat rise from her in layers like steam. Julia felt the presence of the house about her, for a moment almost oppressive in its size. Yet she had wanted it, and she had it. The McClintocks’furniture was old-fashioned and a bit worn, but comfortable, tending toward plush and cushions. In time, she would get rid of it and buy new furniture, but for the moment she was as pleased with the old furniture as with the house, since it had the same settled, familial look of prosperous comfort.
    It was odd, the way this house had claimed her. At first, she had thought of moving to a service flat, probably somewhere in Knightsbridge; the temporariness of such a home depressed her, however, even in imagination, and she had gone to a real-estate agent’s office, thinking vaguely of buying a lease on a flat. But having seen the house on Ilchester Place—“Quite unsuitable, of course,” the man had said—she had known that she had to have it. It was nearly the first time in her life that Julia had used her money in a high-handed, reckless fashion. With Kate dead, did it matter how much she spent? The image of Kate’s last minutes threatened to rise up again, and to put it off Julia moved quickly away from the window. She had been half-consciously looking for the girl she had seen that morning, the blond girl. How lovely it would be if buying the house brought her into contact, friendship, with another child, a girl like Kate, with whom she could have an easy, relaxed companionship.
    But that was impossible: she could not make a stranger’s daughter her own. She really was getting less realistic, less responsible to the world of ordinary truths. Was it possible that instead of beginning a new life, she had merely further confused and muddled the old one?
    She could not afford to think that way. If she had been garrulous, disorganized, sloppy, everything that Magnus had accused her of being, perhaps these qualities were wrong only to Magnus: she had a right to her own foibles. And even now, free from him for only two days, Julia could simply feelhow oppressive Magnus—Magnus’s values—had been. She said to herself, I think it means my marriage is over, and surprised herself with the thought. Leaving Magnus had everything to do with Kate’s death, of course, that horrific scene on the kitchen floor, Kate’s blood everywhere, boiling out of her panicked body—but leaving him, Julia now thought, might also come from a deep