‘Mostly background. Although there is one other thing—’
‘Yes?’ There was no particular reason why Lucy should feel a sudden butterfly-flutter of apprehension, but she did feel it.
‘I want to find out about Alraune,’ said Trixie Smith.
Alraune.
The name dropped into the small room like a heavy black stone falling down a well. There were several possible responses to it; one of which was for Lucy to say, with extreme flippancy, ‘Yes, wouldn’t we all like to find out about Alraune, dear,’ and then escort Ms Smith out of the building faster than a bat escaping hell. After which Lucy could forget this entire discussion, leave Lucretia with the brand of Cain on her sultry white forehead, and shut Alraune firmly back into the stored-away memories along with the rest of the ghosts.
The second option was to look faintly bored and slightly disdainful, and to act as if a rather embarrassing gaffe had been committed. (‘Oh, we don’t talk about that, Ms Smith, not in public…’)
The worst thing of all would be to say, in the kind of aggressive voice that positively invites an argument and a discussion, that Alraune had never existed, and add that the whole thing had been a publicity stunt dreamed up by journalists.
Lucy said, ‘But you must surely realize that Alraune never existed. It was all a publicity stunt dreamed up by journalists,’ and Trixie Smith, with the air of one who has finally heard what she has been waiting for, said,
‘Are you sure about that?’
As Lucy made her way home that night, she hardly noticed the stuffy, crowded tube and the rush-hour jostle of people.
She reached her flat, threw her coat into the wardrobe, and went through to the kitchen. She lived in the upstairs, left-hand quarter of a rather ugly mid-Victorian house on the edge of Belsize Park; the house was not quite large enough to warrant the term ‘mansion’ but it was not really an ordinary family house either, and the inside was very nearly palatial. It meant that Lucy had a huge sitting-room, which had originally been the house’s master bedroom, and a tiny bedroom opening off it, converted from a dressing-room. The original landing, which was vast, had been partitioned so that she had a kitchen and bathroom at the front half, and the flat on the other side of the house had the back half. This worked reasonably well, although the dividing wall between the two bathrooms was a bit thinner than it should have been.
Aunt Deb had always thought it rather a ramshackle set-up and Edmund had never understood how Lucy could live here, but Lucy liked it, partly because she had the feeling that it had once been a very happy house. She liked the feeling that over the years entire families had printed their cheerful memories on the old timbers, or that contented ghosts had pasted their shadows on to the walls.
Memories and ghosts…
She liberated a bottle of sharp dry wine from the fridge, and took it to the uncurtained window to drink. It was dark outside: the rooftops beyond the windows were shiny with rain, and there was a long, snaking beadnecklace of car headlights from the Finchley Road, which always seemed to be in the grip of its own rush-hour, no matter the day or the time.