‘Oh, join the modern age,’ said Donna, and went out to the garden.
She gave Don his lunch in an offhand way–he was plugged into his music, and barely acknowledged her–and went back to the kitchen, walking slowly as if it was too much effort to do anything else. Her parents were seated at the kitchen table eating the sandwiches, and Maria was talking animatedly about the stone tablet and the memorial clock, saying how interesting it was and that she might as well see if they could find it. She did not suppose any of them would want to come back to Amberwood again, but she had found the old watermill very interesting and would like to have another look inside it before they left.
‘You won’t mind driving down there, will you, Jim? It isn’t as if you had anything else to do.’
Donna’s father said something about a quarterly forecast to prepare, but this was swept aside on the grounds that nobody could be expected to prepare forecasts on holiday. It might rain tonight–the television had said it might–so they should do this while the sunshine lasted. They would take torches and the camera; it was only a quarter past one now. They could set off sharp at a quarter to two and have a good couple of hours. ‘Donna, you and Don had better come with us.’
‘Bor-ing,’ said Donna, deliberately drawling out the word.
‘Listen, I don’t care which of you comes, but one of you must, because—’
‘Because you won’t leave us on our own in the cottage in case we leap into bed and start screwing like stoats,’ said Donna. ‘Oh, all right then, but it had better be me. I shouldn’t think anything short of an atomic bomb would budge Don from the garden today. He didn’t so much as speak when I took his food out.’
‘He’s finishing a holiday task,’ said her father reproachfully. ‘A history essay. And Donna, you will not talk to your mother in that way—’
‘She has no shame whatsoever,’ said Maria at once. ‘Oh, let’s get going if we’ve got to,’ said Donna. She glanced out of the window. ‘Don looks as if he’s asleep anyway. We’ll be back before he knows we’ve gone.’
‘I’ll go upstairs to get ready,’ said Maria. ‘I’ll only be five minutes.’
It was, of course, a lot longer than five minutes before Donna’s mother was ready to leave. She had to find the correct shoes–‘No, I want the brown ones, for goodness’ sake. Would I wear navy shoes with this jacket, now would I? Well, I don’t care if it is only a mouldy old watermill, I have my standards, you should know by this time that I have my standards, and one of them is not wearing navy shoes with a brown jacket.’
Donna put on jeans and a clean T-shirt in her own room, found a straw sunhat to wear, and stabbed crossly at her hair with a brush as if she could not be bothered to brush it properly. This was to maintain the image of a sulky intractable teenager, in case either of her parents happened to be slyly watching her through the partly open door. She thought she was giving quite a good performance.
She went on giving a good performance on the short drive to Twygrist, slumped in the back of the car (deliberately slumped very low in case any of the locals happened to see the distinctive people-carrier go by with Donna inside), and replying in monosyllables to any remarks made to her.
But once at Twygrist, she livened up a bit, and even agreed to come into the mill. It would be better than frying inside the car on a hot afternoon like this. No, she didn’t know where the memorial tablet about the clock might be. No, she had not thought to ask, because she found the whole thing utterly—Oh wait a minute, though, something had been said about a kiln room. (This was in a slightly more animated tone.) Did you have kiln rooms in mills? Well, anyway, it was somewhere right down below ground–there were some old tunnels that led to the centre, or stone cellars or something.