Page 30 of Love and Loathing

“How did it even start, this rumour that the two of you were dating?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Amy came over, sat on the window seat near where Evie was leaning and smiled up at her—one of her rare, mischievous smiles. “I admit, I’m somewhat more interested in how it’s going toend.”

Evie shot her a look. “It’s alreadyended.” She fiddled with the tassel of the curtain tie-back, running the thick, silky strands between her fingers. “Women aren’t allowed to have opinions, are they?” she began in a different tone, as though starting acompletely different topic. “If we get angry, if we make a stand, everyone thinks we’re just shrewish and whining. Or childish. Little girls throwing a tantrum. Still, even now, after everything we’ve fought for, a woman showing any kind of strong, negative emotion is criticised or laughed at. It’s what they did to the suffragettes. And it’s still happening.”

Amy sighed, but sympathetically. “Probably. Sometimes. Is that what Aubrey’s like? Because you objected to the shooting?”

“I don’t care about Aubrey.”I. Do. Not. Care.“He thinks I’m immature.”

If Amy thought that the second of those statements perhaps contradicted the first, she only showed it by frowning slightly as she, too, glanced out at the gardens.

“I’m beginning to not like the sound of him,” she said, which, irritatingly, gave Evie the sudden urge to defend him. She dropped the tassel in disgust.You don’t understand,part of her brain protested.He’s not always so…

“Maybe I am immature,” Evie said, suddenly wondering if it was true. “I keep doing the same sort of things I’ve done since I was a teenager. Going on the same types of voluntary schemes, joining in the same types of protests, making the same arguments over and over, and I’m not getting anywhere. It’s all so ineffectual, and it keeps breaking my heart. But maybe I’m the problem. Acting like a thirteen-year-old with a hand-written petition and expecting it’s going to change the world. I need to do something different. Think bigger. But I don’t know what.”

“I thought that’s what this FTP thing was? That’s how you explained it last night. Serious activism, high-profile stuff. You said they were proactively trying to change things, not just care for the broken pieces after the fact.”

That’s how it had felt, when she was describing it all to Amy and Hugo last night. Because what good was feeding a few starved donkeys when you could change the system that let themstarve in the first place? There had been refugee camps in Spain. She had passed them sitting in the back of a pick-up, bales of hay stacked around her, dust in the air. Rows of tents like something out of the apocalypse. She’d felt very small then. Completely insignificant. Still that child trying to rescue ants from puddles while shots rang out in the fields and her father shouted at Hugo for another of his indiscretions and her mother came back from London in new fur and her best friend cried with loneliness at her father being away. But how could you fix it all? So many problems, and all of them so big and complicated. Grown up.

“I just need to try harder,” she said—as much to herself as to Amy. “Maybe I won’t achieve much. But I won’t achieve anything at all if I give up.”

“True enough,” Amy agreed, a trace of doubt in her smile. But she stood up, giving Evie a sudden, unexpected hug. “Just remember to put yourself first occasionally, when you’re out there saving the world.”

Evie smiled that away, awkward, embarrassed. Then she caught the change in Amy’s expression. “What? What is it?”

Amy’s grimace deepened. “I came to find you because we’ve been summoned to Conyers. Hugo and I. Your father wants to discuss some estate stuff. And we’ll be there for dinner—we can get changed there. It’s where all our clothes are anyway. Are you coming? I don’t blame you if you’d rather stay here with the demon horse.”

Evie laughed faintly, looking back at the vicious creature that was ready to fight to the death for its freedom. She had one night before Aubrey left. He doubted her commitment to the cause, did he? She’d prove him wrong.

She left the room with her lip curling much like that of the horse on the wall behind her.

FOURTEEN

Aubrey’s phone rang onthe way back to Conyers. He was in such a bad mood that he almost didn’t answer it, but he reminded himself he was a mature professional, and anyway, the name on the screen was Roscoe’s.

“Hello. Just calling to see if you’re surviving the old place?”

Aubrey pulled the blue gate shut behind him with a bang. “Just about.”

He walked rapidly over the short grass, eyeing with distaste a ragged flock of geese in the sky. There were birds bloody everywhere. How could she care about every damn last one of them?

“I heard a rumour Evie’s up there,” said Roscoe.

Aubrey didn’t reply, suddenly extremely suspicious of the true motives behind Roscoe’s call.

“Roscoe,” he said instead, “did your father ever talk to you about his future plans for the tax department? The, um…exact scope of the services provided?”

“Nothing beyond what would have been documented. But you know I was already uncomfortable with the more aggressive strategies we were pursuing.” He paused. “Is he pushing it even further?”

“I’m not sure. But it’s fairly obvious he wants to at least convince Domnall that’s an option.”

“To secure him?”

“But Domnall’s not stupid. He’ll demand delivery. And I’m not sure that…”

“My father won’t comply?”

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