Page 49 of A Colourful Country Escape
‘And get rid of that horrible Mrs Carrington-thingamajig,’ Sky added.
There was a clattering somewhere in the distance. The walls in this place really did seem to have ears.
‘Shh!’ Lexie giggled. ‘You’ll get me into bother!’ She draped herself belly first across the long coffee table and kicked out her legs. ‘Then I’d bring out a range of chalk-style paints. Paints for real people, who like to make do and mend, to create new beginnings.’ She grabbed a nail file from her back pocket and pretended to rub it over the varnish, as though sanding away the dullness.
Caught up in the moment, Grace sprang to her feet and began pirouetting with a net curtain. ‘You could take over the empire, make bossy Ben your employee and demand that his mother finds you a suitably rich husband!’ She blinked at the girls from behind her makeshift veil.
‘I still think Cory is better.’ Sky jumped onto one of the sofas and braced herself in a surfing-the-waves position.
‘The Carrington guys are hot!’ Grace squealed, through a room full of raucous laughter.
As the three girls threw shapes in their unlikely game of roleplay, there was an almighty metallic clunk against the doorway, then a crashing of delicate china. A tea trolley sped into the room, followed by a panting Mrs Moon and a red-faced fox of a woman.
Chapter 25
‘Mrs Carrington-Noble is here!’ Mrs Moon announced, shoving her trolley to safety on the living-room rug with one hand and rearranging her bonnet with the other.
But Lexie could hardly mistake her. She gulped, praying that the woman hadn’t heard the bit about her sons being hot.
‘What on earth?’ Ben and Cory’s mother glared at Lexie, Sky and Grace in turn, seemingly deciding which one to tear apart first. Her eyes landed on Lexie. They were angry and grey, and looked nothing like Ben’s comparatively agreeable atlases.
The girls stayed frozen in their now-quite-ridiculous poses – Sky surfing the sofa, Grace camouflaged by a net curtain and Lexie wishing she hadn’t belly-flopped onto a table better suited for morning coffee.
‘Get. Off. My. FURNITURE!’
Lexie and Sky didn’t wait to be told twice. They scrambled to their feet and lined up with their backs to the fireplace, like two of the children von Trapp. Lexie couldn’t even argue; they’d been acting like love-starved chimpanzees. Although the absence of Grace in the line-up made her quake at the threat of rebellion.
Mrs Carrington-Noble coughed into her hand, almost winded by the effort of shouting, before straightening her jacket and composing herself. ‘Alexis.’
‘It’s just Lexie.’ Her voice came out as a squeak and she saw Mrs Moon grimace.
‘Alexis. I have put up with you squatting under my roof.In the circumstances.’
‘In the circumstances of you having had my van crushed,’ Lexie muttered, somewhere in the direction of her slippers.
‘But if you’re going to announce onsocial mediathat you’re moving in your assemblage ofsisters,’ she hissed the final word, looking back and forth between Grace and Sky, ‘then I’ll have to rethink my position.’
‘Sister,’ Lexie mumbled. ‘I only have one, and she’s just visiting.’
Lexie pointed towards Sky, and tried not to cringe as Mrs Carrington-Noble appraised her. Sky was looking particularly ‘hippy commune’ in a brown floaty dress, with scraps of ribbon braided through her henna-dyed hair. The woman let out a huff before turning her attention on Grace, who was still swishing around in the net curtain, face veiled like an obstinate bride.
Lexie dared to glance back at Grace. Of the unlikely trio, her friend was the only one who didn’t look fazed. Lexie could have sworn she heard her chomping on imaginary gum.
‘Who is this?’ Mrs Carrington-Noble directed the question at Lexie, as though the blue-haired woman in the borrowed thrift-shop jumper did not deserve to speak. ‘And why won’t she remove herself from my bobbinet swags?’
‘Grace,’ her new friend said. ‘Not short for Gracious, Cornelius or anything fancy. Just Grace.’
Oh God, oh God, oh God. Lexie could feel Sky’s shoulders beginning to shake with laughter at her side. And why was Mrs Carrington-Noble wearing some kind of screen-goddess turban? This was too much.
‘Not-Graciouswho?’ Mrs Carrington-Noble screwed up her forehead as though the name was vaguely familiar.
Mrs Moon fiddled awkwardly with her tea trolley, fishing bits of broken china from her Victoria sponge. Lexie tried not to think of the time the housekeeper explained that the Patricia Noble of her school days hated her name being shortened, or in fact extended – to Patty Cowpat.
‘Does my surname matter?’
Lexie could see Mrs Carrington-Noble’s pointed chin beginning to tremble with annoyance.
‘Young lady, if you are in my house, leading a merry dance with my silk bobbinet fabrics and making lewd comments about my offspring, you can at least identify yourself.’
