Never Mind Miss Fox
Page 20
But Clive could not respond. He did not move.
A moment of stillness—a question and an answer in the air—and then Martha turned and stepped down into the house. Confident, light-footed, she continued down the stairs with a free, careless stride that Clive could only envy. “I’m coming,” her voice sang out again. “Are you in the garden?” He heard a door slam.
In the thick, closeted air Clive waited and listened. The attic itself was a hood which muffled his head. He strained to hear any sound, any sign, that might help him. A tumble of boxes, some of them opened, were balanced on the beams around him. I should have left all this alone, he realized.
A laugh: Eliza’s. The slam of two car doors. An engine sparking, coughing and stammering into life.
Clive’s head swam. He found his feet and pounded down the stairs to the garden door. “Eliza? Martha?” No one answered. With a kicking heart in his chest he ran across the garden.
The car was perched at the lip of the yard and ready to leave. Eliot sat in the driving seat and Eliza waved from beside her. Martha, on her feet and smiling, waved back. Clive raised his own hand—Stop!—but now they were off: pelting away down the track in a clatter and spit of stones, pausing at the lane—the clunk-rev of a changing gear—and now they were gone.
“Where are they going?” Clive’s voice was dry with dust and fright.
“Just for a spin in the car—Eliza’s been longing to go.” Martha folded her arms and spoke with a kind of defiance. “I wanted to go with them, but there wasn’t room.” Turning to Clive she examined his expression. “What’s the matter?” She peered at him closely. “Clive?”
But Clive did not respond. He put a hand up to his brow, and looked across the field. A pitiless wind beat at his face; it hurt his eyes to search this empty view.
“Clive?” Martha said again. She glanced from his face to the horizon and back again. “There’s nothing there.”
She was right—Clive knew she must be right—but he did not want to be told.
Martha turned away from him, to the house. “Are you coming?”
“Not yet.”
He stayed where he was, watching. Only the lifting spirals of dust, circling into the air, told him that the little car had ever come or gone.
Eliot drove fast: the passing hedge was a dark green blur. The car’s roof was down, and the windows rolled wide open.
Eliza’s hair, head and whole body were buffeted by the scented summer air. It was delicious and exciting. She raised her hands above her head for a moment, daring herself, and then she turned to Eliot. “It feels like we’re flying,” she said. “It feels like we’re free.”
Eliot seemed to take this remark very seriously. When, after a moment or two, she smiled across at Eliza she looked quite different. “That’s how I feel too,” she said.
About the Author
Olivia Glazebook was born in 1976. Her first novel, The Trouble with Alice, was published in 2011. She lives in Dorset, England.
Also by Olivia Glazebrook
The Trouble with Alice
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Prologue
Part I1
2
Part II3
4
5
Part III6
7
8
Part IV9
10
11
12
13
14
About the Author
Also by Olivia Glazebrook
Appendix
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2014 by Olivia Glazebrook
Cover design by Ploy Siripant
Cover photograph by bravo les filles / Getty Images
Cover copyright © 2014 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First North American ebook edition: August 2014
Originally published in Great Britain by Virago Press, February 2014
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ISBN 978-0-316-24287-5
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