Free Love Falls by Esther Freud

palm and stroked it. Startled, she pulled back. He laughed and Kip, presumably aware of the trick, laughed too.
    To Lara’s relief Andrew turned his attention to Lulu, to a film she’d been cast in, and Andrew began teasing her about a sex scene she would have to do. ‘But I haven’t given my written permission,’ he said. ‘How dare these Yanks come and take advantage of our most beautiful girls!’
    ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ Lulu said. ‘One, you’re not my father and two, I’m not doing any sex scenes. There’s just a snog.’
    ‘Not true,’ Andrew insisted, but Lara didn’t know which piece of information he was refuting.
    The food came then, and there was an excuse for her to duck out of the conversation as she tried to find a way of pulling apart her prawns, peeling back the slippery shell, scraping off the soft slush of the eggs.
    Occasionally she looked up and whenever she did she found Roland’s eyes on her. ‘Like this,’ he said, ‘Comrade Lara,’ and he sucked at the belly of a prawn, made a slurping noise with his tongue, and winked.
    During the main course, Roland described a waterfall he had heard about, ‘ La cascata dell’amore – the Love Falls.’ It had a pool below it into which you could jump. ‘It’ll only be fun if we all go,’ he said expansively. ‘Except my fat wife, of course. She can stay behind,’ and although Lara took an audible intake of breath, and looked round for some response, the insult was ignored and it wasn’t until later in the evening when a tall woman, heavily pregnant, came up behind him and began whispering in his ear that Lara understood this had been meant as a joke.
    People began to drift around, swapping places, squeezing on to others’ chairs. Andrew stood and stretched, and visibly giving up on the young crowd moved down to the far end of the table, where immediately great gales of laughter rose up as if he were relaying some anecdote he’d been saving just for them. Lara felt the atmosphere at their end of the table lighten and for the first time, in a tone of genuine conversation, May turned and asked her where she lived.
    ‘Finsbury Park,’ she said.
    ‘Where the Rainbow is?’ She’d caught Kip’s attention, and they all looked at her, mystified, impressed, as stunned as if she’d said she lived on Mars.
    ‘Have you seen any bands there?’ Kip asked.
    ‘I saw Peter Tosh once.’ She didn’t mention she’d gone with her mother. ‘And you?’
    ‘I was thinking about it,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see Peter Tosh but I was away at school.’
    ‘He was good,’ Lara said, remembering the reggae star’s tall dark dancing frame, and it gave her confidence, the way Kip looked at her. ‘So, have you got other brothers and sisters?’ She wanted to hand the conversation back to them. ‘Or are you all here?’
    ‘Sisters,’ May corrected, and she explained that apart from Kip there were only sisters. Tabitha, the pregnant woman, and another, older girl, Antonia, who had a place among the grown-ups. ‘Then there’s Katherine who’s in America and Fifi who’s . . . not well.’
    ‘And then, finally, me.’ Kip looked up.
    ‘Yes, you.’ May poked him. ‘Our poor mother. Papa was never going to let her stop breeding until there was someone to inherit.’
    ‘And is she . . .?’ Lara remembered too late her father’s assurance that the mother of all these girls, the mother of Kip, so disconcertingly handsome she could hardly trust herself to look, was unlikely to be here.
    ‘Shhhh.’ May had hold of her arm. ‘She’s never been here. Papa won’t let her come. And if you see her, whatever you do, never mention Pamela.’
    ‘Of course,’ Lara agreed blindly, and she nodded her head as if it was likely she’d see Lady Willoughby any time soon.
     
     
    Later, while the grown-ups and the older girls sat around drinking small shots of grappa with their coffee, Lara sat with May, Piers, Lulu and Kip along the edge of the