Free Night Music by Jojo Moyes Page B

down heavily. ‘Well, I’ll just have to drive to the next town. There must be a launderette somewhere.’
    ‘People don’t go to launderettes any more. They have washing-machines.’
    ‘I’ll wash his things by hand, then, and dry them with a hairdryer.’
    ‘Can’t we go home?’ Kitty pleaded. ‘We can find the money somehow. I’ll take a year off school and work. I’m sure I can do something. We’ll manage.’
    Isabel felt the claw of inadequacy.
    ‘I’ll be really, really helpful. And Thierry will. Even being poor at home would be better than this place. It’s awful. It’s – it’s like something a tramp would live in.’
    ‘I’m sorry, darling. It’s not possible. Maida Vale is sold. And the sooner you start to see this as our new home, the easier it’ll be for everyone. Look past the problems to the beauty of it all. Imagine what it could be like. Look,’ she said, her voice conciliatory, ‘everyone has teething troubles when they move in somewhere new. Tell you what – I’ll call a plumber and we’ll get the hot-water system sorted. And then we’ll ring a chimney sweep. Before you know it we’ll forget we were ever this miserable.’ It was a plan. ‘The phone’s working so I’ll do it now.’
    With an encouraging smile, Isabel walked briskly out of the kitchen, unsure whether she was rushing to make a start or escaping the crushing disappointment in her daughter’s face.
    *    *    *
     
    Her mother’s quilted Oriental jacket glowed out of place in the sad, shabby house. Kitty put down her magazine, rested her head in her hands and checked strands of her hair for split ends. When that grew boring she wondered what else she could attack in the kitchen. Mum had gone over the top about how wonderful and practical and clever she was. She didn’t know that Kitty kept busy because it was the only thing that stopped her wanting to cry. While she was working, she could pretend this was an adventure. She could see the difference she had made to their surroundings. She could, in the words of the school counsellor, take control. But the moment she stopped, she was thinking about Dad, or about their house in London, or Mary, who had hugged them and wept when she left, as if they were her own children. And all of that made her want to shout at Mum, because she was the only person left whom she could shout at. Except they couldn’t shout at her because she was still grieving. And she was fragile, a little like a child herself, Mary had said. ‘You often find that with people who have a talent,’ she had told Kitty one evening. ‘They never have to grow up. All their energy goes towards doing the thing they love.’ Kitty had never been able to decide whether or not she had meant this as a criticism.
    But Mary had been right, and when Kitty had been small she had resented the Guarneri so much that she had frequently hidden it, and watched with guilty fascination her mother tear through the house, white with anxiety, trying to find it. Their lives had been governed by that instrument. They had not been allowed to disturb Mum while she was practising, or have the television on too loud, or make Mum feel guilty about the times she had to go away on concert trips. She had not been allowed to mind that Mum never played outdoor games or helped her to make things with glue and ripped-up boxes because she had to protect her hands. Kitty’s most abiding memory of her childhood had been of sitting outside the study door, listening to her mother play, as if that might bring her closer.
    She knew she had almost been an only child because Mum wasn’t sure that she could balance the needs of two children with her musical career. And even after Thierry arrived, unexpectedly, she had still never been at school evenings or netball matches, because she had had to play. They would understand when they were older, her father had said, if they were lucky enough to find the one thing they were really good