Free Wise Children by Angela Carter Page B

trebled.
    ‘– and come and watch the lucky people win Lotsa Lolly! again, next week!’
    Roars. Applause. Up came the credits over the three of them bravely waving farewells to the invisible punters. Nora rose up with some ceremony and killed the tape. The set crackled. Then there was silence.
    ‘I thought Tiff might be here,’ said Tristram after a bit, snuffling and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘We’ve looked everywhere else.’
    ‘Why didn’t you come here first of all, then?’
    ‘God, such a terrible night. . . The police. The casualty wards. We searched the night shelters.’
    ‘Who are this “we”?’ enquired Nora sharply.
    ‘Finally, well, I just passed out,’ said Tristram. ‘I couldn’t cope any more. She took me back to her place.’
    ‘Who,’ I asked, more sharply still, ‘is this “she”?’
    As if we didn’t know. He was too scared to say out loud or else he wanted to keep it from Wheelchair. Then, again, he’d never shown any consideration for her sensibilities in the past; why did he want to start now? But Nora leaned forward and, with her long, lean fingertips, delicately plucked from his lapel one single hair, as red as his own hair but very, very much longer. She held it high, she let it dangle, proof positive that last night of all nights he’d spent with –
    And that is the single, most unmentionable secret in this entire family’s bulging closetful of skeletons, that ever since he was little, Tristram and Saskia, although she is his half-sister and old enough to be his mother, in fact, his mother’s best friend, once upon a time . . . I thought our Tiff had weaned him off the nipple, but here was the evidence to prove the contrary.
    ‘Like a dog,’ said Nora, sneering at the hair, ‘returning to its own vomit.’
    ‘Oh, God!’ said Tristram. ‘Try to be a little understanding. Tiffany had vanished clean away, I was half mad with fear –’
    The area door slammed, such a bang the back windows shuddered. Came heavy footsteps down the passage. We harkened. Brenda always let herself in.
    ‘I suppose,’ said Nora with heavy irony, for she knew swift retribution was at hand, ‘it never occurred to you to ask at her mother’s, did it?’
    The kitchen door burst open. You could tell by the look on her face that she had seen his Porsche outside. She’d been a real slip of a thing, when she was a girl, but she’d put on a lot of weight after the kids, now she could give Leroy a pound or two, and strong as a horse, with it. She still had her rollers in, her carpet slippers on, but she was past grief, white with rage.
    At least Tristram was spared the task of telling Brenda, the police had done that already. Leroy tried Tristram in his absence and found grounds for a verdict of justifiable homicide. When Bren told him that: ‘If her Dad gets his hands on you . . .’ she aimed a big whack at him and I thought I’d slip outside and put the kettle on, leave them to get on with it.
    All of a sudden, I felt my age. If the youngest goes before you . . .
    There’s a photo of Evelyn Laye on the wall above the tea caddy. ‘To twenty twinkling toes, with loads of love.’ I thought of Tiffany, ‘this little piggy goes to market’. And her feet, leaving blood behind them as she came down the staircase. She’d have made a cracking dancer, if she’d put her mind to it.
    Then my heart felt as if a hand had squeezed it because I’d thought of our darling Tiffany in the past tense, hadn’t I?
    Little Tiff.
    Nora came out into the scullery and slipped her arm through mine. We watched the kettle bounce and hiss on the gas and listened to the sounds of fracas coming from the breakfast room. Smash! There goes a plate. The cats trampled themselves underfoot as they streaked out of the cat door. ‘Not good enough, was she!’ Muffled cry of pain from Tristram. ‘Treat her like dirt, did you! Well, see where it gets you!’ Then the telephone rang. I looked at