Free Blood Sinister by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page A

Conservative types. We thought we were being witty, but it got us a reputation. Some of the others called us
Les Tricoteuses
.’ She glanced at Swilley to see if she understood the French. ‘We didn’t mean any harm. To tell the truth, I barely understood half the comments. But Phoebe led and I followed.’
    ‘And how did your husband meet her?’ Swilley asked. ‘Through you?’
    ‘No, not really. Josh was at UCL too, reading architecture,’ she said. ‘We all met through Dramsoc – the Drama Society. I wanted to act – I’d been to stage school – so I joined it straight away, and Phoebe came along just for fun. Josh joined because – well, anyone who was anyone at UCL had to be in Dramsoc.’ She smiled with faint self-mockery. ‘It was a hotbed of preening student
poseurs
, though of course one only realises that with hindsight. But anyway, that’s how we all met. We liked the look of him. He seemed much more sophisticated than the other male students. He had an air about him, of belonging to a larger world. What he saw in us—’ She shrugged. ‘Phoebe was stunning, of course – that gorgeous red hair and those eyes. Intelligent, too – she was a brilliant student. And so witty – that fabulous stream of words! Everyone was in love with her. I don’t know what she saw in me. I was dull and plain beside her.’
    If she wanted contradiction, Swilley thought roughly, she’d come to the wrong shop. ‘Who knows what friends see in each other? It just happens, doesn’t it, friendship?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ Mrs Prentiss said. ‘It’s a kind of love, and love is unaccountable. At any rate, Phoebe had beauty and brains, though she wasted them, in my opinion. Josh had looks, brains, charisma,
and
a private income – quite the Golden Child. The only talent I ever had was for acting, and even that’s provednot to be such a huge talent. I don’t suppose you remember me in
Des Res
?’
    ‘I didn’t watch it. I think I may have seen a bit of one episode, but it’s not really my sort of thing.’
    ‘It wasn’t anyone’s sort of thing,’ Mrs Prentiss said bitterly. ‘Yet I suppose in a way it was the high point of my career. High point and death knell. Everyone thinks if you get a sitcom you’re made for life, but when it’s a stinker like that …’
    Swilley was not interested in a career post-mortem. ‘So at university you went around as a threesome?’ she prompted. ‘Or was it more two and one?’
    ‘We were a threesome. But when we graduated Phoebe sort of disappeared for a while, and that’s when Josh and I started to get close.’
    ‘Disappeared?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t mean mysteriously,’ Mrs Prentiss said. ‘I just mean we lost touch for a while. Three or four years, it must have been. I was in London, trying to get my career moving, and Josh was with a firm of architects, also in London, so we still saw each other. And in the end, of course, it was us who got married. When Phoebe reappeared, we became a threesome again, but with Josh and me the couple within it.’
    ‘Do you know where she was or what she was doing in that time?’
    ‘I imagine she was involved in some protest or other – she was always marching and demonstrating. I don’t know where in particular. She didn’t live anywhere permanently at that time. When she came back to London it was just the same, just lodgings, and sleeping on other people’s floors. She was still a student at heart.’
    A touch of disapproval? Swilley wondered. The materialist’s contempt for the idealist? ‘You didn’t agree with her ideas?’ she asked.
    ‘Oh, I don’t want you to think that,’ Mrs Prentiss said hastily. ‘Of course Josh and I are
convinced
socialists, always have been. But Phoebe was always much more radical than either of us. I was always willing to sign petitions and make donations, but I never went in for direct action the way she did. I was more interested in my career. And Josh had doubts about some of her