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I've moved you.

Her mother stood clasping her hands in front of her, pearlized nail varnish offering reflections of the hall light in subtle gleams. Her chin was up and her mouth was a hard line.

What do you mean, you've moved me? Where to? Laetitia stood in front of her mother and, for the first time she could remember, saw that she looked her age. She was tired, strained, her skin taut across her cheekbones. What's been happening, Mummy? Are you alright?

Oh, perfectly, darling. Her mother's voice warmed at her use of ‘Mummy'; no doubt to her it evoked an earlier, simpler time when she had been loved by her daughter. She took a step towards Laetitia and clasped her free hand.

I'm sure you'll like your new room. It's compact and cosy with plenty of space for… well, everything you need. After all, dear, you don't stay here permanently any more, and—

Where have you put me?

In that little room at the back.

The
box
room?

Well, I only called it that, but actually it's quite large. It's —

And what have you done with
my
room?

I've had another bathroom put in. A proper one.

A
bath
room!

Yes. I needed…

Does Daddy know about this? Have you told him?

Her mother moved away from her and walked towards the drawing room. At the door she turned, held on to the frame. Her face was white and her fingers trembled against the wood.

This is
my
house, not your father's, though you seem to
find it extremely difficult to grasp this simple fact.
My
house. And may I remind you that it was your father who precipitated the break-up of this family with his serial infidelities, and
his
decision that we sell Wellwood and that I move with you into this dreary Victorian terrace, while
he
lives it up somewhere in the sun with… with…

Clearly she couldn't bring herself to say the name without spitting. Feathers and blood. Nails. Her voice had risen in a crescendo, and Laetitia realized she had walked straight into the trap. Once her mother got into her
WRONGED WOMAN
stride, there was no gainsaying her. All conversations were structured by this ineluctable fact: she had been wronged in
the
one major area of life, so take care lest you wrong her again by challenging her in any way. Having suffered such a devastating blow, she deserved only to be cosseted and indulged for the rest of her time on the planet. Her tragedy was that there was no one – no one! – in her life with the sensitivity and perspicacity to recognize this and oblige. Certainly not her uncaring viper of a daughter.

First rule of the game: ignore her. Walk away. Laetitia used to fight her father's corner. That induced fainting fits and hysteria… well, as good as. Then she tried another tack: sympathy. It was worse, if anything. Drew out that many splendoured thing, her mother's self-pity.

She listened for a moment to her mother's movements in the next room, heard her take a bottle and a glass from the drinks cabinet, chink over to the sofa, sit down heavily, clatter the bottle and glass onto the coffee table. By the fatness of the glug of liquid, she could tell it came from a decanter, that her mother's current poison of choice was whisky. Great! When she'd left a month before it had been Pinot Grigio. So refreshing, darling; cleanses the palate. Things must have gone downhill since then. Whisky meant danger. Whisky meant keep out
of her way. Give her a body swerve, as the Glaswegians have it. Steer clear.

Laetitia swung her rucksack onto her shoulder and started up the stairs. She could feel a prickly, itchy heat across the top of her back now as if the soft cashmere had transmogrified into a hair shirt. An allergic reaction. Julian was right about her mother, she
was
toxic. A waste of space. Toxic waste. Best
dumped
away from human habitation. By the appropriate
tradesman
. She allowed the memory to soothe her of Julian's last kiss when she'd got off the bus in London. Sweet and salt. Deep enough to lose herself in. Only the irritant of the ever-vigilant Clare to mar it, watching them through the window of the bus.

She stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at the doors that curved round the sides of the landing. They'd been newly painted. A fresh coat of what her mother called
a hint of spice,
a sort of pallid ginger, if such a thing were possible, with all the warmth and colour sucked out of it. Laetitia put a finger to the first door and ran it down the paintwork, hoping she'd leave an ugly streak. She was in the mood for scribbling on walls with felt-tip pens, easing her fingernails under wallpaper and stripping it away, shred by shred. But the paint was dry. Only the smell of it persisted under the room freshener.

The door of her old room was next to Mother's
boudoir
. For a moment she stood outside, allowed herself, like the hapless victim of a home makeover programme, to visualize it as it had been when she'd left. Only just over a month ago. Her rucksack slid off her aching arm onto the carpet. She opened the door slowly, fumbled for the light. But the switch had been moved outside, of course. A stainless-steel effort, out of keeping with the rest of the fittings on the landing. She pressed it and stepped into the room. Instantly it revealed itself as something straight from the pages of one of Mother's
Sumptuous Homes and Splendiferous Gardens
— type magazines: modern, minimal, the acme of good taste. Clearly a designer had been at work; this was no sudden whim. Rows of subtle spotlights were embedded in the ceiling and there were halfconcealed lights behind panels facing the mirror, the better to illuminate Mother in the kindest possible way. From somewhere came the sensation of a low hum overlaying the silence, as if the whole room was a precision-made machine, ready to reveal shiny lubricated pistons, working to some mysterious end, should she happen to press the right button. Or the wrong one. The washbasin was clear glass; the shower like the inside of a spaceship, stainless steel and glass; the toilet and bidet were pristine white; the walls a muted shade somewhere between pale dove grey and mauve.

Laetitia felt her throat tighten; all trace of her had been erased from the room she had occupied since the age of eleven, since Daddy had left and Wellwood was sold. The panelled door that had connected her room to her mother's was gone, replaced by a modern flat-planed effort. For years, after the nightmares stopped, the old pitch pine door had been concealed on her side by a bookcase, and on her mother's by a wardrobe. Now the new sleek version stood slightly ajar, offering a glimpse of her mother's bedroom, completely redecorated too by the looks of things. Ah, the master bedroom with en suite. Of course.

Laetitia moved slowly across the bathroom floor, feeling scruffy, her trainers squeaking on the dark grey tiles. She looked in the mirror. Her red jumper seemed to have expanded, to have indistinct edges, which bled into the metallic tones around her. Her brown eyes, her dark hair even, were splashes of colour. Though she could hardly imagine much splashing in here. Not even of water.

Lizzie Borden. Didn't she stand naked in a small basin to
wash away the blood of her butchered parents? Set aside the bloody axe and step into the clean water? Didn't she rinse off every drop without spilling any over the side, without leaving the minutest spatter on her body as forensic evidence? Did that happen? Or had she just made it up?
Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks …

There was no bath. There would be no long sudsy soaks, water slopping onto the floor as you adjusted your position for reading. She slid open the glass shower door and looked inside. So clean and modern it was clinical. You couldn't wash away your sins in here; a place like this admitted no sin. No colour, no mess, no sin. The door glided shut again at the merest touch.

What do you think, darling? Do you like it?

How long had her mother been standing at the door watching her?

No. I don't.

But it's so
contemporary
, don't you agree? I thought you'd love it. She stepped into the room, crystal glass held in front of her, whisky glowing like a lamp, scattering pieces of amber light around the mirrored surfaces, little flecks of it dancing on her face. The smell of alcohol challenged the asepsis. It was René Bouchard who did it, you know. The designer? Famous for his cutting-edge ideas?

Never heard of him.

Oh, darling, you must have. He did the Phillipses' bathroom too. Her mother glanced around for somewhere to set her glass, thought better of it, took another sip instead. I think he's done a much finer job here.

This was
my
room.

But, darling, have you seen your
new
room yet? Her mother made her way to the door. She must have taken her slippers off downstairs because she tiptoed barefoot now on the ribbed
tiles. It was slate, wasn't it; it would be cold on her feet. Her beige cardigan was over her shoulders and Laetitia thought her retreating back looked hunched. Defeated. In spite of her new light hair, its gloss and upswing. She was downbeat.

I know where it is, Mother. I don't need a guided tour. Her mother cast her a hurt, quivering glance from the doorway, took a slug of whisky and walked to the stairs. Laetitia followed her out and watched from the landing as she shifted her glass into her left hand, so that she could hold on to the banister on the way down. She felt for each stair carefully, as if it were dark, as if she were already drunk.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! Laetitia picked up her rucksack and walked round the curve of the corridor to the boxroom. A strong smell of fresh paint escaped from the cracks round the door. Julian, I wish you were here with me. She breathed in deeply, thought she caught a whiff of his tobacco. The power of the mind. Maybe if she concentrated hard enough she could conjure him up, all of him. They could go into her new room together. A new beginning. She pulled air into her lungs again and opened the door.

Before she switched the light on, she stood, trying to make out the changes in the almost dark, barely touched in this corner by the dim bulb on the landing; she wanted to absorb the room in stages. All the old Wellwood furniture Mother had stored here, piled to the ceiling, had gone: the Chinese dresser and the other pieces of chinoiserie; the Japanese screen with the gold peacocks à la Whistler; the rolled-up Afghan rugs; the paintings. The gewgaws and fripperies, the rest of the expensive tat. What on earth had Mother done with it all?

When the light snapped on she found herself gaping at a modern furniture showroom.
A compact and well-appointed study bedroom
– the estate agent speak instantly parsed itself in her mind. Funny how it had infiltrated the language. Her old
single Wellwood bed had been replaced by a futon. Of course. A double one, in cream-coloured cotton, with red and yellow and blue scatter cushions. She picked up a yellow one and hugged it to her. In front of the window, on a brand-new glass-topped desk, was a laptop computer, a standard lamp in stainless steel above it in an elegant arc. The wardrobe looked like birch. As opposed to pine or oak or beech. She opened the door to find her clothes hung neatly, put her hand in between a cotton shirt and a long skirt and moved them along the rail garment by garment. All there. It seemed her mother hadn't taken this opportunity to do a fashion makeover. A Color-Me-Beautiful transformation. They were definitely all there, the ones she hadn't brought down to Cambridge. All there and all black. Most of them. No colour. Or hardly any. Brown. Slate grey. The yellow cushion glowed like something standing in for sunshine against her clothes. She tossed it back onto the futon. The walls were yellow too, a pale, fresh yellow. One was taken up entirely by glass shelves. Her books were there. All those she'd left behind. In alphabetical order by author by the looks of things. The ragged spine of her Blake stood out –
Songs of Innocence and of Experience;
she took it down, flicked through it.

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

Her finger traced the arching thorns on Blake's etching, circled the fat round rose that looked more like a peony, avoided the worm, followed the little figure emerging with its arms outstretched,
the spirit of joy extruded
. Extruded. She remem- bered that day, sitting on a low wall in the quad, reading the poem, the start she gave when Julian came upon her. And the whole wide universe Blake had opened up shrank instantly to eight black lines on a page. Her backside chilled on the cold stone, her fingers frozen. No matter how often she'd read it since, she could never get it back. That hugeness.

Her stereo was there too; her CDs. Some of her boxes of notes from Cambridge. The toy rabbit Julian gave her in second year, dark brown and furry, nibbling forever on a green silk lettuce leaf, with paler stitching for the veins.

Oh God. She'd have to go down and talk to Mother.

The chair was on castors; moulded wood with slits on the back. She sat down and rolled herself in to the desk. The glass top felt cool to touch. She'd have preferred wood probably. Warmer. But the glass did look good, it had to be said. She bent down and breathed on the pale turquoise surface, misting it over. With her finger she wrote:

LETTUCE

LAETITIA

The mist cleared before she'd finished her name and all the letters dispersed. Nothing there but a few smudges. She pulled her sleeve down over her hand and rubbed at the marks till the glass was transparent again. The edge of it was smooth, curved, opaque like sea glass; she rolled herself closer till her waist was against it. The laptop was one of those titanium affairs. Beautiful. She ran her hand over it. Mother must have spent a packet on this lot. An absolute fortune. The button
on the front of the computer released the spring sweetly. She opened the lid. No, better not. She shut it again. Mother would be waiting for her downstairs, drinking herself stupid, nursing her grievances. Love-rat husband. Ungrateful daughter. Wellwood, Wellwood. She stood up, took a deep breath, plucked the rabbit from the shelf and looked into its brown button eyes.