Odd Girl Out by Elizabeth Jane Howard

eighteen months
with anybody. Like a rogue elephant in velvet.’
    ‘She’s not fat, is she?’
    ‘No: but elephants aren’t fat . Just overpowering. Mammalian juggernauts. That’s like Clara.’
    ‘Do you – find her – difficult?’
    ‘Difficult? Yeah – that’s about what I find her.’
    She was stuffing the clothes she had worn yesterday into the wastepaper-basket.
    ‘That’s not a dirty clothes basket!’ Anne said, wondering how on earth Arabella could think that it was.
    ‘It’s a trash basket, isn’t it? I don’t want these clothes, you see. Ever again.’
    ‘Oh.’
    They went downstairs to the kitchen; Anne carrying the breakfast tray in spite of Arabella’s protests. The kitchen was a large country one: slate-floored, with an Aga and pine dresser that
occupied one whole wall. It looked out on to the kitchen part of the garden. There were geraniums on the window sill, in front of which was a round pine table where Ariadne sat watching the flies
that skittered and zoomed above her head.
    ‘Is that cat yours?’
    ‘Yes. Ariadne. She’s half Greek, and about to produce a huge family.’
    Arabella sat on the edge of the table and stroked the cat’s head. Ariadne rose to her feet, arching her neck in acknowledgement, but her attention was still upon the flies: she knew that
sooner or later one of them would make a mistake and fly too low; nothing could distract her from this eventuality.
    ‘What will you do with them all?’
    ‘Find homes for them,’ Anne answered more lightly than she felt. Ariadne’s procreative life was as regular as it was prolific, and all obvious oudets for her progeny were long
used up. ‘Why? Do you know anybody who would like one?’
    ‘I hardly know anyone in England. I mean – know. I would love one all to myself.’ A picture of her living in a tiny, thatched cottage on the edge of some moor with a cat
came to mind.
    ‘But you travel so much, you couldn’t really have an animal, could you?’
    ‘It might pin me down. There!’
    A fly had come down, Ariadne had caught it with one, neat movement, and crunched it up almost before she had resumed sitting on the table.
    ‘Isn’t it bad for her?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter what it is for her. She just does as she likes.’
    ‘All the time?’
    ‘I think all the time.’
    ‘Goodness! I wish I was a cat. Even if it meant being demoted from the reincarnation point of view, I think I should prefer it.’
    Anne was clearing up everybody’s breakfast. ‘Don’t you like – ’
    ‘Being me? No. Hardly ever. I simply haven’t got the hang of it at all. I just don’t know what – ’ She stopped and stared at the bare foot she was swinging against
the table leg.
    ‘What? What don’t you know?’
    ‘What to do with myself, I suppose.’ Her hair hung down so that Anne could not see her face.
    ‘What are you going to do?’ she added almost at once. (To stop me asking anything more, Anne thought.)
    ‘Pick raspberries for dinner. Like to come?’
    ‘Oh yes ! I haven’t done that since I was in Scotland when I was four.’
    What an extraordinary thing to be able to say and remember, Anne thought.
    They took a colander and a chip basket and went out of the back door to the kitchen garden. The fruit cage was at the end of it. It was already hot, and the air smelled of lavender and warm box
from the miniature hedges each side of the cinder paths. Arabella was barefoot.
    ‘Don’t you mind no shoes?’
    ‘Not really. Anyway, we didn’t get to the case with the shoes in it. No – honestly, I like the feeling.’
    When they reached the cage, there was the usual adventurous and panic-stricken bird inside, making short spluttering flights up to the chicken wire and down again, then bustling and clucking
about the bushes and canes of fruit.
    ‘We’ll leave the door open for him, and he may have the sense to find it.’
    ‘Supposing he doesn’t, he’d still be all right, wouldn’t he, with so much to