Odd Girl Out by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page A

eat?’
    ‘He’d start fussing about his family.’
    ‘Do all birds have families?’
    ‘I think so; most of them. At this time of year, anyway.’
    ‘Lucky them.’
    ‘To have a family? Or just to have a family for part of the year?’
    ‘Oh – both, I should think. Where shall I start?’
    ‘Let’s do a row each. There won’t be an awful lot yet, as it’s rather early for them.’
    ‘You mean “Don’t eat any or there won’t be enough”?’
    Anne, feeling rather caught out, laughed, and said, ‘Something like that.’
    They picked in silence until Arabella said, ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’
    ‘No. I’m an only child.’
    ‘I’m one of them too. I hate it, don’t you?’
    ‘I’ve never really thought about it. My mother died when I was born, so I was brought up with an aunt and her child.’
    ‘What became of it, the other child? Do you see him or whoever it is?’
    ‘She was a girl, and the moment she was old enough, she emigrated to New Zealand. She’s married there, now.’
    ‘Still – you had someone to be a child with. That must have been fun.’
    ‘Well – in a way.’ Anne thought, as she had not done for some time, of the bleak and run-down rectory in Leicestershire where nothing had been fun, really, but one had always known,
with dismal certainty, where one was. ‘It was the kind of house where one was always eating the stale bread to use it up and never having new. And the garden. You could see everything in it
from everywhere – it wasn’t at all exciting: just safe. I don’t know whether that constitutes a happy childhood, do you?’
    Arabella sat back on her heels and thought. ‘I simply don’t know.’
    ‘What about yours? Your childhood, I mean?’
    There was a long pause. ‘I moved about so much, you see. I never had time to have any friends, or haunts – you know, like apple trees or favourite chairs for reading in
– because we were always going to some other place.’
    ‘That must have been exciting.’
    Arabella said flatly, ‘Yes; I suppose it was.’ She thought about some of it, trying to choose something about it that Anne would be shocked by but in an understanding way. ‘All
those stepfathers. Sometimes they made passes, and sometimes they didn’t, but they never really liked me.’
    Anne rose to this. ‘But that must have been when you were older.’
    ‘You’d be surprised. I was ten when that began. Well, anyway, I hadn’t even started the curse. The kind of men Clara goes in for are pretty decadent, if you ask me.
Horrible casual old Humberts: they weren’t in the least obsessed, just experimenting.’
    There was another pause, and then Anne said softly, ‘Poor Arabella. How awful for you.’
    Somehow, that had been too easy: she wanted Anne to be too sorry for her to be able to say so. ‘It didn’t matter at all, in fact. I soon got the hang of things. I used to steal back
money that Clara had given them. Even if they found out, they couldn’t say.’
    ‘I suppose you went to school?’
    ‘I went to – let me think’ (she didn’t need to, in the least – this was routine) ‘ – fourteen schools in different places. Not always different countries: sometimes I ran away, or got expelled. I speak three languages and I can’t spell in any of them.’
    Whether this was meant to be a boast, or a derogation, there was something dull, or stock, about it; it sounded as though Arabella had often made it before. But then, Anne considered, if one
kept moving about and meeting new people, one would be likely to go through the same hoops with them. She licked the juice off her fingers and got to her feet. ‘I’ve finished, and I
should think we have enough.’
    ‘Let me see yours. Far more than I’ve got.’
    ‘I’ve just had more practice. I don’t suppose you were an expert when you were four.’
    ‘I ate most of them. Has the bird got out?’
    ‘Can’t hear him, so I think he must have. Remind me to find out how he