Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana Rosnay (e novels to read online TXT) 📕

Clarissa had erased each message, like all the others received from him. She didn’t care one bit that he missed Andy. She didn’t care at all that he was miserable. This morning, there had also been a message from Toby. She was often in contact with her first husband. He asked her how she was; he had heard from Jordan that she had moved. He must have known from their daughter that she had left François. She’d get back to him tomorrow.

Jordan’s face showed up on Clarissa’s phone. Clarissa picked up.

“Guess what, Mums? I got the most unexpected email from Mimsy and Pimsy.” Jordan’s nicknames for her British cousins. “They’re sending me jewels. Jewels! A brooch. Stuff that was locked in Serena’s safe for the past century. Something tells me Grandpa has been putting pressure on Arthur.”

“How generous of Mimsy and Pimsy,” said Clarissa ironically.

“So generous, isn’t it? They no doubt exhumed something prehistoric and decided it was for me. Who wears brooches nowadays?”

“At least you’ll have something from Aunt Serena, darling.”

Andy walked in, wrapped up in Clarissa’s bathrobe, her hair dripping.

“Hi, Mom!” she chanted, blowing a kiss.

“Have a nice evening, you two,” said Jordan. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

“Are you going to watch the hologram event?” asked Clarissa, tasting the soup.

“That looks rather good, Mums! Not sure if I’ll watch the telly. I’ll see what Ivan wants to do. Bye, my darlings.”

Jordan had lost many friends in the attack. Clarissa said good-bye to her daughter, and then asked Andy to go dry her hair. The president’s face appeared on the screen.

“Ugh,” said Andy. “Let’s mute her. I’ll ask Mrs. Dalloway to do it. Mrs. Dalloway! Mute the awful president!”

Nothing happened. Andy stamped her foot.

“Mrs. Dalloway, why are you ignoring me?”

“Adriana, don’t be silly. She can’t hear you. She can only hear me.”

Clarissa pressed on the remote control. The president’s voice died out.

“That’s better,” said Clarissa. “Now, go dry your hair, missy. Dinner will be ready in five minutes.”

Later, as she was savoring a glass of wine, she observed Andy tuck into her dinner. She wondered what kind of woman Andy would turn out to be. There was such promise in her—her sense of humor, vitality, inquisitiveness. How lucky she was to have given birth to an affectionate daughter, whom she loved, and who loved her in return; and then, the joy of watching this lively and talkative adolescent grow up, just as demonstrative as Jordan was toward her. Clarissa’s own mother had been aloof and unemotional. She had not been close to her. Yet she had never harbored animosity toward her mother. When she thought about her, it was with tenderness. At the end of her life, Solange was lost in amnesia. Her illness turned her into a bland, pleasant person. Clarissa went to see her at the hospital, and talked to a nice lady who had no inkling who she was. She died in her early seventies. Her passing seemed so long ago. And to think her father was still around, in the pink of health. In two years, he would turn one hundred. He had told his family that he wanted to throw a costume party where everyone would dance all night long. He was quite a dancer, her dad. He’d taught her how to do the bossa nova, the cha-cha, the tango. But he loved to waltz above all. When she felt glum, he’d play the “Blue Danube,” and a grin would come creeping back to her face. She could see him in her mind’s eye, at those family gatherings where he’d whirl her around and around, faster and faster, telling her to keep her chin up, her shoulders down, and to smile. Yes, to smile.

“What are you thinking about, Mums?”

“About Grandpa dancing the waltz.”

“Are you going to see him soon? He told me how much he misses you.”

“Yes, I must go. I promised.”

Andy paused.

“You were with him, in London, the day of the attack, right?”

“Yes, I had gone to spend a couple of days with him. I used to get on with Arthur, at that point, and I was staying over with them.”

Adriana was watching old photos of the Tower on TV. The mayor of Paris had given a short, poignant speech.

“I do hope they are not going to show the attack again,” muttered Clarissa. “We’ve had an overdose of that.”

She knew her granddaughter would have only foggy recollections of the events, if that. She was only a small child at the time. But still, she asked her, “And what about you, miss? What do you remember?”

“I remember being scared like never before. I remember it was nighttime, and my parents were panic-stricken. The expression on their faces made me cry.”

As if to summon up courage, Clarissa had a sip of wine. She told Andy that Arthur had come to wake her up in the middle of the night. She had been sleeping at his place, on the top floor of his home in London Fields. She couldn’t make out what her brother was saying. He had difficulty speaking and seemed dumbfounded. His face had gone ashen. She followed him downstairs, stood in front of the television. His wife, Jane, was standing there, too, rooted to the spot. Their two daughters had gone on holiday, somewhere in Spain. It was the middle of July, hot, clammy weather. The journalists’ voices seemed high-pitched and hysterical. From a wobbly image filmed with a mobile, Clarissa made out a gaping black crater encircled by a crest of orange flames, beneath billows of thick gray smoke; she heard shrieking sirens, clamors, yells. Paris was written in a large, lurid font at the bottom of the screen. Paris, where? It was so confusing, hard to understand. She couldn’t breathe properly; she could only think of Jordan, Ivan, the child. She thought of François.

Tripping, she rushed upstairs to get her phone. No one had called her. She pressed on Jordan’s icon. The call went straight to voice mail. The same for François and