oratorio, and all the time one of you killed her! I keep expecting to wake up and find this is all a nightmare, except I realize it’s been going on for years, one way or another. Maybe this is hell?” She flung her arms out, only just missing the top of Dominic’s head. “All this … hypocrisy! Though hell is supposed to be hot, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just bright and endless … nauseating.” She swung around to Vita. “And don’t bother to tell me to leave the room … I’m going to. If I stayed I should be sick.” And she knocked her chair over backwards and stormed out.
Dominic rose and picked up the chair. It would be pointless to try to make excuses for her.
Ramsay looked wretched, eyes cast down towards his plate, skin white around the lips, flushed in patches on his cheeks. Clarice was staring at him with naked distress. Vita kept her gaze steadily ahead of her, as if she could not bear any of it but could not escape.
“For someone who speaks so disparagingly of theater,” Clarice said huskily, “she manages to put on a highly dramatic performance. Overacting a bit, though, don’t you think? The chair was unnecessary. Nobody likes an actress who upstages the rest of the cast.”
“She may be acting,” Mallory retorted, “but I’m not!”
Clarice sighed. “What a pity. It would have been your best excuse.”
Dominic looked at her quickly, but she was turned towards Ramsay again.
“For what?” Mallory would not let it go.
“Everything,” she answered.
“I haven’t done anything!” he said defensively, then inclined his head towards his father.
There were two hectic spots of color on Clarice’s cheeks. “You mean you didn’t push Unity? I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe she was having an affair with Dominic.”
Vita glared at her daughter, her eyes wide and angry. She drew in her breath to say something, but Clarice continued loudly and clearly.
“I can remember lots of things, now I think about it, times when she sought his company, little looks, glances, standing very close to him—”
“That’s not true!” Vita interrupted her at last, her voice tight, as if her throat would barely allow the words through. “It’s a wretched and irresponsible thing to say, and you will not repeat it. Do you understand me, Clarice?”
Clarice looked at her mother in surprise. “It is all right for Tryphena to imply that Papa murdered Unity, but not to say that Unity was having an affair with Dominic? Why ever not?”
Dominic could feel his own face burning. He remembered those moments, too, with a clarity which horrified him and made him wish he were anywhere but at this table, with Vita looking hurt and dismayed, Mallory’s lip curled in loathing, and Ramsay avoiding everyone’s eyes, drowning in his own fear and loneliness.
“I suppose he got tired of her,” Clarice went on relentlessly. “All that political preaching can become a bit tedious. There are times when it is terribly predictable, and that is a bore. She didn’t listen, you see, and men hate a woman who doesn’t at least pretend she hangs on their words, even if her mind is miles away. It’s an art. Mama is wonderful at it. I’ve watched her hundreds of times.”
Vita blushed and seemed about to say something, but was too frozen in embarrassment.
No one except Dominic noticed the door open and Tryphena appear in the entrance.
“I daresay he found Mama was attractive,” Clarice went on in the prickly silence. “That’s it. Dominic fell in love with Mama …”
“Clarice … please …” Vita said desperately, but her voice was low, her eyes downcast.
Mallory stared at his sister, his attention at last truly caught.
“I can see it.” Clarice warmed to the drama. She sat back with her eyes closed, her chin lifted. She, too, was giving a fine performance. “Unity still besotted with Dominic, but he is bored with her and he’s moved on to someone more feminine, more alluring.” Her expression was rapt, a fierce concentration filling her. “But she will not give him up. She cannot bear rejection. She blackmails him with their past liaison. She will tell everyone. She will tell Papa; she will tell the church. He will be thrown out.”
“That’s nonsense!” Dominic protested angrily. “Stop it! You are talking completely irresponsibly, and none of it is true.”
“Why not?” She opened her eyes and turned on him. “Why shouldn’t someone else be blamed? If it’s fair to blame Papa, why not you, or Mallory … or me, for