Writer's Corner - This is Maplecroft Part Five

      “She lives alone, why would I lie to you?”
      “Your mother? So beautiful and popular—I find that hard to believe…”
      The summer storm had broken and now raged beyond her screens, causing the sheer curtains to whip about. Lizzie kept Katarina’s glass filled.
      “ Well, she has visitors. But nobody special”
      “ Oh please. There’s always ‘somebody special’”
      “ Anni is her best friend but-“
      “ See, I told you so”
      “ They’re friends! For the most part…”
      “ Meaning?”
      “ Lets just say they’re romantic friends”
      Lizzie swallowed a sip of wine quickly to facilitate a burst of laughter. “Romantic friends! What a euphemism! May I use it sometime? How very clever Katarina”
      Katarina snorted that small sound of disagreement.
      “ But they are just friends”
      “ Do they sleep together?” Lizzie braced herself for the answer.
      “ Well…. yes, but not so much now”
      There it was, her proof. She had known before, Bibi had never denied that she would not be alone for long when they parted. But hearing it now from a neutral observer, having a name put to her rival (“Ahnnie”?) made her feel her face go pale. Later, later she would suffer in her room.
      “ Then they are lovers,” she pronounced.
      Katarina concurred. “They were. But I don’t think they are in love”
      Lizzie’s heart leapt. She struggled to remain nonplussed but Katarina had seen the look of pain in her pale eyes.
      She went on gently. “I’m sure that they’re not in love”
      Lizzie smiled, but there was sadness in her voice.
      “ Thank you for saying so. That’s very kind. Is she beautiful?”
      “ Well…yes she’s very beautiful. Like Nance.” she thought a reference to Anni’s counterpart might help, but her hostess did not respond. Kata went on lamely.
      “ They shop together and go to the theater mostly…” she tapered off knowing that anything she said could be taken one way or the other. It did not make Lizzie feel any better to hear of the friends and their closeness and common interests. She and Bibi had gone to the theater and shopping too.
      “ Besides, Anni took my virginity” Katarina added almost as an afterthought.
      Lizzie gasped. “You’ve slept with your mother’s lover?”
      “ Yes, a few times.”
      “ Does Bibi know?”
      Katarina rolled her eyes and laughed at the memory as Lizzie stared in shock. (These Scandinavian women! Where would they draw the line?!)
      “ She was furious with both of us; I couldn’t tell which of us she was jealous of. But it didn’t last. Of course”
      Lizzie’s head spun with this revelation. What must it be like for them there? She’d lost her virginity to Bibi at thirty years old. Thirty! Before meeting her, Lizzie had never even considered the possibility of consummating her desires. She had saved them and opened herself to them only in the dark sanctity of her bedroom when she was sure the rest of the house slept. And this twenty-four year old sitting in her parlour had already experienced it, how many times?
      “ What, how did it happen?”
      “ On my eighteenth birthday. We had a party, lots of champagne. Anni and I got a little drunk …” she sighed.
      “ Were you nervous?” (Eighteen!)
      “ Nervous? My legs were knocking together like an epileptic. I’d had a terrible crush on her and it was my first time”
      “ That sounds familiar” Lizzie remembered well how her own limbs had shaken and shaken that first night in London, while Bibi had kissed and touched her; unfastened her dress so adroitly while still kissing her. Lizzie’s very teeth had chattered, startling Bibi and causing her to ask if she weren’t sick with a fever!
      “Mother did the same to you” Katarina did not ask, but pronounced it as fact.
      “ Very much” Lizzie admitted remembering that night for the thousandth time. The ten thousandth time.
      The wine made her sleepy and sentimental. She longed to hold Katarina in her arms, breathe in the scent of her lover once again. But she curbed her desires neatly and considered another, acceptable way of obtaining them; she was expert at it.
      “ What will I do?” she lamented.
      “ Why, what’s wrong?”
      “ She’ll surely hate me now…”
      It worked. Katarina went to her and, with difficulty sat by her on the arm of the settee and took her into her uninjured arm.
      “ Mother doesn’t hate you”
      “ She doesn’t?”
      “ Of course not, I already told you she thinks very fondly of you”
      “ You’re sure?”
      “ Yes, why would she ever send me to you? Trust me to you?”
      Lizzie settled into the soft flesh near Katarina’s shoulder, inhaled the clean cotton of her shirt. Her head spinned with the wine. This was close to heaven-how long had it been since she’d been in a woman’s arms? Far too long. And even though this was not the woman she dreamed of, it was close enough for now.
      “She won’t hate me?”
      “Don’t talk crazy”
      ‘But I practically begged her not to leave me…”
      Katarina sighed. She knew that Lizzie’s was far from the only female heart her mother had broken.
      “It’ll be all right” was all she could think to say, “You’ll see, things will turn out all right”
      “I miss her so much, I’m afraid that I’ll do something foolish”
      “ Like what?”
      “ Do you think she still cares for me?”
      “ Of course she does.”
      “ She told you that?”
      “ She called you her sweetheart, and I never hear her say that about anyone. Not even me!”
      Lizzie smiled, her eyes still closed.
      “ All that” she whispered mysteriously.
      Katarina shifted her weight a little and looked down at the woman who dozed in her arms. Her throat tightened as she wondered once again about this woman’s past. Would her mother have sent her to a murderer?

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