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should.
    Kindly, Arthur led her by the hand. They went together through the stone archway; the French windows in the drawing room were open onto the terrace and the lawn. A table was set out on the terrace for lunch. They never seemed to stop eating, Harriet thought – although Alice didn’t really eat much, she just picked at it, watching her weight. Roland at the head of the table was talking, his fork laden with avocado and tomato and then forgotten: his delivery was always deliberate, full of measured pauses as if he considered every remark, holding it in inverted commas before letting it out in shapely sentences. His sisters half-worshipped his cleverness.
Who’d have thought it?
they said to one another. Being his sisters, they also found it slightly ridiculous, even Harriet did. They could remember him in short trousers, when his glasses were mended with sticking plaster.
    Roland’s academic position was as a philosopher, but he had also published a couple of popularising books, which didn’t popularise too far, on philosophy and film, and now he wrote and reviewed for the national papers. The surprising white suit must be the new wife’s influence, Harriet thought, and made him appear worldly and gilded. He was saying that British film had always been limited by its lack of pastoral. — Unlike Italian films, say, or Iranian, we can only do the pastoral as pastiche. We only know how to be nostalgic about landscape, we don’t know how to imagine ourselves inside it.
    Pilar said that the countryside didn’t make her in the least nostalgic. — I love cities. I love London. All the people, all the conveniences.
    Her accent was not heavy but pervasive, exotic, tawny.
    â€” She grew up on a ranch, Roland told them. — Twelve thousand acres.
    â€” I’m hopeless at numbers, Alice said. — Is that enormous or tiny?
    Pilar was dressed in white too, the shape of her dress seemed stamped against the shadows under the overhanging clematis. Her slim long legs were crossed, a white shoe dangled from the toe of one long foot, her long brown hair was caught up smoothly behind in a clip. When Arthur led Harriet forwards to the table, they were startled as if they’d hardly registered that she was missing – there wasn’t a place set for her. Roland over-compensated, kissing her although they didn’t usually kiss, then escorting her almost ceremonially to meet Pilar. Harriet put out her hand at arm’s length to forestall more embraces, Pilar unwound from her chair and stood up to shake it. She was very handsome, and taller than anyone in their family; in fact, she seemed to be made of a different material to them, less fussy and more polished, simplified to a few strong statements – the dark strokes of her eyebrows, straight long nose, heavy jaw. Harriet was suffused for a moment in the pungent perfume the other woman was wearing, and could smell it on her fingers for hours afterwards.
    They were all affected by Pilar’s new presence among them – it had the effect of making their talk at the table seem false, as if they were performing their family life for her scrutiny. Alice and Fran were noisy, showing off; Fran exaggerated the drama of Jeff’s selfishness, his dereliction. Ivy spilled her drink, Arthur picked out all the cheese from his sandwich, then left the crusts; Kasim when he appeared wouldn’t sit down for lunch – he said he wasn’t hungry and then carved himself huge hunks of bread, ate them sitting on the grass at the bottom of the garden. Pilar didn’t contribute much to the conversation, her remarks were rapid and forceful like her concentrated, liquid glances, as if she closed discussion instead of opening it up. But this might just be cultural difference, the sisters generously thought. Perhaps it was difficult to be tentative in Spanish. When they asked about the situation in Argentina, Pilar said she loathed