“What about Saturday evening? Are you doing anything on Saturday evening?”
She was not, but she needed to talk to him. It could wait, of course—most things can wait—but she wanted to talk to him as soon as possible.
“There’s something we need to discuss,” she said, trying not to sound too insistent, but fearing that she did.
Jamie’s hesitation was very brief, but enough to convey anxiety. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come round on Friday evening. We can discuss whatever it is. What is it, by the way?”
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“Do you mind waiting?”
A note of irritation crept into his voice. “No, not really.
But . . .”
“It would be better,” she said.
After that their conversation came to an end. She knew what he was thinking: that she was proposing to end their affair and that she wanted to do it face-to-face. He must be thinking that, she told herself—if only he knew.
She decided to make a special meal for that evening and went into Bruntsfield to buy supplies. When Isabel went into the delicatessen Miranda was serving, standing behind the counter with Eddie. They had been laughing at a shared joke.
“Something amusing happen?” asked Isabel.
Eddie glanced at Miranda, and burst into giggles.
“Eddie said . . . ,” began Miranda, but she, too, started to laugh.
Isabel smiled, not at the joke, whatever it was, but at the sight of the two of them so obviously enjoying themselves.
She had so rarely seen Eddie smiling, let alone laughing, and the sight pleased her. “Don’t bother,” said Isabel. “Some jokes just don’t translate.”
“She said . . . ,” Eddie began, but again burst into squeals of laughter.
Isabel shook her head in mock despair. She saw that the door of the office was open and that Cat was sitting at her desk.
She approached the door, knocked and stuck her head in.
Cat looked up. When she saw Isabel, her expression changed. There was a flicker of a frown, but only a flicker. Then she gestured to a chair in front of the desk.
“I mustn’t stay,” said Isabel. “I thought that I might just . . .”
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h She had not thought of what she might say to Cat, but now she knew. The time for reconciliation had arrived. “I thought I might just say that I’m sorry.”
Cat looked down at her desk. “I’m the one who should be saying that,” she mumbled. “I got carried away.”
“We all get carried away,” said Isabel. “It’s a risk of being human—being carried away.”
The tension that had been in the room disappeared. “May I come round on Sunday? To tea?”
“Of course,” said Isabel. In her relief, she decided to include Patrick. “And Patrick too. Please bring him.”
Cat’s frown returned. “Patrick and I . . .”
Isabel looked up quickly. Patrick’s mother had won. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do,” said Cat. “We’re no longer seeing each other.”
“His work?” asked Isabel. “Was that the trouble?”
Cat seemed surprised by the question. “How did you guess?
He said that he just didn’t have the time at the moment to continue to be involved.”
Mother, thought Isabel. That interfering woman had got what she wanted. And Patrick joins the ranks of Cat’s former suitors.
“Oh well,” said Isabel. “You’ll be all right.”
“I am,” said Cat. “I am all right.”
“Good.”
“And you?” asked Cat. It was not a prying question.
“I’m all right too,” said Isabel. “You know how it is . . .” It was a vague, pointless thing to say, and for a moment she thought of adding whatever, but did not.
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She left Cat’s office and made her purchases. Miranda and Eddie were still laughing with each other, and Isabel’s presence seemed to tickle them all the more. “Anyone would think that you were high on something,” Isabel said good-naturedly.
There was a sudden, sober silence. You are! thought Isabel.
And that, she thought, must be Miranda’s doing. She would have to speak to Cat about it, discreetly. She did not like the idea of Eddie being led astray by an older woman. Young men are easily led astray, she thought, but then . . .
Eddie pointed to a large box filled with crumpled silver-paper wrappings. He smiled guiltily. “Liqueur chocolates,” he said. “Cat found a time-expired box and gave them to Miranda.
Rum. Cointreau. Even crème de menthe. We’ve eaten them. All of them. Thirty-two.”
He turned to Miranda, as a conspirator turns to an accom-plice; she put a hand to her mouth in an elaborate display of greed discovered, but then burst out laughing again. Isabel shook her head and smiled, then left the delicatessen. Once again I jumped to the wrong conclusion, she thought; I am often almost right, she told herself, or right but wrong.
She made her way back to the house, walking slowly along Merchiston Crescent in the warmth of the afternoon, deep in thought. There was no turning back; she would not do that, she would see things through. Once back at the house, she laid out the provisions she had bought. Grace was about to leave, but before she did she showed Isabel the rearrangement she had made of the spice cupboard. “The nutmeg was all mouldy,” she said accusingly. “I had to throw it out.”
Isabel would not be held responsible for mould and she ignored Grace’s remark.
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“And as for the pepper,” Grace went on, “you had three opened jars. That makes pepper dry and dusty. I put everything into one jar and sealed it.”
Isabel accepted the reproach. “I’ll try to remember to finish each one before I open another,” she said.
They finished with the spice cupboard, and Grace gathered her things in readiness to leave. Isabel asked her about her plans for the weekend and was told that there was a session at the spiritualist centre that night. “A very good medium,” said Grace.
“She’s very direct, and she doesn’t hesitate to warn us.”
She looked challengingly at Isabel, as if expecting contradiction. But Isabel said only, “How useful.” She was wondering when she should speak to Grace, when she should tell her; next week perhaps.
Then Grace said, “I’ve not said thank you properly. For the flat. I’m very grateful to you, you know.”
Isabel looked away. She felt awkward about thanks; she knew that she should not, but she could not help it. She knew how to show gratitude; it was harder to accept it, and she would have to learn.
“I’m glad that you like it,” she said. “I took to it straight away.”
Grace nodded. “Shall I pay you the rent monthly?”
Isabel frowned. “There’s no rent,” she said.
“But I must,” said Grace. “You can’t . . .”
“I can.”
“I won’t accept it,” said Grace. She could be stubborn, as Isabel knew well.
“In that case we’ll agree on a peppercorn rent,” said Isabel, pointing to the spice cupboard. “A jar of peppercorns.”
The matter was left at that; they would discuss it later.
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Grace left Isabel in the house shortly before five. Jamie would be coming at seven, and she had things to make ready. But although she had things to do, she could not do them. She sat down at the kitchen table, feeling suddenly weepy; she rested her head in her hands, staring at the stripped pine surface. The table—a long one—had been bought by her father when it was no longer required by a psychiatric hospital on whose board of trustees he had served. It had seen sorrow, she thought, confusion, unhappiness. And she remembered, as she sat there, a short film she had seen about the life of a man, a quiet, gentle man, who had been taken from his small farm on one of the Hebridean islands and had been detained in that hospital for seventeen years. He had been a weaver, and had made figures out of reeds and rushes; she realised, as she watched the film, that her father had known this man and had brought back for her one of these small figures, a corn dolly, and she had kept it on her window sill amongst her other dolls. When he had been allowed to go back to his croft, after all those years, he had been looked after by a sister, who had waited for him to return and was ready to care for him again, as she had done before.