His presence seemed suffocatingly large in the small room, and she could smell the beer on his breath, no doubt the result of a rather liquid pub lunch. He still wore his gown, and as he leaned against the photocopier with his arms folded, he looked like a dissipated King Lear. Or Olivier playing Lear might be more like it, she thought. There was always something a bit overly theatrical about Darcy.
Smiling, he said, “Perhaps if one were better prepared one wouldn’t be in such a panic.”
The fury that seared through her caught her completely by surprise, and she found herself suddenly shouting at him, “Don’t you dare criticize me, Darcy. You’ve no right. And you had no right to undermine me to Adam Lamb. You knew how important it was to me to see him.”
“My dear Victoria.” Darcy raised his brows and looked down his rather fleshy nose at her. “I have a perfect right to express my professional opinion to my friends, and I am not responsible for the success or failure of your little projects.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she hissed back, making a belated effort to keep her voice down. “Of course you’re not responsible for my work, but you’ve no right to deliberately sabotage it just because it doesn’t fit into your archaic
Oooh,” said Darcy with pursed lips, mocking her. “On a first-name basis with Adam now, are we? How chummy for you.” Coldly, he added, “For your information, I haven’t seen Daphne since Lydia’s funeral, and I have no intention of doing so in the foreseeable future. I quite despise the woman. I’d have thought the two of you would have got on quite well.”
While Vic struggled to think of a suitably stinging retort, Darcy had scooped up his papers from the photocopier’s trays and turned towards the door. “Take all the time you want,” he said sweetly, over his shoulder. “I shan’t need my copies until
Just thinking about it made Vic flush painfully. Darcy Eliot could be quite charming—she’d even seen him behave considerately to other staff members on occasion—so why did she let the man reduce her to such childish behavior? She had meant to talk to him about Adam, meant to do it in a civilized, rational way, in a place and time of her own choosing. But somehow she and Darcy always seemed to be at cross-purposes with one another, and their constant infighting did her reputation no good in the department. In future, she’d have to make more effort to find some sort of common ground, difficult as it might be.
With a sigh, she splashed some cold water on her face, ran a brush through her hair, and went out to meet Kit in the garden.
She found him at the gate, scuffing his feet in the pile of last year’s leaves she’d been meaning to rake up. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes, but when she said, “The river path?” he nodded.
Once through the gate, they automatically turned left, towards Cambridge. Vic put her mind in neutral as they swung along in silence, trusting that the exercise and companionship would eventually loosen Kit’s tongue. Now she found herself glad of the excuse to be out, for it was her favorite sort of day—soft, still, and damp, the world a comforting and uniform gray. She had no objection to sunshine; in fact, she liked it as well as the next person after a long wet spell, but clear days didn’t exhilarate her in the same way.
The moisture in the air intensified odors, and as she breathed in, the rich, earthy spring scent came to her so strongly that she thought she must actually be smelling things growing. Glancing at Kit, she saw that his scowl had softened, and he was looking about with almost his usual interest. Judging her moment, she said casually, “Do you want to tell me what happened at school today?”
He glanced at her and shrugged, but after a moment he said grudgingly, “I heard Miss Pope talking to the new PE teacher.”
“Miss Pope? Your English teacher?”
Kit gave her the disdainful glance she deserved for such an asinine comment. She knew Miss Pope perfectly well. Thirtyish and single, Elizabeth Pope had been obviously smitten with Ian, and had requested regular and unnecessary parent-teacher conferences. Whether or not Ian had taken his advantage, Vic had not known, nor had she particularly cared, except for Kit’s sake.
“And what did Miss Pope say?”
“They were in the lunch queue, and I went back for a fork,” he began circuitously. “They didn’t see me. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Vic said encouragingly, but he hunched his shoulders, turtlelike, and looked down at his trainers. She thought fleetingly and irrelevantly that he had outgrown his shoes again, and wondered when he would begin to catch up to his feet. “Were they talking about me?” she asked, when he didn’t speak.
Nodding, Kit kicked hard at a stone in the path, then spit out the words with the same violence. “Miss Pope said you worked all the time, and that Dad wouldn’t have left if you’d paid more attention to him. She said you weren’t a proper wife.”
“Darling,” she said when she thought she could control her voice, “it was very wrong of Miss Pope to be talking about things that are none of her business. You do know that, don’t you?”
Kit made a slight movement with his shoulders, but kept his head down.
Vic sighed. How could she explain to him what she didn’t understand herself? “In the first place, no one can ever really know what goes on between two people except the people themselves. And things are never as simple in a relationship as Miss Pope made it sound.” She couldn’t blame Ian—tempting as it was, she knew that trying to enlist Kit on her side could damage him even further. “Sometimes people just grow in different directions, develop different needs and interests, and one day they wake up and discover there’s no reason to be together anymore.”
“Except me,” said Kit, taking her generalization personally. “Wasn’t I a good enough reason?”
There it was, thought Vic, the crux of the matter, and she had no excuses to offer for Ian. And the truth, even if it were possible to tell Kit, would still not suffice. Haltingly, she said, “Sometimes grownups decide they’re not ready
