theories of female psychology were simple: women competed with one another for men and there was great distrust between them. Women did not like one another, he had decided – unlike men, who had easy friendships, with none of the ups and downs and moodiness of women’s relationships.
Bruce was used to being fought over, and relished the experience. If he was in a room with two women, then he would imagine that both of them would be vying for his attention, and he liked to look for the signs of this subtle, under-the-surface competition. It was easy to miss, but if you kept your eyes open you could see it. In these particular circumstances, Lizzie would be glowering at her mother because the older woman had invited Bruce to sit beside her and now she was talking to him in this familiar way. This would be annoying Lizzie, because she, quite naturally, would be wanting Bruce to notice her, not her mother.
Bruce smiled. How delicious! Mother and daughter are both interested in me, and she, the older one, is the boss’s wife.
He looked at Sasha. She’s crammed herself into that dress, he thought, but she’s not all that bad-looking in the right light.
And there was a certain brassiness to her which he rather liked, a suggestion that she understood what it was to have fun.
Interesting. Now for the daughter. Well, what a frump, with that frown and that way of slumping her shoulders. He knew the sort well enough; she would have given up, that’s what she would have done – she would just have given up on the prospect of finding a man. So she would have decided to behave as if she did not care, which of course she did. How sad. If she made an effort then she could probably be reasonable-looking, and might appeal to some man or other.
Bruce wondered. He was free at the moment, and he would be doing a service for this rather unhappy-looking girl if he paid her a bit of attention. She might do for a few weeks, to bridge the gap, so to speak, before somebody a bit more suitable turned up. He could even look on it as a form of community service of the sort that was handed out at the sheriff court. You are sentenced to one hundred and forty hours with Todd’s daughter.
You are warned that if you don’t comply with the terms of this
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order then you will be brought back to the court to explain yourself to the sheriff.
And he would say to the sheriff: “My lord, have you
And the sheriff would look down from the bench and shake his head and say: “Young man, that’s what community service is all about. But I see what you mean. You are free to go.”
That’s what Bruce thought. He found the fantasy rather amusing, and smiled again; a smile which was misinterpreted by Sasha, who thought: this dishy young man is smiling at me! It’s not too late, obviously. It’s not too late to have some fun in this life.
“This is a nice place you’ve got, Todd,” said Bruce to Todd as he was handed his glass of wine.
Todd smiled warmly. “It’s a very good corner of town,” he said. “We’ve been here for – what – sixteen years now and I don’t think we’re planning to move, are we Sasha?”
Sasha shook her head. “I couldn’t move,” she said. “I’ve put so much effort into the garden and if you go further into town these days it’s so noisy. Students and the like. All sorts of people.”
Bruce nodded in sympathy. He knew all about students and the noise they made, although it was only a few years since he had been a student, and had made a lot of noise himself, if one were to be strictly honest. Mind you, he reflected, the noise he made was not from music being played at full throttle, it was rather from parties, particularly after rugby internationals. Those parties had produced a sort of
“Marchmont’s impossible,” he said. “I was pleased when I moved down to Scotland Street. It’s much better.”
Todd, who had taken a few paces back from the sofa and was standing with his back to the fireplace, gestured to the room around them. “Of course, we had to do a lot to this place when 140
we moved in,” he explained. “It was typical of those houses they built in the Twenties – the rooms were just far smaller than they needed to be. This room, for example, was two rooms. We took a wall out over there – right down the middle, and made it into a decent-sized drawing room.”
Bruce looked about him. He could see where the earlier wall had been, as there was still a detectable line across the ceiling and one of the light fittings had clearly been moved. For a few moments he stared up at the ceiling, his surveyor’s instinct asserting itself. Was that a bulge running where the wall must have been? And did the ceiling not seem to sag slightly in the middle? He looked over at the far wall, where the now-disappeared wall would have met the room’s perimeter. It seemed to him that there was clear evidence of buckling.
He looked at Todd, who was running a finger around the rim of his whisky glass. “It’s a very comfortable room,” he began.
“But that wall . . . would it not have been a supporting wall? I suppose that you had an engineer look at it?”
Todd snorted. “Engineer? Just for a partition wall in a bungalow? Good heavens, no. I looked at it myself. It was absolutely fine. I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t load-bearing.”
Bruce looked back at the ceiling and at the bulge. “Are you sure?” he said. “Hasn’t there been a bit of movement?”
Todd frowned. “What exactly are you saying? Are you suggesting that the house is going to fall down about our ears?”
Sasha picked up the tension which had arisen between the two men, and made an attempt to defuse it. It was
