She looked at the telephone. She knew that she had only to call Jamie and he would come. He had said that before, on more than one occasion—
She left her chair and crossed to the telephone table. Jamie lived in Stockbridge, in Saxe-Coburg Street, in a flat he shared with three others. She had been there once, when he and Cat had been together, and he had cooked a meal for the two of them.
It was a rambling flat, with high ceilings and a stone-flag floor in the hall and in the kitchen. Jamie was the owner, having been bought the flat by his parents when he was a student, and the flatmates were his tenants. As landlord he allowed himself two rooms: a bedroom and a music room, where he gave his music lessons. Jamie, who had graduated with a degree in music, earned his living from teaching bassoon. There was no shortage of pupils, and he supplemented his earnings by playing in a chamber ensemble and as an occasional bassoonist for Scottish Opera. It was, thought Isabel, an ideal existence; and one into which Cat would fit so comfortably. But Cat had not seen it that way, of course, and Isabel feared that she never would.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Jamie was teaching when she called and promised to call her back in half an hour. While she waited for the call, she made herself a sandwich in the kitchen; she did not feel like eating a proper meal. Then, when that was finished, she returned to the drawing room and awaited his call.
Yes, he was free. His last pupil, a talented boy of fifteen whom he was preparing for an examination, had played brilliantly. Now, with the boy sent off home after the lesson, a walk across town to Isabel’s house was just what he wanted. Yes, it would be good to have a drink with Isabel and perhaps some singing afterwards.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t feel in the mood. I want to talk to you.”
He had picked up her anxiety and the plan to walk was dropped in favour of a quicker bus ride.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I really need to discuss something with you. I’ll tell you when you come.”
The buses, so maligned by Grace, were on time. Within twenty minutes, Jamie was at the house and was sitting with Isabel in the kitchen, where she had started to prepare him an omelette. She had taken a bottle of wine from the cellar and had poured a glass for him and for herself. Then she started to explain about the visit to the flat and her meeting with Hen and Neil. He listened gravely, and when she began to recount the conversation she had had with Neil earlier that evening, his eyes were wide with concern.
“Isabel,” he said as she stopped speaking. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”
“That I should keep out of things that don’t concern me?”
T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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“Yes, absolutely.” He paused. “But I know from past experience that you never do. So I won’t say it, perhaps.”
“Good.”
“Even if I think it.”
“Fair enough.”
Jamie grimaced. “So what do we do?”
“That’s why I asked you to come round,” said Isabel, refilling his glass of wine. “I had to talk the whole thing through with somebody.”
She had been speaking while she prepared the omelette.
Now it was ready and she slid it onto a plate that had been warming on the side of the stove.
“Chanterelle mushrooms,” she said. “They transform an omelette.”
Jamie looked down gratefully at the generous omelette and its surrounding of salad.
“You’re always cooking for me,” he said. “And I never cook for you. Never.”
“You’re a man,” said Isabel in a matter-of-fact way. “The thought doesn’t enter your head.”
She realised, the moment she had spoken, that this was an unkind and inappropriate thing to say. She might have said it to Toby, and with justification, as she doubted whether he would ever cook for anybody, but it was not the right thing to say to Jamie.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That just came out. I didn’t mean that.”
Jamie had put his knife and fork down beside his plate. He was staring at the omelette. And he had started to cry.
C H A P T E R T W E L V E
E
OH MY GOODNESS, Jamie. I’m so sorry. That was a terrible thing to say. I had no idea that you would . . .”
Jamie shook his head vigorously. He was not crying loudly, but there were tears. “No,” he said, wiping at his eyes with his handkerchief. “It’s not that at all. It’s not what you said. It’s nothing to do with it.”
Isabel sighed with relief. She had not offended him, then, but what could have provoked this rather extraordinary outburst of emotion on his part?
Jamie picked up his knife and fork and started to cut into his omelette, but put them down again.
“It’s the salad,” he said. “You’ve put in raw onion. My eyes are really sensitive to that. I can’t go anywhere near raw onion.”
Isabel let out a peal of laughter. “Thank God. I thought that those were real tears and that I’d said a dreadful,
