The Sunday Philosophy Club

eyes. It was almost impercepti-ble, but she saw it.

She let go of his hand, and momentarily flustered, she brushed at the crumbs of bread around her plate.

“Why would I do that?” said Toby. He smiled. “Not me.”

Cat felt her heart beating wildly within her as Isabel’s warning, suppressed until now, came back to her.

“Of course not,” she said lightly. “Of course not.” But the image came to her of Toby and that other girl, Fiona’s flatmate; and he was naked, and standing by a window, looking out, as Toby did when he got out of bed; and she, the other girl, was watching him, and she closed her eyes to rid herself of this thought, of this dreadful image, but it would not leave her.

“What are we going to do?” Cat asked suddenly.

“When? Do when?”

She tried to smile. “What are we going to do now? Should we go back to the flat? Or shall we go and see somebody? I feel sociable.”

“If anybody’s at home,” said Toby. “What about Richard and Emma? They’re always there. We could take them a bottle of champagne and tell them the good news.”

Cat thought quickly. Distrust, like a rapidly creeping strain, egged her on. “No. I don’t want to go all the way down to Leith.

What about Fiona? She’s your sister, after all. We should celebrate with her. Let’s go down to Nelson Street.”

She watched him. His lips parted slightly as she began, as if he was on the point of interrupting her, but he let her finish.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “We can see her tomorrow at my parents’ place. We don’t need to go there now.”

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“No,” she said, “we must go down to Fiona’s. We must. I really want to.”

He did not protest further, but she could tell that he was uneasy, and he was silent in the taxi, looking out the window as they drove down the Mound and then over the ridge of George Street. She did not say anything, other than to ask the taxi to stop outside a late-night wine shop. Toby got out silently, bought a bottle of champagne, and then came back into the taxi. He made a remark about the man in the shop and then said something inconsequential about their planned visit to his parents the following day. Cat nodded, but did not take in what he was saying.

They stopped outside the flat in Nelson Street. Toby paid off the taxi while Cat waited on the steps. There were lights inside; Fiona was in. Waiting for Toby, she rang the bell, glancing at him as she did so. He was fiddling with the paper in which the bottle of champagne had been twist-wrapped.

“You’ll tear it,” she said.

“What?”

“You’ll tear the paper.”

The door opened. It was not Fiona, but another woman. She looked at Cat blankly, and then saw Toby.

“Fiona . . . ,” began Cat.

“Not in,” said the other woman. She moved forward towards Toby, who seemed for a moment to back away, but she reached out and took his wrist. “Who’s your friend?” she said. “Toby?

Who—”

“Fiancee,” said Cat. “I’m Cat.”

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - O N E

E

ISABEL HAD POSTED her letter of apology to Cat the day before the Really Terrible Orchestra concert and Cat had responded a couple of days later. The reply came on a card bearing Raeburn’s picture of the Reverend Robert Walker skating on the ice at Duddingston Loch, a picture as powerful and immediately recognisable, in its local way, as The Birth of Venus. Great art, she felt, had a calming effect on the viewer; it made one stop in awe, which is exactly what Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol did not do. You did not stop in awe. They stopped you in your tracks, perhaps, but that was not the same thing; awe was something quite different.

She turned the eighteenth-century clergyman on his back and read Cat’s message: Of course, you’re forgiven. You always are.

Anyway, something has happened, and it has proved that you were right. There, I thought that would be so difficult to say, and I suppose it was. My pen almost ground to a halt. But anyway come and have coffee in the shop and I can let you try this new cheese that’s just come in. It’s Portuguese and it tastes of olives. Cat.

Isabel felt grateful for her niece’s good nature, even if an aspect of that same nature was a lack of judgement when it came 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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to men. There were many young women who would not so readily have forgiven the intrusion; and of course there were fewer still who would have admitted that an aunt was right in such a matter. Of course, this was welcome news, and Isabel looked forward to finding out how Toby had been exposed; perhaps Cat had followed him, as she herself had, and had been led to a conclusion by that most convincing of evidence—the evidence of one’s own eyes.

She walked into Bruntsfield, savouring the warmth which was beginning to creep into the sun. There was building work in Merchiston Crescent—a new house was being crammed into a small corner plot, and there was a