The Sunday Philosophy Club

Cat hesitated for a moment. “He told me something. Not very much.”

Isabel waited, but it was clear that Cat did not want to divulge what Eddie had said to her. She steered the subject back to the event of the previous night. How could he have fallen from the gods when there was that brass rail, was there not, which was intended to stop exactly that? Was it a suicide? Would somebody really jump from there? It would be a selfish way of going, surely, 2 4

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h as there could easily be somebody down below who could be injured, or even killed.

“It wasn’t suicide,” Isabel said firmly. “Definitely not.”

“How do you know?” asked Cat. “You said you didn’t see him actually go over the edge. How can you be so sure?”

“He came down upside down,” said Isabel, remembering the sight of the jacket and shirt pulled down by gravity and the exposed flat midriff. He was like a boy diving off a cliff, into a sea that was not there.

“So? People turn around, presumably, when they fall. Surely that means nothing.”

Isabel shook her head. “He would not have had time to do that. You must remember that he was just above us. And people don’t dive when they commit suicide. They fall feetfirst.”

Cat thought for a moment. That was probably right. Occasionally the newspaper printed pictures of people on the way down from buildings and bridges, and they tended to be falling feetfirst. But it still seemed so unlikely that anybody could fall over that parapet by mistake, unless it was lower than she remembered it. She would take a look next time she was in the Usher Hall.

They sipped at their coffee. Cat broke the silence. “You must feel awful. I remember when I saw an accident in George Street, I felt just awful myself. Just witnessing something like that is so traumatic.”

“I didn’t come here to sit and moan, you know,” said Isabel. “I didn’t want to sit here and make you feel miserable too. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to say sorry,” said Cat, taking Isabel’s hand.

“You just sit here as long as you like and then we can go out for lunch a bit later on. I could take the afternoon off and do something with you. How about that?”

T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B

2 5

Isabel appreciated the offer, but she wanted to sleep that afternoon. And she should not sit at the table too long either, as it was meant for the use of customers.

“Perhaps you could come and have dinner with me tonight,”

she said. “I’ll rustle up something.”

Cat opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated. Isabel saw this. She would be going out with one of the boyfriends.

“I’d love to,” said Cat at last. “The only problem is that I was going to be meeting Toby. We were going to meet at the pub.”

“Of course,” said Isabel, quickly. “Some other time.”

“Unless Toby could come too?” Cat added. “I’m sure he’d be happy to do that. Why don’t I make a starter and bring it along?”

Isabel was about to refuse, as she imagined that the young couple might not really want to have dinner with her, but Cat now insisted, and they agreed that she and Toby would come to the house shortly after eight. As Isabel left and began to walk back to the house, she thought about Toby. He had arrived in Cat’s life a few months before, and like the one before him, Andrew, she had her misgivings about him. It was difficult to put one’s finger exactly on why it was that she had these reservations, but she was convinced that she was right.

C H A P T E R T H R E E

E

THAT AFTERNOON SHE SLEPT. When she awoke, shortly before five, she felt considerably better. Grace had gone, but had left a note on the kitchen table. Somebody phoned. He would not say who he was. I told him you were asleep. He said that he would phone again. I did not like the sound of him. She was used to notes like that from Grace: messages would be conveyed with a gloss on the character of those involved. That plumber I never trusted called and said that he would come tomorrow. He would not give a time. Or: While you were out, that woman returned that book she borrowed. At last.

She was usually bemused by Grace’s comments, but over the years she had come to see that Grace’s insights were useful.

Grace was rarely wrong about character, and her judgements were devastating. They were often of the one- word variety: cheat, she would say about somebody, or crook, or drunkard. If her views were positive, they might be slightly longer— most generous, or really kind—but these plaudits were hard to earn. Isabel had pressed her once as to the basis of her assessments of people, and Grace had become tight- lipped.

T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B

2 7

“I can just tell,” she would say. “People are very easy to read.

That’s all there is to it.”

“But there’s often much more to them than you think,” Isabel had argued. “Their qualities only come out when you get to know them a bit better.”

Grace had shrugged. “There are some people I don’t want to get to know better.”