her
Jamie looked down, seeming to study the tablecloth. Isabel looked at his cheekbones, and at the
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looked up, she caught his gaze, and held it—eyes which were almost grey in that light; kind eyes, she thought, which was what made him so beautiful in her view.
“You’ve met somebody,” she prompted.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And I’m not sure what to do. I’m happy, I suppose, but I’m all mixed up. I thought that you being . . .”
“The editor of the
“And a friend,” Jamie went on. “Perhaps my closest friend.”
No woman likes to hear that from a man, thought Isabel.
Men may think about women in those terms, but it’s certainly not what most women want to hear. But she nodded briefly and Jamie continued: “The difficulty is that this person, this woman I’ve met, is not somebody I thought I would fall for. I hadn’t planned it. I really hadn’t.”
“Which is exactly what Cupid’s arrows are all about,” said Isabel gently. “Very inaccurate. They fly about all over the place.”
“Yes,” said Jamie. “But you usually have a general idea of what sort of person you’re going to go for. Somebody like Cat, for instance. And then somebody else comes along, and wham!”
“Yes,” said Isabel. “Wham! That’s the way it happens, isn’t it? But why fight it? Just accept that it’s happened and make the most of it. Unless it’s impossible, that is. But that doesn’t happen much these days. Montague and Capulet difficulties.
Social barriers and all the rest. Even being the same sex is not a problem today.”
“She’s married,” Jamie blurted out, and then looked down at the tablecloth again.
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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Isabel caught her breath.
“And she’s older than me,” said Jamie. “She’s about your age, actually.”
She had not been prepared for this and her dismay must have shown. Jamie frowned. “I knew that you would disapprove,” he said. “Of course you would disapprove.”
Isabel opened her mouth to say something, to deny the disapproval, but he cut her short. “I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. It would have been better not to tell you.”
“No,” she said. “I’m glad you told me.” She paused, gather-ing her thoughts. “It is a bit of a shock, I suppose. I hadn’t imagined . . .” She trailed off. What offended her was that it was a woman of her age. She had accepted that he would want somebody of his own age, or younger, but she had not prepared herself for competition from a coeval.
“I didn’t ask for it to happen,” Jamie went on, sounding quite miserable. “And now I don’t know what to do. I feel . . .
what do I feel? I feel, well I feel as if I’m doing something wrong.”
“Which you are,” said Isabel. Then she paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but . . . but don’t you think you’re doing something wrong if you’re participating in decep-tion, which adultery usually involves? Not always, but often.
There’s somebody whose trust is being abused. Promises are being broken.”
Jamie looked down at the tablecloth, tracing an imaginary pattern with a finger. “I’ve thought of all that,” he said. “But in this case the marriage is almost over. She says that although they’re still married, they lead separate lives.”
“But they’re still together?”
“In name.”
F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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“In house?”
Jamie hesitated. “Yes, but she says that they would prefer to live apart.”
Isabel looked at him. She reached out and touched him gently on the arm. “What do you want me to say, Jamie?” she asked. “Do you want me to tell you that it’s perfectly all right? Is that what you want?”
Jamie shook his head. “I don’t think so. I wanted to talk to you about it.”
The milky coffee which Isabel had ordered now arrived, and she picked up the large white cup in which it was served.
“That’s understandable,” she said. “But you should bear in mind that I can’t tell you what to do. You know the issues perfectly well. You’re not fifteen. You may want me to give you my blessing, to say that it’s perfectly acceptable, and that’s because you’re feeling guilty, and afraid.” She paused, remembering the line from WHA’s poem:
