Isabel was tired by the time she locked the front door and drew down the shutters. Eddie had left a few minutes early for some reason—he had mumbled an explanation which Isabel had not quite caught—and Isabel had shut everything up herself. She glanced at her watch. It was seven o’clock, and she had still to call Jamie. But she thought that if she did so now, then there would be a chance that Louise might be there and it would be difficult for him to talk, if he wanted to talk to her, of course. The previous evening had been a social disaster. After Isabel had brought up the issue of the husband, with her inex-cusably mischievous question, Louise had become more or less silent, and had not responded to the question. The tactic had worked, though, Isabel realised, and although Louise persisted with her air of studied boredom, it was obvious that she had a new understanding of her hostess. Jamie had been flustered and had gulped down his wine before suggesting that it was time that they went on to Balerno. The farewells at the front door had been perfunctory.
Isabel had almost immediately regretted her rudeness, for it 6 8
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h was simple rudeness to embarrass a guest, no matter what provo-cation the guest had offered. It had been a petty action, and not one from which she was likely to benefit. The bonds of friendship might appear strong, but she understood that there was nothing easier to break than friendship, with all its expectations.
One might ignore a friend, or let him down, but you could not do something deliberate to hurt him.
An apology could not be put off. Isabel remembered her father making this point when he considered Japan’s apology to China for what it did in Manchuria. Forty years is slightly late, he had observed, adding, but I suppose one doesn’t want to rush these things.
“Jamie?”
There was a slight hesitation at the other end of the line, which is always a sign of resentment. This was the
“Yes.”
She took a deep breath. “You can guess why I’m calling.”
Another moment of silence. Of course he could guess.
“No,” he said.
“About last night, and my bad behaviour. All I can say is that I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Jealousy, maybe.”
He came in quickly. “Why should you be jealous?”
He doesn’t know, she thought. He has no idea. And this should not surprise her.
“I value your friendship, you see,” she said. “One can see other people as a threat to a friendship, and I thought . . . well, I’m afraid I thought that Louise was not in the slightest bit interested in me and that she would cut me out of your life. Yes, I suppose that’s what I felt. Do you think you can understand that?”
F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
6 9
She paused, and she heard Jamie’s breathing. Now there was silence, each uncertain whose turn it was to speak.
“Nobody is going to cut anybody out,” Jamie began. “Anyway, things did not go well last night. It had nothing to do with you. We had an argument even before we came to see you. Then things got worse, and I’m afraid that’s more or less it.”
Isabel looked up at the ceiling. She had not dared to hope for this, but it was exactly what she had wished for, subcon-sciously perhaps, and it had occurred much sooner than she would have thought possible. People fell in and out of love rather quickly, of course; it could happen within minutes.
“What a pity,” whispered Isabel. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’re not,” said Jamie sharply.
“No,” said Isabel. “I’m not.” She paused. “You’ll find some -
body else. There are plenty of girls.”
“I don’t want plenty of girls,” Jamie retorted. “I want Cat.”
C H A P T E R E I G H T
E
AND SALVATORE?” asked Isabel. “Tell me all about Salvatore.”
“Charming,” said Cat, meeting Isabel’s eye. “Exactly as I told you he was.”
They were sitting in the gazebo in Isabel’s back garden that Sunday afternoon, shortly after Cat’s return from Italy. It was an unusually warm day for Edinburgh, where summer is unpredictable and where the occasional warm day is something to be savoured. Isabel was used to this, and although she bemoaned, as everybody did, the tendency of the sky to disappear behind sheets of fast-moving cloud, she found a temperate climate more to her taste than a Mediterranean one. Weather was a test of attitude, she felt: had Auden not pointed that out? Nice people, he observed, were nice about the weather; nasty people were nasty about it.
Cat was a heliophile, if there was such a word for a sun-worshipper, she thought. Italy in the summer must have suited her perfectly; a climate of short shadows and dry breezes. Cat liked beaches and warm seas, while Isabel found such things F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
7 1
dull. She could think of nothing worse than sitting for hours under an umbrella, an open invitation to sandflies, looking out to sea. She wondered why it was that people did not talk on beaches; they sat, they lay prone, they read, but did they engage in conversation? Isabel thought not.
She remembered, years before, at the end of her spell at Georgetown, a visit she had paid to the Bahamas with her mother’s sister, the one who lived in Palm Beach. This aunt had bought, almost on impulse, an apartment in Nassau, to which she travelled once or twice a year. She had made there a group of bridge-playing friends, bored
