Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

ISABEL DID NOT LIKE her desk to get too cluttered, but that did not mean that it was uncluttered. In fact, most of the time there were too many papers on it, usually manuscripts that had to be sent off for peer assessment. She was not sure about the term peer assessment, even if it was the widely accepted term for a crucial stage in the publishing of journal articles. Sometimes the expression amounted to exactly that: equals looked dispassionately at papers by equals and gave their view. But Isabel had discovered that this did not always happen, and papers were consigned into the hands of their authors’ friends or enemies.

This was unwitting; it was impossible for anybody to keep track of the jealousies and rivalries that riddled academia, and Isabel had to hope that she could spot the concealed agendas that lay behind outright antagonism or, more often, and more subtly, veiled antagonism: “an interesting piece, perhaps interesting enough to attract a ripple of attention.” Philosophers could be nasty, she reflected, and moral philosophers the nastiest of all.

Now, seated at her cluttered desk, she began the task of clearing at least some of the piles of paper. She worked energeti-cally, and it was almost twelve when she glanced at the clock.

1 0 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h She had done, she thought, enough work for the morning, and perhaps for the day. She stood up, stretched, and went over to her study window to look out on the garden. The display of pinks in the flowerbed that ran alongside the far garden wall was as bright as it ever had been, and the line of lavender bushes that she had planted a few years previously was in full flower.

She looked down at the flowerbed immediately below her window. Somebody had been digging at the roots of an azalea and had kicked small piles of soil onto the edge of the lawn. She smiled. Brother Fox.

She very rarely saw Brother Fox, who was discreet in his movements, as befitted one who must have thought that he lived in enemy territory. Not that Isabel was an enemy; she was an ally, and he might just have sensed that when he found the chicken carcasses that she left out for him. Once she had seen him at close quarters, and he had turned tail and fled, but had stopped after a few paces and they had looked at one another. Their eyes met for only a few seconds, but it was enough for Brother Fox to realise that her intentions towards him were not hostile, and she saw his body relax before he turned and trotted off.

She was looking at the signs of his digging when the telephone rang.

“So,” said Cat, who always started telephone conversations abruptly. “Working?”

Isabel looked at her desk, now half clear. “I was,” she said.

“But have you any better ideas?”

“You sound as if you want an excuse.”

“I do,” said Isabel. “I was going to stop anyway, but an excuse would be welcome.”

“Well,” said Cat. “My Italian friend has arrived. Tomasso.

Remember the one I told you about.”

F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E

1 0 1

Isabel was guarded. Cat was sensitive about Isabel’s past interference in her affairs, and she did not want to say anything that could be misconstrued. So she simply said, “Good.”

There was a silence. “Good,” said Isabel again.

“I thought that you might like to come and have lunch here,” said Cat. “In the delicatessen. He’s coming back once he’s put his car away safely at the hotel. He’s staying at Preston-field House.”

“You don’t think that I shall be . . . in the way?” she asked.

“Won’t you want to . . . to have lunch by yourselves? I’m not sure if you’ll want me there.”

Cat laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There’s nothing between him and me. I’m not thinking of getting involved, if that’s worrying you. He’s good company, but that’s as far as it goes.”

Isabel wanted to ask whether Tomasso thought that too, but said nothing. She was serious about not interfering and any remark like that could easily be seen as interference. At the same time, she felt relieved that Tomasso was not going to be Cat’s new boyfriend. She knew that it was wrong to judge him on the basis of scanty evidence—no evidence at all, in fact—

but surely there was good reason to feel concerned. A handsome young Italian—she assumed he was handsome: all of Cat’s male friends were—with a taste for vintage Bugattis would hardly be the reliable, home- loving sort. A breaker of speed limits—and hearts, she thought, and almost muttered, but stopped herself in time.

“Will you come over?” said Cat.

“Of course,” said Isabel. “If you really want me to.”

“I do,” said Cat. “I’ve got a salad specially prepared for you.

Extra olives. The ones you like.”

“I would have come anyway,” said Isabel. “You know that.”

1 0 2

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Upstairs, she looked at herself in the mirror. She was wearing the dove-grey skirt that she often wore when editing. It was complemented, if complemented were not too strong a term, by a loose, cream wool cardigan on which a small smudge of ink had appeared on the left sleeve. She smiled. This would not do. One could not meet a man with an interest in vintage Bugattis in such an outfit; indeed, one could not meet any Italian dressed like that.

She opened her wardrobe. Guilty by Design, she thought, looking at a black shift dress she had bought from the aptly named dress shop in Morningside, for there was a great deal of guilt involved in the buying of expensive dresses—delicious guilt; she had loved that dress and had worn it too often. Italians wore black, did they not? So something different—a red cashmere polo-neck would transform the skirt, and a pair of