Isabel hesitated before answering, but only for a short while. Then she said, “No. No, I don’t. But I’ll try.”
Cat burst out laughing, and Eddie, who had caught the conversation, looked up and met Isabel’s eye.
“You’re very nice as you are,” he muttered. “Don’t change.”
But Isabel did not hear what he said.
C H A P T E R S I X T E E N
E
GRACE HAD TAKEN THE CALL from Tomasso, and when Isabel returned home she found the note on her desk. It was written on one of the cards on which Grace liked to scribble her messages—cards which Isabel used to log in manuscripts. She resented Grace’s use of these cards for this purpose—a scrap of paper would have sufficed—but she had decided not to tackle her housekeeper about it. Grace was sensitive, and even a modest suggestion could easily be interpreted as criticism.
Grace was still in the house, working upstairs, and when she heard Isabel come in she made her way downstairs and popped her head round the door of Isabel’s study.
“You saw that message?”
Isabel nodded. “Thank you. He’s called Tomasso. And he’s Italian.”
Grace smiled. “I liked the sound of his voice,” she said.
“Yes, it’s very . . .” Isabel thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose there’s only one word for it. Sexy.”
1 7 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h
“Good luck,” said Grace.
Isabel smiled. “Well,” she said, hesitantly. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Grace opened the door fully and came into the room. “Don’t be defeatist. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t find somebody. You’re a very attractive woman. You’re kind. Men like you.
Yes, they do. They love talking to you. I’ve seen it.”
“They may like talking to me,” said Isabel. “But that’s about it. They’re frightened of me, I suspect. Men don’t like women who think too much. They want to do the thinking.”
Grace thought about this for a moment. “I’m not sure if you’re right about that,” she said. “Some men may be like that, but by no means all. Look at Jamie. Yes, look at him. He worships the ground you walk upon. I can tell that from a mile away.” She paused, and then added, “Pity that he’s still just a boy.”
Isabel moved over to the window and looked out into the garden. She felt slightly embarrassed by the direction in which the conversation was going. She could discuss men in general, but she could not discuss Jamie. That was too raw, too dangerous. “And what about you, Grace? What about the men in your life?”
She had never before spoken to Grace like that, and she was not sure what her housekeeper’s reaction would be. She looked round and saw that Grace had not taken offence at the question. She decided to be more specific. “You told me the other day that you had met somebody at the spiritualist meetings.
Remember?”
Grace picked up a pencil from the desk and examined its tip nonchalantly. “Did I? Well, perhaps I did.”
“Yes,” said Isabel. “You told me about him and then I think I F R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
1 7 1
saw him when I went there with you. That man sitting behind us—that good-looking man—the one who had lost his wife.
That was him, wasn’t it?”
The pencil became more interesting to Grace. “Could be.”
“Ah!” said Isabel. “Well, I must say that I thought him rather nice. And he obviously liked you. I could tell.”
“He’s easy to talk to,” said Grace. “He’s one of those men who listens to what you have to say. I always like that. A gentleman.”
“Yes,” agreed Isabel. “A gentleman. Now that’s a useful word, isn’t it? And yet everybody’s too embarrassed to use it these days, for some reason. Is it considered snobbish, do you think? Is that it?”
Grace put the pencil back on the desk. “Maybe,” she said.
“I wouldn’t think that, though. You get all sorts of gentlemen. It doesn’t matter where they’re from or who they are. They’re just gentlemen. You can trust them.”
Isabel thought, And then you get men like John Liamor. And you know, or you should know, that he’s not a gentleman. She had known that, of course, and had ignored it, because one of the effects of those who are not gentlemen is that one’s judgement is overcome. You don’t care. But she did not want to think about him now because she realised that time was doing its healing, and he seemed to have become more and more distant. And she liked the feeling of forgetting, of the slow conversion into the state of his being just another person, somebody whom she could think about, if he came to mind, without feeling a pang of loss and of longing.
She looked at Grace. If this conversation went too far, then Grace would simply remember that she had something to do and would go off and do it, leaving the exchange in midair. This 1 7 2
