Ian suddenly reached for Isabel’s arm. He clutched at her, and she felt his grip through the material of her sleeve. “I’m not feeling well,” he said. “I’m going to have to go. I’m sorry . . . I’m feeling very odd.”
Isabel experienced a moment of sudden alarm. His face looked drawn, pale; he had slumped slightly on his stool, his right arm slipping off the bar. She imagined the heart within him, the alien organ, sensing the adrenalin from the shock that he had experienced on seeing the face of his imaginings. It was folly to have invited him here, and for what reason? That he should conF R I E N D S, L OV E R S, C H O C O L AT E
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front this man, who had nothing to do with him anyway, since his partner’s son had not been the donor?
She put her arm round him, half to support him, half to comfort him.
“Shall I call somebody? A doctor?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing. It seemed to Isabel that he was gasping for air, and she looked about wildly. The barman, from behind the bar, leant forward in concern. “Sir? Sir?”
Ian looked up. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right.”
“Let me take you to a doctor,” said Isabel. “You don’t look all right. You really don’t.”
“It sometimes happens like this,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with the heart. It’s the drugs, I think. My system is at sixes and sevens with itself. I suddenly feel weak.”
Isabel said nothing. She still had her arm about him and now he stood up, gently pushing her aside.
“That looks like him,” he said. “It’s very odd, isn’t it? That’s the face I’ve been seeing. Now, there he is. Sitting over there.”
“I’m not sure that I should have asked you to come,” said Isabel. “You see, I thought that he had followed me in here.
It occurred to me that at least we should establish whether it was him.”
Ian shrugged. “It’s him. But I don’t want to speak to him.”
He made a helpless gesture. “And what would I say to him, anyway? You tell me that he’s got nothing to do with what happened. So where does that leave us?”
They left the bar together, not looking back at Graeme.
Isabel asked him whether he would mind walking with her round the corner to the taxi rank outside the high Gothic edi-2 0 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h fice of George Heriot’s School. He agreed, and they walked off slowly. He still seemed slightly breathless, and she walked at the pace he set.
“I’m worried about you,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done this.” And as she got into the taxi, she said, through the open window, “Ian, would you like me to do nothing more? To keep out of the whole thing?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t want that.”
Very well. But there was another thing that had puzzled her. “Your wife, Ian? What does she think of my involvement in this? I’m sorry, but I can’t help wondering what she thinks about your seeing me, rushing out to meet me in a bar, for example.”
He looked away. “I haven’t told her. I haven’t told her about anything.”
“Is that wise?”
“Probably not. But don’t we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?”
Isabel looked into his eyes for a moment. Yes. He was right.
She closed the window. He walked to the next taxi on the rank and opened the door, and then both taxis moved out into the traffic. Isabel sat back in her seat. Before the taxi turned, to make its way along Lauriston Place, she looked back to the end of Forrest Road, half expecting to see Graeme appear, coming round the corner. But she did not see him and she upbraided herself for her overactive imagination. He had no reason to follow her.
He was an entirely innocent man who was simply annoyed with her for upsetting his partner. She should keep out of his way—
as she had been trying to do. She could imagine how he felt about her. She imagined his saying to a friend:
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Isabel settled herself back in the taxi seat. The key question in her mind was this: When their eyes had met in Sandy Bell’s, when Graeme had turned his head and seen her, had he looked surprised?
C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N
E
GRACE BROUGHT the morning mail through to Isabel’s study. There were many more letters than usual, prompting a grimace from Grace as she laid the towering pile of envelopes and packages on the desk.
Isabel gasped. If she were not there, how quickly would the mail pile up, gradually filling room after room, until the house itself was full. “What would happen if I went away, Grace?
What if I went off to . . .” She did not continue. She was planning to go away, or almost planning to go away, with an Italian, no less, in a Bugatti. But she could hardly say that to Grace—
