The Right Attitude to Rain

Cat did?”

Eddie nodded. “She wasn’t pleased. Or at least not at first.

She said that I’d never believe what you’d got up to. Then she told me, expecting me to side with her.”

Isabel watched Eddie as he spoke. He would never have been this forthcoming a few months ago. And when he had first come to work for Cat he would hardly have said more than a word of greeting, and mumbled at that. This was progress.

“And you didn’t?” she asked.

“Of course not,” said Eddie. “I laughed. She didn’t like that.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Isabel. “She virtually accused me of stealing him.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Eddie. “And I told her she had no right to be jealous.”

Isabel told him that that was exactly what she had thought.

But one was dealing with irrational feelings here, she pointed out. Jealousy was something which people found difficult to control; sometimes it was impossible.

“I know,” said Eddie. “Anyway, I talked to her about it and she calmed down. Then, at the end, she said that maybe she should be proud. She said that . . .” He trailed off, and Isabel looked at him quizzically.

“Go on,” she encouraged him. “She said what?”

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A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Eddie looked sheepish. “She said that not everyone had an aunt who was capable of running off with a younger man. She said that it showed a certain style.”

“And that was how you left it?”

He nodded. “Yes. Then we started talking about Miranda.

We—”

Isabel glanced across the room and cut Eddie off. Miranda had finished dealing with the customer and was coming over to join them at the table. “Here she is. Here’s Miranda.”

Miranda came up to stand behind Eddie. She greeted Isabel, smiling warmly, and then she rested a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie half turned, smiled and lifted a hand to place on hers, patting it fondly. Isabel watched in astonishment.

“Yes,” said Eddie.

“Well,” said Isabel. “Well . . .”

“You should have told me, Isabel,” said Miranda in mock admonition. “You should have told me that the nicest boy in Scotland worked here. As it is, I had to discover that myself.”

Eddie beamed with pleasure. “We must get back to work.”

He rose to his feet and touched Miranda gently on the shoulder.

“Come on.”

Isabel watched them return to the counter. For each of us, she thought, there is our completeness in another. Whether we find it, or it finds us, or it eludes all finding, is a matter of moral luck. She had a good idea of what it was that had happened to Eddie, but now she saw that shattered, timid life begin to be made confident and whole, and she felt a warm rush of satisfaction and pleasure. She reached into her pocket and took out the note she had written to Cat. It was in its rectangular white envelope, the flap tucked in. She took it out and reread it. It had T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

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taken time to choose and weigh each word; now she tore it up in seconds and tossed the pieces into the bin used for scraps of sugar wrappers and the like. The next move was Cat’s rather than hers, and she would wait for it with impatience. She did not have to apologise for Jamie; she did not have to apologise to anybody for her happiness.

M I M I A N D J O E were out when she returned to the house, but Grace told her that they had said that they would be back in the late afternoon. There had been a change in their plans, and they had decided to go off the following day to Skye for a week. Joe wanted to write up his article on adoption and there were distractions in Edinburgh. “If I go somewhere really remote, I shall get it done,” he said. And Mimi had agreed. Skye, she said, was far enough away and, more important, there were few, if any, bookshops to distract him. For her part, she had reading to do, and could do it as well on a small island as on a big one.

Isabel would miss them, but would see them briefly on their return. And they had persuaded her to make a trip to Dallas to stay with them, which she had agreed to do before too long. “My sainted American mother would have liked me to . . . ,” she had said, and faltered. No. There was no reason why her mother should not still be called sainted. A saint might still fall in love; indeed, would it not be most likely that those who loved their fellow man in general might feel all the more strongly inclined to love their fellow man in particular? I love Jamie, she thought, and has that not made me love the world all the more? Of course it had.

That evening Mimi sat in the kitchen while Isabel did the 2 5 6

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h cooking. They talked about Skye, and what Joe and Mimi might do there. They could stay in Claire Macdonald’s hotel; they could walk; they could watch the slow movement of the sea; they could sniff at the peat smoke in the air.

“Come with us,” urged Mimi. “There’s room.”

“I’d love to,” said Isabel. “But I have my work.”

“Be irresponsible for once,” said Mimi.

Isabel smiled at the thought. I’m being very irresponsible as it is, she thought, and it’s immense fun. “I can’t,