The Right Attitude to Rain

“It would be better,” she said.

After that their conversation came to an end. She knew what he was thinking: that she was proposing to end their affair and that she wanted to do it face-to-face. He must be thinking that, she told herself—if only he knew.

She decided to make a special meal for that evening and went into Bruntsfield to buy supplies. When Isabel went into the delicatessen Miranda was serving, standing behind the counter with Eddie. They had been laughing at a shared joke.

“Something amusing happen?” asked Isabel.

Eddie glanced at Miranda, and burst into giggles.

“Eddie said . . . ,” began Miranda, but she, too, started to laugh.

Isabel smiled, not at the joke, whatever it was, but at the sight of the two of them so obviously enjoying themselves.

She had so rarely seen Eddie smiling, let alone laughing, and the sight pleased her. “Don’t bother,” said Isabel. “Some jokes just don’t translate.”

“She said . . . ,” Eddie began, but again burst into squeals of laughter.

Isabel shook her head in mock despair. She saw that the door of the office was open and that Cat was sitting at her desk.

She approached the door, knocked and stuck her head in.

Cat looked up. When she saw Isabel, her expression changed. There was a flicker of a frown, but only a flicker. Then she gestured to a chair in front of the desk.

“I mustn’t stay,” said Isabel. “I thought that I might just . . .”

2 7 0

A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h She had not thought of what she might say to Cat, but now she knew. The time for reconciliation had arrived. “I thought I might just say that I’m sorry.”

Cat looked down at her desk. “I’m the one who should be saying that,” she mumbled. “I got carried away.”

“We all get carried away,” said Isabel. “It’s a risk of being human—being carried away.”

The tension that had been in the room disappeared. “May I come round on Sunday? To tea?”

“Of course,” said Isabel. In her relief, she decided to include Patrick. “And Patrick too. Please bring him.”

Cat’s frown returned. “Patrick and I . . .”

Isabel looked up quickly. Patrick’s mother had won. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do,” said Cat. “We’re no longer seeing each other.”

“His work?” asked Isabel. “Was that the trouble?”

Cat seemed surprised by the question. “How did you guess?

He said that he just didn’t have the time at the moment to continue to be involved.”

Mother, thought Isabel. That interfering woman had got what she wanted. And Patrick joins the ranks of Cat’s former suitors.

“Oh well,” said Isabel. “You’ll be all right.”

“I am,” said Cat. “I am all right.”

“Good.”

“And you?” asked Cat. It was not a prying question.

“I’m all right too,” said Isabel. “You know how it is . . .” It was a vague, pointless thing to say, and for a moment she thought of adding whatever, but did not.

T H E R I G H T AT T I T U D E T O R A I N

2 7 1

She left Cat’s office and made her purchases. Miranda and Eddie were still laughing with each other, and Isabel’s presence seemed to tickle them all the more. “Anyone would think that you were high on something,” Isabel said good-naturedly.

There was a sudden, sober silence. You are! thought Isabel.

And that, she thought, must be Miranda’s doing. She would have to speak to Cat about it, discreetly. She did not like the idea of Eddie being led astray by an older woman. Young men are easily led astray, she thought, but then . . .

Eddie pointed to a large box filled with crumpled silver-paper wrappings. He smiled guiltily. “Liqueur chocolates,” he said. “Cat found a time-expired box and gave them to Miranda.

Rum. Cointreau. Even creme de menthe. We’ve eaten them. All of them. Thirty-two.”

He turned to Miranda, as a conspirator turns to an accom-plice; she put a hand to her mouth in an elaborate display of greed discovered, but then burst out laughing again. Isabel shook her head and smiled, then left the delicatessen. Once again I jumped to the wrong conclusion, she thought; I am often almost right, she told herself, or right but wrong.

She made her way back to the house, walking slowly along Merchiston Crescent in the warmth of the afternoon, deep in thought. There was no turning back; she would not do that, she would see things through. Once