She looked up. Eddie, Cat’s timid assistant in the delicatessen, the damaged boy who had been taken on and nurtured, was standing before her, wiping his hands on the floury-looking apron he was wearing. More progress, thought Isabel; there had been a time when Eddie had been unwilling to don the apron on the unexpressed grounds that it was unmascu-line, or those were the grounds that Cat and Isabel had inferred. Now he felt sufficiently sure of himself to wear it, and Isabel felt pleased. Little by little, whatever trauma it was that Eddie had experienced— and she had a good idea of its nature—was receding in the face of his increased confidence.
“Nice apron,” she said.
The words came out automatically, but it occurred to her just as automatically that she should not have said anything.
Eddie hesitated. He looked down at the apron and then looked up again. He smiled.
“It’s really for lassies.”
Isabel shook a finger at him playfully. “No, Eddie. We don’t say that sort of thing anymore. Men do women’s work, or what used to be women’s work, and vice versa. It’s the same with clothes.”
Eddie looked at her disbelievingly. “You mean that men wear women’s clothes? Dresses?”
Isabel shrugged. “Some do,” she began, and then laughed. “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant to say that the categories of what’s for men and what’s for women have blurred. We share so much now.”
Eddie decided that the conversation had gone far enough. “Are you going to have coffee?” he asked. “Cat said I wasn’t to keep you waiting.”
Isabel explained that she was expecting to be joined by somebody, but that he could bring her a coffee anyway if he did not mind coming back for a second order once her guest arrived. Eddie nodded.
“And what are you up to these days, Eddie?” she asked.
“The usual.” He paused. “Well, the usual, and something else. I’m taking a course.”
Isabel expressed her pleasure. She had hoped that Eddie would eventually get round to obtaining some sort of qualification. He was intelligent enough, she thought; once again it all came down to confidence. She enquired what the course was. He had once mentioned a catering certificate that one could start by post and then go on to finish at catering college. Was it that?
“Hypnotism,” announced Eddie.
Isabel stared at him. “Hypnotism?”
“Yes. I’ve been doing it for six weeks now. There’s one lecture a week—Thursday nights at college. You don’t get an actual certificate, but you do get a bit of paper at the end saying that you’re licensed to hypnotise people.”
Isabel thought this unlikely. “A licence? Surely not.”
Her disbelief took Eddie aback, and he started to become defensive. “It’s not the sort of hypnotism you see at those shows,” he said. “We don’t make people eat an onion and think that they’re eating an apple. We don’t make them see things that aren’t there.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Isabel. “I should hate to find myself eating a raw onion at your behest, Eddie.”
“It’s about hypnotising people to help them stop smoking or…or doing other things that they don’t want to. Bad habits. Hypnotism can cure bad habits.”
“I’m sure it can,” said Isabel.
“And past lives,” Eddie went on. “You can take people back to their past lives.”
Isabel thought: We’re in Grace’s territory now. Had Eddie been put up to this by Grace? “Are you sure?” She looked at him enquiringly and he inclined his head. He was perfectly serious.
“My friend Phil is in the class too,” said Eddie. “He allowed one of the girls—I forget her name—to regress him. I was there. I watched it. It was at Phil’s place after the class. We’d gone back there and Phil asked to be regressed.”
Intrigued in spite of herself, Isabel asked what Phil had been in his previous life. “A coal miner,” said Eddie. “A coal miner up in Fife. Somewhere near Lochgelly.”
That, thought Isabel, is progress. There were too many exotic previous incarnations; too many Egyptian princesses, too many figures of minor royalty, too many Napoleons, no doubt. A coal miner from Fife had the ring of authenticity about it.
“And then,” Eddie continued, “she took Phil one life further back.”
“And what was he then?” asked Isabel.
“Robert the Bruce,” said Eddie. “I’m not making this up, Isabel. I swear. He was Robert the Bruce. Phil was. He didn’t open his eyes or anything. He just said, ‘I’m Robert the Bruce’ when we asked him who he was.”
“Fancy that!” said Isabel. “Phil, of all people! Robert the Bruce.”
“Aye,” said Eddie. “It was dead spooky, Isabel. He started talking about a battle and how he was going to defeat the English.”
Isabel opened her mouth to say something, but the door opened and Stella Moncrieff walked in. She looked across the room, searching for Isabel, and Isabel gave her a wave.
“My friend,” Isabel said to Eddie. “Could we carry on our conversation some other time?”
Eddie nodded. “Anytime, Isabel. And I’ll regress you, too, if you like.”
“All right,” said Isabel. “But you do realise, don’t you, that I’m likely to be Bonnie Prince Charlie? Or possibly Louis the Fourteenth?”
Eddie looked at her with the air of one about to disabuse another of a fondly held notion. “No you won’t,” he
