The Lost Art of Gratitude

early she would come straight in to work; Isabel, however, put her off. “Take a day off,” she said. “That’s what aunts are for.”

Her own words struck her. That’s what aunts are for. It was true, of course: aunts were for coming to the rescue, and she always tried to do just that. But were aunts for helping themselves to their nieces’ discarded boyfriends? It was Cat who had got rid of Jamie—an act that betrayed appalling judgement, Isabel felt—and so she could hardly complain when Isabel took up with him. But she had complained, and had done so bitterly. Things were slightly better now, but there was still a touchiness on Cat’s part that could flare up at any time—and it did.

Jamie was not yet up, and so Isabel took him a cup of tea and the copy of the Scotsman that came through the door early each morning. When she told him that she would be spending the day in the delicatessen, for a moment she saw a shadow cross his face. She hesitated; they did not talk about Cat because she was an unseen third person in their relationship, as a former lover sometimes can be. It was akin to a past act of unfaithfulness that can stand, a painful monument, in the history of a marriage —a forbidden memory, cauterised and sealed off, but still with the power to hurt.

“We could see whether Grace could come in,” said Isabel. “She tends to be free on Saturday, so you needn’t have Charlie all day.”

Jamie looked at her reproachfully. “I like having Charlie all day,” he said.

She was emollient. “That’s fine then. He loves being with you.” She bent down and kissed him on the cheek, gently tousling his hair as she did so.

“Don’t do that.” But he did not mean it.

She sat down on the bed. “You don’t resent my helping Cat, do you?”

He looked away. “No, not really.” A small rectangle of sunlight streamed in through a chink in the curtains, across Jamie’s shoulder.

Isabel reached forward and placed her hand against his chest. “I think you do, you know. But I can’t just … just cut Cat out. She’s family. I can’t.”

He looked at her. “I never wanted you to do that.” He hesitated for a moment, and then took Isabel’s hand in his. “I’m the one who feels awkward about this. I know I don’t need to, but I do. I feel embarrassed, I suppose, that I’ve …”

She waited, but he did not complete the sentence. “Embarrassed that you’ve what?”

“That I slept with her, and now I’m sleeping with you.”

He spoke with transparent honesty, but the pain his words caused him was laid quite bare. Isabel pressed his hand. “But that’s …” She found herself at a loss as to what to say.

“Nothing?” said Jamie.

“No, of course it’s not nothing.”

“Then what is it?”

Isabel took a deep breath. “What I mean is that it’s something you simply don’t need to think about.”

He sighed. “You can’t just deny these things.”

“I’m not saying that you should deny it. What I’m saying is that you should forget it. That’s quite different.” She watched him. He had a way of looking at her when something she was saying interested him profoundly—it was a sort of searching look—and she saw it now. “Do you really want me to discuss it with you?”

“Of course. Why not?”

She pressed his hand again. “Because I sound like a philosopher, and I don’t always like that. Not when I’m with you. It’s just the way it is.”

He had not been returning the pressure of her hand; now he did so. “But that’s what I like,” he said. “It’s like being … like being married to Socrates.”

The analogy was so unexpected that Isabel burst into laughter. “Thank you! Socrates …”

Jamie grinned. “In a purely mental sense, of course. You’re far more beautiful than Socrates.”

“Poor Socrates—just about everybody is.”

Jamie steered the conversation back to its original subject. “But what about forgetting? How can you forget on purpose?”

She acknowledged the difficulty. “All right, I know that forgetting is normally something over which you have no control. But you can tell yourself to forget, you know. You say to yourself that you are not going to dwell on something and then the mind—the bits of the mind that are in charge of forgetting, so to speak—do the rest. The memory is suppressed, I suppose.”

“So?”

“So you tell yourself that the fact that you and Cat had the relationship that you did is something you are not going to think about—that you’re going to forget it. And then you will.”

For a few moments Jamie said nothing. He was looking up at the ceiling now, thinking; or perhaps trying to forget.

“Maybe I don’t want to,” he muttered.

She gently withdrew her hand. “Then don’t.”

She felt a stab of disappointment, and she wished that she had not started to discuss the subject with him. Perhaps his instinct had been better: to say nothing, to leave it where it lay. The past was so powerful that sometimes when we chose to deny its potency it reminded us just who we were—its creatures.

She crossed the room and drew open the curtains, flooding the room with morning light. “Let me make you