exactly what he meant.
SHE ARRIVED back at the house slightly later than she had anticipated. She went into the kitchen to find Jamie leaning against the sink, looking disconsolately at a red Le Creuset oven dish on the draining board. He looked up when she came in, but then his gaze fell.
“Your potatoes dauphinois?” she asked.
He nodded. “Burned,” he said. “Ruined. I put them in and went off to play the piano. I forgot about them.”
“And I was late,” she said. “It’s my fault. I’m very sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It was mine.”
She walked across the room and put her arms around him. “Darling Jamie.”
It seemed to her as if he was somehow resisting her. His body felt taut, wound up like a spring. She touched his cheek with the back of her hand, gently, as if to take his temperature. His skin was smooth. His eyes had been closed; now they opened. She saw the flecks of colour.
“I don’t love you just because you can cook potatoes dauphinois,” she said.
His eyes widened. “You don’t?”
They both laughed.
“Nor because you play the bassoon,” Isabel went on. “Nor because your hair goes like that at the front and you can make up funny little songs out of nowhere.”
“Stop.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re making me laugh when I don’t want to laugh. I want to feel cross.”
She disengaged from him, smiling with pleasure. “Look,” she said. “Take off the top layer—like that—and, see, everything is fine underneath. We can have potatoes dauphinois after all.”
He did as she instructed, laying each burned slice on a plate beside the oven dish.
“Somebody phoned,” he said as he tipped the contents of the plate into the bin.
Isabel licked a piece of creamy potato off the tip of her finger. “Who?”
“He wouldn’t say,” Jamie replied. “He asked for you and then just more or less slammed the phone down when I said that you weren’t here. Rude.”
Isabel felt a sudden twinge of concern. “Not a voice you recognised?”
“No.”
“Scottish?”
Jamie looked thoughtful. “Maybe. Yes, probably. Not very broad. In fact, not broad at all.”
Isabel wondered. “A lawyer’s voice?”
Jamie looked bemused. “How does one tell that?” But then he nodded. “Yes, maybe.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHE WOULD HAVE CALLED Jock Dundas at nine o’clock the next morning, which was the earliest she thought that his office switchboard would answer, had it not been for the fact that Jamie suddenly shouted from the garden. She immediately feared that something was wrong—he had taken Charlie out on to the lawn to pull him about on the small, red-wheeled cart that he loved so much. Charlie had fallen out of the cart; Charlie had cut himself; Charlie had swallowed something and stopped breathing—the possibilities ran through her mind as she ran for the back door and pushed it open.
Jamie was standing in the middle of the lawn and Charlie—oh, relief—was sitting securely in his cart, looking up at his father, wondering why the ride had ended so abruptly. Adults could be relied upon, generally, but not always; there were puzzling interruptions of service.
Jamie, looking over his shoulder, beckoned to Isabel to join him.
“There,” he said. “Over there by that big …”
“Azalea?”
“Yes. That bush with all the red flowers.”
She strained her eyes. “What?”
“Brother Fox. Underneath.”
She stared at the shadowy undergrowth. Was that red shape him, or leaves?
“We were standing right here,” said Jamie. “And he went right past. Limping. He’s injured. I think quite badly.”
Isabel now thought that she could just make the fox out; and then, yes, his tail moved, and she saw the shape of a haunch. She took a few steps forward; the fox was not far away and he must have seen her coming. There was a sudden parting of leaves and he emerged, his head lowered, his body strangely twisted. She saw the patch of black on his side—a mat of hair and dried blood.
Brother Fox paused; he looked at Isabel, his head still held low, and then he moved away, going back into the undergrowth, heading for the back wall. She stood quite still. She wanted to go to him and tend him, but she knew that it was impossible; he would bite, and she would only make things worse.
