She pushed the proofs to one side and waited. She could hear Jamie outside in the hall, and then the door of her study opened and he came in. She held her breath. She suddenly felt that she hated him; she hated this man coming into her study. It was so easy, so very easy.
He smiled at her. “Busy?”
How dare you smile? she thought.
“Isabel?” He sounded anxious.
“Yes.”
He immediately picked up the coldness of her tone. “Is something wrong?”
She opened her mouth intending to say that nothing was wrong, but that was not what came out. Instead, she said, “Did you enjoy that film?”
He looked puzzled. “What film?”
“That Italian film.” Her voice faltered.
The effect was immediate, and dramatic. “Oh God …” He moved quickly towards her, and then stopped. He had been carrying an envelope that he had picked up off the hall table, and now he dropped it. He did not bend down to pick it up. He said, “Oh God …”
He was now standing close to her. He reached out, but she avoided his touch.
“Eddie told you,” he said simply.
She looked up at him. It was true; there was no innocent explanation. If there had been one, he would not look like this: drained, guilty.
“I didn’t want you to know,” he admitted.
She turned on him angrily. “Evidently not.”
“Because I felt so awkward about the whole thing.”
Awkward? She shook her head in disbelief. “As one might,” she said. And then, almost under her breath, but audible none the less, she continued: “I hate you, you know.” The words were flat, were ugly, and she regretted saying them the moment she uttered them; she did not hate Jamie, she loved him, but she hated him too, wanted to harm him, to strike him, push him away from her. She closed her eyes.
Her eyes were still closed, but she felt his hands upon her shoulders. She tensed: it was not a lover’s touch, would never again be such.
“Isabel,” he whispered. “It’s not what you think. It really isn’t. Prue invited me there. The rehearsal finished early and she asked me to go to the cinema with her.” He paused. She heard his breathing; she felt his breath against her cheek. “What could I do? You know about her. She’s the one who’s ill. Dying.”
She opened her eyes. She looked at him; there were the beginnings of tears in his eyes.
“I only went with her because … because I couldn’t say no. She has nobody.”
She reached out and took his hand. Her relief made her feel almost dizzy. “Oh, Jamie …”
“And there’s something more,” said Jamie. “I wanted to talk to you about it, but I didn’t know how to.”
“I’m sorry,” said Isabel. “I thought …” She did not know how to say what she had thought. How could she tell him that she had not trusted him?
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t blame you for feeling as you did.”
She shook her head. “What’s this other thing?”
He looked away. “It’s very difficult to know how to put it. Prue asked me to go back to her flat with her after the film.”
Isabel was quite still. She felt her hand in his, but she did not press it as she normally would. “And?”
“Well, of course I said no. But I didn’t say to her what I should have said.”
“Which was?”
“That I can’t. She knows about you, but she behaves as if it makes no difference. She’s pretending that you don’t exist.”
Isabel tried to smile. “I do.”
“I don’t want to hurt her. She’s only got a few months to live.”
“Of course you mustn’t hurt her. Of course not.”
She felt a sudden tenderness; a return of tenderness really. He was so kind; he could never hurt anybody, even a persistent girl who needed, however gently, to be told that what she wanted could not be.
Jamie seemed to be preparing to say something more. Was there anything more? Suddenly it occurred to her that he might already have been unfaithful, and that the cinema outing was nothing important; a sequel rather than a prequel to something else. She felt herself tensing again.
“She said something to me,” said Jamie, his voice lowered. “She said that she had never had a proper boyfriend. Then she said that she did not want to die without ever having had a lover. That’s what she said. The implication was … well, I could hardly misread it.”
Isabel drew in her breath. “Oh …”
“What could I say? So I didn’t say anything. I called her a taxi and came home. But I felt … well, so awful about
