“Right,” said Isabel. “I’m going to have a word with her. I’m going to go there right now. Right now.”
“Do you think …”
She brushed him aside. “We have to sort this out, Jamie. I know you don’t want to do it. You’re … you’re far too kind. And anyway, she’s not listening to you. Perhaps she’ll listen to me. Women have a way of conveying this sort of information to one another.” Yes, she thought—we do. And she remembered a fight she had once witnessed when walking past a bar in Tollcross years ago: two women had come tumbling out, tearing at one another’s hair, scratching at each other like cats, and one had been screaming, “Cow! Cow! He’s mine, you cow!” She remembered how shocked passersby had been, or most of them: one, a young boy, had shouted out his delighted encouragement until his mother put a hand across his mouth.
“She’s dying,” said Jamie quietly.
“We all are,” snapped Isabel. “Ultimately, we all are. So dying is no excuse. Not for this.”
She was about to add something, and almost did. She was about to tell him about her bizarre idea that charity required of her that she share him, but she did not. She was ashamed that she had even thought it, and she would keep it to herself. Now she was angry too, and that feeling was even more inappropriate. This girl, with her astonishing gall in telephoning Jamie at home, did not deserve such concern. She deserved what Isabel was going to give her: an unambiguous warning.
She dressed quickly. Jamie said something about being gentle with Prue, but Isabel barely took it in. She asked him the address, and he gave it to her. “It’s in Stockbridge,” he said. “Leslie Place. It’s that narrow street that goes up to St. Bernard’s Crescent.” He gave her the number. He did not have to look it up, and she wanted to ask him whether he had been there before. Had he said anything about that? Then she remembered that he had.
“I don’t expect I’m going to be long,” she said. “Can you wait for dinner?”
He could. “I’ll cook something,” he offered. “I’ll wait for you to come back.” His voice sounded flat.
She moved towards him. She was clothed now; he was still wearing his towel. There were goosebumps on his shoulders when she embraced him. She did not want to go; she wanted to stay with him. She wanted to lie down with him and forget about this girl, and about everything, really: about being the editor of the
“I have to go and speak to her. You realise that, don’t you?”
He nodded silently.
“Sometimes,” she went on, “the only way of stopping a mess becoming more of a mess is to … gird up your metaphors and lance the boil.”
They laughed together, the tension disappearing.
“A mixed metaphor never harmed anybody,” he said.
“Don’t you believe it.”
SHE WALKED DOWN LESLIE PLACE, looking up at the numbers painted on the stone above the doors. With one or two exceptions, the doors here led to what were called common stairs—a stone stairway shared by a number of flats that gave off each landing of the four- storey tenement. The flats themselves varied: most of them were spacious enough; others, tucked in almost as an afterthought, consisted of no more than a bedroom and a living room that doubled up as a kitchen. In the nineteenth century, when they were built, even such cramped accommodation would have housed an entire family, that of some struggling clerk, perhaps, battling its way up from more modest housing in a less favoured part of the city. Some of the stairways had now been done up, with new stone treads and refurbished banisters; others remained dowdy, with crumbling plaster where generations of careless removal men had allowed wardrobes to collide with walls, and smelling vaguely of cat.
Prue’s flat was up one flight of stairs. The door seemed freshly painted, a lilac colour in contrast to the black of the other two doors off her landing. A small card had been pinned to the door with the name—P. L. McKay—written on it, and underneath:
She drew in her breath. She could see from light coming through the fanlight above the door that there was somebody within, which would be Prue, as she had only recently made the telephone call. Thompson and Edwards only received their mail there; they would not be in. And Edwards, of course, would be keeping his head down.
She rang the bell, which had an old-fashioned wire pull. Inside there came a muffled clanking sound.
Prue opened the door. She was a young woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in a pair of jeans and a red- flecked sweater. She wore no shoes.
Isabel said, “You’re Prue?”
Prue’s lip quivered. Isabel saw this.
“I’m Isabel Dalhousie.”
Prue took a step back. It was not a planned movement, Isabel thought, and for a moment she was worried that the other woman was going to faint.
“Do you mind if I come in?” Isabel moved forward as she spoke, and reached to close the door behind her. “I knew you were in, you see, because you telephoned Jamie a short time ago. You telephoned him at our house.”
Prue said nothing. She was staring at Isabel in unmistakable fear.
“I don’t think that it’s a good idea to …” Isabel searched for the right words, remembering that Jamie had said something about being gentle. She would be gentle. This poor girl was dying.
She started again. “Look, I know that you are very fond of Jamie. I understand that. But Jamie and I are together, you know. We’re going to get married. He likes you—don’t think that he doesn’t like you. It’s just that … well, he and I are together and that’s really all there can be to it. You do understand, don’t you?”
Prue seemed to be recovering herself. Her shocked expression was slowly changing; now she was beginning to
