smile. “Jamie is very fond of me,” she said. “Yes, you’re right. He is. He’s shown it.”
The words hit Isabel with an almost physical force. “Shown …”
The smile widened. “Yes. Jamie and I are … well, we’re lovers.”
Isabel stared at her. She could not speak.
Prue continued. “Has he not told you? I thought he had. He told me he was going to speak to you.”
“When?” It was a whisper, almost inaudible.
“When what?”
“When did you become lovers?”
“Oh, I forget exactly when. A month or so ago. May, I think. Yes, May.”
A door opened. They were standing in a small entrance hall, and the door gave on to a living room. There was another woman, slightly older than Prue. She shot a glance at Isabel and then addressed herself to Prue.
“Prue? Is everything all right?”
Isabel turned and opened the front door. She did not say anything to either woman, but simply left the flat. She felt her eyes stinging with tears. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and grasped the rail. She looked up, right up through the stairwell to a skylight. There was still a glow in the sky, which was empty, white in the evening, innocent of the insignificant tragedy happening below it.
She heard footsteps on the stone stairs; somebody was coming down. She looked up, prepared to see Prue, but it was the other woman.
“You’re Isabel, aren’t you?”
Isabel did not answer. She stared at the other woman, uncertain what her intentions might be. She remembered the catfight in Tollcross.
The other woman was before her, reaching out to place a hand on Isabel’s arm. “I’m Prue’s sister,” she said. “And I heard what was said up there. I came round when she telephoned me a few minutes ago—I live round the corner in Danube Street.”
She continued: “You have to forgive my sister. She’s not well.”
There was something in the other woman’s manner that reassured Isabel. She started to speak. “I’m shocked … I don’t know …”
“Of course you are. But listen: it’s not true. None of it. It’s all imagined.”
It took a few moments. There were words; now there was meaning, and eventually, slowly, there came relief. Isabel felt herself being plucked from the dark place into which she had fallen. “Not true about Jamie?”
The woman shook her head. “Certainly not. She’s done this before, I’m afraid.”
Isabel winced. “And she’s dying.”
The other woman groaned. “There’s nothing wrong with her—at least nothing physical. It’s a trick she plays. She tells people that she’s at death’s door. It gets sympathy.”
It took Isabel a moment or two to absorb this. Of course. Of course. It was an obvious trick: if you were dying you could get what you wanted. “It’s a sort of blackmail,” said Isabel.
“Exactly. Look, we’re trying to get her to have treatment. I think we’re getting there, but it’s not easy.”
Isabel felt weak with relief. “It never is.”
“You’ve been very understanding,” said the woman. “And I can promise you there’ll be no more of this. She’s going up to Aberdeen. Our parents are there, and they’re taking over. My father’s a doctor up there. He’s spoken to his psychiatrist friends.”
Isabel felt sympathy for both of them—for Prue and for her sister. There were apologies. The woman told her how embarrassed she was by Prue’s behaviour. Not everybody, she said, was as understanding as Isabel.
They made their goodbyes to one another and Isabel walked out into the street. She felt drained, and would need to get a taxi. She saw one at the end of the road, its yellow light glowing. She waved her arms. The taxi turned, the driver signalling with his headlights that he had seen her.
“You all right?” he asked, as she settled into her seat.
“Entirely all right,” she said.
Edinburgh taxi drivers were not just taxi drivers. They were social workers, psychotherapists and, like Isabel, philosophers. She caught his eye in the mirror.
“You seemed upset,” he said.
“I was,” she admitted. “A few minutes ago I thought my world was in ruins. Now I know it’s not.”
The taxi was making its way up the hill past the end of Ann Street. Down to the right, at the end of a wide road, was the Gothic bulk of Fettes College, another school.
“Well, that’s good,” he said.
“May I ask you something?”
He looked into the mirror again. “Of course.”
“Should we feel ashamed of believing ill of someone we love? When we ought to trust them?”
He thought for a moment before replying. “No,” he said. “That’s natural.”
