She went out into the hall, where they had left Charlie to continue his sleep. She lifted him up gently; she would transfer him to his bed. She was aware that she and Jamie had experienced a moment of intimate disclosure in the kitchen, talking about their childhoods, about the little things that might seem inconsequential but that were obviously buried somewhere in the mind, where they could be far more powerful than one might imagine. The possessions of childhood are sometimes loved with astonishing intensity; precious to their owners in spite of their simplicity or raggedness. Baby Isabel was a cheap little doll, but adored with passion, as, no doubt, was that betrayed teddy.
As she carried the still sleeping Charlie upstairs, Isabel found herself wondering why Jamie had thrown his teddy over the Dean Bridge. He was punishing him, no doubt—or perhaps he was punishing himself. And if he was punishing himself, what for? She would ask a psychotherapist friend who knew all about such things. This friend had once said to Isabel that we punished ourselves for all sorts of reasons, but, for the most part, we did not deserve it. “In fact,” Isabel had said, “I wonder who truly deserves punishment, anyway. What good does it do to punish a person? All that does is add to the pain of the world.”
Her friend had stared at Isabel. “Yes,” she said. And then, after a further few minutes of thought, she had said yes again. “That sounds so right,” she said. “And yet I suspect, Isabel, that you are very wrong.” And Isabel thought: Yes, I am. She’s right; I’m wrong.
CHAPTER THREE
CAT HAD ASKED ISABEL to help out at the delicatessen the next morning, and Isabel, as she always did, agreed. She knew that her niece only asked for her assistance when she really needed it, and in this case it was the best of reasons: a medical appointment.
Isabel could not help but sound anxious. The news that anybody has a medical appointment is often taken as a sign of the worst; that was entirely natural, even if people saw doctors for all sorts of innocent purposes. “Is everything all right?” she asked. And thought,
“I’m seeing a dermatologist,” said Cat. “I have a spot and the GP said that …”
“Oh, Cat …”
“Listen, don’t panic. People have spots. She said that it looked absolutely fine to her but she suggested that I have it checked.”
“I know, I know. It’s just that …” And here she almost said,
“Well don’t,” said Cat. “Anyway, could you …”
“I’ll be there,” said Isabel. “Do you need me to open up?”
Eddie would do that, explained Cat, but it would be helpful if Isabel were able to arrive shortly thereafter. “He’s all right to begin with, but he gets really anxious if he’s in charge by himself for too long. You know how he is.”
Isabel did know. She was fond of Eddie, whom she had known for some years now, and she was used to his vulnerability, even if she had never been able to understand it. It seemed strange to her that a young man who looked robust enough should be so lacking in confidence as to be incapable of being left in charge of a delicatessen. But she realised that this was what anxiety was like—it knew no rhyme or reason; just as a fear of the dark cannot be assuaged by the pointing out that there was nothing there, anxiety could be without foundation.
Something had happened to Eddie—some dark thing—that Cat knew about, but that she would not explain to Isabel. Isabel had not pressed her; if Eddie had told her in confidence, then she would not want Cat to break that confidence. She could guess, though, and she assumed it was to do with sex, and with the shame that went with that. Her heart went out to Eddie; she wanted to wrap her arms about him and say to him that he should not feel ashamed, that whatever had happened to him was not his fault, it was no doing of his, and was no reflection on him. She wanted to say to him that such things happened to both men and women and that it did not mean he was less of a man for it. But she realised that there must have been people who had already said all these things to Eddie and it had made no difference. You did not erase horror and shame with a few words; it did not work that way.
Eddie had made some progress, of course. There had been a girlfriend, and even if she was not what Isabel might have wished for Eddie—she was a Goth, a follower of a fashion for pallid looks and dark clothes—he seemed to grow while she was with him. She had gone, Isabel understood, and she did not think that she had been replaced.
“Isabel?”
“Sorry. I was lost in thought.”
Cat was used to this. Isabel thought too much, she felt. “I said: Will Jamie be able to look after Charlie?”
Isabel was moderately surprised by Cat’s question. Her niece had experienced great difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that it was her aunt—even if Isabel was a very young aunt—who had taken up with her former boyfriend, and there had been a time when she would have scrupulously avoided any mention of Jamie’s name. But that had seemed to become much easier, as this question revealed.
“Yes,” she said. “Jamie will do it, or Grace can if Jamie is teaching. Either way, Charlie will be entertained.”
Arrangements were made, and that morning shortly after nine Isabel made her way along Merchiston Crescent to the delicatessen on Bruntsfield Place. It was a warm morning—June had eased itself into July with a grudging rising of temperature—and the foliage in the gardens along her route was in riot. She dodged a particularly ebullient climbing rose that had sent tendrils into the path of pedestrians; indeed, on one of these tendrils, snagged on a vicious-looking thorn, was a small fragment of blue material. A passerby had been caught, Isabel decided, and had lost a bit of a blouse or a shirt. She stopped, and gingerly took the piece of cloth from the thorn. No, she decided, if the owner of the garden was not going to cut back this impediment to the safe use of the pavement, then she would, before anyone lost an eye on one of those thorns. Reaching up, she took hold of the rose where it crossed the iron railings of the fence and bent it sharply to one side. The plant gave, but not enough; now the tendril pointed down towards the ground, discouraged but not detached.
“Excuse me!”
Isabel gave a start as she heard the voice from the garden.
“Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?”
A man came into view in the garden; a man somewhere in his fifties, she thought, holding a garden rake.
“Your climbing rose had sent a shoot out over the pavement,” said Isabel. “It’s a bit dangerous, I’m afraid. I
