A Terrible Beauty

you can do to relax yourself.'

With her thumbs, she located all of the knots of tension down Katie's spine, and loosened them. 'I could do with more of this,' said Katie.

'You really areincrediblytense,' Lucy told her. 'It's like your whole body is wound up tight, like a clock spring.'

'Do you still see him?'

'Who?'

'The boyfriend who taught you how to massage people.'

Lucy shook her head. 'I'm afraid I've never been very lucky with men. Either I frighten them, or else they see me as some kind of challenge. I guess it's the penalty you pay for being tall and well educated.'

'Better than being small and bossy, like me.'

'It's your job to be bossy, isn't it?'

'It's not my job to be obnoxious.'

Lucy massaged her neck and her upper back. Katie kept her eyes closed and she could almost feel her stress dissolving into the bathwater. Then, without any hesitation, Lucy squirted more body shampoo into her hand and started to massage her breasts.

Katie thought,Holy Mary, what's she doing?She opened her eyes and stared at Lucy but Lucy looked completely calm, as if this was a natural part of the massage. She gave Katie a friendly little smile and Katie thought that if she tried to pull her hands away she would look like a prude. This was a woman, massaging her, that's all, and even if she hadn't been expecting her to touch her breasts, it didn't seem to be intended as a sexual advance.

Lucy squeezed and caressed her shampoo-slippery breasts and Katie dared herself to close her eyes again, and relax, and simply enjoy what Lucy was doing. Lucy came from California, after all, and she knew that American women were much more at ease with nudity than most convent-educated Irish women. God, if only Sister Brigid could see me now.

'You should do this yourself, at least once a week,' said Lucy. 'It helps to firm your breasts and stimulate your breast tissue, and of course it's important to check for lumps.'

Katie said nothing. The sensation of having her breasts massaged was beginning to arouse her, especially when Lucy pulled gently at her nipples and rolled them between her fingers. It had been a long time since anybody had touched her as lovingly as this, as if they really cared about her. She began to think that if she allowed Lucy to carry on, she might even be able to reach an orgasm, simply from having her breasts caressed.

But then Lucy said, 'Come on, now, you don't want to get cold,' and kissed her on the forehead. She pulled the plug and helped Katie to climb out of the bath and wrap a towel around herself.

When Katie was dry, Lucy poured them both a whiskey from the minibar and they lay side by side on the bed, talking. Katie felt as if she could lie there forever.

'You know, I don't think I've ever had a really close woman friend,' said Lucy. 'I guess it's because I getso-o-obored by women's conversation. All they want to talk about is their repulsive children, or their husbands' careers in accounting, or how to make a tantalizing casserole out of leftover turkey.'

Katie smiled. She felt warm now, and much more peaceful, and she realized that while Lucy's massage had been disturbingly intimate, it must have been the kind of hands-on sisterly gesture that California women considered to be perfectly natural. Just because Sister Boniface at Our Lady of Lourdes would have been scandalized.

She said, 'I used to have some wonderful friends at school, but most of them are married now, with seven kids. One of them's a teacher at a special school in Kilkenny, and one went to Dublin to sing in a choir, but the rest of them fell pregnant as soon as they'd finished their leaving certs, or even before.'

She turned to Lucy. 'Did you ever think about getting married?'

Lucy shook her head.

'Children?'

'One day, maybe, if things work out the way I want them to.'

'Do you know, I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, with Paul in a coma. I'm still going to be married, aren't I? But how can you be married to somebody who's never going to wake up?'

Lucy touched her bare shoulder. 'He's gone, Katie. You're going to have to get used to the idea.'

'I suppose so. But it's hard.'

They lay in silence for a long time. Katie closed her eyes and felt that she could easily drift off to sleep. But after a while Lucy said, 'This guy Tomas O Conaill. Do you really think that you're going to get a conviction?

Katie opened her eyes and blinked at her.

'You have a whole lot of evidence, don't you? The fingerprints, the footprints.'

Katie said, 'Well, you're right. The circumstantial evidence is very strong, and O Conaill's got a bad reputation, but still-I don't know-something doesn't quite fit. He said that Mor-Rioghain could only be raised by a witch, a woman. Yet our eyewitness report suggests that Fiona Kelly was almost certainly abducted by a man, and Dr. Reidy says that the physical strength required to kill her and cut her up would have been way beyond a woman's capabilities. Not only that, I've been reading through the FBI profiles, and it's extremely rare for a lone woman to be a serial killer, and almost unheard-of for a woman to be a serial killer with any kind of mythical or fantasy motive.'

'So you think itcouldhave been a partnership?'