“It’s easy to love the bearer of good news,” says Cynthia. She throws her unpaid bills into the file all higgledy-piggledy. She wipes her hands on her navy woollen frock as if they’d been dirtied by commerce. “The bills can wait another day.” She holds out her arms to Claire, smiling so warmly her skin falls into brackets at the corners of her mouth. “Dear girl,” she says. Claire goes to her, submits to an embrace, but she’s imagining her own dear mother lying stiffly on an ill-sprung bed upstairs.
Alex grins, bends, winks at her, gives her a hasty kiss; one that lands badly. He leaves.
He’s behaving like a clumsy puppy today, Claire thinks, smiling.
“By the way, Cynthia, I know about Bonnie.”
“You know what about Bonnie?” She’s stern again. Her eyes have lost their twinkle.
“I won’t spell it out.”
“Who told you?”
“I notice things. I’d never talk. Alex would love to know if ever you…Anyway, I think you three manage the situation rather well – except for the shoes.”
“They’re expensive shoes, my dear. She pays me back ten-fold in those horrid rock cakes. They’ve ruined my teeth.”
“The shoes are abominable. It’s cruel to make Bonnie wear them.”
“How could I force Bonnie to do something she doesn’t want to?”
“You give her a choice of Cubans or Hush Puppies. No woman wants to seem an absolute hick. And there’s something else. My baby might be Alex’s. It depends whether she’s a blonde angel or a swarthy gypsy. I’ll love her whoever the father is.”
“Good Lord, girlie!” she says, when Claire shrugs. “What a soap opera.”
“Or a moral tale. I haven’t yet fathomed the moral of this story,” Claire says.
“Don’t fall for the first man you fall for, perhaps?”
“But if I hadn’t fallen for Clive first, I couldn’t have fallen for Alex second.”
“True.”
“Or maybe it’s this: if you always wear sensible shoes, then no astonishing, thrilling, awesome disaster will ever befall you.”
Falling into Place Page 30