The Glass Ceiling
Page 19
‘That’s the ceiling,’ I said. ‘But it isn’t glass. It’s – hormonal.’
‘One sausage or two?’
‘Two.’
‘What d’you mean about the ceiling?’
‘That’s what keeps women . . . not down, so much as apart. The way their emotions bleed into everything. They take it personally.’
‘Are you still in shock?’
‘No.’
‘So I’m supposed to say something intelligent back?’
‘I’d settle for rational,’ I said.
‘I like that in women,’ he said. ‘They care about things, so I can, without feeling a berk. And they notice things, and do things, that I wouldn’t think of. But that’s what I remember about them. Like the way you used to push my hair behind my ears after we’d made love.’
I’d forgotten I ever did that. ‘It looked uncomfortable for you, straggling into your eyes.’
‘It was. But I didn’t know it, until you noticed. I do it myself, now.’
He was eating. I couldn’t, yet. I was still thinking. ‘And the emotions go on, all mixed up. Which is why, I suppose, Elspeth killed the hamster. Because of the abortion. And why she killed the dog, too, in a way. She was angry. But she loves Melanie, too, and Melanie loves her, and Elspeth probably looked after Edward all those years for Grace and Melanie, because Grace said after his first suicide attempt that he refused to see them. Elspeth was the only one he could bear to be with. Maybe because she was so insignificant, to him.’
Peter groaned. ‘Is this a script conference for Lezzy Loonies on the Job?’
‘No. It’s about – sisters.’
‘Sisters usually hate each other.’
‘Only for a very small part of the time.’
‘If you’re not going to eat that, I will,’ he said.
I stabbed his reaching hand with my fork. ‘Get off, Barstow.’
He concentrated on his remaining food. ‘D’you want to tell me what you’re talking about?’
‘Not really.’
‘Where’s O’Neill?’
‘I left him behind in Oxfordshire, with all of them. They needed him. And Nick wanted to stay with Grace. And Nigel wouldn’t go without Melanie. He thinks they’re all mad, and he wants to keep her away from them. He doesn’t like women together.’
‘I’m with Nigel,’ he said.
I looked at him. ‘No, Peter,’ I said. ‘That’s what I like about you. You’re an unthinking, rugger-playing, super-masculine git, but you’re not with Nigel. You never have been.’
After the taxi took him to Heathrow the flat seemed empty, and the next few hours – the rest of the day – stretched aridly in front of me.
I took the action list from the board, picked up the Arabella Trigg file, went through to the word-processor and loaded the disk. I could get the report done, at least.
I read Nick’s shopping notes again. What would it be like, to be Arabella, to spend each morning choosing things? To play whatever shuffling game it was to avoid full disclosure in your accounts? What would it be like to have a husband who read your accounts? Was she going to tell him she’d paid the full price for the marked-down jacket, and that the underwear was from Harrods instead of Marks, and take the difference to pay her physiotherapist? So that she could stay perfect for him?
I tapped my fingers on the plastic of the keyboard. I could send Trigg the report he’d asked for On the other hand, I could be a sister and give Arabella a ring, tomorrow, while he was at the office, and between us we could cook up a report she knew about and could substantiate, which left out unpleasant realities like incontinence. A wrenched shoulder, perhaps.
We’d manage it, easily enough, between us.
I replaced the notes in the file and put it aside.
The telephone rang.
‘Alex Tanner’
‘This is Kinross. Is the boy there?’
‘The boy?’
‘Your boy. Nick. I need to speak to him.’
‘I’ll get Nick to ring you back.’
‘When?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘This is most inconvenient.’ He sounded compos, sober and irascible. It took a while to get rid of him. For the last minute of our conversation I could hear a taxi throbbing outside, then pulling away.
When I rang off I went straight to the window. It was Barty, with a bulky parcel, about a metre and a half square and thirty centimetres deep. I chucked him the keys.
‘Hi,’ he said, lugging the parcel inside the door and propping it against the wall. ‘Present from Grace.’
‘Do you know what it is?’
‘It feels like a picture,’ he said, ‘but I’ve no idea what of. When we all moved back to Grace’s Hampstead place, Grace and Nick and Elspeth wrapped it up, with much giggling. They wouldn’t let me see.’
‘How are they?’
‘Who in particular?’
‘Elspeth and Melanie.’
‘All right, for the moment. Melanie will survive it better than you think. She’s never really liked Teddy.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t think she likes men, much.’
‘What about Elspeth?’
‘Grace will look after her. Are you going to give me a cup of coffee?’
I looked at Grace’s present. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not now . . . I’ve things to do. Thanks for lending me the car last night.’ I tossed him the keys.
He caught them. ‘Oh,’ he said. He looked surprised, and disappointed.
‘Would you take me out to dinner?’
He perked up. ‘Tonight?’
‘Yep.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere smart. Somewhere crowded. Surprise me.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick you up at half past seven.’
This time, when the door shut behind him, the flat wasn’t empty. It was comforting. It was my own place, where I’d potter about with no clothes on, and play the Eagles, and dream. I’d go downstairs and ransack Polly’s wardrobe, and come back up again and have a bath and shave my legs and pluck my eyebrows and do my face and hair.
Then I’d dress.
Then I’d look at myself in Grace’s magic mirror.
The cheese-plant could whistle for a drink tonight; I’d get by, with a little help from my friends.
Tomorrow I’d take back the mirror. She needed it more than I did.
I’d have the last chuckle. Maybe not now, not even soon, but some time.
Because in 1969 I was five.
Anabel Donald
Anabel Donald has been writing fiction since 1982 when her first novel, Hannah at Thirty-five, was published to great critical acclaim.
In her thirty-six-year teaching career she has taught adolescent girls in private boarding schools, a comprehensive and an American university. Most recently, she has written the five Alex Tanner crime novels in the Notting Hill series.
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The Notting Hill Mysteries
An Uncommon Murder
In at the Deep End
The Glass Ceiling
The Loop
Destroy Unopened
Copyright
First published 1994 by Macmillan
This edition published 2015 by Bello
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ISBN 978-1509-8134-07 EPUB
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Copyright © Anabel Donald 1994
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