by Joan Smith
Now, with the letters safely in her bag, she decided she could go without food no longer. She summoned the waiter and ordered aubergine salad and pitta bread as her first course. ‘And I’d like the afelia next, and some mineral water, please.’
She sat back and drew patterns on the table in the damp patch where the waiter had spilled a drop of retsina while pouring her first glass. She had intended to confide in Robert, to try out her various theories – though they hardly deserved so grand a title – on him. Everything she had learned suggested that Sandra had been leading a – a double life, that was the phrase that came into Loretta’s head. No wonder Sandra had behaved oddly at Christmas, though Loretta hadn’t suspected anything on this scale; how could she? It was impossible to believe that the deception had nothing to do with Sandra’s death, but the problem was to make the right connections. . . Loretta was beginning to feel tired and a little bad-tempered; Robert might at least have phoned the restaurant to warn her he was going to be as late as this. She brightened as the waiter returned with her first course and fell on it hungrily, remembering she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She was wiping her plate clean when Robert appeared.
‘Loretta – sorry, it took longer than I expected. Oh, you didn’t wait.’ He looked at her empty plate.
‘I was hungry. You’re almost an hour late.’
‘An hour? God, it’s even later than I thought. I’m sorry, you know what these meetings with lawyers are like. There were problems with the contract. . .’ He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her.
‘What did you have?’
‘What did I – oh, melitzanosalata.’
‘Was it good?’
‘Yes.’
They sat in silence for a moment.
‘Is it all right if I –’ He lifted the wine bottle.
‘Help yourself.’ Loretta noticed for the first time that the bottle was half empty; she had drunk it without noticing, and it explained the slight buzzing in her head.
‘I think I’ll skip the first course,’ she heard Robert saying. ‘Excuse me –’ He raised his voice. ‘Is the kleftico on tonight? Good – and another glass of mineral water. So, Loretta – it seems ages since I’ve seen you. What have you been doing?’
Loretta opened her mouth to tell him about Sandra and closed it again. It was too complicated; he didn’t even know she’d been to the inquest. She cast around for something else to talk about, and remembered her book.
‘I had a letter from Vixen yesterday. They like the book.’
‘Great,’ said Robert, drawing the word out. ‘Let’s drink to that.’ He held up his glass and after a moment Loretta followed suit. ‘To Edith Wharton – and Loretta Lawson.’ He chinked his glass against hers, then drank from it. Loretta did likewise, beginning to feel anxious about driving home. Perhaps by the time they left. . .
‘What else?’
‘Oh – I’ve started work on a new course, a new set of tutorials.’
‘On?’
‘On crime fiction.’ A sudden burst of enthusiasm seemed to clear her head. ‘I have this idea that a lot of women find the idea of writing a novel – the novel – terrifying, so they write crime fiction instead. The rules makes them feel safe. I think that’s why it’s such a female form, in this country at any rate. Which makes it the perfect way to examine women’s ideas about fiction –’ She pulled her chair closer to the table, warming to her theme. ‘I went to the London Library today, I wanted to have a look at Baroness Orczy. . . What’s the matter?’ She was puzzled by the look on Robert’s face.
‘We-ell.’ Robert held out his hands, palm upwards, and shrugged. ‘It’s nothing to do with me, but. . . I’m curious, that’s all. What has Agatha Christie got to do with an English Literature course?’
‘It won’t just be Agatha Christie. The point is to look at the development of the form, as one would with, say, the nineteenth-century novel.’
‘You’re not comparing Agatha Christie to the Brontës?’ Robert leaned back in his chair, an amused look on his face.
‘Why do you keep going on about Agatha Christie? There are dozens of other women who write detective stories, most of them a good deal better ... It sounds to me like you’re defending the canon – the idea that you can draw a line and say this is literature and everything else is rubbish.’
‘Isn’t that the case? Surely your job is to make sure your students. . .’
‘I think I know what my job is,’ Loretta interrupted him angrily. She was about to say more when the waiter placed a plate of afelia in front of her. ‘Oh – thanks.’ She glanced down at the chunks of meat and coriander seeds, no longer sure she felt like eating. When she looked up, Robert was eyeing his lamb with an equal lack of enthusiasm. She said: ‘Let’s drop it, the food’s going to get cold.’
She saw a distant look in his eyes, and he responded with a polite nod. ‘As you like.’
They ate in silence, then had a desultory conversation about something Robert had heard on the Radio Four news as he drove to London. Loretta refused the waiter’s offer of coffee, saying truthfully that she was tired, and was relieved when Robert told her she needn’t wait for him. She took out her purse and put fifteen pounds in notes on the table, resisting his half-hearted attempt to return it to her. Then she stood up and threw her denim jacket over her shoulders.
‘Well, goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
They stared at each other for a moment, then Loretta moved out from behind the table and went to the door. The waiter leapt to open it, and she left the restaurant without a backward glance. Outside on the pavement she was aware of a catch in her throat; she swallowed, and hurried in the direction of her car. All at once she realized it would be risky to drive home in her present agitated state, not to mention the fact that she was probably over the breathalyser limit. She remembered she had parked the car in a meter bay; if she got back to it reasonably early in the morning, it was unlikely to have been towed away. She turned up the collar of her jacket, thrust her hands into the pockets, and turned into a side street, heading for Tottenham Court Road and a taxi.
Chapter 10
The answering-machine was flashing when Loretta arrived home and she pressed the playback button wearily. The first message was from Andrew Walker, a history lecturer from college, who wanted to pass on some gossip about a mutual enemy of theirs in the bursar’s office. He would be at his cottage in Charlbury next day, he said, and in the history department on Friday. Loretta shook her head, wondering how Andrew had managed to avoid being in London on the first day of term. She waited for the next message, expecting Tom Neil’s voice, but it didn’t come. Instead she heard the machine rewind, and looked at it in surprise. Maybe Neil had phoned but decided against leaving a message? Since acquiring the answering-machine a few weeks before Christmas Loretta had discovered that this was a disappointingly frequent occurrence, regardless of how she phrased the outgoing message. She decided she needed to record it again, this time with a direct plea to callers not to ring off without announcing themselves, and made a mental note to do it at the weekend.
She scooped up Bertie from an armchair and left the room, turning off the light. She went slowly up the stairs, the cat cradled in her arms, and deposited him on the bed. He blinked, flexed his front paws a couple of times, and went back to sleep. It occurred to her that he at least would not miss Robert, whose visits to the flat tended to coincide with the cat’s exclusion from the bedroom, and she wondered if she would come to regret their chilly parting. She was too tired to worry about it now, she thought, glancing at the clock on the bedside table and seeing it was nearly midnight. Where would Robert spend the night? She felt a momentary pang of guilt, then remembered he had come to London by car and could just as easily drive back again. And of course there was his club . . . Loretta began pulling her jumper over her head, slipping her shoes off at the same time.
A few minutes later, her clothes folded neatly over a chair, she was in bed. T
he room was at the back of the house, undisturbed by street lights and traffic noise from Liverpool Road, and she lay in the darkness with her hands clasped on the pillow behind her head. Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom and she fixed them on the outline of the lampshade, its deep fringe casting a curiously elongated shadow on the ceiling. For the second night running she didn’t feel the least bit sleepy, in spite of the ache behind her eyes which would probably be a lot worse in the morning. Her mind returned restlessly to the scene in the Greek restaurant, picking over the sequence of events from the moment of Robert’s arrival in an attempt to pinpoint when things went wrong. At the time the row had seemed to come out of the blue, without warning, but now Loretta wasn’t so sure. She realized she hadn’t been looking forward to seeing him, and wondered if she’d subconsciously chosen a subject that was bound to provoke an argument. She ought to have known by now that Robert’s views were both entrenched and surprisingly conventional.
The last word brought her up short. Someone else had used it of Robert. . . Loretta suddenly remembered a conversation with Sandra just after Christmas. At the time she had been irritated by Sandra’s unsolicited opinion on the incongruity of her relationship with Robert, but perhaps it had struck a chord? If so, Loretta wasn’t yet sure whether she was grateful or angry about the result, and her conflicting feelings on this issue stirred up others. Sandra had used her, she thought, visualizing the woman’s arrival at the flat on Christmas Eve. Where had she come from, and why? She pictured Sandra in the hall, unbuttoning her raincoat with her luggage at her feet. It wasn’t a far step to thinking of the suitcase lying open on the drawing-room floor that afternoon, the bundles of money sitting on top of Sandra’s crumpled clothes. The scene changed again, images coming into her head almost randomly now: Janet Weir beckoning from the door of the Notting Hill flat; Sandra walking into Loretta’s kitchen in the lilac kimono she used as a dressing-gown; the naked woman on the postcard from Sandra’s lover. Suddenly Robert was standing just inside the bedroom door, and when Loretta looked more closely he was carrying Sandra’s body in his arms. ‘Where would you like it?’ he asked, advancing on the bed, and Loretta heard a scream –
She jerked into a sitting position, staring wildly round the empty room, and it took her a moment to realize that the scream which had woken her was her own. She lay back against the pillow, her heart pounding as the dream receded, then sat up and reached for the glass of water on the bedside table. She took a couple of sips, noticing that it was now ten minutes to one; she must get some rest – she had to be up early to move her car nearer the college, and she had a lecture at ten followed by a two-hour tutorial. The head of the English department, Bernard Shilling, had called a meeting after lunch, an event which Loretta considered a complete waste of time but couldn’t afford to miss. As the government’s education cuts bit deeper, Shilling seemed to regard it as his duty to give his staff regular pep talks. The elements were familiar, and consisted of numerous platitudes about ‘these difficult times’, combined with veiled threats about the consequences for any member of the department foolish enough to take part in the public protests organized by the AUT. . . Loretta sighed, realizing she had allowed herself to be sidetracked by a new set of worries. She’d be tied up until at least three-thirty, and when was she going to find time to call Derek Ghilardi? In desperation she put out a hand and touched the cat, allowing herself to be comforted by his sleepy purr and the softness of his coat. Then she turned over on her side, drew up her legs, and sternly commanded herself to go to sleep.
The next day was as busy as Loretta had anticipated, and she returned from college in the late afternoon somewhat out of sorts; she still hadn’t succeeded in speaking to Ghilardi, who had been in a meeting when she snatched time to phone him, but she had collected a parking-ticket in spite of returning to her car at nine-fifteen. She stopped at Sainsbury’s on her way home, then parked the car and walked the last few yards to her flat with a shopping bag in each hand. The weather was cold, though not bitterly so, and she debated with herself as to whether she had the energy to light a fire in the drawing-room. She had no plans to go out; her scheme for the evening was an early supper followed by a couple of hours of marking, making a start on the essays she’d collected that morning.
Someone was sitting on the step in front of Loretta’s house. The hunched, child-like figure in a duffel coat was leaning against the railings, arms clasped round knees and white face staring glumly ahead. On drawing level Loretta saw it was a girl, eleven or twelve years old, with long brown hair pulled back in a pony tail.
‘Hello,’ she said in surprise, wondering if the visitor was waiting for Shahin. If so, perhaps she ought to invite her in. She could hardly leave her sitting on the doorstep in the gathering dusk. ‘Have you –’
‘Are you Loretta?’ The girl sprang to her feet, and immediately seemed older. ‘I’m Lizzie.’
‘Lizzie?’
‘Lizzie Neil – you talked to me last night. Can we go inside? I’m freezing, I’ve been waiting hours.’
‘Have you?’ Loretta gazed at the girl, taken aback by this unexpected visitation. ‘Did your father – is he here?’ She glanced hurriedly up and down the street, half expecting Tom Neil to materialize from behind a lamppost.
‘Of course not,’ Lizzie said scornfully. ‘Look, I’m jolly cold, so if you don’t mind. . .’
‘Um, yes, of course. Just let me find my keys.’ Loretta lowered one of the carrier bags to the ground and fumbled in her shoulder-bag. ‘Here we are.’
She unlocked the street door and led the way inside. ‘It’s at the top, I’m afraid.’ She began climbing the stairs, wondering why she was apologizing to Lizzie Neil. She hadn’t asked her to turn up like this, and she couldn’t imagine what the girl wanted. Surely Neil hadn’t sent her to collect her mother’s luggage on her own?
‘Come in,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘You’d better take off your coat.’
She hung up her own, shaking it first to get rid of the creases it had acquired on the journey home.
‘Is that real?’ Lizzie asked in a disapproving voice, hanging her duffel coat on the next-door hook.
‘Good God no,’ said Loretta. She stared at the bright red fake fur. ‘Have you ever seen an animal this colour?’
‘It might be dyed,’ Lizzie said dismissively, transferring her attention to the hall and gazing round it with a slight frown on her face.
‘Well it isn’t,’ Loretta said firmly. ‘Now, would you like a hot drink? How long have you been sitting on the step?’
Lizzie didn’t need to consult her watch. ‘Two and a quarter hours last time I looked. That was just before you came.’ She thrust her hands into the pockets of a new pair of jeans and looked down at her baseball boots. ‘I would have got here earlier but I got lost on the Underground – I’ve never been to London on my own before. Is this your cat?’ She knelt to stroke Bertie, who had just appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Yes, he’s called Bertie. He’s Burmese.’
‘Why do you keep a cat in a flat? It isn’t very big.’ She peered past Loretta into the kitchen with the air of a prospective purchaser who is unimpressed by what she sees. Lizzie’s resemblance to her mother was unsettling, Loretta thought, and it wasn’t confined to her appearance.
‘He’s quite happy,’ she said tartly.
‘Where does he –’
‘He’s got a litter tray.’ Loretta tried to make it clear from her tone that the subject was closed. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Yes please. Have you got Earl Grey? Tea, I mean, not teabags.’
‘Um – yes.’ Loretta thought Lizzie was treating her like a canteen assistant and decided to assert herself. ‘You go in there and I’ll bring it through,’ she said, pointing in the direction of the drawing-room.
Lizzie shrugged. ‘OK.’
Five minutes later, when Loretta arrived with a tray, she found Lizzie playing with Bertie.
�
��I like your cat,’ she announced, making circles in the air with a biro. Bertie was watching closely; suddenly he shot out a paw and knocked the pen to the floor. Lizzie laughed, a surprisingly girlish sound.
‘Milk? Sugar?’
‘No sugar.’ Lizzie took the mug and trickled milk into it like a connoisseur.
Loretta took her mug to the sofa, sat down and fixed the girl with a direct look. ‘Lizzie, I’m not sure why you’re here–
‘I’m here about Mum,’ Lizzie said impatiently, turning to look at Loretta. ‘You said she stayed with you at Christmas – I wanted to see what your house was like. I didn’t know it was a flat until I saw the bell. It doesn’t say in the phone book.’ She looked as disapproving as she had in the hall.
Loretta swallowed the urge to apologize for the meagreness of her living quarters. ‘Well, this is it,’ she said instead, gesturing round the room. ‘Your mother slept in here, where I’m sitting – this sofa turns into a bed. There’s only one bedroom,’ she added, feeling like the urban poor.
‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ said Lizzie. ‘You haven’t really got room – why didn’t she come home if she couldn’t stay at her flat?’