The Glass Lake (34 page)

“I know. Sorry, Mother. I was running to the library to do more revision.”

“Right. But just walk briskly. Do you feel all right? You look flushed.”

“I'm fine, Mother.” Kit escaped before the groaning lie should be discovered and further explanations sought.

         

“Emmet, will you deliver a note up to Kellys' for me.”

“No.”

“I'll pay you.”

“How much, threepence?”

“I was going to say a penny.”

“I won't do it for a penny.”

“You're a horrible, horrible person.”

“Okay. I won't do it at all.”

“When I think of all I do for you.” Kit was stung.

“What exactly do you do for me?”

“I protect you.”

“Who do you protect me from?”

“From people shouting at you.”

“Oh, don't be silly, Kit. You don't protect me. People shout at everyone.”

“I always speak nicely about you. I even think nicely about you.”

“Well, why shouldn't you? I'm not that bad. Why should you be giving out about me?”

“Everyone else gives out about their sisters and brothers. I don't.”

“Who gives out?”

“Clio does. Stevie does. Patsy Hanley gives out about Deirdre.”

“Well,” Emmet shrugged, as if these were people with crosses to bear.

“Oh all right. Be as rotten as everyone else. I used to think you were special.”

“What did you want delivered?”

“A note to Clio.”

“Why couldn't you walk up with it yourself? You and Clio have a path worn to each other's house…”

“I'm not talking to her.”

“So it's a note making it all up?”

“No it's not. It's a note saying how bad she is, and how she pokes her horrible nose everywhere it isn't wanted.”

“That'll only make things worse.” Emmet was philosophical.

“Yes, but I don't care. They couldn't be bad enough between us as far as I'm concerned.”

“But then you'll go and apologize or she will, and it will all be back where it was.” Emmet had seen these fights ebb and flow over the years.

“I don't think so this time.”

“That's what you always say,” Emmet said. “You'll forgive her or she'll forgive you, and things will be the same for a while.”

Kit thought about it. He was quite right, that was the way the pattern always had been. But not this time. No, Clio had almost snatched her secret from her.

Out of nothing but sheer pique she had nearly found out that Mother's friend Lena was writing these letters. And if Clio discovered that, then it would all have been over. In some way Kit knew that it had to be secret to continue. She wished that Lena had been able to say something sensible about why she couldn't come to Lough Glass. It sounded like a load of excuses.

“So what happens now?” Emmet asked. He was wondering whether to bring his price down.

But life was full of surprises. “I'll tell you what happens next,” Kit said cheerfully, tucking her arm into his. “I am going to buy you an ice cream, how about that.”

“What do I have to do for it?” Emmet asked.

“Nothing, nothing at all. Just admit that you have the best sister in these parts for miles.”

“I suppose I do really,” Emmet said thoughtfully. And together they ran up toward the shop before Kit might change her mind.

“S
WEETHEART
?” Louis rang Lena at the agency.

“The very person,” she said, and the smile came into her voice.

“You know this conference?”

“Oh, yes.” Did it sound casual enough? she wondered. Did it give any telltale hint that she had been thinking about nothing else for weeks?

“The rules have changed.”

“In what way…?”

“We are allowed to take spouses, partners, whatevers.” A great silence. “So…”

“So, Louis?”

“So, isn't that great? Pack your glad rags and we'll have a ball.”

“I can't.”

“You what?”

“I can't, love. You know that. I've arranged to baby-sit Mrs. Park, and to keep the office open. No, there are too many people. I can't back out.”

“We'll never have anything like this again…you can't turn it down.”

“If I'd known earlier I wouldn't have set all this up.”

“Well, I didn't bloody know earlier.”

Oh, how she would love to have gone on a train journey, all expenses paid, to Yorkshire. She would have taken out a map and wondered were they passing places like the Wash and the Humber.

They would have stayed, for the first time since the time of the miscarriage, that terrible visit to Brighton, in a hotel together. They would have had free time…time to talk and relax together. She could have looked well for him, and been happy. She could have sparkled in front of other people and made him proud of her. The tight knot in her stomach would have gone because he would have wanted her.

She had allowed a silence to fall between them. She heard him grumble. “Are you making your mind up or is that it?”

“Why didn't you tell me earlier?” she asked.

“Because I didn't know earlier,” he said, as if explaining to an idiot or a child.

“James Williams knew earlier,” Lena said.

“What do you mean?”

“I met him. And he asked me was I going. I said there were no spouses, he said he thought there were.”

“And he was right,” Louis cried triumphantly. “He was the one who said from the start that this was the way it should be.”

Lena felt very, very tired. What would someone else have done in her shoes? A cleverer woman? Would she have dropped everything and gone, gone with him, stormed her way back into his heart again? Or would she have allowed herself to be persuaded slowly, played hard to get?

“I can't go, Louis,” she said. Because she had thought she would be alone for the weekend, Lena had set up so many activities to distract her that she was going to be busy every second of the time. Now she realized with bitter irony it would be impossible to unpick them. There were too many people depending on her. Louis believed she was sulking and trying to make a point about staying behind. She decided it would be best not to apologize or explain too much. Just to let him know that she would have loved the trip. “Let me take you to lunch on the Friday,” she suggested.

“I don't know. If you've time to go gallivanting off to lunch with men like me, why haven't you time to come to Scarborough?”

“Because, you idiot, I thought you couldn't take me. Come on, let's have a lunch like people do in the movies.” She had persuaded him.

But as Lena sat in her office and studied her face in the mirror of her compact she saw with alarm that she must look many, many years older than she was. There was a tight drawn look, a near permanent frown. Her hair seemed dull and her eyes lifeless. No wonder he had asked someone else to Scarborough. Someone who had let him down at the last moment. No, no. She would not allow herself to think that way. But what a dreary wife she would look.

“Jessie,” she said, suddenly standing up. “I have to go out on business. See you after lunch.”

She knew her voice sounded raspy and tinny. She saw Dawn and the two other assistants look up in surprise. Mrs. Gray always spoke gently and moved smoothly from place to place. She didn't grab up a handbag and scamper out the way she had today.

Dawn looked after her in amazement. “What's happened to her?” she asked.

Jessica didn't like office gossip, and especially not about Lena. “Carry on, Dawn,” she said briskly.

But inside in the inner sanctum she confessed to Jim Millar that she thought Lena Gray was working too hard. “She's looking after my mum while you and I go out, she's coming in to deal with workmen here…carpenters she found herself. She's got the girls doing overtime so that we'll have the whole new filing system set up by Monday…I don't know.”

“What's that handsome husband of hers going to think if she's working in here all hours of the day and night?”

“I think he's going away on some conference or other.”

“Maybe that's what has her on edge,” said Jim Millar.

         

“Grace, can you squeeze me in?”

“Sure thing. Come to the end cubicle.” Grace started to take out the shampoo.

“Not you yourself…you're the manager…I meant one of the girls.”

“They're all busy…I'm glad to say.” Grace's singsong voice never sounded anything other than cheerful, yet Lena knew she had a hard life. The man Grace loved had two children by other women. They were not spoken of.

“I feel so awful, I look old and sad and no use to anyone.”

“Tired maybe?” Grace suggested.

“We know what ‘tired' means.” They laughed. It was a polite way of saying that age was showing.

“Work is it?” Grace asked as her firm fingers massaged Lena's scalp.

“No,” Lena muttered into the towel as she leaned over the basin. “No, work runs itself.”

“Me too,” Grace said. “Funny, isn't it? Men had such a big deal about work. To women like you and me it's nothing. Nothing at all.”

“He has someone else,” Lena said as she sat and looked at herself turbaned with a towel.

“No, I'm sure that's not so,” Grace said.

“I'm sure it is.”

“I'll give you a hot oil treatment, make your hair shinier, and I'll find some nice makeup for you.”

“It won't get him back.”

“Perhaps he has not gone.”

“I think he has…you know the way you know these things.”

Grace had massaged in the warm olive oil and replaced the towel with another one. “Has he said he has someone else?”

“No, of course not.”

“Well then…”

“I didn't ask him,” Lena confessed.

“No, of course you didn't.” Grace grinned.

“But I can't stop thinking about it…all the time everywhere, at home, at work, in bed, even here. And I'm going to find out…I really am. I can't sleep until I know.”

“Not much sign of sleep recently.” Grace gently touched the dark shadows under Lena's eyes. Lena wanted to cry and hold the woman close to her. But it was a public place, and she had years and years experience at hiding her feelings.

“Think of something nice, think of something you really know is constant and true…”

“My daughter,” Lena said.

Grace looked up, startled. In all the time they had known each other the previous life had not been discussed. Only Ivy knew the whole story.

“How old is she?” Grace asked gently.

“Soon to be seventeen.”

“That's a great age, they're lovely at seventeen. And can you talk to her?”

“No, not directly.”

“Why?”

“She thinks I'm dead,” Lena said. And wondered had anyone in the world ever felt so lonely before.

“Well well, don't you look a treat,” he said in the restaurant.

And indeed she did, Grace had worked miracles.

“Have to send you off with a good memory of me,” she said, smiling at him.

“I wish it wasn't only the memory.”

“So do I, but honestly it's only a weekend…there'll be others.” She was determined to make a virtue out of it now that it had to be done this way.

His eyes were on her, she could feel them without looking up. “You look so alive…” he said.

“Thank you, Louis.”

“Let's have a glass of wine and go home, hey…?”

“What! We've only just arrived.”

“We can be home in a few minutes…I can't go away to the wilds and leave unfinished business behind me.” He wanted her now. She could still arouse him, make him desire her.

Lena smiled. “Well, I said let's have lunch like people do in the movies…but this is even better,” she said, and went ahead of him out of the restaurant.