Page 86 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘I had to go to Norfolk first and then across to a place near Guildford, so I thought I might as well call in on Zelda this morning before I came home, to clear the air with her.’
‘And … did you manage to do that?’ I asked.
He frowned. ‘It’s odd: you’ve known someone for years and years and think you understand what makes them tick, and then they throw you a curve ball that makes you see you really didn’t at all.’
‘A new curve ball, or the old one?’
‘A new dimension: the reason she thought I’d be up for marrying her and starting a family is that she was under the illusion that I’d kept a torch burning for her ever since we briefly went out with each other at university.’
‘And have you?’ I asked bluntly, the words just marching right out there.
‘No, of course I haven’t!’ he snapped. ‘I’ve already told you that Ionly see her as a friend and that’s how I thought she saw me, too. Yet all the time she really thought … I mean, she’s veryprettybut she doesn’t ring my bells.’ He looked across at me, his light grey eyes inscrutable. ‘I seem to go for an entirely different kind of girl these days.’
‘Presumably she usually prefers a different kind of man – so you’re a desperation measure.’
‘Yes – thanks for that,’ he said tartly. ‘But what it all boils down to is that she’s obsessed with the idea of having a baby before it’s too late and would rather do it with a partner than on her own. And she genuinely thought that I’d never found someone else because I was in love with her. I wondered why she was so affectionate all of a sudden, and kept ringing me about stuff she’d usually sort without my going down to London.’
‘Yeah, right,’ I said disbelievingly. ‘I’m sure I’ve read that novel.’ I was starting to think Zelda could have a second career as a writer. ‘So, did you put her straight?’
‘Yes, and she says she’s going to have to go it alone, with AI.’
‘Lots of women do, these days,’ I said.
‘I warned her to weigh it all up carefully first, but she said she hadn’t got time, the clock was ticking.’
‘It does sound as if she can’t think of anything else, now.’
‘No, she can’t, because then I suggested that since she’d been left a bit of money lately, she should buy me out of the antiques stall and throw herself into expanding the business. She said she’d consider it, but she might need the money to buy a flat, because living on a house boat wouldn’t be ideal with a child.’
‘I suppose that’s true,’ I said. ‘You’ll just have to wait and see how things pan out.’
‘That’s the conclusion I came to, as well,’ he said, getting up. ‘And now I’d better go and unpack the rest of the car and leave you to do some more work.’
‘I’d just about got to the staring-into-space phase of trying to figure out how it will all end,’ I said. ‘I can’t do any more tonight, so perhaps, before you go, you wouldn’t mind helping me with something in the tearoom? I need you to hand me the crockery I want todisplay on the shelves, so I don’t have to keep going up and down the ladder. It’ll only take a few minutes.’
‘Opportunist!’ he said, though after watching me sway about on the top of the ladder for a few moments, he told me I was unnerving him and took over.
Bossy as always.
Still, despite my colleagues evidently considering me to be completely devoid of human emotions, I wasn’t entirely immune to curiosity. I therefore asked to see the files of patients who had recently registered, a perfectly reasonable request and one I’d made before. I discovered Alice Rose lived not far from the surgery and thought I might walk in that direction one day.
31
Distant Echoes
Robbie, having heard about Dan’s death from mutual friends, actually rang me, all the way from Australia! This wasn’t something he was prone to do. In fact, I didn’t think I’d heard his voice since he emigrated, but he sounded just the same.
‘Where did you get this landline number from?’ I asked, astonished, once he’d trotted out his ‘Sorry for your loss, mate’ condolences, like a pale imitation Crocodile Dundee. I’m pretty sure the ‘mate’ was unintentional, it just slipped out.
‘Edie gave it to me and told me where you were. She always had a soft spot for me,’ he said smugly.
‘She did until you vanished to Australia. After that, whenever your name came up, she said you were a great daftie.’
‘It’s probably a Scottish term of endearment and I think she’s forgiven me. Anyway, I’ll be coming over soon and I wanted to see you.’
‘Why? You didn’t bother last time, or the one before.’
‘No, but that was because you were at the other end of the country, shacked up with Dan Carmichael.’
