Page 63 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
‘I was trying to put the whole sorry episode out of my mind. Not only was there Max to consider, but Dante isn’t my type,and he’s absolutely eaten by the trauma of seeing his friend killed, and then the guilt about his wife.’
‘He’s got a wife? I thought he was a widower?’
‘He is. I meant he was guilty about his wife because she was pregnant and died while he was a hostage.’
‘Oh well, if she’sdead,’ Orla said expansively, ‘what does she matter?’
‘Dead wives seem to be more trouble than living ones – look atRosemary,’ I pointed out bitterly, and then, abandoning the troublesome – and troubling – Dante, toldher more or less everything that had passed between Max and me earlier.
‘He did look like an old goat in that beard – it’s definitely a mistake,’ she agreed. ‘And if you’re convinced that Rosemary was telling the truth in her letter, then he’s been lying to you all down the line. You’re goingto have to cut loose, Cass – you simply don’t love him any more, do you?’
‘But thereweremoments when he almost had me believing him again, and I could have – I mean, if it weren’t for that beard—’
‘He’s too mercenary even to marry you after all these years together. And face it, Cass, if he agreed that you could try for a baby and you still turned him down flat, you not only don’t fancy himany more, you positively dislike him!’
I sighed. ‘Yes, you’re right, but things are never that simple, are they? The worst bit was when he first arrived and wanted me to jump straight into bed with him! I felt all shy and embarrassed at the idea, because he was just like a stranger, and a stranger I didn’t even fancy, at that. And he couldn’t understand how awful I felt about poor Rosemary either,or evenwantto try and understand it. And then, of course, he didn’t know what I’d done with Dante, either.’
‘Yeshewas a stranger, but apparently a stranger you fancied,’ she said. ‘Hard to explain to Max, that.’
‘Hard to explain tome, never mind Max.’
‘Ye-es,’ Orla looked pensively down at her immaculate fingernails. ‘With Dante, Cass, you did take precautions, didn’t you?’
‘I thoughtof that – too late! – and I shouldn’t think so. But I’m not an adolescent, likely to get pregnant from a one-night stand. Anyway, according to the Predictova thing I probably didn’t ovulate this month, so that’s that.’
‘He’s young, though – around thirty-five, six, do youthink? Good stud material! If you really want to try for a baby, he’s your man.’
‘He’s not my man, he’s a drunken aberration,and now he knows about Max he probably thinks I sleep around whenever my lover’s away, so I’m just a tart. I’m going to put that night right out of my head, and I’m not going to do his haunting, either.’
‘Of course he won’t think you’re a tart!’ she said indignantly. ‘And that night you spent together, what I’d really like to know—’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ I said firmly. ‘And even if you would,I’m not going to tell you. Even if I remembered.’
‘Spoilsport! And it’s sod’s law that you get the only available decent man, when you’ve already got a lover. Orhada lover, perhaps I should say. Isn’t it odd how everyone we know seems to have lost their spouse?’
I thought about it, and had to agree: ‘Yes, Max, Dante and Jason have all lost their wives in one way or another.’
‘And I lost ahusband, don’t forget,’ Orla said. ‘There’s Mike.’
‘At least you know where Mikeis.He ran off with that busty blonde exec with the big briefcase.’
‘True,’ she conceded. ‘And once I knew they were living in Swindon I realized that God had punished them as much as they deserved.’
‘Yes, so that only makes two dead wives …’ I ticked them off on my fingers. ‘One disappeared wife, and one divorcedhusband. Shall I now officially dump my lover of over twenty years standing (though very little of it was standing, as I recall), and join the Suddenly Single club?’
‘You’ve been single as near as damn it for years anyway, Cass, and at least now there’s the possibility of getting something going with Dante.’
‘There is no possibility of gettinganythinggoing withDante: too young, too big, toodark, too intense, too haunted, too traumatized and too scary!’
‘That’s at least five things you’ve got in common to start with,’ she suggested helpfully. ‘You are carrying a load of guilt, rejection and childhood trauma. And what do you mean, he’s too scary? This fromyou!’
‘He’s different scary to my usual scary,’ I tried to explain. ‘Maybe you’re right about us having things in common, butthat’s surely all the more reason not to go near each other? I may have piqued him a bit, as you say, but really he’s only interested in getting me to flit about the grounds of the Hall at night doing ghost impersonations for the edification of his visitors.’
‘His sister’s visitors,’ Orla corrected. ‘I wonder what she’s like? Clara’s met her in the shop, and she says she looks a bit like Dante,and is very nice. She told her she’d already advertised the first ghost party weekend, and she’s taken on two cleaners to get the place straight, and hired a garden clearing service to come and sort out the grounds.’
‘That’s quick work! And there isn’t going to be much profit after paying for all that,’ I pointed out. ‘And if Dante’s so well off, which he must be, I don’t see why he should beletting his sister do this at all.’
Orla looked surprised: ‘Oh, haven’t I brought you up to date on all the nice long chats I’ve been having with Dante? I only wish he looked at me the way he looks at you, so brooding and sombre and—’
