Greyglass, Tanith Lee [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

track of the rift with R.J. – but then only momentarily. And her work was not very good. Like a disobedient child, she was sent back by the editor to re-work the canvas massively, made a hash of it, and had to start again.

“Is something wrong, Susan?”

“No – I’m just a bit upset. My – grandmother’s not well.”

“Oh, lord. I’m sorry. Yes, you look worn out. Is she dangerously ill?”

“Oh no, no, she’ll be all right. She’s very strong. But – well. She’s the only family I’ve got in England.”

Why such a ridiculous lying lie? Never mind, it got her off the hook, though someone else took over the cover job. Too many more of those and Paragon wouldn’t want her. Her fame from the Cameron was fading fast. As had the ten thousand pounds.

One night he called her. She thought it was Anne, who promised in a letter to call at ten o’clock. But Anne seldom now kept any promises to Susan, including the ones of sending her more money orders, coming to England again, or of making it financially possible for Susan to visit New Jersey, where Anne and Wizz now lived. The last, of course, was a relief.

Instead of the by now slightly Americanised, at last slightly aging, voice of her mother, Susan heard R.J.

“Are you free to talk a moment?”

“Yes,” she said, and fell back into the chair.

“I’ve missed you.”

She started to cry.

Standing above herself she thought, Shut up, for Christ’s sake, just as she had when they rowed and she sniped and whinged.

He said gently, “Don’t cry, Susan. Let’s – look, I have to come up to meet Hammond next Tuesday. Shall we have dinner? Maybe we could. I’d like to see you.

They met on Tuesday. She wore a new black dress, and earrings he said were like stars. He was supposed to get back to Hampshire, but in the end he rang Maria from a callbox. Susan stood there and heard him say he had missed the train and would stay over at a hotel.

She wondered, even as they travelled to Brashspeare Road, if later he would tell Maria the truth.

This time their lovemaking was hesitant, and in the end, for Susan, disappointing. There was no longer an electric current between them. It was only sex. Had she stopped loving him, being obsessed by him? Or was she only afraid to be?

She didn’t care. She had to see him, have him, even if only now and then, if only for the most methodical sex.

He looked older. But so did she, she thought.

That night, lying in bed with him while he slept, she wished Maria would die, couldn’t hold the wish away, like a cruel and unavoidable sneeze. The next day it haunted her.

Sorry, Maria, she thought, after he was gone, at eight a.m. But she cried again.

She cried off and on all through the next months. So that by the night they stopped seeing each other once more, this time for good, she was practice perfect in the abysm of tears.

Susan had made a second bedroom, which opened independently from the corridor of her flat, into her workroom. It too had a large window which looked out over the lawns, to a winter-bare apple tree and the edge of the pond. Some days after she had delivered the package, from this window Susan saw the girl walking across the grass.

Viewed in cold morning sunlight, she was arresting. The long skeins of fair hair incandescent in the sun, her slender equilibrium, and the choice look of her pale clothes. Later, Susan left her flat to go to the supermarket, and saw a white cat running along the corridor towards Flats A, B and D.

She had never seen this cat before, but now and then a few cats appeared in the gardens, pets of other residents, or even visitors from over the walls.

The cat reminded her oddly of Crissie Fielding. She didn’t know why. Perhaps it belonged to her?

Susan had asked the estate agent about cats the first time, when he brought her to see the flat last spring.

“A feral colony in the gardens? Not any more. I’ve never heard of it, I must say. Probably some cat place caught and re-homed them.”

He had vouchsafed nothing about Olivia and Jeremy, either, let alone about Catherine. But he was very keen on the virtues of the flat, showing it off to Susan like an impresario with shares.

“Oh. There’s no window in the bathroom.”

“No, ’fraid not, but there is the latest in extractor fans. And look at this – ” he pressed a switch, and a false window lit up, with a stained glass picture of Rousseau-esque leaves and flowers, reflecting in the midnight blue suite, with its gold sea-shell taps.

When he showed her round the gardens, which were now like a well-stocked park, with pools, roses, terraces, trimmed hedges and trees, statues and vistas, Susan had been perplexed by the exterior of the house. Naturally it had undergone endless internal rearrangements and additions, and had gained about seven main entrances to give access to all the flats, plus all the arched windows, French doors, and balconies. But certain parts of the masonry had also been, she thought, cut into and excised, other portions extended outwards. But she had never been sure of its contours. Even the house had not, constantly changing its shape. Now it had been made also strong and youthful, with a succulent, painted skin. “Mediterranean Gold,” described the agent. “But they repaint, when they do the other major maintenance, every five years.”

With all the cover charges for the upkeep of garden and house, the general price, and the vagaries of her semi-self-employed status, getting her mortgage had been quite an endurance test.

Soon after Susan returned from the shop and was unpacking her groceries, her doorbell sounded.

She knew before she opened it – knew also the next scene would contain the white cat.

Sure enough, Crissie Fielding stood there, holding the cat in her arms. Both