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ways.
    ‘Who was she?’
Rhona tried to make her voice as if she didn’t care.
    Sean studied
her carefully, his eyes catching hers.
    ‘A woman I know
who likes art galleries,’ he said.
    ‘Like me.’
    ‘No,’ he shook
his head, ‘not like you.’ He ran his fingers through his hair.
    I’ve got to
him, she thought. She waited for him to say something else then
interrupted him when he tried.
    ‘Rhona...’
    ‘Are you
fucking her?’
    ‘Fucking her?’
He repeated the words so lightly they no longer seemed important.
‘It doesn’t matter if I am.’
    ‘It matters to
me,’ she said angrily.
    He didn’t
answer. In the distance Rhona heard a church clock chime. She
counted eight before he spoke.
    ‘That’s because
you make it matter,’ he said quietly.
    Sean was never
outright angry. When he was ruffled or irritated he always gave the
impression he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
Sometimes Rhona wished he would argue with her, let it out. But he
never did and she was always left yapping at his heels like a
terrier.
    ‘If I tell you
I’m not, will you believe me?’ he said.
    She had known
this would happen.
    ‘Listen,’ he
reached over the table and lifted her chin and made her look at
him. ‘I will not cook for her or play for her or stroke the back of
her neck when she’s tired,’ and he ran his hand tenderly down the
curve of her face.
    They left the
table without clearing it and moved through to the living room.
Sean lit the gas fire and closed the curtains. He sat on the couch
and made a place for her in the crook of his arm. Rhona allowed
herself to slip close against him, laying her head on his chest;
already thinking of what her life would be like without him.
    When the phone
rang, Sean was the one who got up and answered it.
    ‘It’s for you,’
he said. ‘A man. Didn’t give his name.’ Sean’s face betrayed
nothing.
    She took the
receiver and Sean left the room. From the bedroom she heard a
trickle of notes.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Rhona? It’s
Edward. Edward Stewart.’ The repetition was unnecessary. As if
Rhona wouldn’t know that voice anywhere, at any time.
    He’s talking to
me like a client, Rhona thought. There was the sound of a throat
being cleared.
    ‘Would it be
possible to speak to you about some business?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Rhona, this is
difficult for me...’
    Things were
always difficult for him, never for anyone else. ‘Fuck off Edward,’
she said and began to put the phone down.
    ‘Rhona, wait,
please. It’s important.’
    There was
something in his voice that stopped her from hanging up.
    ‘Could we
meet?’ he was asking.
    Rhona heard
herself agree.
    ‘Tomorrow. Half
ten?’
    Edward was
confident again as he said goodbye. He’s got what he wanted, she
thought. What sort of business could he possibly want to discuss?
Business, as in his law firm, or business as in the by-election
he’s hoping to win next month? And why now? she asked herself. We
haven’t spoken in three years, and then only across a bench in
court. He hadn’t been pleased when her evidence put his client
away. Edward didn’t like losing.
    Sean was still
playing his saxophone but now he’d moved to a tune that Rhona had
come to think of as theirs. The tune he’d been playing, he said,
when he fell in love with her.
    She knew he
meant it now as a peace offering.
    Sean wouldn’t
ask her who the man on the phone was. He wouldn’t ask her if she’d
slept with him in the past or was sleeping with him in the present.
He wouldn’t ask because it wouldn’t make any difference to the way
he felt about her.
    Rhona only
wished she could feel the same.
     
     

Chapter 4
    There were
times when Bill Wilson thought he had been in the police force too
long. Such negative thoughts usually surfaced when Margaret, his
wife, told him off for talking to their two teenage children ‘like
you’re interrogating them’, or when (like last night) he’d told an
unmarked police car to follow