As she opened the door of her car it seemed to be the ending of a chapter which could never be re-written, however hard she tried. The initial mistake she had made in trusting Coralie implicitly had brought her confusion and heartache, but it had also brought her companionship and love. She would never forget Emma and Fergus and Sandy, who had left a bright warmth in her heart, just as she could never forget Charles, who must still hold her in absolute contempt. So much so that he must only be glad that she would never return to the glen.
There was very little to do when she reached the flat because she had decided to tidy up finally on the Monday morning. After that she would leave, phoning through to Emma at the hotel to tell her what she had done. The paintings would be safe enough at the flat until someone could come to Edinburgh to collect them.
All next day she wondered about Glassary, thinking that the routine would be very much the same as it had always been; seeing Sandy riding down to the Stable House on his pony or sitting bolt upright on Fergus’s knee while the electric wheelchair careered down the slope towards the loch; seeing Fergus preparing a new canvas for his brush while he discussed it with Emma, or even showing it to Charles. There would be the boat on the loch lying beside the wooden jetty with the oars ready, and the ducks congregating among the reeds, and high up against the rugged contours of the mountains there would be a kestrel or a buzzard hovering above the moor to plummet in a magnificent aerial dive when it found its prey.
Because it was a day for heights she climbed to the top of Arthur’s Seat to look down on the broad estuary of the Forth and beyond the water to the green Ochils standing in a bright half-circle, shutting out the wind from the north. Edinburgh lay at her feet, its undoubted magic casting its spell until she knew that she would stay there for good or ill. This lovely northern capital with its grey towers and battlemented castle standing high on its ancient rock had bewitched her, and she would look for a job here. London, in comparison, seemed very far away.
Her decision made, she scanned an old issue of The Scotsman to assess the situation as it would affect her and decided that her chances were good. In the morning she would ring an agency, leaving her credentials with them for reference.
It occurred to her, then, to phone Emma at the hotel, telling her that she would leave the paintings at the flat for Fergus to collect when he was next in Edinburgh. There was a long pause before Emma answered.
‘I think you’re wrong,’ she said slowly, ‘avoiding Glassary like this. I think you ought to come back to the glen even if it’s only to say goodbye.’
‘I’ve already said my goodbyes.’ Katherine almost choked on the words. ‘I couldn’t bear to do it all over again, especially if I met Charles.’
‘I guess that would be inevitable if you went to Glassary,’ Emma agreed, ‘but why not come here and take a chance?’
‘Later, perhaps,’ said Katherine. ‘I’ll look for a job, Emma, and then I’ll contact you again.’
‘I hope you will,’ Emma said doubtfully, ‘but I warn you that Fergus might not take “no” for an answer. He’s very grateful for your help, Kate. We all are, and we’ll be terribly disappointed if you cut adrift.’
‘I won’t do that,’ Katherine whispered. ‘Honestly. I’ll be in touch when I’ve settled in and perhaps we can meet when you come to Edinburgh!’
‘You’re still at the flat, of course?’ Emma asked.
‘Till tomorrow. Then I mean to look for a quiet hotel where I can stay for a while until I land a suitable job. Wish me luck!’ she added as lightly as she could.
Emma said: ‘Of course I wish you luck, but not while you’re being stupid and renouncing all your friends. You’ve done so much for us, Kate, we simply have to care about you. Fergus isn’t going to be at all pleased when he hears your decision.’
Katherine put down the receiver, her vision blurred by the tears she could no longer hold in check. They had become friends in the shortest space of time because Emma and Fergus had judged her impartially, apart from Coralie, but Charles had seen her as just another lightweight character like his sister-in-law and his former fiancée, and that alone would keep her from returning to the glen.
In the morning she packed her suitcase, leaving it just inside the door beside the paintings she had collected from the gallery the evening before. The view of the glen she had bought for herself was still unwrapped and she stood looking at it for one tender moment before she found the corrugated cardboard and brown paper in which to protect it against damage until she found a place for it on the wall of some other flat or even in a bed-sitter somewhere in the suburbs.
Even after she had dusted the living-room and smoothed out the cushions for the last time it was still only eleven o’clock. She had nearly a whole day before her, the first of many lonely days. They would fall into a pattern in the end when she eventually found work, but it would be a pattern far removed from Glassary.
The doorbell rang, jolting her thoughts back to the present, although she could not imagine whom it might be. Wildly she thought of Charles, her pulses racing for a moment, but when she lifted the receiver it was a woman’s voice that answered.
‘It’s Coralie,’ she said. ‘Can you let me in?’
Katherine’s first impulse was to refuse, to say ‘no’ because Coralie had caused so much trouble in the past, and then, almost automatically, she pressed the button which released the lock on the main door.
She was standing at the entrance to the flat when Coralie came up the stairs, and she saw instantly that her visitor had spent a restless night.
‘I have to talk to you,’ Coralie said, passing her as if she had expected to be kept standing on the landing. ‘I’ve got a lot to say.’
‘If it’s about Sandy,’ said Katherine, ‘surely you’ve said it all?’
Coralie closed the door behind her.
‘Not quite. I’ve taken nearly two days to think about it and now I’ve made my decision.’ She walked into the tidy living-room. ‘Are you leaving?’ she asked.
‘I can’t stay here indefinitely now that the exhibition is over,’ Katherine pointed out. ‘Emma and I had the use of the flat while we were working at the gallery, but I can’t expect Charles to go on accommodating me for ever.’
‘Why not?’ Coralie’s eyes were brilliant. ‘I could make this place look entirely different, given a chance,’ she decided. ‘I’d do away with this atrocious purple carpet, for a start, and change the wallpaper to liven things up a bit. Then I’d have different curtains and new furniture and plenty of side tables to reduce the space. I could do it over for Charles if he did want to let it.’
‘I don’t think he does,’ Katherine said firmly, ‘and I wouldn’t ask, if I were you. What did you come to say to me?’
Coralie’s enthusiasm died in her eyes as she met the challenge. She was no longer the effervescent designer, but a rather sad person who had come to a reluctant conclusion about her future.
‘Could we have some coffee or something?’ she asked plaintively. ‘I have to talk.’
Katherine went towards the kitchen where everything had been washed and stacked away.
‘I was going out to look for a hotel,’ she explained. ‘I won’t be staying here tonight.’
‘Surely a cup of coffee can’t be too great a problem,’ Coralie suggested, following her through. ‘I’ll help wash up afterwards, if you like.’
‘Two mugs won’t take much washing.’ In the face of her visitor’s obvious distress Katherine felt suddenly churlish. ‘I’m sorry! I should have offered,’ she apologised, ‘but there isn’t much to eat.’
‘I don’t eat in the middle of the morning,’ Coralie said. ‘I have to watch my figure, especially now that I’m going places and doing things. I’ve got that job I told you about, by the way,’ she added, ‘and the promise of a follow-up if I can go to Rome immediately afterwards. My designs are taking off in a big way.’ Her blue eyes glittered. ‘Success attracts success, as the saying goes!’
‘I expect it does,’ Katherine allowed, ‘but that’s not what you came to discuss, is it?’
Coralie spooned instant coffee powder into the jug she had found.
‘No, it isn’t,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know why I have to tell you, unless it’s because you were so fond of Sandy.’ Katherine turned to look at her in the full light from the kitchen window. All the brilliant anticipation of a successful future had faded from Coralie’s eyes and she looked lost. She was so like a bewildered Sandy in that moment that Katherine’s heart seemed to turn over, and then she said:
‘I guess I’m an essentially selfish person, Kate, but I’ve thought very carefully about the future now.’ She carried the coffee jug into the living-room. ‘You see, I hung around after I came to the gallery on Saturday afternoon intending to come back when Fergus had returned with Sandy. I did come back,’ she added, ‘and I was in one of the cubicles looking at Fergus’s paintings when they arrived. I saw you all together then for the first time. I saw Sandy’s joy and security and I knew I could never match it. I could never give him what he had at Glassary by right.’ Her voice faltered as she looked through the window at the trees in the gardens across the road. ‘I can hardly expect you to believe me,’ she said, ‘because it’s the toughest decision I’ve ever made, but I do mean to put Sandy’s interests first.’
Surprise and incredulity were both mirrored in Katherine’s eyes, and suddenly she found herself wishing that Coralie hadn’t told her about the wonderful chance she had been offered in Rome, about the amazing, continuing success of her career which seemed to be bounding forward by the hour. It made her decision about Sandy seem far too easy, her desire to do what was right for him ring slightly hollow even as she spoke.
‘You’re not saying very much,’ Coralie challenged, sipping her coffee. ‘Perhaps you don’t believe what I’ve just said?’
‘I want to believe you, Coralie, and I think I can understand how difficult it’s been for you to decide,’ Katherine said with genuine sympathy, ‘but it would do more damage if you eventually went back on your word.’
‘I’m not likely to do that.’ Coralie drew a deep breath. ‘I’ve thought everything out in the minutest detail, and even if I had Sandy I couldn’t trail him all over the world in pursuit of my career. I had a decision to make. A terrible decision,’ she added, her eyes suddenly beseeching in their evident sincerity about that, at least. ‘It wasn’t easy.’
Katherine’s heart was suddenly touched by pity.
‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think Fergus or Emma will ever want to shut you out completely. There’ll always be room for you in Sandy’s life.’
‘You speak of them together.’ The blue eyes were sharply inquisitive. ‘Will Fergus marry Emma?’
‘Eventually, I think. They have so much in common,’ Katherine pointed out.
Coralie nodded.
‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Having things in common, not wanting to rush off at a tangent to live your own life the way you want to. It’s what’s known as “togetherness” in the modern jargon, isn’t it? Being a single unit instead of two individual personalities pulling in the opposite direction all the time. Fergus and I never had it,’ she concluded. ‘We should never have married.’
Katherine crossed to her side, her coffee mug still in her hand.
‘It isn’t easy,’ she said, ‘working all these things out, and when you’re in love it doesn’t seem to matter.’
‘I thought I was in love in the beginning,’ Coralie mused, ‘until my life began to seem empty. It seemed empty long before Sandy was born, but he was the answer for a while, and then, after the accident, I knew. I could see all my future stretching before me with nothing done, and I couldn’t bear to look at Fergus tied to a wheelchair for the rest of our lives together. You think that despicable, don’t you, but it was how it was. I was twenty-four years of age and my life was over.’
‘It needn’t have been,’ Katherine said quietly, ‘but even that has to be a shared decision. How long will you stay in Edinburgh?’ she asked to dispel the tension between them.
‘For two weeks this time.’ Coralie hesitated. ‘Maybe I could see you once you’re settled in somewhere,’ she added unexpectedly. ‘We’ll both be tackling something new.’ The plea was for companionship and understanding while she needed it.
‘You’ll be far too busy,’ Katherine pointed out, ‘once you get fully into your stride.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Coralie was still gazing out of the window. ‘Are you expecting a visitor?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Katherine turned to look through the window. ‘It will be for one of the other flats.’
A taxi had pulled up at the kerbside and a tall man in a tweed suit was getting out.
‘It’s Charles!’ Coralie exclaimed.
Katherine stood looking down into Heriot Row, every pulse in her body throbbing as she watched the man she loved paying off the taxi before he walked briskly across the pavement towards the main door. Charles! Her heart cried wildly. Charles, why have you come?
Coralie moved at her elbow, making her realise how awkward the situation could prove to be. If Charles found Coralie visiting her he would surely think that they were still the best of friends.
Coralie laughed at her obvious concern.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked in her usual flippant manner. ‘Hide in a convenient wardrobe?’
Katherine moved towards the door as the street bell rang.
‘There’s no need for anything so dramatic,’ she said. ‘Charles may only be coming to take away the paintings.’
In spite of her outward calm her hand was shaking as she lifted the receiver.
‘May I come up?’ Charles asked.
Her heart sank a little as she pressed the door release.
‘Yes, please do,’ she said.
Going through the hall to open the door she could not think what to say to him. To try to explain away Coralie’s visit would only be to suggest that it mattered to him, and she didn’t think it did, except perhaps where Sandy and Fergus were concerned. He had already made his decision about Coralie and also about herself, although he had been kind about the flat.
When she opened the door he looked immediately at the stacked paintings propped against the wall and her suitcase standing beside them, ready for her departure.
‘Why did you change your mind about coming to Glassary?’ he asked. ‘You can’t possibly have got another job right away.’
She swallowed hard.
‘Edinburgh seemed the best place to look for one,’ she said, following him into the living-room where Coralie was waiting.
‘Hullo!’ she greeted him lightly. ‘Fancy our meeting! How are you, Charles, after all this time? You look just the same,’ she ran on, not at all abashed by the situation, ‘but that’s probably the glen’s amazing air!’
For a moment Charles looked angry.
‘You didn’t find it particularly invigorating while you lived there,’ he reminded her, ‘but that’s water under the bridge now. I’m surprised to see you in Edinburgh,’ he admitted.
‘It isn’t all that odd,’ she said. ‘I’ve an assignment at the Festival as a stage designer which has to be finished by June and then I’m going on to Rome. I seem to have the Midas touch at the moment,’ she smiled, ‘so I hope it will last.’ She put her empty mug down on the table between them. ‘Kate and I were discussing the future,’ she added deliberately, ‘so I’ll leave her to tell you all about it, because I really must go. I have a heavy date for lunch and a meeting with a Festival V.I.P. afterwards.’
Charles stood aside for her to pass.
‘I hope you’ll be successful in your new career,’ he said stiffly.
Katherine went to the flat door with Coralie.
‘Will you settle in Rome?’ she asked.
‘Good heavens, no!’ Coralie’s eyes were shining
as she looked into the future. ‘Rome will only be the beginning. If I do well there I’ll be able to establish an international reputation and then it will be back to New York to work there for a year or two or even to Los Angeles. I’d like to work in L.A. sooner or later,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘It’s Mecca as far as I’m concerned.’
The hardness which Katherine had glimpsed in her before was more obvious now and she was eager to get away.
‘Must dash!’ she said. ‘Good luck with Charles!’
She had no idea of the havoc she had wrought, of the web of deceit she had spun reaching out to entangle other people’s lives, and as she banged the outside door behind her Katherine could almost hear her laughter echoing up the staircase.
Charles was washing up the mugs in the kitchen.
‘I didn’t—invite Coralie to come,’ she said, standing just inside the door. ‘She came because she said she had to speak to somebody and she knew Emma and I had been staying here because she asked me when she came to the gallery.’
He turned slowly, something in his expression which she could not fathom.
‘I’m not interested in Coralie’s reasons for being here, Kate,’ he said. ‘I came because I wanted to know what you’re going to do.’
‘I’m—looking for a job.’
He followed her through to the living-room.
‘Is that what you really want?’
She had never heard him speak so softly before.
‘It’s what I must do.’
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