A Passionate Man by Joanna Trollope Page B

‘She offered to speak to Andrew and my first reaction was to say no, but I wonder—’
    Privately, Liza thought there were other things Marina might understand about, too. ‘The first of many meetings,’ Marina had said to Liza before she was driven away. And she had smiled. There had been an edge of female complicity to that smile.
    â€˜I’m taking a rice pudding down the lane to old Mrs Mossop,’ Liza said. ‘Want to come?’
    â€˜Not really. But I don’t want to go home either.’
    â€˜Clare,’ Liza said warningly. She opened the bottom oven door and took out a Pyrex dish.
    â€˜I’m three years older than you,’ Clare said. ‘And we might almost be different generations. Look at you. All this domestic bliss and a job and village life—’
    Liza wrapped a clean dishcloth round the Pyrex dish.
    â€˜Hold that.’
    On the way down the hall, they passed through a lingering breath of Marina’s scent and stopped to sniff.
    â€˜Honestly,’ Clare said. ‘It’s like having a crush at school.’
    Liza began to giggle.
    â€˜Aren’t we idiotic?’
    â€˜No, no, I love it; I love this carried away feeling—’
    â€˜Me, too.’
    â€˜Think of what life is like for Andrew, I mean, just think—’
    â€˜I know. I simply didn’t know where to look at lunch.’ Liza opened the front door. ‘Do you think they just drove straight back to London to go to bed?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Clare said, ‘of course they did. And left us all here, years younger, simply green with envy—’
    â€˜Speak for yourself!’
    â€˜Can you,’ Clare said, stepping carefully down the drive because of carrying the pudding, ‘can you talk to Archie about it?’
    Liza thought.
    â€˜No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I can. Not about that.’
    â€˜But I thought you talked about everything. Sex and everything—’
    â€˜But not Andrew and sex.’
    â€˜No,’ Clare said, ‘perhaps not. But will Archie think about it?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Liza said slowly. ‘I don’t see how he can help it,’ and then she took the pudding from her sister and they went away with it down the lane to old Mrs Mossop’s cottage, and found her there, alone in her darkening room, watching the empty Sunday lane.
    â€˜When I want charity,’ Granny Mossop said, ‘I’ll ask for it.’
    But she grew cross when Liza offered to remove the pudding and, when the sisters peered back in through the window as they left, she was hunting for spoons.

Chapter Four
    On Monday morning, Liza accused Archie of behaving like a child. She did this over breakfast, causing Mikey to weep and remember he had not done his violin practice, and Imogen to refuse, flatly, even to look at her breakfast. They were all late and a faint disheartening drizzle was misting the kitchen windows. Archie, whose provocative crime had been to remark that the sitting room still smelled like Harrods, got up in silence, kissed his children, and went off to his car. Liza was impressed to find that she felt buoyed up by indignation rather than borne down by tears, as was her wont in such situations, and merely said to Imogen as Archie’s car could be heard revving in the garage, ‘Eat that up when you are told.’
    The car went down the drive and Imogen picked up her cereal bowl and held it upside down over the floor.
    Driving down the lane towards the village, Archie wrenched his mind on to the day ahead. Surgery, visits, an hour or two at the local cottage hospital (saved from the great central state crushing machine only by relentless local effort), a practice meeting, more visits and evening surgery. The practice meeting would, he knew, be about the installation of computers at the health centre. Intellectually he was all for this but emotionally he rebelled. One of his colleagues had