Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood Page B

fully ten centimetres long, more of a belt, really, and a slashed neckline. I could not imagine any man holding out against it for any length of time. I spared a moment to try to remember what I had worn when I was eighteen, sighed, and reflected that the world might be in a terrible state but at least the reign of the bubble skirt had been mercifully brief.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said Kylie, patting my hand. ‘You had your time, didn’t you, though you’re old now?’
    I was about to tell her that thirty-eight wasn’t actually pensionable age when I remembered how old thirty had seemed when I was eighteen. I just nodded. Besides, yesterday someone had told me I was beautiful. And sounded as though he meant it.
    An odd thing happened. The phone rang and when I answered it was my ex, James. I hadn’t heard from him in months. While we weren’t actually friends, we hadn’t split with great bitterness. Just loathing. He was a high flyer, I was a lowflyer, if not actually earthbound. He liked merchant banking and I liked baking. He wanted me to stay home and look after his children and soothe his furrowed brow when he came home from a hard day’s accounting, and I didn’t. We were not a match made in heaven and I couldn’t, offhand, think of anything we had in common now. That had always been the problem. But he sounded just the same as he always had. In a hurry.
    ‘Hello, James, this is a surprise—’ I had got as far as that when he cut me off.
    ‘I know. You still running that bakery? Come to dinner on Saturday night? Meet you at the Venetia at seven thirty? My treat. Want to talk to you.’
    ‘But—’
    He cut me off again. I had forgotten how angry this habit made me and I was about to refuse to go anywhere with him. But my curiosity got the better of me. Me and Kipling’s mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, whose motto was ‘run and find out’. It’s got me into more trouble.
    James went on. ‘Can’t talk now. Waiting for a call from Singapore. Seven thirty, right? The Venetia. Bye,’ he said, and hung up.
    Well, the food would be good. The Venetia had been specialising in Italian food long before the days of frozen pre-cooked supermarket lasagne in every freezer. Though mentioning the latter in the Venetia would probably get you turfed out into the street as a peasant unworthy of their food. I not only couldn’t afford the Venetia, I couldn’t justify spending that much on feeding myself when there were bread and eggs in the world. But if James was paying, then why not? And what on earth did he want to talk to me about?
    That would have to keep. The morning tea rush had arrived.
    When it was over, leaving the shop considerably emptier, Kylie informed me that she had seen the person who had bought apartment 4A, Daphne. It had a picture of a woman turning into a bush. Next to her was a very annoyed Apollo. One saw his point. All that trouble to lay hands on a recalcitrant nymph, and just when you’ve got her she has the nerve to turn into a tree. Heh, heh.
    ‘What was this person like?’ I asked.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. This was a hard thing for Kylie to say. She has the insatiable curiosity of a magpie. ‘It was a man, about the same age as you. Blue suit, pretty tall, bit bald. He only had one suitcase and a lot of boxes. I suppose he must have bought old Lady Diana’s furniture. I liked her.’
    ‘So did I.’
    Lady Diana was a kindly, witty old lady with a strong British accent who had broken her hip months ago and not recovered properly. Her heirs had moved her tenderly to one of those well-staffed, five-star nursing homes on the Mornington Peninsula, where she spends her days watching the sea and skinning the other old ladies at bridge. I was sorry to see her go. I had never forgotten her reaction to viewing Mr Pemberthy’s new ‘undetectable’ hairpiece. ‘What has he done with the rest of the sheep?’ she wondered, for my ears alone, and I nearly split a gusset trying not to