Last Run by Hilary Norman Page A

paints them herself.’
    ‘That’s amazing,’ Grace said. ‘I can barely manage to get basic colour on without smudging.’
    ‘Woody shut in?’ Cathy asked.
    Right on cue, the little dog came flying out from the back, leaping up at Cathy in greeting, then turning to check out the visitor.
    ‘Don’t.’ Kez backed up against the wall, knocking against the small Spanish tile-framed mirror. ‘Please,’ she said sharply, her voice hoarser. ‘I’m not
good with dogs.’
    ‘It’s OK.’ Cathy lifted the mongrel off the stone floor, held him close, let him lick her face. ‘Woody’s cool,’ she told Kez, ‘and really
gentle.’
    ‘I’m sure.’ Kez stayed close to the wall. ‘Maybe we should go.’
    ‘We’re going for a run on the beach,’ Cathy explained to Grace. ‘Thought we’d come by for a quick juice first.’
    ‘Put Woody in the den,’ Grace told Cathy.
    ‘No need,’ Kez said. ‘We can just go—’
    ‘It’s no problem at all.’ Grace felt for her.
    They went through to the kitchen, collecting juice and water, taking the drinks out on to the deck.
    ‘I got bitten as a kid.’ Kez was clearly embarrassed. ‘Badly enough to need stitches and shots. I’ve never been able to get past it.’
    ‘I don’t blame you,’ Cathy said.
    ‘It’s very natural,’ Grace said.
    ‘Doesn’t stop people laughing at me, especially when the dogs are cute.’
    ‘I wouldn’t laugh,’ Cathy said. Kez smiled at her. ‘No,’ she said.
    The connection between them struck Grace quite forcibly.
    The beginnings of something
more
than friendship, she felt, at least from Kez’s standpoint; she thought she’d glimpsed a distinct strength of feeling in the young
woman’s interesting eyes.
    They had all noticed Cathy’s high excitement last Friday evening when she’d talked about her meeting with the college athlete, and Grace had been aware of a degree of hero-worship in
that excitement, but nothing more. More than that now, she realized as the two young women finished their drinks, then sat with her a while longer, exchanging questions and answers about running
and their respective majors, Kez seeming genuinely interested in Grace’s and Sam’s disparate professions.
    ‘Isn’t she great?’ Cathy whispered to Grace as they were leaving, Kez ahead of them and out of earshot. ‘Don’t you think?’
    Grace looked into Cathy’s blue eyes – so like her own that, together with their similarly straight blonde hair, strangers often took them for biological mother and daughter –
and realized she’d never seen them sparkle that way before. And then, hard on the heels of that thought sprang another: that Cathy, still quite naïve despite all her experiences, seemed
to be in Kez Flanagan’s thrall.
    The idea disturbed Grace, and not just, she thought, because she felt it probable that Kez was gay – would she mind, she asked herself sharply, almost accusingly, if Cathy was lesbian or
even bisexual?
    So many thoughts in the blink of an eye.
    ‘She’s very nice,’ she answered.
    She waved them off, then closed the door, still feeling troubled.
    There had been, it was true, surprisingly few boyfriends in Cathy’s life so far. One spell during which Cathy had come to Grace to share with her the fact that she was dating a guy called
Nick Cohen and had decided to take the pill; but that relationship had ended soon after, and since then men seemed – so far as Grace and Sam knew – to have been a little thin on the
ground.
    It had not appeared to have bothered Cathy.
    Certainly no indications at any time – Grace reflected on her way back to her office to commence writing up her notes on Gregory Hoffman’s appointment – that Cathy might be
harbouring doubts about her sexual orientation. Though then again, Grace knew better than some the myriad conundrums buried in the human psyche. And in some ways, of course, ceasing to be
Cathy’s therapist and becoming her mother had almost automatically