avoids these parties of hers like the plague. And you are?’
‘My name’s Lindsay Drummond. I work at the Correspondent …’ The woman looked her up and down.
‘Right. Mrs Sabatier probably wouldn’t mind. It’s those stairs over there. If you get stopped, if anyone objects, just say Pat gave you the OK…’
‘Pat?’
‘That’s me. Really.’ She made an encouraging gesture. ‘It’s fine. The doors are open. You don’t need a key.’
As she made this remark, Pat was moving off rapidly again. With Lindsay at her heels, she approached a wall of bookshelves at the head of the stairs. Without further speech, she opened an invisible door in these bookshelves and disappeared. What a cunning piece of trompe l ’ oeil , Lindsay thought, pausing to examine it; why, even the hinges were well-nigh undetectable. She examined the false book spines, amused; then she began to descend the stairs. There, at a turn on a lower landing, she ran into Markov and Jippy at last. They turned back with her and accompanied her to the garden below, where, Markov claimed, they had been lurking for some while.
‘Smart move, huh?’ he said. ‘It was purgatory up there. Wall to wall jerks. No sign of Tomas Court. We saw you skulking at the window. We waved…’
Lindsay was not listening. She was looking around her, entranced. A secret garden, she thought, invisible from the street, invisible from any other building except the one she had just left. Mist drifted across the symmetry of the hedges and settled above the still surface of the pool. It was as quiet as any country garden; she could hear, just, the tidal slap against stone of the river beyond; from above, like the murmur of bees, came muted sounds from the party; no traffic was audible and no roads were visible; across on the far bank of the river, she could just see the outline of some industrial building, bulking as large as a cathedral in the dark. Markov and Jippy had taken her arms; now, Lindsay disengaged herself. She wandered away, touching the stone goddess’s crumbling hem, then the base of her ardent god’s pedestal. She reached up and touched the nereid’s sightless eyes.
‘Look, Markov, Jippy,’ she said. ‘Isn’t she lovely? In daylight, I’m sure she’s meant to be blind, but the moon gives her eyes. She’s looking across the river…What time is it, Markov?’
‘Nearly midnight. Around midnight, Lindsay…’
Lindsay had moved off again. She trailed her hand dreamily over the crisp crests of the topiary hedges and made her way along a path, the river flowing ahead of her, and Markov and Jippy somewhere behind her in the shadows. Perhaps Jippy brought me here for the garden, Lindsay thought; perhaps it was Jippy’s companionship that made her feel truly at peace for the first time that evening, for Jippy’s presence always calmed.
She stepped through a gap in the hedges and approached a wooden balustrade. She leaned over it, wisps of mist drifting, then clearing, and looked down at the flow of the tide. The river was smooth and dark, a liquid looking-glass; reflected in it, bending gently then reassembling as the currents moved beneath, she could see the moon, lights like orbs, and an Ophelia-woman, pale and poised on the tide, who looked up at her, half drowned, from some water world beneath.
In the distance, a church clock chimed, then another, then a third. The last minute of the last hour of the last day of deadline month. Lindsay thought of Rowland McGuire, who had felt close, very close, the instant she came out here. She would summon him up, Lindsay decided, before, as she had resolved she would, she said her final and irrevocable goodbye.
Rowland McGuire, this week, was away. Taking his first vacation in a year from the newspaper he edited, he was climbing with friends on the Isle of Skye, or possibly—for his plans were subject to change—he had moved on to join another old friend from his Oxford days, a man who, as far as Lindsay
Saud Alsanousi
Delilah Frost
Aaron Allston
Sam Lipsyte
Kim Harrison
Armistead Maupin
Juliette Miller
Craig Strete
Anne Malcom
Karen Kingsbury