Deborah Crombie - Dreaming of the bones

Vic would see that the book was published as it should have been, a testament to Lydia’s talent.

But there was something more, she thought as she swapped two of the poems again, a feeling that there was a sequence, a pattern to them that kept shifting just out of her mind’s reach. Perhaps if she read them once more, in a slightly different order-

The door slammed, Kit’s signature, and a moment later she heard the thud of his backpack hitting the floor outside her study. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said, not looking up. “How was school?”

No answer. She turned and saw Kit standing in the doorway, face set in a sullen scowl. Although he suffered from the occasional preadolescent mood, he was normally a good-natured child, and particularly boisterous when let out of school for the day. “What’s the matter, love?” Vic asked, concerned. “Are you all right?”

He shrugged and didn’t speak.

All right, thought Vic, try another tactic. She took off her glasses and stretched. “Bad day?” she asked mildly.

Another shrug. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Me, too,” she said as if he’d answered. “Maybe we’d both feel better if we took a walk. What do you say?”

This time she thought the shrug looked a bit more positive.

“Want a snack first?” she asked, and received a sharp, negative head shake. A bad sign-he was usually ravenous after school. “Then let me get my coat.”

She heard him stomp through the kitchen as she stopped in the loo, then the back door slammed. Oh, Lord, she thought, leaning against the sink for a moment. One was never prepared for these things, and she had had a particularly bad day already. Lost lecture notes this morning, then an hysterical student, and to top it off, a furious row with Darcy after lunch.

The argument had started, of all the silly things, over whose turn it was to use the photocopier.

Vic had taken a stack of books into the photocopier room, intending to make handouts of some selected poems for her lecture on the Romantics, then had to run back to her office to retrieve a volume left on her desk.

When she’d returned to the photocopier a few moments later, she’d found her books moved and Darcy firmly in position over the humming machine.

“Oh, so sorry. Were those yours?” he’d said. “One should really be more careful about leaving one’s property untended. So much petty theft these days, even the hallowed halls of the English Faculty might not be sacrosanct.”

“You knew perfectly well that they were mine,” she said, exasperated. “And no one in their right mind would steal secondhand copies of Keats and Shelley.” She eyed the stack of papers in the machine’s In tray with dismay. “Couldn’t you let me run these few things, Darcy? I need them for tomorrow morning’s lecture, and I’ve got a supervision in ten minutes. After all, I was here first.”

His presence seemed suffocatingly large in the small room, and she could smell the beer on his breath, no doubt the result of a rather liquid pub lunch. He still wore his gown, and as he leaned against the photocopier with his arms folded, he looked like a dissipated King Lear. Or Olivier playing Lear might be more like it, she thought. There was always something a bit overly theatrical about Darcy.

Smiling, he said, “Perhaps if one were better prepared one wouldn’t be in such a panic.”

The fury that seared through her caught her completely by surprise, and she found herself suddenly shouting at him, “Don’t you dare criticize me, Darcy. You’ve no right. And you had no right to undermine me to Adam Lamb. You knew how important it was to me to see him.”

“My dear Victoria.” Darcy raised his brows and looked down his rather fleshy nose at her. “I have a perfect right to express my professional opinion to my friends, and I am not responsible for the success or failure of your little projects.”

“Don’t patronize me,” she hissed back, making a belated effort to keep her voice down. “Of course you’re not responsible for my work, but you’ve no right to deliberately sabotage it just because it doesn’t fit into your archaic little definition of academic respectability. Did you say the same sort of things about me to Daphne Morris that you said to Adam?”

Oooh,” said Darcy with pursed lips, mocking her. “On a first-name basis with Adam now, are we? How chummy for you.” Coldly, he added, “For your information, I haven’t seen Daphne since Lydia’s funeral, and I have no intention of doing so in the foreseeable future. I quite despise the woman. I’d have thought the two of you would have got on quite well.”

While Vic struggled to think of a suitably stinging retort, Darcy had scooped up his papers from the photocopier’s trays and turned towards the door. “Take all the time you want,” he said sweetly, over his shoulder. “I shan’t need my copies until next week’s lectures.”

Just thinking about it made Vic flush painfully. Darcy Eliot could be quite charming-she’d even seen him behave considerately to other staff members on occasion-so why did she let the man reduce her to such childish behavior? She had meant to talk to him about Adam, meant to do it in a civilized, rational way, in a place and time of her own choosing. But somehow she and Darcy always seemed to be at cross-purposes with one another, and their constant infighting did her reputation no good in the department. In future, she’d have to make more effort to find some sort of common ground, difficult as it might be.

With a sigh, she splashed some cold water on her face, ran a brush through her hair, and went out to meet Kit in the garden.

She found him at the gate, scuffing his feet in the pile of last year’s leaves she’d been meaning to rake up. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes, but when she said, “The river path?” he nodded.

Once through the gate, they automatically turned left, towards Cambridge. Vic put her mind in neutral as they swung along in silence, trusting that the exercise and companionship would eventually loosen Kit’s tongue. Now she found herself glad of the excuse to be out, for it was her favorite sort of day-soft, still, and damp, the world a comforting and uniform gray. She had no objection to sunshine; in fact, she liked it as well as the next person after a long wet spell, but clear days didn’t exhilarate her in the same way. Gloomy , her mother had disapprovingly called her as a child, but Vic didn’t see how she could help something as innate as a love of rainy weather.

The moisture in the air intensified odors, and as she breathed in, the rich, earthy spring scent came to her so strongly that she thought she must actually be smelling things growing. Glancing at Kit, she saw that his scowl had softened, and he was looking about with almost his usual interest. Judging her moment, she said casually, “Do you want to tell me what happened at school today?”

He glanced at her and shrugged, but after a moment he said grudgingly, “I heard Miss Pope talking to the new PE teacher.”

“Miss Pope? Your English teacher?”

Kit gave her the disdainful glance she deserved for such an asinine comment. She knew Miss Pope perfectly well. Thirtyish and single, Elizabeth Pope had been obviously smitten with Ian, and had requested regular and unnecessary parent-teacher conferences. Whether or not Ian had taken his advantage, Vic had not known, nor had she particularly cared, except for Kit’s sake.

“And what did Miss Pope say?”

“They were in the lunch queue, and I went back for a fork,” he began circuitously. “They didn’t see me. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t,” Vic said encouragingly, but he hunched his shoulders, turtlelike, and looked down at his trainers. She thought fleetingly and irrelevantly that he had outgrown his shoes again, and wondered when he would begin to catch up to his feet. “Were they talking about me?” she asked, when he didn’t speak.