Free The High Places by Fiona McFarlane Page B

about the other one, will you? The man I mentioned?’
    â€˜Of course not. Is everything all right?’ Janet shook her wet fingers.
    â€˜Everything is perfect,’ Amy answered. It seemed that it was. The windows and doors were locked. The men slept on in the house.
    *   *   *
    Athens gave Janet unexpected allergies and she fumbled continually with sodden tissues – too thin, they clung to her fingers. She laughed, embarrassed, and brought attention to herself. Amy walked into the hot, quiet hour of the day and returned with a box of smooth handkerchiefs, scalloped in blue.
    â€˜How clever,’ said Janet. ‘I’d never have thought.’
    â€˜You’re the suffering kind,’ said Amy – not true, surely? – ‘who won’t put others out.’ Possibly true, and Janet had never felt so guilty. She was shy behind her quaint handkerchiefs. Money was offered and refused. They were all up on the roof terrace of Amy’s hotel. Husbands lay on lounges behind them, Eric with the newspaper, Murray asleep, hands clasped over his ribs, a midday saint.
    â€˜Hasn’t it been forever?’ said Amy, as if they’d just encountered each other in a supermarket. Forever might have been eight months. ‘Hard to imagine. So many years since Cornwall. Remember Cornwall?’
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ said Janet.
    â€˜Cornwall was wonderful. Lately it’s all I think about. Remember that adorable little house? And drinking sherry from those tiny glasses?’
    â€˜The sherry,’ said Janet. She didn’t remember the sherry.
    â€˜Remember how cold it was? And the coin-operated heating? How worried we were that we’d run out of coins?’ Amy sat with her chin in her hands, and her head was older, thinner, than it had been in Cornwall. ‘You have to wonder what would have happened without Cornwall. Marriage is like that, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘It reaches a point.’
    Janet was unsure what point Amy’s marriage might have reached.
    â€˜Why don’t we take a walk, just the two of us?’ said Amy.
    Janet was tired. ‘What a good idea,’ she said.
    â€˜We’re going for a walk,’ Amy told Eric. He nodded behind his newspaper. Murray looked so defenceless, asleep on his lounge, that Janet hated to leave him. She and Amy walked out into the exhausted afternoon.
    â€˜You know where I’ll take you,’ said Amy, ‘I’ll take you to that café I was in yesterday morning. Now, if I can just remember how to find it.’
    She remembered how to find it; it was only around the corner. It was a very ordinary café, and there were racks of postcards among the outdoor tables, where tourists sat drinking Cokes. Janet had pictured something else. She looked at it from across the street, disappointed.
    â€˜Is this where you met Christos of Marathon?’
    Amy was unexpectedly anxious. ‘Oh god, I don’t know what you’re going to say,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to be up front with you. I need a favour.’
    â€˜Of course,’ said Janet, imagining a small loan, imagining confidences about Eric.
    â€˜I need to borrow your apartment for a few hours this afternoon.’
    â€˜Oh,’ said Janet. They were walking toward the café, and a man, a little younger than they were, stood up from a table when he saw them. Everything was so predetermined; it was embarrassing. Amy introduced them. They all stood there, embarrassed, and perhaps Christos was the most discomfited of all. He was the kind of man Amy used to see in England and say to Janet, ‘Look at the quality of his shirt!’ Janet never noticed the quality of any man’s shirt. She thought Christos had a pleasant face, a face you enjoyed looking at; it seemed so sensibly arranged. She went to pass her key to Amy, who turned away, suddenly fastidious, checking for something in her handbag, so