Free Providence by Anita Brookner

her line of work. They had spent a few evenings together comparing notes on clothes, until Kitty realized, with a feeling of shame, that Caroline was intensely boring. Or perhaps, she thought scrupulously, she was just intensely bored. Caroline lived on her alimony and consulted fortune tellers to see when her luck would change. Caroline spent most of her days, impeccably groomed, wandering around Harrods. Very little seemed to happen to Caroline although she had many stories to tell of her life before she had been abandoned: the parties, the cruises, the weekends at important houses. ‘Why did I marry him?’ she would ask soulfully. Why did he leave you, wondered Kitty, but was too polite to ask. She rather dreaded Caroline’s reminiscences these days and tended to avoid her. She had once seen her coming down Old Church Street, presumably returning from a day atHarrods, and had noted that there was a ladder in her tights and that she was carrying an umbrella and two rather crumpled plastic bags, the very image, Kitty thought, of a woman slipping down from her own high standards. She had felt a shiver of apprehension, and at the moment considered herself the more fortunate of the two. For she had Maurice.
    ‘What is it, Kitty?’ asked Caroline in genuine surprise. ‘You sound really upset. Didn’t you have a nice evening?’
    It had been impossible to keep the sight of Maurice hurtling up the stairs from Caroline, and that was another reason for Kitty to want to avoid her: Caroline was avid for information, and Kitty had no information to give.
    ‘Come in,’ said Caroline, ‘I’ve just made a cup of tea.’ She was desperately lonely.
    At that moment Kitty wanted nothing more than a cup of tea. She wanted it with a passion that she had not felt for food or drink for a very long time. Wiping her hands on her apron, and aware that she must look a mess, she followed Caroline into her flat.
    ‘Marvellous tea,’ she acknowledged. ‘But really, Caroline, the noise is too much. And you know you don’t really listen.’
    ‘Oh, darling, I keep it on for company. You know what it’s like here in the evenings. Dead. I might as well be ninety. When I think …’
    ‘All the same,’ said Kitty, holding out her cup for more and forestalling the usual recital, ‘it is a bit much. Oh, I realize you’re lonely. Perhaps if you got a job?’ They had had this conversation before.
    ‘I’d still be alone in the evenings,’ said Caroline. This was unanswerable.
    ‘How was your boyfriend?’ asked Caroline after a pause.
    ‘Oh, fine, fine.’
    ‘You’re upset, Kitty. Oh, men. You don’t have to tell
me.
’
    You wouldn’t understand if I did, thought Kitty. No one would. Maurice’s story now appeared to her as something she could never tell a living soul. It was, after all, a secret.
    ‘Tell you what, darling,’ said Caroline. ‘Why don’t you come with me to this marvellous clairvoyant I’ve just discovered? No really, Kitty, she’s fantastic. I know you don’t believe in them, but this one is different. She told me all about Paul and how life was so stagnant at the moment, and how I was going to make a new life abroad, and meet a man whose name begins with J. In the entertainment business. Well, that’s not really my line, you know. I’m used to rather better than that. Did I ever tell you about the time we chartered a yacht off Saint-Tropez?’
    She had. Many times.
    But a thought was forming in Kitty’s mind. Supposing she went to this clairvoyant, made a firm declaration of her scepticism, and then waited to hear what she said? She needed a message, desperately. For Maurice had not said when he would see her again. And soon he would be off to the cathedrals of France.
    ‘Where is she?’ she enquired.
    ‘My dear, she’s two minutes from here, just next door to the antique market. And it’s only ten pounds. And she’s marvellous. She told me all about the lease running out.’ (This was another