The Light of Day: A Novel Read Free Page A

be.
    “My husband is seeing another woman.”
    There aren’t so many ways of saying it—but you have to look as if you haven’t heard it said in every possible way. They’re all unique: the only one to have to come to the doctor with this rare complaint.
    “I see. I’m sorry. Can I offer you some coffee—tea?”
    A doctor—a specialist. You’re already gauging the symptoms. At any moment now there could be tears, curses, fireworks, waterworks. They all come with a script, fully rehearsed, and at some point it all gets abandoned.
    Something I never expected: that this would be the most demanding, the most absorbing, the most rewarding part of the job. Things you weren’t taught in the Force.
    She didn’t want coffee or tea. But Rita, I knew, was outside, like a trained nurse with the emergency trolley, ears pricked, kettle primed, ready to rush in with the tray at a moment’s notice.
    And, as an extra fall-back, the bottle of Scotch in the little cabinet in the corner. Strictly for client use only. Though it’s surprising how often they’ll say, “Aren’t you going to have one too?”
    “You know, or you think?”
    “I know.”
    No hesitation there. She had eyes that seemed to shift— under a slight frost—from black to brown, to ripple. Tortoiseshell. The hair was the same. Black, you’d say, but when the sunlight from the window caught it you saw it was deep brown.
    Another thing I never expected—though it’s obvious, you only have to think. Mostly women. Or say sixty per cent.
    I said to Helen, my daughter, “They’re mostly women, Helen.”
    She said, “Is that a complaint?”
    And some of them don’t just come in with their lines rehearsed, they come in as if for a full-blown audition, as if they’ve spent the last two hours in front of a mirror. (Rita, for example.) Dressed to kill. Clouds of scent. They don’t want you to think it’s for
that
reason, that it’s out of neglect. They’ve made the decision, but they’ve got their pride.
    Doctor, solicitor, casting director . . .
    But she wasn’t one of the star turns—if she wasn’t cheaply dressed. The black coat: pure cashmere. She’d done her face, I guessed, in the hasty, automatic way of women who don’t need to slap it on like war paint. She didn’t need to—though she might be going to war.
    You think, of course, of the husband. You think: What could be going on here? You put yourself in the husband’s shoes (that’s what they know you’ll do).
    Early forties—forty-two, forty-three—and in good shape. The eyes with just their touch of frost. Clever quick eyes—the frost making them look stern. But you could imagine them melting.
    A teacher, it turned out, a college lecturer. Used to running the show.
    Teachers—even on day-release in the Force—always used to give me the willies.
    Clever, and comfortably off: the coat. An easy ride through life, probably, till now. So the sternness was thin. One of those women who come with a little professional crispness and firmness, but you can still see in them the woman of half their age, the girl.
    “I see. So you know who the woman is?”
    She’d undone her coat but hadn’t taken it off, and she was carrying a bag, a plain black soft-leather bag which she’d unhooked from her shoulder and let slip to the floor. The flaps of her coat fell open. A black skirt of some velvety material, a sandy-coloured top over a white blouse. The bar of sunshine between us caught her knees and gave them an almost tinselly sheen. They didn’t seem like the usual knees of women that can project from a skirt with all kinds of angles and meaning. They were just knees caught in the light.
    It was her knees, maybe.
    “Yes. Her name is Kristina Lazic.”
    “That sounds foreign.”
    “She’s from Croatia.”
    “Could you spell—?”
    I’d pulled my notebook towards me. There’s a point where it helps to get brisk.
    “And do you know where your husband and Miss Lazic—is it