The Sunday Philosophy Club Read Free

leaning before, and there, down on the ground, a programme. She bent down and picked it up; its cover, she noticed, had a slight tear, but that was all. She replaced it where she had found it. Then she bent over and looked down over the edge. He must have been sitting here, at the very end of the row, where the upper circle met the wall. Had he been further in towards the middle, he would have landed in the grand circle; only at the end of the row was there a clear drop down to the stalls.
    For a moment she felt a swaying vertigo, and she closed her eyes. But then she opened them again and looked down into the stalls, a good fifty feet below. Beneath her, standing near to where the young man had landed, a man in a blue windcheater looked upwards and into her eyes. They were both surprised, and Isabel leant backwards, as if warned off by his stare.
    Isabel left the edge and made her way back up the aisle between the seats. She had no idea what she had expected to find—if anything—and she felt embarrassed to have been seen by that man below. What must he have thought of her? A vulgar onlooker trying to imagine what that poor boy must have seen during his last seconds on this earth, no doubt. But that was not what she had been doing; not at all.
    She reached the stairs and began to walk down, holding therail as she did so. The steps were stone, and spiral, and one might so easily slip. As he must have done, she thought. He must have looked over, perhaps to see if he could spot somebody down below, a friend maybe, and then he had lost his footing and toppled over. It could easily happen—the parapet was low enough.
    She stopped halfway down the stairs. She was alone, but she had heard something. Or had she imagined it? She strained her ears to catch a sound, but there was nothing. She took a breath. He must have been the very last person up there, all alone, when everybody else had gone and the girl at the bar on the landing was closing up. That boy had been there himself and had looked down, and then he had fallen, silently, perhaps seeing herself and Jennifer on the way down, who would then have been his last human contact.
    She reached the bottom of the stairs. The man in the blue windcheater was there, just a few yards away, and when she came out, he looked at her sternly.
    Isabel walked over to him. “I saw it happen,” she said. “I was in the grand circle. My friend and I saw him fall.”
    The man looked at her. “We’ll need to talk to you,” he said. “We’ll need to take statements.”
    Isabel nodded. “I saw so little,” she said. “It was over so quickly.”
    He frowned. “Why were you up there just now?” he asked.
    Isabel looked down at the ground. “I wanted to see how it could have happened,” she said. “And now I do see.”
    “Oh?”
    “He must have looked over,” she said. “Then he lost his balance. I’m sure it would not be difficult.”
    The man pursed his lips. “We’ll look into that. No need to speculate.”
    It was a reproach, but not a severe one, as he saw that she was upset. For she was shaking now. He was familiar with that. Something terrible happened and people began to shake. It was the reminder that frightened them; the reminder of just how close to the edge we are in life, always, at every moment.

CHAPTER TWO

    A T NINE O’CLOCK the following morning Isabel’s housekeeper, Grace, let herself into the house, picked up the mail from the floor in the hall, and made her way into the kitchen. Isabel had come downstairs and was sitting at the table in the kitchen, the newspaper open before her, a half-finished cup of coffee at her elbow.
    Grace put the letters down on the table and took off her coat. She was a tall woman, in her very late forties, six years older than Isabel. She wore a long herringbone coat, of an old-fashioned cut, and had dark red hair which she wore in a bun at the back.
    “I had to wait half an hour for a bus,” she said. “Nothing came.