The Lost Art of Gratitude_ An Isabel Dalhousie Novel - Alexander McCall Smith [10]
“From now on?” asked Ronnie.
“From now on,” Isabel confirmed.
They left the accountant’s office and began to make their way down the hill to the top of Dundas Street.
“You made a promise back there,” said Jamie, as they passed Queen Street Gardens. “Look, Charlie. Trees. Trees.”
Charlie looked, and gurgled—he saw only green, and movement, and blue above that—the high blue ceiling of his small slice of the world, his tiny part of Scotland.
“I know,” said Isabel. “It was like promising one’s dentist to use dental floss.”
Jamie did not approve of the comparison. “You should take it seriously,” he said. “Ronnie only wants to help. And he has to make up the accounts for the tax people. He puts his name to them.”
Isabel nodded. She had taken it seriously, and she had meant what she had said to Ronnie; she would start a spreadsheet and try to stick to it. She felt slightly irritated that Jamie should think that she had tossed words about carelessly, when his own accounts, if they existed at all, were probably little better than hers.
“You keep a spreadsheet, I suppose,” she said.
He had been about to say something, but hesitated.
“No?” she pressed.
“It’s different,” said Jamie. “I don’t have … well, I don’t have much money.”
She looked steadfastly ahead. She regretted her remark, and turned to him to say sorry. He was looking at her, smiling. “What a ridiculous conversation,” he said.
She was relieved. “Isn’t it? One should never let spreadsheets come between one and one’s …”
“Friends,” he supplied quickly.
“Exactly.” He was more than that, of course, but she had not used the word lover to his face, nor he to hers. Significant other, she thought, and smiled—if some others were significant, then were the other others insignificant? Teenage argot, she knew, had a word for them: randoms, who were the people one did not really know. Eddie, Isabel’s niece Cat’s young assistant at the delicatessen, had used the term to describe the other guests at a party he had attended. “I didn’t know anybody,” he said. “The place was full of randoms.”
“Randoms?” said Isabel.
“Yes,” said Eddie. “Just randoms. Who could I talk to? So I left.”
“You couldn’t talk to the randoms?”
He looked at her with amusement; one did not talk to randoms.
They crossed Heriot Row. “Robert Louis Stevenson’s house,” Jamie said, pointing to one of the elegant Georgian terraced houses that ran along the north side of the street. “I went to a party there once with …” He stopped, and Isabel knew what he had been about to say.
“With Cat,” she prompted.
“Yes. With Cat.”
“I hope she enjoyed it.”
He shook his head. “She didn’t. We fought.”
Isabel thought, It wouldn’t have been his fault. But she did not say it; instead she made a remark about the Queen Street Gardens, which Stevenson would have seen from his window, and about how you never saw anybody in them, except ghosts, perhaps.
They went into Glass and Thompson, the place they both favoured for lunch, leaving Charlie’s pushchair outside. Charlie was wide awake and showing a close interest in his surroundings, delighted by the colourful display of olive oils and pastas that dominated the shelves on one side of the café. He was easily pleased by colour or movement and waved his little arms in approval and a desire to embrace the things he saw.
It was just before the lunchtime rush and there were several free tables at the back of the café. While Isabel settled Charlie on her lap, Jamie went up to the counter and ordered—mozzarella salad for him and Isabel, and a piece of quiche for Charlie. In the display below the counter he saw a bowl of olives, and he added some of these to the order as a treat for Charlie. They were large and unstoned, and he would have