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By Root 420 0

that gripped on to the jamb of a door and allowed the child to bounce up and down on a strong elastic rope. Charlie had loved it, but on the second occasion it had been used he had bounced off one side of the jamb and then back against the other. He had been slightly bruised, even if he had not complained, but the baby bungee had been retired to a cupboard. Charlie, she had decided, was a stoic by temperament, a useful thing in this life. If this stoicism came from anywhere—rather than being an entirely random quirk of personality genes—then it must have been inherited from Jamie, who was fond of saying “It happens” when faced with any frustrating development. Stoicism and defeatism, of course, can be kissing cousins, but Isabel would never find fault in Jamie’s quite exceptional ability to accept setbacks. She had never seen him angry—not once; distressed, perhaps, but not angry, and it seemed that Charlie was the same. Of course the tantrum stage still lay ahead of him, and that would be a stringent test of any stoicism he possessed; it was no use saying “It happens” to a three-year-old brewing a stamping attack.

“Sorry to phone so early,” said Cat. “Crisis.”

Cat was visited by crisis rather more often than others, but the difficulties these crises entailed always seemed genuine enough, even if they were clearly of her own creation. A crisis was a crisis, Isabel believed, and it was unhelpful to allocate blame. You did not ask the drowning man how he ended up in the river, nor point to the No Swimming notice—you rescued him; even if he happened to be Dove, Isabel thought, or Professor Lettuce. A delicious scene came into her mind: Dove and Lettuce had both fallen into a loch and were calling for help. Isabel, passing by, would not hesitate, of course, nor would she relish their evident discomfort as it dawned on them who their rescuer would be. But what if it were in her power to rescue only one of them? It was the familiar and horrific dilemma that must cross the mind of at least some imaginative or overanxious parents: Which of my children would I save? The thought is usually too appalling to contemplate, and the question is suppressed rather than answered.

But here it arose with Dove and Lettuce, both schemers and plotters of the same stripe, and in moral terms, Isabel reluctantly concluded, both of equal merit. The deciding factor in such a case would have to be age; all other things being equal, the sole remaining basis of just discrimination would be that Professor Lettuce, being the older of the two, had less claim for a future than the relatively youthful Dove. So Dove was saved. She did not like the conclusion, but doing the right thing, even if that took the form of making the correct choice in an entirely hypothetical situation, was often uncomfortable.

Cat waited for a reply. Isabel was thinking, she decided, and was probably mentally chewing over something altogether different, as often happened.

“You need me to do the delicatessen?” Isabel asked eventually.

“Yes, if you don’t mind,” Cat explained. “The boiler in the flat has gone on the blink and the engineer is coming. However …”

Isabel was familiar with such issues: the gas people were always unwilling to commit to a time, and would give only the most general indication of when it might be.

“They said that it could be either morning or afternoon,” said Cat. “And they wouldn’t budge. So I have to stay in all day to let them in.”

“Frustrating,” said Isabel. “Of course I’ll help. What about Eddie?”

Eddie was a rather vulnerable young man who lacked the confidence to look after the delicatessen on his own. Isabel believed that he was perfectly capable of doing so, and Cat did, too, but his anxiety had been acute on the few occasions on which he had been left in charge by himself.

“He’ll be there,” said Cat. “But you know the problem.”

Isabel said that she did, and the arrangements were made. Isabel had a key to the business and would open it up at ten to nine, to be ready for Eddie’s arrival. Cat promised that in the unlikely event of the gas engineer