Zelda’s Cut. Philippa Gregory

the thesaurus beside her on the desk.

      Like a barrier, bastion, bulwark, dyke, rampart … Like an impenetrable bulwark, like an impenetrable bastion, like a bastion, like a rampart …

      She hesitated. Her husband put his fair head around the door of her study.

      ‘Can’t you take a break for lunch now?’ he asked plaintively. She glanced at her watch. It was not yet one o’clock but Philip’s condition meant that he needed regular small meals, and if Isobel failed to provide these, he became hungry and irritable.

      ‘What has Mrs M. left for us?’ she asked, getting up from her desk and glancing back at the screen, thinking distractedly about soup and barrier, bastion, rampart and bulwark.

      ‘Soup and bread rolls again,’ he said. ‘But I got her to buy a piece of steak for supper.’

      ‘Oh good,’ she said, not hearing him.

      The kitchen was a pretty room with sprigged curtains and wooden units. The view from the window over the sink looked up the hill at the back of the house, the green shoulder of the Weald of Kent, bright now with springtime growth. Beside the Aga stood a saucepan filled with home-made soup. Philip watched as she put it on the hot plate and took the rolls from the bread bin.

      ‘I’ll lay the table,’ he volunteered.

      When Isobel brought the bowls to the table she found that he had forgotten a knife to cut the cheese, and there was no salt. She fetched them without irritation, her mind still on bastion, rampart or bulwark.

      ‘You had two phone calls while you were working,’ Philip said. ‘Someone from your publishers, I wrote down the name. And Troy.’

      ‘What did Troy want?’

      ‘It’s such a ridiculous name,’ he remarked. ‘D’you think his parents really christened him Troy? Or was he called Trevor and has been trying to live it down ever since?’

      ‘I like it,’ she said. ‘It suits him.’

      ‘Never having had the honour, I couldn’t say. But it is a ridiculous name.’

      ‘Anyway,’ Isobel said patiently. ‘What did he want?’

      ‘You don’t imagine he’d tell me, do you?’ he demanded. ‘I’m just the messenger boy, the telephone operator. The receptionist at Hotel Literature.’

      ‘Hotel des Lettres,’ she suggested and was rewarded by the gleam of his smile.

      ‘Très belle.’

      There was a brief silence, he reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said briefly.

      ‘Aches and pains?’ she asked.

      ‘A bit.’

      ‘Why not have a lie down?’

      ‘I have all the rest of my life to lie down,’ he snapped. ‘That’s one of the things I have to look forward to. Progressive disability, or as you would say: a nice lie down. I don’t especially want to rush towards it.’

      She bowed her head over the bowl of soup. ‘Of course not,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

      Philip put his spoon in his empty bowl and finished his bread. ‘I think I’ll go for my walk,’ he said. ‘Stretch out a bit.’

      She glanced outside at the clear skies. Their house was in a fold of the Weald, he had the choice of walking upwards to the crest or downwards to the village.

      ‘You could walk to the pub and I could drive down to meet you there later,’ she suggested.

      ‘You mean so I don’t face the challenge of an uphill?’

      Isobel was silent.

      ‘That would be good,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Thank you. In about an hour?’

      She nodded.

      He got up from his place at the table and sighed with weariness at the effort of having to move. He went to the housekeeping jar which she kept filled with money, and helped himself to a ten-pound note. She watched the money that she had earned slide into the pocket of his slacks.

      ‘See you later, about two thirty,’ he said, and went out.

      Isobel got to her feet and cleared the plates into the dishwasher. For a moment she looked at her face reflected in the window above the sink. She hardly recognised herself. The features were as they had always been, strong bones, large grey eyes, but the skin around her eyes and mouth was crumpled with sadness and disappointment. She paused in her work for a moment, looking at the lines around her eyes and the groove which marked either side of her mouth. She might call them laughter lines; but there had been little laughter in the last three years. In her head she heard Philip say, so sharply: ‘Progressive disability, or as you would say, a nice lie down.’

      ‘God, what a stupid thing to say.’ She shook her head. ‘What a fool I am.’

      She bent and closed the dishwasher door. When she straightened up and saw her mirrored face again she gave the pale reflection a tight, determined smile. ‘I’ll have to try harder,’ she said to her image. ‘I’ll just go on trying.’

      Troy on the telephone was always at his best. Isobel was glad to be talking to him without the silent presence of Philip, brooding in the kitchen or walking slowly in the garden.

      He answered on the third ring. ‘Troy Cartwright,’ he said warmly.

      ‘It’s Isobel,’ she said and heard her voice lighten.

      ‘My star writer!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thanks for calling back. How are you?’

      ‘I’m well.’

      ‘And Philip?’

      ‘He’s fine,’ she said cheerfully.

      ‘You sound wonderful. How’s the book going?’

      ‘It’s finished,’ she said. ‘Actually, all except one word.’

      ‘One?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Troy briefly considered asking her which word, but thought that lay within the area of the writer’s particular talents and outside the remit of her agent.

      ‘Come out to lunch to celebrate!’ he commanded. ‘I need to be seen out with a beautiful woman.’

      Isobel smiled at the thought of Troy Cartwright, slim, mid-thirties, urbane, and living at the heart of fashionable London, needing to be seen lunching with her. ‘Oh, ridiculous.’

      ‘Not at all. I was looking through my client list for someone who combined brains and beauty and there was no contest.’

      Absurdly, she heard herself giggle, an unusual sound in the quiet house. ‘I could deliver the manuscript, I suppose.’

      ‘Oh please! I so want to see it.’

      ‘Tomorrow?’

      ‘Great. I’ll book a table somewhere expensive.’

      She hesitated. ‘It’s not necessary – ’

      ‘If I am taking Isobel Latimer out to lunch I want the world to know it.’ His voice dropped to a warm caress. ‘So you make sure that you wear something beautiful.’

      ‘All right,’ she said, surrendering to the pleasure of flattery. ‘I’ll come to your office at one.’

      ‘I’ll vacuum the red carpet myself,’ he promised.

      Philip had walked himself into good humour. He sat in the garden of the pub with a whisky and ice in a glass before him. He waved as Isobel drew up in the Volvo and watched her park and get out of the car. He thought that she looked older than her fifty-two years as she walked across the car park towards him. She was as slim as she had always been, and