Kathleen Tessaro 3-Book Collection: The Flirt, The Debutante, The Perfume Collector. Kathleen Tessaro

skin pale and forehead damp. His legs looked like two sticks under the sheets.

      ‘When did you find him?’

      ‘This afternoon. He’d fallen. Luckily I had a set of keys. Usually, I check on him twice a day.’

      ‘I see.’

      He’d been his carer, not his lover. Leticia felt sobered, ashamed. Leo had needed a nurse and she hadn’t even realized.

      ‘I called an ambulance. He’s got pneumonia and a bad kidney infection. They’re giving him high doses of antibiotics.’

      ‘But how? How did it come on so fast?’

      ‘When the system is weak to begin with …’ his voice trailed off.

      ‘He was sick before? I mean really sick, not just a cold?’

      Juan was silent.

      ‘He was sick before,’ she said again, remembering the prescription bottles.

      ‘Yes. He has been unwell for a while.’

      How could she not know?

      She touched his hand. It was clammy. ‘These blankets aren’t warm enough. Look at how thin they are!’

      ‘He has a fever. Too many and he will only kick them off.’ He smiled. He had a nice smile. ‘You know Leo.’

      He offered her a chair. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea. With sugar. You’ve had a shock.’

      She watched as he headed down the hall then looked round. The ward was filled with other old people, dying, alone. Terror gripped her.

      Leticia sat down and took his hand again.

      His eyes flicked open.

      ‘Emily Ann!’

      She squeezed his fingertips.

      ‘Here I am.’

      ‘Emily!’

      ‘It’s all right, I’m right here.’

      His voice was hoarse. ‘I … I must tell you something …’

      ‘Yes?’ she leant in.

      ‘That look doesn’t suit you, darling.’

      He smiled.

      She kissed his fingertips. ‘Neither does yours.’

      He closed his eyes again. ‘It seems we’ve let ourselves go.’

      He slipped back into the thick fog of sleep.

      His hand went limp in hers.

      She was alone.

       The C Word

      ‘I can’t. Not today, Simon.’

      Olivia was sitting on her bed, still in her dressing gown, dark circles under her eyes. Somewhere around four thirty in the morning she finally nodded off, only to wake again in tears. She must’ve been crying in her sleep. Once they started, she couldn’t stem the flow. Sobbing, moaning, practically barking with grief and despair, she worked her way through an entire box of tissues. There was nothing to live for. She was old and childless and alone.

      Then, at some ungodly hour, Simon rang.

      ‘You can!’

      ‘No,’ she cleared her throat, ‘really, I can’t!’

      ‘I’m telling you, Olivia, you can!’

      ‘But you don’t understand! I’ve never hung a show before! And I’m … I’m,’ she struggled to find a delicate way to put it, ‘I’m not at my best today, Simon.’

      ‘Olivia,’ his voice was firm, ‘I need you. Ralph’s pulled his back out and it’s not finished! And we can’t afford to get this show wrong. Besides, you’re the only person I know who has the vision I need. It’s non-negotiable; I’m calling in all my favours. I need you now!’

      Olivia sank to the floor, into the pile of used tissues that had accumulated in a snowy heap around the bed. She couldn’t fathom how she was going to get dressed let alone down to the gallery.

      ‘Olivia?’ He wouldn’t give up.

      ‘OK,’ she rasped.

      ‘Great. I’ll see you in an hour.’

      He hung up.

      Olivia blew her nose for the seven thousandth time. She badly needed a cigarette.

      Sitting in her dressing gown on the back steps, Olivia fumbled with a box of kitchen matches, trying to light an ancient, stale Gauloise she’d found in an old handbag.

      She wasn’t a real smoker. There was no style to the way she jammed the cigarette between her lips or struck the match so hard that it snapped in two. The Gauloise was a serious cigarette – thick, acrid. There was smoking and then there was napalming your lungs. But she needed napalm; her mind twisted wildly, to and fro, trying to justify the evidence, while her heart cracked with the same agonizing resistance of an old tree being felled, its trunk snapping painfully, slowly in two.

      It was gone. Her world. The entire answer she’d formulated to the question of how to live life.

      How could he do that to her? What made her so … so disposable?

      Taking a deep drag, she choked and spluttered.

      When she was done, she’d go back in and ring Simon. He’d have to get someone else. Today was a day for taking tranquillizers washed down by vodka, not for striking out in new directions.

      In front of her, the newly erected fountain made a relentless dribbling noise like a leaky faucet. It was a horrific Baroque-inspired confection; a gold-encrusted seashell bowl surrounded by piles of fat, frolicking cherubs and dolphins spitting water. Expensive, ugly, derivative.

      She thought about the shiny aluminium gulley cutting, as Ricki put it, like a blade through a bright square of green grass. If only she’d had the courage to listen to her. Taking another drag, she coughed and, pulling her dressing gown tighter, shivered in the brisk morning air.

      ‘Here.’

      It was Ricki, holding open a box of Marlboro Lights.

      Olivia’s face went red.

      Before she could say anything, Ricki knelt down, taking the Gauloise from her fingers.

      ‘Let’s get rid of that, shall we?’ She tossed it into the fountain, where it fizzled out, bobbing up and down in the golden bowl. ‘What are you trying to do – kill yourself?’

      Not a bad idea, Olivia reflected.

      Then Ricki shook out a couple of cigarettes, popped both into her mouth and lit them with a battered black Zippo. She passed one back to Olivia.

      It was all done so smoothly, so confidently. With what her mother would’ve called ‘élan.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      Ricki nodded, settled down next to her, stretching out her long legs.

      They sat, smoking in silence.

      After a while, Ricki nodded to the fountain. ‘So, do you like it?’

      Olivia struggled to find something nice to say. ‘You did a good job.’

      ‘Yeah,’ Ricki laughed, ‘but do you like it?’

      ‘It’s ghastly,’ she admitted, too exhausted to be polite.

      ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

      They stared at it.

      ‘It’s not too late. We could still get rid of