“Why the hell isshestill here?” someone hisses. Rhian. “How can you let her eat with us?” she demands of Haneen, who’s just sat down.
Haneen looks unerringly at the end of the table. “She’s a guest.”
“Whose guest?” Rhian challenges hotly. “Llewellyn threw her out.”
I wince because Llewellyn is right beside me.
With an uneasy smile, he gets up quietly, takes his plate and goes to sit with the professor several seats away.
“Rhian.” Haneen’s censure sounds firm despite her kind tone. “It’s none of our business.”
“She’s Leonie’s guest,” Shirley offers, unaware that Haneen was trying to close the subject down.
Leonie? I turn to her, sitting opposite me. She looks very uncomfortable. She too has watched Llewellyn move seats. When she catches my eyes, she makes a helpless gesture with her hands. “What was I supposed to do? Nora gave up her flat when she moved in with Llewellyn and now has nowhere to stay.”
“Where was she staying all of last month?” Shirley asks.
“With friends, but only temporarily. She was sure they’d get back together.” Leonie’s eyes flick quickly to Llewellyn. “So now she’s homeless.”
“And why is that your problem?” Shirley asks pointedly.
“What would you all do? Turn her away and let her sleep in a cardboard box?”
Shirley scoffs. “Women like her are never homeless. She need only wander into the nearest bar and find someone to give her a bed for the night. There are plenty of men willing to have a one-night stand.”
Like Osian. The thought slithers into my mind and won’t leave.
“That’s not nice,” Leonie says.
“Nice?” Shirley purses her lips. “That’s your trouble, if you ask me. You and Evie, generous even if it means losing your fella. Don’t think I don’t see what’s going on.”
Leonie glances swiftly towards Raff then just as swiftly back to her plate.
Shirley helps herself to a bread roll from the basket and butters it generously. “And how long is Nymphet Nora staying with you?”
Leonie shrugs. “A few days until she can find a place to rent.”
How long is a few days? As long as a piece of string, I suppose. Looking down the table, I see Nora talking and laughing but with a hint of pain. The perfect picture of a damsel in distress trying to be brave. A damsel in double distress because she’s dividing her smiles between Osian and Raff.
Raff is not single. He’s Leonie’s boyfriend. Leonie, who’s allowing her to stay on her sofa.
“Why, Leonie?” I can’t help asking.
“It’ll be okay.”
That’s all she says. It’s what I would say if someone asked me why I didn’t claim Osian earlier, didn’t hook my arm through his or beg him to help me with my presentation, didn’t ask him to sit with me… Anything to telegraph a ‘hands-off’ message to Nora.
Because women like me and Leonie don’t play the victim and use our tears as a tool. We hide our pain; it’s private and no one else’s business.
A few days, she said, A lot can change in a few days. For both of us.
Chapter Thirty-four
Fortunately, the lights are dimmed for my presentation, so I can’t see Nora or Osian. That’s not to say my imagination doesn’t provide enough pictures. Nora whispering in his ear, her hands on him. Or his hands on her, for that matter.
“The fan motif will be the centre of my design.” I press the remote to move from a slide of the gorgeous stained-glass panel above my door, to one of the cleared garden showing the slate outlines of the fans. “The flowerbeds are still bare but by the summer will look like this.” I switch to the next slide and there’s a chorus of gasps and exclamations from my audience.
Thanks to iPlnt, my favourite software. It allows me to mock up flowerbeds with different types of plants and then the program creates pictures at different phases of growth. So the image on the screen now shows a mature fan-shaped flowerbed with segments of blue delphiniums, cornflowers, forget-me-nots, irises and Veronica. “The idea is to show the fans graduating from pale to dark. To mimic the way a real fan looks when opening, so it gives the illusion of movement and animation.”
