Joyce felt a pang of loneliness. She missed her friends in the Secret Society desperately. The bulletins were all well and good, but it wasn’t the same as their gin-fuelled weekends.
Arriving at 35 Harrington Square, Joyce knocked. Mitsy Bouvoir answered, dressed in a lilac silk marabou-trimmed robe, clutching her white Bichon Frisé dog. She was a little bird of a woman, and Joyce had never seen her without her red lipstick, which always bled a little into the lines around her mouth. Her wispy white hair was whipped up high on her head like a trifle.
‘Do you have them, darling?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Fear not, Mrs Bouvoir. Right here.’
‘Oh wonderful.’ The elderly lady closed her eyes in relief. ‘You’ll come and have a sherry, won’t you?’
Joyce followed Mitsy up a dimly lit passage into what was once a grand dining room. Despite making deliveries to her house for several years, now, she had never made it further than the doorstep, and she was intrigued to see what lay beyond. She suspected Mitsy was a stage name she’d never quite been able to let go of. Mitsy never tired of telling Joyce about her previous career as a silent-movie star.
Looking round the room, Joyce’s eyes lingered on a black-and-white photo of a young Mitsy in front of the pyramids in Egypt, her arms wrapped around a beautiful man.
‘My husband, Cedric Bouvoir,’ she said, catching Joyce’s gaze and pouring her a generous measure of sherry. ‘Wasn’t he divine?’
‘I should say,’ Joyce replied, tearing her eyes away from the photo. ‘How long were you married?’
‘Fifty good years. Then two bad,’ Mitsy sighed, lowering herself down into an armchair so big it seemed to swallow her. ‘Cancer is a savage brute.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. We lived and loved enough for five lifetimes.’
Joyce spied a bed in the corner behind a Chinese silk screen. ‘Why do you sleep in here, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘My legs, darling. I once climbed the Pyrenees. Now I can’t even climb my stairs.’
Joyce tilted her head.
‘Don’t you dare feel sorry for me,’ Mitsy scolded. ‘My life may be reduced to this room, but I have Missy Dog and my books – thanks to you, anyway.’
Joyce took a sip of her sherry and smiled. ‘You have a book, you have a friend.’
Mitsy pushed her library card across the coffee table, and Joyce realised this was her signal to go.
‘I’ll make sure this gets stamped,’ she promised, making a mental note to get in before Hildegard tomorrow.
‘Be a dear and fetch my reading glasses, would you? I think I’ll start withThe Serpent in the Garden. Romance and mystery on the French Riviera. How’s a girl to say no?’
‘How indeed?’ Joyce smiled. She fetched her glasses and a soft rug, which she placed around Mitsy’s shoulders.
‘Dear girl, you’re an unofficial travelling library. Why don’t you set up an actual mobile library? I can’t tell you what a tonic your visit’s been. Apart from you, the milkman’s the only other person I see.’
‘Great minds, Mrs Bouvoir. I did suggest that very idea to my superior earlier. In fact, it’s something I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a year, now.’
‘Hildegard March?’
Joyce nodded. ‘Yes. She wasn’t as enthusiastic as I’d hoped.’
‘Hildegard March is a toffee-nose twit with the imagination of a Brussel sprout.’
Joyce burst out laughing.
‘I’m serious. Don’t let her bury your dreams. Start your travelling library.’ Her eyes, the pale blue-green of sea glass, shone in the gloom. ‘See where it takes you.’
Arriving home to Unwin Terrace, Joyce mentally steeled herself for a cold meat supper for one. But as she walked up to the front door, she realised a figure sat hunched over on the doorstep.
‘Hallo...’ she said cautiously. ‘Can I help you?’ As she got closer, though, she recognised the figure and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, Adela, it’s you. I didn’t know you had the weekend off. What a super surprise—’
