Ivoria by Tanith Lee (uplifting novels .txt) 📕

“You know, I kept thinking about that woman you told me about - Kit? I did know a girl - oh, about a year ago – very good-looking, sort of like you described. Only she had red hair, but I do think it was dye, not like a real red, but that sort of too crimson type of thing that sort of gets lost against a red wall or red curtains. She was called Kitty. Kitty Andrew. I met her on some TV commercial I made for feminine hygiene – Christ! Oh I put on this thing and at once become the most sexy, athletic and alluring woman on earth. Despite the fact I’m bent double with period cramps - or stoned on pain killers – whee! Anyhow, Kitty was the tea-girl or whatever, but a bit of a laugh, a bit nuts. And she did once meet me from work, so she would know the sort of work, and the building too. But no, I never said a word about you, Nick.”

He had noticed a tell-tale flicker in her eyes when she added this. Nick knows that while this can be the giveaway of the liar, also it is often the tell-tale sign of someone who fears they may be thought to be a liar, even if not lying. Often the truest test of one who deceives is that they will stare you straight in the eye.

But anyway the name Kitty Andrew is not quite Kit Price, is it, and red is not blonde, even when dyed to match the curtains.

In a way Nick had been regretful that Sonia had referred to it, reminding him.

That episode is closed. It is shut out, and the mind’s door also shut, and fastened with its extra security lock.

Kit had looked like Claudia, or he had thought she had. And to Nick, now, this appends an ultimate proviso of unlikeliness. Doubtless anyway she had no sinister motive - the break-in had no connection. He does not want to consider Kit any more.

When the flat lights are on, Nick pours himself an orange juice and sits down with the two letters left for him in the lobby.

He seldom receives letters. Or only junk mail, to be sloughed in the handy recycling bin downstairs.

But now in the lamplight, although one still looks simply official, he sees the second letter is defaced by his sister’s scrawling. Serena’s handwriting manages to combine characterlessly immature round shapes with an untidy, ugly unreadability.

Nick regards his name and address on the envelope, which appear to begin: M Lous, Plud IS.

A second class Christmas stamp has been crookedly stuck on. Serena is not poor, and probably sends only a handful of letters per year. It reminds him, this, of a time soon after he had received his mother’s legacy, when Reenie had constantly sullenly applied to Nick for loans - always given - two hundred quid here, a thousand there, until presumably she found some other axe to grind elsewhere.

He opens the envelope.

‘Muck,’ the letter starts. He translates this as his name. There is no punctuation.

‘nick why the fuck you cant have an email address like everybody else god knows I havent got time for this I had to rush back from 99 in Corfu for christs sake because of this terrible thing with laurence’ (or, cuunc, as she appears to have their brother’s name) ‘I cant believe hes dead for gods sake I keep telling angie they made some mistake and it isnt him only shes off her bloody head so its useless and I hate the fucking police and its getting to be a police state and I knew I couldnt call you after the awful fucking way you treated me when I called you after claudia died as if you were the only child for gods sake and she wasnt my mother too but you always were selfish so basically dont come to the funeral as angie’ (which looks more like orange) ‘says if she sees you there she will kill you after how you behaved to her on the phone and anyhow she is sure you got him involved with that bloody woman and some doctor or other thinks he died because of all the sex stupid fucker at 45 or whatever he is to be overdoing it I mean hes practically an old man only now hes dead’

There is a little more, this of a slightly religious nature. It quickly becomes, even for Nick, once practiced in Serena-ese, entirely illegible. Oddly, or perhaps not, her nickname of Reenie, signed at the bottom, is curlicued but quite clear.

Nick sits holding the letter upside down, then drops it on the wooden floor.

Which bloody woman does Serena mean?

Something clicks, almost like a bone, in Nick’s head.

Is this a reference to Laurence’s female TV producer? That makes a certain sense. Since the consultation with Nick had been Laurence’s smoke screen, Laurence had perhaps intended to meet her after his visit to Nick and the hiding of the Roman pin. Their affair was doubtless already up and running. Which might even explain why Laurence had chosen to hide the pin in Nick’s flat. The new girlfriend might be the clinging, or lovingly prying sort, who would for example needlessly use Laurence’s own toothbrush, and then go through his bags, looking for a keepsake, or one of his shirts to put on. Laurence had fancied but not trusted her. But even so, would she really have caused Laurence’s death by her invitation to over-enthusiastic sexual exertion?

There had been nothing wrong with Laurence’s health. He was the right weight, active and fit from his archaeological stints. And he was forty-two, forty-three… not old by today’s standards - even if his thirty-six year old sister suggested he was.

Whatever else, Nick has been exempted from the funeral. Serena has furnished a get-out clause.

He refuses to consider her remarks about her call to him in Edinburgh.