Constance by Thomas Rosie

Author:Thomas, Rosie [Thomas, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780007389551
Publisher: Harper Collins, Inc.
Published: 2011-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Connie left her when the nurse arrived. Jeanette asked Connie if she would come back again the next day.

When she reached home Roxana had already gone out, but Connie guessed that she had only just missed her. The flat retained the warmth of another presence, nothing more than a breath in the air and a faint indentation in a cushion, but it was enough to make the place feel inhabited. Connie liked the idea of her being there.

Roxana had taken to leaving food in the fridge, and yesterday there had been a punnet of strawberries placed on a saucer in the centre of the polished counter, with a note saying For you. Today in the same place was a small marguerite bush in a brown plastic pot. A piece of kitchen paper had been folded into a square and placed underneath, so as not to leave a mark on the counter. Connie went in search of a better pot for the plant, humming as she looked through the cupboards.

Later she sat down and tried to listen to music, but she kept getting up and walking to the window to look down at the roofs and the streets spread below. A young couple who lived at the top of a terraced house in the middle of the nearest street were lighting a barbecue on their roof terrace. Connie stood and watched them fussing with food and plates while the blue smoke curled up behind them. Suddenly she turned and went down the corridor to Roxana’s door. She felt guilty about prying, but she told herself that she was just checking to see that she had everything she needed.

The bed was made, and there was a Russian–English dictionary and an English language course-book lying on the bedcover. In the bathroom, a roll-on deodorant, a lip-salve and a tube of toothpaste shared a glass shelf.

As in the main part of the flat, Roxana’s presence made an impression, but only a faint one.

Connie inched open the wardrobe door and saw a brown envelope, two pairs of neatly folded jeans, some tops dangling from wire hangers. On the wardrobe floor were two pairs of shoes, one flat and one high-heeled, both with worn-down heels and creased toes.

She noticed a postcard stuck to the side of the cupboard next to the bed, and leaned forward to study it. It was a picture of a beach, turquoise water and a rim of white sand, with a fringe of palm trees. Straightening up again, Connie thought how brave the girl was to live in a strange place with so little, so precariously, and with almost nothing to conjure up other places and other times except a picture postcard.

Connie herself did not like to feel insecure, not physically or financially or emotionally. She had, she supposed, devoted a lot of energy to work that shielded her in the first two cases and to retreating from the demands of the third.

She went back and turned off the music. She rolled back the section of wall that hid the television screen, and sat down to watch that instead.

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