Crossing Washington Square by Joanne Rendell

Author:Joanne Rendell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Diana held her breath from the moment she saw Rachel emerge from first class into economy. Please don’t let her be next to me, Diana prayed over and over. Please. But then Rachel stopped at the end of Diana’s aisle and started manhandling her bulky hand luggage—which looked big enough to hold a small child, Diana noticed—into the overhead locker. In those last seconds, Diana continued to pray, hoping that perhaps Rachel might be in the row in front or behind. But when Rachel finally clapped eyes on Diana and the color drained from her cheeks, Diana knew her worst nightmare was about to come true: seven hours sitting next to the very last person on the plane she wanted to be next to. Diana’s chest instantly lurched and tightened.

For the first hour of the flight, as they taxied and took off, Diana and Rachel said very little except to exchange pleasantries about the weather and talk briefly about the trip ahead. Rachel was clearly as tense as Diana felt. But unlike Diana, who remained rigid with apprehension, gripping a heavy book on Plath in her lap, Rachel fidgeted in her seat and flitted between different brightly colored paperbacks pulled from her purse. After she’d tried looking at three of these books, she put them all away and started flipping through the channels on the small television in the seat back in front of her. All the while, she tossed and tweaked her unruly hair and repeatedly smoothed down her blouse and pants.

Diana watched her colleague out of the corner of her eye. At some moments, she felt sorry for her. Diana knew that it was her own presence making Rachel so agitated and unsettled. At other moments, all Diana’s antipathies would return. When Rachel would flick back her hair, Diana would be reminded of her likeness to Annabelle, and when Rachel would smooth her hand over her tight-fitting blouse, Diana couldn’t help thinking of Carson.

Since Graham had come back into Diana’s life, Diana had thought little about Carson and had almost forgotten her stupidity that night, the night of the book launch and the taxi ride home. But when she’d spotted Carson with Rachel at the airport, anger reignited inside her. It wasn’t that she wanted Carson anymore—far from it—it was just the predictability of it all that infuriated her. The fact that Carson couldn’t keep his hands off a beautiful young thing like Rachel, with her curvy, sexy body and the chest-hugging blouses she wore to reveal it. There was also the fact that Rachel seemed to be able to lure any man she pleased. Even a handsome, blue-blood professor from Harvard who was ten years older than her and a whole lot more successful and established.

Seeing Carson and Rachel together also raised a question that agitated Diana: What about Mikey? The disastrous night when Diana had glimpsed Mikey and Rachel fooling around together outside Carson’s place felt like aeons ago, and since that night Diana had tried really hard not to think about what was going on between the two of them.

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