Girl From the South by Joanna Trollope

Author:Joanna Trollope [Trollope, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780425193501
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Published: 2001-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The Internet café and coffee shop that Henry used was in the back part of a nail parlour. The whole enterprise was run with unsmiling briskness by a Korean family who seemed to make no distinction in discourtesy between a one-time drop-in customer and a customer like himself who came in most days, always bought a bagel and a latte, and never failed to obey the rules taped on to the partitions above each computer in laminated panels. The father ran the café at the back: the mother the cash desk and the appointments book at the front, and a row of sleek-headed daughters and nieces sat at the manicure stations in between and talked to each other, past the customers, in their own staccato language. Henry said ‘Good morning’ to each of them, every time he went down the length of the room towards the café. The mother gave him the smallest of nods. The daughters and nieces took no notice of him whatsoever.

When he first arrived in Charleston, he had checked his e-mails every day, feeling a small surge of guilt when Tilly’s little unopened envelopes appeared on the screen. She was very careful in her e-mails: admirably careful. She didn’t tell him too much, or ask him too much. She signed them ‘Best love, Tilly’, a phrase which suggested slight formality and distance as well as paying him the complicated compliment of not sending him second-rate stuff. For the first few weeks, she wrote every day. Then, every other day. Now, with Christmas not far off and even Charleston cooling into winter, she wrote perhaps twice a week, and ‘Best love’ had dwindled to ‘Love’. Henry always wrote back on ‘Reply to Sender’. It did not occur to him how this might seem to Tilly – a mere response to something she had instigated rather than something he had instigated himself. He signed off with ‘Love, H’ and sometimes with a row of capital X kisses. When the e-mail was sent, he felt as he used to feel when a set childhood task was either done, or its not being done had escaped notice. In between, Tilly waited at the back of his mind, not moving, just waiting as if she were about to enter a room or descend a staircase. He was filled with sorrow every time he caught sight of her.

E-mails from William were another matter altogether. They came fairly regularly and they were terse and rude. William said Tilly wasn’t coping very well, had lost weight. He said that he and Susie were looking after her as best they could, taking her out with them, planning weekends. William’s e-mails did not fill Henry with sorrow; they filled him with fury instead. Who was William, with his idle, casual personal life, to preach to Henry about the consequences of inadvertently breaking someone’s heart? And Susie. If you made a list, Henry thought, of the ten most unsuitable people for looking after someone in a state of distress, Susie might well occupy the top nine places.

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