Alexander Mccall Smith - Isabel Dalhousie 06 Read Online Free PDF Page B

course.
    Minty smiled at Jamie and then turned back to Isabel. She looked around her and saw that the remaining tables had all, rather suddenly, been taken. “You wouldn’t mind, would you?” she asked.
    Isabel could not refuse. She did mind, of course, as she had planned to tell Jamie about Dove’s letter and she wanted to talk to Charlie about olives. Such promising lines of conversation would now be impossible with Minty and Roderick there. “Please join us,” she said, “I’d be delighted.” And she thought, as she spoke, of how often what we say is the exact opposite of what we really mean.
    Minty had a portable infant’s seat, which she fixed to a spare chair before strapping Roderick in. “Could you watch him for a second while I order?”
    As Minty went up to the counter to place her order, Isabel whispered to Jamie, “Remember her?”
    He glanced in her direction. Minty was elegantly dressed and was being attended to by the young server.
    “She was that woman who told you about that man? Quite a long time ago?”
    “Yes,” said Isabel. “I thought that she was the one who was doing the insider trading, but it was really …”
    “The other one? That man?”
    “Yes.”
    “So she helped you?”
    Isabel nodded. “I think so. But I was never really sure about her.”
    Minty, having chosen her food, returned to the table. “Roderick has a very sweet tooth,” she said. “I try to control it, but he takes the view that if he comes out for lunch with me, he’s entitled to something sweet. So I cave in, I’m afraid.”
    “Charlie’s the opposite,” said Jamie. “He likes savoury things. Olives in particular.”
    “They’re funny,” said Minty. “Little individuals from day one.”
    Roderick was staring suspiciously at Charlie, who seemed unaware of the other child’s presence. “Look,” said Minty. “They’re making friends.”
    Roderick now reached forward and grabbed at Charlie’s small green boot, which he tried to pull off its owner’s foot. Charlie, vaguely aware that something was tugging at an extremity, looked to Isabel for clarification.
    “He wants to play,” said Minty.
    Isabel struggled not to show her astonishment. This was not play; this was an alpha baby trying to take her son’s boot from him by brute force. She had noticed this sort of behaviour in the playgroup that she took Charlie to three times a week. They were two-hour sessions, held in a local church hall and marked by an astonishing level of noise. Charlie, she had observed, was tolerant and put up in a good-natured way with the grabbing and pushing of his coevals. It was a quality he had inherited from Jamie, she thought.
    “Aren’t they sweet!” Minty remarked. They were not: Charlie was sweet; this Roderick, it seemed, was his mother’s son. She remembered Minty as a ruthless high-flyer in the world of finance; her son would be heading in the same direction, no doubt. But the thought, she decided, was an uncharitable one, and she checked herself; Roderick had not chosen his mother, and, besides, all babies were little psychopaths in their early years. Only later would there emerge the finer aspects of the personality—if there were to be any.
    “I wonder what they think of one another,” mused Jamie. “Presumably they see somebody like themselves.”
    Roderick, at this point having abandoned his attempt to remove Charlie’s boot, had grabbed hold of his ankle, which he was trying to twist. Charlie watched, wide-eyed, but impassively. Gradually Roderick gained purchase and began to dig his tiny fingernails into Charlie’s skin. It was too much; Charlie turned red and opened his mouth to cry.
    “He gets a little rough sometimes,” said Minty, moving Roderick away. “He doesn’t mean it. Sometimes I think he doesn’t know his own strength.”
    Isabel made light of this assault on her son. “Boys …,” she said.
    “And girls,” said Jamie. “I knew a girl who used to pull my hair when I