Transgressions by Sarah Dunant Read Free Book Online Page A

one back? Or did he already know that she didn’t need it anymore. After all, if it was him, then his last visit would have revealed the fact that she’d already replaced the first CD. It was unbelievable. But it was, she realized, not unlike Tom to do something like this, to admit everything and nothing at the same time with a gesture that was both cruel and generous.
    Her sense of outrage moved into anger. How dare he? She pulled the front door open, hoping—hoping what? To catch him still hovering behind it? But there was no one there and when she went out onto the street it was empty. From behind her a set of firecrackers went off alarmingly close. She jumped around, half expecting to see him, flinging up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry, Lizzie. Just a joke.” But instead two teenage boys jumped out from behind a car where they had been crouching.
    “Police,” shouted one of them, in a howl of laughter. “It’s a raid.”
    She slammed the door and went inside. From the hall phone she dialed his number. He wouldn’t, of course, be home yet. The Barbican from here? How long would it take? Ten minutes? Twenty in traffic. His answering machine had a different message, a little less jaunty, she thought. She waited till the beep, but when it came she couldn’t trust herself to speak, wasn’t sure she would find the right words to register her contempt as well as her fury. It would be braver and better to do it face-to-face. Or at least person-to-person.
    She thought about driving straight to his apartment, confronting him then and there, but by the time she got herself ready, the kitchen clock was showing 8:20 and she was already late. Having refused the last three invitations, it wouldn’t do to completely blow off this one. Sally might act casual about such things but she didn’t easily forgive people who forgot Patrick’s birthday.
    She slammed the CD down onto the counter. The cover of the old one was still on the rack above. She brought it down and sat them side by side. She was tempted to fling the new one straight into the trash, to not allow herself to be contaminated by it. But why punish Van Morrison for someone else’s transgression? In the end, she pulled off the cellophane and slipped it into the machine. She played the first three tracks before turning it off and heading out the door, grabbing a bottle of wine on her way.

 
     
    four
     
    I f it wasn’t the best of evenings, then neither was it the worst. Years of practice had made Patrick’s birthday something of a ritual: first the fireworks (whatever the weather), then the food, and finally the dancing. Lately, Sally had got her hands on the guest list, skillfully working in business with pleasure. There were a few faces that she recognized (not Charles, she noticed, but, then, perhaps the aroma-therapist had been invited instead), otherwise the place was full of people who usually wore suits, slumming it in jeans and sweaters and shoes that had probably never seen a garden, let alone mud.
    She chatted to some of them as the rockets exploded over the Islington skyline, and surprised herself by how well she did. A few friends came by and told her how fabulous she was looking, and how much they wanted to have her to dinner, and she smiled and agreed it would be a good idea, promising to call them back before moving on to the next group of strangers. It struck her as curious that she got on better with people she didn’t know, as if this new Elizabeth, single, without Tom, needed an equally new world to define herself against. Curious, but not unpleasant.
    In fact, had she arrived less freaked out she might even have found one or two of these strangers attractive. She had gone to the social precaution of leaving the car at home, so that by halfway through the evening she was more than a little drunk. When the fireworks had given way to the food she found herself sitting on a bench at the back of the kitchen, laughing with a guy