Joanne was fascinated by Mae Bell, a woman whom she hardly knew, but an exotic creature in these parts. Mae represented everything Joanne wanted to be—confident, elegant, well-traveled, mysterious. She wanted to keep Mae Bell to herself, but also wanted to show off her fascinating new friend.
Chiara and her father, Gino Corelli, were outsiders, people of the world—coming to this distant highland town from war-ravaged Italy, meeting up when the war was over, and Gino Corelli, released from a prisoner of war camp in northern Scotland, had made the decision to stay. They have no coffee or ice cream, was Gino’s simple explanation for the decision. That there was nothing left for him in his birthplace was the real reason; wife killed, home and orchards and olive groves and small café burned to the ground—that was the real reason. That and a chance to make a better life.
Make a better life he did; a new café, an ice cream business, and a fish-and-chips shop were all achieved in the first seven years. His daughter’s marrying another émigré, a Polish nobleman who had fled with his air force unit to Scotland, delighted him. The recent birth of his first grandson delighted him even more.
Life is good, Gino Corelli said. Often.
Joanne hoped her friends would find Mae Bell as fascinating as she did, and when Mae Bell said she wanted to thank Joanne for the article on her husband, she agreed to meet in the café on the river.
He looked up, saw Joanne, and smiled with his whole body.
“I’d like to introduce my friend Mrs. Mae Bell.” Joanne stood back, gesturing towards Mae as though she were a prize exhibit in an art gallery.
“Mae, please. Hi, Mr. Corelli.”
“Gino. Pleased ta meet you.” Gino beamed. Mae Bell smiled back, and they both instantly knew they would be friends.
Joanne took her favorite seat by the window with a view over the river and castle and the intersection where traffic slowed down to pass through the narrow stone archways of the suspension bridge.
Joanne asked for a cappuccino, Mae Bell an espresso. Gino himself brought over the order. “I’ll leave you lovely ladies to chat,” he told them. “An’ I hope you stay a long time, Mrs. Mae.”
Chiara had mentioned Joanne’s friend to her family, and although curious, Gino would not dream of intruding—but he knew a refugee when he saw one.
“So, anything further on finding friends of your late husband?” Joanne asked.
“No. But thanks for the story in the Gazette. It seems to have done the trick.” She laid out another envelope. Took out another sheet of the same lined notepaper. Joanne looked at another anonymous message.
“It’s the same writer as the first one,” Mae said.
I HAVE WARNED YOU. NO MORE INTERFERING IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO LOSE YOUR LOOKS.
“That’s not nice.” Joanne shivered. “And it must mean the writer knows what you look like.”
“I agree,” Mae said as she exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke. “I’m losing my looks as it is—don’t want to hurry the inevitable.” Her laugh sang out across the café, but an edge to it made Gino look across at the pair.
“You’re not losing . . .” Joanne started, but was interrupted by Rob walking up to the table.
“I saw you through the window. Hello again.” He took a seat without asking, oblivious to the glare from Joanne. “How are you doing? Had any response to the article about your husband?”
“Only this.” Mae picked up the letter and passed it to Rob.
Joanne was furious. This is my story. But she knew how petty that would sound.
“Bloody hell! Another one.”
Both women stared at him. Gino too. “Language, ma boy, there’s ladies here.”
“Sorry, Mr. Corelli. Sorry, Mae, Joanne.”
Joanne shrugged but had caught the use of Mrs. Mae Bell’s first name.
“What do you mean?” Mae was watching him, “Another one?”
“I . . .” Rob stopped, unsure if he should explain. “I think we should show this to McAllister.” He stood. “Meet you at the office,” he called out as he left.
The two women nodded back and, not saying much, not looking at the river and the cold clear rare sunshine reflecting off the water, the castle, the distant hills of the Black Isle, they walked across the bridge, up the steep street, on to the Gazette building, not conversing but not uncomfortable, both considering the contents of the letters, both curious as to the writer, and Mae Bell, more than Joanne, worried in a What? Me? Worried? way.
Joanne took them straight up to McAllister’s office. Rob was already there. When she introduced Mae Bell, she was expecting McAllister to be entranced by the visitor and was not disappointed. Mae Bell sat on the chair and crossed her legs, her nylons making that shimmering sound that normally set Rob a-fantasizing, but this time he managed to ignore.
“Mrs. Bell had a response to her advertisement and the article in this week’s paper,” was all Joanne said.
Mae Bell laid the envelope on McAllister’s desk. He stared at it. Poked it with his pen. Then opened it and read. “Is this the first note?” It was obvious from the wording that it was not the first warning.
“The second. I tore up the first. Never pay attention to anonymous letters,” Mae said. “It only encourages them.”
“I’m not sure how much I should tell you,” McAllister began, “but this has to go to the police.”
“Now you’re making me nervous.”
Mae Bell did not look nervous. Joanne doubted anything could make her nervous.
“You obviously know something. Should I be nervous? At least give me a clue.” And that signature Mae Bell send-shivers-down-the-spine laugh filled the editor’s poky wee office.
“Are you a singer, Mrs. Bell?” McAllister was staring at her.
“Sure am.”
“Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky Stormy weather . . .”
The sound of her voice was loud; clear—clear as a bell—a phrase Don McLeod would delete if one of them used it in an article.
“Paris, 1948, that wee club on the Left Bank—but you weren’t Mae Bell then . . .”
“Oh, my, Mr. McAllister, now you’re giving away my secrets . . .”
“I saw you. You were, are, marvelous.”
“I took my husband’s name. I love the sound of Mae Bell . . .”
“So do I,” Rob joined in.
“The anonymous letters.” Joanne had enough of this heroine worship but immediately regretted sounding so churlish. Though no one else had noticed.
“Yes, the letters.” McAllister knew he had to call DI Dunne. “I’ll ask the inspector if he will come here to talk to you.” He thought it better that the inspector come to the Gazette, than that the unmistakable Mrs. Bell walk up the steps of the police station, alerting who knows who, maybe even the letter writer.
“Fiona also opened an anonymous letter addressed to the Gazette. I think from the same person . . .”
McAllister turned to Joanne. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He meant it as a comment, a we-could-have-talked-this-over, but the pink cheeks as she looked at the floor told him he’d upset her.
“My fault,” Mae intervened. “I told the young lady always to ignore anonymous communications and chain letters.”
Not quite accurate—Mae told Fiona to throw the note away.
But Joanne was grateful for the intervention. Her arms wrapped around herself to hide her shaking hands, she was looking at the floor where a carpet had once lain, leaving a lighter mark on the wood.
“Sorry.” Face pink, furious that McAllister should pull her up in front of Mae, she stood. “I have some work to do.”
Rob looked at his watch. “Me too. I’ll catch you later, Mae . . . Mrs. Bell . . .” He backed out of the room, clearly enchanted.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” Mae said to Joanne.
Joanne thought Mae must be psychic—the way she seemed to sense the undertow in a conversation, an inflection in a voice, a remark that seemed casual but wasn’t. She nodded at Mae. There goes my story. No one was interested until it got interesting. Not looking at McAllister, she followed Rob to the reporters’ room.
“Did you hear that voice? She’s a real jazz singer.” Rob spoke as though he’d just had an audience with Phil Everly, his hero.
“I heard,” Don McLeod joined the conversation. “So who’s the singer?”
“My friend,” Joanne said. She sat at the typewriter and began banging on the keys, typing at hurricane force.
Don looked at Rob. Rob shrugged. Ten minutes later, the sound of footsteps on the stairs made Rob look up. Joanne kept on with her work. The footsteps went into McAllister’s office. Rob half rose, thinking it might be Detective Inspector Dunne.
“None of our business,” Joanne snapped.
Rob went back to his notes on the plans to demolish Bridge Street saying, “We’ll find out eventually.”
“Aye,” Don agreed, “and hopefully before deadline.”
• • •
Joanne was out of sorts, was how she put it when she talked to Chiara later that day.
“Come round after work and hold wee Andrew, that always cheers you up. Bring Jean and Annie. Stay for tea—we’ve plenty of pasta.”
After they had eaten and Chiara had bathed the baby with the help of two besotted girls, and after Andrew was wrapped up tight like baby Jesus in swaddling clothes and delivered to his daddy, who sat with him and the girls watching television, Joanne and Chiara did the dishes—Chiara washing, Joanne drying. The soothing routine and the warm kitchen and the rich food, especially the orange cake they had for pudding, comforted Joanne, melting the cold lump in her chest.
“How’s McAllister?” Chiara asked, trying for innocent and failing.
Joanne didn’t look at her. “How’s McAllister? I don’t really know. I’ve only seen him at work lately.”
“I’ve been busy . . . what with the divorce and the girls and . . .”
“It’s me you’re talking to, Chiara, your best friend . . . or is this wonderful American woman now your best friend?”
“Never! And how do you know she’s wonderful? Of course, your dad. She’s charmed him too.”
“Joanne, I’m only joking. I know we’re best friends, and yes, she charmed Papa—he loves blond women, you should hear him go on about Grace Kelly—but you’re like a big sister, so I’m allowed to tell you when you’re behaving like an idiot.”
Joanne said nothing but wiped a large white dinner plate so often it was gleaming.
Chiara was not going to let up. “McAllister is a man. Single. Forty-five. Never been married. You have to train him. You have to—”
The doorbell rang. Peter Kowalski, Chiara’s husband, answered.
“Come in, come in. Chiara’s in the kitchen with Joanne if you want to say hello.” Peter came in carrying his bundle of baby, followed by McAllister.
“We were talking about you,” Chiara said as she dried her hands on a tea towel and came forwards for a continental-style double kiss. “Coffee? Tea? Wine?”
“Coffee please,” he said. He looked at Joanne. Smiled.
She smiled back, said, “McAllister,” then looked away. The large wooden table between them was as wide as a frontier, and as helpful.
When they were alone, the men having taken their coffee into the sitting room, and Chiara had the percolator on the stove for a second round, she felt, then saw, the irritation in Joanne.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“You never told me McAllister was coming over.”
“I didn’t know. But he comes here regularly for a game of chess with Peter. You know that.” Chiara was staring. “You, dear friend, have a problem. We will talk later. But first . . .” She was laying the tray with cups and sugar.
“First I have to get the girls home, it’s late.”
“No, you don’t. It’s Friday. They can sleep here and we can have a lovely night together, the four of us.”
“I can’t . . .”
“You have no choice. I’ve decided.”
And a lovely night they had. Then McAllister offered her a lift home. When they were in the car, Joanne remembered Chiara’s words. She hadn’t liked hearing her friend tell her she had a problem, but she knew she was right. “Can we go to your house? It’s ages since we talked alone.”
She could feel his reaction. Feel the pleasure emanating from him like the heat from her two-bar electric fire that she practically sat on top of on cold winter’s nights.
At his home, they talked. At first the conversation was about Nurse Urquhart. The viciousness of the attack had shaken everyone—especially women who could imagine it happening to them. They talked over the Why? They considered motives; an amputated leg in a shinty boot in Nurse Urquhart’s washing was a pretty sick joke; acid in the face had no explanation except hate. But shinty, whilst fierce, was not vicious off the field.
McAllister played a soft, haunting piece of music he told her was flamenco. They drank a little wine. He lent her a book. She asked for another, this one a book of poetry, some American woman called Emily whom she’d never heard of.
He kissed her. Once. But a nice kiss, she decided. Then he took her home.
Going to bed in her little prefab and the house empty, she enjoyed the rare solitude. And regretted she was never able to say to McAllister what she didn’t know she wanted to say, which was, I feel so inadequate. Naïve. Uneducated. Unsophisticated. Untraveled. Is that a word? Mae Bell is much more your style than me.
Thoughts kept gushing out, unstoppable, like a burst water main. She gave in, got up, went to the kitchen, made cocoa, sipped it in bed. When sleep finally came, the thoughts transformed into dreams, where, in a running race with McAllister, Mae Bell, her girls, and her mother-in-law, she lagged far behind, watching the others disappear across the hill into bright sunshine, leaving her behind in the rain.