Bleeding Hearts. Lindy Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ Miranda said. "No one is expecting a ring-in today, so you can be a rocket scientist, a taxi driver with a Ph.D., or whatever you like. They don't know Del either, so we can use her as a point of reference should we have to bring up old times for any reason. But aren't there seven of us for lunch, Tor?"

      "Eight, counting Kit," Tori said. "Us, Rebecca, Dee, Paula, Doodle and Carmel."

      "Doodle?" Kit asked.

      "Grace Markham," Miranda explained. "She runs a headhunting employment firm. You know, gets the best people for the top jobs with the most money for the highest commission."

      "And the others?" Kit asked.

      "Dee, ah Dierdre Clay is CEO of a private hospital in Kew; Paula Bracken's an accountant with a city firm; Carmel Fisher is a history teacher; Tori, thanks to you, is a lady of leisure; and I, as you know, am an art dealer of impeccable taste and gallery owner of some renown."

      "And speaking of herself, she has a favour to ask," Tori added.

      "Hey," Kit threw her hands up, "ask away. You've obviously been responsible for most of my work in the last two months."

      Miranda sighed, dramatically. "I seem to have attracted an opportunistic thief to my Tuesday soirees at the gallery."

      "An opportunistic thief?" Kit repeated.

      "Yes. Some miscreant using the throng and bustle to cover his, or her, actions."

      Miscreant? Kit thought. "What is he, or she, taking?" she asked.

      "Wallets, mobile phones, cigarette cases, that sort of thing. He-she is picking them up off tables, and sometimes taking them straight out of pockets and bags."

      "A pickpocket? Interesting," Kit said. "I gather you'd like me to look into it."

      "Oh yes please. Would you, O'Malley?" Miranda enthused, as if that hadn't been what she was asking for. "Tonight would be great. My featured artist this evening is Frankie Diajo, a splendid young painter, and we're also having the Hojo Blues Quartet so we're expecting quite a crowd."

      Kit's response was lost in the clackety-clack and skippety-clicker commotion that heralded the arrival of the silliest watchdogs in Melbourne who barreled into the room and then out again to let the humans know, in case they hadn't heard it, that the door bell had rung.

      "Fred and Ginger," Miranda snapped. "Come here, immediately."

      This time Tori chased the dogs back into the sunroom and shut them in before going to open the front door.

      "Come on precious," Miranda cooed at the animal that bore no resemblance to any breed of anything.

      "I thought this one was called Bumble," Kit said as the Lab squirmed onto her lap.

      "It is," Miranda replied.

      "So who's Fred? Or Ginger?"

      "Not or. This is FredAndGinger," Miranda explained, stroking the description-defying-thing.

      "Let me guess," Kit said. "He-she's a transgender dog."

      "No," Miranda snorted with laughter. "It's because he can dance - forwards and backwards."

      "And you really don't own a television, Katherine?" Carmel Fisher queried.

      "I really don't," Kit lied.

      "There's a truly amazing thing that probably goes with that mildly interesting revelation," Paula Bracken noted sullenly. The woman had been quiet for most of the lunch, due to the residual hangover she'd owned up to on arrival.

      "What's that, oh grumpy one?" Dee asked.

      Paula curled her lip at her friend and then looked at Kit. "It probably means that, until today, Katherine was the only person in the country who couldn't have picked RJ out of a line-up."

      Kit feigned puzzlement as she briefly searched Paula's angular face and brown eyes for a sign that her statement carried any more animosity than a slightly envious tone. It didn't seem to, so she glanced around the table, as if it took her a moment to recall which of the other women was Rebecca. She flashed her a wide-eyed apologetic smile. "She's right. Sorry."

      "I find it refreshing," Rebecca stated, trying not to laugh.

      "Speaking of refreshing, where's Tori with that bloody champagne?" Miranda demanded.

      "I'll go see if she needs any help," Kit offered, struggling up from her chair on the huge shaded patio at the side of the house, where they had adjourned for lunch. She wandered inside, calling out Tori's name so she'd have some idea of which direction to head.

      "Last door on the left," Tori called back.

      Kit glanced back at the seven laughing women and wondered what a reunion of her schoolmates would be like. She hadn't attended the function that marked her 10th anniversary of leaving school, because it was the same year that her best friend Hannah had been killed by a drunk driver. And birthday cards were the only contact she still kept with her other three closest school friends, as they'd all left the state. Jane now lived in Hobart with her husband and three kids, Karen had gone feral in Byron Bay, and Ruth was playing the hotshot lawyer in Adelaide.

      Kit's closest friends now were people she'd met as an adult and, while they were without doubt the most precious things in her life, she wondered what it would be like to be still attached, in some way, to someone you'd known all your life. It made her feel strangely disjointed to think that she possibly already knew more about the women she'd spent the last two hours with than she did about Jane, Karen or Ruth; and that she wouldn't even recognise half the girls she'd gone to school with.

      Tori and her mates, on the other hand, had such a long history they would no doubt survive all the things that are regularly sent by the mean and spiteful Muck-up Troll to test the friendship concept; including, perhaps, a really good reason for one of them to be sending a batch of poison pen letters and maybe, at a pinch, even FredAndGinger.

      OK, she thought, shaking her head to switch off the gooey Big Chill scenario that was trying to influence her judgement of this group of women. She had observed something oddly askew about their interactions, as if they either had a reason for wanting to forget an aspect of their shared past, or they hadn't always been such an intimate group.

      Kit found Tori in the cavernous and stainless steel kitchen where she was defying the laws of physics by flinging biscuits and pieces of fruit and cheese willy-nilly onto a huge platter and having them land in an artistically appetising configuration.

      "That is a talent I'd kill for," Kit stated.

      "What?"

      "The elegant art of the food toss."

      "Nothing to it," Tori claimed, licking her fingers.

      "There is when your own kitchen has a vendetta against you," Kit pronounced.

      "The secret," Tori laughed, "is don't ever let it think it's got the upper hand."

      "Too late, I'm afraid," Kit said. "My kitchen appliances have formed their own street gang."

      "Oh dear, in that СКАЧАТЬ