Tigerlily's Orchids by Ruth Rendell

come and revealed that no bones were broken. He knew that already. He studied his own image in the mirror, feeling calm and even cheerful. How handsome he was! Trying to think who he reminded himself of, he came up with José Mourinho, only a younger version, of course. Another way of getting away from the phones would be to join a gym. His figure was perfect but there was no harm in doing a bit of work to keep it that way. Besides, Jack had told him a gym was an amazing place to meet girls, all of them beautiful or they wouldn’t dare strip down to leotards and prance about in public on elliptical cross-trainers.
    At the end of the fortnight he was going to have to confront Claudia. Another discovery made through his new lifestyle was that he didn’t really like Claudia. He fancied her, of course – any man would fancy her. But if he liked her or, more than that,
loved
her, Freddy Livorno’s threats wouldn’t have carried much weight with him. He would, he told himself, have defied that hectoring bully. No, Freddy had perhaps done him a favour. Instead of missing Claudia and pining for her as she and he too had thought would be the case, he was rather relieved and worrying only about how to stop her
coming back to him
when the two weeks were up.
    Still, he felt that he had reached an important point in his life, a crossroads perhaps. Things were on the crux of change. Once before, when he had first moved in, he had consulted Marius Potter – on the recommendation of RosePreston-Jones – and applied to him for a
sortes
reading. Now seemed the time to request another. Stuart sat down in a strange chair with a rail padded in brown corduroy providing its back while Marius sat in a chair with a diamond-shaped seat and carved circular back and consulted the copy of
Paradise Lost
which lay on the marble table. Marius opened it at random, leafing through the pages with his eyes closed like a practised card sharper.
    He opened his eyes but without looking, ran his fingers down the right-hand page, stopping a little more than halfway down. He read: ‘ “Live while ye may, / Yet happy pair; enjoy, till I return, / Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed!” ’
    â€˜That’s not very good, is it?’ Stuart was dismayed.
    â€˜Well, I’m sorry.’ Marius sounded genuinely contrite. ‘That’s the trouble with the
sortes
. You have to take the rough with the smooth. Come back tomorrow and you might get something more hopeful.’
    â€˜I don’t think I will, thanks.’
    The reading plainly referred to his relationship with Claudia and must mean that things were all right for him now but would change when she returned. Any pleasure would be shortlived and afterwards, misery. For the first time in the six months since he gave up, Stuart thought how much he would like a cigarette. Reminding him where addiction might lead, he encountered Olwen crossing the hallway, a clinking plastic bag in each hand. She wore her tattered fur. Her face was grey, her head wrapped up in a scarf of much the same shade. Everyone in Lichfield House had by now of course heard on the grapevine, which had its roots in Flat 5, of her near collapse, her apparent illness and pleas for someone to buy her alcoholic drink. Everyone had his or her own view of how this crisis should have been handled.
    Stuart didn’t care but still thought it incumbent on him asa resident to ask her how she was. He recoiled a bit from her unsavoury ambience. ‘Are you feeling better?’
    â€˜Not really,’ said Olwen, though she knew she would be once she had swallowed her first gulp of the vodka which, February having started, would probably be the liquor of the month. She shuffled up to the lift. It was now four days since she had eaten anything and there was no food in the two bags she carried.
    Still made uneasy by his
sortes
reading, Stuart decided a long walk would be a good idea.