“Taking a lot of care for a ‘mercy date,’ aren’t you?” Barbara asked her. Dee was using a small mirror in an attempt to see the back of her hair. Barbara stepped behind her, said, “It looks smashing and even if it didn’t, he’s not going to be evaluating your hair . . . or is he?”
She replied to Barbara’s first remark. “He seems rather nice in a horsey kind of way.”
“You did mention the royal princes,” Barbara pointed out.
“I meant in personality,” Dee told her. She applied lipstick, stepped back, observed her image, applied a second colour. In the mirror, she said to Barbara, “What’s to come of your evening? No celebration?”
“I’m thinking Welsh rarebit with a side of chips and another of baked beans.”
Dee cast her a disapproving look. “We need to book the holiday camp, Barbara. You do see that, don’t you?”
What Barbara saw was the opening, so she took it. “As to that, Dee.”
Dee raised a shapely eyebrow. “No arguments,” she said. “We’re doing it. That’s done.”
“I appreciate all of this. I really do,” Barbara told her. “But . . . Bloody hell. I don’t know exactly how to say this.”
Dee dropped her lipstick-wielding hand. “Oh Lord. He was wrong. He was wrong, wasn’t he? You are and I’ve been very, very stupid.”
“I am?”
“Is there someone I’ve not met? Have you not wanted to say? You can’t have been afraid you’d be bullied. Lord, Barbara. Who on earth would have the nerve to bully you? And anyway, aren’t we past that? I don’t mean you and me. I mean society in general. Aren’t we past that kind of intolerance?”
Barbara was so far out to sea she began to think they were speaking in foreign—and decidedly different—tongues. She said, “Dee, the thing is, I’m not looking for a man.”
“I know, I know.”
“You do?”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to tell me?”
“More or less,” Barbara admitted. “But what the hell are you trying to tell me?”
Dee turned from the mirror. She’d taken a case of makeup from her bag, and she shoved this back where it belonged as she said, “That you . . . Well, that you prefer—and believe me I don’t care in the least except, obviously, I’m not available . . .”
Barbara twigged. “Women,” she said.
“Well, yes. I mean, I asked the inspector . . . I mean the acting detective chief—”
“Got it,” Barbara cut in. “You asked Lynley if I’d rather be with a woman. For the sake of my own interest, what did he say?”
“He didn’t actually know. I mean, how could he when you think about it. But he said he doubted it. Or words to that effect. Or something. And then those flowers came—”
“Right,” Barbara said. She wasn’t about to reveal the source of the flowers. “The answer is no. I don’t prefer women. At least I don’t think I prefer women.”
“Yet you still don’t want to . . . Let’s do the holiday camp, Barbara. I’m mad to do it. Aren’t you?”
“Dee, only having my teeth pulled sounds worse.”
“That means no, does it?”
“It means I’m fine. As I am. Who I am. Do I look like someone who’s spending her life moping round waiting for a bloke to shove a glass slipper onto my foot?”
Dee crossed her arms, leaned against the wash basin, gave Barbara an up and down. She said, “To be frank?”
“Please.”
“No. You don’t. You never have actually.” She sighed then and arranged the strap of her shoulder bag so that it didn’t cause a wrinkle in her cotton dress. “But can I ask you one question.” And before Barbara could say yes or no, she went on with, “We’ll still tap dance, won’t we?”
“I didn’t buy tap shoes to give it up now,” Barbara told her. “Especially when I can, at long last, do a bloody Shirley Temple.”
Now, Barbara had finally reached Chalk Farm. She wasn’t as late as she so frequently was, so she was able to park in front of the house behind which she lived. She’d not stopped for takeaway although she reckoned she might regret the omission. Despite what she’d said to Dorothea, she wasn’t certain she had the required comestibles for Welsh rarebit, and while she’d left a tin of Heinz baked beans open in the fridge, she couldn’t have sworn to its suitability for consumption as she’d completely forgotten when she’d deposited it there. But there would be something edible in her little habitation. If nothing else, she had plenty of Pop-Tarts.