“You were out running,” Dorothea said. “D’you expect me to believe that? And why did you not show up for tap dancing last night?”
“Ingrown toenails?” Barbara said with hope.
“Unamusing. Next week I intend to drag you by your hair if necessary. How much weight have you lost?”
“Don’t know,” Barbara said. “The bathroom scales and I have not been intimate lately. But I’ve probably lost nothing, Dee. Whatever I lose, I make up by eating curry for the rest of the week. And naan. Absolute piles of naan.”
“Oh bother,” Dorothea said. “You’re impossible.”
“That sounds good.”
“Don’t cross me, Barbara. I simply refuse to let you cross me. Now. Let’s get to a computer. I’ve found something spectacular for us.”
To Dorothea spectacular meant having the potential to line herself up—and, unfortunately, Barbara as well—with a man. In this case, however, it appeared that her intention was to line them both up with herds of men. It was a website called GroupMeet, and Dorothea brought it up on Barbara’s computer the moment they reached her desk.
“This is simply the bee’s knees,” Dorothea said.
The bee’s knees? Wasn’t that something from . . . Barbara wasn’t sure. The 1920s? Dee had been watching period television again.
“What is it?” Barbara asked over Dee’s shoulder. Bright colours, photos of laughing, smiling, chortling, giggling people from thirty-five to seventy engaged in various activities. Men with women, men with men, women with women, old with old, young with young, older men with younger women, younger men with older women. They were all playing tennis or boating or working in gardens or riding horses or attending the opera or the ballet. And everyone was having a smashing good time. “What the hell, Dee?” Barbara repeated. “This isn’t some dating site, is it?”
“Lord, no,” Dorothea said. “Heaven forfend and all that. This is an activity site. What one does is scroll through the various activities—Look! Here’s one for tap dancing!—and click on whatever appeals. That takes you to where the next round of that activity will be taking place. Here, let me do it.”
As Barbara watched, Dorothea clicked on Rambling. Up popped various photos of ramblers along with a list of upcoming rambles. Dorothea then clicked on Pub Rambles, which took them to a dozen different walks to and from pubs that were scheduled in various parts of England. She clicked on Oxfordshire and found two rambles listed, both to take place in the following week. She chose one of them and a list of names popped up. “One adds one’s name to the list and then just shows up for the activity,” she announced. “Isn’t that brilliant? Name the activity and there’s someone doing it. Look.” She took them back to the main page and began reading off the various activities: Sketching, Plein Air Watercolours, Rock Climbing, Crewing, Ballroom Dancing, Amateur Theatricals, Choirs, Chinese Cookery, War History, Architecture, Inigo Jones Landscapes. “It goes on and on,” Dorothea told her. “We must do one of these together, Barbara. It sounds like such fun.”
It sounded to Barbara like various levels of the Inferno.
Dee was going on, however. “Of course, we still have our tap dancing, you and I. But there’s more to life than that.”
“Right. There’s curry after tap dancing as well.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m signing us up for something.” She peered at the terminal’s screen again. “Sketching,” she decided. “I’m signing us up for sketching. I’ve always longed to sketch, haven’t you? Never mind. You’ll just say you’ve never given sketching a thought. But I know you better than you know yourself, so sketching it is. And, oh! Look at this, Barbara. There’re language groups as well. French, German, Cantonese, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, Spanish, Finnish—heavens, does anyone actually speak Finnish these days? Are you interested in Italian at all, Barbara? It can be a very useful language when one travels, you know. Conversations with the locals and all that.”
Barbara narrowed her eyes. Dee was very clever. She was leading to a topic that Barbara had been avoiding for weeks. Inspector Salvatore Lo Bianco of the Lucca police had been in England since early July—was still in England, as far as she knew—to study the language, and Dorothea had decided straightaway upon meeting him that he was the answer to a young girl’s dreams, or at least to Dorothea’s dreams for Barbara. Only Barbara wasn’t a young girl with dreams nor had she considered Salvatore as someone she might set her cap at. Whatever setting one’s cap meant and from where on earth had she dug up that expression? Possibly one of her Regency romance novels. Time to switch genres, she told herself. Horror, perhaps. Yes. Horror sounded good.