The Price Of Deceit

‘You’re not listening to a word I’m saying.’ David pushed his plate aside and looked at her with a certain amount of pique. ‘I’m boring you.’

‘No! I’m very interested in what’s going on at your school.’ She looked at him with affection and applied her mind to the conversation at hand. ‘Perhaps you should leave.’

‘Leave and do what?’ He sighed. ‘Teaching is all that I’m cut out to do. That’s like telling a fish to leave the water and try and make a life in a tree.’

Katherine grinned at him. ‘You can be so descriptive,’ she said. ‘You’re absolutely wasted teaching maths. You should give it all up and write a book.’

‘You’re mad,’ he said, laughing, ‘but maybe you’re right. There’s quite a lot to be said for getting out of school politics.’ He sighed, and she noticed all the tell-tale signs of a man showing his age, even though he was only twenty-nine, younger than she was, in fact. There were small wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and a sprinkling of grey hair in between the fine brown.

In an attempt to steer him away from more maudlin self-analysis, she began chatting about books, and was relieved when he took the cue.

She didn’t feel that she could cope with David’s problems, or anyone else’s for that matter. She had enough of her own, and for once she decided that she would be selfish and not allow herself to become a never-ending sounding-board for other people. She had spent a lifetime listening to her mother and she had acquired a talent for listening, but the talent, she was discovering over the past few weeks, was not quite as accessible as it used to be. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss her own problems with anyone else, she was too private a person for that, but neither could she bring herself to be the helpful ear that she once was.

It had only struck her recently that friends and colleagues took her availability for granted, and they always had.

They always knew where to find her; they always knew that she would be around if they were at loose ends or else had something to discuss.

Should she be flattered at that? she wondered. Or was it a reflection of some essential lack in her own life?

She frowned, leaving David to hold forth on the pleasant daydream of giving up the orthodox life for something more adventurous, and only snapped back to reality when her eyes, aimlessly drifting around the room, flitted over a tall, dark man standing by the bar with a drink in his hand.