Free The Lightning Cage by Alan Wall

suggested we share one last one before setting out, I suggested we didn’t.
    â€˜There’ll be wine,’ I said. ‘Let’s take it easy. We can have one when we get back.’ Alice was clothed as she always was. As casually as I could, I wondered out loud whether she might perhaps consider putting a dress on. I knew that she had one because I had ironed it the day before. She gave me that look of hers, which could appear so serene sometimes, but at others could be perilously close to vacancy. Then she went off to the bedroom without saying a word. When she came back, she had put on the short green dress. Over the top of her blue jeans. And she still retained the constructor’s boots on her feet. But then, she was a painter, after all. I didn’t have the strength to argue.
    We walked across the bridge and stopped there awhile to watch the river. When we arrived at the house, it was Andrew who opened the door. He was in his suit, but then he usually was. He looked at Alice, and there was a momentary flicker, no more than that, but enough to register his surprise. Then Helena appeared in a full-length red velvet dress, and I realised they had decided this was a ceremonial occasion. Helena looked Alice up and down, from the mop of her white bedraggled hair to her building-site boots, and simply said, ‘Well.’
    I fumbled my way through the introductions as we entered and were given our glasses of wine.
    â€˜And what do you do?’ Andrew asked.
    â€˜I paint. I did a diploma at the West London College of Art.’ Andrew swung his eyes towards the ceiling in his characteristic gesture of concentration and recollection. I noticed the small tuft of hair growing out of his nostrils.
    â€˜West London College of Art,’ he said finally, ‘but now, didn’t we just do a job for them?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I said. ‘Quite a while back actually. The brochure, remember. That’s Alice’s painting on the front.’ Andrew looked at me in silence, as though in the middle of a calculation, and then started to nod his head slowly as the facts sank in.
    I had forgotten, of course. I had omitted entirely to mention Alice’s dietary exclusions, which in fact were now my dietary exclusions too. I had taken her pledge. The subject of meat had been banished from our lives. When both our hosts were out of the room for a moment, I spoke quietly and hurriedly to Alice.
    â€˜I’m sorry. I forgot all about asking for a vegetarian meal. Slipped my mind completely. You’re amongst serious carnivores here. Let’s not make a fuss about it. If there’s meat on your plate, I’ll eat it for you.’
    â€˜I thought you’d given it up.’
    â€˜I have,’ I said. ‘But, just tonight.’ I had begun to wish I had agreed to that pre-dinner joint after all.
    So it was that when the Parma ham and melon were served, I managed somehow to scoop all the ham from Alice’s plate while no one else was looking. And then, when the medallions of lamb appeared, I forked those from her plate too, leaving her with the vegetables. She took out a paper handkerchief from her jeans pocket and carefully wiped the traces of blood from the porcelain. Then she dropped the soiled paper on to her side plate. I picked it up quickly and stuffed it into my pocket. Thus did we survive dinner, perilously.
    Alice had never demonstrated much of an appetite for sustained conversation, but it had not seemed to matter overmuch while the two of us were alone together in my flat across the river. That evening, around the table, her lack of interest in the content of questions addressed to her started to feel like more of a liability. Andrew and Helena finally gave up, and spoke exclusively to me, as though she weren’t there at all. If they wanted to find out something about Alice, they asked me instead. Helena occasionally glanced in her direction and then back, reproachfully I