Free Blind Date by Frances Fyfield

fear of bugs, germs and stray dogs. Her whole heart’s yearning, not simply for a man, but for an ultra-conventional large, protective man in a suit, who would look after her and want her to wear white at the wedding.
    Everything.
    And the woman had said, trust me. I know exactly what you mean.

Chapter
FIVE
    â€œG emstones,”her father told her, “are only at their most interesting when pure.”
    Elisabeth, smoking her endless cigarettes, stood by the kitchen window which looked onto the most prosaic part of the garden, divided from the rest by a wooden fence covered with clematis. She could not tolerate the sight of the sea. It had the challenging brightness of a brilliant, cut zircon. Instead, she was watching the washing line, where a tiny, spring-reared Blue Tit played. He swung from one peg to the next, examined each; let the momentum of his weight and the grasp on the peg tilt him upside down so fast she felt she could hear him laugh. Her mouth was open to laugh, but she could not; as if, like he, she had either lost the knack of making a sudden noise, or never learned it. There was a healthy, sweet smell of pure garden rubbish burning next door. You will not get that at home, her mother would say. You’ll get dampness and darkness up that tower.
    Now itwas so near, she was afraid of going home. She was better, stronger, by degrees, and still afraid of the opinion of the world.
    H azel approved of Patsy’s car because it was loud. Red, noisy, fast, sleek and eminently noticeable. A short, low-fronted dress rode far up on her thighs as she sat in the passenger seat, arm resting on the open window, black glasses over her eyes. Her hair was coloured auburn; it shone like metal in the sun.
    They had skirted Exeter, disliked Exmouth; they had stopped for coffee and cursed the caravans which littered the roads like lumbering beetles. The roads were narrow, the luxury of speed forgotten. Here and there, Patsy pulled aside to allow for something bigger, although she usually assumed the right of way was hers. Drivers waved, nodded, smiled; they failed to blow horns, even when she was in the wrong. Road rage was a feature of another planet.
    â€œWhy are they so polite?” Hazel asked.
    â€œBecause they are. Look! There’s the sea! Isn’t it wonderful?”
    â€œI can’t swim,” Hazel said.
    They roared down the narrow street, too fast amid Friday lunchtime stares. Patsy wore white shorts and a cropped red top which matched her car, her hair a mass of curls messed into volume by the wind. She was awed by the prettiness of it all, yet still felt superior.
    â€œAngela would love this,” she announced.
    â€œYour Elisabeth doesn’t.”
    â€œLizzie doesn’t know how to be happy.”
    The wordswere out of her mouth, carried in a slipstream of resentment. A friend of hers, and Lizzie had been a good friend once, was not quite supposed to be a friend in need. Hazel would never be that and Hazel was along for the ride. Purpose; rescue Lizzie from her mother, who would not or could not take her all that distance, selfish cow, whereas Elisabeth herself must not take the train unaided, so here they were. Something like that. Patsy did not want to see Lizzie, first met in a shared flat another lifetime ago, in any other state than the one she remembered best, namely drunk, rudely cheerful and sportingly healthy. The way she had been before her sister had … died, for want of a better word. And now, this … clumsiness, turning her into a loser.
    Quite what it was about Mrs. Kennedy which put Hazel on the defensive immediately was something she could not pinpoint afterwards: perhaps it was the rigid dignity and lack of warmth, so alien to Hazel’s own style, but her response was to act the clown. She found herself gaping at the staircase and coming over like a gorblimey Cockney released from school to view the interior of a celebrity house featured