Free Blind Date by Frances Fyfield Page B

sight.
    â€œSo, Lizzie,” Hazel asked, uninhibited by the closer ties of friendship, “how are you going to manage in that weird place of yours? All them steps.” She hadn’t seen the place, only heard it described in unflattering detail. A signpost to the M5, invitation to civilization, cheered her enormously.
    â€œOh, I’ll manage. The exercise will do me good.”
    â€œDo you think this is wise?” Patsy asked, too late. “Are you sure your mother wanted you to go?”
    â€œOh yes, she wanted me to go, she just didn’t think she should want it. I wanted to go. I don’t want Matthew to miss me too much.” She did not expand and they did not persist.
    As they drewnearer London, Patsy began to consider the enormity of what they had done. They had taken a sick young woman, albeit at her own request, to deposit her back in her own rented home, a place so eccentric it defied belief. Patsy toyed with the idea of responsibility, irritated by it. This was not the Lizzie she had known: this one was vulnerable. As if reading her mind, Lizzie leant forward, tapped her shoulder.
    â€œI
shall
be all right, you know. Don’t worry, I’ve worked it out, really I have. Don’t be so maudlin. You’ve haven’t kidnapped me, you’ve been very kind. If it all gets too much, I can go back. But I’m sick to death of myself. Tell me news. How’s the love life?”
    That was better. Elisabeth hungry for gossip, wanting other people to be happy, the way she always had, curious, never jealous Lizzie. Patsy and Hazel exchanged a meaningful look.
    â€œThe state of the love life is abysmal,” Patsy stated cheerfully. “As it was before you left the scene, only worse. Not that you were coming out to play much, were you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSo Hazel and I and Angela, we’ve decided to take positive action. We’re all enrolling with a dating agency. At least, two of us are, tomorrow … Angela’s being a bit wet about it. It may not sound momentous to you, but it is. What do you think?”
    Looking in the rear-view mirror, all she could see was a pale face, transfixed by horror, the twist of the neck accentuated.
    â€œI’m not sure that’s a clever idea. You’re joking, aren’t you?”
    Patsy wassuddenly angry. Stuck in her own car with a friend who wasn’t even pretending to be fun.
    â€œWe’ve thought about it for weeks, and that’s all you can say? Is it wise?” she mimicked. “Wiser than living alone or living with Mummy and getting yourself mugged, isn’t it?”
    Twenty miles of silence later, and then there was an apologetic laugh from the back.
    â€œYou’re right, of course you are. Just keep me posted, will you? You don’t have to nursemaid me, but I do want to know. Send me signals from the outside world, won’t you? Until I can join it.”
    T hey called it her ivory tower. This was where Elisabeth lived, without the blessing of belief, in a church. Not, as Patsy might have approved, a glossy conversion no longer inhabited by the ghost of a previous congregation. This was a disused, slightly abused church, set back off the street with a passage down each side where weeds grew out of old gravel. It was disused only in the sense it no longer had parishioners. It was available for use: a soup kitchen at Christmas; meetings twice a week; band practices; exhibitions. The Reverend Flynn liked the exhibitions best. Even when they contained sculptures he did not understand, photographs he could not comprehend, items made of wire which he shuddered to examine and an audience who failed to notice the other surroundings, it was still a time when the glorious space came into its own for another kind of worship. He thought that was the proper, long-term future for a place which had been through so many incarnations since its early Victorian optimism. Victorian planning had