Free Something in Disguise by Elizabeth Jane Howard

flourish: they looked very gay, with Sukie wearing a pink velvet yachting
cap on her straight, ashy hair.
    ‘Pop in, sorry if we’re late, how was it?’
    Sukie was thoughtfully in the back, so she climbed in beside Oliver just as tears began to spurt from her eyes.
    ‘Darling Liz! Here!’ He seized the remains of a packet of popcorn and started to feed her. ‘It’s almost impossible to cry if your mouth is absolutely full. Unless
you’re about two, when it all slides out like a slimy blind. Poor Liz!’ He put his arm round her and gave her a hug and such a weighty kiss on the cheek nearest him that all the popcorn
had to change sides, and she nearly laughed.
    She told them about it, and Sukie said things like, ‘The bastard!’ ‘Fantastic scum!’ and what a good thing they were both so ghastly, married couples often
weren’t, and Oliver said he had a good mind to join the agency and get hired by them; one evening with him as their cook and they’d change their tune. The rest of the drive home
cheered Elizabeth up completely, because Oliver thought of such awful things to do while being their cook: ‘Casserole of poodle was probably a fine Siege-of-Paris dish; of course I’d
say that I only cooked live food: the meal would start with their beastly tropical fish en gelée , and end with me advancing on lovely Mrs Hawthorne with my meat chopper asking him how
he would like her done.’
    They all had hot buttered rum when they got back to Lincoln Street, because Sukie had found a very pretty silver flask of her father’s that she was stealing to put scent in, and it seemed
a waste not to use up the rum. After it, Elizabeth suddenly felt so tired that she was being turned to dormouse stone on the spot, so Oliver told her to go to bed. Sukie must have stayed the night,
because when Elizabeth woke at about six, as she always did when things were worrying her, and went down to get a drink of water, the scarlet Mini was still parked outside the house. But by the
time she and Oliver got up there was no sign of Sukie, and the Mini had gone. When she mentioned tentatatively to him how nice Sukie was, his face closed and he said shortly, ‘She’s
all right. A bit dim, though. A little of her goes a long way.’ ‘Goodness!’ she thought, ‘If he thinks that about Sukie, it’s jolly nice to have me all the
time.’

 
4. A New Life
    ‘And now it’ll go on for ever and ever,’ thought Alice. It seemed impossible that somebody could turn out to be so different all the time; surely they must
sometimes have been it before – and she had simply never noticed? And it was no good saying that love was blind, because she was far from sure what love was – now. It was obviously her
own fault for expecting a miracle, but she had thought that the reason that people made so much fuss about (going to bed with someone) was because it was the only certain way of having an intimate
friend. All that (sex) would only be possible if you felt really close to the person all the time when they weren’t (making love to you). He wasn’t unkind to her: she simply felt
miserably shy with him – in fact, exactly as she felt with everyone else, only now, with him, there were more, and more awful opportunities for feeling shy. For the hundredth time she went
back to her meeting with Leslie: on a beach in Sitges. He and some friends were playing with a large rubber ball which had fallen near her and bounced off her back. He had come to apologize and she
had sat up. She had been wearing a navy one-piece bathing suit and a huge pink straw hat (she always had to be careful of the sun on her skin). He had lingered, asked her if she would like to join
in the game: she had shaken her head, smiling too much to conceal how nervous she felt and also not to seem rude. It was very kind of him to ask her. Then, a bit later, they had met in the sea, and
he had asked her whether she was enjoying herself and she had said yes,