Free Acquired Tastes by Simone Mondesir

their base. Like Alicia, most of them were academics.
    Unfortunately, the low cost of membership had meant that the club was becoming rather more shabby than genteel, and efforts to cut down on the staff rather than raise the membership fees, had resulted in a down-and-out living in the basement for nearly six weeks before he was discovered. As a result of this unfortunate incident, the members had been offered a choice: either a quadrupling of fees or allowing the management to let rooms at hotel rates to foreign tourists. The vote had been for foreign tourists, as long as they were female. The idea of men staying in their exclusively feminine preserve was anathema; in fact nobody would probably have minded too much if the unwelcome occupant of the basement had been a woman, but the idea of a man living in the building had been enough to cause at least two of the more elderly members to resign.
    Alicia had continued to stay at the club despite the admittance of tourists, who were mainly foreign students anxious to soak up the atmosphere of Bloomsbury. But the atmosphere had indubitably changed. The polite murmur of voices had been replaced by much louder and brasher accents, and she was not sure how much longer she would keep up her membership.
    But the club did have one very great advantage; it was within walking distance of the British Museum. If there was only one reason to live in London, for Alicia it would have been to be able to use the Reading Room in the British Museum every day.
    Every time she went there, she felt the serried ranks of the ghosts of great academics and writers who had once worked there, looking over her shoulder, urging her on to academic excellence like celestial cheerleaders. Alicia knew it was just a silly fancy on her part, but somehow she felt that any article or paper that she wrote there had the blessing of the Reading Room ghosts bestowed upon it. So it had been in those hallowed surrounds that she promised herself she would begin, if not complete, her paper on the significance of food in the nineteenth-century novel.
    It was a pleasure she had been reserving for the beginning of the summer vacation in four weeks' time. She had intended to combine it with some of the few other treats that London offered, like taking tea at Fortnum and Mason's, spending a leisurely afternoon in the Victoria and Albert Museum and revelling in the enchantments of Liberty's fabric department. She also hoped to see Vanessa. Their friendship now seemed to consist mainly of her leaving messages on Vanessa's answer machine. Her repeated invitations to Vanessa to come to Heartlands invariably invoked the reply that Vanessa was 'snowed under', so the only way she could get to see her was to come to London.
    She had telephoned a week ago and left a message announcing her intention to visit London in a month's time in the hope that such long notice of her intended visit would mean that she would get into one of the 'windows' in Vanessa's permanently busy diary. Much to her surprise, Vanessa returned the call the next day and suggested lunch the following week and Alicia had agreed. There was something in the tone of Vanessa’s voice when she replied that everything was wonderful that suggested otherwise, added to that, Vanessa never usually returned her calls so promptly. It was only intuition, but Alicia had the feeling that something was wrong, so even though it was a very difficult time of the year to rearrange her timetable, she had managed to take a couple of days off in order to go to London. Even after all this time they were still best friends and what were best friends for if not to support each other in times of trouble?
    Other people found it difficult to understand their friendship but not Alicia. Vanessa could have chosen anyone she wanted as a friend at St Aloysius, but instead of one of the other popular pretty girls, she had picked Alicia, and Alicia would always be grateful to her for that.
    Alicia