Free Angel Cake by Helen Harris

she was quite unable to stretch out her own hand and accept it, in case it turned out to be a misunderstanding and was snatched upsettingly back.
    The girl encouraged her. ‘It’s really nothing.’
    Alicia stiffly took it and put it, politely unopened, on the mantlepiece. To her disbelief, she heard her voice from ‘East Lynne’ say, ‘Thank you, my dear. How charming!’
    They faced each other.
    ‘Do sit down,’ said Alicia. She examined her visitor from head to foot. Without her coat and her tatty fox, she looked quite schoolgirlish and awkward. She was so nervous that she twice crossed and uncrossed her feet, which were infunny old-fashioned ankle-boots. Alicia finished her examination at the feet.
    ‘However do you manage with those?’ she asked. ‘On your bicycle?’
    The girl had ridden over from Holland Park. Alicia remembered Holland Park, although it was years of course since she had been there. She strained to picture it.
    ‘Where do you live?’ she asked. ‘In a flat?’
    The girl nodded and Alicia was satisfied; she could imagine that. It was like on the television; young girls in London sharing flats, telling one another their secrets, while in the background tens of pairs of tights hung drying over the bath and a week’s washing-up was stacked undone in the sink.
    ‘What’s it like?’ she asked eagerly.
    The girl said hesitatingly that it was very nice. ‘We’re on the top floor of one of those big old white houses. It’s six flights up, but it’s very peaceful.’
    ‘No lift?’ enquired Alicia.
    Greedily, she pressed the girl to describe it a little more. They had two bedrooms, a study, a kitchen and a bathroom. Even though they were up on the top floor, they still had the original high ceilings and, in every room, those beautiful tall but draughty windows.
    ‘And,’ Alicia asked, ‘do you have heating?’
    The girl smiled and pretended to shiver. Those windows and the high ceilings gobbled up an awful amount of heating. But, on the whole, she thought it was well worth it for the space. They gave you the impression that you lived somewhere much bigger and much grander than you did. Yes, she liked it although, she added politely, she hoped that she would one day end up living in a proper house like Alicia.
    ‘How do you get on with the others?’ asked Alicia.
    ‘The others?’
    ‘The others in your flat. Do you get on top of one another?’
    ‘Oh, oh no. We get on fine … We sometimes have a bit of trouble with our downstairs neighbours –’
    ‘Foreign?’
    ‘Well yes, but –’
    Alicia nodded sagely. This again, she could imagine. Incomedy programmes, people came out in their curlers, with rolling pins, driven mad by the noise. She leant forward expectantly. ‘Black?’
    ‘No,’ said the girl reproachfully. ‘No, Iranians actually.’
    Alicia was momentarily mystified. She had no opinions on Iranians. She hazarded a guess: ‘Are they very noisy?’
    ‘No,’ said the girl. ‘No, quite the contrary. But they’re always complaining about us.’
    ‘Whatever do you do?’ asked Alicia.
    The girl looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t think they like our music’
    ‘Oh,’ Alicia said disapprovingly. ‘Oh, do you play loud music?’ It was funny, she thought – she would not have imagined this dowdy little girl leaping around to loud music.
    ‘It’s not so much that it’s loud,’ the girl said, ‘but my friend likes Indian music. I don’t know if you know Indian music?’
    Alicia didn’t really know what the girl meant by Indian music but, because she didn’t want to seem out of her depth, she surprised herself by announcing, ‘I once played the part of a Maharanee in a beautiful love story set in India.’
    The girl’s tense face was instantly transformed. ‘Ooh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Ooh, how interesting!’
    Alicia was suddenly embarrassed by what she had let slip. She stood up abruptly. ‘If you’ll excuse me for a moment,’ she said formally, ‘I think