Free Angel Cake by Helen Harris Page B

Isaacs.
    But the girl amazed her. ‘It’s not rented,’ she said. ‘It’s all my friend’s furniture. He owns it.’
    ‘You mean your friend’s a
man?
’
said Alicia. I’ve been had, she thought.
    She sat very straight and she stared at the girl, full of disapproval. What tell-tale signs had she missed? There didn’t seem to be anything about her which suggested that she was that sort of a girl. She was evidently secretive, on top of everything else. How shocking! But as Alicia got over her amazement, she found she had to struggle to stop her disapproval from being swept aside by glee. It was of course wrong – oh, it was very wrong – but so much more interesting.
    Only for appearance’s sake, she concentrated on her disapproval. ‘Well, you’re old enough to know your own mind, I suppose,’ she said grimly, ‘But let me tell you, we did things very differently in my day.’
    She must have glanced unconsciously at Leonard’s picture for confirmation, because the girl asked eagerly, ‘Was he your husband?’
    Alicia drew herself up even straighter. She clasped her hands above her cake plate and in her most dramatic voice, she declared, ‘He was my life!’
    The girl was duly impressed, Alicia could see. She took advantage of the lofty impression she had made to lean forward and ask her keenly, ‘Your friend – how long have you been with him?’
    She did wonder, when the girl was gone, if she had not maybe asked her too many questions. The girl had glanced at her watch all of a sudden and got up in a fluster. ‘Gosh, it’s dreadfully late! I must be going.’ Was she simply fleeing from Alicia’s questions?
    Alicia accompanied her to the front door and then watched her going away; she tied the paws of her mangy fox and unlocked her bicycle. As she climbed on to it, she looked round and she saw Alicia. She gave her a quick little wave before she pedalled off into the dark.
    Alicia was left alone in her living room. She stayed for a while at the window. It was a nice time of day, with the street-lights on and not everyone having yet thought to close their curtains. She hoped that someone might have looked in on her and her visitor and seen them sipping their tea together in the lamplight.
    She turned back to her room but, extraordinary thing, it had been transformed. In front of her was another room in which two people had just had tea. The furniture stood in new positions. The depth of the silence had changed. Sitting down to take stock in her armchair, Alicia was indignant. Was the room always going to be different now, even when that troublesome girl wasn’t there?
    Her alarmed eyes fell on the tea-table. How sad that two of the fancies had been eaten, that two of the plates had been soiled. She took comfort in the neatly aligned uneaten wafers. Everything would have been so much better, she thought bitterly, if that girl had never come.
    It was only a long, long time afterwards that Alicia remembered her present. Where on earth had she put it? She caught sight of the golden ribbon glinting on the mantlepiece. For quite a while, she just sat and looked at it and then, for quite a while, she held and felt it. At last, she opened it. It wassmall and cushiony, like a cloth toy. She brought it up to her face and examined it; it seemed to be heart-shaped and made of a flowery material. For a moment she was mystified. Then she remembered days which had smelt differently. She put it to her nose and sniffed it. It was a frilly sachet of strong, sweet-smelling lavender.
    *
    My first night here in Rob’s bedroom – did I think then that something important was beginning or just that I was holding spinsterhood at bay? As I lay awake afterwards, far too exhilarated to sleep, and heard for the first time the now familiar night-time noises of his house – the sharp shots of the central heating system and the loose skylight trying to flap away – did I think that I was here to stay or that the night was just