London Transports Read Online Free Page A

death factory, wouldn’t it?”
    That puts me in my place, thought May, wondering why she hadn’t the courage to say that she was only visiting the home, she didn’t earn her living from it.
    She let herself into Celia’s gloomy flat. It had become gloomy again, like the way she had imagined it before she saw it. The warmth of her first night there was gone. She looked around and wondered why Celia had no pictures, no books, no souvenirs.
    There was a note on the telephone pad.
    “I didn’t ring or anything, because I forgot to ask if you had given your real name, and I wouldn’t know who to ask for. Hope you feel well again. I’ll be getting some chicken pieces so we can have supper together around 8. Ring me if you need me. C.”
    May thought for a bit. She went out and bought Celia a casserole dish, a nice one made of cast iron. It would be useful for all those little high-protein, low-calorie dinners Celia cooked. She also bought a bunch of flowers, but could find no vase when she came back and had to use a big glass instead. She left a note thanking her for the hospitality, warm enough to sound properly grateful, and a genuinely warm remark about how glad she was that she had been able to do it all through nice Dr. Harris. She said nothing about the time in the nursing home. Celia would prefer not to know. May just said that she was fine, and thought she would go back to Dublin tonight. She rang the airline and booked a plane.
    Should she ring Celia and tell her to get only one chicken piece? No, damn Celia, she wasn’t going to ring her. She had a fridge, hadn’t she?
    The plane didn’t leave until the early afternoon. For a wild moment she thought of joining Hell and Charlie in the pub where they were meeting, but dismissed the idea. She must now make a list of what clothes she was meant to have bought and work out a story about how they had disappeared. Nothing that would make Andy get in touch with police or airlines to find them for her. It was going to be quite hard, but she’d have to give Andy some explanation of what she’d been doing, wouldn’t she? And he would want to know why she had spent all that money. Or would he? Did he know she had all that money? She couldn’t remember telling him. He wasn’t very interested in her little savings, they talked more about his investments. And she must remember that if he was busy or cross tonight or tomorrow she wasn’t to take it out on him. Like Hell had said, there wasn’t any point in her expecting a bit of cossetting when he didn’t even know she needed it.
    How sad and lonely it would be to live like Celia, to be so suspicious of men, to think so ill of Andy. Celia always said he was selfish and just took what he could get. That was typical of Celia, she understood nothing. Hell had understood more, in a couple of hours, than Celia had in three years. Hell knew what it was like to love someone.
    But May didn’t think Hell had got it right about telling Andy all about the abortion. Andy might be against that kind of thing. He was very moral in his own way, was Andy.

Holland Park
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    E veryone hated Malcolm and Melissa out in Greece last summer. They pretended they thought they were marvellous, but deep down we really hated them. They were too perfect, too bright, intelligent, witty, and aware. They never monopolized conversations in the taverna, they never seemed to impose their will on anyone else, but somehow we all ended up doing what they wanted to do. They didn’t seem lovey-dovey with each other, but they had a companionship which drove us all to a frenzy of rage.
    I nearly fainted when I got a note from them six months later. I thought they were the kind of people who wrote down addresses as a matter of courtesy, and you never heard from them again.
    “I hate trying to recreate summer madness,” wrote Melissa. “So I won’t gather everyone from the Hellenic scene, but Malcolm and I would be thrilled if you could come to supper on