London Transports Read Online Free Page B

the twentieth. Around eightish, very informal and everything. We’ve been so long out of touch that I don’t know if there’s anyone I should ask you to bring along; if so, of course the invitation is for two. Give me a ring sometime so that I’ll know how many strands of spaghetti to put in the pot. It will be super to see you again.”
    I felt that deep down she knew there was nobody she should ask me to bring along. She wouldn’t need to hire a private detective for that, Melissa would know. The wild notion of hiring someone splendid from an escort agency came and went. In three artless questions Melissa would find out where he was from, and think it was a marvellous fun thing to have done.
    I didn’t believe her about the spaghetti, either. It would be something that looked effortless but would be magnificent and unusual at the same time. Perhaps a perfect Greek meal for nostalgia, where she would have made all the hard things like pita and hummus and feta herself, and laugh away the idea that it was difficult. Or it would be a dinner around a mahogany table with lots of cut-glass decanters, and a Swiss darling to serve it and wash up.
    But if I didn’t go, Alice would kill me, and Alice and I often had a laugh over the perfection of Malcolm and Melissa. She said I had made them up, and that the people in the photos were in fact models who had been hired by the Greek Tourist Board to make the place look more glamorous. Their names had passed into our private shorthand. Alice would describe a restaurant as a “Malcolm and Melissa sort of place,” meaning that it was perfect, understated, and somehow irritating at the same time. I would say that I had handled a situation in a “Malcolm and Melissa way,” meaning that I had scored without seeming to have done so at all.
    So I rang the number and Melissa was delighted to hear from me. Yes, didn’t Greece all seem like a dream nowadays, and wouldn’t it be foolish to go to the same place next year in case it wasn’t as good, and no, they hadn’t really decided where to go next year, but Malcolm had seen this advertisement about a yacht party which wanted a few more people to make up the numbers, and it might be fun, but one never knew and one was a bit trapped on a yacht if it was all terrible. And super that I could come on the twentieth, and then with the voice politely questioning, would I be bringing anyone else?
    In one swift moment I made a decision. “Well, if it’s not going to make it too many I would like to bring this friend of mine, Alice,” I said, and felt a roaring in my ears as I said it. Melissa was equal to anything.
    “Of course, of course, that’s lovely, we look forward to meeting her. See you both about eightish then. It’s not far from the tube, but maybe you want to get a bus. I’m not sure….”
    “Alice has a car,” I said proudly.
    “Oh, better still. Tell her there’s no problem about parking, we have a bit of waste land around the steps. It makes life heavenly in London not to have to worry about friends parking.”
    Alice was delighted. She said she hoped they wouldn’t turn out to have terrible feet of clay and that we would have to find new names for them. I was suddenly taken with a great desire to impress her with them, and an equal hope that they would find her as funny and witty as I did. Alice can be eccentric at times, she can go into deep silences. We giggled a lot about what we’d wear, Alice said that we should go in full evening dress, with capes, and embroidered handbags, and cigarette holders, but I said that would be ridiculous.
    “It would make her uneasy,” said Alice with an evil face.
    “But she’s not horrible, she’s nice. She’s asked us to dinner, she’ll be very nice,” I pleaded.
    “I thought you couldn’t stand her,” said Alice, disappointed.
    “It’s hard to explain. She doesn’t mean any harm, she just does everything too well.” I felt immediately that I was taking the myth