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A breeze fanned the newspaper on the table, the smells of a city summer were wafted through the open window: tar and car exhaust, the bitter-green of the flowering privet hedge. Police horses went past in the broad street, their hooves clip-clopping conversationally alongside the voices of the wome…

she lacked Barbara’s emollient social lightness and deprecating charm

— I like their emptiness, the absences in them.

— That’s only because I can’t do people yet. I’m going to learn how to do them. I’ve signed up for life-drawing classes.

— Don’t put people in them. People only spoil things.

— Oh! So that’s why your poems are all about furniture.

Alex lau…

Christine was surprised by the violence she felt, being wrenched out of her concentration on her picture. Usually, if she was working on her thesis, she looked forward to being interrupted at this time of the evening. She was uneasily aware of her growing preoccupation with her drawings: as if what…

Soon Lydia was round at Kensal Rise almost every day. She didn’t see much of Alex, though; mostly she was babysitting for Sandy or drinking coffee or wine at the kitchen table with Juliet, who poured out to her all the dissatisfactions of her marriage. Actually Lydia liked Juliet. Lydia was really …