Alphabet by Kathy Page Page A

arms. And then I realise she doesn’t have her glasses on. My heart starts to put out a steady beat as if I was running uphill.
    â€˜What do you think?’ she says. She’s got these green eyes, very clear, sparkling from what she wants and I start to want to hit her.
    â€˜I can’t wear the hard ones but the technology’s improved,’ she’s saying. ‘These are extra soft. I can keep them in for three hours now.’
    â€˜They’re fucking shite,’ I tell her. ‘Put your glasses on, or get back dressed again. Phone a cab. Go home, now!’ She doesn’t do any of it.
    â€˜What?’ she almost laughs. ‘What’s the matter with you?
I’ve always hated my glasses,’ she says. Well, I knew that.
We’ve all got things we hate about ourselves and that was one of hers: quite small on the scale of things. ‘I look much better like this,’ she says. ‘Don’t I?’ She comes over, takes hold of me, squeezing, rubbing herself against me. ‘Come on, now,’ she says. She takes my hands and puts them on her hips. She slips her own hand up between my legs but there’s nothing going on there by now and I push her away hard and she staggers into the coffee table, shrieks.
    â€˜Get off !’ I tell her. I turn the TV on again and sit down again, act as if I’m watching it, the late news, though I’m too angry to take it in. She comes over, squats down in front of me, blocking the view. She’s still stark naked, she puts her hands on my knees and looks into my face.
    â€˜Don’t you ever do that again,’ she says. ‘Look, I don’t mind doing the things you want, letting you watch, all that, it’s been fun. But I won’t lower myself. I won’t wear glasses for you when I don’t want to. That’s the end of it . . .
Listen, Simon Austen, I do know I’ve got nice eyes. I know because I’ve been told. And if this thing is going nowhere,
well, let me tell you, I get offers. In fact, I’ve even been out with another bloke, once or twice – but we haven’t done anything, really we haven’t . . . I’m just saying this, because I’d much rather it was you, I really would.’ Then she starts crying.
    It’s one of the gym instructors, she says, without me even asking. ‘I’ve always fancied you,’ she goes on. ‘I don’t mind going slow. I’m quite shy but I’m not a prude. But I’m beginning to wonder whether maybe you’re just some kind of weirdo.’
    I’m thinking, quicker than it takes to blink but at the same time so strongly that it fills me right up: this has got well out of hand. It’s upside down, the wrong way round. I can’t have this, and by that I don’t mean her doing whatever she did or didn’t do with the gym instructor or keeping things from me or even standing there naked and making me lose it completely, telling me I’m weird. I mean her not doing what I wanted, just exactly that, and trying to get me to do things her way. It makes me feel like I’m nothing and there’s nowhere to go –
    So then, I just flipped : that’s the thing you say, and in due course, I said it. Is this what you wanted to know?

12
    The lights went off two hours ago. If hours were people they would be thickset men with flat feet and asthma; eight more of them have to pass through every bit of the prison before the doors are unlocked. The typewriter is zipped in its case, the letter addressed, stamped; the flap of the envelope is open in case it is one that the censor selects to check for threats, accounts of escape plans, or plots . . . Simon lies on top of his bed, eyes wide. Vivienne asked the impossible. Tasmin asked him to do this, just very, very difficult. What he has written is hers, he reassures himself. On the way to breakfast, he will hand it over. He will feel better for just