Remember Me by Fay Weldon

other—were married. Well, the other two were. Judy freaked out her hair and Jamie took to wearing jeans: she writes theatre crits, he runs a little theatre. They live in a penthouse, caring for a rich man’s dogs while he is on safari, and hopefully lost forever in the jungle.
    They seldom venture out so far into the suburb, but Lily is known as a good cook and Jarvis and Jamie are old friends, left over from other days. Jamie went to school with Jarvis.
    Listen to Jamie and Judy now, as Lily opens the front door to them.
    JUDY : Lily, I’m sorry we’re late. Jamie has no sense of direction. That’s his trouble. When I pointed out we were driving round in a circle and it was symptomatic of his whole life, he hit me. Look! Is it bleeding? His nails are very sharp.
    JAMIE : I apologise for Judy. She’s been drinking. It’s the depressed housewife syndrome.
    JUDY : If only it were a house. You’ve no idea how pokey a penthouse can be. Especially when it’s not even yours, and you never know where you’re going to be living from one week to the next.
    LILY : Do both come in. No, Judy, you’re not bleeding, not that I can see.
    JAMIE : Of course she’s not bleeding. I had to slap her. If I hadn’t stopped her nagging there would have been an accident. Judy has simply not caught up with one-ways. She lives in the past. Women do, over a certain age.
    JUDY : Shall we just stop all this? It’s very boring for everyone.
    JAMIE : I didn’t start it. It’s not surprising we never get asked anywhere. Lily darling, you look angelic. The pallor amazes. Jarvis is the luckiest man alive. You and Judy scarcely seem to belong to the same species. Look at you both!
    Poor little grey, badly-behaved Judy. Poor smarting Jamie.
    There are few riddles left in such exchanges. Resentment, fear, rejection; the desire to hurt, the craving to be hurt; the tangle of love me in spite of me, see how you’ve wounded me, offered up and opened up for all the world to see. A cry for help, seldom answered. Lily, good kind Lily, makes the attempt to do so. Her own armour is not so well made as she would like it to be. Chinks keep opening up in her carapace of conventionality, letting in shafts of understanding and compassion.
    LILY : Judy and Jamie, do stop it, whatever it is. You do love each other. You always have. You’ll never part, so you might as well be happy together. Do forget it, whatever it was. Kiss and make up.
    Bon appetit!
    Judy catches Jamie’s hand. But Jamie’s hand remains cold and hostile. Tears start to Judy’s eyes. Jamie’s hand relaxes just in time. For the rest of the evening they sit together when they can, touching flesh to flesh, as they did when their love was still illicit, and so much more satisfactory.
    ‘Where are the Bridges?’ asks Judy now, looking round hopefully. Harvey Bridge, the (quite) famous architect; Moira Bridge, the lady TV director. ‘I thought they were coming.’
    ‘They’ve got the ‘flu,’ says Lily. ‘But do meet the Baileys. Philip is our noble GP. And Margot helps Jarvis out. Between them they know more about us than anyone else in the world. I’m surprised they came.’
    The shadow of the missing guests, of possible excitements and elusive good times, hovers over the rest of the evening: though Jamie does, between the jellied consommé and the crown roast, ask Philip for a diagnosis of a recurring pain under his right ribs: and Judy complains about service in the Casualty Department of the local hospital as if it were all Philip’s fault.
    Margot sits and smiles and speaks when she is spoken to. She may appear bland, benign and dull—but she is serviceable, as a guest, and sops up aggression and tempers the general nervousness in much the same way as Lily’s yellow curtains are also serviceable, absorbing noise and shutting out light.
    After the crown roast, presented on a splendid blue and white venison dish (picked up for five shillings on a market stall by Madeleine, in