Terms & Conditions by Robert Glancy Page B

You have to believe. Her job was one of those.As a general rule, jobs with the least actual work require the most faith. After the hair, more changes arrived. She fixed her teeth. This tiny gap between her front teeth, so slight that only people who knew her well noticed. I loved it but she went ahead and got it
fixed
, got it filled. I miss the gap; it was the chink that let me inside when she smiled. Now when she smiles it’s like being hit by a wall.
    Then came the hobbies. First of all she took up cycling because her boss Valencia had taken up cycling. My wife would vanish for hours, returning flushed, slurping off her outfit and leaving it on the bathroom floor like a second skin.
    Then came the dreadful dinners with her colleagues. Young men whose slim necks left awkward gaps between neck and collar – betraying something of the schoolboy still in them – not yet filled out into the fat businessmen they aspired to be. They all gave iron-grip handshakes and stared unflinchingly into my eyes. The iron grip and the stare were management tricks. They teach you these things at my wife’s firm. I know, because they taught my wife. She was coached to look deeply into people’s eyes, to shake people’s hands with a firmness that suggested there wasn’t a problem in the world she couldn’t solve. Sometimes over breakfast I’d look up from my cornflakes and catch my wife staring at me and I’d say, ‘Can you stop that staring, it’s freaking me out.’
    â€˜Sorry,’ she’d say, ‘I was just practising.’
    My wife was lovely when we first met. Relaxed, quick-witted. In fact, more than all of that, she was a wonderful mess of a girl. The day I met Alice she was crying into her beer in a pub on the South Bank. I’d spotted her in the audience at the cinema watching Kubrick’s
2001
. Afterwards I followed her to the bar. She looked as lonely as I felt, so I followed her. At the bar she started to cry. I leant over and said, ‘The film wasn’t that bad, was it?’
    She seemed confused and I explained, ‘Um . . .
2001
, I was at the same showing.’
    She wiped her tears and smiled, ‘The film was wonderful, my life’s the problem.’
    After I bought her another beer, the story came out. She’d been kicked out of home. Her parents’ Born Again Christian phase clashing with her Born Again Rebel phase. She had a great degree but no job prospects. She told me she wanted to do something useful with her life, make a difference. She’s the only person that’s said that to me without sounding deeply insincere. At closing time I asked if she had anywhere to go.
    She said, ‘Well, Sandra, and her mum, Molly, always put me up, but I just feel like such a failure running back there again.’
    From that moment my heart opened up and took Alice into it and there she stayed. She was so honest; there she sat, in a cardigan and sneakers, telling a stranger the truth.
    When we arrived at the flat, the door opened and there was Molly with huge white hair hovering above her head like a Chinese lantern.
    Molly wrapped her arms around Alice, saying, ‘Sweetheart?’
    â€˜Mum and I had another fight.’
    Molly said, ‘Well, that’s bad news. Come on in, your bed’s still made up from last time. Oh, and who’s this?’
    â€˜This is Frank,’ said Alice. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’
    â€˜Well,’ said Molly. ‘Do you like mushroom soup, Frank?’*
    * As it was the first thing I was going to say to Molly, I didn’t want to say something negative.
    So I said, ‘I love it.’*
    * When, in fact, I loathe it.
    This resulted in Molly cooking me mushroom soup every time I went round.
    Alice’s friend Sandra joined us in the kitchen, kissing Alice and saying hello to me. Sandra had an interesting face, not beautiful but noble. Her nose was incredible. Large but delicate