Dear Doctor Lily Read Free

desert.
    â€˜I wish you hadn’t thought of it.’ At the mirror, Lily was examining her skin with her glasses off, which improved it. ‘Now we’ve got to have one. Let’s go and prowl.’
    â€˜We can’t.’
    â€˜We can.’
    Lily waited while Ida tried to struggle into the pointed shiny black shoes with very high heels in which she was to totter towards Buddy on the Boston tarmac.
    â€˜They’re too small for you.’
    â€˜No.’ Ida changed her mouth of pain to the closed smile which hid her teeth. She stood up, then sat down again on the bed and took off the shoes. ‘I don’t want to put my suit on again anyway.’
    Annoyed with her, Lily went out of the room and down the concrete stairs. She found her way back to the mess hall, where men were now sitting at the tables with food and bottles and paper cups, playing cards and dominoes or reading or smoking or just sitting. Lily spoke to one of the men, who leaned back in his chair and looked up at her, tongue in the corner of his mouth, dark Mediterranean eyes boldly amused.
    â€˜A cup of tea?’ he mimicked. ‘Oh, veddy, veddy Bwitish.’
    A wolf whistle from another table, and someone called out something that Lily was glad she could not hear.
    â€˜Give her a break.’ A woman in Air Force uniform looked up from a letter. ‘Try the vending machines.’
    The machines were in a corner space off the mess hall. Coca-Cola and pictures of other fizzy things, ice-cold and condensing. No tea in the hot machine, but tomato soup, hot chocolate, coffee, coffee regular, coffee extra cream, coffee extra sugar. Insert two dimes.
    Lily had no American money. Did she dare ask?
    A warm bitter smell of coffee came from the machine. In the pictures over the knobs, the tomato soup was bright orange, the chocolate had a foam of cream on the top, the coffee had bubbles swirling and a spiral of steam rising.
    Ida would like it. It might keep her awake to talk about Buddy, which Lily wouldn’t mind, because if she was really going to end up as a counsellor, she had got to learn what made people cleave together, as well as what split them apart.
    â€˜Having a hard time choosing?’ A man’s voice behind her. ‘They probably all taste equally foul.’
    It was the man from the seat across the aisle. He had taken off the blue pullover, so the colour of his eyes had calmed down. He had a good nose. Lily liked a good nose. No one in the family had one, only splodgy common things.
    She pushed her glasses back on hers. ‘I haven’t got any American money.’
    â€˜Let me.’ He fished a handful of coins out of his pocket. ‘What’ll it be?’
    â€˜Oh, thanks. Two coffees with milk and sugar. Where does it say that?’
    â€˜Coffee regular.’ He put in two coins. The machine digested them, then with a whirr and a clunk, a paper cup descended and a spout plopped the right amount of coffee into it.
    â€˜How marvellous.’
    â€˜Don’t they have these in England?’
    â€˜Not like this.’ They did, but Lily wanted to admire America. ‘Were you there long?’
    â€˜Just a quick business trip.’
    Another cup arrived and was filled. Lily waited for him to get his black coffee, so that she could walk back through the mess hall with him, but he waited, starting to drink his coffee.
    â€˜Your first flight?’
    To lie, or to sound inexperienced? Lily took a sip of coffee, then put down Ida’s cup and pushed back her glasses to see him better, and said, ‘May be my last.’
    â€˜I don’t blame you. Why do you do that all the time with your glasses?’
    He’d noticed her. ‘The frame is loose.’
    â€˜Take them off.’
    â€˜I can’t see.’
    â€˜You don’t need to see to drink coffee.’
    Without her glasses the small corner space was less dingy, the garish vending machines muted, the man less