Dear Doctor Lily Read Free Page B

looked up at Lily with a tired defiance in her violet-shadowed eyes, her closed mouth nondescript without the bright pink lipstick.
    â€˜Ida,’ Lily leaned forwards. She could feel it coming on. She had to ask, ‘Are you sure you love him?’
    â€˜Oh … love.’ One side of Ida’s mouth went up in an ugly little sneer. ‘What’s love got to do with it? There, I’ve shocked you, haven’t I? But in my situation you don’t pin all your hopes on love.’
    â€˜Has it been tough, then?’
    â€˜Bit rough in spots.’ Ida pushed back the sheet and got out of bed. Her small blunt feet were still swollen from the plane, with red dents across them from her new shoes. She went to the mirror to fiddle with her tightly permed hair, pushing it up, pulling bits of it down. It always sprang back to the same shape, like a wig above her pale bony forehead.
    â€˜Tell me.’ People needed to get stuff off their chests, and Lily was ready to listen. ‘Dear Doctor Lily…’ One of her many ambitions was that one day she would have an advice column in a women’s magazine. ‘Dear Doctor Lily, I have never told this to anyone before…’
    â€˜What was it like, Eye?’
    â€˜No worse than most, I suppose.’ Ida shrugged.
    â€˜Bad enough to make you glad to get away, though.’ A statement rather than a probing question. They had done that in Preparation for Interview Techniques, Session II.
    â€˜Knock it off, dear.’ Ida’s eyes met hers knowingly in the mirror. ‘I’m not a case history at your college.’
    They had pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast. The coffee blew Ida out again into delicate little belches behind her fingers.
    â€˜If you didn’t say “Excuse me” every time and put your hand up,’ Lily muttered, ‘no one would notice.’
    The two teachers from Rhode Island who sat with them did not notice anyway. They were on the edge of their chairs, wearing coats and checking their cameras and tickets and passports, their minds already ahead to arriving in Boston. The man Lily had met by the coffee machine did not even look at her. Had seeing her in her slip been too much for him? Another chance lost.
    The airport was a springboard, the rocks less sinister, the ponies less deprived. In their seats by the wing, Ida and Lily held hands again as they taxied past the broken cliffs. At the end, the plane stopped for a long time before it turned and moved forwards to take off. The runway was so short, it would have to spring up like a pheasant. Ida’s ring cut into Lily’s fingers. The boy across the aisle clutched the arms of his seat. The coffee-machine man stared fixedly out of the window as if he would never see land again. All four propellers were going, but where was the engine’s roar of power, where the speed? They would never make it.
    They weren’t even trying. The plane was merely trundling back along the runway, and the passengers sat back in dismay, the energy they had used to urge it off the ground wasted.
    Back in the airport building, the man with the blue pullover came over and moved someone’s coat and sat next to Lily. Electricity charged up through her body into the roots of her hair. Her hands trembled, so she put them in her pockets. When he spoke to her, she answered without looking at him.
    Sourly the passengers watched their Captain walking back from the plane.
    â€˜Sorry, folks.’ He came into the lounge, tanned, thickening, prematurely grey (with the uncertainty of flying the Atlantic?). ‘We’re gonna get you outa here, but not yet. See the agent about cables or phone calls. On us, of course. Relax. Take it easy.’
    â€˜We don’t want to relax,’ the bald businessman said. ‘We want to get to the United States.’
    â€˜So do I,’ said the Captain. ‘I have a brand new baby to see.’
    Nobody cared about his