Slightly Foxed Read Free

the seismic
    sight of Jace rolling her way down the street. "So Florence is
    over with Alasdair today?" he asked. "I must say, she's
    turning out to be a very pretty young woman. Beautiful big
    eyes she has. Must take after Alasdair's family, does she?"
    19

    Slightly Foxed
    by Jane Lovering
    I narrowed my own, by extrapolation, piggily unattractive
    eyes. "Mmm. I suppose so."
    My tone must have penetrated Simon's general abstraction
    and he turned to me. "Oh, I didn't mean... You mustn't
    think... It's not... I mean, you're a
    very...ahhh...umm...yourself, Alys."
    I think I might have glared at him at this point.
    I was feeling distinctly jaded when I let myself into the
    flat. Grainger lay curled reproachfully on the sofa, one eye
    wedged open for my return, the other eye sleeping the
    peaceful sleep of a blameless cat.
    "I'm back," I said unnecessarily to the smell, the silence
    and the cat. "Now, where's Theo?" He was finally retrieved
    from beneath the sofa where he had been attracting enough
    fur to knit another cat. I tucked my feet up under myself, bit
    the end off a coffee Walnut Whip and opened his pages at a
    poem called "Distorted Vision", when there was a sharp tap
    on the front door.
    "Oh bugger." I laid Theo down and answered it.
    Standing there, and causing almost as much astonishment
    as Simon's earlier visit, was a man I hardly recognised. I'd
    known Piers since Alasdair and Tamar had married four years
    ago, was used to speaking to him on the phone, but I'd not
    seen him for a while. When last sighted he had been a pretty
    but unremarkable looking boy, but standing on my threshold
    he seemed to have a broader chest than I'd remembered.
    He'd lost the startled-in-a-glue-factory spiky hair in favour of
    shoulder-length, expensively unkempt shagginess. A
    smattering of proud stubble adorned sharp, pale cheekbones,
    20

    Slightly Foxed
    by Jane Lovering
    his pallid skin contrasting with his shadow-dark hair as
    though he was trading on what Florence called his "Orlando
    Bloom with edges" look. He'd completed the show with a pair
    of D&G sunglasses. This and the black designer jeans, black
    T-shirt, black leather jacket apparel made him look as though
    he were on the run from a Transylvanian boy-band.
    "Hello, Piers," I said, when he didn't say anything following
    my opening of the door. I hoped I hadn't been staring at him
    in silence for too long.
    "Hey. Alys." He was gazing past me, into the flat. "I
    thought, I mean, I heard Florence left her revision stuff here.
    Thought I'd come by and pick it up."
    Maybe Florence had changed her mind about revision.
    Maybe she'd decided to spend the rest of Sunday rereading
    her notes. Oh yeah, and maybe I was going to be the next
    face of L'Oreal. "Did Florence ask you to come?" I was still not
    opening the door wide enough to let him in, and he was still
    not meeting my eye.
    "Not exactly. I just bought this car—wanted to give it a
    try-out, found myself over this way. I thought, well, okay,
    two birds with one stone kinda thing. You know."
    "Out this way ? From Richmond ?" Richmond was about fifty
    miles north. Not exactly popping next door.
    "Yeah." He took his sunglasses off and began twiddling
    them between his fingers. "A19." Now he looked at me and I
    was taken aback by the expression in his dark eyes. He
    looked almost—nervous?
    "Piers." I stood back now to let him come in. "Is
    everything all right?"
    21

    Slightly Foxed
    by Jane Lovering
    "I'm..." Again, that look of, not panic exactly, but
    something twitchily close, then it was gone. "Yeah. I'm cool.
    How about you, Alys, you okay?"
    Gosh. It was a long time since anyone had asked that.
    "Look, Piers, it's really very kind of you to come all this way,
    but Florrie's already decided she's done enough revision. Do
    you want a drink or something before you head back? Coffee,
    tea? Lemonade?" I could have bitten my tongue off. He was
    twenty-one, for God's sake, not nine. "Whisky? Oh, but