Slightly Foxed Read Free Page B

nice clothe, you never
    find a man."
    This morning Jace was wearing a purple blouse and a
    multicoloured, tiered skirt dotted with tiny mirrors and with a
    row of little bells sewn around the hem. I wouldn't have been
    surprised if she'd been pecked to death on her way to work
    by a flock of disenfranchised budgies.
    "No point in buying new clothe...clothes. Florence wouldn't
    care and there's no one else to notice." I turned on the cash
    register. "I'm not depressed anyway. And I don't want a man.
    I've given up men. Three-dimensional ones, anyway."
    Jace looked dubious. "You are not saying that when you
    are meeting that person with the hair. Who is coming to play
    with his instrument in the shop last year."
    "Yeah, well. Look what happened that time." Leonard
    "Waspy" Binns—what a mistake. "In fact, I think I'm about
    this far"—I held my hands apart a few inches—"from taking
    Holy Orders."
    "You would make terrible nun." Jace began tidying, her
    skirts whirling, chiming and creating fractured reflections as
    25

    Slightly Foxed
    by Jane Lovering
    she went. "You have too-pretty face to be under a Mr. Whippy
    hat."
    "I think I just changed my mind," I surprised myself by
    saying. "How about we pop out at lunchtime?" Maybe some of
    Piers's devil-may-care attitude had rubbed off on me. It was
    certainly unlike me to be this spontaneous.
    Jacinta nearly fell off the stool she was standing on to flick
    dust from the top of a cupboard. "Alys! You taking advice
    from me? I am astonished." She lowered her voice. "Is this
    meaning there is a man you are deciding upon?"
    "Good God, no. Well, there was a man last night that I
    thought was particularly gorgeous, but seeing that he's
    unsuitable on account of being dead, then, no. I just feel like
    buying something."
    "We shall buy you something," Jace said, decidedly.
    "Green. You must be wearing green, Alys. It go with your hair
    and your skin."
    Before you conjure a vision of me as some kind of sickly-
    hued subsea monster, I should mention that I'm a redhead.
    Not flaming red, but kind of dark auburn with the associated
    pale skin which makes hot sun a factor-50-coated ordeal.
    "It will depend on what the charity shops of York have to
    offer us, won't it?"
    Jace's face settled into lines of disappointment. "Can we
    not be buying something really new?" she asked forlornly.
    "You deserve a dress with still the real price label on, which
    does not smell of some other hot persons."
    "Just paid the Council Tax," I said with the briskness I'd
    spent years cultivating in a way only the truly broke can
    26

    Slightly Foxed
    by Jane Lovering
    master. The bell twitched its nerve-jangling message that a
    customer had arrived, and I walked through to see a woman
    standing at the desk, jittering as though she badly needed
    either the toilet or some Valium. I sized her up as I
    approached. About my age, tall, well turned out. Good
    hairstyle, graded bob, but not the cutting edge of the city.
    Looked like the classic "out of towner". Was she a guilty
    secret of Simon's?
    "Good morning," I announced brightly and she stopped
    jigging, turning nervous dark eyes in my direction.
    "Er. Are you—I mean—is Mr. Webbe available?" The
    woman had an accent, definitely not local. "I've come to pick
    up the books that were mistakenly sold at the auction last
    week," she went on. "Only I spoke to Mr. Webbe and he said I
    could collect them today?"
    Her voice was only a little less diffident than Simon's. If
    the two of them had been a couple, their combined hesitancy
    would have meant that the relationship would die of reticence
    before they ever got their clothes off. "Simon's away at a
    book sale, I'm afraid." I picked up the heap of books I'd
    arranged yesterday. "But the books are here." I'd piled the
    books carefully, sure that the early-edition Dickens would be
    the ones she really wanted. They weren't particularly
    valuable, but I couldn't see that she'd come all this way for
    the return of half