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lonely inside her melted and disappeared, and the relief she felt was like
a blessing.
    ‘So,’ said Alice. ‘What’s
she like?’
    ‘Well—’ he began. ‘She’s
different. Different from everybody else. She likes Virginia Woolf and Egyptian
art and chamber music… would you believe that I could fall for a girl who
likes chamber music? She looks a bit like Kate Bush, and… I suppose I’d
better translate that into aesthetic terms you can relate to. You’re so square
you probably don’t get this technical stuff.’
    ‘Watch it,’ warned
Alice.
    ‘Well, she has kind of
Rossetti-ish hair, and a kind of Burne-Jones-ish face…’
    ‘She sounds like a woman
of many parts. I suppose she has a William Morris beard?’ said Alice with a
grin.
    ‘Well, why don’t you
find out for yourself? You’ll have to meet her; that’s mostly why I phoned in
the first place.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Alice. ‘Sure,
OK.’
    Joe seemed to sense her
reluctance.
    ‘I mean it, Al,’ he said
firmly. ‘I’d really like you two to be friends.’
    For a moment, Alice
hesitated, choked by a sudden poignant regret. Then, with an effort, she
shrugged it off, almost in control again.
    ‘I’d love to meet her,
Joe,’ she said. ‘And I’d love to see you again, too. I’ve lost touch with too
many old friends to let this one pass me by.’ She tried to stop her voice from
breaking. ‘How about meeting you both in town? Or maybe I could come and hear
your band. Does …’ she paused. ‘Joe, you mutt, you never even told me her
name.
    Joe laughed.
    ‘Didn’t I? Hey, you can’t
expect me to think of everything. It’s Virginia, Virginia Mae Ashley, but
everyone just calls her Ginny. She says Virginia Mae’s too much of a mouthful
for someone like her. Do you still like pizza? We could go for a pizza
somewhere if you like. The band doesn’t play again till Tuesday, but we could
go out, see a film. How does that sound?’
    ‘That sounds fine.’
    ‘What about you? You
sound a bit down. You OK?’
    ‘Of course I am. I’m
just a bit tired. It’s late, you know.’
    ‘Yes …ah …I’ll get off in a minute. Let you get some sleep. There’s just one more
thing, but the fact of it is that … I’m in a bit of a quandary here, and
normally, you know I wouldn’t ask you, but… well … Ginny’s new to Cambridge,
and she doesn’t have very much money … I wondered if you’d mind putting her
up?’
    ‘Joe—’
    ‘Tell me if I’m out of
line,’ he went on, ‘but it would only be for a day or two. I can’t offer her a
place in my digs because the landlady wouldn’t allow it. We’re looking for a
flat or something, but you know how hard it is to get something decent in
Cambridge at this time of year, when all the good places have been snapped up
by the students or the tourists. It would only be for a little while, maybe
just a few days, while we find somewhere else, and failing that, I’ve got a
friend who lives in Grantchester who’s going off to the States on Friday, and
he says we can use his house as a stopgap, so even if the worst comes to the
worst it would only be till the end of the week.’ He stopped. ‘Alice? What do
you think?’
    Alice sighed inwardly.
    ‘I suppose it’ll be all
right,’ she said, as he had known she would. ‘Where is she staying now?’
    ‘Nowhere yet,’ replied
Joe. ‘She’s just come out of Fulbourn.’
    ‘Fulbourn?’
    ‘They’ve offered to put
her up for a while, but I hate the idea of her having to stay in that rotten
place any longer than she has to. Just looking round there’s enough to give
anyone terminal depression.’
    ‘Oh, no. Are you
serious?’ You never really knew with Joe; years earlier, when they had been
good friends, before intimacy had come to take their friendship away, Alice
would have been able to say: ‘Fulbourn? Well, she must be a nutcase if she sees
anything in you, but here, the link between them was still too distant, still
too fraught with bad