Altered States by Anita Brookner

for which I felt there would never be any substitute.
    ‘I expect you’re very busy,’ said Angela, as if she knew that all men were perpetually busy.
    ‘Well, I dare say you are too,’ I replied. ‘After all, women do most of the work these days, or so they tell me. The girls in my office don’t let me get away with any assumptions about my importance, or rather lack of it.’ I was making heavy weather of this, I realised. I simply did not know what to say.
    ‘I meant to tell you—that’s why I’m here, really. I took those lilies home with me. I hope you don’t mind.’
    ‘Didn’t Sarah want them then?’ I asked carelessly.
    ‘She said the smell gave her a headache. When I went back the next day to clear up she said to throw them away. So I took them. You’re not cross, are you?’
    ‘Not at all. And, anyway, Sarah’s away, I believe.’
    ‘That’s right. America. She’s wonderful, isn’t she, the way she just acts on impulse? I mean she hasn’t got a job or anything. I know she’s quite well off, but you’d think she’d invest her money or something. I know I would. But she seems determined to enjoy herself while she can. I suppose you can’t blame her.’
    Angela obviously did blame her, just as she blamed her prodigality in every other respect. Though she had no proof of this she must have intuited it correctly.
    ‘Any idea how long she’ll be away?’ I asked. ‘Or when she’s coming back?’
    ‘Not really, no. You never know with Sarah, do you? At least I don’t. She makes me quite dizzy sometimes.’ She laughed merrily to show that she bore no malice. I revised my earlier opinion: I could see that she disliked Sarah quite intensely.
    ‘I rather need to know how to get in touch with her,’ I said.
    ‘My goodness, are you another one of Sarah’s conquests?’ Again the merry laugh. This girl, I could see, this
maiden
, had been severely shaken by her friendship, if friendship it could be called, with a woman whom she knew to be superior to herself in one crucial respect, and brooding on this superiority had made her clumsy in her approach to men. Her wholesome aspect, her evident lack of experience, which might have attracted a much older man, embarrassed me, and made me very slightly antagonistic. I did not appreciate this lack of subtlety, although paradoxically it was being paraded for my benefit. I knew that unless I injected a note of sobriety into the proceedings there might be some hectic and unwelcome attempts to tease me. I have seen men beguiled by this sort of nonsense, which I associated with children’s birthday parties. I put it on a level with tickling: certainly I wanted no part of it.
    ‘Sarah is a distant relation of mine,’ I told her, picking up our two bills. ‘Her mother has asked me to keep an eye on her.’
    ‘Oh. Oh, I see. Well I can’t help you there, I’m afraid. She didn’t tell me when she was coming back. I expect she’ll just turn up when she feels like it, don’t you?’
    As she walked out of the door in front of me I noticed the slimness of her legs. Otherwise her physical presence hardly registered, although I had every opportunity to appreciate it since she turned up again the following day, and the day after that. Soon Mrs Daley, sensing perhaps my irritation, would answer my silent enquiry with a barely perceptible nod towards the corner of the room where Angela was modestly but insistently installed. I was left in no doubt that she had me in her sights. This so alarmed me that for a week I went to the trouble of cooking breakfast at home, but this entailed remembering to buy bread and eggs, and carrying a plastic bag to the office, to the disapproval of Mrs Roche. Then one morning I found that I had run out of coffee, and felt vaguely ashamed of myself for so obviously avoiding this quite harmless girl. Mrs Daley was quite aware of my state of mind. By the end of three weeks she had ceased to nod conspiratorially to me and now busied