Golden Hour by William Nicholson

evasion.
    â€œI don’t know what’s happened to Bridget,” says Liz. “She just abandoned my mother last night.”
    â€œYou’d better ask her.”
    â€œI’ve left endless messages. I don’t understand. I thought she was more responsible than that. It means I’ll have to go round and deal with Mum myself.”
    Alan nods, but he’s not listening. He heard it all last night, and gave such sympathy as he could then. His mind’s on other things. Or avoiding other things.
    â€œIf you won’t go and see your film, then take Cas to the skate park.”
    â€œYes, okay. I don’t mind doing that.”
    Liz returns to her desk. She picks up a biro and clicks on theprogram and starts listening again. A little to her surprise, it turns out to be quite interesting. Andy McNab, once of the SAS, talks convincingly about how he loves his wife but “wants the chance to hang out with his mates.” He wants to be all lads together. Her mind drifts. She thinks about Alan. Why doesn’t he have a gang of mates? He never goes to the pub. Maybe that’s why he gets so low. Maybe he needs male friends. What is it men talk about when they’re on their own? In the old days, when the ladies withdrew from the dinner table, leaving the men to their port and cigars, what did the men talk about? Politics? Sex?
    Liz’s biro scribbles away, jotting down thoughts in note form to work up into her article.
    Can men and women ever really be friends? Isn’t it always about something else? A silent dialogue conducted alongside or beneath the audible conversation, an exchange of signals sent and received. Am I still attractive? Do I still exist as a sexual being? God knows, it’s not as if we want to be forever seducing. But helpless in the grip of our self-doubt we smile and dimple in mixed company. Is that why we prefer to gather in gender-segregated groups? The girls out on the town, the lads watching the match, the hen party, the stag party, which by the way should be called the cock party. There’s a comfort in not being on show, and why shouldn’t the boys feel it as much as the girls? The laddish pubs and the gentish clubs, not bastions of male superiority after all, but hiding places.
    Men’s fear of women. A theme to write up one day. Look at the great world religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism: all obsessed with maintaining men’s dominance over women. No wonder they’re all in crisis. Women priests, homosexuality, child abuse, abortion, contraception, veiling, stoning for adultery. What is organized religion but an enormous prison built by men to contain the threat of women?
    A little over-ambitious for five hundred words. She has paused Listen Again to make notes. Now, before she can resume
Men’s Hour
, the doorbell rings.
    Why is it always me who gets interrupted? Why does Alan assume I’ll answer the doorbell?
    Liz realizes then that she’s criticizing Alan to herself a lot of the time these days, and it scares her. She doesn’t want to turn into a nagging wife. Also she has only to think back nine years to her former life to regain the shock of gratitude his love once gave her. And truth to tell, she still experiences a little tremble of happiness every night when she gets into bed and there he is—always in bed first—and she feels the warmth of his body beside hers. Not exactly a sexual happiness: it’s more a kind of comforting, a nightly reminder that she’s not alone. And there’s the sex, too. So much chatter about sex these days it’s hard to know how important it really is. Americans say to each other in bed, “Do you want to fool around?” Sex as folly, sex as a childish game.
    We fool around, Alan and me, and as the years go by it seems more and more precious.
    Liz opens the front door and there’s Bridget, her mother’s carer.
    â€œOh, Bridget! There you