London Transports by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online Page A

actor who plays the part of Henry in that serial,” I said, meaning an actor whose dizzying looks had sent people of all ages into some kind of wistful speculation as to what a future with him might be like.
    “You mean Andy Sparks,” said Marian, and with a thud I realized it
was
Andy Sparks. It was just that his face seemed so contorted, and he hadn’t worn the boyish eager look nor the boyish eager anorak he always wore in the serial.
    “My God, it was definitely him,” I said. By this time the others were losing interest, they thought I had gone into fantasy. Large lumbering black Rita, who read rubbishy magazines, who never seemed interested in anything, not even herself…she could never have been the
petite amie
of Andy Sparks.
    “We did a feature on him about three weeks ago,” said Martin. “No, it can’t have been the same guy, you only think so because they had the same name.”
    “You did say Rita was sexy,” I pointed out, trying to bolster up my claim that she might be so sexy that she could have been seen with the superstar of the moment.
    “Not
that
sexy,” said Martin, and they began to talk about other things.
    “Don’t tell her I told you,” I said. I felt it was important that Rita shouldn’t think I had been blabbing about her. It was as if I had gone into her territory by being in that pub, and I shouldn’t be carrying back tales from it.
    I looked up the back pages surreptitiously. It
was
the same guy. He had looked unhappy and drawn compared to the pictures we used of him, but it was the same Andrew.
    On Friday Rita handed me a parcel and an envelope. The parcel was my skirt, which she said the cleaners had made a lovely balls of. They were sorry but with a stain like that it was owner’s risk only, and she had alas agreed to owner’s risk. They were, she said, the best cleaners around. I looked at the docket and saw she was right. I also saw the name on the docket. It said “A. Sparks.” She took the docket away and gave me the envelope. It was a gift-token for almost exactly what the skirt had cost, and it was from the shop where I had in fact bought it. Not a big chain-store but a boutique.
    “I can’t take it,” I said.
    “You might as well, he can afford it.” She shrugged.
    “But if it had been a stranger, not a…er…well someone you knew, then I wouldn’t have got it replaced,” I stammered.
    “That’s your good luck, then,” said Rita and went back to her desk. She hadn’t even left me the docket so that I could show the others I was right about the name.
    At lunchtime I invited Rita out with me.
    “I thought you were having lunch with that woman who wrote the book about flowers,” she said, neither interested nor bored, just stating a fact.
    “She rang and cancelled,” I said.
    “I didn’t put her through to you,” said Rita.
    “No, well I rang her on the direct line actually,” I said, furious to have my gesture of taking her out to lunch made into an issue. “I didn’t feel like talking to her.”
    “And you feel like talking to me?” asked Rita with one of her rare smiles.
    “I’d like to buy you a nice lunch and relax with you and thank you for going to all that trouble over my skirt,” I snapped. It sounded the most ungracious invitation to lunch ever given.
    Even if I had been down on my knees with roses I don’t think Rita would have reacted differently.
    “Thanks very much, but I don’t think I will. I don’t like long boozy lunches. I have too much work to do in the afternoons here anyway.”
    “For Christ’s sake it doesn’t have to be long and boozy, and though you may not have noticed it, I work here in the afternoons myself,” I said like a spoiled child.
    “Okay then,” she said, took up her shoulder bag, and with no coat to cover her fat bouncing bottom and half-exposed large black breasts, she rolled down the corridor with me, into the lift, and out into the street.
    I chose a fairly posh place, I wasn’t going to