Colouring In Read Online Free PDF

vodka. But Dan has always said I’m wrong about Carlotta: she’s got great qualities, he says, though they aren’t always apparent. Admittedly, he and Isabel have never tried to throw us together. I suppose they asked her this evening just to balance things. It’ll be perfectly all right. All the same, just for this reunion, I do wish they hadn’t asked her.
CARLOTTA
    Isabel can be absolutely dementing. She rings me up mid - morning – how many times have I said Isabel please ring me at dawn? – just as I’m about to go into a meeting, and then sounds put out because I have to cut her off quickly. She rang me at the worst time this morning to ask me to supper – there’s rarely any such thing as a dinner party, these days, chez Dan and Isabel – and in my hurry I just said yes, because although it’s the one night I always like to keep free to catch up with things in the flat, I didn’t want to offend her. She mentioned something about Gilbert Bailey being there. Bert! Heavens. Haven’t seen him for years . Remember him as a rather shy little boy, lanky. Then there was a moment – almost eradicated from my mind, at some teenage dance, and a hopelessly inadequate beer-smelling kiss. Can’t say I’ve the slightest inclination to be re-acquainted, but there goes. He’s apparently Dan’s oldest friend.
    It’s ridiculous, really, how little I see of Isabel – not my oldest friend, but one of the very best. We live so close and yet it always seems difficult to find time to meet. Perhaps that’s just modern life. I really mind about not seeing her more: she’s a wonderfully calming influence, and makes me laugh in her quiet way. God knows why we get on so well: we could not be more different. She’s absolutely not of this modern world: has no interest in fashion, speed, cutting edge, excitement, technology – she lives in her own little white tower, working away, enormously talented, and I would think a pretty good wife and mother. She scoffs at my interests, my racy life, the things I find compelling. I’ve often invited her to come with me to India or Ceylon or America, and promised I’d take care of her, guide her through all the things she seems to find alarming. But she says no, absolutely not. Her idea of a holiday is Wales or Fife or Norfolk or the West Country. Can’t understand it myself.
    I’m not sure how she ever got to Spain, where we met, by herself. I suppose it was the lure of a painting holiday (in the days when she was still trying to discover what she could do) in Trasierra, a fabulous place owned by a friend of hers. We were somehow always side by side at our easels and talked more than we drew or painted. She was quite good, in fact: on a different scale from me. (I was only there for the relaxation, painting as therapy: hopeless, and didn’t even enjoy it). Isabel was of the standard that sells – pretty watercolours competently executed. But she kept saying she wasn’t an artist . Proper artists are passionate about their work and nothing can keep them from it, she said. And she wasn’t remotely passionate about her dinky little watercolours, and couldn’t care less if she never painted another picture. But for all our differences we seemed to enjoy talking to each other: she was amazed by stories of my rackety life, while I was equally amazed by the happiness she said her quiet life produced. So our friendship began, ten years ago.
    The one subject I avoid with Isabel is Sylvie: she’s something of a monster: precocious, spoilt, boastful. Only child-syndrome and all that, I suppose. And Isabel and Dan think the sun shines … Yes, obviously very bright, and lively, but God she’s irritating. I always try to avoid times when she’s around. I do admit she can be winning sometimes, and even witty. I’m just not keen on children in general. I’m bored rigid by mothers who go on about them all the time – Isabel, to be fair, doesn’t do this – but the domestic problems of