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that if she kept putting herself in promising situations it might happen to her before she could stop it. That was one reason she wanted to go to Willowvale. At least it would offer possibilities. A lot of men and a lot of bedrooms. Like her father’s lotto card. Permutations there. But she needed Jacqui to go with her. It might give her the nerve to put herself about a bit more. It would open up the possibilities.
    ‘And there’s David Cudlipp, of course,’ she said.
    She noticed Jacqui and Alison exchange a glance she didn’t understand. Jacqui seemed to become more thoughtful. Katetook it as a hopeful sign. Perhaps she was considering David Cudlipp …
     
     
     
     
    … who was standing in his flat looking through the window down into the street, where one teenager was pushing another along in a supermarket trolley. Both seemed to be shouting some incomprehensible challenge to the street’s residents. David drew back from the window a little in case he became the focus of their marauding arrogance. He remembered a thrown stone coming through the window about a year ago, for no other reason he could see than that the room was lit, with the curtains undrawn, and must have looked like a warm and pleasant place.
    We’ve lost the streets, he thought, as he watched the two careen out of sight, bellowing like berserkers. The propriety of home no longer extends outside to walk the pavements sedately. The roughness of the roads invades the house, estranging us from each other within our own walls. Was that really his wife sitting on a chair and using a magazine she wasn’t interested in like a stage prop?
    ‘So you’re definitely not coming?’ he said.
    ‘There’s so much to do tomorrow.’
    ‘We did promise Andrew Lawson.’
    ‘But what difference does it make? The room will still be taken. It’s just that it’ll become a single instead of a double. At least, I hope so.’
    She was smiling at him. He ignored the implication.
    ‘What do you have to do that’s so important?’
    ‘My own work has fallen behind in the library. I have to goin. Anyway, it’s not as if I have any significant contribution to make. I’d just be a spectator.’
    ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Suit yourself.’
    He didn’t want to pursue it in case she changed her mind. He thought of Veronica Hill …
     
     
     
     
    … a thought that seemed to be troubling Jacqui.
    ‘Veronica Hill?’ I thought you said there wasn’t much competition.’
    ‘There isn’t,’ Alison said.
    ‘Veronica Hill? She looks like a L’Oréal advert.’
    ‘But she disqualifies herself. She’ll hardly look at anybody. Let alone talk to them. She doesn’t just come to uni. She makes royal visits.’
    ‘That’s true.’
    ‘It’s more people like Marion Gibson and Vikki Kane.’
    ‘Listen,’ Jacqui said. ‘Vikki Kane could really look something special. She’s got a lovely figure. Good bones. It’s just the clothes she wears.’
    The idea of Vikki Kane gave Kate comfort. There was somebody else who didn’t seem to belong in a modern context, so demure and reserved. She was so uncertain of herself it was hard to believe she was in her thirties. Maybe she wasn’t the only Lady of Shalott, Kate thought, as she held in her mind the image of Vikki Kane …
    … who was studying herself in the wardrobe mirror.
    The white Lycra top and the black jeans looked good on her. The shop assistant had approved in the passing, saying the jeans made her look like one of those photographs where they’ve painted an outfit on somebody. ‘Know what Ah mean. Robbie Williams did it. All he wore was his underpants. And somebody had painted blue jeans on ’im.’
    The Lycra moulded itself to her breasts. They had hardly sagged at all. Maybe that was one advantage of having had only one child. Her bum looked firm in the jeans. Maybe her half-hearted visits to the gym, before she abandoned them two or three months ago, had done some good after all. Maybe it was the