A Girl Alone

A GIRL ALONE Lilian Peake

Alan's mocking words hit hard, underlining the complete disaster their evening had been. Lorraine had never felt so lonely and so miserable. She wanted to hurt Alan as he had hurt her. "Why don't you leave me alone," she said harshly. "Haven't you done enough damage, enough to keep you supplied with after-dinner stories until you're an old man? You've had your little joke. Now go!" She watched him walk away--the man she loved as she knew she'd never love another!

CHAPTER I LORRAINE bent down over the spare bed and tucked in the blankets. 'What I can't understand,' she said to her mother, 'is why we need to take in a paying guest at all.' Mrs. Ferrers looked a little shocked. 'Oh, we don't need to, dear. Now I've got this good job at the employment agency, and with your salary, we're all right.' Lorraine studied her mother as she drew the candlewick bedspread up and over the blankets. She saw the skill of the hairdresser in her mother's blonde hair, from which all traces of grey had effectively been removed. She saw the eye-shadow and the mascara and the pale pink lipstick. She could not really agree with the way her mother tried to disguise her age, although the make-up she used was delicately applied. It was against her nature to approve of her mother's fight against the inevitable. She wished she would give up the battle and succumb gracefully to middle age like other women. 'I must keep up appearances,' her mother would say, whenever she mentioned it. 'At my age and in my job, I must keep myself looking nice.' She might have added, 'Now I'm a widow, you never know who might come along.' Lorraine's father had died from heart trouble five years before, and his death had left her mother bewildered and grief-stricken. But before very long she had come to terms with her widowhood and eventually taken up her life again with renewed vigour and with the unfailing optimism which was such an endearing part of her character. Beryl glanced with distaste at her daughter's brown skirt, shapeless white blouse and old grey cardigan. 'Couldn't you find something

better to wear for once, Lorrie? And aren't you going to do your face?' She looked at her watch. 'He'll be here any minute.' Lorraine frowned. 'You know I never "do" my face, Mum. So why should I bother for him? And no, I'm not going to change.' She looked down at her clothes and knew her mother wouldn't be seen dead in them. She had said so more than once. 'And you're such a nice shape, too, dear. You should show it off, not hide it underneath all that bagginess. The trouble is, you've got your father's primness, dear man that he was. You're all stiff and starchy. You want to break out a bit, Lorrie. It shows, dear, it shows in your face.' She rearranged the flowers on the small dining-table—they had made the bedroom into a pleasant bed-sitter—and said, with her back to her daughter, 'The way you talk, you make it sound as though Alan's not welcome.' 'As far as I'm concerned, he isn't. You know what I think of journalists.' 'But he's different, Lorrie. He's Nancy Darby's boy. When she wrote and told me Alan was coming to work on the local evening paper, I—well, I thought about this room standing empty and--' 'And you offered it to him.' 'Only for a little while, dear,' Beryl said, trying to placate her daughter, perhaps falsely so, because she knew that she personally would do her best to make her old friend's son stay as long as possible. 'Only till he finds something more suitable.' She paused and drifted reminiscently back to the past. 'I remember seeing him when he was a little lad, a bit quiet, with nothing much to say for himself.' She hesitated, then went on, 'The last time I saw Nancy,' and that was a few years ago, she told me he'd changed a lot.'

'Is he married?' 'No, although you'd think he would be at his age. He must be in his middle thirties, Nancy did say he was one for the girls now.' She laughed self-consciously, as if she were a girl herself. Lorraine thought, 'Well, if someone didn't know how old she was, they'd never guess.' She began to suspect that her mother was actually looking forward to the paying guest's arrival. The doorbell rang. Beryl Ferrers' hand jerked to her hair. 'That's him, dear. Let him in, Lorrie. I must tidy myself.' Lorraine went down the stairs slowly, conscious for some odd reason of her total lack of make-up and her general dowdiness. Now she wished she had taken her mother's advice and changed. Now, when it was too late, something inside her wanted to impress this man whose outline she could see through the patterned glass of the front door. Then she told herself not to be a fool. 'He's just a journalist,' she reflected, 'the scum of the earth.' And with that rebellious thought gleaming in her eyes, she opened the door. The man on the doorstep saw her face raised mutinously to his. He listened to the mumbled and wholly insincere welcome and waited to be invited in. The invitation was so long in coming that he had time to size up—and down—the girl who stood on the threshold, barring his way. His eyes did a swift analytical job on her. They took her apart, assessed her and put her together again, in the space of a few seconds. As she stood back at last to let him in, she wondered precisely what was the result of that bit of research. She had to wait a long time before she knew the answer. She told him, her face stiff with dislike, her eyes challenging his, her voice edgy and grating, 'I'll show you upstairs to your room, Mr. Darby. Will you please follow me?'

As she climbed the stairs with the tall, dark-haired man behind her, she wished more than ever that she had at least changed out of her laddered stockings and worn her sandals instead of her old lace-up shoes. On the landing her mother pounced and took over. Lorraine heard the warm and spontaneous greeting, heard it returned in pleasant, precise tones, saw the gripping handshake and exchange of smiles and left them. She could not join in the general rejoicing. She would not change her opinion of journalists simply because this one was the son of an old friend of her mother's. They were all the same, she told herself, desperately trying to justify her deep and almost obsessive dislike of the 'breed' as she called them. They were shiftless, heavy-drinking rabble, devoid of morals and completely insensitive to the feelings of others. And this man, in spite of his good looks and proud bearing, was no different. In fact, she toyed gloatingly with the thought, because it added justification to her mistrust of the man, all those assets probably made him worse than others of his kind. 'One for the girls' indeed! She remembered the expression in his eyes as he had summed her up even before setting foot in the house. She drew in her lips angrily as she thought of the dismissal which was contained in his glance, almost as if he had mentally lifted her up and put her out of the way. He had trampled on her with his eyes, she told herself furiously as she went downstairs to set the table. And she, Lorraine Ferrers, teacher of English at Walkley School for Girls, was not going to be treated as an irritating obstacle to be removed from anybody's path, let alone a journalist's. As she spread the cloth over the table, she heard her mother's voice on the landing. 'You must have a meal with us this evening, Alan, but after today, of course, you'll probably prefer to eat in your own room.'

'Thank goodness for that,' Lorraine thought, as she arranged place-settings for three. Her mother came down and helped her prepare the salad and slice the cold ham. 'He's such a nice boy, dear,' she was saying. Lorraine smile