Pulse

boiled egg, Alice found her mind drifting from the cultural pages to Derek. Yes, he had been an oaf, but one with such an appetite for her that it had all seemed not worth questioning. And at the time Jane didn’t appear to mind; only later did she start to become resentful. Alice wondered if this was something to do with Jane, or with the nature of time; but she failed to reach a conclusion, and went back to the newspaper.
    Jane, meanwhile, in another part of London, was watching television, and picking up cheese on toast with her fingers, not caring where the crumbs fell. Her hand occasionally slipped a little on the wine glass. Some female Euro-politician on the news reminded her of Alice, and she thought about their long friendship, and how, when they were on stage together, Alice always played the senior partner, and she always acquiesced. Was this because she had a subservient nature, or because she thought it made her, Jane, come across as nicer? Unlike Alice, she never minded owning up to weaknesses. So maybe it wastime to admit the gaps in her reading. She could start in Edinburgh. That was a trip to look forward to. She imagined these jaunts of theirs going on into the future until … what? The television screen was replaced by an image of herself dropping dead on a near-empty train coming back from somewhere. What did they do when that happened? Stop the train – at Swindon, say – and take the body off, or just prop her up in the seat as if she was asleep or drunk and continue on to London? There must be a protocol written down somewhere. But how could they give a place of death if she was on a moving train at the time? And what would Alice do, if her body was taken off? Would she loyally accompany her dead friend, or find some high-minded argument for staying on the train? It suddenly seemed very important to be reassured that Alice wouldn’t abandon her. She looked across at the telephone, wondering what Alice was doing at that moment. But then she imagined the small, disapproving silence before Alice answered her question, a silence which would somehow imply that her friend was needy, self-dramatising and overweight. Jane sighed, reached for the remote, and changed channel.

At Phil & Joanna’s 2: Marmalade
    IT WAS THE kind of mid-February which reminds the British why so many of their compatriots chose emigration. Snow had fallen intermittently since October, the sky was a dull aluminium, and the television news reporting flash floods, toddlers being swept away and pensioners paddled to safety. We had talked about SAD, the credit crunch, the rise in unemployment and the possibility of increased social tension.
    ‘All I’m saying is, it’s not surprising if foreign firms operating here fly in foreign labour when there are piles of job-seekers at home.’
    ‘And all I’m saying is, there are more Brits working in Europe than Europeans working here.’
    ‘Did you see that Italian worker giving the finger to photographers?’
    ‘Yes, I’m all for importing foreign labour if it looks like that.’
    ‘Don’t give her any more, Phil.’
    ‘Without sounding too much like the prime minister or one of those papers we don’t read, at the moment I think it should be a case of British jobs for British workers.’
    ‘And European wine for British wives.’
    ‘That’s a non sequitur.’
    ‘No, it’s a postprandial sequitur. Amounts to the same thing.’
    ‘As your resident alien –’
    ‘Pray silence for the spokesman of our former colony.’
    ‘… I recall when all you guys were arguing about joining the single currency. And I was thinking: what’s their problem? I’ve just driven to the middle of Italy and back using a single currency and it’s called Mastercard.’
    ‘If we joined the euro the pound would be worth less.’
    ‘Surely, if we joined the euro –’
    ‘Joke.’
    ‘You’ve got the same colour passports. Why not cut to the chase and say you’re all Europeans?’
    ‘Because then we wouldn’t be allowed to make jokes about foreigners.’
    ‘Which is after all a central British tradition.’
    ‘Look, go to any city in Europe and the stores are more or less the same. At times you wonder where you are. Internal borders hardly exist. Plastic’s replacing money, the internet’s replacing everything else. And more and more people speak English, which makes it even easier. So why not admit the reality?’
    ‘But that’s another British trait we cling to. Not