A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [6]
Pretty little Patty had become fat, plain Patty with awful acne as she got into her teens, yet she was still so sweet-natured. She was training to be an optician, and she had the patience of a saint with old people.
Fifi wished she was patient too, but she always wanted everything immediately. She couldn’t bear to wait in queues; she ran across busy roads instead of waiting for the lights to go green. She spent her wages mentally before she even got paid. She jumped into situations with both feet without stopping to think.
She was doing it again now with Dan. She’d only known him for six hours, but she was already convinced they were made for each other.
Getting excited over a new man wasn’t a new experience; she’d done it many times before. She would hang round the phone willing it to ring, count the hours till they met, weave improbable fantasies about the life they’d have together. But these romances had always been shortlived.
She knew exactly why. It was because she always hid her real character behind a phoney one, trying to be whatever she believed the man wanted.
Hugh had wanted someone who would bolster up his self-image. Not too bright, not too stunning, a girl who would hang on his every word and be the perfect accessory of a would-be lawyer, never complaining or demanding anything of him.
She’d been so good at it too, until she got bored with stroking his ego and kowtowing to him.
Alan, the boyfriend before Hugh, had wanted a wild, arty girl. Fifi had been quite good at that too, wearing tight black slacks and baggy jumpers and tying her hair back in a pony-tail. She learned lots of obscure poems, pretended she liked jazz and red wine, and talked about going to live in the Latin Quarter in Paris.
That had been fun for a while, but she missed pretty clothes, and got tired of pretending to be a Bohemian. There had been other characters she’d played too; it seemed preferable to be anyone other than her real self.
*
Tonight, however, she’d just been herself. That was partly because of the way she and Dan met, when she wasn’t dressed up. She had been in her work clothes, her hair needed a wash, there was a ladder in her stocking and she hadn’t even put on any perfume. She didn’t once try to impress Dan, nor did she build him up to be something he wasn’t either.
It was all the laughing that made it so easy to be natural. Dan was neither a clown nor a joke-teller; he was just a funny person with his witty turn of phrase, his razor-sharp observations and ability to see humour in just about everything.
After his question about whether she’d kiss a man in his work clothes they had gone on to a couple of other pubs, so he could get an idea of the area he’d be living in. She found out that he was twenty-five and had done his National Service in the Army; although he never went out of the country, he had enjoyed it so much that he was tempted to sign on as a regular.
In the past he’d had a spell living rough; he’d spent six months in a leaky caravan in the middle of a field, and stayed in many other grim lodgings when the building firm he worked for sent him off to a different town.
His friends were the men he worked with, and it seemed to Fifi, by the affectionate way he spoke of them, that they were the nearest thing he had to family. He hadn’t accumulated many personal belongings as he had never had a real base. But he said his boss would be bringing the rest of his stuff from Swindon tomorrow, a few more clothes, a radio and some tools.
‘What I’d really like is to settle down and have a real home,’ he said at one point, the only time in the whole evening when he sounded less than content with his lot. ‘I’d like to decorate it myself and have furniture I’d chosen. To lock the door and know no one could barge in on me.’
Fifi turned off the bedside light and snuggled down under the covers. She had been moved by the simplicity of what Dan wanted. Most men coveted a smart car or a hand-tailored suit; they wouldn’t care about a decent place to live. And she’d never known anything else. She took this warm and