Bob and Carol and Gemma and Alice?

She was beginning to sob by then. I never could stand a woman crying, especially a friend. I just knew that, whatever the consequences, I had to say yes. So I did. Which is why, a few minutes later, I was at in the kitchen. Hesitant. Waiting. I could hear the girls and Bob talking next door. Presumably they were telling him what was going on. But how much of it? What was about to be expected of me? I heard Gemma's voice calling out.

"OK, dear? Ready for this?"

**************

I walked through into the lounge and turned to face Gemma. And Bob. I wasn't sure exactly what the girls had told him, I hadn't been able to hear properly what they had been talking about. Probably something about Gemma and me having had difficult times ourselves and of our pleasure in being able to work through them. But, from the look on Bob's face, I could see Gemma hadn't told him exactly how.

He said nothing for several seconds, then spoke, "Streuth Alan, You look sensational!"

Again, as with Carol, not quite what I had been expecting, Not laughter, not ridicule, not 'Alan you look totally stupid', nothing like that. I decided to maintain whatever illusion I had succeeded in creating.

"Good evening sir, may I get you a drink?"

It was the combination of the mild manner and the rather gentle voice which did it, I think, and Bob's own obvious mental jump which matched the one I had made myself some months earlier. Not a massive jump, just an assumption about my name.

"Er - yes please - er - Alice, a whisky if I may."

I smiled sweetly at Bob and turned towards the drinks trolley, pouring his drink and adding what I knew to be the right amount of soda. I turned towards him and noticed Gemma and Carol beaming at each other.

"Gemma, did you see that. You are a dirty old man, Bob Harris, I saw the way you tried to look up Alan's skirt!"

Bob felt in some way caught out, he stuttered a little.

"Well - er - no, I was just looking - I mean - "