INSTRUCTION: Now read carefully the text below;
then mark the alternatives that answer the questions or
complete the sentences in the question.
Amy watched six taxis avoid her and go deliberately
towards other people. Then she began to realise she
was suffering from advanced paranoia and that she had
better cut her losses and take the tube home. She was
already so late and angry, that the lurching crowded
journey couldn’t make her much worse. And there was
the danger that if she stood much longer on the side of
the street being ignored by rush hour taxi drivers she
might lose her small remaining ration of sanity. And she
needed to hold on to what she had for tonight.
Tonight Ed’s sister and her husband were coming to
dinner. Tonight, for the first time, she would meet the
Big Mama figure in Ed’s American family, the one they
all bowed to, the one Ed had practically written to for
permission to marry Amy. At the time Amy had thought
it funny; she had even suggested that her dental reports
and Photostats of her GCE certificates be sent to New
York. But three years later, after a period of watching Ed
write his monthly letter to his big sister Bella, she found
it less funny. She was never shown those letters and in
pique she had opened one before posting it. It was an
infantile report on how their life had been progressing
since last month: childish details about the floor covering
they had bought for the kitchen, aspirations that Ed’s
salary would be reviewed and upped. Praise for a new
dress that Amy had bought, minutiae about a picnic they
had had with another couple. It had made Amy uneasy,
because it had made Ed seem retarded. It was the kind
of letter that a mother might expect from a small son
who had gone off to summer camp, not something that a
sister in far away America should need or want.
Ed had been euphoric about the visit. It had been
planned for over three months. Bella and her husband
Blair were coming to London for three days as part of
a European tour. They would arrive in the morning;
they did not want to be met, they preferred to recover
from their jet lag alone in the privacy of a good
hotel with a comfortable bedroom and bathroom.
Fully refreshed, at seven p.m. they would come and see
their beloved Ed and welcome their new sister Amy to the
family. Next day there would be a tour to Windsor and an
evening at the theatre, with a dinner for the four of them.
And on the Saturday morning, Amy might kindly take her
new sister Bella shopping, and point out the best places,
introduce her to the heads of departments in the better
stores. They would have a super girly lunch, and then
Bella and Blair should fly out of their lives to Paris.
Normally, on any ordinary Thursday, Amy came home
from Harley Street, where she worked as a doctor’s
receptionist, took off her shoes, put on her slippers,
unpacked her shopping, organized a meal, lit the fire and
then Ed would arrive home. Their evenings had begun to
have a regular pattern. Ed came home tense and tired.
Little by little, in front of the fire, he would unwind; little
by little he relaxed his grip on the file of papers he had
brought back from the office. He would have a sherry, his
face would lose its lines; and then he would agree really
that there was no point in trying to do too much work in
the evening.
And afterwards, he would carve away happily at the table
he was making, or watch television, or do the crossword
with Amy; and she realized happily that she was
essential to him, because only her kind of understanding
could make him uncoil and regard his life as a happy,
unworrying thing.
That was all before the threatened visit of Bella.
In: BINCHY, Maeve. Victoria Line, Central Line. Hodder and
Stoughton: Coronet Books, 1982, p.11-12.