by Anna Cheska
‘You do that, lovie.’ Sylvie noded, almost satisfied. Returned to the sink, muttering, ‘What do you want to be wasting your time drawing old women for anyway? When you could be … could be…’
‘Drawing dolly birds?’ Alex suggested, knowing she was secretly flattered. ‘Like the gorgeous Marisa, for instance?’
Sylvie sniffed, turned on the tap, squirted in more detergent. ‘A new young lady is it, then?’ She turned and shot him a glance from the gimlet eye that might be short-sighted but had seen everything.
Carefully, Alex drew it.
‘Keeping you out all hours?’
‘You’re worse than me mam, you are.’ He made the Marigolds super-big and started to hum.
‘And your mam would tell you the same as I’m telling you.’ Sylvie pointed a yellow finger. ‘Sort it, that’s all I’m saying.’
Alex drew the finger and a word-balloon, SORT IT, in caps.
The doorbell rang. ‘I’ll get it.’ He should be off. Things to deal with before term started. Imogen West was turning him into a dreamer. And what he was dreaming of was her.
But Sylvie was away from her sink and into the narrow hallway before you could say … take off them Marigolds, lovie. She didn’t answer the door, though, just scrutinised the outline of the figure on the other side of the frosted glass. ‘She may not be at home,’ she said to Alex.
‘Mmm?’
‘Because she’s here.’
The penny dropped. Alex went to open the door on the second ring.
She stood there, not angry – he’d expected angry – but beatific. Stunning too – he’d almost forgotten. ‘Marisa…’
She reached up and kissed him very firmly on the mouth. ‘Alex, darling,’ she said. ‘At last.’
* * *
‘Do you really think it’s so awful of me?’ Wide-eyed, Imogen stared at her friend.
Jude gave her a quick hug of reassurance. ‘Don’t listen to me – I’m just jealous. If you think it’s right then you go ahead.’ The floodgates had opened and for the past thirty minutes Imo hadn’t seemed able to stop talking about Alex Armstrong. And that, Jude reminded herself, was what happened when you were in love – though it had been so long that she could barely remember.
‘He quoted John Donne to me,’ Imogen said, with what Jude privately considered to be a sickening smile. ‘But I suppose you’re used to men reciting poetry?’
‘Nope.’ And anyway Jude had gone right off poetry just lately.
‘From Mattie, I mean.’
‘Mattie only quoted Mattie,’ Jude told her. ‘And Mattie is in the past.’ She wasn’t sure why she had bothered with him in the first place. Her bullshit antennae had been well off beam there.
‘It didn’t work out then?’ Imo put a hand on Jude’s arm. A hand covered in soil, she noted.
‘Mattie was looking for someone to write about. Someone to make him feel complete.’ Or so he had said, shortly before Jude had given up and gone to sleep. She brushed a few specks of earth from her yellow sweatshirt.
‘Nothing wrong with that.’ Imogen firmed the compost with the heel of her hand and grabbed another peat pot from the pile on the shelf above the work bench. ‘Is there?’
‘I’d rather he was complete before I got anywhere near him.’ Jude watched Imogen knead the soil between her fingers. Mattie had said she was like the soil – well, like the earth actually. She thought she knew what he meant, but couldn’t help feeling he could have tried a bit harder in the simile department. And in others actually.
‘So what’s wrong with Mattie?’
‘Well, for starters, he takes himself too seriously.’ Like most men, she thought sadly.
Imogen smiled. ‘You could sort him out if anyone could.’
‘But that’s just it…’ Jude sighed. ‘I honestly can’t be bothered. I know he’s not right for me.’ Why did she need to keep trying? What was so perfect about coupledom? She and Daisy were happy as they were. Why rock the boat? She groaned. ‘I’m a member of the Blind Date world-wide internet introduction service. It has thirteen thousand members, and I still can’t find a nice man.’ She glanced at Imo. What did she have that Jude lacked – apart from a slender figure, clear skin, cheekbones to die for and a notable lack of cynicism? ‘Where are they all, Imo?’ Only her friend wasn’t exactly the right person to ask. She had apparently found one without even trying.
‘You could join a church.’ Imo’s mind was clearly not on the job.
Now she’d heard it all. Jude dusted a chair with her hand and sat down gingerly. At Say It With Flowers you could never be quite sure what you were sitting on and she was very fond of her orange skirt. She watched Imogen flicking through her seed packets with long fingers, scrutinising them closely to check dates. ‘You don’t honestly think I’m likely to meet my ideal partner in a church, do you?’
‘Or you could start hanging out in bookshops or art galleries,’ was Imogen’s next offering.
‘I have a salon to run.’
‘Evening classes?’
‘Forget it.’ She had made up her mind. One more from her shortlist and then she was done. If that was another miserable failure, then she would drop it. And neither would she wait patiently for her prince to come. Jude lit another cigarette. No, she’d go out and buy a vibrator and to hell with it. At least she wouldn’t have to wash anyone’s dirty socks for the rest of her life.
Whereas Imo … Jude narrowed her eyes. Look at her, so saturated today, so glowing. ‘What was he like between the sheets then?’ she asked, realising belatedly that this was the one bit (the best bit) that Imo had left out.
Imogen blushed. ‘Pretty good, actually.’ She grinned. ‘And Mattie?’
‘Terrible, since you ask.’ Jude really wasn’t keen to remember. ‘He said he felt challenged.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘In this case bad. Truth was he couldn’t manage it at all.’
Imogen sprinkled some fine compost on top of the seeds. ‘Oh, dear, poor Jude.’ She hesitated, and Jude just knew she was going to say something absolutely awful.
‘Come on then, out with it.’ She sighed. ‘Say what you’ve got to say.’
Imo grinned. ‘Mattie wasn’t a performance poet then?’
Hah-bloody-hah. Definitely time to go. She grabbed her coat. As for Imo, it was all very well throwing caution to the wind and falling in love madly, truly and deeply. But Jude had the feeling that Marisa Gibb would have something to say about that.
Chapter 24
‘Whoever can guess what this is going to be…’ Alex manipulated the rubber of the balloon between his fingers ‘… gets to keep it.’
‘Big deal,’ said some kid in the front row with long hair, buck teeth and a Bart Simpson jumper.
Little brat. Alex was not feeling well disposed towards the world. And kids were supposed to like animal balloons. They were supposed to watch open-mouthed – and quietly – as he magically created sausage dogs, long-eared rabbits and the odd giraffe. He moved closer to the semi-circle of children and squeaked the red rubber as close to the Little B’s face as he dared.
‘Gerroff!’
The kids laughed. Gotcha. Alex roamed from one side of the room to the other, in the hope that if he kept moving he’d keep them with him. And at least in this annexe of the church hall (hung with balloons and banners but unmistakably a church hall) there was more space to swing a cat-balloon than in the average sitting-room.
‘A dog!’ someone called.
‘Correct.’ He ran off another four assorted animals, keeping up a patter of corny jokes. What game makes you hoarse? Stable tennis. And, Why did Cinderella get dropped from the football team? Because she kept running away from the ball. ‘Who wants to try some juggling?’ He offered the skittles to the Little B in the front row.
‘I bet you wouldn’t juggle with knives,’ the Little B jeered. ‘Too chicken to do that, eh?’
Why did the chicken cross the road? Alex would have used knives
– if he could have got the Little B to have a go. The children, he sensed, were getting restless, starting to whisper and giggle.
Smoothly, he began with three skittles. Glossy red to contrast with his black tracksuit. Get into the rhythm, keep up the jokes, that was the way. And don’t panic. So, How do you stop a skunk from smelling? Hold his nose. Alex added more skittles. Easy does it.
Behind the Little B was a grave-faced child whose eyes were fixed on Alex. She seemed very familiar though it was hard to say when she was only on the edge of his peripheral vision. Hell’s bells. Daisy.
Alex dropped the lot.
* * *
Vanessa leaned towards Hazel. ‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked. They were sipping Earl Grey in Kirby’s Wedgwood blue, Edwardian-style tea room. But Vanessa had been practically summoned here today, and Hazel was not looking her usual ebullient self. She was wearing the kind of black hat one might wear to a funeral, and her face was as pale as if she had indeed just attended one.
Hazel replaced her china cup in the saucer with an uncharacteristic rattle. She was wearing a black coat too, black scarf, black stockings, black court shoes. ‘Does anything seem wrong to you?’ she asked intently.
Vanessa repressed a sigh, looked around her, tried to be soothed by the elegance of the wood panelling, the pleasing geometry of so many straight lines. Games … Perhaps that was why she found Ralph so invigorating. They had agreed from the start that game-playing, once fun, now bored them. There didn’t seem time enough left for it, she supposed. They had known one another for so many years and it was wonderful not to have to pussy foot around. A spade could be called a spade and dirty too. ‘Not particularly.’ Vanessa waited.
‘I can’t wear a hat in Italy,’ Hazel said. ‘It’ll be much too warm.’
‘A hat?’ If there was any logic to Hazel’s remark then it was lost on her. ‘Italy?’ she added for good measure. With luck she’d get there eventually.
Hazel peeled off the said hat with a sad and dramatic flourish.
‘Oh.’ Vanessa blinked. Her friend’s hair was very short. And the colour was … copper? Bright, new, bottom-of-saucepan copper.
‘It was the streaks,’ Hazel explained, looking surreptitiously around the tea room. Only a middle-aged man rustling a paper, two elderly ladies and a fifty-something female immersed in a book were within range. She replaced the hat. ‘Jude had to bleach out the black and then do an overall tint.’ She shuddered. ‘It took three hours and it was pure hell.’
‘Three hours?’ Streaks? Confused, Vanessa pushed away the disconcerting image of a naked copper-haired Hazel racing across a cricket pitch.
‘And the tint brought it back to copper. It was that or go black.’
‘Back?’ To Italy perhaps? Vanessa refocused on her gloves, lying neatly by her side plate. Kirby’s was very civilised, she reflected, and Hazel was normally predictable. But not today.
‘Black.’ Hazel pointed to her hat, or at least to what was hidden by it.
‘Ah, black.’ Vanessa nodded, unfastened the buttons of her red coat. Logic was always there if you searched hard enough for it. Most people acted with reason.
‘What do you think of the new colour?’ Hazel seemed to be aiming for nonchalance as she sipped more tea.
Vanessa, however, was tired of games. ‘Not one of your wiser decisions,’ she said.
Cup and saucer clattered together once again as Hazel emitted a low wail. ‘Feel it,’ she demanded, releasing a copper clump from the constraints of the hat band. ‘Just feel it.’
Reluctantly, Vanessa did so. It reminded her that she needed more hand cream.
‘Well?’
She frowned. ‘A good protein conditioner might help. I use eggs when I’m travelling.’
‘Eggs?’ Hazel repositioned the clump. Out of sight, out of … ‘Eggs?’ Her voice seemed to be rising towards hysteria.
Vanessa tried to defuse the situation. ‘I love the cut,’ she said. ‘Very chic.’
‘Giorgio hates short hair.’ Absent-mindedly, Hazel picked up Vanessa’s eclair and took a large bite. ‘He thinks women should be women.’
And not have the vote perhaps? But Vanessa realised that this must be the Italian connection. ‘You’re going to Italy with Giorgio?’ she said brightly, trying to cheer her up.
Hazel nodded miserably. ‘He asked me on New Year’s Eve,’ she confided. ‘Just after his crema e granita al caffé.’
‘For a holiday?’ Vanessa made her voice brighter still.
‘He wants me to meet his family.’ Hazel took another bite and Vanessa waved at the waitress to fetch her another one. ‘I’m supposed to be on a pasta diet,’ Hazel went on.
‘Pasta diet?’
‘I only eat when I’m with Giorgio.’
Goodness. ‘And you’re worried he won’t like your hair?’ Vanessa tried not to sound incredulous. After all, there were women to whom a good hair day meant a day when all was satisfactory with their world and a bad hair day meant they might as well have stayed in bed. This was merely an extension of the same concept though Vanessa would have hoped that intelligent women had grown out of such insecurities by the age of sixty. And as for diets … Extension? A thought occurred to her. ‘How about a wig?’ she whispered.
* * *
‘Oh, you weren’t that bad,’ Trixie said brightly.
But Alex knew that Sylvie’s daughter was just being kind. He had never dropped all the skittles before. And he never really recovered. With the Little B and Daisy Lomax in his audience, his act had disintegrated into farce. He’d even resorted to toilet humour. Why did the lobster blush? Because the sea weed, to regain some respect. Before long, the kids were wandering off to find the food, and Alex had decided that enough was enough, and this was too much.
‘Nice of you to say so.’ He began collecting up his stuff. ‘But I was hardly on top form.’
‘We all have our off days.’ Trixie looked doubtful. Whatever her mother said, Alex knew she wouldn’t be recommending his services to any more of her friends.
But it didn’t matter. Alex wouldn’t be doing any more children’s parties. He’d made up his mind. No more Santa Claus, no more juggling. He’d gone off children in a big way.
‘I enjoyed it, Alex.’
He glanced up to see Daisy standing beside him. She looked charming in her pink party frock and blonde plaits with pink ribbons, and he didn’t trust her an inch. ‘Hello, Daisy.’ Now how could he put this? ‘I’m glad you had a good time.’ He dropped nonchalantly to her level and met her steady blue gaze. ‘But I don’t think Auntie Imo would be interested in hearing about it, do you?’
‘Oh, but she would.’ Daisy sounded confident. ‘Auntie Imo loves anything that makes her laugh.’
‘Does she indeed?’ Alex groaned. He was unlikely to score any Brownie points with this afternoon’s disaster.
‘Oh, yes.’ Daisy blinked. ‘And she might feel sorry for you too.’
‘Might she?’ Alex brightened at this.
‘Mmm. She’ll think you’re really sad.’
And that was supposed to make him feel good?
‘Do you love Auntie Imo?’ Daisy went on conversationally.
Alex felt about twelve. He gulped. ‘Love? That’s a big word.’
‘It’s only four letters.’ Daisy was waiting.
‘Auntie Imo is a lovely lady,’ he said. That seemed safe enough. Though with this child, who could be sure?
‘I thought you did.’ Satisfied, Daisy turned on her black patent heels. ‘Wait till I tell my mummy. She’ll be really interested to hear that.’
* * *
At Say It With Flowers, Imogen was in the front of the shop trimming fern when she glanced out of the window to see Marisa Gibb walking up South Street.
Help! Instinctively, she ducked behind the counter, still clutching the fern. She wouldn’t be coming here, would she? Imo prayed for her to walk on by.
But the shop door opened with a ping, and …
‘Imogen?’ Marisa’s tone demanded attention.
She couldn’t face Marisa. She really didn’t think that after New Year’s Eve and Alex … She couldn’t talk to her. But neither could she stay where she was so, slowly, Imogen rose to her feet. ‘Oh, it’s you. Hello.’ She tried for pleased and surprised, and probably only managed guilty.
Marisa looked wonderful. She was wearing chocolate brown jersey trousers and a cream fleece. Her clear green eyes were knowing. Imogen swallowed hard, put the crushed and forlorn fern on the counter, wiped her hands on her green overalls. Did Marisa know? Could she know? Surely Alex wouldn’t have told her?
‘Imogen.’ Her nod was cool.
Imo grabbed some more greenery from the pile by the till and began cutting furiously. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I just wanted a little chat.’ Marisa glided over to the white roses, bent and sniffed. ‘My favourites,’ she said. ‘Alex often buys me white roses.’
‘Does he?’ In Imogen’s hand, another innocent fern was crushed to a pulp. She rubbed at the green stain on her fingers. And at the thought of him – just the thought of him – her heart did a bungee jump. ‘How is … er … Alex?’ she asked carefully. It proved harder than she’d expected to drain the name of all emotion. ‘Have you seen him?’
Marisa considered. ‘Not over Christmas,’ she said at last. ‘He had to go back to Nottinghamshire to see his family. We hate to be separated. But he had to let them know what was going on.’
Imo put the fern to one side before she destroyed the lot. Her bungee-jumping heart had coiled into a knot of unease. ‘Going on?’
Marisa moved in closer. For the kill? Imo wondered. ‘There were things he had to tell them, you see. Things that couldn’t be said over the phone.’
Imo stared at her. ‘Things?’ She half-hoped Marisa wouldn’t elaborate. What things? She grabbed a packet of Staybright flower food – wishing she could – spooned some of the powder into a large watering can and marched over to the sink. Having her back to Marisa for a while, she reasoned, would give her valuable recovery time.