by Isabella May
“No, no, you go ahead, be my guest.”
“Well, technically you’re mine, so I don’t want to play something that might assault your ears. What with you being a musician and all…”
“Oh, so you recognise me.”
“It’s hard not to with Avalonia being one of my favourite bands.” She let out a strange snigger. “But I promise not to get star struck, Alice – may I call your Alice? – I’m kinda used to ferrying the big names about. I’ve had Björk and her tatty hair knots, that Heather Small from M People, Ana Matronic out of the Scissor Sisters… her real name’s Ana Lynch, did you know? Then, who else, let me see… Ant and Dec… even old Kanye in the back of my cab over the years. So no biggie when it comes to discretion, I won’t be tipping off the press.”
“Thanks, that’s good to know.”
“De nada, love.”
“Ant and Dec though, really?”
“Oh yeah, well they needed a trip to the supermarket, were glamping it up in the VIP fields at the festival, like.”
“Oh right, yes. I suppose the festival attracts all sorts.”
“Certainly does.”
“Stop!”
“But we’re not quite in Bath yet, pet.”
“Please, sorry, stop here, just a short while. I need to write a note. I can’t leave it like this. Not after all he’s done to help me.”
“Whatever you say, nothing to do with me. You see to your business.” The driver pulled the vehicle over to the side of the road and tugged at the handbrake. “I can’t stop the metre running though no more than I can stop the Earth spinning, just so’s you’re aware.”
“No, it’s all right, it’s all right. This won’t take long. But do you have some paper, a pen?” Alice felt herself getting more flustered by the second, hardly helped by the random tidbits of gossip being involuntarily thrown her way, as if she were some kind of starved seagull.
“Course… here you go.” The driver twisted her bulky frame awkwardly, showing off an impressive neck tattoo, as well as an array of gold hoop earrings straight out of an Argos catalogue, proportionately decreasing in size as they ran down her earlobe. She handed Alice a notepad and pen.
Alice scribbled the first words that came into her head, hardly poetic at this time of the morning, but better than vanishing without a trace of an explanation.
“I’ll be fifty-nine seconds, literally,” she said, tearing the paper with its taxi details off the pad and opening the door.
“No probs, but how about some music? I’ll get the CD ready while you’re doing your thing.”
This woman was seriously something else at three forty-five am.
“I dunno… um… err… what about some Sting?”
Hardly her favourite, despite singing his praises to Heather, but bizarrely he was the first artist to pop into her head.
“Your luck’s in.”
Alice smiled wanly at the back of her head as the driver lunged at the glove box compartment and busied herself rifling through her musical collection. She stepped onto the kerb and walked the few metres behind her, past the organic bakery, to River’s bar, took a deep breath and then slid the paper under the door, immediately berating herself thereafter that Georgina might well return to work within hours, the first to place her grubby mitts on it.
She ran back to the cab only to be welcomed by the beats of The Police and Every Breath You Take, which serenaded her in an irritatingly timely fashion. The driver began to whistle along and Alice closed her eyes, trying in vain to focus on the woman in front of her and her tragic middle-aged impediment, as opposed to Georgina and her growing stomach. In any other circumstances this would definitely not be preferable.
Somehow it must have worked though, because when she opened her eyes it was to the site of the lush green hills of Peasedown St John, basked in a pretty pink sunrise, and not long after, the trickle of Georgian terraced houses and Bed & Breakfasts, witnessing her arrival into the glorious city of Bath.
“Almost there. I must say, I for one can’t wait – gonna treat myself to a fry-up in one of the city cafs before I head back to Glasters.”
“Sounds great,” Alice lied and again she tried to focus on anything but the kind of subject which threatened to evict the contents of her stomach.
“Now are you one hundred percent sure you’re doing the right thing?”
“I beg your pardon?” Alice wasn’t sure how much more of the driver’s tiresome quirks she could take.
“Look, far be it for me to interfere, and what is spoken in this taxi, stays in this taxi. From Dec to Kanye, Ana Matronic to Alice, Joe Bloggs to The Queen… should I ever be lucky enough to have her grace my behind.”
For almost five am this was beyond painful.
“What I’m trying to establishment, love, is are you sure you won’t change your mind about running away from him?”
“How did you… I mean, running away from who? I’m not even running away!” Alice tried in vain to reassure the both of them, completely overlooking her giveaway high pitched voice, now on the brink of a screech.
“Okay, fair dos, I see the subject’s off limits.” The driver held her chubby hands up and shook her head in defeat. “All the best to you, I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Yeah, thanks, same to you… no don’t bother, it’s okay, I’ve got this.” Alice held up her own hand to stop her chauffeur from heaving her weight out of the seat to help her with her luggage, and went to the boot to do the honours solo.
A round of completely unnecessary bon voyage beeps later and the mysterious woman, whose name had never been revealed, was presumably off for her Full English Breakfast in a greasy spoon, leaving Alice to feel equally full – of paranoia, fear, guilt, regret, and just about every other lower spectrum emotion one could conjure up besides, as she made her way to platform one.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
GEORGINA
Georgina treated herself to two days off work, just enough for Alice to slip out of the picture, as she’d cleverly predicted. Of course River had dressed up her disappearance with the announcement that His Beloved was taking a weekend break to visit her sister in London.
Oh, the irony! As if.
Little did he know Georgina had already had her own introduction to that grotesque specimen of a Society Darling, courtesy of their mutual swift mini break at one Reading Services. Georgina rather thought River would find that Alice was in fact flunked out on a sunbed at Glenn Luke Sherringham’s mansion in Bel-Air, attempting to revive his affection in a barely-there bikini and a string of diamonds dancing around her neck. She was more than welcome to stay there.
It was almost like wiping the slate clean: just the two of them running the bar. And with the ever-increasing chance of Alice’s eclipse really being for ever and ever Amen, it was also something of a relief that Georgina wouldn’t need to start desperately stuffing cushions up her jumpers like some child playing Mummies and Daddies in a Wendy house. She’d already started experimenting with socks in her bras, realising quickly that it would have been a desperately hard act to keep up.
Depleted stock brought them to the local supermarket. River had left the wholesale order too late for the delivery to arrive on time and had instead called Georgina in early, seemingly eager to encourage her to make up for those lost hours of the last weekend.
Loser Lee was strutting his stuff on the shop floor, biro tucked behind his ear as if he’d suddenly shot up to management level. River spotted him and left Georgina to bag up the fruit, passing her an extensive shopping list behind him.
“Pineapples, lemons and limes in first, don’t squash the peaches whatever you do.”
“Blimey, I must be going up in the world,” she said to his back which was now halfway down the aisle to bestow Lee with a handshake.
“Coincidence?”
River couldn’t seem to help but tease him about something, and Georgina couldn’t help but overhear. With River’s focus firmly on his friend, she
couldn’t resist but to wheel the trolley closer, eyeing the pineapples’ handy location, just to the right of their dialogue and on special offer. Because who exactly did buy pineapple in a town like Glastonbury?
“It’s nowt to do with your outlandish theory. They had a vacancy, I fit it. Simple as,” Lee replied, and Georgina found herself raising her eyebrows and listening in more intently.
“Wonder why it’s never happened before in… how many? Thirteen years of service for the same supermarket?”
“Because I wasn’t ready, obviously, but now I am,” Lee replied in a funny kind of yodel, more than hinting at his uncertainty regarding this apparent twist of fate.
“Exactly,” said River, and then promptly turned, visibly more than a little stunned with the realisation that Georgina had been all too obviously eavesdropping. She dived onto the pineapples like an amateur actor, grabbing the two closest to hand and carefully deposited them upright in the front section of the trolley where they made the perfect likeness of twin babies in the child seat, wild new born hair in spikes, not all that dissimilar to River’s – or her own on a windswept morning on Glastonbury Tor. She couldn’t help but let out a giggle at the synchronicity given her recent cunning plan, upon which River eyed her, curiously.
“What was all that about then?” she asked, averting him from her childish behaviour.
“Leeroy’s only been promoted to Assistant Manager.”
“He’s what?”
“Lee, he’s going up in the world.”
That was an all too obvious dig at her earlier comment which she’d sarcastically assumed he hadn’t heard. She’d have to be more careful around him, she was starting to realise he wasn’t quite as naïve as she’d previously thought, although quite how he’d still not twigged she’d pilfered the Spanish letter, was anybody’s guess.
“But Blake’s been working here eighteen months longer than Lee, how’s that for dedication?” she snapped back as he burdened her with a heavy netted bag full of Seville oranges. “Ever since he’s stopped doing the night shift and got together with that short-arse Jonie, it’s like he thinks he’s a cut above or something. He’s lucky Blake is still working nights. There’s no way he’d stand for taking orders from that.”
“Oh for crying out loud, Georgina, why can’t you just be happy for him? He’s had an opportunity and he’s taken it, that’s all,” said River, flinging a bag of limes into the trolley, grinning bizarrely like the Cheshire Cat in an undeniable attempt to blind Lee with the flash of his teeth even from afar.
She wanted to loathe him for that remark.
Yet these weeks without him wouldn’t allow hatred to completely consume her heart. And that’s because she was in love with him, the bastard. Why couldn’t he trade that pony tail for a man bun and make things easier for her?
She’d been as sure as hell that she’d built a fortress around the word ‘emotion’ when she’d entered those tween years, but it was becoming more apparent by the day that she hadn’t tended to the cracks. She’d let her guard down big time and he’d turned her into that pathetic teenage tomboy again, the one who masks her insecurities by clothing like the unassuming girl with the pudding basin haircut; the one who simultaneously embraces the masculinity and convenient hiding place of the shell part of shell suit, the one who gazes adoringly at those cult Athena posters of the man and the baby, and the Smash Hits pull outs of Robbie Williams, with Mark and Howard vying for second place, Gary coming in third at a push; all safe bets, as good as fictional characters in a story book. Apart from Jason, who never got a look in, poor Jason. But it was easier on the heart that way. When your own mother abandons you as a child, never again will you be foolish enough to let anybody else get close to you.
Love and hate; a potent mix when they strike at the same time, and, like a desperate teenager, clinging to a rock of nothingness, now that she truly knew Blake’s anguish over Alice, she also knew she was ready.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
RIVER
“Oh my God, you won’t believe what’s happened!”
River, bogged down with sterilising his worktops before bar opening time, inventing a plausible excuse not to open Cassandra’s cattery, as well as the mild depression that was already taking hold over Alice, had long forgotten to look out for the latest signs of improvement in Lee’s life.
“What’s up? Traffic jam on the High Street because my mum and Dawn Brierley are doing another of their peace marches?”
“No, no, no, nothing like that, are you going to listen, or not? This is crazy, absolutely bat shit crazy.” Lee paced the length of the bar and back again as would a soldier outside Buckingham Palace. “But I’m telling you, it’s true. I don’t know how, or why, and I’m not about to put it down to that blessed cocktail… but on the other hand maybe it actually—”
River stopped his circular scrubbing motions. It was working. It really was working. Mercedes was right. His intuition to trust her, no matter how out of his head that made him feel, was right. Lee didn’t have to say anything. He could feel it. This new energy that surrounded him was palpable. River might not have been able to detect auras and weird things like that, much to Heather’s dismay, but he could feel Lee’s vibration, raised up several notches, inexplicable, wonderful and mesmerising all at once.
“You had me at hello,” said River, throwing his cloths into the sink and then seizing the bar’s edge as if he were about to play a little Mozart to heighten the drama of the moment. “I’m listening.”
“So,” said Lee, seated now, swivelling round and round on the bar stool, as impatient as a child in an old-fashioned sweet shop waiting for his quarter of Rhubarb and Custards to be weighed and bagged up. “Jonie proposed to me last night.”
River, speechless at first, slowly began to jump up and down, and then before he knew it he was fist pumping, too, in that pathetic ‘Get In’ way that all modern footballers seem to have to sign contracts to do the very moment a camera pans into their line of vision.
“Hey, congratulations, mate.” He finally stopped moving and found some words. “Let me fix you up a little something on the house to celebrate. Although, I suppose you’re obliged to ask Blake to be Best Man—”
“Pff, I’ve not got that far in the planning. But yeah… do crack open a bottle, I’m gonna need at least two of something strong before I leave here and make a decision. Couldn’t you bend the rules to three cocktails though… pretty please, just for me, seeing’s I’m an old friend and all?”
“You’re a current friend as much as an old one and you damn well know the answer to that already. But what do you mean, make a decision? What’s to think about? It’s a no-brainer, surely? She’s a lovely girl and you’re smitten with her, sail off into the sunset and enjoy your happily ever after, how many of us get the chance?”
He cursed himself quietly for letting his head swim with Alice all over again.
“No, I don’t mean Jonie. Of course I said yes, didn’t flinch to hesitate. Was even starting to dream up scenarios of me asking her myself. But I’m glad she beat me to it, I’d have been my usual car crash of a nervous wreck unable to get my words out. In the end she asked me going down on one knee in the fruit and veg aisle.”
“Romantic. That’s um, well, it’s original.”
“See, that’s what I love about her. She’s one of a kind, my Jonie, and that aisle means everything to us. It’s where she first asked me out, after two days of flirting when we were reducing the prices of the corn on the cobs.”
“Nice.”
“What I mean is… this.”
Lee looked this way and that over each shoulder, before slowly, with very measured actions, producing something that looked uncannily like a lottery ticket.
“I kid you not… I’ve only gone and won the weekend’s jackpot.”
“What?” River almost toppled backwards.
“Yeah,” Lee frowned. “All six numbers, been playing every Saturday since I was old enough and f
inally me numbers came up. So that’s it now, destiny ruined by a dumb piece of paper.”
“H…h…h…how so?”
River’s language struggled to make it out as a stuttered whisper now. This sudden news was unbelievable; things were happening for Lee dizzyingly fast, River could barely register the latest revelation. First a gargantuan promotion, then a proposal and now a mammoth lottery win, all in the space of a couple of weeks.
“Magic catches like that, it’s wildfire,” Mercedes whispered from nowhere, so that River was forced to examine Lee’s face to see if he’d heard her too – apparently, fortunately, not.
“Just shy of two point five million, that’s my share. According to the bloke I spoke with on the phone at HQ anyway. There were only two of us that hit it last week, me and some other poor unsuspecting sod. Why did I bother playing? Now I’ve got a meeting with him and some other Lotto official, plus a financial advisor. They lay all this stuff on and give you a chat and some tips as to how to deal with the queue of scroungers you can expect to attract, not to mention the likes of the red-topped papers poking their noses in.”
Lee sighed, right fist supporting his out-turned bottom lip, just like he used to during those hot, sticky GCSE exams in the school gym when he evidently hadn’t a clue what was being asked of him.
Huh, like he’d ever needed that shiny string of A-C grades anyway.
“I mean, who really and truly stops to think through the impact this kind of money is going to have on their life?” Lee continued. “Nah, instead we just blindly put our two quid on, week in week out, oblivious to the catastrophe we’re inviting to happen. But I want this marriage to be built on a stronger foundation… and now this has come along and just swiped that away from me in a heartbeat. There’s always charity I s’pose… but the chances are, any donation I make in this gossip crazy town, will soon become public… and then Jonie will up and leave me because I gave all our money away to a donkey sanctuary.”
Sanctuary.
Did he have to mention that word? River didn’t need any more reminders today that he still hadn’t found his get out clause for Saturday’s date with Jane Austen and her furry friends.