by Ashley Croft
‘What is it, then, Ni?’
‘It’s um … ah, just a game, Sarah. I came home early and I’m … um … so embarrassed.’
‘Tied yourself up, did you, after putting on the tiara?’
‘Well, er …’ His wrists strained against the scarves. She realised that one of them, the silk one with the camellia print, had been her mum’s.
The door to the en suite opened and a tall, spiky woman with inky, poker-straight hair stood in the doorway. She was wearing Sarah’s purple bathrobe and stared at her pityingly. ‘Give it a rest, Niall. I think we’ve been rumbled.’
Niall cut across her. ‘Oh, fuck … Look, Sarah. I can explain. I mean it looks bad. It is bad but I never meant to hurt you.’
The woman swore and folded her arms.
‘That’s my bathrobe,’ Sarah murmured, still half in a trance.
The woman shrugged. ‘It swamps me, anyway,’ she said untying the belt and slipping it off her bony shoulders. She was stark naked underneath apart from two sparkly nipple clamps that tinkled when she moved. Sarah had the bizarre thought that they were actually really pretty and that she should add a new line to her business.
Niall groaned. ‘Jesus, Vanessa!’
‘She may as well know everything – you can’t talk your way out of this one,’ said Vanessa, casually plucking a leopard-print thong from the bedside table. ‘It can’t get any worse for you.’
Niall met Sarah’s eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Oh, it can, believe me.’
Sarah stepped out of her trance. ‘Get out,’ she said, quietly.
‘Don’t you think I’d better get dressed first?’ Vanessa stepped into the leg of her thong, a smirk on her face.
‘No, actually, I don’t. Get out of my house.’
A great wave of rage hung over her head, on the brink of breaking. She took a step towards the other side of the bed, shaking with anger and shock.
Vanessa’s cocky expression changed to dismay. She held up her hands. ‘All right, love. I can see you and Ni need some time to talk. I’ll just get me uniform first.’
Sarah flashed her teeth at Vanessa. ‘Why don’t you let me help you get dressed?’
Vanessa shook her head and struggled to pull up her thong. ‘No, it’s OK …’
Sarah grabbed the nearest thing to hand: a purple glass tea light holder.
‘Christ, no, Sarah!’ Niall screamed a fraction before the tea light sailed through the air. Vanessa shrieked as the tea light hit the wall, bounced off and knocked the bedside lamp onto the floorboards. The lamp flickered and went off.
‘Jesus, Sarah!’
Ignoring his shout, Sarah dashed around the bottom of the bed. Vanessa leapt onto the duvet.
‘Arghhh!’ Niall screamed as she kneeled on his genitals in her haste to get away from Sarah. She scrambled off the bed with the nipple clamps tinkling madly.
‘Go on, get out of my house!’ Sarah shouted as Vanessa fled out of the door.
‘You’re mad!’ she screeched, scuttling onto the landing like a giant hairless spider.
Sarah followed her onto the landing, picking up the uniform shirt and trousers. She threw them down the stairs on top of Vanessa.
Vanessa clutched her clothes to her body. ‘I can’t go out like this. I need me boots!’
‘Oh, I am soooo sorry, how rude of me. Here you are.’ One after the other, Sarah hurled the boots down the stairs. They thumped against the wall and Vanessa swore as one whizzed past her head and knocked a picture of Niall on his Triumph clean off the wall. Clouds of plaster dust flew into the air.
‘Your girlfriend is fucking mental!’ Vanessa attempted to step into the boots but toppled against the wall.
‘Yeah, I am. Hasn’t Niall told you? I must be to have trusted him!’ Sarah stood at the top of the stairs, not trusting herself to run down them in her condition.
Vanessa’s hair and face were coated in dust. ‘Keep away from me!’ she screeched, hobbling through the front door.
As Vanessa fled, Sarah made her way downstairs, still trembling with shock.
Wearing one boot, with her clothes clutched to her boobs, Vanessa tinkled off down the icy path.
Sarah’s shout echoed into the night after her. ‘And don’t come back!’
Wailing like a banshee, Vanessa scuttled up the pavement, still trying to put her clothes on. A light flicked on in the bedroom of their elderly neighbour who occupied the cottage next door. Sarah didn’t care who heard the row. She slammed the door shut behind her and leaned against it, tears running down her face. She sank down with her back to the door when a bellow cut through her sobs.
‘Sarah! Sarah? What’s happened? Will someone untie me and take this feckin’ tiara off?’
CHAPTER SIX
Department of Behavioural Ecology
Fenland University
January 2nd
(Scientifically proven to be the most depressing day of the year)
Research Proposal
Objectives To determine why, when a human male asks you to dance at a party, calls you a “sexy nurse” and snogs you in full view of your colleagues, he then proceeds to drop you like you had Ebola.
To discover why male subject #2 allowed (half-witch/half-she-devil) female subject #1 to tie him to a bed and dress him up like a fairy. To discover whether there is a specific reason for this behaviour or whether man in question is just a shit, like 99% of the rest of his sex.
Design Longitudinal cohort study.
Setting Male #1 Research institute.
Male #2 County ambulance service.
Subjects Male #1. Fit and healthy, technically Scottish, demonstrably a genius and a fuckwit. Observed almost daily over six months and two weeks.
Male #2. Not quite so fit. Physically sound but clearly suffering from (temporary) insanity. Demonstrably a total shit with pervy tendencies. Observed daily over two years, five months.
Main outcome measures Determine male subject #1’s behaviour and reasons thereof. Create method to alter male subject’s pattern of behaviour to achieve desired outcome of date/sex/commitment, ideally all three.
Determine male subject #2’s behaviour and reasons thereof. Create method to spontaneously make his tiny dick shrivel up and his balls drop off and/or realise what he has done and crawl back on his belly to lovely, amazing sister who will then walk all over him in her stilettos and tell him to fuck fuckity fuck off.
Results To be advised but not hopeful.
Conclusions To be determined.
Molly stopped typing and stared out of the window of the lab. The sky was the colour of an old dishcloth and big wet snowflakes were settling on the statue of Isaac Newton outside her window. It was a grey, soggy January the second and even Isaac looked pissed off. It also seemed wholly appropriate considering what had happened over the past thirty-six hours.
She’d been woken at nine a.m. by Sarah sobbing down the phone. Apparently, she’d got home to find Niall having kinky sex with a naked woman who drove his ambulance. Sarah had been almost hysterical – not that Molly blamed her – and Molly had spent the rest of the day dispensing tissues, chocolate and vodka – for herself – at Sarah’s cottage.
Molly had listened to the whole sorry story, almost in tears herself. Niall had apparently begged Sarah to forgive him for three hours, until Sarah had finally untied him from the bed and kicked him out. He’d fled to his mother’s, blaming Sarah for causing Vanessa “mild hypothermia” and himself severe emotional distress. Sarah had then had to go around to her neighbour, Mrs Sugden, and apologise and explain that Vanessa wasn’t a prostitute, but a friend of Niall’s who’d been to a nearby fancy-dress party, got very drunk and sought refuge in the cottage before becoming violently deranged. Sarah couldn’t bear to tell her neighbour the truth yet.
Molly had to admit that next to Sarah’s woes, being publicly rejected by Ewan paled into insignificance. However, it was still humiliating and hurtful, especially as she had to work with him.
She returned to her paper, trying to concentrate until her desk phone rang. When she saw the extension number, she swore and braced herself.
‘Good morning, Professor Baxter.’
‘Um. Molly. Would you mind popping into my private office for a few minutes? If it’s convenient, of course. I’d like to discuss our next grant application for the Love Bug.’
Molly inspected her nails before replying. ‘Surely, you’re referring to Hormone XTB229, Professor Baxter?’
‘There’s no need for sarcasm.’
‘Of course not, Professor Baxter. I’ll be up in five minutes, Professor Baxter.’
‘Molly, can you please stop calling me Prof—’
Click. Burr. Molly winced. She’d dropped the receiver a nanosecond sooner than she’d really intended. Or maybe not. Ewan didn’t deserve an ounce of her guilt. She took a deep breath and attempted to get things into perspective. They’d both had too much to drink; it had been New Year’s Eve. Surely, you were allowed to make a pass at your boss, photocopy your arse, dress as a naughty nurse, ask him what was under his kilt? It was the Season of Misrule and anyway, it was only a kiss … followed by a moment of public humiliation that was excruciating but would pass. Eventually.
Not like Sarah had endured. Catching the bloke she adored and trusted shagging another woman; having her world turned upside down when she was at her most vulnerable. Molly should probably man up, although if “manning up” seemed to mean behaving like a cowardly louse, she’d rather stick pins in her eyes.
The blind rattled in the draught and the snow, now sleety, skittered against the pane. Molly held her finger on the file delete button and then changed her mind. Instead she pressed save and salted away the study in a file marked: “Reminder to reorder glove supplies” in a folder marked “Missellaneos”, which was deliberately spelled wrongly to remind her not to attach it to a real email.
Gathering up her notepad, she trudged down the corridor towards Ewan’s “private” office. So he wanted to discuss the abstract, did he? Well, she could tell him a few places where he could shove his “abstract”. That was one of the advantages of having a PhD in behavioural ecology.
For half an hour, they discussed the abstract while Molly simmered silently. Judging by the way he kept fiddling with his pen, Ewan was squirming as much as her. Finally, the discussion was over.
‘OK. I think that will do it,’ he said, sounding relieved, like he’d been let off a life sentence.
Molly got to her feet, clutching her notebook to her chest. ‘Right, I’ll get back to work. I’m so busy in the lab.’
Ewan stared at her from his deep espresso eyes. Molly suddenly decided a stain on the tiles was intensely interesting.
‘Before you go, I think it would be a good idea if we discussed the elephant in the room.’
Molly couldn’t help herself. ‘What elephant’s that, then, Ewan? Are we moving on from primate research to pachyderms?’
‘There’s no need for sarcasm. I’m trying to be mature about this.’
‘Really? And it was mature to snog me and pull a party popper out of my top and then get cold feet?’
‘First, that party popper could have gone off at any moment and second, I didn’t get cold feet.’
Molly snorted.
‘I didn’t get cold feet,’ Ewan said. ‘Believe me I wanted to …’ His voice tailed off.
‘Wanted to what?’
‘You know …’
Molly put her notebook back on the desk and raised an eyebrow. ‘Not really. Could you be more precise, please, Professor Baxter.’
‘I wanted to take you to bed!’ Ewan burst out then threw up his hands and groaned. He lowered his voice. ‘Please don’t make this any harder for me.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of making anything hard for you. Not after the other night.’
Ewan covered his face with his hand. Molly hated him and herself for the shivery tingle in her limbs when he’d said, “take you to bed”. It was pathetic.
‘If you wanted to do it, why didn’t you?’ she said. ‘Are you that worried about what those idiots in the lab think?’
‘No, of course not!’ He tapped his pen on the table. ‘No, that’s a lie. Yes. Yes I am but not because I’m put off by a few stupid comments. It’s what those comments have made me realise.’
‘And that is?’
‘I don’t have to spell it out, do I? It would be unprofessional of me. If I sleep with you, start seeing you, how can I supervise you and work with you after that? What if I need to promote you or interview you for a job? What if I have to …’
‘Discipline me?’ she cut in.
‘For God’s sake. Can you please not say things like that?’
‘Why not?’
His pen clattered onto the desk top. ‘You know perfectly well why not and there’ll be no need for discipline, because you – and I – are going to behave with utmost discretion and professionalism. We are going to focus one hundred and ten per cent on our work.’
‘I don’t think that’s actually possible, Professor Baxter, or did you fail statistics?’
He glared at her. Molly fancied him more than ever, if it was possible. ‘We are going to focus totally on our research, making this project a success and publishing our results. There will be gossip and speculation, naturally, for a few days but it will pass. People will soon realise that there is nothing between us beyond a professional relationship.’
‘Of course not, Professor,’ Molly said coolly.
‘Please stop calling me Professor. You’ll thank me for this one day. One day very soon. There is nothing worse, believe me, than a relationship failing, and that’s when the two people have to see each other every day at work. If you want to know what it’s like to hate the sight of someone you once cared for, then let’s go ahead and shag each other’s brains out for a few weeks but then it will all go wrong. Office romances are a recipe for disaster. Trust me.’
She was momentarily stunned into silence by this outburst.
‘So you care about your career more than being happy?’ she said, eventually.
‘No, I care about yours.’
His phone rang. He mouthed “fuck” before snatching up the handset. ‘What is it? I’m in a bloody meeting … Oh, yes, Dame Eleanor. I’m so sorry. Yes, I was working late last night and went to the party on New Year’s Eve. You’re right, I should probably get more sleep but you know how busy we are … Come to your office now? No … no … I’m almost done here. I’ll be up in five minutes … Yes, coffee would be a great idea.’
She sat, arms folded, enjoying him squirming as he spoke to their eminent head of faculty.
Eventually, he put the phone down. ‘And, that,’ he said quietly, ‘is exactly what I meant about bringing relationships into the workplace. Now, as you heard, I have a meeting with Dame Eleanor. I expect you to go back to the lab and get on with the abstract for that paper. I want to get into a decent journal with the two of us as co-authors, which can only be good for your career. And the next time we meet, I also expect things to be back on civil, professional terms. Am I making myself clear?’ he said coldly.
There was something in his tone that told Molly not to argue. He was, after all, her boss and she’d pushed him further than she ever thought she’d dare. It was all hideously unfair of course, but possibly, maybe, he had a point and she really wanted her name as co-author on the paper. It would be a big thing to be associated with Ewan Baxter, in scientific terms if not in other ways.
She picked up her notebook again. ‘Perfectly clear,’ she said and walked to the door, hoping that the clogging in her throat wasn’t the start of an infection.
‘I’m sorry, Molly. It just wouldn’t work between us,’ said Ewan. ‘No matter how much I like and respect you. Let’s not spoil what is, after all, a great working relationship.’
Molly’s favoured replies included an expletive but she stopped short. ‘You’re probably right,’ she muttered and shut
the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the Tiara Kabin, Sarah fixed on a smile as her first wedding client of the year unfurled a list of demands that would rival a hip-hop diva. She just hoped her customer wouldn’t notice her puffy eyes, but luckily Cassandra Burling rarely noticed anything that didn’t stare back from her own mirror.
‘I’d want the pearls dyed to exactly match my shoes. I’ve brought one of them so you can see what I want,’ said Cassandra Burling, ‘and there will be six matching hair slides for the bridesmaids and two smaller ones for the flower girls.’
‘I’m sure I can help …’ said Sarah with a smile, while silently screaming.
‘And I want a Swarovski crystals dove with a pearl in his beak to symbolise our union. And I want the bridesmaids’ hair clips all done to match but not as nice as mine, obvs. Then there’s the necklaces for my mum and his mum, not that the evil cow deserves anything but we can’t leave her out or she’ll probably cut us out of her will …’
Finally Cassandra drew breath. She picked at the plastic on the edge of the coffee table with a Barbie-pink nail.
‘You can do that by the end of the month, can’t you?’ she added, flicking a piece of plastic onto the floor of the workshop.
Sarah swallowed down a gasp of dismay. ‘The end of this month? As in the end of January?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘I thought you told me your wedding was in May?’
‘Oh, it was but we’ve got a cancellation at a theme park. It’s on Valentine’s Day and there’s a cable telly contest for Valentine’s Day brides. I want to have the ceremony on the Termination ride at Adrenalin Park. We’ll be upside down while the celebrant marries us but I still want to look ahm-azing. If you win, the telly company give you all your money back for the wedding and honeymoon.’ Cassandra folded her arms. ‘No one will be able to beat that idea.’
Sarah wanted to vom at the very thought of being upside down. ‘No. I doubt if they will, but won’t the headdresses fall off on the ride?’
‘Oh, you’ll come up with something and if I win, your tiaras and stuff will be all over Brekkie.’