Romantic Comedy Box Set (Helen Grey Series Books 1 & 2)

by Hodge, Sibel

  ****

  Very early the next morning I woke with a start. I studied a patch of street light dancing on the wall of my bedroom for a moment before turning onto my back. I tried to drift back into a very yummy dream I was having about Kalem, but much to my annoyance, muffled shouts from Charlie’s flat next door kept interrupting me.

  ‘Help me.’ I thought I could hear. I pulled the duvet over my head and tried to ignore it, but he was getting louder.

  ‘Help!’ Charlie cried. ‘Help me!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Why can’t anyone get any sleep round here?’ I stormed out of bed and banged on his door in my fleecy pajamas and fluffy hamster slippers.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Charlie wailed.

  ‘St John’s Ambulance. What’s the matter with you?’ I shouted.

  ‘Is that you, Helen?’

  ‘Of course it’s bloody me. Now you’ve woken me up, open the door and tell me what the matter is.’ I banged on it again.

  ‘I can’t open it. I’m stuck,’ he yelped. ‘You’ll need to get your spare key and open the door.’

  ‘Right – back in a minute.’ I stomped off to retrieve it from a jumble of keys in my kitchen drawer.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Charlie asked when I forced the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

  ‘It’s me again.’ I looked around the lounge for him. ‘Where are you?’ I wandered into the kitchen.

  ‘Bedroom, but I warn you, it’s not a pretty sight.’

  I flung open the door to his bedroom, which was dark apart from a small sliver of light coming through the heavy, lilac, crushed-velvet curtains, and came face to face with Charlie. When my eyes had adjusted to the light, I saw his lily-white body laying spread-eagled on the bed, legs and arms akimbo.

  I stood agog, rooted to the spot at the sight of him handcuffed to the bed, naked except for a feather duster placed tactfully over his todger. He gave me a wicked grin.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ I erupted with laughter. ‘I recognize a pair of those handcuffs. They’re the ones I gave Ayshe!’

  ‘I know. I nicked them off her. Can you let me out?’ He struggled with the handcuffs, but they didn’t budge.

  I edged closer to him, trying to avoid eye contact with the duster. ‘Where’s the key?’ I put my hand over my mouth and stifled a laugh.

  ‘There.’ He jerked his head towards a very shrieking Liberace-looking gold and purple chair.

  I fumbled around on the chair, picking up some socks and a pair of leather hot-pants with the very tips of my fingers. A tiny little key plopped to the floor. Retrieving it, I walked around the bed, undoing all four handcuffs as I went. ‘There.’ I smirked at him. ‘Good night, was it?’

  ‘Well, it started off good. Then this happened, and he went off and left me. I’ve been like this all night,’ he muttered, holding the duster to his crutch and swinging his legs off the bed.

  ‘Who?’ I wanted the gossip. ‘Marco?’

  ‘We had a bit of a tiff.’ He rubbed at his ankles and wrists, which were a nice shade of arctic blue. ‘That’s it! I’ve had it with him!’

  ‘Would you like me to make you a nice, hot cup of sweet tea?’

  He looked at me with a hang-dog expression. ‘No, I’ll be OK. Thanks, Helen.’

  I stood up to leave. ‘OK, see you later.’

  ‘TTFN.’ Charlie paused, mid-thought. ‘And don’t tell anyone,’ he hissed at me as I closed the door behind me.

  Chapter 24

  Friday, day 12 – First Dates Are Full of Surprises

  I was still giggling to myself an hour later, as I walked along the High Street on my way to see Nan. I wouldn’t be able to go on my normal Sunday jaunt to see her, so I wanted to get a quickie visit in before the wedding.

  ‘Hello, Nurse Pratchett. How are you?’ I asked when I reached the nursing home.

  The unmistakable perfume of boiled-to-oblivion cabbage wafted up the corridor.

  ‘Your nan thinks she’s got Elton John in her wardrobe today.’

  ‘Nurse, Elton John’s come back. Can you get him out again?’ Nan shouted at the top of her voice from her room.

  ‘See.’ Nurse Pratchett rolled her eyes.

  ‘I’ll go and get him out,’ I said, wandering off to her room, heels squeaking on the lino.

  ‘Hello, Nan.’ I swung round the doorway and planted a kiss on the cheek. She smelled of Lily of the Valley and TCP, which was not a particularly nice blend.

  ‘Who are you?’ She pursed her lips together, looking at me like I was the devil.

  ‘Helen. You know; your granddaughter.’ I pulled open the wardrobe to check for Elton, just in case Nurse Pratchett and I were the mad ones and my nan was the only sane person in here.

  ‘Oh,’ she sighed, pointing at the other wardrobe. ‘He’s in there. Nurse Hatchett keeps taking him out, but he keeps coming back.’ She flopped against her pillows. ‘Some times he sings to me, you know.’

  I stood back and let her see there was nothing there. ‘See, he’s come out of the closet now. There’s no one there.’ I sat on the chair next to her.

  She leaned forward, squinting. ‘I love Elton. I wrote a love letter to him once. He never wrote back, though.’

  ‘Well, I expect he’s been a bit busy.’

  ‘Helen!’ She suddenly recognized me. ‘Hello, dear.’ She patted my hand.

  ‘How are you then, Nan?’ I took my hand in hers and gazed at her liver spots and wrinkly face.

  ‘I think I’ve got a hernia.’

  I crinkled my nose up. ‘And how did you get that? Swinging from the chandeliers again, were you?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, weight-training, of course.’ She went into a trance-like state. ‘I can remember when me and Malcolm were at it behind the potting shed on the allotment. I nearly got a hernia then, as well.’

  ‘Who’s Malcolm?’ I asked, not really sure if I wanted to hear this.

  She stared out of the window. ‘He was my first love, until that hussy Sylvia from down the road stole him. Evil witch. I never got over him.’ She shook her head. ‘He didn't felt the same about me after she got her hooks into him.’

  ‘So what did you do, Nan?’ I stared at a rabbit outside nibbling some grass.

  ‘Well, I married Albert instead, although I never forgot about Malcolm. Albert was a very good husband, you know, but if you want my advice, don’t settle for second-best.’ She cast a knowing look in my direction. ‘You have to wait for the right one.’

  ‘What if he’s unavailable like Malcolm?’ I heaved a frustrated sigh.

  ‘Then you’ll have a broken heart like I did.’

  Great. Just what I wanted to hear.

  ‘Have you lost weight?’ she growled at me all of a sudden, which made me jump and almost blew my ear off.

  ‘Um…a little.’

  ‘How’s that other knobbly-kneed girl?’

  ‘Ayshe? She’s getting married on Saturday. I’m going to be a bridesmaid.’

  ‘Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.’

  All right, don’t rub it in. ‘How’s the food this week?’

  ‘I wanted to make an omelette but Nurse Hatchett won’t let me.’

  ‘She’d kill us all,’ Nurse Hatchett muttered in the corridor.

  ‘You know what the fireman said after you left the gas on and nearly burnt the house down that time, don’t you? You are not allowed near a cooker.’ I shook my head.

  ‘Are you from environmental health? Because I found a lizard in my dinner the other day.’

  ‘I’m Helen.’

  ‘No you’re not. She’s huge!’ She sat forward, studying me hard.

  ‘No, she’s not…I mean, no, I’m not.’ She had me doing it now. Pretty soon I wouldn’t remember who I was any more.

  ‘How about sneaking me in a curry next time you come, hmm?’

  ‘You hate curry.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I hate it.’ She gave me a strange look, as if I’d just force-fed her a whole
ginormous plate of the stuff. ‘See that man over there?’ She pointed across the hallway. The Mills and Boon lady from last week had been replaced by an old man who was lying on his back, snoring like a frog with a magazine half open, resting on his chest. ‘He loves me.’

  ‘And how can you tell that?’ I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, you don’t believe me, huh? It’s true. He’s always shouting at me and making jokes about me behind my back. But I can hear him, you know. I’m not deaf!’ She paused. ‘That’s how you can tell, you see. When they pretend they don’t like you, really they do.’ And then she fell asleep.

  I daydreamed, gazing out of the window, wondering about what she’d just said.

  Five minutes later, revived from her power nap, she was as fresh as a daisy. ‘Helen! When did you get here?’ she shouted into the quietness, making me jump again.

  ‘Ages ago.’

  ‘Quick, get Elton John out!’ She pointed at the wardrobe.

  I jumped up. ‘OK, OK, don’t panic.’ I opened the door, pretending to shoo him out. ‘All gone, see.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ She put her hand to her chest. ‘I’m allergic to goats.’

  ‘Yes, Nan.’ I nodded and plonked myself down again

  ‘Do you remember when I took you, Ayshe and Kalem out to Hyde Park for the day and you dropped your ice cream down your knickers?’ She seemed to be lucid again. Maybe she only had selective madness.

  ‘No. I can’t remember that. How old was I?’ I loved hearing stories about when we were younger.

  ‘About six, I think.’

  ‘So, what else did I get up to then, Nan?’

  ‘Well, there was one time when you threw up all over Yasmin’s carpet. You would have been about ten, I suppose.’

  I seemed to be making a habit out of ruining Yasmin’s carpets.

  ‘Yes, I remember. Ayshe and I had a homemade, peppermint-cream eating competition to see who could guzzle the most. It had been foul.’

  ‘And the time when you fell off the roundabout and broke your foot and Kalem carried you all the way to casualty. Why are you so accident-prone?’ She scratched her head.

  ‘I’m not.’ I was in denial.

  ‘If I remember rightly, you nearly set yourself on fire once with a magnifying glass, didn’t you?’ She fiddled with her bony fingers.

  I snorted. ‘Hardly! That would be impossible. And anyway, you can’t talk. You nearly blew up the whole street.’

  ‘I did love looking after you when your mum and dad died. You knew that, didn’t you?’ Her face softened all of a sudden. ‘But it was lucky that Yasmin and Deniz sort of adopted you into their family. Their house was always like a second home to you. You know, I can remember the time when Kalem said he was going to marry you when you grew up.’

  I didn’t remember that one. ‘Did he?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I always thought you’d make a nice couple.’ She eyed me. Maybe she was just pretending to be a nutcase, and, really, she was perfectly on the ball. ‘He came to see me recently.’

  ‘When?’

  She waved her hand. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Might’ve been last week, or was it last year?’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, he said it again. He said he wanted to marry you.’ After that revelation she dozed off again.

  ‘Nan,’ I whispered. How could she go to sleep after she’d just told me that? ‘Nan?’

  Could it be true? Had he really said it? Or was it just the ramblings of a senile woman? No, it couldn’t possibly be true. After all, Nan thought she was having an affair with David Hasselhoff. Those weren’t the kind of thoughts of a sane person. I picked at my thumbnail, lost in a trance. I couldn’t let myself believe it was true. I would just be torturing myself. I shook my head. It isn’t true. It isn’t true. Shut up brain.

  I had to do something to take my mind of things until Nan woke up and I could ask her. To kill time until she came back to the land of the living – if that was ever possible – I sent Ayshe a text.

  ‘Did you remember to pick up dresses?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, doing it now,’ came the reply.

  ‘Going on a bridesmaid de-fuzzing splurge tonight. Was thinking of shaving my bits off and having a Hollywood. What do you think?’ I sent back.

  ‘Ayshe’s popped out to get dresses, but I think it’s a fantastic idea,’ was the next reply.

  The colour drained from my face. ‘Who’s this?’ I fired back, whizzing my fingers across the buttons.

  ‘Kalem. Ha-ha,’ he replied. It just had to be, didn’t it?

  How embarrassing! He was the last person I wanted to know about my hairy bits. How many more humiliating situations could I possibly get into with Kalem to put him off me for life?

  I snapped my mobile shut with a heavy sigh and glanced over at my nan. Her snoring was competing with the man across the hall, so I decided to make a quick getaway whilst the coast was clear. If she couldn’t even remember who I was, she’d never remember what she’d just said when she woke up. I pecked her on the cheek and left her dreaming about Malcolm and Elton.

  ****

  As I ambled home up the High Street, I decided to quickly nip into Boots and buy some anti-wrinkle cream. Big mistake! There was nothing quick about it. Forty-five minutes after being pointed in the right direction by a disinterested sales assistant, I was still studying tiny tubes and minute tubs of the stuff which ranged in price from five to thirty quid. How did you know what was best? A tub with pentapeptides, a pot with coenzyme Q10, or a tube with alpha lipoic active ingredients? Were these weird-sounding things actually real or did the manufacturers have a right old laugh making them up, hoping to fool us? Did they all sit around a boardroom table blurting out the first thing that came to mind – ‘I know, let’s call it floppynaptids, the public will believe that one!’ – or perhaps – ‘No, no I think we should call it saggyalphawaddles, that’s much more believable!’

  I agonized over the decision for an hour. An hour! Can you believe it? Were the more expensive ones necessarily better? Which ingredients were the most effective? And why was Oil of Ulay now called Oil of Olay? Finally, I bought a pot with Q10 because it was cheap and full of promise.

  When I came out of Boots, swinging my prized possession, I caught sight of Kalem about twenty metres in front of me coming out of another shop. With a woman! They were having a good old belly-laugh about something. He tipped his head back, roaring with laughter as she gently rested her hand on his arm in a very familiar way – a bit too familiar for my liking. I froze in horror. Mouth open, eyes wide, heart racing like a jockey in sight of the finish line. It was Zerdali. My nightmare had come true. I stood rooted to the spot, watching them as they carried on up the road ahead. She kept sneaking glances at him as she tossed back her mane of hair. As for Kalem, well, he looked like he was having a very good time indeed. I watched until they disappeared round the corner.

  All the energy drained from my veins, and I shuffled back home feeling very sick indeed, my eyes stinging as I choked back the tears.

  Chapter 25

  At half past five, I was half-heartedly doing what all girls do before a date. Primping and preening myself in a long leisurely bath. I decided against the Hollywood, or the Las Vegas, or anything else that would involve itchy re-growth. I spent forty-five minutes locked in a fight with my straighteners, and when I finally I checked out the full effect of my efforts, I hardly recognized my new sleekness.

  I’d decided to myself that from now on, I would just let fate take its course and let whatever was going to happen just happen around me. Maybe everything did happen for a reason; it had just taken Ayshe’s challenge for me to finally learn what the death of my parents should’ve taught me years ago: That life was too short for worrying and wondering and accepting second best. Life was for living, not wasting, wishing for something that you might never find. Now I’d regained my self-confidence, I knew I could find happiness in myself without a husband and children; I could feel complete without a family of my
own. That wasn’t half a life after all, just a real one. This challenge had shown me that at any moment, the unexpected could happen if I took a chance on life, and if I wasn’t meant to be with Kalem, then I would simply have to move on. It was time to feel good about me for a change.

  I tried on three outfits, but they were either too tight, too baggy or too boring. What was the usual attire for a boxing match? I hadn’t got a clue. Was it casual gear for a quick punch-up on the side lines? Or was boxing the new ballet where you got all poshed up?

  In the midst of my dilemma, the phone rang. I dived over the bed in my black camisole top – with hidden support, of course – and new cheeky knickers from La Lingerie.

  I snatched the phone from its cradle. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Is this Ms Grey?’ It was the return of the dreaded telesales monsters. I could tell before she even went any further.

  ‘Yes,’ I snapped. Hurry up; don’t you know I’ve got a date to go on?

  ‘I am pleased to tell you that you have won our competition for a free holiday. As long as you and your husband are between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five, you are entitled to a free Mediterranean holiday worth up to eight-hundred pounds,’ the saleswoman gushed.

  ‘Oh, what a shame, I’m only seventeen and my husband’s sixty-six.’ I slammed the receiver down. Bloody people!

  Five tops and three pairs of trousers later, I settled on some tan, suede hipsters and levered myself into a figure–hugging, black, V-necked top with three-quarter length sleeves. Back on with the ever-faithful and versatile black high-heeled boots and I was done, all except for the war-paint. After a quick, ten-minute spruce-up, I was out of the door, swinging my brown leather hand bag for good measure.

  I wandered leisurely up the High Street, trying to avoid eye contact with the early evening Friday night drunkards who’d probably been in the pub since lunch time, arriving at the rendezvous spot at seven-forty. As I loitered outside the door of the Watermill, a thickset bouncer glanced up and down at me. I decided to do the same to him. He had a shaved head, neck as wide as his shoulders, standard, security-issue, black trousers and white shirt, ear piece, blah, blah, blah – in other words: the usual package. He must have been a close relative of the hefty gym boys.