‘A stress-buster massage. Two trims, a facial and a pedicure.’
‘Swap?’
‘OK,’ she smiled at him. ‘But mine are all men.’
Reuben frowned, glowered a bit, and concentrated on his lager.
He stopped frowning. ‘Tonight? You free?’
‘I might be.’
‘Either you are or you aren’t. Don’t shillyshally.’
‘Yes, then.’
‘Good. I want you to come and give my shortlist the once over.’
‘As invitations go, that’s a pretty hard one to turn down.’
Reuben grinned at her. ‘I used to think you were a real daft bat. Wrong. You’re OK. For a woman, that is.’
‘Thanks. You’re not so bad for a moody bastard either. Which shortlist?’
‘The potential managers for Caught Offside. I’ve whittled them down to four. I’ve arranged to meet them in the club tonight. I thought you might be able to –’
But whatever Reuben thought she might be able to add to the selection procedure went straight over Miranda’s head. Sitting behind the plastic rubber plant was Mr Drop Dead Gorgeous Dreamboat Possible Husband Number Two.
Miranda knew her mouth was open. She snapped it shut. She knew Reuben was still talking, so she nodded like an automaton. It was pretty tricky, because she was trying to crane her neck at the same time to peer round the other side of the rubber plant. If Mr D-D-G was with a woman she’d probably scream.
‘Oops, oh, bugger . . .’ She toppled sideways from her stool, clutching at Reuben at the last moment.
He pushed her back into place. ‘Those orange juices must have a hell of a kick.’
It vaguely registered that they’d just had a hand-meet. Typical. Their first physical contact had to come at the precise moment she could see Mr D-D-G was sitting opposite his elegant male companion of before. Miranda deliberately ignored the echo of Billie’s voice dismissing the partnership as two gays out on a jolly. He’d had his hair cut, Miranda noticed with a professional eye, and not badly either. It still flopped nicely but didn’t hang in his eyes this time. He looked tired. Bugger again. She could only see him from the waist up, which was fantastic, of course, but she leaned a bit more – ah, that was better . . .
He was wearing a very faded denim shirt over a white T-shirt and looked completely havoc-making. And surely if she yanked her neck round just a touch more . . . yes . . . she could see his hands. Yippee! No wedding ring! No signet ring! No – She stopped. Didn’t gay men signify their allegiance by wearing rings on their little finger? She entwined her legs round the stool, clutched at Reuben’s shoulder and leaned . . . Oh, joy and thank you God! Mr D-D-G’s long, slender, sexy fingers were completely bare.
‘Someone who owes you money?’ Reuben drained his half-pint and slowly disentangled her clutching hands. ‘Do you want me to go over and have a word?’
‘Uh? Oh – no, doll. No . . . Just someone I thought I knew . . . Sorry.’ Miranda straightened up, feeling a bit guilty. Even she had standards – and lusting after one man while being asked out by another was a bit below the belt. Hell, look at the time. I’ll have to dash. Er – about tonight? Shall we meet at the club then?’
‘Sounds sensible. I’ve asked all the people on the shortlist to come in for nine o’clock – and I presume you still don’t want Billie to know that we’re mates, so I won’t offer to come and pick you up.’
Miranda alternatively shook and nodded her head. Mr D-D-G was just leaving. He’d stood up, pulling on the leather jacket he’d worn last time, leaning towards the older man who remained seated. They were laughing. Miranda shrank back again, just in case they spotted her and recognised her as the sad tart who had thrust the Follicles and Cuticles cards at them a couple of months earlier.
‘At the club then?’ Reuben repeated. ‘Tonight? About half-eight?’
‘What?’ With a sinking heart Miranda watched Mr D-D-G disappear out of Mulligan’s and into the Spicer Centre. ‘Oh, yeah, great, doll. See you then . . .’
Follicles and Cuticles was just waking up and stretching after its lunch-time siesta, or at least that’s how it seemed to Miranda as she opened the door. In truth, she knew that Kitty and Pixie had been working flat out, but there was a sort of muted hum inside her head which went well with a more soporific and languorous mood. The marshmallow moment was embellished with rosy images of Reuben and Mr D-D-G, all sort of blurred round the edges.
‘Hi, Randa,’ Kitty mumbled through a mouthful of tail comb. ‘Thank God you’re back. Pixie’s had a bit of disaster with the blackhead remover and while we were sorting it out we seem to have overbleached Mrs Higgins. We’ve put her in the kitchenette to cool down.’
Sod it. With the magic moments popping round her like rainbow bubbles, Miranda shed her PVC jacket, rolled up her sleeves, and trotted briskly through to the staff restroom to try to prevent a law suit.
She was still applying aloe vera and tea and sympathy and explaining to Mrs Higgins – who was sixty if she was a day – that lop-sided semi-shaven heads, especially with peroxide streaks, were very trendy, when her two o’clock body rub appointment arrived.
‘Er – I’ve given him coffee and said you’re sorting out an accident,’ Pixie pirouetted in the archway. ‘Is that OK?
Miranda placated Mrs Higgins with a pat, and glared at Pixie. She gritted her teeth. ‘The-coffee-is-fine-the-rest-isn’t! Go-and-tell-him-it-is-NOT-an-accident! Tell-him-anything! Tell-him-I’m-doing-a-henna-tattoo! Tell-him-I’ll-be-there-in-five-minutes!’
Scowling, Pixie stomped off on her tartan DMs, and Miranda smiled hopefully at Mrs Higgins. ‘Actually, a henna tattoo might just set the new hairstyle off a treat. Become all the rage at the bingo? No? Oh, well – let’s see what we can do, shall we? And let’s look on the bright side. This is going to save you a fortune in perms, isn’t it?’
It was a good ten minutes before Mrs Higgins, clutching a fifty-pound cash refund and a promise of free hairdos – when, of course, she had any appreciable amount of hair to do – for the rest of her life, left the salon. Miranda, feeling frazzled and desperate for a cigarette, swept into the treatment area.
‘So, sorry to have kept you Mr – um –?’ Oh God! What was his name? Why the hell hadn’t she looked in the appointment book? She racked her brains. Posh, she’d thought . . . Sounded a like a volcano . . . Etna? Vesuvius? Ah, no – she beamed and picked up an armful of towels. ‘Mr Molton-Kusak . . . Oh, bugger . . .’
She managed to turn the expletive into a sort of cough. Her body rub appointment was Mr D-D-G’s urbane and elegant chum.
And –’ she perched on the edge of the kitchen table, a Marlboro Light in one hand, a treble gin in the other, ‘Potential Husband Number Two is called Joe. Joseph . . . Fantastic name, don’t you think, Billie? Sort of strong and hunky – and, well, gypsyish . . .’
‘Fantastic,’ Billie echoed, looking up from the heap of papers on the kitchen table. ‘Joseph and Miranda . . . Sounds great. Like Chekhov. What’s his surname?’
‘No idea. Mr Molton-Kusak didn’t say. It took me all toy powers of ingenuity to get that far.’
‘I can imagine,’ Billie said, chewing the end of her Pen. ‘Like, what’s the name of your mate – the one you were in the pub with – because I fancy the pants off him?’
‘Nah! I was far less subtle than that.’ Miranda waved her Marlboro Light under Billie’s nose. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to take it up again, doll? I can’t believe how good it feels after packing in.’
‘You only gave up for two days!’
‘Forty-eight hours,’ Miranda affirmed vigorously. ‘Forty-eight nicotine-free hours. Pure hell.’ She slid from the table. ‘Are you going out tonight or can I grab the bathroom?’
‘Yes I am, and yes you can, because I’m only going back to work. So, what was this Mr Molten-Lava like, then? Did he have a nice bod, or what?’
‘Pretty tasty considering he had to be at least forty. Rubbing it was no hards
hip, let me tell you! No, really, I mean if I wasn’t madly in love with Reuben and Joseph, I’d go for him. He must work out a lot – his muscle tone was incredible – and he had this sort of golden tan and really blue eyes. And he gave me a stonking tip and made three more appointments . . .’
Billie gathered all the papers together, swigged back the last mouthful of gin, and pushed the chair away from the kitchen table. ‘Great. You might be able to put in a good word for me, then. Sounds just like the sort of man I’ve been searching for. We could make up a foursome. You and Joseph, me and –’ she looked at Miranda – ‘he does have a first name?’
‘Suppose he does, doll. I just didn’t discover it. Well, what with all the hoo-ha over Mrs Higgins, and me being really keen to find out about Joseph, I just stuck to calling him Mr Molton-Kusak. I’ll find out next time he comes in, shall I?’ She paused in the doorway. ‘Are you serious, though? I mean about fixing up a foursome?’
Chapter Eighteen
Jonah hadn’t been able to sleep. Insomnia was fast becoming a fact of life: but at least this latest attack hadn’t been caused by red bank statements, or Claire and Aerobatic Archie trampling on his dreams, or even the thought of flying the Shorts to somewhere really tricky like Middlesbrough. The previous night’s lack of sleep had been caused by fizzing anticipation; like childhood Christmas Eve’s, or the day before the holidays when he and his sisters couldn’t wait to leave the confines of the Isle of Wight and go somewhere huge like Weymouth.
Jonah grinned to himself as he stared out of the window, watching the sky. He could cope with this sort of sleeplessness. Today he and Barnaby would be flying the Stearman for the first time. He looked at his watch. Almost six. Soon be daylight. And the balmy winds of the last few weeks had dropped away even further to give a perfect mild morning, more like April than the very end of October. The sky, as the weather forecasters had predicted, was hazy and clearing, the breeze slight, all of which augured ideal flying conditions. Whiteacres Aviation Inc. had given him a midday slot of airspace, and as the Stearman would take off and land from the Aeroclub’s grass strip well away from the main airfield, no one outside the confines would be any the wiser.
At least there was no problem about whether or not the plane would fly. The Stearman was completely airworthy, and Barnaby had seen to it that it had come from Kentucky with all the right certification, so today the onus was on Jonah as a pilot to prove that he could simply get it off the ground – and keep it there.
As he watched, the identical block of flats opposite his was waking. Lights were flicking on in some windows; curtains were being drawn back in others; a few bleary-eyed people were stumbling into cars for the start of another day. Strange, he thought, he’d never considered what they did for a living. He’d lived a stone’s throw away from them for almost two years and yet he’d pass them in the street without recognising them. The world he’d built around himself since Claire’s departure was clinically anonymous. These people, his closest neighbours, could also be heading for some momentous challenge today, and he’d never know.
‘I’ve made coffee . . .’ Estelle, wrapped in his towelling robe and managing to look as perfect as a glossy magazine cover, wandered into the living room. ‘I didn’t bother with toast. I didn’t think you’d manage any under the circumstances.’
‘Thanks.’ Jonah, who had had a bath and dressed in jeans and a rugby shirt somewhere around four thirty, took the mug. He hadn’t managed anything. Estelle had slept alone in the big rumpled bed while he’d alternately dozed on the sofa and paced the floor.
She drifted out of the room again without comment, sleepily pushing the landslide of silver-blonde hair away from her eyes. She understood him well. She knew he wouldn’t want to talk yet. He had a feeling she’d have plenty to say later. He could hear the hiss of water as she switched on the shower. Not long to go now.
Barnaby, who was putting up in the Four Pillars at Amberley Hill, was going straight to Whiteacres. So were Vinny and Pam, which he reckoned was pretty good of them on their Sullivanair day off. He yawned and stretched, still watching from the window as the rest of the flats opposite suddenly erupted into life like someone kicking an ant hill. Time to move.
He wondered fleetingly how Billie was getting on, and whether she’d be there today to watch the Boeing take off. Probably not. Oh, he knew she’d be there; but he was still pretty sure that despite sitting in the Stearman, she wouldn’t be overanxious to watch her fly. Strange, that: Billie, who was feisty and tough and had done really butch jobs like being a cabby and now running the warehouse, being scared of planes. It seemed a sort of fragile, feminine fear – but maybe not. Wasn’t there some international who was a total aerophobe? And a tough-guy actor? He shook his head: he simply couldn’t understand anyone being terrified of flying. Flying gave him a reason to live. Still, there was no reasoning with phobias, was there? He was terrified of spiders – although he’d never admit it to anyone apart from his mother.
He’d met Billie only once in the last week, passing on the doorstep after he’d arrived back from flying a computer software company in the Shorts to a conference in Exeter, and she’d been leaving for the evening. She’d spoken to the leasing agents, she’d said, but not got any joy. They hadn’t been prepared to reveal the name of the interested party, or even whether there was any progress with the takeover of the units. He’d shrugged and said Whiteacres Aviation Inc. had told him much the same, and that his calls to Claire had gone unanswered.
They’d both agreed they had no choice but to carry on as normal and promised to let the other know if they heard anything at all that might shed light on their respective futures. Then they’d been interrupted by a large man with a David Niven moustache, wearing cavalry twills and a yellow waistcoat, who had demanded that they returned his wife this instant.
Billie had filled him in as they went along. Apparently Sylvia, the holiday brochures lady, had left Douglas, her cavalry-twilled husband, because he wanted to take her cruising in the Caribbean. At this point Jonah, who had long since given up trying to understand women, took a back seat while Billie said that if Sylvia didn’t want to open her door to Douglas and put the phone down when he rang, then there was very little she could do about it. Yes, she’d said, she was quite sure that Sylvia was all right and that Douglas should perhaps try writing to his wife, apologising for the things he’d said, and offering to cancel the cruise and to back Sylvia’s ambition and enterprise. If he did that, Billie had suggested gently, then Sylvia might just consider coming home.
This was when Jonah had thought his first-aid skills would be called upon. Douglas had turned puce and spluttered a lot and called Billie a meddlesome little madam, which she’d appeared to find amusing, and then had stomped off to hammer loudly on Sylvia’s door.
‘Prat,’ Billie had said dismissively. ‘I’ll never understand why men can’t support their wives in their business ventures. After all, it’s what women have been expected to do for years, isn’t it?’
Jonah had decided not to get drawn into any debates on feminism, and had murmured something about it probably being a generation thing. Billie had smiled and nodded her agreement and, twirling her car keys, had disappeared into the night. Sylvia’s Mini, he’d noticed, had still been there when he’d left four hours later, and her lights were on, so presumably Douglas had again been unsuccessful.
‘I’ll go into the office for the first part of the morning,’ Estelle now said, emerging from the beige bathroom, almost wrapped in a towel and dripping suds across the flat neutrality of the carpet. ‘I’ve only got a couple of hours’ work to do, so I should be able to be over at the warehouse in plenty of time.’ She slid scented arms round his waist from behind. ‘And as you owe me something for last night’s nonevent, you are going to take me up, aren’t you?’
Jonah looked down at the perfectly manicured hands gently kneading his waist. He felt nothing. Vinny, he knew, would have killed for this opportunity. ‘I honestl
y doubt if there’ll be time today. I’ve only scheduled one flight, and Barnaby obviously wants to go up.’ He turned round to face her. She didn’t move away. ‘Maybe next time.’
She pouted. ‘Bugger off, Jonah! No way. How many times have I heard that? I’ll just have to sweet-talk Barnaby into making his flight shorter so that there’s time for me.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed the end of Jonah’s nose. ‘I’m sure he’ll be reasonable about it. He’s a complete poppet – unlike you.’
He smiled ruefully, watching her as she swirled away to dress in the second-skin leather trousers and waist- skimming jacket that usually constituted her secretarial uniform. Jonah knew that Barnaby was such a gentleman that he’d probably agree to cut short his flight time for her.
Still, Estelle deserved it really. She’d worked as hard as any of them on the Stearman. He liked, admired, and respected her. He felt guilty about turning down her advances last night. He wished to God that just once, when he made love to her, he didn’t think of Claire.
The warehouse was in uproar. Jonah, who had hoped for a few minutes’ solitude before anyone else arrived, looked at the pandemonium in horror. Everyone from all the other units seemed to have converged on Billie’s shed, and were swarming around the Boeing. The replacement window fitters, whose names he could never remember and who always appeared to be on the periphery of everything, were standing side by side in their overalls, nodding with gloomy relish. Sylvia, swathed in a turquoise pashmina over her shorts and looking very spry, was handing out pieces of paper, while the two hippies from the old clothes shop who Jonah knew were called Zia and Isla but was never sure which was which, were going through some sort of ritual chanting. The Guspers boys were darting about beneath the outstretched wings with hand-held cameras and microphone booms.
Jonah gazed at the mayhem and sighed heavily. The shed was crowded enough just with the plane: this lot made it look like the Wembley Way on Cup Final day. Surely they weren’t all here to give the Stearman a send-off, were they? He tapped the shoulder of the bearded bloke – Isla or Zia? – who had finished chanting and appeared to be wearing a fair amount of his own stock. ‘What the hell’s going on er – Isla?’
Walking on Air Page 19