Walking on Air

by Christina Jones

  Jonah was still speechless. He’d had absolutely no idea. And now with two Stearmans . . .

  Billie smiled at him, quite gently. ‘Barnaby and I have had a little talk while we were waiting for you, haven’t we?’

  ‘We have,’ Barnaby affirmed. ‘And we’ve decided that by the start of next season – May next year at the latest – we should be up and running with a wingwalking display team. Two biplanes, two pilots, two wingwalkers. Billie will have to train the new girl, of course, being such a natural –’

  ‘Mmm,’ Billie butted in, ‘and we thought we’d call it Sullivan’s Flying Circus. Sounds good, doesn’t it? What do you reckon?’

  Chapter Forty-two

  ‘So really,’ Miranda screeched above Pixie murdering a Guns ’n’ Roses number on Mulligan’s karaoke, ‘you’re not exactly feeling on top of the world?’

  Billie pulled a face over her gin and tonic. ‘My mother’s a liability; I’ve just saddled myself with promising to be a member of a wingwalking team when flying still scares me rigid; I’ve got to kowtow to your bloody other half to rent unit six; and Jonah’s sodding ex-wife is about three and a half years pregnant! How much more not on top of the world can you get?’

  ‘Not much,’ Miranda admitted, stirring her rapidly melting ice round her glass. ‘Still, it’s nice to see that you’ve kept your sense of humour. And Reuben will be chuffed to bits that you want to rent out that other warehouse – no, really! Don’t interrupt – he cares about you, Billie. And I mean cares about how you’re doing with the business, not cares as in phwoar!’

  ‘Crap!’

  ‘No, honestly. And he said how pleased he was with the way you were running the warehouse, and how happy you seemed, and he said that all we needed to do was to find you a nice man and –’

  ‘There’s no such thing.’ Billie drained her glass and pushed it across the table. ‘And even if there was, I don’t need Reuben’s help to find one, thanks. It’s your round and when you come back can we please not discuss Reuben, or Claire, or my mother?’

  ‘Whatever. But I actually thought your mum was pretty ace.’

  ‘My mum should have been muzzled at birth.’

  Miranda laughed, and got to her feet, expertly balancing the glasses as she elbowed her way to the bar. It had been a great night, just like old times. Faith might have upset Billie in some way, but she’d been dead right about this: they’d needed a girls’ night out to build a few bridges. And, of course, have a good gossip. And the gossip had certainly been good.

  ‘Two G and Ts, please, doll.’ Miranda used her height to launch the empty glasses over the heads of Amberley Hill’s pre-pubescents who were drinking Archers and Coke four deep round the bar.

  Secure now in her relationship with Reuben, all she needed to make things perfect was for Reuben and Billie to like each other – but not too much, naturally. Oh, and of course, she thought, watching the Aussie-Irish barman lob ice into the glasses, getting Billie someone to love. She agreed wholeheartedly with Reuben on that one. It had been for ever since Billie had had a man.

  Miranda had had great hopes about Jonah, especially after the three wingwalking displays at the airshow. Billie had trusted him with her life, for heaven’s sake! Miranda had been confident that if you shared something as stupendously scary as that, you could share just about anything. And then when Billie had said Estelle was leaving Sullivanair, Miranda had been pretty sure that it would be only a matter of time before Billie would be belting into Follicles and Cuticles to get her hair done for her first date with Mr Drop-Dead Gorgeous Sullivan.

  She sighed, squashing three teenagers against the bar as she thrust her money across the counter and reached for her drinks. Of course, because of Claire’s pregnancy, the date had never happened. Which was typical of bloody men – no sense of timing! Miranda juggled the glasses and her purse. And now, according to Billie, she and Jonah were very icy with each other, and she was only going to do the wingwalking thing because she enjoyed it, and because it would keep Sullivanair renting two warehouses. Nothing more.

  However, looking on the bright side, Miranda had noticed that Barnaby had crept into Billie’s conversations quite a bit recently. It appeared to have been Barnaby who had contacted her about the second plane which he’d flown in from Paris without telling Jonah; it was Barnaby with whom that Billie had discussed the wingwalking team; and Barnaby to whom she had suggested renting Sullivanair a second warehouse.

  Miranda skipped through the tables. Mercifully Pixie had handed over the karaoke microphone to Sally, Debs and Anna, who were now doing something kitsch by the Beverley Sisters. Miranda winced as Sally missed top C.

  That, of course, would be the perfect solution. Billie and Barnaby. She still felt rigid with guilt when she thought about his blushing and gentlemanly proposal. She’d had to turn him down because it wouldn’t have been fair to string him along, not when she loved Reuben – but that hadn’t made it any easier. He was a lovely man whom she had led on, albeit unwittingly, and whom she had hurt in consequence. She wouldn’t have done it for the world. And now, maybe Billie could repair some of the damage and solve her own loneliness at the same time.

  ‘I got doubles, doll.’ She edged the glasses onto the table. ‘Save’s going back up there for the next ten minutes or so. It’s like youth club night by the bar. Right, so if we can’t talk about your mum or Jonah’s wife or Reuben, what can we talk about?’

  There appeared to be quite a lot, and most of it involved nudging and winking and giggling. Miranda thought it was wonderful. Exactly like old times. Well – almost. Of course, tonight when she and Billie eventually staggered home, it wouldn’t be together. Still, with Debs, Anna and Sally having been banned from the karaoke for the rest of the evening and consoling themselves with tequila, and Pixie with her nose in a pint of Guinness, it was really getting into deja vu territory.

  ‘Jesus!’ Billie, who was facing the door, suddenly spluttered into her gin. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What?’ Miranda craned her neck round. She couldn’t see anything apart from about twenty million people. ‘Is it a what or a who?’

  ‘Definitely a who! Mind you, I don’t know whether it’s a who you’ll want to see or not, because of what this particular who has done to you, if you get my drift.’ The sentence ended in a hiccup and a giggle and a slightly glazed look of panic.

  Sally, Anna, Debs and Pixie had paused in their serious drinking and were staring, open-mouthed, in the same direction as Billie. Miranda, not wanting to miss out on a bit of scandal, leaned dangerously backwards in her chair ‘Bloody hell!’

  Kitty, looking very smug and carrying a small suitcase that had Prada scribbled all over it, was standing in the doorway, peering through the smoky crowd.

  ‘Kitty! Hiya!’ Pixie had scrambled onto her chair and was waving both arms above her head. ‘We’re over here!’

  While Billie, Miranda noticed, was concentrating on her beer mat, everyone else was concentrating on the prodigal Kitty as she slooped and shimmied her way through the tables towards them. Miranda, feeling delighted to see her but also blazingly angry that she’d done a runner for so long without giving notice, tried very hard to look stem. She knew it wouldn’t work. It never did. She had the wrong kind of nostrils.

  ‘Wow! Hi!’ Kitty, dressed in a short, strappy pink dress, dropped the suitcase and edged herself in between Debs and Pixie. ‘Long time no see, eh?’

  Miranda decided to get the business side of things out of the way immediately. After all, she was as agog as the rest of them to find out what Kitty had been up to, but first things first. ‘Before you say anything, do you intend stopping? I mean, are you back, permanently?’

  ‘What? Oh, yeah? God!’ Kitty looked stricken. ‘You haven’t given my job away, have you?’

  ‘Kitty, you’ve been missing for nearly three months, doll, and –’

  ‘I sent postcards!’

  ‘Two lines on the back of a couple of seaside Don
ald McGills with ineligible – I mean illegible – postmarks is hardly keeping in touch, is it?’

  Kitty looked taken aback. ‘God, where’s your sense of fun? Didn’t you think they were a scream? And I did ask you to hang on to my job for me. She stretched her well-tanned legs. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been, then? I’ve been – Oh, hello, Billie. You were so quiet I didn’t know you were there. I guess you won’t have to ask me, will you? You’ll know only too well . . .’

  Billie, who’d gone pale, was standing up. Miranda, pretty sure she’d missed something, flapped her hand at Kitty. ‘Hush a minute. We’ll talk about work tomorrow. Billie, what’s up?’

  ‘Er – nothing. I just want to go, that’s all. It’s been a great night – No, honest, I’m fine . . . I’ll catch you all later.’

  As all eyes and ears were on Kitty, the resulting goodbyes were merely desultory as Billie crashed away from the table. Miranda, torn now between hearing about the explicit details of Kitty’s away games with the totally fabulous Kieran Squires, and worried about Billie, frowned. She hesitated, but not for long. There was really no contest. She drained her glass and pushed her chair away from the table.

  ‘Be in Follicles by ten tomorrow morning.’ She spoke as bossily as she could to Kitty, hoping the non-flare of her nostrils hadn’t let her down. ‘We’ll talk about everything then. And I mean everything, doll – OK?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, all the sordid details.’ Kitty grinned and winked and then took a deep breath, leaning across the table towards Sally, Debs, Anna and Pixie. ‘Well, after the wet footie-shirt thing, Kieran asked me if I fancied a drink and . . .’

  Miranda thrust her way out of Mulligan’s in search of Billie.

  She didn’t have to search far. Billie was standing outside in the warm August darkness, leaning against the dark side of the pub, with the pastel light from the fibre-optic fountain sliding across her face.

  Miranda leaned beside her. ‘Want to talk about it?’

  Billie sort of snuffled quietly. ‘Yeah, actually. But I also want to do something else as well. I want to go and see Reuben about leasing the other warehouse, while I’m still in the mood. I’ve been putting it off for ages because, well, you know . . .’

  Miranda didn’t really. She had no idea why Billie, who was getting pretty astute at running her own business, should have shillyshallied for so long over contacting Reuben and taking out a second lease.

  Billie tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘So, is he taxiing tonight, or clubbing, or mouldering in the bedsit?’

  ‘He’s at the club.’ Miranda decided this wasn’t going to be the best moment to take Billie to task about slagging off Reuben. Not if she wanted to find out what the hell was going on. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘I don’t need you to hold my hand.’ Billie stared at the ground. ‘But, yeah, I’d be glad of a bit of moral support, thanks.’ She lifted her head and stared at Miranda. ‘So, how much has he told you? How much has my mother told you?’

  ‘Uh?’ Far too many gin and tonics had blunted the sharpness. Somewhere things had shifted. Somewhere from about the moment Kitty walked into Mulligan’s. ‘Sorry, doll. I’m not with you.’

  ‘You soon will be.’ Billie unpeeled herself from the wall. ‘Let’s walk round and round the Spicer Centre until I’ve told you everything, then we’ll go into the club and I’ll face your precious Reuben.’

  They walked, bumping into the summer night crowds, kicking at empty cans, circling the fountain, and Billie talked, and Miranda couldn’t believe any of it. Kieran Squires! Billie and Kieran Squires! It was all news to her. Neither Faith nor Reuben had breathed a word. There didn’t seem to be an appropriate point in Billie’s hardly-pausing-for-breath revelations to stop her and let her know. Mind you, it made an awful lot of sense now: the face-slapping in Caught Offside, Billie’s aversion to televised football, and her reaction when Kitty swanned into Mulligan s looking like the cat who had just got the Premiership cream.

  The strangest thing, Miranda reckoned, was why on earth Billie had felt it necessary to keep it all a secret for so long. So, she’d had an affair with a married man – so what? Oh, sure, it must have been awful finding out, but it wasn’t like she’d murdered anybody or anything, was it? And Reuben had helped her when she’d been all alone that night, hadn’t he? So why had Billie hated him ever since? And how the hell, if Miranda didn’t know anything about it, had Faith found out?

  Feeling giddy, Miranda stopped Billie on their umpteenth circuit, pulling her down beside her on the wall round the fountain. ‘So, was that why you left Devon, then? To be with Kieran? Not that I blame you, doll. Kieran Squires is dead lush – and after Damon –’

  ‘Oh shit . . . That’s another he. Damon never existed. I made him up to explain why I was here. It just sounded better than that I was a silly little tart caught in the middle of nowhere with my knickers in my handbag.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know –’ Miranda caught sight of Billie’s face. ‘I mean, well, yeah, I suppose it was.’ She groaned a bit. Hadn’t she spent ages, when she was doing Faith’s hair, discussing bloody Damon? Christ! ‘So, now it’s over and out in the open, and everyone knows, and the world’s still turning. Do you feel better?’

  Billie shrugged. ‘Yes, I think so. Oh, I wish I’d told you before because it all seems so silly now. But at the time . . .’

  Miranda hugged her. ‘Yeah, I know. You start believing in your own fiction – we’ve all done it, do. You bottle things up, and then they fester out of all proportion and then by the time you think you’ve got the balls to tell the truth, everyone believes the lie and it’s too late.’ God – she’d have to stop before they both ended in tears. Several people who had tumbled out of Mulligan’s prior to tumbling into Caught Offside were eyeing them suspiciously. Miranda glared at them. ‘Bugger off! We’re bonding!’

  Billie sniffed. ‘So, now you know the truth about how I came to Amberley Hill, and I’m really surprised that Reuben hadn’t already told you, and –’

  ‘Well, he hadn’t, so I think you’ve underestimated his integrity a bit.’ Miranda interrupted, amazed at how suddenly the emotional outpouring had sobered them both up. ‘But what I don’t understand is, why you hate him so much? Oh sure, he saw you at your absolute worst, and you must have felt dead embarrassed, but why do you still hate him?’

  Having unleashed a lot of nasty genies from her bottle, Billie obviously wasn’t going to mince her words. ‘Because he scares me. That night – when I found out about Kieran – Reuben was just so weird. So intense. Like he had a personal vendetta or something. And because now – oh, I don’t know – he hounds me. He’s everywhere, Miranda, don’t you see? Ever since the night in the taxi he’s always been involved in my life. It’s like he wants to control me – and no, I know he doesn’t fancy me or anything. He’s just always there:

  Miranda stood up, hauling Billie to her feet. ‘I’m sorry to disagree with you on this one, but I still think you’ve got him wrong. He’s not like that. I know Reuben, and yes, sure, he’s a bit prickly on the surface, but underneath he’s a good man. Kind. Caring. Funny.’

  ‘As in peculiar?’ Billie nodded. ‘Yeah, dead right.’

  Miranda bit her tongue and started to walk away. She almost expected Billie to cry off, to say that she didn’t think she could face Reuben now, that she’d discuss the warehouse another day. But she didn’t. She wandered alongside Miranda through the Spicer Centre’s throng towards Caught Offside, not speaking, almost as if she was lost in a world of her own.

  The club was packed, as always. Miranda, who helped Reuben with the accounts, knew how well it was doing. As an all-night dance venue and bar, it was second to none, but the Penalty Spot had also quickly become one of the area’s in eateries, and the tables were constantly prebooked. Despite his bulldog appearance, Bertie Malone was a shit-hot manager, and the security staff had no truck with Amberley Hill’s boy racers, teeny yobs, or petty drug pushers. An
yone contravening the club rules was dealt with swiftly, and Reuben was determined there shouldn’t be a whiff of scandal at Caught Offside. Miranda smiled in the foyer as they crashed through the turnstiles. Billie and Kieran Squires could have scuppered the no-scandal clause before the club had even opened!

  The noise was, as always, overwhelming, and the dance floor packed. Miranda paused on the top of the terraces, scouring the floodlit gloom for Reuben. She felt Billie stumble to a halt behind her and felt very sorry for her. This must bring back some awful memories.

  She saw Reuben then, sitting at the bar, watching his leggy staff with an eagle eye. Miranda’s smile widened. No one would pocket the change while Reuben was around. Leaping down the terraces and forcing her way through the dancers on the pitch, she ducked between the goal posts. She rushed towards him and flung her arms round his neck. Loving him had freed her of all inhibitions; trusting him had freed her of even more. She adored him. She had never, ever, felt like this before.

  Did you have a good night, then?’ He slid from his stool and kissed her, laughing. ‘I didn’t expect to see you in here so soon. I thought you’d hang on in Mulligan’s until kicking-out time at least. How was Billie?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ Billie stepped out from behind Miranda, raising her voice against an ear-splitting blast of Puff Daddy. ‘And, yes, we had a great night. Just like the good old days.’

  Reuben, still holding Miranda’s hands, raised his eyebrows. ‘If I didn’t expect to see Miranda in here early, I certainly didn’t expect to see you in here at all.’

  ‘After last time, you mean?’ Billie was instantly defensive. ‘Well, no, it wasn’t my first choice of venue, either, but –’

  Miranda shook her hands free. ‘Stop it, both of you. Reuben, Billie wants to discuss some business, that’s all. We decided it would be a good opportunity as we were both in town.’

  Reuben’s eyebrows were stuck on quizzical. ‘Business? Fine. Do you want to use the office?’