Chapter 39 – Returning The Beast
It’s not long before we’re back in Tring, me having made another mental note to pop into the Tring Garden Centre café we passed on the way. It used to be a Wyvale but a year or three ago it simplified, became part of ‘the British Garden Centres family’, their Facebook page said. Sometimes I’m too curious for my own good.
My uncle’s car is outside their house which isn’t unusual as they often walk into town but I take it as a good sign nonetheless.
My aunt opens the door and I smile at a splodge of blue paint on her nose. I can’t imagine which part of the painting, other than the sky, would have blue but I simply tap my own nose which prompts her to rub hers and the splodge is successfully transferred onto her right hand. Her left would have been a better choice, especially as it’s holding a tissue…
She looks down at Elliott, or where he should be except he’s already gone into the house. We were too busy with the splodge to have noticed. I hear my uncle coming down the stairs, accompanied by a less elegant scurry of furrier feet and Elliott bounds back into the lounge, as we’ve come in and closed the front door. He jumps up at my aunt and licks her hands. The blue splodge, like the Bluebells’ sausage, is history and he looks particularly pleased with himself… until he starts coughing.
“Oh dear,” my aunt says.
I didn’t think there was enough paint to have tasted anything let alone cause a problem but it turns out, as Elliott regurgitates it, that the offending article was a Cadbury’s éclair sweet I’d lost in the back of my car a few weeks earlier, wrapper still intact. I pick it up by its end and don’t think about what it’s covered in. The sweet itself is mostly toffee but it does have a chocolate centre so just as well it hadn’t disintegrated as chocolate’s notoriously poisonous to dogs.
A light bulb goes off in my head as I think it would make a great article. Not everyone will know that fact and healthy doesn’t just apply to humans. I could do a week-long animal special. When I get back to Northampton.
An image of the Tring Garden Centre red poppy logo flashes into my brain, pushing aside the thought of the non-human articles, for the time being at least.
“Do you fancy afternoon tea a bit later?” I ask my aunt as we trudge through to the kitchen and I deposit the sweet in the bin. My aunt looks at my uncle who looks back at her.
“At the garden centre?” I add.
My aunt looks at the clock then back at my uncle. “Shall we?”
My uncle nods.
“I have to pop back to my mum’s,” I say, "to do a bit of work but could collect you en route. We could take Elliott and sit outside.”
My aunt and uncle are still looking at each other. “Shall we?” my aunt repeats.
My uncle nods again.
“Great,” I say. “See you at two thirty?”
They both nod. I smile, make a final fuss of Elliott who’s recovered from the regurgitated sweet, and let myself out.
There’s no sign of my mum or her car as I get back to hers. She’s usually home for lunch on a Wednesday, the only weekday she is, but no, something, or someone, has lured her away. It does make it easier though for me to write up my report on the Bluebells and email it to the Williams. My William, he of the ‘never call me Billy’, is copied in for info but I’m sure he’d like to know how I’m getting on.
Mum’s still not back by gone two. I give her mobile a call but it goes straight through to answerphone. It’s only a five-minute drive from here to my uncle’s so I’m okay to wait a few minutes but I like to be prompt, especially as it sometimes takes time to round up Elliott from the garden… until we say the word ‘car’ then he’s at the front door faster than Mo Farah, pawing to get out.
I’ve also just remembered to make a note about the dog chocolate article so open up a new Word document and save it as ‘animal week’. I do have a pretty good memory but things have to be saved to it in order for me to remember and sometimes I forget to get to that first stage. I have so much buzzing around my brain.
My handbag’s packed and ready to go when I hear my phone buzz. It’s been on silent since the Bluebells but the vibrate’s on twenty-four-seven.
“Hey darling,” I say as I hit the green phone icon.
“Hey you,” Duncan says and I can almost hear his smile. “Sorry I missed you earlier. I was removing a staple from a cat’s tongue.”
Little surprises me about what Duncan’s confronted with but this does. “A staple? What was a cat doing eating a staple?”
“Oh, it wasn’t the cat but its owner.”
“What?”
“Not its adult owner. His three-year-old granddaughter. She was supposed to be drawing but went into her granddad’s office to get some more paper and took the stapler from his desk, via his chair, apparently, and thought it would be fun to staple everything in sight. He’s not sure how the cat got its tongue in the way – you’d think it wouldn’t have been that compliant. The chap heard the clicking but thought it was his fax machine until the scream. Not sure if cat or child, but the end result was the same.”
“Fax machine? I didn’t know people still had faxes.”
“Me neither. Our office one went years ago.”
I look at my watch. Two twenty-five. “Can I put you on hands free? I’m off to Uncle Pat’s, taking them to the garden centre, you know, the one that used to be Wyvale.”
“Nice. I’m going to have to go actually – next patient – but chat later?”
“Absolutely. I miss you, you know.”
Duncan blows me a kiss and my heart swells. “Miss you too.”
I can’t help Cheshire catting as I put my phone back into my bag, double-lock myself out of Mum’s house, and make my way up the road.
Chapter 40 – Afternoon Tea For Three… Five
So we head off to the garden centre between Tring and Bulbourne. There’s a pub on the left if we keep going into Bulbourne and I’ve passed it a hundred times as it’s the way I come into Tring whenever I visit but I’ve never noticed its name, or it doesn’t register. I still don’t get to find out this time as we turn right into the garden centre car park a hundred yards or so early.
I pull into an end space four rows from the front, and my uncle remarks at how busy the car park is for a Wednesday.
“Maybe it’s OAPs’ day,” my aunt suggests. I’m surprised she doesn’t know, being one herself.
As we’re walking towards the café between the pet store and main outside plant areas, I do a quick search on Google but it only mentions pensioner discount on a Tuesday and their rewards card giving five points per pound spent, entitling the holder to £2.50 per 250 rewards. My brain almost whirrs as it calculates a fifty-pound outlay for that recompense. Compared with a pound back for every hundred spent on most other reward cards, that’s pretty good. Not that it’s going to change the world but for some my aunt and uncle’s age, every penny counts. And many of them are here.
We get the last spare table outside, and my uncle and I go inside to get the food. My aunt and uncle usually insist on paying but he and I agree to go halves as he won’t let me pay for it all. It’s only when we get to the till to order the hot drinks and pay that my eye’s caught by a flash of orange on a distant table. I recognise the scarf and look to its owner.
Sure enough, there’s my mother sitting opposite a very distinguished-looking man. Charles. It has to be. He must have collected her or I would have spotted her car in the car park but it wasn’t at her house so I’m a tad baffled. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, for her not to drive here, as there would have been no way of me knowing they were going to be here, or them us, but it explains why Mum wasn’t answering her phone. I debate going over but know they’ll have to come out past us so leave them to it. They’re engrossed in a conversation so I’m not spotted, which is just as well.
My uncle and I pay without him having noticed my mum and I’m relieved for that too.
We return to my aunt and a very wag
gy Elliott. It always makes me laugh at how his whole body moves when his tail does and I wish Buddy were as enthusiastic to see me. He’s very sweet but he’s a one-person dog: Duncan, which is understandable. I smile again as I think of Duncan’s call and I sit with a sigh.
We’ve just struck up a conversation about our lack of summer holidays when a too-young-looking-to-be-working boy comes out with a tray of our hot drinks. I look at his badge. Rather than the standard printed, his is handwritten, as if he’s only temporary. A school exchange, I wonder as the scrawl identifies him as ‘Laurence’.
He looks at the number on our table and only says, “I think these are yours?” but it’s enough for me to detect a French accent.
“Merci,” I say as he distributes the drinks, me pointing at the relevant person each time. He smiles and says something very quickly in his mother tongue. Too quick for me to catch.
“Je parle un peu Français,” I mumble and struggle to think of how to say ‘sorry’ in French. I can only think of ‘Lo siento’ which is Spanish and ‘Das tut mir leid’ and ‘Entschuldigung’, both German, and I don’t know why I know those when I did Spanish and French at school, but he smiles nonetheless.
“Very good. Your accent. It is very good.” Although I’m old enough to be his mother, I blush like a school… well, a girl his age.
I know from experience (Google told me) that the average calories in a cheese scone are one hundred and forty-five but these are whoppers so I can easily double it. I put on a scraping of butter and equally sparse jam so they not only save calories but don’t hide the scrummy cheese flavour. There’s melted cheese on the top and it looks like Red Leicester. I have a neighbour who doesn’t like cheese and although she’s lovely, I’ve never understood why.
I sneak a two-pound tip under my plate. The single coin doesn’t seem much but it’s a chain so feels less of a local business, although these days everything’s franchised so how could one tell. I wonder if that’s something I could cover in an article, or another week’s worth, and dig out a notebook to jot it down.
They don’t ask me what I’m doing but I sense my aunt and uncle’s eyes looking at me.
I look up and sure enough, they are. “Something I need to remember for work,” I say and they nod.
All the way through our conversation about my project, Elliott’s recent visit to the vet (his yearly booster) and my uncle’s latest photography client, I’ve been willing the door into the café to open and my orange-scarfed mother and her companion to come out but no such luck.
We’ve finished our drinks and food, and unless anyone wants a refill, there’s no reason to stay. Plus I have to drop everyone off before getting back to work to meet up with Greta for yet more food and drink. Although this is supposed to be a healthy eating project, I feel I’ve done little else.
We all stand, much to Elliott’s delight as it means we’re going somewhere exclusively for him (of course!), just as the door does open. I’m side on to it but get a gust of warm air, even warmer than the tepid exterior. I will it to be my mother and although it’s not, it’s Charles. Minus my mother. Unless my mother’s shown him a photograph of me, he doesn’t know who I am, nor my aunt and uncle. And I’m not supposed to know who he is so I have a dilemma: I could engage him in small talk but what excuse would I have? Or do I let him go but delay our exit as my mother can’t be far behind; in the ladies presumably. Would she want us to know she’s here?
I opt for letting fate decide so I ignore Charles and we casually follow him out into the car park, me holding on to Elliott. Charles heads in the same direction as us so I pick up speed, pretending to trot with Elliott like one of those Austrian Spanish Slovenian Lipizzaner horses. I know, it’s always confused me too.
Charles appears to be oblivious as we scoot past then I realise he’s looking at his phone screen. I can’t see what and I’m not going to peer. I don’t want our first meeting, unofficial or otherwise, to be of me perving.
Elliott obligingly hops up into the car, panting away at his little burst of exercise. A Lipizzaner he is not. My aunt and uncle have caught up, and I see that Charles is standing beside a car two spaces away. Between us is a hulk of a Range Rover so I can’t see what car he’s actually driving but he’s super tall, William tall, and I recognise his (Charles’s, not William’s) greying hair. Considering he’s in his sixties, he’s still got a fair amount of brown. And hair. Many men I know, other than my uncle, and Duncan, and William, have started thinning in their thirties.
My car refuses to start. It never not starts. I try again. Nothing.
“Maybe it’s the battery,” my aunt suggests.
“I’m in the AA,” my uncle says, “personal cover, if you need it.”
“Thank you,” I say and hope I won’t need it.
“There’s your mum,” my aunt points out as the orange scarf dazzles us from a few feet away.
“Oh,” I respond, trying to sound surprised. “What’s she doing here?” Although I know full well.
Thankfully she’s not looking in our direction, despite my aunt waving through the gap between my seat and my uncle’s, cooing a ‘Woo hoo!’. She much prefers the back, not only having a clear view either side but of us too.
Unsure what to do, I sit and wait. My mum’s still oblivious of us and I wouldn’t put it past my aunt to stretch even further and honk the horn would she be able to reach it. As it turns out, we all sit and wait, my aunt’s retracted arm is, I notice, rested on the top of my uncle’s seat. We watch as my mum heads for, and gets into, Charles’s car and a few seconds later, it – another Range Rover – emerges and they leave the car park.
“Get the gossip later, yes?” my aunt says and I know she means from me but I say nothing.
The car starts perfectly and I drive us back to their house, a silence descending over us like an autumn mist.
Chapter 41 – Pause And Think, Think And Pause
With a promise to get as much ‘dirt’ as possible from my mother, I drop my aunt, uncle and a tired – though no reason to be – Elliott at their house, and make my way to work to meet up with Greta. With a desktop and matching network at the office, there’s no need to collect my laptop from my mum’s however tempting it might be to see if she’s gone back there or to Charles’s. I’m assuming from them taking his car that they’d have gone to his to collect hers so the chances of her being home are tiny, and time negates curiosity, therefore Hemel Hempstead it is.
Despite it only being just gone five, the office is fairly sparse. Owen’s on reception, like the captain of a ship; the last to leave, other than Billy who is actually the captain. I don’t disturb Owen so head through the double doors and down the corridor into the open-plan area. The individual offices leading up to it are empty, even Hazel’s conspicuous by her absence, as is Leah, her assistant.
Greta and Frank make up the sole entity of the left side of the office with no one on the right. I’m grateful that James isn’t there and think of him playing happy families with his however-many-point-four children and beautiful wife. Nathan and Billy are also missing so it’s just the three of us. I head for Greta first. Head down, she’s engrossed in some kind of paperwork.
“Hi,” I say, hovering between her and Frank’s desk.
With no reply, I turn to Frank but he too is engrossed. Not in Greta’s paperwork obviously but in something on his screen. I can’t see what it is and like Charles’s smaller version earlier, I’m not going to gawk.
There’s a chair between the two desks but facing them so I turn it more towards Greta. I want to sit but think I’m being a nuisance. I want her to know that I’m here, or for Frank to know so he can pass on the message but neither is paying me any attention. I’m not normally needy but it feels quite disconcerting.
I cough. Not as a distraction but because a tickle has launched itself and I need to. Either way, it does the trick and Greta looks up.
“Ooh hello. Sorry. Have you been there long?”
I s
hake my head.
She looks behind her, at a clock on the wall and gasps. “Sorry,” she repeats. “Didn’t realise it was so late.”
The trouble with it being May is the long hours of daylight. Not that people usually complain but it doesn’t give any sense of being past work and into play. At five thirty, it’s somewhere in between.
“Are you okay to still go out for something to eat?” I ask and hope she says ‘yes’. We’ve not really spent any time together and while I’m more than capable of going out on my own, I was looking forward to the company, not that I haven’t had much of that today. Restaurants are made for two, as the saying doesn’t really go.
I realise she’s spoken but I missed it. Her face isn’t portraying a negative or positive so I wait.
“Anywhere in mind?” she asks and I’m relieved.
“I don’t really know…” And I don’t. I have a list but it’s on my desk.
“Let’s just grab our stuff then and head into town.”
That sounds like a great plan. And we do.
“Do you like Italian?” Greta asks me as we head down the stairs and towards the main road. I wonder if she’s going to suggest Ristorante Alberto. It would be nice, having been there twice, to actually go inside. But we don’t get that far. We’re standing outside Papa John’s and although I’ve seen adverts for them on the television, and those only relatively recently, I’ve never been in one. I envisaged a takeaway but we can eat in too. It’s rather chainy, as I’d expect, but Greta must like it to bring me here. I go to open the door but she speaks. “Actually…” I let go of the door handle and follow her away.
We then end up outside Pizza Express. “Sorry,” she says for the third time. “Nothing wrong with Papa John’s, I just felt…”
The Serial Dieter (The Serial Series Book 2) Page 17