by Blake, Rosie
‘Oh dear, please don’t judge me too harshly,’ I said, as Mark launched into a long tale that charted all the various humiliations of the last month of my life. Carol fortunately laughed at the appropriate moments, gasped at the appropriate moments, and slapped Mark at the appropriate moments (‘Sea kayaking, in November … how could he?’).
‘Sounds interesting,’ she commented when Mark had finished. ‘You know, I’ve actually got a cousin who …’
‘Stop right there,’ I said, holding up my hand to her. ‘No more setting me up. Truly,’ I insisted as they opened their mouths to argue. ‘I’m going about things in a new and different way.’
‘Like what?’
‘The minute details of my cunning plan are yet to fully materialise …’
‘Huh?’
‘She means she hasn’t thought of them yet,’ translated Carol.
‘Thank you, Carol.’ I nodded at her. ‘But rest assured, I am going to come up with something. It just won’t involve any more blind dates with total strangers.’
‘But I …’
‘But we …’
‘I have to pee,’ I declared loudly, and then I turned round slap bang into Stanley. ‘Oh, I …’
‘Doesn’t one always have to at the most inopportune moments?’ he leered and I raced away.
‘Where are the blinking, blinding toilets?’ I muttered five minutes later, still searching the long, dimly lit corridors for a lavatory. My feet ached in my new heels as I tottered past paintings of serene rural scenes; cottages, mills, farmers in big hats doing things in the fields, which I assumed to be hoeing or raking or some such. I heard the burble of voices getting further away as I continued, past sculptures and large suits of armour glinting dangerously in the shadows, before entering a wing of the house I was sure I’d already ventured down. Rounding another bend, I pushed open a heavy oak door. The room was lit by the rosy glow of candlelight, and a fire roared beneath an ornate mantelpiece, over which hung a large gilt-framed mirror. The room was too big to be a toilet, and the rows of bookshelves climbing to the ceiling seemed quite over the top for some light bathroom reading; I must have stumbled across the library. I turned to retreat, but a voice called out from the depths of the room.
‘Come in, dear,’ it said.
Hoping the voice was not a figment of my imagination or the Ghost of Christmas Past, I followed the sound to a vast leather armchair placed next to the fire. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting I made out the slight figure of an elderly woman.
‘I’m so sorry, I’ve got the wrong room,’ I said quickly.
‘Not at all, come in, sit down,’ she said, indicating another armchair placed opposite her.
The fire crackled, sprigs of holly hung from the mantelpiece, Christmas cards stood to attention, and the whole scene seemed enormously comforting.
‘Wine?’ she offered, producing a glass from a tray beside her.
‘That would be lovely,’ I said, going over and taking the glass. ‘Thank you.’
I sat down. ‘I’m Nicola, by the way,’ I said, pointing slightly unnecessarily to my chest, as if she wouldn’t be aware who I meant.
‘Esther,’ she said, sipping at her wine.
She must have been at least eighty, I guessed. She leaned forward, pouring the wine with two hands to steady the bottle. Dressed in a simple navy dress with a neat string of pearls round her neck, she looked elegant and well at home in this enormous house. Her hair was short and showed off little pearl-drop earrings which sparkled as she moved. Her eyes glinted in the firelight as she spoke.
‘So, why have you squirrelled yourself away here then?’
‘I’m looking for the loo is my excuse.’ I blushed. ‘You?’
‘Oh, just a bit of quiet. My ex-husband is out there. Both of them in fact.’ She cackled.
‘I see.’
‘Yes, one’s brought his new wife to show off. She looks like the Christmas turkey, trussed up in layers of what looks to me to be turquoise tin foil.’
I wrinkled my nose at the thought.
‘Never did marry well,’ she said, swilling the wine round in the glass.
‘Why?’ I found myself blurting out.
She didn’t look annoyed, her brow wrinkled as she sat and thought for a while.
‘Nothing in common,’ she concluded, sipping again at her wine.
‘Like?’ I ventured.
‘Like fine wine.’ She cackled again, pouring another glass. ‘And music, and dancing, and a sense of humour and books. They didn’t read a book between them,’ she went on. ‘Just sport – fishing, shooting and bloody horses. I can’t stand bloody horses, or rather bloody polo. If I had to watch another polo chukka, I’d end it all right out there in the hall.’
‘Wow, you really don’t like polo,’ I commented.
‘How about you, Nicola, are you married?’
‘No.’
‘Courting.’
I laughed. ‘Not courting, not seeing anyone in fact, I am …’ I paused.
‘Shopping around?’
‘Exactly.’ We both laughed.
‘Well, you keep shopping, Nicola. You need to find someone you can share your life with, someone you have something in common with … although a handsome face always helps … and good legs. They’re vital.’
‘Absolutely. Thank you for the wine.’ I lurched over and gave her a hug. Then straightened up, feeling embarrassed. ‘Sorry,’ I laughed.
She just smiled. ‘You’re a gem,’ she said simply.
‘Thank you.’
‘Nicola,’ she called as I reached the door.
‘Yes,’ I said turning, anticipating a wise word, a piece of advice or some thought-provoking proverb.
‘The loo’s on the left, dear.’
Tottering out of the loos and realising I might have had one mulled wine too many, I couldn’t avoid the looming figure of Stanley, who was standing next to an alarming sculpture of a naked man with long, flowing hair, one arm pointing towards the sky, the other resting on his hip as if frozen in a dance move from ‘Night Fever’. This thought made me giggle. Stanley lit up and walked purposefully over to me so that I was pinned back against the wall.
‘You’re looking rally, rally, lovely this evening,’ he said, smoothing his ponytail down with a hand and licking his bottom lip.
‘Thank you,’ I squeaked, a hand flying self-consciously to my chest.
He leaned closer. ‘Just been having a rather enlightening tête-à-tête with Mark,’ he said.
‘Have you?’ I said, playing dumb.
Note to self: kill Mark.
‘And I’m planning to act on it,’ he said in a whisper.
‘Gosh, really, well that’s nice. Oh look! They’ve hung tinsel from the beams, how gorgeous.’
‘Nic,’ came a shout. Carol waved at me from the end of the carpeted corridor. I exhaled loudly.
‘Coming.’ I waved back, scooting under Stanley’s arm before he could stop me. ‘Lovely to see you, Stanley,’ I threw over my shoulder. ‘Happy Christmas.’
Carol linked arms with me as I appeared.
‘Bloody Mark,’ I said in a low, dangerous voice.
Many mulled wines later, we piled back into the Land Rover, Guy talking into the hands-free as he drove us home. Mother sat silently next to him, her right eye wandering as it always did after too many glasses of wine. I told Carol and Mark about meeting Esther on my trip to the loo.
‘Esther isch right. Isch about interests. We have to have the shared intereschts.’
Carol turned to Mark with a hiccup. ‘What are you intereschrested in?’
Marks eyes were crossed. ‘You ’n bats.’
‘Yesch, but you’re a bit weird.’
‘Yeah, but we did schpend a lot of time in the same places when we met.’
‘Yesch, but you just followed me to them, which is called stalking, so waschn’t a coincidence.’
‘Thish is true,’ Mark said. ‘But sometimes we met by acci
dent in the same place because we do have similar intereschts.’
‘True,’ Carol said, leaning across to peck him on the nose. She turned to me. ‘Men juscht love cars, tools and football so you should do something with that.’
‘Amazshing idea. I will,’ I announced, lurching forward as Guy parked the Land Rover in the driveway.
We tumbled out and crunched up the gravel path to the house, laughing stupidly as mum missed the keyhole three times.
Sniffing about us behaving childishly, she seemed surprised when I gave her a warm hug. ‘Night Ma,’ I said, pecking her on the cheek.
‘Goodnight,’ she said back, one hand on the banister.
Guy didn’t look up from his Blackberry as he called a ‘Goodnight’ from the staircase.
I joined Carol and Mark in the kitchen.
‘Let’sch get on the internet and sign you up for stuff, Nic,’ Carol said, clapping her hands.
‘Good thinking!’
We pulled up short, seeing a pan half full of mulled wine on the oven.
‘Another glass to mull over the situation?’ Carol asked, which cracked Mark up for a good ten minutes.
Mugs of mulled wine in hand, we proceeded to spend a drunken hour signing me up for carpentry classes at the local university.
‘Thscat’s where they’ll all be,’ said Carol, gesturing at the screen, her pretty green dress now sporting a trail of red wine down the front.
‘By Valentine’s Day , sis, you’ll have met a man, AND you’ll be able to make me a wooden tray using a lathe,’ Mark read from the advertising blurb on the website. He pointed at a man standing by a machine. ‘You could meet him,’ he whispered.
‘Excellentsch work,’ Carol and I chorused, before collapsing onto Mum’s white leather sofa.
Chapter Twenty-One
Hung-over and head thumping, I practically crawled into the kitchen the next day to pour myself a coffee and forage for breakfast. Mark and Carol were still not up and Guy had left a note on the kettle that said, ‘Meeting’. Mum had left a second note saying, ‘Back soon’. I felt like writing a third note that simply said, ‘Dying’, but didn’t have the energy required to find a pen.
The kettle bubbled. I reached for a mug and shook coffee granules into the bottom, already anticipating that first caffeine hit, and feeling it was a win-win, when I discovered a year’s supply of paracetamol in the cutlery drawer.
Reaching into the fridge for milk, I frowned as the doorbell rang.
I poked my head round the kitchen door, making out a shadow of a man in the frosted glass. Could I ignore him? As if in answer to my question, the doorbell went again. Postman? Lone carol singer? I opened the door.
Standing outside was a man in a full three-piece tweed suit, complete with flat cap on top of his straggly long hair. Stanley.
My mouth fell open and I automatically drew my tatty towelling dressing gown protectively around me.
‘Nicola,’ he said, taking off his flat cap with a flourish and leaning forward to kiss both my cheeks. ‘How wonderful to see you! Rally, rally wonderful.’
‘Stanley, I …’
‘Golly,’ he drawled, taking in the dressing gown over faded pyjamas and flip flops. ‘You look frightfully like one of those women on that television programme, Eastenders. Ma in?’ he asked, looking round as he stepped inside, uninvited.
‘No, no, Ma’s, I mean Mum’s out. Back soon,’ I said, parroting the note.
‘Shame. Is that the kettle just boiled?’
With a defeated sigh, I realised I had a house guest. ‘Yes. Tea? Coffee?’ I offered.
‘Earl Grey if you have it, old gal, lovely, lovely.’
I fetched a mug and noticed Mark’s head appear round the door, wide-eyed, and then hastily withdraw. I followed him into the hallway but he’d already escaped up the stairs.
‘Mark,’ I hissed.
He mouthed things at me from the top landing, out of sight of Stanley, and made a hanging mime of a dead man on a rope, tongue lolling out, rocking sideways. I was too groggy to laugh and shuffled back into the kitchen, realising, sadly, that there was no hope of back-up.
Stanley flicked his long hair behind his shoulder as he marched around the kitchen taking the lids off things to peer into them for no reason.
‘Well, Nicola,’ he said as I handed him an Earl Grey with a slice of lemon, just how he liked it. ‘You must be rally surprised to see me here?’ He eyed me over his mug, before taking a sip, pinkie out.
‘I guess so!’ I confirmed.
‘Just thought I should pop by and tell you I am in the neighbourhood.’ He leaned forward.
‘Right.’
‘Didn’t feel we really caught up properly last night.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘I’m around the corner,’ he said, nodding slowly.
‘Sorry?’
‘A-round the corner,’ he emphasised each word.
‘Um …’
‘Available at a moment’s notice if you wanted a … play date.’ He winked.
‘A play da—’
‘—A rally fun play date.’ He winked again.
‘Oh! Okey dokey,’ I said, draining the last of my coffee and wrapping my robe even more tightly around myself.
‘We could rally have some fun, you and I. I thought of you last night in that gorgeous dress of yours, and do you know what I thought?’
‘Er, what did you think Stanley?’
‘I thought …’ He paused, gaze travelling slowly up my body, before meeting my eyes. ‘I rally have to make that girl realise I am keen if she is.’
‘Ah. Well that is kind,’ I said, my toes rubbing the back of my heel in awkwardness.
‘Quite. We’re having our annual Christmas backgammon tournament this afternoon,’ he guffawed. ‘So I best get back to Mummy but, Nicola … Just remember … Around the corner, there is a friend. A friend who could be more than a friend.’
‘I’ll remember that, Stanley,’ I croaked, nodding dumbly. ‘Thank you for er … thinking of me.’
‘I’ll leave my mobile number here,’ he said, sliding a card across with one finger. ‘And you can ring it day or night. Day … or night, Nicola.’
‘Thank you,’ I squeaked, suddenly overwhelmed by the awful urge to laugh.
‘Well,’ he said, adjusting his flat cap. ‘I’ll be orf.’
And, striding out into the hallway, he was gone. I was left blinking in the kitchen.
When the front door closed I heard an explosion of laughter from the landing above, as Mark and Carol chorused: ‘Day or Night, Nicola. Day or NIGHT.’
‘Was that Stanley Holloway I just saw leaving?’ My mother asked, sweeping into the kitchen moments later, her head still craned towards the front door.
I groaned inwardly. ‘It was,’ I said, refusing to divulge more. ‘Tea?’
‘Green,’ she nodded. ‘You know, Nicola, you could do a lot worse than Stanley Holloway. Believe me.’ She perched herself primly on the edge of the white sofa. ‘You wouldn’t have to work for a start,’ she said, noticing a speck of something on her skirt and brushing it off immediately.
‘I want to work,’ I said.
‘I know, darling – you’ve always been eccentric – but you wouldn’t have to,’ she stressed.
I rolled my eyes and waited for the kettle to boil.
My mother waved a hand, ‘Well, I’m glad you want to move on but you can’t be so fussy, Nicola.’
‘God forbid,’ I muttered.
‘Mark tells me you are getting back out there …’
Did Mark? I glanced at the stairs with a scowl.
‘… And maybe that will put an end to this constant work and no fun. You used to be quite fun,’ she mused.
‘Thanks Ma,’ I said, handing her a mug.
‘Good luck with it,’ she raised the mug in a toast. A flicker of warmth passed between us and I smiled at her.
‘Thanks, Mum.’
She sipped at her tea. ‘Too st
rong,’ she sighed and poured it down the sink.
Chapter Twenty-Two
After three whole days and three whole nights in the family pad in leafy Gloucestershire, I was ready to return to Bristol for my casual cinema trip with Dan and the chance to catch my breath. I was glad to be back.
Flinging my suitcase into the doorway of my flat, I ventured straight back out to buy a newspaper and a coffee. Heading for the nearest place that sold caffeine by the double shot, a newspaper folded neatly under one arm, I already felt in better spirits. The barista gave me a smile and a ‘Happy Christmas’ as I picked up my mug from the counter. Settling myself in a window seat, I had a leisurely read of the articles, finishing up with a peek at my Virgo horoscope.
‘A new year, a new you! Be bold!’
It continued to tell me that there was a moon in Uranus and something about this being a significant moment, whatever that meant. I heard my phone beep and took it out of my bag. Oh! I’d missed a call from a number I didn’t recognise. I rang my answerphone.
‘Ni-co-la. Happy Christmas. Seeing you in a few short days. You promised you’d come for dinner and then on to a party. It’ll be rocking. Call me. Don’t break my heart.’
I stared at the mobile. I stared at my horoscope. I realised that, although I was only going out with Chris to help James keep him as a client, I was actually looking forward to it. New Year, New Me! On the way home, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to pop into the office. I could check any emails and tidy up the post so that there wouldn’t be a huge pile to wade through when we returned after the Christmas holidays.
Unlocking the door to the agency, I headed straight upstairs to our floor. Pushing open the door, I was surprised to see we had no mail. Not even an advert for double glazing, or a festive card from a desperate actor keen to send us Christmas salutations and his new show reel. I jumped as I heard movement in James’ office beyond. Before I could seize a weapon, the man himself emerged, an umbrella held aloft.
‘We have no cash on the premises,’ he called out. ‘No cash on the premises.’
He stopped, took one look at my frozen face, bag halfway to the floor, feet planted in panic, and burst out with a relieved laugh. ‘Nicola! Thank God. You scared me!’ He dropped the umbrella to a less threatening height.