by JL Merrow
“No. I can’t do this now. I’ll call you.” He’d shepherded me halfway to the door before I’d realised what was happening. I should have stayed in that bloody chair; he’d have had to prise me out with a crowbar. When we reached the door, Raz hesitated, and I thought for a moment he’d changed his mind. But all he said was, “We should stay in touch. When… When this is all settled. We can talk about things.”
“Yeah, sure.” I flashed him a smile, but he just kept staring at me with those big, earnest eyes of his.
“And come to the reading,” he added. “Tomorrow night, at the library here. Eight o’clock.”
I blinked, surprised. “Thought you didn’t want me coming to any more of your ‘do’s.”
“Oh…that was when I thought you were just there to make fun of us. I didn’t realise, then. But you should come.” He urged me out of the door and shut it firmly behind me.
Mixed messages, much?
Chapter Twenty-One
I caught up with Phil on the village high street. He was staring at the ads in an estate agent’s window. “Fancy moving out to the country, do you?”
Phil turned to face me. “That was quick.”
“Yeah. Apparently, he can’t answer questions on an empty stomach. Maybe I should have made him a sandwich.”
“So what did he tell you?”
“Not a lot. Can’t think why anyone would want to off the old chairman and didn’t like to think about it either.” I shoved my hands in my coat pockets and stared at a stunning Grade II listed period home of immense charm and character, 5 beds, 4 bathrooms, 7 receptions—seven? Really? Why the hell would you want that many? That was more than one each for the people living in the bedrooms, although maybe some of them would double up—Price on Request. “He said to tell Cherry he was sorry.”
“What for?”
“Didn’t say. Maybe he’s just generally regretful. On the plus side, though, I reckon I’ve pulled. He was very keen on keeping in touch, and he made me promise to go to his poetry reading tomorrow night.”
Phil scowled. “Jesus.”
“Oi, I can’t help it if people are drawn in by my natural charm.” From the look on his face, it’d probably be in my best interests to change the subject right now. “So what sort of place you looking for?”
“I’m not.”
“Just enjoying the pretty pictures?”
“Something like that. Pipe dreams. No, if I was really looking for a house it’d be more like your place.”
“Got a thing for poky little semis in the scruffy part of St Albans?”
“Got a thing for places I can actually afford.”
I shrugged. “If they kick you out of your flat ’cause you can’t make the rent, you can always move in with me.”
There was a silence. Shit, this was like the kids thing, wasn’t it? As in, Phil was the one person I couldn’t just casually toss that sort of thing into the conversation with. “I mean,” I said quickly, “just till you get sorted, obviously. Wouldn’t want to think of you kipping on a bench in Verulamium Park.”
“Right,” Phil said after a pause that was just a little too long.
“Let’s see if Cherry’s ready to go, yeah?”
If I’d known my sister was going to be coming to stay, I’d have tidied up the spare room a bit. Actually, sod that, I’d have hired a bloody skip. The room wasn’t exactly big to start with, and I’d managed to fill it up with all kinds of crap over the five or so years I’d been living here. When I opened the door and reminded myself of the state it was in, I seriously considered just giving Cherry my room and kipping on the sofa.
Trouble was, she might look under the bed and discover my stash of porn. Not to mention one or two specialised articles I mostly hadn’t even got around to using with Phil yet. Given the choice between clearing a load of junk and clearing a load of sex toys and probably getting caught red-handed before I’d had a chance to work out a new place to hide them, I thought, sod it, I’ll clear the junk.
“Can I help?”
I looked up from the pile of fashion disasters, boxes of invoices and other guff that was hopefully going to reveal a bed underneath when I’d finished excavating. “Nah, it’s okay. Shouldn’t take too long. Put your feet up and watch the telly. Actually, tell you what, are you hungry?” I’d forgotten about dinner, I realised with a bit of a shock.
Phil would be calling a doctor. If, that was, he hadn’t buggered off back to his place already. Not that I was feeling resentful, or anything. Still, maybe this whole thing with the key was a sign. Maybe him and me wasn’t meant to be the big, moving-in-together thing.
“I’m starving,” Cherry was saying. “Have you got anything in?”
I frowned, trying to visualise the contents of my cupboards. I’d been a bit busy to go shopping in the last few days, despite the nearest supermarket being only yards away. “Well, there’s eggs.” There’s always eggs in my fridge. They’re handy to have around. And Phil likes them. “Bacon and bread too, probably. Fancy a fry-up?”
Cherry made a face. I was guessing that meant no. “How about I pop down the road and get something?”
Now I wasn’t sure. “You okay about going out on your own?”
“Do you honestly think someone’s going to try and run me down with a Morrison’s shopping trolley?” She might have been going for sarcastic, but it came out a bit too wobbly for that.
I tried to lighten the atmosphere with a smile. “You can joke all you want, but some of those old ladies in there are lethal. ’Specially if you get between them and the going-out-of-date bargain bin. Tell you what, why don’t we get a takeaway? There’s loads—”
Cherry cut me off. “Why don’t we go out for dinner? Look, you’re putting me up and doing all this…” She waved a hand at the explosion-in-an-Oxfam-shop theme I currently had going in my spare room. “I’ll pay.”
“Well…you paid last time.” God, that lunch in Carluccio’s seemed like it’d been years ago now.
“Yes, but I must earn considerably more than you.” She said it offhand, like male pride was something she’d heard of once but immediately dismissed as an urban legend.
“You’ve got a wedding to save up for.” I thought about it. “Or are you getting Dad to pay? That’s traditional, innit?”
“It may be traditional, but I’m not going to ask him to spend his pension on my wedding when I’m earning perfectly good money myself. So are we going out?”
Well, if she was that desperate to splash the cash… “Go for it. Got a place in mind?”
“Not really. I don’t eat in St Albans a lot.”
“What, not even with the people from your office?”
She shrugged. “Not really. I don’t really like that kind of thing. Everyone getting drunk and embarrassing themselves, and then you have to work with them next day or next week, or whenever. It’s silly.”
I didn’t really feel I could comment. I’ve never worked in an office. The closest I’ve ever been to a works do was buying my accountant a pint. “All right, what sort of food do you fancy?”
We ended up heading for a newish place, just down the road from Jamie Oliver’s overpriced Italian. It promised fusion food. I hoped that didn’t mean we’d end up glowing in the dark after eating it. I took the Fiesta—parking’s not so bad in the evenings, when the shops have shut.
“Oh, Waterstones is having a book launch on Sunday,” Cherry said as we tootled down St Peter’s Street, stopping for the traffic lights every ten yards or so.
I kept my eyes on the road. “Yeah? Anyone famous?”
“Not sure. The name didn’t really ring a bell. Hayden Mead. Still, I don’t suppose you’d have heard of him anyway. Or her. I suppose it could be either.”
“Cheers, Sis. I have heard of a few authors, you know.”
“All right, name some, then.”
Er… “Whatsisface who did the Da Vinci ones, um… Oh, I know. Salman Rushdie. There you go.”
She tsked. “It was Dan Bro
wn who wrote The Da Vinci Code. And you’ve only heard of Salman Rushdie because of the death threats.”
I winced. That probably hadn’t been the best name to pull out of the hat.
Cherry was silent a moment. “I used to feel sorry for him—but annoyed too, because he brought it on himself. I never thought I’d know what it was like myself. It’s just so horrible.”
“Yeah, but at least you’ve only got one person after you, probably. Not a whole crowd of religious fundamentalists.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?”
Er, yeah? I thanked the gods of parking that allowed me to avoid answering in favour of pulling in, not ten yards from the restaurant. “Here we are, then,” I said. “Got your bag?”
“I’m not a child.”
“Oi, never said you were. But it’s my car’s going to get broken into if someone sees a bag in it.”
“What, this old thing? I’m sure even car thieves have some standards.” She rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m only teasing. You’re so touchy.”
Had she been talking to Phil? “Restaurant’s that way,” I said firmly and got out of the car.
We got a table straight away. I hoped it didn’t mean the food was a bit dodgy. Still, the place was more than half full, so the chances were we’d just been lucky.
“Oh, Raz said he’s sorry, by the way,” I said over the top of the menu.
“Oh? What for?”
“Dunno. Hopefully not for poisoning you. Actually, hang about, if he did poison you, and he’s sorry, that’s good, right? Means he won’t do it again. Probably.”
She gave me a weak smile. “He’s probably referring to the unpleasantness with Morgan. It must have been very awkward for him. I’m sure he’s been avoiding me in the village ever since.”
“What, because him and Morgan are like that?” I held up two fingers pressed together.
“Mm. And because he was the one who introduced me to the group, of course.”
“He was?” I got distracted then, as the waitress came over to take our order. She was short and pretty, with red hair in bunches, and she went pink every time I spoke to her.
“Do you have to flirt with every woman you meet?” Cherry said snippily once Little Red was out of earshot. “It’s not like you’re even going to follow through.”
“I wasn’t flirting!” Bloody hell, she was as bad as Phil. “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of banter to brighten up the day.”
“As long as she doesn’t start expecting you to brighten up her nights as well.”
“Come off it. I asked her for the specials, not her bloody front-door key. Anyway, weren’t you going to tell me about you and Raz?”
“Oh, that. Well, nothing to tell, really. We just got talking one day in the Post Office. I think he commented on my name—asked if I was Polish, you know how people do.”
“Just a bit,” I agreed with a grimace.
Cherry took a sip from her water glass. “Well, after that, we carried on saying hello. And one day he mentioned he wrote poetry, so of course I mentioned that Gregory was a writer too, and he suggested I tell him about the group.”
“So Greg joined the Literati, and then after a bit, you started wondering what you were missing?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly like that. I’ve always thought about becoming a writer.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Just because I didn’t go on and on about it… Oh, here’s the food. Thank you.”
“Cheers, love,” I said with a wink, and Red went all pink again.
We managed to spend the rest of the meal talking about non-deadly stuff, and it actually went all right. Cherry was picking at a fruit salad while I wolfed down a ginger cheesecake when I made the mistake of mentioning our old house in London in between mouthfuls.
Cherry scooped up a lychee. God knows why—they’ve always looked the opposite of appetising to me. Like tiny bleached brains. “I hated you for that, you know,” she said in a conversational tone and popped it in her mouth.
“What?” I stared at her.
She chewed and swallowed. “You know. When you found that girl in the park, and Mum got all upset about it and insisted on moving out here. You ruined my social life—I hardly ever saw my friends after that, and it wasn’t easy making more. I’d finished school, so it was really hard to meet people. Not to mention Martin.”
“Martin?”
“My boyfriend.” She went pink. “I’d have thought you’d remember him. There was such a row after you found that test.”
Ah. Come to think of it, that did ring a bell. “The pregnancy test?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, a history test. What do you think?”
“Bet it taught you to be more careful, though, didn’t it?”
“I didn’t have much choice, did I? Not after the house move effectively split us up. He started going out with my best friend after that.”
“Sorry.” What else could I say?
There was a flicker of a smile. “It was more than twenty years ago. I think I’m over it now. But it wasn’t easy for Dad either, suddenly having a much longer commute.” Cherry put her spoon down. “Are you finished? I don’t think I want to stay for a coffee.”
I nodded. “Nah, I’ve got to finish clearing your room yet. I’ll get the bill.”
“I’m paying, remember.”
While Cherry was faffing around with credit cards, I checked my phone in case I’d missed any calls. Not that I was expecting Phil to call or anything.
He hadn’t, but there was a text. “Shit,” I muttered when I read it.
Cherry, of course, heard me over the chatter in the restaurant. “Is something wrong?”
I showed her the message: the worst has hapnd!!! come to dyke at once!!!
Her eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling. “Who on earth is that from?”
“Well, you remember a couple of Christmases ago…”
“Oh God. Not that awful man you brought round to Mum’s.”
“Oi, Gary’s a good mate. And yeah, it’s him.”
“So what do you think has happened?” Cherry, bless her, held off from adding the eye-roll and Did he break a nail? But I had a fair idea it was a close-run thing.
“Not sure. It might just be a case of the amateur dramatics, but…” I screwed up my face, trying to think how to put it. “See, Gary’s not had a lot of luck with blokes, and this new one, Darren, Gary thinks the sun shines out of his bum. They just got engaged. It’s going to kill the poor bloke if this one’s gone sour too. I’d better give him a call.”
I dialled, but it went straight to voice mail. “Shit,” I said again. Gary never turns his phone off—can’t stand the thought of the world keeping on turning without him being in the know. “He’s not answering. Look, do you mind if we just drop in on the way back? He means the Devil’s Dyke pub in Brock’s Hollow.”
“It’s not exactly on the way.” She sighed. “Of course not.”
She didn’t suggest I drop her off at mine and leave her there, which was good, because I wasn’t planning to. That’d be a fine way to keep an eye on her.
Also, she might terrorise the cats. “It shouldn’t take too long,” I reassured her. “If he’s in a really bad way, we’ll just bring him back with us.”
On second thoughts, judging by her expression, she didn’t find that all that reassuring.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When we got to the Dyke, it was easy to see this wasn’t just one of Gary’s storm-in-a-teacup, everyday crises. He was moping in the far corner, being comforted by the Devil’s Dyke herself. Harry, the frankly terrifying landlady of the pub, was patting him on the shoulder with a battle-scarred hand that rivalled Greg’s for size, and Flossie, the pub dog, had her head on the knee not already being drooled on by Julian, Gary’s St Bernard.
I headed straight on over to him. “What’s happened? Er, you remember my sister, Cherry, right?”
Gary looked up with red-rimme
d eyes and sniffled in acknowledgement.
“I’ll get some drinks,” Cherry said quickly.
“Cheers. Pint for me, vodka martini for Gary, and…” I looked questioningly at Harry.
“I’ll get ’em,” she said gruffly, unfolding her sizeable frame from the chair. “You take care of your mate.”
“I’ll go and, um, help carry,” Cherry said and followed Harry before anyone could say anything else that might threaten her escape.
I put an arm around Gary. “Come on, tell me all about it. What’s the bastard done?”
He hiccupped. “We had a row.”
“About?”
“About the wedding, what else? He won’t even consider us both wearing white.”
Huh. Maybe it wasn’t quite as serious as it’d looked. “Is it really that big a thing?”
It was a clear sign of how upset Gary was that he heard that line and did absolutely nothing with it. “I gave in to him over the doves, and now I’m worried I’ll just give and give, and there’ll be nothing left of me!” Gary made an extravagant gesture that narrowly missed sending his drink flying.
Okay, so now I was beginning to see where he was coming from. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling. “Bit of a control freak, is he? I don’t know. Maybe it’s better to find that out now?”
Gary gave a large sniff and downed the rest of his martini, which, as answers went, was less than helpful.
“Has he done this before? You know, tried to make you change stuff?” A thought hit me, and I flushed. “When you go out, does he always insist on driving?”
There was a smaller sniff. “Not really.”
Huh. “Maybe he’s just got a thing about white? You know, doves, clothes…”
“You really think so?”
“Have you actually talked about it?” I gave him a pointed look. “Or have you just been hiding in here with your phone switched off?”
Cherry came over with our drinks at that point. Gary thanked her in a pathetically small voice, and she almost smiled at him. “I’ll be over at the bar if you need me,” she said as I reached to pull her out a chair.