by JL Merrow
Robin didn’t mean to peer into Archie’s house as he passed by that Saturday afternoon. It just sort of happened without any conscious decision on his part.
He’d needed a bit of retail therapy after the events of Friday—there was nothing like buying stuff you didn’t need to ward off the horrors of potential future unemployment and penury. So he’d been into town to go to the shops he didn’t work at. He’d come back with a really cool shirt and an amazing pair of shoes, classic yet individual, which he’d put on as soon as he’d got home so he could start walking them in. As it was a nice day for the time of year, i.e. not actually raining, he decided he might as well walk them in outdoors.
He ambled along the street, idly wondering what he was going to have for his tea, and letting his feet take him where they would. Apparently his feet really liked Verne Avenue, which just so happened to be Archie’s road. They were taking him past Archie’s house when, oh look, his shoelace started to come loose. Better stop and tie it a bit tighter before it came totally undone and tripped him up as he was crossing the road, sending him straight under the wheels of a double-decker bus. Which would be tragic, as nobody had seen him in his cool new shoes yet.
While he crouched down, it was only natural to cast a glance through the rusty wrought iron gate. After all, his fingers had been tying laces for twenty years now, give or take. They could probably manage perfectly well without any input from his eyes.
The garden was mostly overgrown shrubs, with some signs of recent—and ruthless—cutting back having gone on. The front door was painted heritage green, which Robin recognised from having spent many a Sunday teatime listening to his aunt Susan complain about the limited range of paint colours English Heritage allowed to use on her house, which was a listed building. The bay window was a sash type Robin hadn’t thought existed any more outside of Peter Pan movies, but which went perfectly with the large, old-fashioned knocker on the door. Despite the cold—the sun hadn’t actually gone down yet, but it was, metaphorically speaking, putting on its coat and checking it had its keys—the sash was thrown up, and a woman was sitting on the windowsill, gazing out.
More precisely, she was gazing straight at Robin with a strong hint of amusement in her raised eyebrow.
As Robin lurched to his feet and struggled to untangle them enough to sprint far, far away, she met his gaze and beamed as though he were her long-lost son. “All right?” she called out. “Are you looking for Archie? He’s not in right now. He had to go into work, some kind of a thing . . . I know he told me, but what was it, now? Works too hard, he does. Still, what can you do? Not like anyone’d hire me.” She gave a loud . . . well, Robin had been brought up properly, which was a euphemism for strictly, so he’d call it a laugh, but he had a strong suspicion that anyone else might have termed it a cackle.
She was a petite woman, with very white skin, big brown eyes, and a huge mop of floofy dark hair as if she’d gone back in time to an eighties hairdresser just after they’d had a fresh crate of mousse delivered.
Who on earth was she? A lodger, Robin decided. It must cost a lot to keep up an old house like that, and with Possibly-Mrs.-Archie only working nights in the chippie, and child care to worry about too, they could most likely do with the extra money. Maybe this lady babysat for Archie and his wife when they wanted a romantic night out . . . Robin swallowed, and tried not to think about that. “Um, I was just passing . . .” He took a step forward, trod on the end of a shoelace, grabbed hold of the gate to stay upright, and almost fell over again as it swung open.
The woman threw her legs over the windowsill and jumped out of the window with total disregard for a couple of sad little plantlings in the flowerbed underneath. Her clothes were a weird mix—a pair of wide-legged pinstripe trousers, coupled with a tight T-shirt and a grandad cardi that looked like it’d been lent her by an actual grandad. She didn’t have any shoes on, but her thick woolly socks were probably proof against anything short of Biblical floods.
She walked towards Robin, her footsteps barely crunching in the gravel drive. “So you thought you’d drop in? Aw, that’s lovely! Come on in and I’ll make you a cuppa. I think we’ve got some tea. Or was it coffee? We’ve definitely got all kinds of herbal stuff. No, come on, I insist. Any mate of Archie’s is a mate of mine. Gets a bit quiet round here when he’s out. Maybe I should get a dog? Do you have a dog? Or a cat. Cats are good. Or a ferret. Nice shoes, those. Archie’s always saying I should wear shoes.”
Stupefied by the flood of words, Robin found himself being taken by the elbow and steered into Archie’s house—thankfully, through the front door, rather than the window. Then it hit him. If Scary Chip Shop Girl only worked nights, she could very well be in the house right now. He swallowed. “Is the rest of Archie’s family in?”
The woman stopped so suddenly that Robin almost fell on top of her. “Over my dead body.” Her tone had flicked a switch from babbling brook to glacial meltwater.
What the hell had they done to her? Was she even talking about the same people? “I . . . uh . . . The baby? And the lady with the . . .” Temporarily unable to remember the technical term for the sort of poofed-out skirt Scary Chip Shop Girl had been wearing when he’d seen her last, Robin found himself tracing a voluptuous figure in the air with his hands.
Sunshine broke back over the woman’s face. “Oh, them. Thought you were talking about my family. No, they’re over on Shelley Street, Bridge and Jerrick, bless him. Where the chippie is, you know? It’s just me and my Archie here. Except he’s not.”
“Your . . .”
“Oh, didn’t I say? Forget my own head next. I’m Lyddie. Archie’s mum.”
Robin blinked. “You don’t look nearly old enough.” She didn’t—there was a wide-eyed innocence about her that didn’t gel with Robin’s ideas of parents of adult children.
She laughed again, much more musically this time. “Oh, get away with your bollocks! You’re a proper charmer, ain’t you? I’m telling Archie that one, he’ll have a fit. No, he’s all mine. Child bride, I was. Well, less of the bride. Never really believed in it myself. Come on in and I’ll get that kettle on.”
She padded down the hall, her socks leaving faint muddy traces on the floorboards. Robin struggled briefly: his mum had always been strict about him taking his shoes off when visiting someone’s house, but she’d also been pretty forceful about not walking on dirty floors in his socks. He decided in the end that anyone who wore socks outside probably wouldn’t care too much what he did with his shoes, and kept them on. She led him into a medium-size kitchen that must have been the height of modernity sometime in the seventies and had been resting on its laurels ever since.
“How do you know my Archie, then?” Lyddie yelled over the noise of the kettle filling.
“Er . . . we’ve bumped into each other a couple of times, that’s all. I’m Robin, by the way.” Did she know her son went out at night to do unspeakable things to vulnerable fridges? Robin felt very strongly that he shouldn’t be the one to break it to her if not.
“Biscuits, biscuits, biscuits . . .” Having put the kettle on, Lyddie looked blankly around the kitchen. Then her eyes lit up. “Cake! We’ve got cake. Bridge brought it round. You go and sit down. Not there; those chairs aren’t fit to be sat on until we get them painted. Living room is over the hall. You can’t miss it. Not unless you end up in the loo. I’ll bring it all through.”
Robin retreated into the hall and struggled with a brief, unworthy impulse to take the opportunity to escape. He pushed it down firmly and opened the door to, as it turned out, the living room.
It was a large room but nonetheless cosy, with a squashy sofa and a comfortable clutter of newspapers, discarded woolly jumpers, and— Oh good God, what’s that?
A sizeable portion of one wall was covered in newspaper clippings. There were placards on sticks propped against the wall, reading People Not Profits and Willoughbys Will Not Win. A bit of old board had what looked like an oddment of wallpaper pinne
d to it, with a list of objectives penned in scruffy Sharpie.
Robin was apparently standing in the campaign headquarters of the alarmingly real and not at all bluffing Community Over Consumerism group. Well, this is all a bit of a COC-up, he thought hysterically.
“So what is it you do for a living, love?” Lyddie came out of the kitchen brandishing a slightly lopsided Victoria sponge cake. And a very large knife.
Robin panicked. “I, I work in a . . . in an office. As a . . . an accountant. Lots of numbers. Totally boring. I don’t like to talk about it.”
She put her head on one side. “Aw, bless. You ought to think about a different career if you hate it that much. Can’t waste your life doing stuff you don’t like. Course, what would I know? Done bugger all in my life.” Her shoulders slumped, the cake listing on its plate and the knife hanging limp by her side.
All at once she seemed fragile rather than frightening. Robin’s stomach twisted. “Can I help you with that cake? Let’s put it down here, and I’ll go and get some plates. Wouldn’t want to get crumbs on your carpet.”
She didn’t say anything, but her eyes held a hint of Blimey, aren’t you posh? Robin was as quick as he could be fetching the plates—it helped that the kitchen was surprisingly well organised—and when he returned, cut her a large slice.
Lyddie, who’d ignored the sofa to sit cross-legged on the floor, gave him a brave smile. “You’re a treasure, you are. And you’re not even all that young, are you? How old are you?”
“Uh, twenty-four.” Why was she so interested in his age?
“That’s plenty old enough in anyone’s book. Why aren’t you with my Archie? He could do with someone like you.”
“Um, because he’s married to a woman? With a kid?” With a sort of when-in-Rome spirit, Robin hitched up his trouser legs and sat awkwardly on the floor in front of the sofa.
Her peal of laughter was high and delighted. “Archie? Married? Where did you get that one from? Oh, he’s going to piss himself when I tell him. Married! Not that she’s not a lovely girl, but them, married? It’d never work. Tell you the truth, I’ve always reckoned he’d go for a bloke in the end. Too like his old mum, he is.”
“But . . . it is his kid, isn’t it? The baby?”
“Oh yeah. He’s a darling, isn’t he? Spitting image of his dad. But they split up well before Jerrick was born, him and Bridge did.”
“So . . . they’re not together anymore? At all?” Okay, she’d pretty much said that, but Robin was feeling too elated to trust his own senses and would rather like some additional confirmation.
Lyddie leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “They look after Jerrick together. He’s a great dad, Archie is. I won’t have no one saying he’s not. None of this buggering off and leaving her to it like his own dad did. Well, I say his dad. Who really knows, right? But he could have been. If he’d wanted to. Archie has him evenings, after work, while Bridge does her shift at the chippie. Always has.” She cocked her head and gave the now thoroughly confused Robin a curiously shrewd glance. “You like him, don’t you?”
Robin inhaled a mouthful of cake. And not in the ate-it-quickly way.
Lyddie laughed her head off at his choking fit, her earlier sadness apparently forgotten. At least she thumped him on the back while she did so. It didn’t seem to help much, and Robin had a feeling he’d be bruised in the morning, but the sympathy was welcome.
The coughing finally subsided, leaving him red-faced and still spluttering slightly, so of course, that was the perfect moment for Archie to walk in, debonair as always—for about a nanosecond. Then his eyes (which, even in his mortified state, Robin noticed were the same rich shade of brown as his mum’s) widened comically as they took in Robin sitting down with his mum like the stalker who came to tea.
There was only one thing, Robin thought in a detached way, that could possibly make this more embarrassing, and that was if he’d blurted out “You’re not married!” to the unwitting object of his affections.
And then Archie’s jaw dropped, Lyddie burst out laughing again, and Robin realised that the reason he’d had such an oddly specific thought was that he had, in fact, done just that.
Archie had walked in on any number of strange or embarrassing scenes involving his mother, but somehow none of them had prepared him for this. He felt uncomfortably hot, and absurdly self-conscious. “Robin?” he said weakly. “And no, no, I’m not. Married. Never have been. Uh, who told you I was?”
Robin’s face seemed to get even redder, which Archie would have bet a crate of Dapper Devil Moustache Wax wasn’t actually possible. “I just . . . thought? You know, with the cog-thing—”
“Cogling?”
“Right, and Scary Chip Shop Girl—”
Lyddie shrieked with laughter.
“—and the whole family out for Sunday lunch and all. And, um, I think I’d like to go home now. And never go out anywhere ever again.” He tugged at the collar of his flannel shirt, clearly miserable.
“You think Bridge is scary?” Archie asked, because of course that was the most important issue.
“You don’t?”
“Um, no?” Archie glanced at Lyddie, but she was still having fits and was no help. “And anyway, you were out for Sunday lunch with the family too. Are you married?”
He meant it in the sense of See how ridiculous your assumption was? but had a nasty feeling it came out sounding more like Please be single.
“What, to Azrah? Oh God, no. No. She’s like my oldest friend. Or frenemy. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. And she doesn’t want to get married. To anyone, not just me. Not that I would, because I’m gay. Did I mention I really ought to be going?”
“You want cake, Archie? We’ve got cake. And tea.” Lyddie looked around, and frowned. “We were going to have tea, I’m sure we were.”
“Sorry, my fault.” Robin stumbled to his feet. “Forgot to bring it in. I’ll get it now.”
Archie watched him go, trying not to be ridiculously happy at the knowledge Robin was into blokes. It got easier when he turned to Lyddie and saw the state of her socks. “Where did you find him? And you know you shouldn’t keep going outside without your shoes on. It’s not the middle of summer anymore.”
Lyddie did her usual note-perfect imitation of a teenage eye roll. “I only hopped out the window to say hi. Robin came to see you, didn’t he? So I was making him feel at home.”
Robin had come to see him? Archie couldn’t imagine why. Unless . . . No, that was just wishful thinking. And hadn’t he decided Robin was too young for him? In the event Archie was in the market for a boyfriend, which he certainly wasn’t.
Except that Robin seemed a lot more mature today, in a pair of casual trousers and a much less objectionable sweater over his checked shirt. He looked older, and sharper, and not to put too fine a point on it, exactly like the bloke Archie had been dreaming about ever since they’d first met over the fridge. And he’d been sitting on the floor with Lyddie, which was all kinds of endearing.
No, no, it wasn’t. Or it shouldn’t be, at any rate. Archie had responsibilities. He couldn’t go around finding people adorable. He took a deep breath. “Right. I’ll go help him in the kitchen, and see what he wants.”
“Oh, I know what he wants,” Lyddie sang out, and laughed again.
Trying not to read too much into it—Lyddie was notorious for seeing things that weren’t there—Archie left the room before she could start quizzing him on what he wanted. He found Robin searching the kitchen cupboards. “What have you lost?”
Robin jumped and banged his head on a cupboard door. “Um, mugs. And tea. And milk. And possibly sugar if your mum or you take it.” He turned, rubbing his head, a lopsided expression on his face that in no way made Archie want to kiss him.
Get a grip. “Mugs are top left. Milk’s in the cellar, but don’t worry about it cos we’re out of proper tea. Herbal okay? That’s in with the mugs.”
“You have a cellar? That sounds really cool. U
m, literally and figuratively, I’d imagine.” Robin retrieved two mugs and set them on the counter, then pulled out a couple of boxes of teabags. “Sorry, by the way. Didn’t mean to, you know, intrude. I was just passing by, and then your mum invited me in . . .”
“Yeah, she does that. We’re going to need another mug, by the way. You only got two out and my maths may not be that great but I’m pretty sure there’s three of us.”
“Oh, I didn’t think you’d want me to stay.”
“So you were going to make your hosts some tea, and then leave? I like to think we’re a bit more hospitable than that.” Archie gave a rueful smile.
Robin’s answering expression was tentative but hopeful. The tension was leaving his eyes, and they shone bluer than ever. He really was adorable . . . Then he shook himself minutely. “Right. Tea. You’ve got, um, blackcurrant, or . . . I don’t know how to pronounce this one.”
“Rooibos,” Archie supplied, his voice coming out a bit croaky. He cleared his throat. “And yeah, I’ll have that one. Lyddie too. She says the blackcurrant one tastes like watery Ribena.”
“Oh?” Robin raised an eyebrow, and opened the box of blackcurrant to give it a sniff. “Huh. It’s like being a kid again.” He put a blackcurrant teabag into one of the mugs, fetched down another from the cupboard and, in short order, had made two rooibos teas and the blackcurrant for himself. “My mum’s never agreed with sugary drinks for kids, so when I had tonsillitis and the doctor told her to give me Ribena for my sore throat, she made it with about seventeen parts water. This smells just like it, only stronger.”
“Fond memories?” Archie asked with a grin.
“Hey, days off school, staying in my pyjamas, and getting to watch cartoons all day—what’s not to like?”
Archie tried not to wince. That sounded pretty much like a regular day in his childhood, and you could definitely have too much of a good thing.
“You know, you’re a lot more normal than I thought you were,” Robin said as they carried the teas to the living room. “Um, that came out sounding wrong.”