Caught!

by JL Merrow

  My mouth now being full, I snapped off a salute—and nearly took an eye out with the fork I’d forgotten I was holding.

  At least it had been empty, I consoled myself as I caught the Head giving me a frankly worried glance.

  When the bell rang for the end of school, the children weren’t the only ones in the class whose heartbeats starting racing. I wiped my palms on my handkerchief and, figuratively speaking, buckled on my breastplate like a knight of old preparing to do battle for a lady’s favour. Except, if all went well, it would be Sean winning Rose’s favour—or did the fact that he was the one being wooed cast him in the lady’s role here? A swift vision of Sean in a wimple and Rose in full chivalric armour almost surprised a nervous laugh out of me, but I managed to turn it into a cough.

  “Choke up, chicken,” Emily G’s gran, who was first in line for child collection, said with a wrinkly smile.

  Charlie, who was standing close by my side, pulled on my sleeve. I bent down to his level. “Why did she say that?” he whispered.

  “I have absolutely no idea,” I whispered back. “But you should always be polite to older people.” I straightened to nod, smiling, at Emily and her gran.

  Granny G narrowed her eyes and hurried Emily away rather more abruptly than I would have considered necessary.

  The line continued, parents and other nominally responsible adults picking up their infants, exclaiming over stories of childish achievements and being pestered to go and buy sweeties and/or visit the swings on the way back home. Luck was with me, although possibly not with the twins’ mother, as it was Sean who came to pick up Wills and Harry. I stood aside to let the twins barrel past me and launch themselves at their uncle, who bore the onslaught with only a minor look of discomfort as one of them head-butted him in the solar plexus.

  I winced in sympathy and stepped forward again. “Sean? Could I, um, have a word? If you don’t have to rush off, of course.” Maybe he did have to rush off. I wondered what he did for a living that he was able to bring his nephews to and from school. Perhaps he was unemployed? I wondered if Rose knew. Would it be a deal-breaker for her, as the common parlance was?

  “Yeah, sure.” He frowned down at the twins. “What have you two been up this time, then?”

  “No, no—it’s nothing to do with them.” I was struck with a brainwave. “Actually, why don’t you two go and play on the climbing frame while you’re waiting?”

  “Yeah!” they shouted in unison, and ran off without a second glance at their uncle.

  Sean waited while I offloaded the last of my charges, save for the twins and Charlie. Then he turned to me, a question in his eyes. Actually, the question was in his entire body language. It seemed to give the moment a weighty importance I could, frankly, have done without. It was ridiculous. All I had to do was ask him to go for a drink, and it wasn’t even for me. “Er,” I began. My throat caught, so I coughed to clear it.

  “Choke a chicken,” Charlie piped up politely from beside me, having evidently decided it was just one of those things people said for no apparent reason, like bless you to a person who’d sneezed, or sorry to someone who’d trodden on your foot.

  “Thank you.” I turned back to Sean. He seemed a bit distracted and tore his gaze away from Charlie with a start when I spoke. “I, ah, just wondered, if, you know, you’d like to, um, go for a drink? Just, just a friendly drink,” I added, to make things perfectly clear. “To see what the place is like now? The wine bar, I mean. Badgers. It’s been refurbished. Um. You probably knew that.”

  Sean arched one copper-coloured eyebrow. “Yeah, okay,” he said slowly. Something inside my chest performed gymnastics that were, in the circumstances, totally unwarranted. “Tonight?”

  “Tonight would be lovely.”

  “Eight o’clock all right? I’ll come to yours first.”

  “No, no, you needn’t do that.” I was fairly sure that was more, well, date behaviour. Not friendly-drink behaviour. “We can meet there.”

  He shrugged. “I’m going to need somewhere to park the bike, anyway. Your place is nearer than the village car park.”

  “Oh. Well, in that case, mi entrada es su entrada.” Sean looked blank. “Um. My driveway is your driveway? I mean, feel free. Park away.” God, why did I turn into a blithering idiot around this man? The sooner I got him fixed up with Rose the better. Then maybe my subconscious would stop getting its knickers in a twist every time I saw him.

  There was a painful knot in my stomach. Clearly I’d eaten too much of Rose’s rice salad.

  “Great. I’ll see you then.” Sean smiled and turned to amble over the field to where the twins were hanging upside down from the climbing frame.

  I looked down at Charlie. “Looks like it’s just you and me, then. Want to sit down and do some colouring while I see if Mrs. Ormley can find out what’s keeping your dad this time? Don’t worry, I won’t make you sit with her.” Mrs. Ormley was known for her excellent manner with the parents and extreme surliness with anyone else. Including the teachers, whom she seemed to see as somewhat larger and therefore more troublesome schoolchildren.

  Charlie nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sure he’s just got held up in traffic. Or lost track of time.”

  Charlie nodded again, blinking rapidly.

  I hid a sigh as I got out the colouring pencils.

  By the time Charlie’s monolithic dad lumbered up to the classroom door, sweating and apologising in equal profusion, it was too late to catch Rose still in school, so I sent her a text: Mission accomplished. Badgers @ 8 tonight.

  Her reply was somewhat cryptic: TFIF. Jst rmmbr: YOLO.

  I sent back: Translation, please?

  Her response wasn’t much better. Lrn txtspk, FFS. DDAIWD.

  I gave up.

  As I sat at my dining table that evening, tapping idly at my laptop and burning my mouth on my Tesco microwave lasagne, I couldn’t help thinking about what Hanne had said. Was it really unhealthy to be alone? Should I start looking for another relationship?

  Sean’s smiling face popped into my mind. I suppressed it ruthlessly. Then I recalled it and stamped a mental Property of Rose Wyman on top of it.

  The trouble was, Sean duly disposed of, I found my thoughts turning inevitably to Crispin. He’d had that colour of hair that’s commonly termed “dirty blond”, but the bare description didn’t do him justice. He’d worn it long on top, so it just flopped over his eyes. God, his eyes. They were blue, and clear, and twinkled with devilry when he smiled…

  Damn it. I was not still hung up on Crispin. I was not.

  At any rate, it was safer for me to steer well clear of men for the foreseeable future. So that was what I would do.

  I looked at the computer screen and went cold all over as I realised I’d absentmindedly called up the Gentlemen’s Relish dating website—their motto, Huntin’, Shootin’ and Cottagin’.

  I shut the laptop with a snap.

  Chapter Four

  I was glad when it was time to get ready for my evening date—no, not date, friendly drink—with Sean. But that brought its own problems. I wanted to put him at his ease; to make him feel he was among friends. And after Rose’s comments about my bow ties, I was starting to wonder if I should experiment with more popular neckwear. Or even none at all.

  I tried wearing a shirt with no tie, but with the collar unbuttoned, my throat seemed absurdly naked, my neck too thin and scrawny, my skin glaringly white and my Adam’s apple the size of a grapefruit. But with the buttons all done up, it looked like my mother had dressed me. Also, that she didn’t like me very much.

  As I was almost certain she was actually quite fond of me, it would hardly be fair to go around giving erroneous impressions. I sighed and rooted around in my wardrobe for a tie of the non-bow variety. I knew I had some. At least, I’d had some before the move—four, to be precis
e—so presumably they were here somewhere. I glanced at my watch and started rooting a bit more speedily.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I eventually located them, strung on a coat hanger with my second-best waistcoat. Now I saw them, I even had a vague recollection of putting them there with the thought that all the things I was unlikely to wear might as well stick together. I pulled them off the hanger and regarded them thoughtfully.

  The old school tie was out, obviously; that eye-piercing combination of lime and magenta would probably get me refused admittance to the wine bar. It certainly wasn’t going to put anyone at their ease. The college tie was acceptable in appearance, being plain navy with an understated pattern of little crests, but I didn’t want to seem like an intellectual snob. Especially as I was fairly sure Sean had never gone to university.

  I hesitated over the next tie. I don’t know why I’d kept it, to be honest. It was ivory in colour, with an elegant cursive script that read “My other tie is a bow tie.” I’d loved it from the minute Crispin had given it to me…

  I shoved all three ties back into the wardrobe and shut the door. The fourth and final tie would have to do. Even if it was plain black and had only previously been allowed out to funerals.

  Now, how to tie it? A full Windsor would clearly be too ostentatious. A four in hand, though safe, might imply a lack of care. A half Windsor? That just screamed boring. Ah! I had it. The Prince Albert. Debonair, yet with a touch of individuality. Perfect. I had to make several attempts to get it tied to my satisfaction—I was sadly out of practice—but in the end, I thought, it didn’t look too bad: nonchalantly asymmetrical, with the slenderest of extra folds peeking coyly out from the bottom of the knot. That would look nicely informal.

  I ran lightly down the stairs and settled in an armchair to await Sean’s arrival. It was a minute to eight, so he’d be here directly… I caught myself and told myself firmly that to other people, eight o’clock meant anything from eight to half past, not just as the Greenwich pips fade into the ether. I would not allow myself to become anxious over any lack of punctuality.

  Then I heard the roar of a motorbike engine. It Dopplered towards me in an ever higher-pitched crescendo, then faded to a purr and stopped, as Sean parked his bike in mi entrada. I watched, entranced, as he pulled off his helmet and shook out his hair. Rippling softly in the streetlamp’s yellow glow, it shone like liquid copper. There ought to be swelling music, I thought. Possibly birdsong, if anyone could persuade the lazy little blighters to twitter after sunset. The clouds should part, and the light of the full moon should break through and limn his form with silver…

  No.

  No, no, no. I wrenched the curtain shut, wincing as a hook cracked under the pressure. Sean was here for Rose’s benefit, not mine.

  I flung open the front door a bit more dramatically than I’d intended and yelped as my hand got jammed between the doorknob and the wall. “Ouch. Come in.”

  “You all right there?” Sean’s gaze fell upon my tie. “Oh, sorry, mate—have you just been to a funeral?”

  “No, no. Just thought perhaps I should give the bow ties a night off.” I made a face. “It’s been pointed out to me they’re not very trendy.”

  Sean frowned. “Who said that? I like your bow ties. Bow ties are cool.”

  A warm, fluttery feeling spread through my chest, as if a dozen animated bow ties flitted like butterflies inside me. “That’s exactly what I told her!”

  “Who?”

  “Er, Rose.” Too late, I realised I shouldn’t be saying anything that might make her look bad. “But I’m sure she meant well. She doesn’t seem to think much of Matt Smith’s Doctor Who.”

  “What? He was one of the best ones. Well, him and David Tennant.” Sean pursed his lips and nodded. “You could fancy David Tennant, but Matt Smith was the one you’d take home to your mum.”

  “You didn’t like Christopher Eccleston?” I’d always considered him the sexiest Doctor. Certainly, he could have enticed me into his deceptively large blue box for a ride any time. “I’d have thought, being a fellow fan of black leather…”

  “Nah, well, he was okay, but he was like a transitional Doctor, wasn’t he? The one just after the Time Wars, when he’s all PTSD and stuff. Bit too serious for my liking. Can’t imagine him in a bow tie, can you?”

  “Good Lord, no.” I shuddered at the very thought. “You know, I’ve been searching forever for a bow tie that actually has Bow Ties Are Cool on it. Somebody in the neckwear business is definitely missing a trick there.”

  “Too right. Hey, are we going to stand on your doorstep all night, or are we heading out for this drink?”

  We were still on the doorstep? Oops, so we were. Had I forgotten to invite him in? Or just forgotten to move so he could actually get in? Probably both, I decided. “Sorry about that. Er, I won’t be a tick.” I turned to shove my feet into my second-best brogues. “There. All ready. Shall we?”

  He grinned. “I feel like I ought to offer you my arm or something.”

  “What, in case I totter in my high heels?” I glanced down at a pair of rather delicious-looking black biker boots as we walked down the exceedingly short garden path to the pavement. “Come to think of it, your heels are higher than mine. Perhaps I should offer you my arm.”

  “Nah, I’m taller than you. Wouldn’t look right.”

  “I’m sure we’d be exactly the same height if we were barefoot.” My face grew a little warm, for no apparent reason I could fathom. After all, I hadn’t meant completely bare. Just our feet. Which I in no way had any kind of fetish about. “Five foot eleven?”

  “Six foot,” he countered smugly.

  “Damn it.”

  “Yeah, it’s the extra inch that makes all the difference.”

  “Surely it’s what you do with it that counts?” Bugger it sideways, I was not supposed to be trading innuendo with the man. That was Rose’s job. “Ahem. Nice evening, isn’t it?”

  Sean looked up and down the street as we ambled on. A light drizzle was falling, making the pavement glisten in the lamplight as if an obscenely large slug had happened to pass that way. “Well, it’s an evening.”

  I glanced at him and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a grin at the merriment in his eyes.

  Badgers wine bar was another forty-five or so yards up the road from the Chinese takeaway, on the corner just across the road from the churchyard. Its large windows glowed with an inviting, warm light. The entrance was set off to the side and looked confusingly like the front door to one of the terraced houses, a row of which directly adjoined the business. The effect was rather as if the owner of the end house had come into money and splurged the lot on building a conservatory with more floor space than the house itself.

  “This is definitely the right door, isn’t it?” I asked, my hand on the large brass knob. “I don’t want to walk into somebody’s house.”

  “Yeah, just imagine if it was one of the kids in your class. Poor little sod would have a heart attack thinking you’d come to check they were doing their homework properly. Nah, we’re good here.”

  I opened the door and found myself stepping into a cosy little vestibule that led, via a somewhat winding route, to the wine bar proper. This was a large rectangular room with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides and colourful artwork on the other two walls. We sat at a table next to the window—actually, it was more like what I believe Americans call a booth, with red plush diner-style seats perpendicular to the wall or, as in this case, window. Sean slid onto one bench and I onto its opposite number. Our knees jostled for position under the rectangular oak table, and I forced myself to remember Rose.

  His leather jacket discarded, Sean was casually dressed in a dark blue shirt with the top few buttons undone to reveal a T-shirt underneath. Apparently the open collar held no horrors for him. Perhaps I should have dispensed with the tie after all? At a
ny rate, I could take off my jacket, I decided. I shrugged it off and laid it on the seat beside me.

  The world’s smallest waitress—really, I was certain several of class 2E outweighed her—came with a bounce of blonde curls to take our order. I perused the wine list and ordered a large glass of sauvignon blanc, hoping she wouldn’t buckle under the weight when she brought it over. Sean chose a bottle of something called Wormold’s Woe, from a local brewery.

  “Ah, you’re a fan, I take it?” I commented as the waitress tripped off with soundless steps.

  “Yeah, they do a good beer, this brewery. Haven’t tried this one yet, though.”

  I mentally kicked myself. Of course he wouldn’t recognise the literary allusion in the name.

  Sean grinned. “Or were you talking about Our Man in Havana?”

  “Oh, you’ve read it?” I tried to keep the surprise out of my tone. The merriment in Sean’s eyes told me I wasn’t entirely successful.

  “Yeah. Brighton Rock’s my favourite, though. He came from round here, you know, Graham Greene.”

  “Really?” I hadn’t known that. Why hadn’t I known that?

  “Yeah, born in Berkhamsted. Bit of a git, or so they say, but a good writer. Go on, admit it, you thought I’d never heard of Graham Greene, didn’t you?”

  “Um…” I really, really wished the waitress would hurry up with our drinks. Fiddling with the salt and pepper pots just wasn’t the same.

  “Don’t worry, I get that all the time. People just make assumptions—like, they see me, they reckon I never open a book. Then they see someone like you, and—”

  “Here you go, one large sauvignon blanc,” the waitress interrupted him, balancing a tray precariously on one hand as she put my wine down in front of me. Damn it. I’d wanted to know what Sean had been about to say. What did people assume when they saw me? “And one Wormold’s Woe.”