by JL Merrow
Sean watched me with a smile. “Hey, you ever wear sock suspenders?”
“Ugh. No.” I shuddered. “Don’t tell me you find those sexy?”
“Well, you know. On the right set of calves.”
“Which, I regret to inform you, will never be mine,” I said firmly. He pulled me into his arms, and I laid my head on his shoulder.
“Oh? Have a bad experience with ’em when you were a kid?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. One of the masters at my old prep school was a firm proponent of the ghastly things.” I snuggled closer to Sean. Our legs fitted together extraordinarily neatly, I thought.
“Yeah?” Sean prompted. “So, what? Did he have horrible skinny legs? Gout? Varicose veins?”
“None of the above, as far as I recall.” I blushed with remembered embarrassment, glad Sean couldn’t see my face. “But, well… You have to remember, it was a rather old-fashioned place. I don’t think the library had been updated since about 1948.” Sean made a puzzled sound, and I hurried on. “So anyway, my friend at the time—Archie, his name was; goodness knows what he’s doing now—we’d been reading a lot of old school stories. Just William, that sort of thing. And we got it into our heads these sock suspenders might make rather good catapults, not that we’d ever seen such a thing. So Archie dared me to, ah, liberate a couple from Mr. Winters’s rooms.”
“Let me guess—you got caught?”
“In the very act of reaching into old Frosty’s underwear drawer.” I winced.
“God, did you get the cane?”
“Worse. I had to spend two hours writing out the lines Purloining underwear is not the act of a gentleman. And after it got around the school, which of course it did within minutes, I spent the rest of my time there known to all and sundry as “Undies”. And if you breathe a word of this to anyone,” I growled as his chest shook with not-very-well-stifled laughter, “this is the last time you’ll be getting your hands in my underwear.”
“Don’t worry. Your dark secret’s safe with me,” he said, his voice warm with amusement. “Honest, Undies.”
“I feel I should point out I have a knee extremely close to your testicles right now.”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure kneeing me there wouldn’t be the act of a gentleman.” His arms tightened around me. There was a long, cosy silence, and I began to drift off to sleep.
Sean’s voice rumbled in my ear. “You didn’t mind, did you?”
I blinked bleary eyes. “Mind? Mind what?”
“Going out with the kids earlier. Wasn’t too much like work for you, was it?”
“Of course not. It was fun.”
“Good.” Sean squeezed me just a little bit tighter.
Chapter Eighteen
After a long, lazy Saturday morning in bed I had to say a reluctant goodbye to Sean. He’d promised to take the twins to a football match in the afternoon and while I was tempted to suggest he take me as well, common sense asserted itself. It wouldn’t do to make him feel suffocated.
“See you tomorrow?” he said with what I chose to interpret as a hopeful lilt to his voice as we shared a last embrace.
“Definitely,” I assured him.
Sean smiled, straightened my bow tie for me in a touching if superfluous gesture, and left.
I flung myself onto the sofa and beamed at the ceiling for a goodly while. Having been constructed in the seventeenth century, it beamed right back at me. Then I got changed and went for a run. The ground, so muddy last night, had been hardened by an overnight frost that lingered in the shade and thawed as the sun hit it, leaving a clean, fresh scent in the air. The whole area around the village seemed extraordinarily beautiful this morning, and I ran for miles, the sunlight almost painfully bright as it glinted off the clear water of the river. I could hardly believe I’d been so lucky as to find this place, having chosen Shamwell purely on the basis that it was quiet, far enough from Potter’s Field and had a vacancy in the local primary school.
By the time I got back, I was ravenous. I called up Rose. “Pub lunch?” I asked when she finally picked up.
“You what?”
“Lunch. In a pub,” I clarified. “Fancy it?”
“Hang on a mo.” There was a slurping sound, as of someone drinking from a bedside glass of water. Then there was a swearing sound, as of someone spilling said water on the duvet. All conjecture, of course, but Rose certainly sounded unwontedly surly when she spoke again. “We don’t all get up at the bum-crack of dawn, you know.”
I frowned. “It’s 1:27 in the afternoon.”
“So?”
“So you’re a little late for dawn. I thought we could try the one down by the river.”
“Try what?”
Really, she was being unusually slow today. “The lunches. In the pub. By the river. They’re supposed to be quite good. How soon can you get down here?”
“God, you don’t give up, do you? Give me half an hour to put my face on.” At least she sounded somewhat more awake now. “The Tickled Trout, yeah?”
I beamed. “That’s the one! So I’ll see you there just before two?”
“Something like that.”
I made a mental note not to expect her before half past. Fortunately the pub advertised that food was served all day.
In the event, Rose made it to the Trout at 2:17, catching me in the guilty act of staving off the hunger pangs with a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps.
“You’ll ruin your lunch,” she said by way of greeting, and hitched a hip onto the bar stool next to mine. “What are you drinking?”
“Lime and soda,” I said abstemiously.
Rose’s lip curled. “Well, at least you’re a cheap date. I’ll have a medium white wine. Large,” she added as the barmaid turned to fill our order. “So what are we celebrating, anyhow?”
I blinked. “Celebrating? Nothing. I just thought as it was such a marvellous day we should make the most of it. If we go on through to the restaurant, they’re keeping a table by the window for us.” I smiled encouragingly at her.
She frowned with a touch of suspicion but followed.
Lunch was excellent—admittedly on the hearty end of the scale, rather than anything the frères Michelin might have felt tempted to write home about, but I had no complaints about my steak-and-ale pie, and Rose certainly polished off her lasagne with appropriate gusto.
“Dessert?” I asked as the waitress hovered with menus.
“Gawd, no, I’m stuffed. Well, maybe the cheesecake.” The waitress gave her a knowing smirk and swept away. “Now, are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
“Why on earth does it have to be about anything?” I cast a glance around the pub, which was crowded with other late lunchers. Mrs. Nunn was at a nearby table, picking at a salad and gesticulating with her wineglass at the tennis coach, while Destinee scribbled industriously on the tablecloth with a ballpoint pen that looked uncannily like one I’d mislaid at school. I smiled genially at them all. “I just fancied lunch out. And it’s been splendid, hasn’t it?”
A sort of weary comprehension seemed to dawn on Rose’s face. “Oh God. You finally got your end away with Sean, didn’t you?”
I blinked. “That’s…something of an assumption to make.”
“Not really. If I hadn’t been so hungover from last night out with the girls, I’d have spotted it a mile off.” She grinned. “So go on, how was he?”
“A gentleman would never kiss and tell.” Particularly not when Mrs. Nunn wasn’t the only parent from 2E potentially listening. I was almost certain Emily G’s gran was sitting with her back to us on the next table. Her monochrome curls were somewhat distinctive, and there was a certain attentiveness about the back of her head.
Rose apparently didn’t care about my reputation. “So leave out the kissing bit, and get straight on to the shagging.�
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“I really don’t…” I cast my gaze around for possible sources of distraction. “Oh, look—they’ve got a piano here. Do you think they’d mind if I tickled the ivories a tad?” The piano was roughly in the centre of the restaurant and was a baby grand rather than an upright like I had at home.
“Thought it was the trout that was supposed to be tickled here. Nah, save it to impress the boyfriend, I’ve still got a headache.” She smirked. “Did you impress him last night?”
“I didn’t ask for a performance appraisal. But he seemed well satisfied,” I couldn’t resist adding.
I may just possibly have mirrored her smirk, although my conscience pricked as I recalled it had been Sean, in fact, who’d done all the work. Still, I’d been there in a supervisory capacity. Providing, as it were, inspiration… I realised Rose was waving a hand in front of my face and had apparently been speaking to me. “Pardon?”
“I’m not going to ask where you drifted off to. There’s kids around. So are you seeing him tonight?”
“Tomorrow. He’s busy tonight.”
“What are you going to do?”
I sent her an evil smile. “That’s a rather indelicate question for a lady to be asking.”
“Good job I’m not a lady, then, innit?”
I pointedly failed to contradict her. “He’s coming over around teatime. We’ll probably just have a quiet evening in.” I gave her my sternest stare, the one even Destinee paid attention to occasionally (and which had almost had Charlie in tears when I’d inadvertently turned it on him). “So no popping round because you just happened to be down in the village.”
“Huh. Catch me playing gooseberry to a couple of lovesick loved-up lovebirds. Even thinking about it’s putting me right off my food.”
“Oh dear,” I said in mock distress as the waitress arrived with Rose’s cheesecake. “Looks like I’d better eat this for you.”
For a moment, I thought she was going to stab me with her fork.
My evening with Sean got off to something of a shaky start. He turned up on my doorstep with a hangdog expression and a spare motorcycle helmet.
“Um. Hope you’re not going to be mad, but I sort of double-booked myself tonight.”
My mood flattened, like a piece of bubble wrap that had had all its little pockets popped. “Oh. Well, if you’ve got a prior engagement, then of course you must—”
“Nah, I didn’t mean I can’t see you. Just, we sort of have to go out? One of the lads at work is in a band, and I totally forgot I’d promised to go to his gig tonight. I know you wanted a quiet night in, so I’m sorry about that. We don’t have to stay all through it or anything.”
“What kind of music is it?” I asked a little dubiously. I could generally find something to engage me in most types of music, but there were limits. Punk and I were not exactly bosom friends, and I couldn’t even count heavy metal as a nodding acquaintance.
“Just old covers and stuff.”
“That doesn’t exactly tell me anything, you know.”
“Uh… Undertones, Stranglers, The Damned… That kind of stuff.”
Lovely. Punk it was. “Should I acquire some jeans and rip them? I’d offer to spike my hair, but I think I’m fresh out of eggs.”
“Well, that’s not the only stuff you could use. We could always improvise…” He winked, leaving me in absolutely no doubt he’d seen the same film I had. “Nah, you’ll be fine as you are. They don’t do the real hardcore stuff. Just the popular ones. You’ll be fine.”
“The fact you felt the need to repeat that isn’t exactly reassuring me. So where is this gig?”
“Pub over in Bishops Langley. They do a sort of open mic thing, where local bands can go along if they book up ahead. I mean, they don’t get paid for it or anything, but it’s all about getting known, innit?”
“Is it? I thought it was about making a living.”
“Nah, they’ve all got day jobs. Just do it for fun, really. And the free drinks, of course. Look, we don’t have to go,” Sean said with a grimace. “I’ll just tell him I couldn’t make it.”
Guilt twisted inside me. “No, it’s fine. We’ll go. I’m sure it’ll be…” Imagination failed me. “I’ll just get my coat.”
As I swung my leg over Sean’s motorcycle, I wondered if turning up to a punk rock gig in bow tie and Barbour was a lynching offence.
I needn’t, as it turned out, have worried. The pub was crowded not with the sneering, multiply pierced teenage underclass, but with the Boden-clad, middle-aged middle class. There were several families with children running around, and the “lad” Sean worked with turned out to be pushing forty, which made listening to him sing about “Teenage Kicks” a somewhat unnerving experience.
I didn’t even have to use the headache pills I’d carefully stowed in my pocket, and ended the evening pleasantly tipsy on the surprisingly acceptable pinot grigio a guilty Sean had kept plying me with. There were several of his colleagues there, all supporting the band, and they proved surprisingly congenial company, seeming to accept me without question. One of them even regaled me with a rather amusing story from Sean’s early days in his job, involving a rat, a bookcase and a large wooden mallet. Swiftly followed by a bucket of soapy water for cleaning the bloodstains off the walls before the customer could see them.
The incongruity of it all striking me as rather amusing, I couldn’t resist texting Rose: At punk rock gig with a party of rat-catchers.
Unfortunately, when the answer came back, Should your father and I be concerned? I realised I’d sent the text to Mother by mistake, but all things considered, it wasn’t the worst thing I could have texted her by accident. Or, indeed, had done in the past.
There was, however, a frustrating downside to spending the evening out instead of in. If the company of Sean’s workmates hadn’t rendered any public displays of affection unthinkable (not that he wasn’t out to them, but, well, it just hadn’t seemed right) the presence of not a few St Saviour’s School parents—and one or two children—certainly had.
It was late when we roared back up at the Old Hatter’s Cottage. “You’re coming in,” I said as I swung my leg off Sean’s motorbike with considerably more grace than I’d managed the first time I’d dismounted from his powerful steed.
Sean grinned. “That didn’t sound like a question.”
“It wasn’t.” An evening spent keeping my hands off Sean, coupled with the ride back, had left me rather desperate to get him into the house.
“If this is the effect it has on you, I’m having you on my bike more often,” he said as we shut my front door behind us. “Or is this just the wine talking?”
“The pinot grigio would be far too well bred to even allude to any of the thoughts I’m having,” I murmured into his ear, having slung my arms around his neck.
“Oh yeah?” He squeezed me tight, causing rather delicious sensations in certain parts of me, then stepped back with an air of regret. “Think I’ll put the kettle on, though, just in case. You’re up for a coffee, yeah?”
I was up for something else entirely, but he’d already bypassed me, and I could hear him filling the kettle. It seemed futile to argue, so I settled for throwing myself on the sofa to await his return. Possibly with the suspicion of a pout. “That would be lovely,” I said, remembering my manners, although somewhat insincerely.
“Sorry about tonight,” he said, walking in with two steaming mugs much more quickly than I would have expected. Perhaps the wine was making me a little woozy. A certain amount of mental fog did seem to clear as I sipped my coffee. Sean had made it strong but added plenty of milk to take away the bitterness, and the temperature was just right.
“No, don’t be silly. Actually I quite enjoyed it. They’re very, um, enthusiastic, aren’t they?”
“What, Mike and the band? Yeah, just a bit. Good, though, aren’t they? Ke
pt the crowd entertained.”
“Mm. Although I felt a little bit on the spot when he came over to our table and started singing ‘My Perfect Cousin’ directly in my face.”
Sean grinned. “Could have been worse, you know. Some gigs, they do a cover version of the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’.”
I shuddered and drank some more coffee.
“S’pose classical music’s more your thing?” Leaning back on the sofa, Sean gestured towards my piano. “That yours? Or did it come with the rest of the furniture? You do rent furnished, right?”
I could have done with him waiting until the caffeine had completed its work before firing quite so many questions at me all at once. “Um, right. I mean, yes, I rent furnished, but the piano is mine. It was a moving-in present from my stepfather—I always played on the school pianos when I was living in, of course.” Mindful of Rose’s comment yesterday about impressing the boyfriend, I dived straight in. “Would you like me to play you some real music?”
“Go for it.” He gave a rueful smile. “Although, maybe not anything too heavy, yeah? Be wasted on me.”
I stood and stretched my fingers. “Oh, I’m not really into the heavier classics myself. Too many hours practising that sort of thing as a child, when Mother still had the idea of making a concert pianist out of me. No, I prefer more lighthearted pieces when I’m playing for fun.” I pulled out the piano stool and launched into “Fat Sam’s Grand Slam” from Bugsy Malone, and glanced over my shoulder to see Sean grinning in recognition.
“Pretty good,” he said when I’d finished. “You ever sing as well?”
I made a face. “Slightly lacking in the vocal talent department, I’m afraid. But sometimes, yes.”
“Go on, then. Let’s hear you.”
Emboldened by his enthusiasm (and, I’d have to confess, by the lingering effects of the pinot grigio) I went straight into Tom Waits’s “The Piano Has Been Drinking”, and sang along to this one. Well, spoke along, as the lyrics were more of a rambling commentary than an actual song. I’d always loved this one. There was something remarkably freeing about deliberately playing badly out of tune.