‘Morning, Shirley,’ she said, with a wave.
‘Morning, crazy lady,’ said Shirley, as she and her trolley shuffled by. Beth felt a thump in her thigh as Doris charged past her. Doris’s gruff bark made Beth jump and cost her valuable moments as she lunged unsuccessfully for her collar. Doris bounded up to Shirley, making Shirley look even smaller than usual.
‘Doris! Come here! Heel! Stop! Halt!’ Beth tried a series of commands as she ran over to the barking dog, but Doris wasn’t paying attention. Doris was fixated on barking at Shirley and her wheelie trolley.
‘Stupid animal!’ said Shirley, waving her arms about wildly, which put the dog on her guard and she stepped back and wagged her tail whilst continuing to bark.
This gave Beth a chance to grab hold of her collar and she marched a reluctant Doris back inside. ‘Sorry!’ Beth called over her shoulder. Shirley shook her head, muttered something, patted her wheelie trolley and moved off again.
Beth guided Doris inside, shut the door firmly, and the dog recommenced her exploration of the cottage whilst Beth reread the business card.
Jack Selby
IT Consultant
Selby Systems
She was intrigued. Was he moonlighting? Or just bigging up a very small part? She turned the card over in her hand, looking for more clues, but that would have to wait until later as there was a noise coming from upstairs. Beth started up the stairs but, before she got halfway, her tent appeared in the bedroom doorway. Doris had somehow managed to get inside the tent but now was unable to get out of it and looked as if she was wearing it as a fancy dress costume. She tried and failed repeatedly to get through the doorway but the springy tent frame bounced her back each time as she whimpered her frustration. Beth blinked hard; maybe this wasn’t going to be that easy after all.
Carly was waiting on the cobbles in Covent Garden. She and Fergus were having a date night. She froze when she saw the bouquet of pale roses coming towards her but relaxed as soon as she saw it was Fergus carrying them.
‘You okay?’ he asked, planting a kiss on her lips.
‘Yes. I wasn’t because, for a second there, I thought you were Nick.’
‘Whoops. I got the roses because you really liked the ones he bought you.’
She had to admit it was a lovely thought, even if it was borrowed from Nick. ‘Your bunch is bigger than his.’
‘I know,’ grinned Fergus, before handing them over and giving her another kiss.
Date night was another of Beth’s ideas and Carly hoped it would end better than the Minecraft tutorial. Carly and Beth had slipped into having long conversations on the phone on a Wednesday evening and it was definitely helping Carly’s state of mind. There were few people that Carly would listen to but Beth was one of them. She had suggested that the proposal was becoming a destructive obsession and that Carly needed to recognize this. It wasn’t what Carly had wanted to hear but she knew her friend was right. And now she was trying very hard to shove it firmly to the back of her mind.
Fergus had booked the restaurant so Carly was a little apprehensive, although she had said that they could pay for it from the bills account in the hope that it would steer Fergus away from fast food. Fergus was wearing trousers and a jumper. No jogging bottoms or lounge trousers in sight – it was a very good start.
They strolled around Covent Garden for a while, popping in and out of the stalls and shops. Covent Garden was always full of life but especially in the early evening when the theatre crowd descended. People were sitting outside making the most of the lack of rain and mild September weather. Music was coming from somewhere but, before they could investigate, Fergus took her arm and guided her away. They ambled along Garrick Street until Fergus stopped and opened the door to a small restaurant.
‘It’s new,’ he whispered, ‘but I’ve heard good things about it online.’
It looked as if a lot of other people had heard that too – the restaurant was heaving. Every inch of available space had a table in it and every table had as many chairs around it as possible but the jolly waiting staff seemed to squeeze through the awkward set-up with ease.
The menus arrived and, on realizing Fergus was deaf, their young waitress proceeded to shout at Fergus, ‘Can you hear me now?’
‘No, I’m still deaf,’ said Fergus, to the puzzled young woman. ‘I can lip-read but it’s easier if you don’t shout.’ She blushed and proceeded to go through the specials at a normal volume. Fergus had long since stopped getting cross with people who thought shouting at him would solve the problem; their lack of awareness wasn’t meant as a personal attack.
The food was incredible and, for the first time in too long, they signed to each other and had proper conversations in between courses. At first, Carly felt the intrigued eyes of other customers on them but they soon lost interest.
Fergus talked about them getting away to Ireland. There were places he wanted to show her, parts of his history he wanted her to see for herself. He brought to life the smell of the peat fires and the noise of the bars as well as the madness of his family. She had met his parents a few times when they’d visited London and she’d been to Ireland once but it had been a flying visit where she was wheeled round elderly relative after elderly relative before they attended his cousin’s wedding. On that trip she had got to know quite a lot of his relatives, the fun and overwhelming volume of an Irish wedding reception, and the effects of too much Guinness, but sadly nothing of County Westmeath.
At the end of the meal, they sat and sipped tea until one of the waitresses coughed and they noticed they were the only ones left in the restaurant.
Fergus took Carly’s hand across the small table. ‘Are you happy, Carls?’
She didn’t have to think. ‘Yes, I am.’ Things were looking better and, more importantly, things felt better. She wasn’t foolish enough to think everything was completely fixed but they were definitely heading in the right direction.
‘That’s good, ’cause I’m happy too. Just the way things are.’ Carly wasn’t sure what that meant. She tried to keep smiling but her brain was working overtime now. Was he trying to tell her something? She wanted to ask him but he was smiling at her and she didn’t want to turn the happy moment into a deep discussion or, worse still, a row.
The bill arrived, Fergus paid with his sole account card and they walked to the Tube hand in hand and in silence. Carly tumbled his words over in her mind but the only way she could interpret them was that Fergus didn’t want anything to change and she assumed that included marriage because that would definitely change things.
‘So why didn’t you say something right then, at that moment?’ asked Beth, the irritation obvious in her tone as she tried to balance the phone between her ear and shoulder. ‘That was the perfect opportunity to raise the whole marriage question.’
Carly was pulling faces on the other end of the line. ‘I know, but then the bill arrived and the moment was gone and you can’t go back to a conversation later on, it doesn’t work.’ She’d been worrying about it all night and, thanks to fitful sleep, she felt wretched.
‘Yes, you can. How about saying, “I’ve been thinking about what you said in the restaurant and …” then you start talking about it again.’
‘Oh, that is rather clever,’ said Carly, ‘but still it was yesterday, he might not remember what he said.’
‘Then remind him. Jeez, you do make things hard sometimes, Carls.’ Beth was simultaneously unpacking what she’d bought from the DIY store.
Carly pondered her mixed emotions. ‘The thing is, I’m kippered either way because if I say I want to get married and he says he doesn’t, then …’
‘Then at least you’ll know … drop it, drop it now!’
‘What?’ Carly was shocked by Beth’s scolding.
‘Not you, sorry, Doris. Drop the mop, Doris. Good dog. Sorry, I’m dog-sitting.’
‘Dog-sitting? I didn’t know you even liked dogs,’ said Carly.
‘I’m not s
ure I do. It’s a long story. Anyway, carry on.’
‘Well, it’s even worse if Fergus says he does want to get married because he might just be saying it because I’ve said it and then he’ll only be asking me because I prompted him to and, worse still, he might opt for the “shall we get married then?” type of proposal which isn’t a proposal at all.’ Carly puffed out her cheeks. It was a conundrum and it weighed heavy on her.
‘Then I think you have to explain to him about your dream proposal.’
‘How do I do that without looking slightly mad and obsessive?’ She knew she wouldn’t be able to discuss it with Fergus without gushing or getting overexcited; in fact, it was very likely she might even cry. And she couldn’t show him her scrapbook of all the articles she’d collected over the years, he’d think she was proper crackers then. She was even starting to wonder it herself.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ admitted Beth after a short pause. ‘Sorry, got to go. Doris has found the laundry bin. Bye, Carls … Drop my pants! Doris, pants! Drop them now!’
The phone went click before Carly could say bye. She cradled the phone in her hands. She was back in that uncertain space where she wasn’t sure where their relationship was going next and she had no idea what to do. So she’d just take a deep breath, carry on and keep hoping that everything would be okay.
Beth finally wrestled her now slobber-covered pants from Doris and dropped them disdainfully into the laundry bin. ‘Bad dog.’ Doris seemed to know what this meant because she grumbled and lay down flat on the floor, looking up at Beth with her big dark eyes.
‘Don’t give me that,’ said Beth, and Doris started to swish her tail from side to side. Beth had an idea. She put Doris’s lead on and led her outside. Doris had a sniff around the front garden then went into the willow tree for a snuffle under there. Eventually she lay down.
‘Great,’ said Beth, and she knocked a tent peg into the ground nearby and hooked the end of the lead around it, before knocking it flush to the earth. ‘Good girl. Stay.’
Beth set to work on sanding down the outside window frames. Her plan seemed to be doing the trick as, every time Beth peeped through the now yellowing and sparse willow branches, she could see that Doris was asleep. After a couple of hours, Beth could barely lift her head up from the aching in her shoulders. Her hands, and especially her thumbs, were sore and all she had to show for it was one and a half sanded window frames. This was hard labour. This wasn’t what she had signed up for and certainly not what she was used to. She yearned for an air-conditioned office as she pushed her hair off her sweaty forehead. Oh, the glamour, she thought.
Despite a quick break for a sandwich and a coffee, Beth worked non-stop until school pick-up time. She decided taking Doris with her was the lesser of two evils and Doris, to her credit, walked very obediently on the lead. For the first time, Leo left his new friends and came running straight to his mother or, more accurately, straight to Doris. The two were very pleased to see each other.
‘Can I hold the lead, Mum?’ asked Leo, and he visibly puffed up with pride when Beth handed it to him. It was an odd sight; the small boy walking next to the huge dog, her head level with his chest. As Leo neared the edge of the pavement, Doris sat down, which made Leo stop and carefully check the road was clear before starting to cross. Perhaps Doris was teaching Leo a thing or two about road safety, mused Beth as she followed close behind.
When Jack arrived to collect Doris, she greeted him excitedly and Beth thought that sometimes it would be nice to receive half as much reaction from Leo. ‘How did it go?’ he asked.
Beth pursed her lips. ‘Well, she went bonkers when she saw Shirley and I thought she was going to eat her.’ Jack pulled an unimpressed face at Beth’s overdramatic description.
‘It’s the trolley, she hates that thing.’
‘She mauled my mop and she trashed my tent and some … clothes but it’s okay.’
‘Sorry,’ said Jack. ‘So, no more dog-sitting then.’ He took the lead from Beth and clipped it onto Doris’s collar as she sat looking adoringly at her master.
‘No,’ said Beth, surprising herself. ‘It’s okay really, she can come again. We just needed to suss each other out.’
Jack looked astonished but pleased. ‘If you’re sure?’
‘Yep, no problem.’ Beth held up Jack’s business card. ‘Branching out from teaching IT are we?’ She had to ask.
Jack gave a sly smile. ‘No, the other way round. Business first, helping out the school with IT in my spare time.’
‘All round saint then, really.’
‘Yep, that’s me. See you tomorrow. Come on, Doris.’
As Jack left, he eyed the roughly sanded-down window frames and smiled.
Chapter Fourteen
Beth was woken by a terrifying noise near her head. Like a scene from a horror movie, she expected to see a masked murderer leaning over her, brandishing a chainsaw, but, when she opened her eyes, there was nobody there although the awful racket continued.
Leo ran into the room, jumped onto the bed and pointed at the window. ‘It’s Jack. Hello!’ He waved at the window. Beth rubbed her eyes and twisted in her bed to see Jack’s grinning face at the glass behind her. She came to very quickly and pulled the covers up protectively. Jack was wearing goggles and he waved a power sander for her to see before setting it back to work on the window frame.
Beth had an instant headache and seeing as all she was wearing was a pair of pants, since she’d never got around to buying new pyjamas, she didn’t want to give Jack an eyeful by getting out of bed. After a surprisingly short amount of time, Jack waved and disappeared down the ladder then moved onto the next window, giving Beth the chance to speed-dress and get some painkillers.
By the time Beth and Leo had finished breakfast, Jack was working on the back of the house and when they emerged for the school run he was packing up.
‘All done,’ he said. He was covered in white dust, giving Beth a glimpse of what an older version of Jack might look like. A silver fox perhaps. Not bad at all, she thought.
‘Thanks, this was kind of you. I mean the sanding, not the waking us up bit.’ She smiled warmly.
‘You’re welcome. It’s the least I could do after the mop and the tent …’
‘And Mum’s pants!’ added Leo loudly.
Beth blushed and ushered Leo away as Jack laughed behind them.
‘I’ll bring Doris over in about twenty minutes, okay?’
‘Perfect,’ called back a red-faced Beth. Kids and animals, she’d heard the warnings and it seemed they were all warranted.
Beth managed to get the window frames and front door painted, in a subtle shade of sage green, before the typical October weather took hold and put her back on inside jobs. After some final checking and measuring from Simon she had ordered her flat-packed kitchen which was now scattered throughout the downstairs rooms in more boxes than she could be bothered to count. Her task now was to tackle the living room. At the moment, evenings were spent either in the pub, curled up in bed or sat on one of the two hard wooden chairs that Rhonda had donated because they’d got too tatty for the tearooms.
Beth set up in the living room, which interested Doris; she was especially taken with the bucket of warm water, which she had a few laps at, but eventually she settled in the opposite corner of the room where she could keep one eye on Beth in between snoozes.
With a large sponge Beth doused the wallpaper with the warm water. She concentrated on soaking one wall first and, when she was happy, went back to where she had started with a wallpaper scraper and set to work. Things seemed to go well for a bit as layer after layer of wallpaper came off in small pieces. Eventually the area Beth was clearing had grown to the size of a pillowcase but she appeared to have uncovered a large patch of pattern in beige, green, and pink. She touched it with her fingers. It was vinyl wallpaper and this was as far as the warm water had been able to penetrate. She took a deep breath and soldiered on.
Af
ter a few hours of relentless scraping, Beth stood back to survey the wall. Apart from a few scratches from the scraper, she had a whole wall of what appeared to be 1940s vintage vinyl wallpaper. It wasn’t the prettiest thing she’d seen; dominated by leaves with the odd recurring flower, but it was probably the height of sophistication for the time.
‘Sorry, Elsie, it’s got to go,’ said Beth out loud, making Doris lift her head momentarily.
Beth found the wallpaper scraping oddly therapeutic. It gave her a chance to pick through her relationship with Nick. As she worked she mentally sorted his actions into categories. The ‘control’ section was overflowing whereas the ‘because he loved me’ section was rather sparse, although there was an odd overlap between the two. When he’d said there were things in his past he wasn’t proud of she wished she had pushed him on it. Perhaps if she’d understood more about his past then their future might have been different. But then the old adage ‘a leopard never changes its spots’ came to mind. The more she scraped at the wall the more her picture of Nick changed in her mind. How had she missed so many signs?
Beth attacked a particularly stubborn piece of wallpaper with vigour. She was getting good exercise working on the cottage and it was probably on a par with the workouts at the expensive gym she used to go to occasionally when she lived in London.
Hours passed until a knock on her newly painted front door dragged her away from her work.
As Beth opened the door, a rather disgruntled looking Leo marched in. Petra and Denis stood on the doorstep.
‘Oh my God, I forgot!’ gasped Beth in horror.
‘It’s okay,’ said Petra as Denis rolled his eyes. ‘I thought that’s what had happened. The teacher knows me and I’m down as one of your contacts so I brought him home.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Beth was mortified. ‘I was stripping wallpaper and lost track of the time.’ She couldn’t explain that she’d been trying to analyse her last failed relationship.
‘Really, it’s all right. I wondered if you fancied doing a tag team with the boys anyway. You do drop-off and I’ll do pick-up?’ said Petra, with a relaxed shrug.
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