“Not exactly. I just bought this car—wanted to give it a try-out, found myself over this way. I thought, well, okay, two birds with one stone kinda thing. You know.”
“Out this way? From Richmond?” Richmond was about fifty miles north. Not exactly popping next door.
“Yeah.” He took his sunglasses off and began twiddling them between his fingers. “A19.” Now he looked at me and I was taken aback by the expression in his dark eyes. He looked almost—nervous?
“Piers.” I stood back now to let him come in. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m…” Again, that look of, not panic exactly, but something twitchily close, then it was gone. “Yeah. I’m cool. How about you, Alys, you okay?”
Gosh. It was a long time since anyone had asked that. “Look, Piers, it’s really very kind of you to come all this way, but Florrie’s already decided she’s done enough revision. Do you want a drink or something before you head back? Coffee, tea? Lemonade?” I could have bitten my tongue off. He was twenty-one, for God’s sake, not nine. “Whisky? Oh, but you’re driving—”
“Nah. Like I said, I’m cool.” He looked it, cucumber cool in all that black whilst I felt unnaturally hot and oppressed by the air in the flat.
I followed him into the living room where, to my surprise, Grainger was submitting to a head scratching. It could only be a matter of time before fingers were lost. “How’s the new car?”
“Pure kick-ass.” Piers left Grainger and whirled to the window, all long-limbed animation like a Quentin Blake cartoon come to life. “There, see? The yellow Porsche? Hey, why don’t you come for a drive, Alys? We could shoot through to the coast, top down, catch some sea air?” He was talking without looking at me, couldn’t take his eyes off the car.
“Oh.” I hesitated, a quick Thelma and Louise moment flashing before my eyes as I saw myself zipping along a coast road next to Piers, top off. Off the car, obviously, not off Piers. “Better not. I’ve got stuff to do. And there’s a book I want to read.” I glanced apologetically towards Theo. Grainger was stomping across his cover trying to attract Piers’s attention again by chewing the cushions, mugging like Jack Nicholson in a small fur coat.
“Well, okay. But, look.” He’d dropped his gaze again, hands in the pockets of his jacket, awkward as a teenager. “I really need to talk to you sometime. It’s just family stuff, but I don’t know who else I can go to with this shit.”
“Really? But I don’t know anything about your family.” I felt a bit strange having this conversation. A bit wrong footed. My memory had Piers down as a teenager, but here he was, very obviously an adult. Making adult conversation.
“It’s Ma and Alasdair. It’s getting kinda heavy.” Once more he met my eyes, and I found myself wondering, not for the first time, how blue-eyed, epitome-of-WASPness Tamar had managed to produce such a sultry-eyed son. “Please, Alys. I’ve always been able to talk to you.”
“It’s—”
“Please.” This time soft, fractured. The faint twang of his American parentage crept in around the vowels, made him sound vulnerable.
“Oh, all right.” Aware that I’d sounded ungracious, and he really did look unsettled, I added, “If there’s anything I can help with.”
“How about tomorrow? I told Florence I’d bring her back here after school.”
“Um. Tomorrow might be tricky. I have my book group on a Monday night.” Because something about his straight stare made me feel like filling in uncalled-for detail I began to gabble. “It was my turn to choose, you see, and I gave them Dead Air. I really want to know what they think.”
“Your book group.” Piers gave a tiny grin. “Is that the one where everyone’s over eighty?”
“No, Mrs. Treadgold’s only seventy-three. And I’m”—well, thirty-six actually, but damned if I’d admit it—“not eighty either.”
“And you gave them Dead Air? Shit, Alys, they’ve probably all had coronaries. Do you know how many fucks there are in that book?”
“Never counted. So, anyway, tomorrow would be tricky.”
He gave me an odd sideways smile and pushed pale silver-ringed fingers through his unAryan hair. “I’ll give you a lift. Pick you up at eight.”
And he was gone in a blur of blackness, flinging himself out of the front door and down the stairs with an energy which almost crackled. Despite myself, I found I was watching from the window as the Porsche roared away down the street. A momentary pang—a drive to the coast would have been nice—then I shook my head and settled myself back down with Theo.
Chapter Three
Jacinta was unlocking the door when I arrived at Webbe’s next morning. “Simon says he is not coming in today. He is ‘busy’.” She stooped to pick up the post. I gave a deep sigh. “You need new clothe,” Jace diagnosed as we went round flipping switches. “Several new clothes. Always make me feel better when I am depressing. Without nice clothe, you never find a man.”
This morning Jace was wearing a purple blouse and a multicoloured, tiered skirt dotted with tiny mirrors and with a row of little bells sewn around the hem. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d been pecked to death on her way to work by a flock of disenfranchised budgies.
“No point in buying new clothe…clothes. Florence wouldn’t care and there’s no one else to notice.” I turned on the cash register. “I’m not depressed anyway. And I don’t want a man. I’ve given up men. Three-dimensional ones, anyway.”
Jace looked dubious. “You are not saying that when you are meeting that person with the hair. Who is coming to play with his instrument in the shop last year.”
“Yeah, well. Look what happened that time.” Leonard “Waspy” Binns—what a mistake. “In fact, I think I’m about this far”—I held my hands apart a few inches—“from taking Holy Orders.”
“You would make terrible nun.” Jace began tidying, her skirts whirling, chiming and creating fractured reflections as she went. “You have too-pretty face to be under a Mr. Whippy hat.”
“I think I just changed my mind,” I surprised myself by saying. “How about we pop out at lunchtime?” Maybe some of Piers’s devil-may-care attitude had rubbed off on me. It was certainly unlike me to be this spontaneous.
Jacinta nearly fell off the stool she was standing on to flick dust from the top of a cupboard. “Alys! You taking advice from me? I am astonished.” She lowered her voice. “Is this meaning there is a man you are deciding upon?”
“Good God, no. Well, there was a man last night that I thought was particularly gorgeous, but seeing that he’s unsuitable on account of being dead, then, no. I just feel like buying something.”
“We shall buy you something,” Jace said, decidedly. “Green. You must be wearing green, Alys. It go with your hair and your skin.”
Before you conjure a vision of me as some kind of sickly-hued subsea monster, I should mention that I’m a redhead. Not flaming red, but kind of dark auburn with the associated pale skin which makes hot sun a factor-50-coated ordeal.
“It will depend on what the charity shops of York have to offer us, won’t it?”
Jace’s face settled into lines of disappointment. “Can we not be buying something really new?” she asked forlornly. “You deserve a dress with still the real price label on, which does not smell of some other hot persons.”
“Just paid the Council Tax,” I said with the briskness I’d spent years cultivating in a way only the truly broke can master. The bell twitched its nerve-jangling message that a customer had arrived, and I walked through to see a woman standing at the desk, jittering as though she badly needed either the toilet or some Valium. I sized her up as I approached. About my age, tall, well turned out. Good hairstyle, graded bob, but not the cutting edge of the city. Looked like the classic “out of towner”. Was she a guilty secret of Simon’s?
“Good morning,” I announced brightly and she stopped jigging, turning nervous dark eyes in my direction.
“Er. Are you—I mean—is Mr. Webbe ava
ilable?” The woman had an accent, definitely not local. “I’ve come to pick up the books that were mistakenly sold at the auction last week,” she went on. “Only I spoke to Mr. Webbe and he said I could collect them today?”
Her voice was only a little less diffident than Simon’s. If the two of them had been a couple, their combined hesitancy would have meant that the relationship would die of reticence before they ever got their clothes off. “Simon’s away at a book sale, I’m afraid.” I picked up the heap of books I’d arranged yesterday. “But the books are here.” I’d piled the books carefully, sure that the early-edition Dickens would be the ones she really wanted. They weren’t particularly valuable, but I couldn’t see that she’d come all this way for the return of half a Jilly Cooper and a second-rate biography of the Iron Lady. She riffled through them almost nervously. The sight of the Dickens didn’t dispel her anxiety and I felt my stomach lurch with foreboding.
“I’m sure—” she began, and flipped through the books again. She seemed almost embarrassed. “There must be another one. Wasn’t there? A book of poetry? By”—she hesitated, seemed to be about to say another name then corrected herself—“Theo Wood?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. These were the only books Simon brought over.”
The woman’s nervousness seemed to step up a notch. “Oh! No, that can’t be right. The book must be here somewhere.” She spun on a flat-loafered heel as though the 360-degree turn would enable her to spot Theo flashing guiltily from a high shelf. “It—he—I mean, Theo Wood was—is—he was a relative, you see. The book, it’s quite important to me.”
Oh God, now I felt guilty. But there wasn’t time to rush back home and get it. Hell, I’d post it to her tomorrow—after I’d photocopied Theo’s picture. “I’m really sorry. I’ll have another look around tonight, after we’ve closed.”
The woman handed me a small square of card. “This is my address and number and everything,” she almost whispered. “Please, if you could. Only it really is terribly important, you see, that I get this book back.”
Isabelle Logan her name was, apparently. The address I only glanced at, Charlton Hawsell, a village with an Exeter postcode. “It’s probably just got mixed in with books from somewhere else. It’ll turn up.” Okay, I’d post it this evening. The library did photocopies and they didn’t shut til six.
She smiled tightly. “Maybe you’re right, Mrs…er.”
“Ms.,” I said firmly. “Ms. Hunter. Alys. With a ‘y’.”
Mrs. Logan gave a deep sigh, reminiscent of mine earlier that morning, and I saw Jace throw a black-eyed glance of concern across at us. I half expected her to come over and recommend “new clothe”, but she carried on shelving until Mrs. Logan took her leave.
“Now, why,” I asked Jace, “do you think she put that book in an auction, if she was going to miss it so desperately?”
“Perhaps it have secret message in code.” Jace leaned against the counter, despite the ominous creaking it immediately set up. “She needs it to find family treasure.”
“Have you been dusting the Conan Doyle section again?”
The rest of the day dragged itself past like a hypochondriac relative. At lunchtime Jace and I walked the streets of York and I bought a green dress from a tiny branch of Help the Aged I’d never noticed before. It bore a well-known designer’s label and had hardly ever been worn. To Jace’s slight jealousy, it fitted me perfectly. She came away with three duvet covers and a CD rack.
Maybe Jace was right and there was some direct inverse proportion between the feeling of happiness and the amount of money one had in the bank, I thought as I climbed the two flights of stairs to the flat that evening. But no, that couldn’t be right, otherwise I’d be perpetually ecstatic. Perhaps it was just having something new that made me so cheerful at finding Florence lounging on the sofa and Piers draped picturesquely in Grainger’s favourite chair. They were listening to something which sounded like drum ’n’ bass recorded in an abattoir marshalling yard.
“What’ve you bought, Mum?” Florence raised her head half an inch from the sofa, a cross between ethereal as a ghost and a right little madam. “Is it for me?”
“No. It’s for me.” Piers was grinning rather inanely and there was a slight tinge of blush receding from his skin. I hoped I hadn’t caught them out in some illegal activity. “How long have you been in?”
“Not long. Is it something I can borrow?”
“No.” I sniffed suspiciously but could only catch the fleeting aroma of eau de Grainger.
“I don’t smoke, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Florence said officiously. “It’s a filthy habit.” Piers said nothing, but his smile went a bit lopsided. “Let’s see what you bought.” Reluctantly needing her approval, I unfolded the dress and found myself the centre of silent attention from the pair of them. “Wow, Mum!” Florence had got up off the sofa in admiration. “This is just so cool.” She pulled the dress from my arm and held it up against herself. “What d’you reckon, Piers?”
Piers swung himself upright in the chair and cleared his throat. “Yeah, that is pretty cool. It’s designer, right, Alys?”
I nodded, watching the feline figure of my daughter whisking around the room, making the flared skirt of the dress dance out behind her. Half of me was proud of her looks, athletically slim with skin that had gone the shade of heather honey in the summer sun, hair so unlike mine or Alasdair’s. People often commented on her moonsilver blondeness, how it contrasted with the perpetually tawny skin.
The other half of me was plain jealous. Young and everything to live for. I’d been like that, once, before I’d screwed up so royally. Still. Never mind, no point dwelling. Must get on, be practical, things to do—
Piers was unexpectedly my ally. “It’d look crap on you, Flo. You’re the wrong colouring.”
Florence dropped the dress on the table. “Oh yeah?” She rounded on Piers. “I wouldn’t wear it anyway, piece of second-hand shit,” and marched off to her bedroom, slamming the door to leave neither of us in any doubt over what she thought about her stepbrother’s opinions.
Piers and I regarded each other in solemn silence for a second, then we both grinned. “Christ, d’you think I was like that at sixteen?” he asked.
“Probably.”
“Shit.” Piers shook his head. “Madness. Why do people have kids anyway?”
“Good idea at the time,” I said briskly. “Most of them would be better off getting a Labrador.” I began tidying up the detritus of their residency. Biscuit wrappers littered the floor and there was a jam sandwich on top of the CD player. Grainger was under the table in a tabby ruckus of newspaper and old socks, with Theo forming a good solid base to it all.
“Can you see my ma with a dog?” Piers had got to his feet. Crouched under the table trying to extricate Theo without waking Grainger, I could only see his lower half. “Mud and hair and stuff? I mean, what the hell did she do with me when I was a baby—put me in some kinda crate or something?” I refused to be drawn into speculation on this subject and crawled out, tugging Theo out of the Grainger-nest as I came. I flipped a few pages in hopes that a piece of paper might drift free and solve the “Isabelle Logan Mystery”, but nothing happened other than a bit of stray fur floating to the carpet. “So, you ready to face the grey brigade? I can drop you off, wait if you want, you might need backup. I mean, Dead Air—what you gonna give them next, Trainspotting?”
“I didn’t realise you were so literary,” I said slightly sharply.
“Yeah. Gorgeous and I read. You wearing the green dress?”
I sighed. His self-confidence was tiring. “I suppose. Might give them a bit of a shock though, finding out I’ve got legs. I think they assume I’m rolling around on castors, like a Dalek.”
Piers glanced down at my workday jeans, a little tight around the bum. “Reckon they’ll already suspect about the legs.” He blew and his hair flipped. “Yeah. Then maybe after we could go get a drink or something? Run down to Opus o
r one of the bars?”
“You just want an excuse to drive that car.”
“You need an excuse to wear that dress. Sounds like a fair trade to me.”
“I am not dressing up to have a drink with you, Piers,” I said, half-laughing until I saw the quick look of hurt which crossed his face. “Oh, all right. It’ll be good for my ego, anyway, having a drink with such a dazzling couple.”
“I’m not coming!” Florence shouted from her bedroom.
“Didn’t invite you!” shouted back Piers.
“But—” I stopped on my way to my room, dress over my arm. “I thought—”
“You know Flo, Alys. She’d spend the whole evening sulking because she’d rather go clubbing.”
There really should be some kind of law that forces guilt to be finite. Because, right now, what with the Theo theft, the frivolity of dressing up to go out to meet a bunch of near octogenarians and leaving Florence so that I could have a drink with a male-model look-alike, I was in danger of creasing up under the weight of my own remorse. But only a bit.
Chapter Four
My book group, ironically enough since I’d joined it to meet like-minded men, comprised Mrs. Treadgold, Mrs. Munroe, Mrs. James and Mrs. Searle, four ladies past pensionable age, and Mr. Mansell, an elderly man so frail I worried that if someone turned a page too quickly he’d blow over. The one male member under forty had left three months ago to live with his partner Malcolm in Derbyshire. Despite this, I’d stayed on and now considered everyone in the group as good friends.
Mrs. Treadgold ushered me to the empty seat next to her and whispered confidentially, “I enjoyed the book. It was refreshing.” Across the table Mr. Mansell dropped me an extraordinarily ribald wink and Mrs. Munroe, who had a Mastermind-level knowledge of the early works of Dick Francis, gave me a grin so broad that her ill-fitting top set almost came over to thank me personally. I felt ridiculously proud of their broadmindedness.
Slightly Foxed Page 2