by Shari Low
And that could only mean one thing…
She’d definitely been back in Farnham Hills for too long.
Roxy mentally summed up her sad excuse for a life. Farnham Hills: Day 11. Location: Hell’s library. Velour tracksuit: pink. Hair: pony tail. Scrunchie: purple.
She had a vision of her obituary: Suddenly, behind the Formica reception desk at the Farnham Hills Community Library, Miss Roxy Galloway died of mortification.
A scrunchie. It didn’t get much more undignified than this. If Daniel Galvin could see her now she’d be banned from his opulent hallows of shiny, healthy hair for life.
She picked up a pile of record cards that she’d meticulously updated, detailing the transactions from the day before. At home she had a computer to do everything from making the coffee to running a bath. Here she’d been reintroduced to the giddy joys of a world that ran like clockwork as long as you were accomplished in the cerebral task of filing bits of card in alphabetical order.
The doors swung open and in marched the fifth-year study group. Romeo and Juliet avoided eye contact.
‘Good morning, my favourite customers!’ she offered in the sing-song grating melody normally espoused by really condescending weather girls. They looked at her like her natural habitat should be nine foot by five foot and padded. Roxy gave them a deranged grin in return, and they swaggered off to the back of the room in a flurry of sneers and mutterings of ‘She’s like, you know, totally fucked up, man.’
Roxy laughed loudly, making them walk even faster. Whey hey, she’d discovered a great new sport–teenager baiting.
‘What are you looking so smug about?’
She splurted her tea across the desk, some droplets dripping onto her hoodie top and spreading like ripples in a pool of water.
‘Do you always sneak up on people?’
‘Do you always slip into these little trances that stop you from hearing swinging doors and footsteps?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Must be some kind of self-preservation mechanism kicking in–the one that stops me from lying down in the middle of the road out there and waiting for a lorry to put me out of my misery.’
Mitch leaned towards her, his folded arms on top of the desk.
‘Aw, come on now, you don’t really hate it here that much, do you? There are worse places than this.’
‘Only those where there’s a high probability of contracting Ebola.’
As she picked up another pile of cards, she caught a movement in her peripheral vision.
‘Sit!’ she yelled. Romeo and Juliet stopped in their tracks at the door to the ladies’ toilets, then turned and skulked back to their seats.
‘Jesus, they’re rampant around here. This is like a day at my normal job but without the posh accents.’
Mitch was intrigued. ‘Really? And what kind of office do you normally work in then?’
It suddenly occurred to Roxy that she’d never enlightened him as to her usual mode of employment. She’d just kind of presumed that he knew; that Ginny would have passed on that little salacious nugget of information. Time for confession…
‘It’s a…staff agency. For the upper classes. You know, matching up wealthy people with the right people to fulfil their needs.’
She was getting into the swing of the lie now. She had a flashing image of the last time she saw Ceecee. ‘Things like maids…’ Then there were the blokes with the rampant Oedipus tendencies. ‘…nannies…’ And the gents who had obviously developed strange habits at public school. ‘…private tutors…’ And not forgetting the food fetishists. ‘…and catering staff. Never a dull moment with that lot. You know, all that Upstairs, Downstairs, illicit mingling with the hired help.’
‘Sounds really interesting.’
‘More than you know,’ she agreed, as a pang of longing consumed her. What she wouldn’t give to be in a room right now with an espresso machine, a sex-aids cupboard and twelve high-class hookers. But in the meantime, Mitch would have to do. ‘So anyway, thanks for saving my arse on Friday night. And for smuggling me out of the church house–it’s reassuring to know that I’m not the talk of the God-fearing people of Farnham Hills.’
Over Mitch’s shoulder she caught two of the fifth-year girls very obviously bitching about her, complete with whispers, gesticulating fingers and barbed looks.
‘It seems that I’m just persona non grata among the shy, innocent youth of the village. Do you think they’re bad-mouthing me on MySpace yet?’
‘What’s your space?’ Mitch asked, his face a picture of puzzlement.
‘No, MySpace. It’s an internet site, where you have your own homepage and…’
He burst into fits of laughter.
‘I’m kidding, I know what MySpace is.’
‘I’ll never like you,’ she huffed indignantly, face flushing slightly as she feigned concentration on the record cards. Davidson. Davies. Dickson. Doherty. How dare he take the piss out of her? Didn’t he know that she was desperate, dejected and…and…only pretending to ignore him.
He leaned over and ruffled her hair. Great, now she’d have to readjust the cutting-edge scrunchie.
‘I know, but I’m the best company on offer and I hereby vow to protect you from rampaging sixteen-year-olds, so how about grabbing something to eat tonight?’
Argh, he was irritating. But then she did owe him a favour for being her knight in shining high-street clothing the other night. She considered the options: inedible grub in a manky pub with a nice-but-smugly-irritating guy, or pulling her legs into unnatural positions with her mother and aunt at the church-hall yoga group. Incidentally, why had no one ever warned her about the flatulence issues of yoga? No wonder Gwyneth Paltrow always looked sour-faced, the poor girl must be in a permanent state of drowsiness caused by toxic emissions.
‘Meet you at five thirty. But don’t let me drink anything with alcohol–removes every iota of sense and I end up in inappropriate situations with undesirables.’
And as he chortled his way over to the sporting section, Roxy contemplated the back of his broad shoulders, narrow hips, and ridiculous boots. She might have said it in bantering jest but she meant every word. She wouldn’t find Mitch desirable if he stripped bollock naked and dangled diamonds on his dick.
He must have felt her stare boring into his back, as he turned, grinned and winked at her, causing the study group to burst into fits of giggles.
Definitely not desirable. Absolutely not. No way.
But maybe she would just nip home at lunchtime and wash her hair so she could lose the scrunchie.
‘Ta-da!’
It was six hours, one hair-wash and a phone call later and now she was standing at the doorway of a darkened library, holding up two bags in front of a perplexed Mitch.
‘I’m cooking you dinner. Actually that’s a lie–I’m taking already-prepared food out of foil containers and putting it on a plate.’
‘Nigella Lawson must be shitting herself.’
He spotted the name on the side of the bags–The Mill House. He may have only been around for a few months, but he’d already heard of the three-star Michelin restaurant a few villages away that attracted an A-list crowd even though there wasn’t a landing strip, a five-star hotel or a rehab centre within fifty miles. A meal for two must have easily cost a hundred quid.
‘How did you get that here–I didn’t realise that they had a delivery service?’
‘Taxi, it just arrived two minutes ago,’ Roxy replied glibly.
Mitch struggled to stifle a splutter.
‘Look, I know it’s a bit of an indulgence for a Wednesday night but it was Felix’s treat.’
‘So you’re talking to him again?’ Mitch’s right eyebrow raised in surprise.
‘Not exactly,’ she shrugged. There were a few quizzical seconds of silence before she caved. ‘Oh, okay. I was going to pay for it myself, honestly, but I thought I’d try all the credit cards Felix gave me just to see if the heartless bastard had cancelled them a
ll, and then I discovered that one of them was still active and I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, it’s just a meal. And a taxi.’
‘And what else did you buy?’
‘Nothing!’ Even the noise of a bin wagon trundling by didn’t drown out her indignant screech.
‘What else?’ he repeated.
‘Nothing!’
He drifted back half a step behind her and playfully grabbed her hood. ‘Confess all or the velour gets it.’
‘Don’t you dare, my mother would kill me.’
He put both hands on the edge of the hood, poised to rip.
She knew when she was beaten.
‘Okay! Three pairs of Jimmy Choos, a Lulu Guinness bag, a Marc Jacobs jacket, two tickets for my mother to see The Vagina Monologues–don’t say a word–and I also treated Reverend Stewart to a subscription to Big Girls Are Easy–well, he was at the computer next to me while I was on the spree and I didn’t want him to feel left out.’
They crossed the High Street and headed left, past the bank, the post office, the chemist and the funeral parlour.
‘Won’t he go crazy when he finds out?’
Roxy just shrugged. ‘And I would care why? Let’s just call it severance pay.’
‘Wow, you’re vicious. I swear if you ever show the slightest sign of violent tendencies I’m buying a mace spray.’
‘Shit!’
Several things happened at once. Roxy spat the expletive, then he felt the full force of her body against his, knocking the wind out of him as she propelled him into the doorway of the Help the Aged office. Then her hand went over his mouth and he felt a burning sensation in his ribcage. They stayed like that for a few seconds, startled, enveloped in the darkness, the searing heat on the right side of his torso making him bite his bottom lip to refrain from doing something really butch like whimpering pathetically.
His teeth were starting to draw blood when he heard running footsteps and then Darren jogged past the doorway, deep in conversation with his running partner, who, if Mitch wasn’t mistaken, was Cecilia Dupree, the recently divorced wife of a London billionaire who’d secured their Farnham Hills country house as part of the settlement. She’d then promptly decanted her whole life to the house that she’d only previously used for the occasional weekend soiree, and taken to wearing Barbour jackets and growing an organic vegetable patch. The locals had a sweepstake running as to how long she’d last before hightailing it back to the city, bored of her little Country Life adventure when she realised that she wasn’t in fact living in a Jilly Cooper novel of lust and glamour among the welly brigade.
‘I think they’ve gone.’ Roxy took her hand off his mouth. ‘Sorry about that–couldn’t face running into that twat. You okay?’
He nodded gingerly, acutely aware that she was still pressed up against him, her face upturned to his. Her hips were pressed against his, her chest rising and falling against his, one hand now resting on his shoulder, her mouth inches from his.
Their eyes locked as his heart began to beat faster, faster, faster, fuelled by what was going on in the near vicinity.
‘Roxy,’ he gasped.
‘What?’ she answered breathlessly.
‘Can you move the bags away from my side because I think those foil trays have just given me third-degree burns.’
‘So how’s Ginny getting on in London?’
‘To be honest I’m not sure. It hurts too much to ask.’
‘Why? Because you’re missing her?’
‘No. Because the cushy cow is living my life, in my fabulous flat, with my fabulous clothes and my general fabulous fabulousness, and I’m stuck here in a backwards hovel where they think frappuccino is a destination in an Airtours summer-sun brochure.’
Mitch laughed. ‘You mean it isn’t?’
‘See–my work here would never be done.’
Roxy was delicately trying to manoeuvre two eight-inch-high slices of mille-feuille out of a cardboard cake box and onto two mismatched plates dragged from the back of her mother’s crockery cupboard. Mitch was getting one engraved with the lofty banner ‘My Friend Went to Clacton-on-Sea and All She Brought Me Was This Lousy Plate’ while Roxy’s was a memento of Charles and Di’s big day.
The conversation over dinner had been easy. This, Roxy had decided, must be what having a brother was like–warm, comforting, and handy to have someone who could reach high shelves.
‘Mmmm. Must remember to send Felix a thank-you card for dinner,’ she declared, popping a glob of cream into her mouth with her index finger.
The food had been truly sublime. Intricate little baskets of seafood–crab, lobster and chunks of delicate soy-marinated hake–to start. The main course had been the tenderest slivers of fillet mignon, nestled on a bed of shiitake mushrooms and surrounded by thick-cut potatoes, then doused in a tangy red-wine jus. And now dessert–thick cream, iced top, and a dozen layers of paper-thin pastry. It was an orgasm in a bowl.
‘Anyway, enough about my woeful existence. I’ve just realised that I know practically nothing about you.’
And what’s more, Roxy realised as she slid his plate over to him, she was actually quite interested. Normally when someone was giving her the history of their life she glazed over and scouted the room for the exits, but she had to admit this time she was intrigued.
He hadn’t replied, mainly due to the fact that he was chewing on two inches of French pastry.
‘So spill. Seeing someone? Married? Divorced? Stalkers?’
‘Would you hang on a minute?’ he said, still chewing. ‘I’ve got about thirty quid’s worth of your boyfriend’s cake in my mouth and I just want to savour it.’
‘Ex.’
‘Ex. Sorry.’ After a few seconds he finally swallowed. ‘Okay, no ex-wives. Never been married, therefore never been divorced, no kids, and–although I would occasionally welcome one–I’m afraid there’s no stalker either. I’m officially the most romantically barren man on the face of the earth.’
Roxy got up and flicked on the kettle–screaming-pink, retro, matching the screaming-pink retro toaster, the screaming-pink retro sandwich-maker and her screaming-pink tracksuit. It was like living in a little bubble of oestrogen. She reached up to grab a jar of instant decaf out of the pastel-pink cupboard, when a question bypassed her brain and came straight out of her gob.
‘Are you gay?’
A lump of cake shot from his mouth, flew across the room and adhered itself to the back of her hoodie.
‘Erm. No. I’m not. Why would you think I was?’
‘I didn’t,’ she shrugged, turning back round, a jar of Mellow Birds in hand. ‘I was just double-checking. You could never be a gay guy.’
Mitch was now sitting up a little straighter, with his chest puffed out just a little more, and speaking in a voice that was just a little deeper.
‘Why’s that then?’ he asked, reassured in his masculinity.
‘Because you dress like crap, you live in a tip, and that hair has never seen a deep-conditioning treatment. So how come you’re single then? And if you answer that using clichés I’m eating the rest of your cake.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Never met the right girl. Waiting for “The One”. Sowing my wild oats. Not settling for second best.’
She raised her spoon in a threatening manner. ‘Okay, hand it over.’
He curled his arm around his plate so that she couldn’t even see it any more. ‘Never–you can take my body, soul and worldly goods but get your hands off my pudding.’
Roxy groaned. ‘Oh, if I had a pound for every time a bloke has said that to me…Anyway, you’re not getting off that easily. Telly is crap tonight, we’re living in the social equivalent of the Gobi, I haven’t been able to get Vogue, Vanity Fair or even Cosmo, and the video shop was frozen in time somewhere around Pretty Woman–so whether you like it or not we have to pass the rest of the night with meaningless chat. So…’ she ran her finger along the edge of her plate, scooping up cream ‘…relationships? Lasted how long
? How many? Heartbroken? In love?’
His slumped shoulders revealed that he realised that resistance was futile–whether he liked it or not he was going to be spending the next couple of hours in the testosterone equivalent of living hell: emotional revelation time. ‘Two main relationships–one lasted two years, the other nine.’
Roxy choked. ‘Nine years? What–after the first five you wanted to wait a while just to be sure?’ she teased.
He tried his best not to rise to the bait, replying casually, ‘Something like that. You know, these things shouldn’t be rushed. That’s why there are so many divorces these days.’
‘Wow. Mitch O’Donnell, anthropologist, social commentator and moral conscience.’
‘Clutching a sharp object,’ he warned, picking up the cake slice.
‘Okay, okay. God, you country boys are so touchy. So you didn’t answer the last one–in love?’
She caught his eye; a mischievous smile playing across her lips, a big dollop of cream perched on her chin.
There was a definite pause as he flushed and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Jackpot!’ Roxy grinned. ‘Okay, come on then–who is she? I want to know everything and don’t spare the details. If we can drag this out until about eleven o’clock I’ll have survived another night without succumbing to lethal boredom. Right, on you go.’
He squirmed in his chair. Pause. Cleared his throat. Pause. Another squirm. Pause. Roxy observed the whole “uncomfortable/playing for time” routine while wearing an expectant expression that refused to disappear without some kind of response.
‘She’s just someone I met not too long ago–kind of love at first sight, you know?’ he stuttered.
‘And it didn’t work out?’
He shook his head and busied himself with the task of scraping his plate with a spoon.
Roxy was on her feet now, her back to him, spooning coffee into two mugs and reaching for the kettle.
‘I never actually got around to telling her. She–erm–has other things going on so we haven’t, erm, had that conversation. Yet.’
She shrieked as she spun around, her face emitting a beam of pure glee at the delicious new revelation. But as she twisted, her hand somehow caught the top of the boiled kettle, tipping it over, sending boiling water cascading towards her.