by Jenni Keer
Her tongue flicked over her lips and she closed her eyes…
She felt a shoulder catch her arm and opened her eyes again to find George reaching for the Thermos.
‘Tea?’ he asked.
Chapter 45
It was a pale crescent moon that watched over the two friends as they lay together, full of hot, strong, soya milky tea and far too many dairy-free chocolate biscuits. They crawled into their sleeping bags and lay on their sides, facing each other. George was propped up on an elbow, looking quite handsome in the moonlight. It caught his features, highlighting his strong nose and large eyes. He was in the glasses again. In fact, he’d been wearing them since she’d made that drunken comment, although it was probably a coincidence.
Knowing she wouldn’t sleep comfortably with the locket around her neck, she took it off and tucked it in the top of her rucksack with her phone. George assured her the only people within a three-mile radius were a handful of all-night fishermen, waiting patiently for fishing alarms to beep, and certainly not wandering around the lake looking to steal antique silver jewellery. Lucy wondered if she’d seen a fisherman earlier as there had been a flash of torchlight deep in the undergrowth when they were drinking their tea, but George thought it was more likely to be the reflection of an animal’s eyes, perhaps a deer or a fox, especially as it was promptly followed by snapping twigs and rustling. But animal or fisherman, it hadn’t disturbed them and had promptly disappeared.
‘Cold?’ George asked.
‘No. You?’
‘A bit. But I have this,’ and he reached into the side pocket of his rucksack that Lucy was sure he had purchased purely for this excursion, as she could still see the price tag hanging from the front zip. (Sixty-four pounds for a diddly rucksack? They saw him coming.) ‘Fancy a stiffener?’ He produced a silver hip flask and started to unscrew the cap.
‘I thought you didn’t drink?’
‘What makes you think it’s not Ovaltine?’
He held it out to her and she sniffed.
‘That’s whisky,’ she spluttered.
‘It’s for medicinal purposes. It’s the excessive consumption of alcohol I find unsettling. People drinking it like tea to get them through the day and relying on it to solve life’s problems. We’re hardly going to get drunk from this small flask. Go on. It’ll warm your cockles.’
Lucy took a tentative sip of the spicy, burning liquid and tried not to cough. As it travelled down her throat, it left a warming sensation that quickly spread to other parts of her body, like dropping a pipette of water onto a piece of blotting paper. Soon, her cockles felt well and truly toasty. Then George put the flask to his own lips and took a swig.
The sky was cloudless and the blue-black of the night was punctuated with dots of brilliant white. The soft breeze had cooled since the afternoon and the air had the clean but damp smell from being near water. A bat swooped out from a tree and circled above them, silhouetted against the pale light from the moon.
George rolled onto his back and looked up at the twinkling stars, scattered like tiny fragments of broken glass overhead. He remained silent and, after a while, Lucy also rolled over and looked up. They lay together in mutual companionship for several minutes, Lucy feeling the residual tingles dance through her body from the whisky.
‘She had a drink problem,’ George said suddenly from nowhere.
Lucy turned her head to look at him, but he was still staring straight up into the night sky. She waited for him to elaborate.
‘Karen,’ he clarified.
The muscles tightened in her stomach. That explained a few things then, like his angry reaction to her drunken escapade and not particularly being a drinker himself.
‘She was always a bit highly strung – either up in the clouds or deep, deep underground, but she was the first woman who was serious about me. Girlfriends always seemed too much like hard work and my previous relationships had been very casual. But she was determined. She didn’t give up, even though I was monosyllabic and offhand.’
He adjusted his position and turned his head to hers.
‘She pursued me with a passion worthy of a tiny, hyperactive puppy after an oversized, unsociable bone. And I was flattered. And then somehow I found myself married and things started to change. Living together, I realised we weren’t compatible.’
He glanced away.
‘Sorry, you don’t want to hear this…’
‘I do. I was wrong to make her off topic. Friends should be able to talk about things with each other. I’m sorry I said I didn’t want to talk about her before.’ Lucy brushed a fluttering moth away from her face and sat up on her elbows to prove he had her full attention.
‘She wanted to be out all the time, preferably spending my money, and she liked a drink. Not in an alcoholic, breakfast-is-forty-per-cent-proof kind of way, but when she partied – boy, did she party. I tried to make it work; after all it takes two to say I do. I wondered if it was my fault, being busy with the company, so I made an effort to be around and even tried talking to her, and you know what a big deal that is for me. But she never wanted me when I was there, only when I wasn’t. What started out as small things to get my attention escalated into increasingly dramatic gestures. She would go off in the car, knowing the fuel was low, and drive until the tank ran out, calling me at four o’clock in the morning to come and rescue her. Or simply not come home at all, with her phone switched off so I couldn’t contact her…’
He tailed off and rested his arm across his eyes, like he was shutting everything out. Lucy, however, was delighted he was finally letting her in.
‘And then, on my mother’s birthday two years ago, she got so ridiculously drunk I had to leave the restaurant early and take her home. She refused to come to bed, told me I was boring and no fun to be with, and that she’d only married me for my money. Possibly all true, but still hurtful. So I said I was going to sleep at the office and I left her to sober up.’
There was a pause, as though he was searching for the right words or struggling with a memory. Lucy risked a glance at his face, but it was so dark now all she could see was shadow.
‘It’s the smell…’
‘Of what?’ Lucy prompted.
‘The bitter, acrid smell of smoke. Sometimes when I shut my eyes, I can still smell it. She maintains it was an accident, but I got a phone call at half three that morning. She was hysterical, sobbing down the phone, saying how sorry she was and how it was all a terrible accident.’
‘Oh my goodness. There was a fire?’ There was a second crippling blow to her stomach as she realised getting drunk and setting fire to her coffee table were possibly the worst things she could have done to the poor man in her efforts to win him over.
‘By the time I got back, there were four fire engines and an ambulance along our drive. She was wrapped in a blanket and a paramedic was sitting with her, holding an oxygen mask to her face. Half the neighbourhood gathered as the blackened roof timbers protruded from the rubble of our home like a recently unearthed skeleton of some ancient dinosaur. Everything was so bloody black. The following day, returning to the house to assess the damage, I realised there was nothing left. Absolutely nothing.’
He moved his arm and stared back up at the stars.
‘She’d promised me months before that the smoke alarms had been checked. I don’t know whether she lied or simply forgot to replace the batteries, but a midnight craving for a bacon sandwich and an easily distracted drunk woman don’t mix. The fat caught, quickly followed by the oven housing. Neither alarm went off and the fire was able to rage through the house unchecked. She was lucky to get out alive.’
Lucy was now cross-legged and upright. What a horrific experience for Karen, and for him.
‘It marked the end of our struggling relationship. A quick divorce and I found somewhere to rent until Lancaster Road caught my eye. None of it was amicable at the time, but, as you know, she got back in touch recently and her life seems to be on a steady path
now. She’s with Richard and seems genuinely happy. They invited me out for a meal the day I was at your office. I think she wanted to prove that she’s changed and for me to see she was no longer a threat.’
Karen was dating Richard. Of course, that made considerably more sense. She looked familiar because Lucy had seen her at Vernon’s retirement party, if only briefly. And Jess had talked about Karen visiting Tompkins, so she suspected it was Jess who had divulged George’s whereabouts.
‘It was closure for us both and I think we’ve parted friends. I tried to tell you all this the other day, but you were grumpy and told me Karen was off topic. It just spilled out tonight.’
‘Sometimes it’s good to talk.’
George looked thoughtful. ‘Yeah, I’m starting to realise that. I’m glad I’ve got a friend like you. Someone who is happy to spend time with me with no ulterior motive. Perhaps I can start to trust women again and appreciate they aren’t all after my wallet or my exquisitely toned body.’ He put up an arm like a bodybuilder might and flexed a bicep.
Lucy chewed at her lip and kept quiet.
Shortly afterwards, she fell asleep, dreaming of perilous fires and George launching himself on top of her. She stirred in the early hours when his bear-like snoring invaded her dreams and found he had shuffled nearer, his huge body curled protectively around her tiny frame, as if she was something of his that he didn’t want anyone else to steal.
Waking with a start, and a dull ache in her lower back where her hips had been resting awkwardly on the hard ground, she noticed George was out of his sleeping bag and sitting next to her, with the locket in his hand.
‘Erm, that’s mine,’ she said, reaching out a lazy hand.
‘It fell out of your bag. You didn’t zip it up properly. It feels warm, probably from being near your phone.’ He turned it over in his big hands and moved to press the catch. ‘May I?’
‘No.’ She sat up in horror, not wanting him to see inside. ‘You won’t be able to open it. It only opens for…’
Despite having fingers the size of dried salamis, the catch popped and the top flipped open. Lucy felt her cheeks flush.
‘A night beneath the stars together, ensures this love will last forever,’ he read aloud. ‘What is this?’ He looked puzzled.
‘Just a silly locket Brenda gave me. It’s meaningless. Some old poem from long ago.’
‘Is this what you were doing? Dragging me out to the middle of nowhere because of a poem in a locket?’ His eyebrows met in the middle.
‘No. And you dragged me out here. I was going to sit in the back garden.’
‘Do you have feelings for me, Lucy?’ He turned to her, frowning and confused.
Her forehead felt hot and her chest was thumping harder and faster than his stupid knock at her front door.
Lucy grabbed the locket from his open hands and slipped it over her head. The pounding from her heart subsided and she looked him straight in the eyes.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I do not. How ridiculous.’ She scrabbled around, gathering up her belongings, tripping over the end of her sleeping bag as her feet became tangled in the material. ‘I’d decided that despite your abrupt nature you were a decent man, who had rescued a cat and was kind to Brenda, so I thought we could be friends. Clearly, you suspect me of all sorts of underhand dealings and I was wrong.’
‘Well, I’m not sure I—’ George began, but as she snatched up her rucksack, Lucy’s phone started to buzz.
‘Hello?’ she said, glad of the distraction.
‘Am I speaking to Lucy Baker?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Renborough Hospital here. Brenda Pethybridge was admitted early this morning. She’s had a fall and you are listed as her next of kin.’
Chapter 46
‘It was silly. I was clearing out the racks in the kitchen, stacking up empty jars and I tripped over the broom handle,’ Brenda explained.
‘At four o’clock in the morning?’ squeaked Lucy.
‘Well, obviously I didn’t realise it was quite that early. But, anyway, I managed to shuffle on my bottom to the phone.’
‘You should have asked me to do it. You’re lucky it’s not more serious.’ Lucy was upset her friend hadn’t thought to ask for her help.
George had driven Lucy straight to the hospital and now they both stood at her bedside; a tiny lady on a big white bed with a flappy diamond-printed hospital gown tied loosely around her. Lucy was impressed to find she had already been X-rayed as it was a Sunday, after all. There were no broken bones, but the nurse said she was badly bruised down her left side and the consultant wanted to run a few more checks before they discharged her. This news had not gone down well with Brenda, who insisted she was fine and Lucy should take her home immediately.
‘They can’t keep me here against my will, you know,’ she muttered.
‘But if I stay with you, and they don’t keep you overnight, it would make me feel better to know you had been thoroughly checked. It would stop me worrying.’
Brenda snorted and Lucy took that as an ‘Okay, if I must’.
Nearly halfway through another week already, thought Lucy, as she sorted through the accumulated papers on her desk. Being organised and tidy was harder than it looked.
The hospital had discharged Brenda late Sunday afternoon and George returned to pick them both up. Lucy and George drifted back to their good friend roles, neither of them mentioning the locket. Brenda was stiff and sore from the fall but didn’t make any fuss. Lucy was hopeful that her friend’s desire to pack up the kitchen was the first step in her plan to look for more suitable housing – perhaps downsizing or sheltered accommodation. It made her sad to think there would come a day when she didn’t live next door, but was relieved her friend wasn’t fighting the inevitable, even though whenever she approached the subject, Brenda shut her down.
There was a clatter from behind the partition as Pat dropped something, and Lucy returned her focus to the spring clean before Sam noticed how messy her desk was. Sam and Adam had been in with Mr Tompkins most of the morning. Adam came out of Richard’s office first and walked to Lucy’s desk.
‘Heads-up, Lucy-Lou, it’s a no.’
‘What’s a no?’ Lucy asked.
‘We ran through your idea for the wine as an alternative to discounting and we aren’t going to fly with it.’
‘Oh, okay,’ Lucy said, her stomach collapsing. ‘Any particular reason?’
‘It was a good idea, but there were some issues, and basically it was vetoed by The Black Widow in the end.’
Lucy’s blood froze in her veins as Sam’s head loomed into view behind an oblivious Adam.
‘I’m known as The Black Widow, am I? Who thought that little gem up?’ Sam asked, looking around the office.
Six pairs of eyes swivelled in Lucy’s direction. Her heart sank to her shoes and out onto the colourful carpet tiles.
The week showed no signs of improving for Lucy. In fact, it was about to hit rock bottom and head straight through the magma, towards the earth’s solid iron inner core.
Pat spoke to her on the internal line to say she suspected something big was afoot, as there was lots of activity downstairs in the conference room – the official name for the office opposite the accounts department that held a large oval table surrounded by chairs. Not that the company conducted many conferences. It was mainly used for the reps’ meetings and to hold the sizeable buffet for the annual office Christmas party.
Adam’s internal line buzzed as he wrestled with the binder of revised company policies that Sam had positively insisted he should be the one to proofread. As he tried to balance the phone between his ear and shoulder and unclip one of the pages, the binder slipped off his knee and the sheets spread gloriously over the floor in front of him like a paper path. A few choice expletives came from his mouth as he crawled around on the floor to gather them all up.
‘Lucy-Lou? Actually, no, Connor?’ Adam corrected himself. Connor’s head peered a
round the corner. ‘Would you mind grabbing the laptop from Sam’s desk and running it down to the conference room? There’s a love…erm, I mean there’s a good chap.’ He was making an effort to be less sexist, thought Lucy, but as Adam himself might say: you can’t expect a leopard to change his spots before the shops shut.
‘I’ll do it,’ she volunteered. ‘I was going down to the Tardis to do some photocopying anyway,’ and she waved a sheet of paper at Adam to prove it.
‘Make the most of escaping into the time machine,’ said Sonjit, as she slipped out from her desk and walked over to help Adam. ‘That big old-fashioned beast of a photocopier has been served its notice. Posh, new, whizzy machines are coming next week. One for in here and one in accounts. From what I understand, they can do the lot: printing, scanning, photocopying, paper aeroplane folding…and they are a fraction of the size. I bet within the year she’s replaced us all with fancy software,’ she grumbled.
‘Thank you most kindly, lovely lady,’ Adam said, as Sonjit started to retrieve scattered papers. Lucy noticed the pair of them briefly lock eyes before Sonjit returned to her paper gathering.
‘You’re welcome, Adam,’ she replied, and then lowered her voice. ‘I was, erm, wondering what you were doing after work tonight? I have this friend who has just opened a restaurant in town and is looking for some early online reviews…’
Lucy smiled to herself as she collected Sam’s laptop and headed for the conference room. She’d seen that one coming, even if Pat now looked more shocked than someone who’d dropped their hair straighteners in the bath.
When she got downstairs, Lucy noticed the conference room door was ajar, but before she was close enough to knock or push it open, she heard Sam’s voice float out into the corridor.
‘I’ve narrowed it down to four suitable candidates for Lucy’s job and I will be interviewing in here after lunch. If we keep the applicants downstairs away from the sales office, we can avoid some of the gossip. You know how quickly it spreads around here.’