Walking Back to Happiness

‘Makes up for fecking Alex . . . Hey! Lorcan. Don’t just stand there, we need a sound system set up. You can start by unplugging Sal. Cut off his plug if needs be. Ow, my head . . .’ And she sank her forehead into her arms.

  Lorcan flashed Juliet a ‘what can you do?’ look, and disappeared to do the tiny Fly Queen’s bidding.

  Juliet whizzed round Emer’s messy kitchen as fast as she could. She’d had a good few coffees in there now, so she knew where most of the things were kept, but even so she was surprised by the headphones in the breadbin and a small dagger where Juliet would have stored potatoes.

  Lorcan reappeared just as she had slung the first baking tray of honey-glazed cocktail sausages into the oven and was looking for a pan to boil eggs in. He had Roisin and Florrie in tow. Their eyes were round, and also ringed in turquoise kohl. They looked like glam-rock cherubs.

  ‘I have a couple of sous chefs for you,’ he said. ‘So long as there are no knives involved. We’re on our last warning at A&E.’

  Juliet didn’t have time to feel her usual nerves in front of the twins. Time was marching on, and the sooner she covered that table in food, the sooner she could be out of there before the mighty hordes of kids arrived, and she was roped into refereeing.

  ‘Pan,’ she said, pointing at Roisin. ‘For eggs. Big dish,’ she added, pointing at Florrie.

  ‘Say, “Yes, Chef!”’ said Lorcan. He pushed them towards the cupboards.

  ‘Yes, Chef!’ said Florrie at the same time as Roisin said, ‘Why?’

  ‘Thank you, Florrie!’ Juliet dumped the first of many packets of crisps into the dish and started sifting icing sugar into a bowl of Emer’s glittery KitchenAid. ‘Lorcan’s going to do the cake.’

  ‘What? No, don’t be stupid. I can’t bake cakes . . .’

  ‘We’ve already got the cake,’ she said, pointing at the slab of plain iced sponge. ‘You’re going to ice it.’ She squinted at the proto-spaceship, trying to work out how much icing she’d need. ‘Stand back.’

  Roisin squealed with delight as a cloud of icing sugar filled the kitchen.

  ‘Seriously, Juliet,’ said Lorcan, over the sound of the mixer. ‘Make his cake nice. Poor little guy. He doesn’t deserve a botched-up horror.’

  ‘Think of it like plastering,’ said Juliet, handing him a flat knife. ‘Now, Florrie, ice cream cones?’

  After barking semi-coherent instructions from beneath her shades, Emer eventually retreated upstairs, and made a surprise appearance with a rejuvenated Alec three minutes before three o’clock, when Spike’s guests were due to arrive. They stood in the kitchen doorway like visiting royalty, surveying the mess with a tranquil sort of acceptance. Juliet couldn’t believe it was the same woman: Emer’s face was now perfectly made up, and she was wearing a fabulous designer tunic thing over her skinny jeans, and some expensive jewellery that looked like an apology made out of diamonds.

  She was also intrigued to see Alec. After all Emer and Lorcan’s stories, she’d been expecting some Viking warrior, but instead, she was faced with a tall, bearded Geography teacher with very narrow trousers. The only rock’n’roll giveaway was the tattoo peeping out of his collar. Juliet thought it probably said, ‘Emer’.

  There was a pregnant pause, and then Emer stepped over the discarded bags and Spike, who was playing with a potato ricer. She grabbed Juliet’s hands and said, ‘Thank you,’ with the sort of heartfelt emotion normally seen at major award ceremonies. ‘You’re amazing.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Alec. He was Scottish. ‘I don’t know how we can possibly—’

  ‘I’ve paid her already,’ said Lorcan, shortly.

  ‘I’ll expense it.’ He grinned nervously. ‘Double whatever Lorcan gave you.’

  Juliet didn’t miss the chilly look that Lorcan shot at him.

  ‘Do you two . . . feel up to running a party?’ she asked tactfully.

  ‘Us? Oh, we’re fine,’ said Emer.

  Juliet looked over at Lorcan and he nodded. ‘Not sure what we’re going to do without the entertainer, but I’m sure we’ll come up with something.’

  ‘If all else fails, we have an extensive dressing-up box,’ said Emer, sweeping a grand hand towards upstairs. ‘Capes, masks, glitter . . . It can change a small boy’s life up there.’

  ‘Did you like the trumpet?!’ said Alec, as if he hadn’t been passed out cold hours before. ‘Surprise gift.’

  Juliet privately thought that a trumpet wasn’t the best choice of instrument for an asthmatic child who kept eating random things, but said nothing, and unwound her apron while she had the chance. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a Labrador to check up on.’

  Diane’s house was far enough away, surely. Not even Salvador’s amplifier could reach that far.

  ‘Ah, don’t go yet!’ said Emer, suddenly more like her everyday self. ‘Stay for one drink. I won’t make you play Pass The Parcel, I promise.’

  ‘I don’t really do kids’ parties.’ Juliet glanced between Emer and Lorcan. Lorcan shrugged as if he didn’t want to force her to stay, but wouldn’t mind if she hung on for a bit, for moral support. ‘Maybe one drink,’ she conceded. ‘Not alcoholic though . . .’

  Emer clicked her fingers, and called, ‘Bargirls?’

  Roisin and Florrie appeared, still sparkly, to take Juliet’s complicated drink order.

  As Spike’s guests began to arrive, Juliet and Lorcan retreated to the kitchen and let Emer and Alec take over the welcoming. To Juliet’s surprise, they were easy, natural hosts – charming to the parents, and the right kind of cool to the kids. To her even bigger surprise, when she glanced at her watch again she found an hour had slipped past, while she sipped elderflower fizzy cocktails, and enjoyed the infectious energy of the party, albeit at a safe distance.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she yelled over the racket to Lorcan. ‘I need to take Minton for a walk. He’ll be next door under the bed thinking war’s broken out.’

  She caught Emer’s eye across the room, where she was painting Kiss faces onto a queue of eager boys, and gestured to the door. Emer made another ‘thanks!’ gesture, clasping her hands to her bosom. Something warmed inside Juliet. It was stupid to feel so excited about a new friendship, at her age, but the Kellys’ bonhomie made her feel giddy, and lucky to be swept up in it with such affection. It was nice too, in a guilty way, not to have to worry that she was enjoying herself too much. The inevitable ‘how are you getting on?’ question never came up.

  Juliet was picking her way through the debris of presents in the hall when Emer caught her arm.

  ‘Just wanted to say thanks again,’ she said. ‘Not just for me, but for Lorcan too. He really appreciates it – I know you did this favour for him, not us.’

  ‘No,’ Juliet started but Emer cut her off.

  ‘He’s a lovely, lovely man,’ she said, meaningfully.

  ‘Emer, please don’t go down that road.’ She felt awkward for the first time that day, cross that everything was about to be spoiled. It had occurred to Juliet that this conversation might arise, that maybe single Lorcan was as much a victim of the passive set-up as she was, but now wasn’t the time to have it, not with Abba being pumped out of professional speakers fifteen feet away.

  Emer’s eyes glittered under her make-up. ‘I hear you. But we should talk about him sometime. There are things you should know.’

  ‘What things?’ said Juliet, but Alec appeared behind her, waving a bottle of expensive champagne.

  ‘For later,’ he said, pushing it into her hand as the trumpet started up, this time played by someone with more lung power than Spike. ‘You might need it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Juliet, and made her escape.

  Chapter 16

  Now that the summer holidays had well and truly started, Juliet wasn’t spending much time in her velvet chair with Minton – or in the house at all. The days on her calendar were ticking by at the same rate, but her old schedule of antiques and home improvement was being replaced by a d
ifferent routine that made her eyes droop by eleven o’clock and sometimes even made her sleep through the whole night.

  In the same way that they’d once ‘persuaded’ everyone to throw parties catered by Kim’s Kitchen, Diane and Louise had taken it upon themselves to spread the word about Juliet’s pet-walking services, mainly, Juliet suspected, so she couldn’t back out of her new ‘out and about’ routine. Louise dropped off small-business guidance leaflets from the council offices and got her some liability insurance, and Diane gave her all Coco’s spare leads and water bowls.

  Her phone, once silent for days on end, kept ringing with people asking if she wouldn’t mind adding them to her waiting list. It seemed there were a lot of time-squeezed owners in Longhampton, willing to pay to have their dog whizzed round the park a couple of extra times a week. Juliet could just catch Homes Under the Hammer with Minton between opening the door to Coco at eight and going to collect Hector at ten, then walking all three before lunch.

  It was at lunchtime that things got really busy – and the boundaries between vicarious telly-based house-viewing and the real thing started to blur.

  On Mondays and Fridays, they had to detour via Mrs Rogers, another book-group lady, to collect Spider, a frantic collie-cross who needed his ball throwing so often Juliet’s right arm felt twice the size when she came back. Diane usually came back from book group grinding her teeth about Mrs Rogers, and her twee insistence on repeating all the views of ‘the lovely Mr Rogers’, as well as her own. Juliet decided not to let on that there was a pile of stickers by the hall table to send mail to Mr C. Y. Rogers to an address in Hunterton, and not one pair of men’s boots in the neat shoe rack by the door.

  On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, she let herself in to Louise’s colleague Mina Garnett’s ultra-modern garden flat by the police station, and played with their beagle puppy, Pickle, for an hour. Mina’s elegant flat was like something out of her home décor magazines, and Juliet couldn’t resist taking camera-phone pics of her shower curtain for inspiration. She also felt like Sherlock Holmes, deducing that Mina and her boyfriend, Ed, did a lot of transatlantic travel, going by the huge bowl of Virgin Atlantic toiletries Pickle nearly upended while Juliet was snapping away.

  Juliet wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow, during the summer, it seemed more and more natural to drop into the Kellys’ ever-clattering house. Maybe it was because the doors were always open in the heat, but she often wandered round there in between walks. Getting a screwdriver for Lorcan. Seeing if Emer had any handy hints for getting mud out of cats. Showing Roisin how to make meringue mice. Letting Florrie practise her vet skills on a patient Minton. A hundred different, very natural reasons to be sitting at Emer’s battered kitchen table, instead of her temporary fold-up own.

  The main reason, though, was that for the first time in months, Juliet needed to talk to someone about something other than Ben. And it wasn’t something she really wanted to share with her mother, or her sister.

  Mark was taking up more of her time than any of her other clients, and not because she walked Damson for a good half-hour longer than the others: Juliet also seemed to spend another half an hour after the walk pummelling her brains about what to write on the note he now always left in a very prominent place.

  It had to be witty, and offhand, like she’d just scribbled it down in passing. It had to be flirty but not flirtatious. It usually had to be in the voice of Damson and/or Minton. The trouble was, all the crypticness was starting to get in the way, and she wasn’t well practised in the art of flirting to begin with.

  Juliet knew she was probably wandering into a minefield, but at the same time, tingles ran up and down her arms when she opened the door and saw Mark’s folded note waiting for her. It was always funny, and clever, and sounded like him – everything she wished her own notes were. Maybe she was letting herself be influenced by the elegant back-and-forth courtliness in the Jane Austen novels she was working her way through as she walked round the town, but Juliet could feel the first shivers of a real crush developing into something more.

  So much about Mark seemed like fate. She told him that he reminded her of the antiques expert on television, as a shy sort of compliment, and he laughed and said that was because he was: he worked for a big local auctioneers, valuing land and farm estates, mostly, but he had done some general sales too. Minton and Damson went to the same vet; he’d been to some parties she and Kim had catered. He was incredibly easy to talk to, and made her feel interesting, drawing out things that she’d never bothered to tell anyone else. And, of course, he was very good looking, with eyes that seemed to add an unspoken compliment whenever he glanced at her. Juliet found herself blushing almost as much as Elizabeth Bennet.

  The hot August days went by and the exhibition got nearer, and Juliet still wasn’t sure if it was actually a date or not. Or even if she wanted it to be. All the websites and books told her this was probably a disaster waiting to happen, but they were websites. What she wanted was some real advice, from someone who wouldn’t look horrified at the way she was letting Ben’s memory down.

  Emer, luckily, didn’t wait for her to raise the topic, but waded straight in one afternoon when Minton and Juliet arrived back from the afternoon’s walks, shiny-faced and covered in burrs, in search of a cold drink.

  Roisin solicitously provided Juliet with Diet Coke on the rocks with a side order of pretzels, having first let her into the VIP area of the kitchen, via a velvet rope across the door. (It was Studio 54 week, chez Kelly, Emer explained.)

  ‘Now then,’ said Emer, leaning forward conspiratorially once she’d sent the girls packing to the garden to supervise Spike. ‘Who’s your man with the spaniel?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your good-looking fella with the spaniel. I saw you having a coffee in the park with him the other day. I almost didn’t think it was you, you looked so cheerful, but then I saw Minton and Coco, so I knew it was you.’

  ‘When was that?’ Juliet hadn’t seen Emer, but then she wouldn’t have been totally surprised to hear that Emer had been monitoring it from the crystal ball in her bedroom.

  ‘God, I don’t know. Friday? What’s he called?’

  ‘It’s a she. Damson,’ said Juliet. ‘She’s a working cocker.’

  ‘No!’ Emer looked appalled. ‘Not the dog. The man! What’s his name?’

  ‘Oh! Mark. I think,’ Juliet added. She’d almost forgotten that detail; they never actually used names, just J and M on the notes. Or Damson and Minton.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes, well, you don’t really do human names with dog-walkers,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s just one of those things. You use the dog’s name much more, and you never remember what the owner’s called.’

  ‘I think I’d remember what a hot man like that was called.’

  Juliet blushed. ‘I do know. It’s Mark.’

  ‘And it’s just business,’ said Emer, in a tone that made it clear that that was not what she thought at all.

  Juliet took a deep breath. ‘Well, he has asked me to an exhibition next week . . .’

  ‘Good for you!’

  ‘No, no!’ Juliet said. ‘I was going to say, I don’t know. That’s just it. I can’t work out whether it is something, and I’m just rubbish at picking up signals, or it’s not and I’m making a fool of myself. He might just be friendly.’

  ‘Do you meet him in the same place every time with the dogs?’ she asked shrewdly.

  ‘More or less.’ Juliet thought about it. ‘He’s usually coming down the hill and we’re coming up, and we sort of meet by the coffee stand and—’

  ‘Big place, that park,’ said Emer. ‘What a coincidence, eh?’ She patted Juliet’s hand. ‘It’s a date, I reckon. Oh, hang on. He’s not married, is he?’

  ‘Separated. Has a child, though. So I think that’s why he doesn’t want to rush into anything.’ Juliet felt her cheeks turning pink. ‘We haven’t really talked about it as such, but we’ve both joked ab
out how much easier it is meeting new dogs than new people.’

  ‘So he knows about your husband?’

  Juliet nodded.

  ‘How long is it now, since your husband died?’ Emer pushed the biscuits across the table and helped herself. ‘Forgive me for asking, I know I should know.’

  ‘Ten months,’ said Juliet, without having to think. ‘On the thirteenth.’

  ‘So long enough to be used to it, but not long enough to be healed,’ said Emer sympathetically. ‘Had you been together a long time?’

  ‘Since we were fifteen.’

  ‘And you were still together! Wow.’ Emer sipped her coffee. ‘If I were still with my boyfriend from school, I’d be either in prison or an institution.’ She tucked her chin into her neck in outrage. ‘I certainly wouldn’t still be playing tambourine in his fecking hopeless Pink Floyd tribute band. Not for free, anyway.’

  Juliet smiled. There was something flattering about Emer’s honest chattiness, but it wasn’t a safe kind of familiarity. She had absolutely no idea what she might say next – but suspected that even Emer’s longstanding friends probably felt the same way.

  ‘How did you manage when you went away to college?’ Emer went on. ‘Come on. You can tell me. Didn’t you even have a secret university fling or two?’

  ‘We didn’t go away – I went to catering college here, and Ben did a year’s horticulture course in Birmingham. He commuted – it wasn’t that far, and some of it was practical.’

  ‘So you’ve always lived here? You never wanted to move out? See the world a bit?’ Now Emer wasn’t even trying to disguise her surprise.

  It reminded Juliet of Lorcan’s surprise when she’d said they hadn’t really gone travelling. It made her want to dig her heels in.

  ‘I had everything I wanted right here,’ she said. ‘My family have always been here – my mum and dad have been in the same house since they got married!’ But even as she said it, she felt the faintest flicker of an old emotion she’d managed to stamp down so hard it had almost disappeared. There had been a time when she’d quite fancied travelling.