‘I’m curious,’ she replied, looking up at me from her crouched position, wide-eyed and full-lipped and, oh Jesus Christ, teaspoon teaspoon teaspoon teaspoon. ‘I like to learn about new things. What if I ever wanted to build my own bar?’
‘Is that likely?’ I asked, wandering around to the back of the armchair and leaning against it casually. I hadn’t had this much trouble with inopportune semis since the sixth form. ‘Was commissioning me to design something for you part of an elaborate plan to run me out of business?’
‘Damn it,’ she bounced back up to her feet, all smiles and easy laughter. ‘You got me.’
The radio was on a low crackle somewhere in a dark corner of the workshop and I searched my one-track mind for something else to say. This wasn’t me, I was good at people, I always had a comeback. It was one of the reasons everyone was so convinced I’d make a great barrister, I could talk the hind legs off a donkey and then convince him he didn’t really need the front legs if he thought about it. Jane just stood there, in the middle of my dusty, dirty workshop, as though there was nowhere else in the world she’d rather be.
‘How come you’re all the way up here?’ I asked as my brain disengaged from my trousers for long enough to form a sentence. ‘You said you were going to be up this way, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, right, I did,’ she said. Her mouth hung half open for just a split second, as though her body was ready to speak before her mind had decided what it wanted to say. ‘I was visiting a friend.’
‘A friend?’
Was she lying? Had she made up a reason to see me again?
‘A friend,’ she nodded, placing the zip pull of her leather jacket into my table vice and turning the handle until it was caught tight. ‘Sorry, not terribly exciting.’
‘I’m not sure I believe you,’ I said, recovering myself as my semi subsided.
Jane looked up sharply, her olive cheeks flushing pink. ‘Is that right?’
She yanked her sleeve upwards but it was caught too tightly in the vice. Certain my crotch was in no way compromised, I crossed the room towards her to free her jacket.
‘Yeah, I think you’re lying,’ I said, spinning the handle towards me, just twelve inches or so between us. My breathing was shallow. Her breathing was shallow. She smelled of something deep and spicy warm. She definitely hadn’t been wearing perfume on Tuesday, this was definitely a new thing. ‘You’re not just trying to take over my business are you? You’re an international assassin. You might as well confess now, I’ve got your number, Jane.’
‘If that is my real name,’ she said, a bubble of tense laughter bursting out of her as she gave my chest a half-hearted slap. The second she touched me I knew I wanted to kiss her and I was almost certain she wanted it too. I’d been out of the game for a while, it was true, but this was not my first hot-girl rodeo. Her hand didn’t move and I knew she could feel how fast my heart was pounding. It really was working overtime to get all that blood away from my head and my feet and concentrate it in one particular area it currently considered much more important. Neither of us flinched. I could feel her breath on my throat and hear the rustle of her jacket and that tiny freckle on her left cheek dared me to walk away.
‘Cup of tea?’
Walk away I did.
My voice was too loud and too high and I felt my ankle roll underneath my foot as I took a big step back, falling directly into my armchair, arms and legs akimbo.
‘I was thinking something stronger,’ Jane said, shaking out her hair and wrapping her arms around herself. ‘Have you got any wine?’
From my incredibly elegant position in the chair, I noticed that she was gripping the workbench even more tightly than the vice. Jesus H. Christ on a pushbike, what had I got myself into?
‘Let’s go to the pub,’ I suggested, righting myself and making a new plan. Get Jane away from my house, away from any surface that could be considered suitable for boning and out in public where there were lots and lots of other people. ‘They’ve got wine. Amazing wine. First round’s on me.’
‘Sounds good,’ she said, eyeing me with a heavy gaze for one moment before turning on her heel and walking out into the garden.
Normal service had resumed.
I followed her out of the workshop, closed the double stable doors, and clicked the padlock shut, leaving whatever had just happened far behind.
The Bell was not a good pub; there was no way around that. It was old, tired and generally populated with men so old there was a local urban legend that one regular had died sitting at the bar and no one had moved him for two days. That said, it was still a better option than the Kingfisher, a pub primarily famous for diarrhoea-inducing warm lager and the constant threat of schoolyard violence. In the interest of not being forcibly dekegged before waking up to find I’d shit the bed, I directed Jane to our local. Swirls of dust danced in the air as I opened the heavy door, letting in unwelcome clean air and afternoon sunlight, and followed her towards a small, round table in the corner.
‘Nice spot,’ she said, settling herself on an unstable stool before switching to the bench built into the wall. ‘Retro.’
‘I thought it would be good inspiration for you,’ I replied, patting myself down for my wallet. ‘Just in case you’re not totally wedded to the summer camp concept and wanted to go for something a bit more late-seventies, Middle England, bag of shite.’
‘It’s tempting,’ she acknowledged. ‘I’m not sure Jim would go for it though. Maybe you and me should buy this place out and make sure no one ever changes a single thing.’
‘No one ever will,’ I assured her. ‘Glass of wine? White or red?’
‘Is it going to be drinkable?’ she asked, squinting behind the bar. ‘Or would I be better with something else?’
‘It’s not going to be great,’ I admitted, exchanging nods with someone Liv had gone to school with but whose name I couldn’t remember for the life of me. He immediately clocked Jane, looking her up and down and raising both eyebrows. ‘I’d go with a beer if you’re not sure.’
‘I know this is a bit shit for a career barmaid,’ Jane said, scooping her hair over one shoulder, away from the sticky table. ‘But I really hate beer. I’m more of a cocktail girl. I know, it’s terrible.’
‘I’m shocked and appalled,’ I replied. ‘If I can’t get them to make a mojito, glass of white?’
She nodded and pulled her black leather handbag onto her lap, shaking up the contents as I walked to the bar and rooting around inside. ‘Sounds good,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Adam.’
Every time she said my name. Teaspoons.
‘Afternoon.’
I must have been in the Bell at least two hundred times in the last six years and this man had been behind the bar every single time. Short, stocky and with the most impressive red bush of a beard I had ever seen, he gave me a nod and reached for a pint pot.
‘Afternoon,’ I replied, snapping back to the job at hand. ‘Pint of the Fuller’s and a white wine, please.’
‘Large or a small?’ he asked, pulling the pint. ‘For the wine?’
‘Umm,’ I glanced over my shoulder to see Jane applying lip balm from a small round pot and smacking her full lips together. ‘Large.’
‘New friend? Haven’t seen her around here before.’
‘Client,’ I replied, quickly before he could think anything else. ‘She’s a client.’
‘If you say so.’
He smiled to himself as I handed him a ten-pound note and watched the head on my drink settle. The idea of me bringing another woman to the Bell on a date was so ridiculous even Liv would have laughed. If I did have someone else on the go, this was the last place I’d bring her. The Bell was the last place I would take my worst enemy if there were a better option in walking distance.
‘Thanks, mate.’ I pocketed the handful of shrapnel he held out to me without counting it and picked up the drinks. Jane accepted her wine with caution and took a sip.
‘Cheers,’ I said,
holding up my pint.
‘Oh, god, yeah.’ She clinked her glass against mine quickly. ‘Sorry, cheers. My curiosity got the better of me.’
‘Hate when that happens,’ I said with a gulp. ‘How is it?’
‘I’m probably not going to put it on our wine list,’ she replied, slipping her arms out of her leather jacket. Her T-shirt slouched off one shoulder, showing off a slender collarbone and a spaghetti-thin black bra strap. How was that possibly holding up her boobs? Even now, the engineering of bras astounded me.
‘How are you getting on with everything? With the bar?’ I asked. It felt weird to be in the Bell without Liv. I doused the ache in the pit of my stomach with cold beer and offered Jane an interested smile. ‘There must be so much to do.’
‘So much,’ she agreed. ‘We’ve got all the paperwork in order and we’re talking to the different suppliers now, but that should all be settled soon. Then we’ve got to find staff, get all the menus printed, decorate. The design is pretty much the only other thing we’ve got sorted.’
‘I’ve heard you’ve got a really good man on that,’ I said with a nod. ‘Best in the business.’
She smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve heard he’s all right. Hasn’t got very good taste in wine though, he’s lost a few points for that.’
‘Doesn’t seem to be slowing you down,’ I pointed out, tipping back my pint. ‘I can’t keep up.’
‘The faster I drink it, the better it tastes,’ she replied. ‘I’ve drunk nicer paint stripper.’
We both stretched our legs out under the table at the same time and snatched them back as our shins clashed.
‘I’m going to run to the ladies.’ She placed her half-empty wine glass on a warped cardboard beer mat and stood up quickly. ‘I’ll be back.’
She walked around the horseshoe and every man in the place looked up. There were only half a dozen old boys, as well as Liv’s friend, but not a single one of them could keep their eyes off her until she disappeared into the ladies and they all turned to look at me. The ache in my stomach that missed Liv told me to look away and ignore them, but the peacock that had always enjoyed the company of a good-looking woman fought harder and I found myself pulling my shoulders back and stretching out my arms. Everyone looked away and a smile found its way onto my face before the niggling fear that, somehow, this might get back to Liv came back to slap me in the face.
Not that I was doing anything wrong.
Not that I was the one who wanted this break in the first place.
‘It’s one quick polite drink and then home,’ I said quietly, checking my watch. We’d be done inside an hour. ‘She’s a client, I don’t want to be rude, that’s all.’
I picked up my pint and sighed. Sometimes I worried that me and Chris weren’t that different after all.
17
‘I’m really not in the mood for the pub,’ David moaned. ‘Can’t we do something more fun like poke ourselves in the eyes with knitting needles or watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians?’
‘I thought you liked the Kardashians?’ I asked, puzzled. It was his secret straight-man shame. At first I thought he was watching it for the possibility of boobs but it soon became obvious he was genuinely invested. He knew the names of Kylie’s dogs; he was legit.
‘I like Kourtney and Kendall,’ he corrected as he wrung out the sleeve of his sodden sweatshirt. ‘The rest of them can get in the sea.’
‘Even Kim?’
He fixed me with a horrified stare. ‘Especially Kim.’
It had been a shit day. First the coffee machine had broken, then I’d spilled cat diarrhoea medicine all down my trousers, then I had to explain to a seven-year-old that I had put his rabbit to sleep because it wouldn’t stop fitting and his parents didn’t want to pay for tests. After all that, I’d spent twenty minutes locked in the toilets, hiding from my dad who wanted to talk takeover strategy, while I ate half a Crunchie and had a little cry. Something that seemed to be happening more and more often; the Crunchie, that is. I’d known Wednesday was going to be a test from the start – dark skies, black clouds, bouncing-off-the-floor rain – from the moment I woke up to the moment we closed up for the evening. And the moment we arrived at the Bell the weather gods decided it would be hilarious to dial things back to a miserable drizzle as we stalked across the car park with our jumpers held up over our heads. Could we find an umbrella in the surgery when we needed it? No, of course we couldn’t.
‘It’s Wednesday, we have to go to the pub,’ I insisted in the same way I’d been insisting all day. So much was going on and too much of it was change, so the very least everyone could do was meet me at the shitting pub for a glass of manky wine. If I was being entirely honest, I’d much rather chill out at home with a glass of wine and America’s surgically enhanced first family, but a best friend’s work was never done. ‘Besides, Abi said she might bring Bill and she doesn’t want him to think it’s a date.’
‘Isn’t it a date?’ David asked.
‘Not if we’re there,’ I replied. ‘Which I think is the point.’
He stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Sod it, I’m going home. I have to find out if Kim has moved out of Kris’s house yet.’
‘But you hate Kim,’ I reminded him, clutching his arm and dragging him towards the pub. ‘Don’t leave me with them, please. It’s half six now; I promise we’ll be home by half seven. Eight at the latest.’
‘I do. I do hate Kim,’ he admitted with a sigh. ‘Fine. One drink?’
‘One drink and we can go back to mine and watch all the shit telly you like,’ I bargained. ‘I need to go back and check on Ronald anyway.’
‘He’s fine,’ David assured me. ‘He’s eaten something manky, that’s all.’
‘I hope so,’ I mused, thinking back on the big, silly dog currently napping in the sleepover section of the surgery. ‘He’s one of my favourites – I was there when he was born, you know.’
‘I don’t know how any animal that throws up on you as much as he did today could be anyone’s favourite anything.’ David held his hand out to test the drizzle before dropping his jumper from over his head to around his shoulders. ‘Did you definitely have a shower? You still smell of it a bit.’
‘I do not,’ I replied, indignant, before sniffing tentatively at my hair. Arsehole.
Ronald was a golden Labrador who’d come in after lunch and had been throwing up on anyone and anything that came within a six-foot radius all afternoon. We’d given him some fluids, run some tests, and after I had changed my scrubs twice he settled down in his bed and slept happily for the rest of the afternoon. If his owners hadn’t texted me to say they were going to the pictures, I would have sent him home, but they were already on their way to the cinema when we closed. Priorities totally in order, obviously.
‘Hmm,’ I agreed, biting my lips in lieu of lipstick. David immediately handed me his ChapStick. I took it and pulled off the lid to give it a sniff. ‘You haven’t got anything contagious, have you?’
‘Not any more,’ he promised as I slicked it on. ‘You’ve got HPV already, haven’t you?’
‘Get me a drink,’ I ordered, slapping the tube back in his hand as we pushed through the double doors. ‘I’m going to the toilet to boil my lips.’
Part of me couldn’t help but wonder if my terrible, awful, not-at-all-good day was karmic punishment for running away from Adam’s house twenty-four hours earlier. After driving all the way to Melton Mowbray and back, I drove around the village three times before heading home to share two fish and a large chips with Abi and Daniel Craig, while trying to convince myself that Adam was a victim of unwanted sexual harassment and the bulge in his crotch was a mechanical, traumatic reaction he had no control over. That could happen, Abi said, she had read it on the internet so it had to be true.
‘The internet never lies,’ I muttered, hurling myself at the door to the ladies, only to hear the sickening sound of it striking someone on the other side.
 
; ‘Ow!’
‘Oh shit, sorry!’
I covered my mouth with my hands as the door swung back to reveal a girl on her hands and knees, rubbing her forehead with one hand and trying to scoop the contents of her handbag up off the floor with the other.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, a curtain of long, dark hair covering her face. ‘You only hit me in the face.’
‘Let me help,’ I said, falling to my knees and grabbing a packet of Polos and holding them out like a minty olive branch. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘It’s OK, I’ve got a thick head.’ She looked up and gave me a dazzling smile. ‘I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose.’
Sitting back on my heels, I let the Polos fall to the floor. If I were her, I wouldn’t be so certain. It was her. The girl I’d seen at Adam’s house the day before. I heard my phone singing in my pocket as I sat on the floor, staring up into her beautiful big brown eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, standing up and leaving me nose to kneecap with her long legs.
‘I am all right,’ I said in a cold, flat voice. ‘Thanks.’
‘Right.’ She didn’t look terribly convinced but she didn’t look terribly interested either. ‘OK.’
We stared at each other for a moment then silently agreed our awkward interaction was over. The girl pulled the door open and stepped over me, leaving me on the floor, staring at her perfect arse through the frosted glass. She was beautiful. She was beautiful, and she smelled nice, and she had one of those low, husky voices that only worked on incredibly beautiful women. If I sounded like that, everyone would assume I smoked a million a day. But I didn’t sound like that and, more to the point, I didn’t look like that. I couldn’t quite get over how perfect she was close up and in person.
Blinking, I took my phone out of my pocket and saw a text from David.
ADAM IS HERE!!!
Of course Adam was here. Adam was here with her. Adam and The World’s Most Beautiful Woman were here together, in our local. Before I could respond, another text came through.
It’s definitely him this time, FYI.