An Autumn Crush (21 page)

Anyway, buying the restaurant would put paid to all of his savings. A house would have to wait. That was the trouble, he had a picture in his mind of him and Floz and Hallow’s Cottage and
really everything else would be second-best. And he’d had enough of second-best to last him a lifetime.

Steve arrived at the flat that evening with a Chinese takeaway banquet for three.

‘Thought I’d surprise you,’ he said, then noticed the smell of garlic in the air. ‘Oh, have you eaten?’

‘I was just about to dish up a spag bol,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s okay though, it’ll do for tomorrow. That all right with you, Floz? Fancy a Chinese with us?’

‘Yes, that’s fine by me,’ nodded Floz, closing her notepad and going into the kitchen for plates.

The three of them watched a film about Jack the Ripper afterwards. Then Floz went to bed, leaving Steve and Juliet leaning on each other on the sofa.

‘Are you staying?’ she asked.

‘Well, I will,’ he said, ‘but I’m too knackered for sex. I’ve been plastering a ceiling and my back is killing me.’

‘I’m tired myself,’ said Juliet through a yawn. ‘Let’s just sleep then, shall we? I’ll relax you with a massage.’

‘That sounds bliss,’ said Steve – and meant it.

Surprisingly, there was an email from Nick in Floz’s inbox which she checked as a matter of course before she went to bed.

Floz burst into tears. All day she had been getting to grips with letting go, felt she was mastering it, and now she was all ripped open again. She sat
at her PC and wrote the one question she now had to ask.

Floz tried to sleep, and managed it but not well. She awoke in the wee small hours knowing without any doubt that a new email had arrived for her. She
was right. That she was so in tune with Nick strengthened her belief that they would have been so right for each other, had fate been on their side.

On the following Monday morning, Floz sat at the window enjoying her first coffee of the day and a slice of toast. The school was open again after the long summer break.
Children were walking up the road towards it in their pristine uniforms, shiny shoes and new coats with mittens on strings poking out of their sleeves. Some of them looked little older than babies
as they gripped their mothers’ hands and skipped along. It was an achingly sweet sight.

Tim, from downstairs, was raking up leaves, but as soon as he gathered a pile, the breeze blew on them and sent them whirling up into the air before he could scoop them up into the green bin.
The autumn wind was a minx, Floz decided with a grin as she watched him.

This week’s work brief was Christmas, but there was nothing odd about that. She often had to write copy about Easter in December, and ‘Happy Hallowe’en’ cards in March.
Many a time she would be writing about Santa when the newspaper headlines were,
PHEW
,
WHAT A SCORCHER
. Such a shame no one sent ‘Happy
Autumn’ cards. It was such a bonny time of year.

Yet people scurried through leaves, seeing only nature’s nuisance litter and paying no heed to the glorious mix of colours: scarlet, gold, rust, bronze, spice, claret, amber, crimson,
copper. They gave a cursory glance upwards to the big blushing Harvest Moon, once so important in helping farmers work extra hours on their crops at night. They failed to notice the raspberries and
blackberries fruiting fat and sweet on the brambles or the sweeping bleed of poppies in the fields.

Floz always loved that autumn brimmed with activity. At Harvest Festival, people sang rousing hymns in church of ‘swelling grains’ and ‘sweet refreshing rain’, children
collected groceries in baskets to give as gifts to pensioners. At Hallowe’en, families scooped out pumpkin heads and placed them outside their doors to tell little skeletons and witches there
just might be ‘treats’ available here, if they knocked and promised not to ‘trick’. Then, when November came, the night air was filled with crackles and smoke and sizzling
barbecues, fizzing fireworks and booms, bangs and merriment. Yet most people instinctively thought of autumn as a ‘non-season’ – a mere fill-in between beloved summer and sparkly
winter.

Floz had more reason than most to hate autumn, but she could never quite manage to believe that God would paint the season with such a beautiful palette if He were not imparting a message of
hope: that the earth was not dying, but preparing to rest and renew itself and would survive to flower again. And she
so
needed to keep her faith that there was a God – and a
heaven.

She took herself out for a walk around the shops and ended up in Morrisons, wandering idly down the aisles but not seeing anything that might tempt her appetite. Food didn’t interest her
much at the moment but she forced herself to eat when she felt weak and shaky. She looked down at her shopping trolley. She could have sworn she had put some potatoes in there, but there were none.
There was, however, a huge bag of onions which she didn’t need. She was tired out: physically from not sleeping too well, and mentally from thinking about Nick and filling in the gaps as to
what could be happening to him, what his family were going through, his niece and nephew, even his dogs. He had two beautiful huskies – Amak and Pilitak. They were Inuit names, she remembered
him telling her. Amak, the female, meant ‘playful’; Pilitak, the male, meant ‘useful’. She had a feeling there would be a lot of people pining for the demise of this strong,
lovely man. And animals.

She had not heard from him in nearly a week now and suspected the worst. The not knowing was tearing her apart.

The woman on the till asked Floz if she was all right because the tears were rolling down her cheeks as she put her shopping into the carrier bags.

‘Yes, fine.’ Floz attempted cheerfulness. ‘I think I’m allergic to this eyeliner.’

It was a crap lie, but the till operator kindly played along.

‘I once had one of those,’ she said, standing to help Floz pack. ‘Made my eyes look like pissholes in the snow. And it wasn’t a cheap one either.’

Floz chuckled, grateful to her. There were some lovely people on this planet, making life run a little more smoothly with just a gentle word or two.

In the car park, Floz noticed a man fiddling underneath the bonnet of his car.

‘Turn the engine, Gron,’ he was calling to someone in the driver’s seat. The voice was instantly familiar.

‘Mr Miller? Are you all right?’

Perry Miller straightened up.

‘Oh hello, dear Floz.’ He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Spot of car trouble. Can’t work out what’s wrong with it at all. It’s just had a
damned service.’

Grainne emerged from the car and waved. ‘Hello, Floz,’ she said brightly. ‘We’re having some car trouble. It’s just had a service . . .’

‘I’ve told her, Gron,’ cut in Perry with a rare snap in his voice. Floz noticed that he looked weary. He was a seventy-year-old man, still under the impression that he had the
energy levels of a twenty-year-old. He was used to doing the rescuing in his family; the role of ‘rescuee’ obviously jarred with his pride.

‘Look, why don’t I run you both home?’ suggested Floz.

‘No, no, we can get a taxi,’ said Perry. ‘You’re a busy girl.’

‘I didn’t hear that,’ said Floz. ‘Let me put my shopping away and I’ll bring my car round.’

‘Thank you so much,’ smiled Grainne, who looked relieved. ‘My ice cream must be nearly defrosted.’

A few minutes later and Floz was driving towards them. Just for a moment, she imagined it was her own parents she was helping because they needed her. They would never be in that position,
though. She had no doubt that when anything happened to one of them, the other would follow soon after. They would never want anyone but each other – it had always been that way, and always
would be. She coughed away the emotion rising within her again. She would never grow out of the feeling of being surplus to her own mother and father’s requirements.

‘I’ve told the customer service desk that you’ve broken down and they gave me this to put in your windscreen,’ said Floz, handing Perry a piece of card saying
Authorized vehicle parking
. Then you won’t get fined for being here over two hours.’

‘Oh, that’s very kind of you, dear Floz,’ gushed Grainne.

They loaded the Millers’ shopping into her boot and then Floz set off for Maltstone.

‘Sorry to put you to all this trouble,’ said Grainne, all snug in the back.

‘Really, it isn’t any trouble at all,’ replied Floz and meant it.

‘I can’t understand what’s wrong with it.’ Perry was still mulling over the problem.

‘Perry has always been very good with cars,’ Grainne said. ‘It must be an odd one if he can’t work it out. Never mind. Guy and Steve will sort it for us later. And if
they can’t, they’ll know a man who can. One of their wrestling friends will be a mechanic, I’m sure of it.’

When they got to the house, Perry was insistent on giving Floz a fiver for her petrol. Floz was equally insistent on not taking it.

‘Floz, I don’t want you to be out of pocket,’ Perry said sternly.

‘Perry, I am not taking that money,’ Floz told him, as she carried in the shopping for them. ‘And there’s an end to it.’ Then she drove off before the pair of them
held her at ransom until she had put the money into her purse.

‘What a sweet girl,’ smiled Grainne, waving until Floz’s car was out of sight.

‘Isn’t she just?’ nodded Perry.

‘I wonder what’s troubling her, though. She looked so awfully sad in her eyes. Did you notice how red they were?’

‘I thought the very same,’ agreed Perry, taking his pipe out of his pocket. ‘Lovely girl, but sad.’

‘How could you not want to see a daughter like that very often?’ Grainne’s smile dropped. ‘Some woman is either very stupid or very selfish.’

‘I stopped judging others by my own standards many years ago, my darling,’ said Perry, putting his arm around his wife and leading her inside. ‘There are a lot of people in
this world who can’t love, and I’m just glad that we aren’t them.’

Juliet flew into the flat that evening and strode right over to Floz looking murderous.

‘Thanks to you and your damned kindness to my parents, we’ve been invited for Sunday lunch,’ she bellowed. ‘And the worst of it is, my mother’s doing the cooking.
Thanks a lot, Floz. Next time, leave them in the bloody car park.’

Floz burst into laughter.

‘You think it’s funny, Floz Cherrydale,’ said Juliet. ‘Just you wait until you’re in A and E getting unpoisoned.’

Despite Juliet’s exaggerated and pretend dread of the Sunday dinner to come, Floz was really looking forward to it. It would take her mind away from Nick and how he was.
Eleven days since his last email. But her daydreams had been full of him and so easy to slip into. In them they lived together in a log cabin at the side of a lake. She was tapping on a laptop, he
was fishing and they would eat the catch on a table outside on a porch on nights lit by a large bone-white moon. She thought about him pulling her onto the bed and kissing her till her
nerve-endings were on fire. And he would say, ‘I love you,’ and she would feel that he meant it.
His constant ‘if only’, as he was hers
.

Juliet crossed herself with her right hand before she pushed open the front door to 1, Rosehip Gardens.

‘If I die because of my mother’s cooking, Floz, I’ll come back and haunt you,’ she said.

‘Don’t be daft,’ laughed Floz, as she followed Juliet inside. A pleasant smell of a roast dinner in progress greeted them.

‘Hellooo,’ said Perry, greeting them both with a kiss. ‘You’re the first here. I’ve just seen Steve’s car pass, so he’ll have gone for Guy.’

Floz’s heart jumped in her chest. So Guy was coming too then? What was it about that man that did funny things to the rhythm of her heartbeat?

‘What was up with the car in the end, Dad?’ asked Juliet.

‘Alternator,’ replied Perry. ‘Guy and Steve got it sorted for me.’

‘Does your mum know about you and Steve?’ whispered Floz.

‘What, that we’re not in a relationship but just having wild sex? Er, no, Floz,’ Juliet whispered back with an Elvis lip.

‘Ah, fair point,’ said Floz, who wanted to add, ‘Just sex, my eye.’ There was genuine affection between Steve and Juliet. Any idiot could see that.