An Autumn Crush (27 page)

Juliet sat on the sofa in her plum-purple flannelette pyjamas sipping on a glass of lemonade. Order had been restored. Whilst Floz was making tea, Coco had listened to the
twenty voicemail messages that Gideon had left on his mobile. It appeared that he wasn’t ‘knocking off a florist’ as accused. And if Coco went home to his house he would find that
Gideon had actually conspired with the said florist to fill his bedroom with bouquets as a surprise.

‘You should trust him or you’ll lose him,’ warned Juliet. ‘If you start hunting around for evidence, you’ll find something to twist and make it fit what you want to
believe of him. Don’t be such an arse again.’

‘I won’t,’ said Coco, who more or less flew home on a current of glee.

After being assured that his sister was just suffering from a tummy bug, Guy exited the flat quietly and returned to work without actually saying why he had called round. His expression was now
so dark, he made Heathcliff look like Frank Carson.

At last peace reigned in Blackberry Court and Juliet cracked open some Jaffa Cakes for which she had a sudden ravenous craving. She hadn’t eaten all day – give or take the cheese
tarte that had been in her stomach temporarily in the Four Trees restaurant.

‘All those years waiting for a date with Piers Winstanley-Black and I end up throwing up on him,’ chuckled Juliet. ‘Can you believe it? You’d think dating would get less
dramatic the older you get, wouldn’t you? Obviously not.’

‘No, it gets worse,’ nodded Floz with a telling sigh that she didn’t mean to make but which Juliet noticed and stored as further evidence of a mystery man in Floz’s
life.

The house phone rang; It was Coco, brimming over about how his flat was like Kew Gardens and there were rose petals all over his bed.

‘What was Guy doing here, by the way?’ asked Juliet, after that call had ended.

‘I never did get to find out,’ said Floz. There were a few moments of quiet before Floz braved what she was dying to air. ‘He doesn’t like me very much.’

Juliet shook her head. ‘Don’t be daft. I just wonder . . .’ Then she stopped.

‘Wonder what?’

‘I just wonder,’ Juliet began cautiously, ‘if you might remind him of an ex-girlfriend. It’s just a wild guess but she was your height and build. Sour-faced
cow.’

‘Great, thanks.’ Floz puffed out her cheeks. Juliet obviously attended the same charm school as her brother.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that you’re a sour-faced cow,’ Juliet stressed. ‘You don’t actually look anything like her in your face. But he is a bit shy with you,
I’ve noticed. It did cross my mind it might be because of Lacey.’

‘Oh,’ said Floz. ‘I’m presuming it wasn’t someone he split amicably from then.’

‘Actually, they did split amicably and stayed friends,’ said Juliet. ‘That was the problem, he was too good a friend to her, to be honest. She used him. She was a nutter. I
hated her. We all did.’

‘Ah!’ said Floz. So, Guy thought she looked like a nutter-ex of his. Someone that everyone hated. It was getting better and better.

‘Anyway, I shouldn’t really speak ill of— her.’ Infuriatingly for Floz, Juliet stopped herself from finishing off the sentence and picked up an earlier thread of the
conversation. ‘About Piers – I exaggerated slightly when I said I threw up all over his suit. He only got a splash on his sleeve. The floor got the rest. It was tiled so I imagine it
was quickly cleaned away. How bloody embarrassing.’

‘Well, it couldn’t be helped.’ Floz topped up Juliet’s glass of lemonade for her.

‘I had absolutely no warning my starter was going to come back up or I’d have rushed out to the loo. That was the scary thing.’

‘What did Piers say?’

‘Not a lot at first,’ cringed Juliet. ‘I think he was in shock. I don’t imagine anyone’s ever thrown up on him before in an exclusive setting or otherwise. I have
to give him his due though; he drove me straight home and saw me to the door. He was a perfect gentleman all evening – just like I imagined he would be, courteous, handsome, attentive . .
.’ then Juliet fell silent.

‘But?’ Floz was forced to supply.

‘You’ll laugh,’ said Juliet. ‘I’d laugh myself if I didn’t feel so confused.’

‘Try me,’ said Floz, nudging her arm with her own.

‘Bloody sodding swining Steve Feast, that’s what’s up.’

‘What do you mean?’

Juliet dropped her head into her hands. ‘It’s mad. There I am, sitting opposite Piers Winstanley-Black – my dream man who I have been slavering over for years. He’s just
poured me some wine which is fifteen quid a glass, I’m choosing from a menu created by an award-winning chef and all I can think is, “Steve will be wrestling tonight. Which costume will
he be in? Will Chianti be there watching? Have I crossed his mind at all since he pulled the plastic cow?” ’

Then she burst into tears. ‘Oh, Floz, I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think I’ve managed to fall in love with him. How the fuck did that happen?’

‘Oh, love.’ Floz put her arms round Juliet; her shoulder was still damp from Coco’s sobs. ‘I don’t know how these things happen, they just do and we have no control
over the way our hearts work. You should tell Steve how you feel, because I think he’d be thrilled.’

‘How could he be?’ said Juliet, wishing she could stop crying. She never did a soft thing like girly crying. And never over a man. ‘He’s going out with his dream woman
tomorrow. We had a “just sex” arrangement and it was me that kept hammering the point home that that’s all it was. Look at me, I’m a bloody wreck. My periods have stopped,
I’m crying, throwing up and everything I eat tastes funny. What the buggering hell is up with me?’

Floz pushed Juliet back and looked at her square in the face.

‘Ju, you’re not going to like this,’ she said.

‘What? What?’ cried Juliet.

‘Juliet, I think you need to do another pregnancy test.’

Asda was open all night. Floz drove down to get one whilst Juliet stayed at home within striding distance of the loo. After Juliet had weed on the stick again, they both sat on
the sofa and watched it. Two faint blue lines appeared in the boxes and got darker and more defined.

‘But I
did
a pregnancy test and it was negative,’ said Juliet, too shocked for tears.

‘Maybe you did it too early for the test to pick up,’ said Floz, who felt a bit light-headed herself.

‘What am I going to do?’ said Juliet. It was too enormous to take in. Pregnant? By Steve Feast, whom she had hated since school and yet now she couldn’t get him out of her
brain – something she had only discovered when he left her life.

‘You’re going to go to sleep, that’s what you’re going to do,’ said Floz. ‘Because we can’t do anything now, it’s far too late. And you need to
rest your brain and your body.’

‘I won’t sleep,’ said Juliet.

They put on
Bridget Jones
and watched it sitting together on the sofa, until the pair of them nodded off like two brain-weary bookends.

Juliet awoke first the next morning and stretched out her arms. She felt hungover, rough, adrift and hurting, because the predominant thought in her head, eclipsing everything
else – even her apparent pregnancy – was that Steve was seeing Chianti that evening. Beautiful, leggy, slim (if chavvy), designer-dressed, unpregnant Chianti, who he had been in lust
with for aeons.

She sobbed into the furry throw which she must have reached for in the middle of the night to cover herself. She did so silently, so she wouldn’t wake Floz. What a bloody fine mess
she’d managed to get herself into.

Floz awoke to the smell and sizzle of bacon. She went into the kitchen to find it on a low heat unsupervised because Juliet was in the loo throwing up. She looked green in the
gills when she emerged, wiping her mouth. Floz couldn’t have imagined that someone as strong as Juliet could look so sad, so bewildered.

‘I rang in sick,’ she said.

‘Too right you did,’ said Floz. ‘Shall I take over the cooking?’

‘I don’t know why I started cooking bacon. I don’t want any. I think I just wanted something to do.’

‘I’ll make some tea and toast,’ said Floz, pushing Juliet back down onto the sofa. ‘I’ll take the day off, we’ll sit and watch the breakfast TV news and
Jeremy Kyle
. . .’

‘I feel like someone off
Jeremy Kyle
,’ Juliet huffed, catching sight of herself in the wall mirror. She was the colour of an anaemic snowman.

Halfway through the DNA results on a ‘who was the father’ story, Juliet nodded off. Floz crept off to check her emails whilst she could. There were a couple of briefs from
greetings-card firms but nothing from Nick. She sat on the sofa next to the sleeping Juliet and wrote some jolly birthday jokes because her own head was full of stuff she wished she could lose
too.

She was absolutely beautiful. A body to die for, thought Steve, as he ran his hands all over her. He wanted to shag her there and then, but she was a car and there were rules
about that sort of thing. He inserted the key into the ignition, and fired her up. She purred as he slipped out of his drive and smoothed out into the road. He was going to buy a Merc from the
slimy salesman. And the one he had in mind was two luxury grades up from this available-for-hire model. He couldn’t wait to climb in and pull the scent of her into his lungs. There was no
perfume like that of a brand new car.

Steve took her for a burn-up on the motorway and felt like a king as she eased past everything to the left of him whilst he listened to ‘Silver Dream Machine’ on a continuous loop on
the surround-sound CD player. Who needed women when there were machines like this? He held onto that thought hard, because it kept wanting to slip away.

Juliet’s day had been the worst she could ever remember. The best bit was falling to sleep and finding oblivion. She woke up to Alan Titchmarsh’s smiling face on
the television, and it was no reflection on him that five minutes later she was retching again. But there were things inside her that ached far more than her strained stomach muscles ever could.
She couldn’t think straight. The one thing she never wanted to be in life was a single mother.

Dear Floz was fussing around her like a red-haired hen, tucking the big snuggly throw around her and feeding her lemonade and the ginger biscuits she had been out to the corner shop to buy
because apparently ginger was a vomit-suppressant, so she said.

The clock hands had crawled around the face more slowly than was legal in the laws of time and physics, Juliet was sure. Somehow it had gotten to
EastEnders
time and she tried to
concentrate on what was happening, but her brain wasn’t strong enough to bat away the images of Steve in a suit, Chianti in a slinky size zero strapless, backless, frontless, sideless frock
and Empire-State-Building heels. Chianti would probably be in Steve’s arms now, and his brain would be full of nothing but savouring the moment. And her body.

The sound of the entryphone buzzer thankfully interrupted those torturing thoughts.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Floz. ‘You sit there and rest.’

‘Please tell me it’s not Coco and more wailing,’ said Juliet. ‘I can’t handle him tonight if it is.’

‘Er no,’ coughed Floz, a few seconds later as she buzzed the visitor up.

‘Who is it then? Guy? Not Mum and Dad. Please, Floz, don’t let them in if it is,’ Juliet called as Floz opened the door, and in sauntered Steve.

‘All right then?’ he said, casual-as-you-like. He was in black trousers and a white shirt, and a loosened blue tie, the same shade as his Swedish eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ Juliet gasped, acutely aware of the dress imbalance. He was all smart and she was in baggy pyjamas that she had been wearing for nearly twenty-four hours. And she
felt even more of a slattern for not having any make-up on.

Steve threw himself down on the sofa next to her. Floz made a discreet exit and left them to it. She had her fingers crossed and was willing Juliet all the luck in the world.

‘What are you doing here?’ Juliet said, modestly pulling the neck of her pyjamas closed.

‘Well, I wanted to come here and see you. Are you okay?’

‘I’ve got a bit of a tummy . . .’ –
passenger
– Juliet cleared her throat, ‘upset.’

‘Oh.’ Silence.

Juliet daren’t breathe. This was a dream and one as delicate as a bubble. If she moved it would break and she would be back on the sofa alone with that furry throw and watching Phil
Mitchell trying not to murder someone.

‘How was your date?’ she whispered eventually.

‘Not that great,’ said Steve. ‘Which is why I’m here.’

‘Why was that?’

Steve turned to Juliet, his bright eyes locking onto hers.

‘Because I didn’t want to be there with her. I wanted to be here with you.’

‘Did you?’ Juliet squeaked.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s only just after eight o’clock now though. What did you tell Chianti?’

Steve cleared his throat. ‘That I’d made a mistake and we should forget about carrying on with the date.’

‘God, Steve, you really do have the gift of the gab.’

‘That’s what she said before she belted me.’ He rubbed his jaw.

‘That all she said?’

‘Yep, pretty much.’ He left out the bit about her screaming at him like a harpy and insisting on getting a taxi home rather than letting some obviously deranged ‘fucking
bastard’ drive her.

‘Oh. Right then,’ said Juliet, not quite believing this was happening. It was a joke, of course. Any minute he would say, ‘Naw, she stood me up.’ But he didn’t.
Both sat like frozen statues on the sofa, not knowing what was going to happen next.

‘Juliet,’ said Steve eventually. ‘I know you think I’m a knob—’

‘Steve, I know I said—’ she interrupted him, and he interrupted her right back.

‘. . . but I love you. And I know that you probably had a great time with that bloke you work for yesterday and are going to tell me to fuck off because you’re going to get married
to him, but I just wanted you to know that I love you. All right?’