An Autumn Crush (3 page)

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Coco. ‘How about something to occupy the time between now and you becoming Mrs Winstanley-Black?’

Ooh, that sounded good, thought Juliet. She mouthed the words ‘Juliet Winstanley-Black’ and thought it made her sound like a magistrate. ‘Like what?’

‘Internet dating.’

‘Internet dating?’ echoed Juliet. ‘What’s brought this on?’

‘I’m bored,’ said Coco. ‘I’m seeing all the same faces at all the same clubs and I want some fresh meat.’

‘Get to Barry the Butcher’s then on Lamb Street.’

‘Ho ho. Marlene my Deputy Manager met her fiancé online. And her cousin is going out with an architect that she met on the same Singlebods site. So they aren’t all
Jeremy
Kyle
rejects that sign up to these things. Oh come on, it’ll be fun. And I need something to take my mind off Darren.’

At that moment Juliet heard the velvet voice of Piers Winstanley-Black say ‘Good morning’ to the receptionist.

‘Okay, count me in,’ hurried Juliet. ‘Laters. He’s here,’ and she had just enough time to end the call, run her fingers through her long, black sheen of hair and
stick out her tits.

Amanda and Daphne, who shared the same office, were also having a quick hair-primp and straightening their backs. Would he come in and choose one to go upstairs to his office to ‘take
something down’? they all hoped collectively.

Piers Winstanley-Black. Owner of a prestigious family hyphen and, as from four years ago, partner at Butters, Black & Lofthouse where Juliet had worked since leaving college and was now the
most efficient legal secretary in the history of the place. Not that it stood her in good stead with ‘the boy from Ipanema’ as her twin brother Guy called Piers. Just like the song,
Piers Winstanley-Black was tall and tanned and long and lovely with a flashing white smile that made Simon Cowell’s look grey by comparison. He drove fast cars, wore sharp suits that
accentuated his broad shoulders and trim gym-toned waist, hand-made shoes and expensive Italian aftershave of which Coco would have mightily approved. Despite being months away from turning forty,
he had never married – although Juliet suspected he had a little black book full of women just waiting for him to call and propose. He emerged every so often from his own arse to acknowledge
his gorgeousness and witness himself sending a million champagne bubbles of erotic shivers down female spines. He did well to milk it now for all it was worth, since in ten years’ time,
Juliet thought, he might have jowls like a Basset Hound and a bald patch the size of Mars.

Despite all three women having puffed themselves up with breathless anticipation, his eyes didn’t even touch any of them as he passed by the open door. There was obviously a long wait to
be had until Juliet could carve her double-barrel onto their joint four-poster bedhead.

Daphne let her breath out. ‘If I were only twenty years younger . . .’

‘You’d still be fifteen years too old for his tastes,’ laughed Juliet. ‘Even Amanda is too old and she’s twenty-five.’

‘Tell me about it,’ huffed Amanda. ‘Plus he likes blondes with legs up to the ceiling and boobies like beachballs.’ At four foot eleven with short dark hair and a AA
chest, she knew that Piers Winstanley-Black was more likely to look at blonde Daphne than her.

‘If I roll my boobs up from my knees, I might be able to turn his eye,’ chuckled Daphne.

‘Daf, don’t be gross. And I do believe it’s your turn to put on the kettle,’ said Juliet, in her best mock-authoritarian voice.

‘Aye, lass,’ said Daphne, getting to her feet. ‘A cup of tea instead of sex. Story of my life.’

‘And sadly mine,’ replied Juliet, wondering what the magic key was to make Piers Winstanley-Black see her with man eyes. There had to be a key – with men there always was.

Juliet’s parents managed to restrain themselves until Sunday before they called by on the ridiculous pretext of borrowing a hammer.

‘Dad, you’ve got more hammers than B and Q and Wickes put together!’ laughed Juliet down the door entryphone.

‘Yes, but I can’t find my pin hammer anywhere,’ said Perry Miller. His real name was Percy but the last person ever to call him that was a horrible old nun, Headmistress of
Holy Family Infant School, County Cork.

‘And it takes two of you to come over and carry it back, does it?’ Juliet went on, winking over at Floz.

‘Oh, let them in and stop teasing,’ said Floz, whose eyes lit up like green emeralds when she smiled. ‘They just want to make sure you haven’t opened up your home to a
homicidal maniac.’

‘Come on up then,’ sighed Juliet, pressing the lock-release button. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

Floz braced herself for their scrutiny. Years of shutting herself away at home to work had made her shy of strangers. She really need not have worried though, because Perry and Grainne Miller
breezed into the flat, embraced her like a long-lost daughter, and soon they were all sitting at the dining-table sharing a pot of tea and a tin full of date-and-walnut scones which Grainne –
‘Call me Gron’ – had brought over.

Grainne and Perry were a very tall couple and Juliet was physically like both of them. She had her father’s cheeky grey eyes and high cheekbones and her mother’s large generous mouth
and sexy small gap between her front teeth. Grainne’s hair was short and greying now, but it had been long and jet black in her youth; curly though, where Juliet’s was poker straight.
Perry had a lovely thick head of snow-white hair and the air of a very calm and gentle person.

‘So, what is it you do for a job then, Floz?’ asked Perry, looking over at the tower of notebooks on the dining-table which she had been perusing that morning.

‘Don’t be so nosy, Perry,’ Grainne admonished him, her soft Irish accent as strong now as it was when she moved to Barnsley forty-five years ago.

‘I’m not being nosy,’ said the placid Perry. ‘It’s called making conversation.’

‘I don’t mind answering,’ Floz said and laughed. ‘I’m a freelance greetings-card copywriter.’ She was forced to elaborate in response to the blank looks the
Miller elders gave her. ‘Basically, I sit at my computer and churn out jokes and rhymes day after day. The greetings-card companies buy them from me.’

‘Well, would you believe that?’ said Grainne. ‘I never thought before who writes all the stuff you get on cards.’

‘Mum will have bankrolled your companies in her time,’ said Juliet. ‘She sends cards for any occasion. “Congratulations on getting rid of your big spot”.
“Sorry to hear you’ve fallen downstairs and bust your skull open”. “Well done on throwing your scumbag of a husband out of your life”.’

Grainne jumped up and went over to the handbag she’d left with her coat by the door.

‘That reminds me.’ She came back holding a red envelope which she presented to Floz. ‘It’s a “Welcome to your new home” card,’ she beamed.

‘See?’ said Juliet. ‘QED!’

‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you,’ smiled Floz, wondering whether to open it in front of everyone or save it until later. She decided on the former as Grainne was waiting
with a wide arc of grinning anticipation on her face. Inside the envelope was a card with a big bun on the front with doors and windows in it. Inside, the message read:
Welcome to your new home,
with lots of love from Grainne, Perry and Guy Miller
.

‘Thank you, that’s very thoughtful of you,’ said Floz. ‘Is Guy the cat?’ She knew that the Millers had a cat because there was a photograph of her father holding
one on Juliet’s kitchen noticeboard. An ancient black cat, with one eye and no teeth. Obviously Guy wasn’t the cat, from the hilarity that comment caused.

‘He’s my twin brother,’ said Juliet. ‘He lives with Mum and Dad.’

‘Well, he lives in the granny flat adjoining our house,’ added Grainne. ‘I’m not sure he’d like to be classed as still living with his parents.’

Juliet turned in her seat and fiddled in the drawer of the dresser behind her. ‘Look, this is him,’ and she handed over a photograph of herself standing in between two huge men
dressed in wrestling gear – one with flowing white-blond hair, and with a fur waistcoat on, the other with jet-black floppy curls and Perry’s grey eyes, fringed with thick, dark lashes.
Floz gulped. Square-jawed, tall, muscular Guy Miller was an absolute hunk. She felt her heartbeat quicken inside her.

‘That’s Steve Feast, Guy’s best friend.’ Juliet pointed to the blond man. She said his name in such a way that Floz guessed he wasn’t one of her bosom buddies.
‘And that is my brother. Where is Guy by the way, Mum? He’s not been around yet for me to introduce him to Floz.’

‘He’s been working flat out at the restaurant,’ replied Grainne. ‘Poor boy is exhausted. That Kenny is a bloody slave-driver! I don’t know why Guy doesn’t
tell him to stick his job.’ Grainne’s blood began to boil when she thought about the many liberties Kenny Moulding took with her son, making him work such long shifts.

‘Oh now, Gron, the man has been good to Guy in his own way. He’s always paid him very well for his services,’ countered Perry, taking his pipe out of his pocket and clenching
it between his teeth. He didn’t light it in anyone else’s house, he just liked the comfort of it on his lip.

Grainne huffed. ‘Money is not everything, Perry. It doesn’t buy you happiness.’

‘Yes, I totally agree with you on that, my dear Gron. Still, it’s nice to have. Oils the wheels of living.’ Perry disarmed his wife with a smile. Floz thought it might be
impossible to have an argument with such a calm and diplomatic man. He should have been serving in international peace-keeping missions. ‘So how many card firms do you actually work for
then?’ Perry continued quizzing Floz.

‘Seven,’ Floz answered. ‘Though I get a weekly brief from a firm called “Status Kwo” and they’re the main suppliers of my bread and butter.’

‘What do you do then? Do they send you some pictures and you have to write around them?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Floz. She picked up a file and opened it to show Perry pages full of thumbnail black and white images. ‘They send me these pictures on a disk and I write copy
for them, depending on what occasion they’ve asked me for. For instance, this picture of a woman swigging back a glass of wine – well, I could marry that to some copy for Mother’s
Day about a mum going for it and over-celebrating, or it could be a best friend card, about only drinking on days with an “a” in them, or it could be a Get Well card about eating grapes
to get better but only when fermented and bottled. That sort of thing. Sometimes . . .’ She rifled through the file for another brief ‘. . . all I get is an instruction to write rhymes
for Father’s Day or Valentine’s Day. Then I’ll send them in and their illustrators work around what I’ve written.’

‘What a nice job. Is it well paid?’

‘Perry Miller! You are obsessed with money today.’ Grainne was disgusted her husband would be so cheeky as to ask that.

‘It pays the bills,’ replied Floz, grinning at Grainne’s comical display of embarrassment. But she also knew they must all be thinking that it couldn’t pay that much if
she was in her mid-thirties and having to share a rented flat. She didn’t enlighten them with details about her circumstances, but moved quickly on to show Perry an example of her weekly
briefs from Lee Status – loony maverick owner of Status Kwo.

Juliet was on her third thickly buttered scone by now.

‘Who made these, you or Guy?’ she asked her mother through a mouthful of crumbs.

‘You’ve answered your own question by eating them, dear,’ said Perry. ‘Your mother only makes scones for smash and grab robbers who are in short supply of
bricks.’

‘Cheeky thing, you are,’ said Grainne, giving him a sharp but good-humoured nudge. ‘Aye, Guy made a batch for you when he came in from work last night.’

‘That was kind of him,’ said Floz, wishing he could have delivered them in person.

‘He bakes to unwind,’ confided Grainne, her voice tightening as conversation touched upon the restaurant again. ‘And my God does he need to unwind when he comes in from that
place. After tomorrow he’s taking a couple of days off, thank goodness.’

Floz took another bite of scone and thought that any man who baked like this had to be a catch. It was a long time since she had felt even a single butterfly in her stomach. But if Guy Miller
was anything like as good-looking in the flesh as he was in his photograph, Floz knew she’d be contending with butter-flies the size of eagles flapping around in her gut when they eventually
met.

She couldn’t have been more wrong if she’d tried.

Guy Miller wasn’t just tired, he was exhausted. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a day off from working in the kitchens in the Burgerov restaurant.
The owner Kenny Moulding was taking the piss, he knew. He had thrown most of the responsibility for his restaurant onto Guy with the excuse that he was a top-notch co-ordinator, but Guy had stopped
buying into Kenny’s flattery years ago. Guy knew he ran the business because Kenny couldn’t be arsed – and though Kenny did pay him well, it wasn’t nearly enough for the
burden he shouldered. If he lost Guy, he would be totally stuffed. Also, there were three areas where Kenny refused to relinquish control: employing new staff, sacking his incompetent cheap labour,
and the buying of foodstuffs from dodgy traders who arrived at the back door with hoods up and faces down. Kenny loved a bargain, which was what he said to justify being a total cheapskate. In
fact, Kenny Moulding made Ebenezer Scrooge look like the Secret Millionaire.

Guy had been so run-down lately that Kenny was forced to give him some long-overdue days off. Anyway, Guy needed to seriously recharge his batteries before honouring his promise to help his best
mate Steve out the next night. Steve was a self-employed plasterer by trade but it wasn’t in that capacity that Guy would be assisting him. Steve’s real passion was wrestling and he was
a part-time amateur grappler who dreamed of working with the huge stars of GWE – Global Wrestling Enterprises – in America, where wrestling was still a seriously popular business. When
Steve performed in the ring, he imagined that the billionaire bigshot promoter Will Milburn was out there in the shadows, talent-spotting – and so he gave every show his all.