Barefoot in the Dark (2 page)

Chapter 3

‘Be of good cheer!’ announced Simon. ‘Because I have found your trainer!’

Hope, who was only of fair to middling cheer most days at the moment, was sitting in the staff room repairing the seam on a suede cushion. She looked up now to see Simon in the doorway, a refill pad clutched to his chest.

She smiled nevertheless. Because that was what you did. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your trainer,’ he went on, crossing the room and plonking himself down opposite her. ‘It’s turned up! Who’d have believed it?’

‘Not me, for one. Who’s found it? Did someone hand it in or something?’ This was patently impossible. Who would know it was hers?

Simon shook his head. ‘Nope!’ he said happily. ‘It’s turned up on the radio.’

Hope stopped stitching. ‘The
radio
?’

He gestured back towards the office. ‘Just then. I wasn’t really listening, but then they mentioned Cefn Melin Station – it’s some sort of competition they’ve got going.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘I’m not sure what it’s all about, but the gist was that someone there found the trainer a few days back and they’ve been asking the listeners to help find its owner.’ He consulted his pad. ‘Reebok. Size four. It has to be yours.’

Hope filed the information that he had noted this information and fretted about it. ‘Sounds a bit daft.’

‘Oh, it’s some sort of spoof. It’s that kind of show. They’ve called it Operation Cinderella. From what I could make out, they’ve been asking people to ring in. Anyway, I made a note of the number for you.’

Hope finished the knot and bit the end off the cotton. She wasn’t sure whether to be amused – it
was
funny – or, more pressingly, alarmed at the little swirly doodles she could see Simon had drawn next to her name on his pad. His quiet devotion, which had been burgeoning steadily since her divorce, was becoming almost palpable. And the longer he went on without doing anything about it the worse her inevitable rejection would be. Perhaps she should invent a lover to dissuade him. Perhaps she should invent one anyway. So much less stressful than a real one.

‘Well, if it’s true, that’s incredible. I mean, what are the chances of that happening?’

‘I know,’ he said happily. ‘So I got the number –’

She stabbed the needle back into the spool of cotton. ‘Thank you.’

‘– so you can ring and fix up when you’re going on.’

‘Going on? What, on the radio?’

‘Of course.’

‘God, I don’t have to do that, do I?’

‘Oh, I think you probably do. So you can claim your prize.’

‘There’s a prize?’

‘Oh, yes. Apparently. Champagne, I think.’

‘Really? God, how embarrassing.’

‘What’s embarrassing?’

This was Madeleine, who had spent the morning in discussion with a big supermarket sponsor and who had returned with a melon under one arm. She put it down and crossed her arms, while Simon repeated his news.

‘And no-one else has come to claim it, apparently. So he said, anyway.’

‘So who said?’ asked Madeleine.

‘Jack Valentine.’

‘Jack Valentine? What, the presenter, Jack Valentine? Really?’ Madeleine clearly knew who he was. Which was more than Hope did.

‘So have you called them?’ Madeleine asked, turning to her.

Hope grimaced. ‘Not yet. I’m just trying to tot up all the reasons why not, but I can think of any. Give me a minute.’

‘Don’t be daft, Hope. Call them!’ urged Simon.

Madeleine, who always thought on her feet, clicked her fingers. ‘Hey, hey hey!’ she said suddenly. ‘Hey hey
hey!
’

‘Hey hey what?’ asked Hope, picking up the cotton and the cushion, and not liking the sound of things at all.

‘Hey hey hey,’ Madeleine said again, fifteen minutes later, and this time on a rising note. ‘This is good
.
This is doublegood, in fact. Tell me, Simon,’ she went on, turning to train her beam upon him. ‘Just how big is this radio show anyway? Prime time?’

‘Lunchtime,’ he said. ‘It’s just finished.’

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘That’s a little disappointing. I thought he was on in the mornings. But nevertheless… never-the-less
…
’

‘Nevertheless what?’ Hope asked her.

‘You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?’ she said, grinning. ‘I’m thinking the fun run.’

‘You are?’

‘I am.’

‘Er,
why?
’

‘Trainers, of course! Serendipity! The happy correlation that you surely cannot fail to see which exists between between a lost trainer and a charity fun run! You cansee it, can’t you? We can make something out of this. I’m thinking the P word. I’m thinking the Cword. I’m – God, yes– thinking the Sword, in fact.’

As manager of the Heartbeat fundraising department Hope knew all about the P word and the S word, of course. Together they comprised her mission statement. Her
raison d’etre
. Publicity and Sponsorship. Or, more accurately, ways and means of prising cash from the wallets of the financially well-placed. Which in the case of putting on an event of this magnitude – which was what they were trying to do right now – was no small feat, as the heaps of polite rejections on Hope’s desk bore witness to. It wasn’t, she thought, great for her psyche, this job.

Madeleine slipped her backside on to the corner of Simon’s desk, scattering his carefully stacked piles of receipts. And then splayed her fingers.

‘We have a misplaced trainer, right?’

‘Right.’

‘And now we also have access to a celebrity.’

Ah. That would be the C word, then. ‘Right,’ agreed Hope.

‘Which means we have a chance of some publicity.’

‘Right.’

‘So what does that add up to? Hmm?’

‘Sponsorship,’ announced Simon with the oily beam of a clever-dick school boy.

‘Exactly,’ beamed Madeleine. ‘Precisely, Simon. We have, in short, a serious fundraising opportunity here.’

She trained her eyes upon Hope.

‘You, in fact,’ she said, stabbing the air in front of her. ‘
You
have a serious fundraising opportunity here, Hope. Or should I say Cinderella?’ She threw her head back and laughed her big laugh. ‘Because, sweetie, you are going to the ball.’

‘Export this time?’

Jack took a long look at the half pint of beer that was beginning to swim in front of him. This was becoming too much of a habit. He and Danny had been here less than an hour and a half, but already they had got through three pints each. Well, two and a half in his case. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or concerned that he was a good half pint behind.

‘Christ, mate,’ he said, pretending a midweek
joie de vivre
that was entirely at odds with the whining of his gut. It was becoming tiring, this façade of buckish blokedom he felt obliged to veneer himself with whenever he was with Danny in the pub. But it was required. He was wifeless and carefree and potent. And he had wasted no time in broadcasting the fact. Which was another good reason for not upending the Export with such fervour. Because doing so made him believe everything Danny said, including the notion that women would be queuing round the block for him. (Twenty-seven-year-olds, blonde and leggy, they’d agreed.) The sober him knew this was not about to happen, because for it to happen you first had to be there. On the block. Out there. Ready for action. Yet he wasn’t even sure where ‘there’ actually was. He shook his head. ‘You’re a bit ferocious on the beer tonight, aren’t you?’

Danny had stood up and was ferreting in his jeans pocket for money.

‘Bah! What’s the matter with you? It’s – oh. Hey. Almost forgot. He pulled something else from his pocket and handed it to Jack. It was a pink post-it note with a website address scribbled on it.

‘What’s this?’

‘Dave gave it to me. Thought you might like it too. Don’t worry. It’s all straight stuff,’ he added. ‘College girls. Cheerleaders. That sort of thing. Check it out.’

Jack read it.
www.shaggalicious.com
.

God. It wouldn’t, it
couldn’t
, come to that.

He sat back. He would have to knock this on the head. This was the second Wednesday running that he had drunk one too many in the Dog and Trouserleg. And would, as a consequence, be the second Thursday running that he surfaced for work as if from a particularly noisome and gloopy swamp, with a number of large mammals playing keepy-uppy on his head. He was too old for midweek drinking. It had been all right when he was young but now a hangover was becoming a two-day event, the love affair between his stomach and lager having gone the same way as his marriage to Lydia. Dyspeptic and altogether sour.

Forgetting to eat. That was the thing. That was why he felt as if his duodenum was trying to make a forced entry through the back of his tonsils. Gastric irritation. Drinking on an empty stomach. He could almost hear Lydia droning on about it now. But it was true. He had not eaten since eleven-thirty and that had only been a doughnut. The consequences of this oversight, which were becoming more apparent by the moment, lowered his mood further. So wimpish. So girly.

‘So go on, then,’ Danny urged, flapping a damp ten-pound note in the face of the barmaid. She was new, and called Emma. Jack didn’t know how Danny had garnered so much information about her, but she was apparently nineteen, and in her gap year before starting a degree in European Studies at college. But she was mainly, everyone agreed (and Jack wasn’t about to contradict them), a bit-of-a-serious-babe. She was also busy serving someone else, so she ignored Danny. He turned back to Jack. ‘Go on then,’ he said again. ‘Give us the low-down. Did your mystery Cinderella turn out to be a stunner, or what? I hear she got in touch.’

Jack suppressed a sigh. Danny, whose current grounding was in the shape of three kids in five years (one only weeks old) and a wife with a hands-on approach to fighting off hands-on activities, was apt to regular flights of carnal speculation. Jack sometimes wondered if Danny was having less sex than he was. Which would have been difficult.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ he replied. He had, if he was honest, entirely lost interest in the subject. No. More than that. The trainer nonsense was beginning to fill him with an ill-defined but distinct unease. He was beginning to find the whole spectrum of nonsensical things he was obliged to do in the name of listener numbers embarrassing. When he’d got his MA in Broadcast Journalism, was this the kind of thing he’d had in mind? This puerile quasi game-show presenter he was turning into? It was not. He had nothing against game-show hosting as a career choice. It was just that it had never been his.

‘I haven’t met her yet,’ he said dully, reconsidering the alarming volume of beer still in his glass. ‘I didn’t even speak to her. Hil did. She’s coming in Friday.’ It was of little consequence. All he knew of the trainer’s owner was that she was thirty-nine and that she worked for some charity or other. The word ‘cardigan’ had lodged itself in his mind. As had ‘worthy’ and ‘well-scrubbed’. Why ‘scrubbed’, particularly? It just seemed to fit. He wasn’t holding his breath.

Danny drained the glass in his hand and sighed extravagantly. ‘God, I envy you,’ he said, as if he’d only just thought about it. ‘My whole life right now is just one long round of crap and sick and Jules having a face on. What I wouldn’t give to be you, mate.’

Jack privately conjectured that Danny could do a lot worse than go home and make an effort to help out a bit, but feeling ill-placed to give anyone a lecture about the secrets of a happy marriage, he swallowed another tepid mouthful and shook his head. To be him. Danny was way off-beam. There was nothing more spicy in his life right now than the microwaveable chicken jalfrezi that was waiting for him at home. Like a lone iceberg in a sea of empty fridge. And no milk. Or was it no Frosties? It was always one or the other, anyway, no matter how hard he tried to get things together domestically. Perhaps, if he left now, he’d be in time for the mini-market. He checked his watch. Or perhaps not. It was such a little thing, remembering to have proper food in the house. Why couldn’t he get the hang of it? He’d been so good at first. The day after he’d moved into the flat he was like a child in a toy shop, going round Sainsburys. A libertine let loose among an abundance of sensual delights. He’d bought speciality beers, a pineapple, lots of different types of biscuits, a selection pack of pesto sauces and bags of pasta with names like tropical diseases. He’d even bought an apron. Navy with stripes. And a pleasing little perspex mill that did salt one end and pepper at the other (Lydia having retained possession of their poncey Philippe Starck ones, because they’d been a present from her womb awareness group or something). But it had been a novelty thing. Now it was just plain boring. And with that thought came a sudden sense of humility that women did this thing day in, day out, all their lives. Guilt nagged at him. Guilt for all the mornings when he’d been brusque with Lydia. There’d been so many.

‘
Any thoughts on dinner?
’

‘
God, I don’t know! Anything! How can I think about food straight after breakfast?
’

But she’d had to. Because someone had to, and it hadn’t been him. Not just make dinner, but thinkabout dinner. Think about what she would needto make dinner. Consult the inventory that was lodged in her brain and know, with some cognitive skill that entirely eluded him, which ingredients she already had in the house. He could readily see, now, what a burden that was. Another failure to add to his list.

‘Not for me, mate,’ he said, as Emma ambled up again. Danny paused to flop his mouth open and emit a low and appreciative moan. Which she also ignored. ‘Oh, go on
.
Put a half in there for him, Em,’ he told her, gesturing to Jack’s glass. ‘It’s only half ten.’

‘It’s only Wednesday,’ Jack countered. It’s only January, he thought. A mere fortnight into his new health and fitness regime and already he was at sea. OK, he was walking to the station intermittently, but he was also eating erratically, drinking excessively, and failing to sign up for any sort of gym, despite there being two within guilt-inducing distance, both sporting huge neon signs that were tricked out with some sort of invisible beam that pawed at his conscience every time he drove past.