Forget Me Knot (33 page)

“I’m going to try it on,” a female voice said. “You stay with Daddy… Honey, please don’t let him out of the stroller.”

Abby stared at Dan, her eyes wide with panic. His hand froze. They were barely breathing as they heard the footsteps get closer. Finally there was the rattle of metal rings on the curtain pole as the woman went into the cubicle opposite theirs.

Abby was about to pull up her panties, but Dan grabbed her arm. “No you don’t,” he whispered into her ear. There was something daring, almost reckless about this man, and she found it irresistible. The next thing she knew, he was kissing her and she was kissing him back. Ever so gently, he parted her again. She trembled with delight. His fingers found the spot. There was something about the hugely increased danger that was driving her faster toward orgasm. She took hold of Dan’s erection and guided it into her. His face looked a question, as if to say: “You sure you’re ready?”

She nodded and let out a tiny gasp. He pushed himself inside her. His thrusts were slow and deep.

“Mummy, Mummy,” a tiny voice cried out from his stroller, “are you coming?”

“In a minute, sweetie,” came the voice from the changing cubicle opposite.

Dan worked on her clitoris, thrust harder and faster. At one point a hanger fell to the floor with a clatter. They were barely aware of it.

“But, Mummy, are you coming yet?” Dan and Abby could hear the child bouncing in his stroller.

“Almost, darling. Won’t be long.”

Abby could feel the tiny tremors growing inside her.

“What about now. Are you coming now?”

“Aaah!”

“Ssh.” Dan placed his hand across Abby’s mouth as he pushed inside her one last time. She felt his body tense for a few seconds, then relax.

“Now. Are you coming now?”

Abby was lost in the gigantic, curling waves of her orgasm. Finally she gave a low grunt of delight from behind Dan’s hand.

“All done now,” the woman called out. Abby and Dan heard her pull back the curtain to her cubicle and walk back into the shop.

The pair dissolved into silent, hysterical laughter. She smoothed the skirt of the dress. He did up his jeans belt. Finally they pulled the curtain aside. Dan stepped into the narrow passageway between the two rows of cubicles. “I love it,” he said, referring to the dress in an ostentatiously loud voice, almost inviting the sales assistant to approach and witness the lack of hanky-panky that had gone on. The girl ambled up just as Abby was admiring herself in the communal mirror at the end of the passageway. “Cool. I
mean, that is so totally random.” Abby couldn’t be certain, but she assumed the girl was trying to communicate her liking for the dress. Suddenly the girl’s eyes seemed to be focused on the floor. Curious, Abby looked down. It was then that she noticed her ankle and the panties caught round it. Her face probably along with several of her internal organs, turned scarlet. She had forgotten to pull up her knickers. How could she not have pulled up her knickers?

For a moment, the shop assistant looked confused. Her eyes went from Abby to Dan, whose faces were positively engraved with embarrassment. The penny dropped and the girl screwed up her face. “Eeeuuuwww. That is just so gross.” With that, she turned and strode back into the shop.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Dan said.

“OK, but I want the dress. I love it.” She also felt it would be extremely bad form to leave the shop without paying for a dress in which she had just had sex.

Abby made her way to the till. “Really sorry,” she mumbled to the salesgirl. “Don’t know what came over us. It was very wrong. I do apologize.”

The girl wrinkled her face. “You two are really sad, yeah? I mean, you have to be like easily as old as my mum and dad.”

“What?” Abby said, more than a little hurt. She wasn’t vain, but this was the first time she had been taken for middle-aged. “I’m thirty-four.”

“Yeah, same age as my mum.”

“
SO SHE
wasn’t disgusted by us having sex, per se,” Abby said to Dan. They were in her kitchen, loading the dishwasher
after dinner. “She was disgusted because we were apparently such old farts.”

Dan shrugged. “You know what teenagers are like. Every body over the age of twenty-five is ancient.” He asked where she kept the dishwasher tablets. She directed him to the cupboard under the sink. “I’m sorry to eat and run,” he said, bending down and rooting around in the cupboard. “I’m going to miss you.” He was going back to Devon tonight and wouldn’t be back until they started filming in the shop on Wednesday morning.

“I’m going to miss you, too.”

Dan was on his feet now, dishwasher tablet in hand. She took it from him, placed it in the dispenser and hit the on switch. As the machine began to fill with water, he brought her toward him and kissed her. His kiss was warm and tender and she wanted it to last forever. Afterward, they stood holding each other, her head on his shoulder.

“I’m so glad I found you, Abby Crompton.”

She looked up at him and smiled. “Ditto.”

Before he left he gave her a final rundown on how Wednesday morning was likely to pan out. The crew, plus Lucinda Wallace and her leading man, a relatively unknown named Ed MacIntosh, would be there by seven. All being well, they would be gone by mid-morning. There would be cables running over the pavement and a couple of large vans parked outside on yellow lines, but all the relevant permissions had been granted by the local council, so Christian wasn’t likely to bother them.

“That’s OK. Scozz and I can open up an hour later and stay open another hour at the end of the day. Doesn’t make much difference, there’s plenty of trade well into the evening.”

She walked downstairs with him, into the shop. “Right, then,” she said, as they reached the front door. “See you Wednesday.” They kissed again.

“See you Wednesday.” He smiled, and she opened the door for him. “By the way, Lucinda’s great and pretty un-starry as they go, but I should warn you that she does have this tendency to think of herself as the fairy on top of her own Christmas tree.”

“I have a couple of rich women clients like that,” Abby said. “I’m used to it. Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll all get along.”

She watched him walk the few paces to his car. As he climbed in, he turned to wave. A few moments later the engine started. It was several seconds before a gap formed in the traffic and he was able to pull away. She stood waving in the doorway as the car’s taillights merged into all the others and disappeared.

AT HALF PAST FIVE
on Wednesday morning, Abby’s phone rang.

“Hello, darling. It’s me, Mum. Are you watching the news?”

Abby rubbed the sleep from her eyes and attempted to focus on the face of her alarm clock. “Mum, it’s practically the middle of the night. Why would I be watching the news?”

“It’s over! We won!” Jean was practically squealing with excitement. “The owners of the
Bantry
have caved in. They’ve agreed to pay all the passengers compensation. The publicity has been awful for them, and I think they just wanted to put an end to it.”

Abby sat up in bed. “Oh, my God! Mum, that’s fantastic news. I am so proud of you. Dad must be, too.” She could hear a kerfuffle in the background as Hugh grabbed the phone from Jean.

“What a girl your mother is, eh? She even persuaded the shipping company to put everybody up in a five-star hotel for a few days so that we could recover. The passengers have
organized a party in her honor tonight. Your mum is quite the star. I’ve lost count of how many newspaper and TV interviews she’s done. And you’ll never guess who she just had on the phone.”

Abby could hear Jean begging Hugh not to “spoil it” and saying that she wanted to “be the one to tell Abby.” The next moment her mother was back on the line.

“OK, guess who I’ve just been speaking to.”

“Oh, I dunno—the Queen.”

“Funny you should say that, because this person is a queen in a manner of speaking.”

“How can you be a queen in a manner of speaking?… Oh, hang on, I geddit. It’s somebody gay. I dunno—Elton John.”

“Why on earth would Elton John phone me?”

“I don’t know. You said you’d been talking to somebody who was a sort of queen, and Elton John fits the bill.”

“It’s not somebody gay. Now be serious. Guess again.”

“OK, Nelson Mandela.”

“Abby, I said be serious.”

“What’s not serious about Nelson Mandela?… OK, that bloke you like from
Antiques Roadshow
—the one who wears the stripy blazers.”

“Nope. Guess again.”

“I can’t, Mum. It’s half past five in the morning. I give up.”

“Opera!”

“Opera? Hang on. I’m confused. What’s me guessing who you just spoke to got to do with the opera?”

“No. No. You don’t understand. I’ve just been speaking to Opera.”

Abby switched the phone to her other ear. Suddenly what her mother was saying started to make sense. “Mum, are you telling me that
Oprah
Winfrey, the Queen of Talk, just phoned you?”

“Opera, yes. Well, it wasn’t her at first. It was one of her researchers. Apparently the
Bantry
story is huge in the States because of all the American passengers on board. They’re even calling it the
Mutiny on the Bantry
over there—isn’t that clever? Anyway, they want me to go on the show… you know, ordinary housewife takes on corporate giant.”

“No! You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“That’s amazing. I can’t believe it.”

“Neither could I. In fact, I still can’t. Anyway, the researcher was about to ring off when Opera comes on the line. She said I was an inspiration to ordinary women all over the world. Me? An inspiration? Can you believe it? When I said I was just a housewife from Croydon, she said something so wise. Now, let me get this right… how did it go? Oh, yes—she said that people can’t become what they need to be by remaining what they are and that the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by changing his attitude. Isn’t that brilliant?”

Abby’s instinct was to say: “She should try telling that to the single mother living in a housing project and working for less than the minimum wage.” Instead, because she hadn’t the remotest wish to rain on Jean’s parade, she agreed that
Opera’s
wisdom was indeed brilliant.

“She really is a wonderful woman. She’s so positive. Opera says that every day brings a chance for you to draw breath, kick off your shoes and dance.”

“Good for Opera. So will you be going on the show?”

“You bet. Opera says: the biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”

A COUPLE
of hours later, Abby, Soph and Martin were in the shop, drinking tea, waiting for Lucinda Wallace to arrive. Around them, Dan and the film crew were lugging in lights, cameras, cables and huge metal boxes full of electronic equipment. “I just can’t get my head round it,” Abby was saying to Martin and Soph. “My mother is going on
Oprah
. It’s surreal. She’d better bring home a DVD.”

Dan, who was keeping half an ear on the conversation while he schlepped around, made the point that the media interest would be just as intense once Jean got home. “Her face is going to be in every newspaper, on every chat show.”

“You know, in many ways,” Martin mused, “me mam’s not unlike Oprah. She’s got some wonderful pearls of wisdom. The wisest thing she ever said was, ‘Never fry bacon in the nude.’ And to this day, whenever I cook a full breakfast, I make sure my bits are covered.” He chuckled at his own joke. “She also said that by the time you can make ends meet, they’ve changed the ends, and that if everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.”

With that, he sashayed over to the window. He wanted to be the first to spot Lucinda.

The next second, he was clapping his hands with excitement. “Ooh, she’s here, she’s here,” he squealed. “Quick, come and look.” He beckoned Abby and Soph without taking his eyes off the young woman getting out of the black cab.

By now Martin’s nose was practically pressed against the window. Suddenly he was oblivious to the noise and chaos going on around him. He paid no heed to the electric cable being laid inches from his feet or to the guy hauling a silver camera case trying to squeeze past him. He ignored the near-collisions, the good-natured banter and occasional effing as the film crew attempted to go about their business in the few square feet that made up Fabulous Flowers.

A real live film star was about to make her entrance. Admittedly, Lucinda Wallace wasn’t quite up there with Kate Winslet or Julia Roberts. But having been named Best Newcomer at last year’s British Film Awards for her role in
The Forgotten Hills
, she was clearly well on her way. Martin had made no secret of the fact that he was in awe, not only of Lucinda’s celebrity but of the illustrious show-business circles in which she moved. These days, Lucinda spent much of her time in L.A. Judging by the photographs of her that appeared regularly in
Hello!
, she hung out with the greats. She regularly air-kissed—and, for all he knew, French-kissed—Hollywood royalty. And he was about to meet her, thereby acquiring his own bit of glamour-by-association. “It reminds me of that song my old gran used to sing,” he had said to Abby a few days ago. A far-off, wistful expression on his face, he had picked up a bunch of white roses and begun waltzing round the shop:
“I danced with a man, who danced with a girl, who danced with the Prince of Wales.”