Love...Among The Stars: Book 4 in the Love...Series (Love Series) (12 page)

I watch in dismay as my husband becomes a dainty little girl in front of my very eyes, wincing coquettishly every time he slides an item of soft material over his reddened skin. The painful enterprise is conducted at a snail's pace. Tectonic plates shift faster than a sunburned Jamie Newman putting a t-shirt on over his head.

I look over to where Poppy is happily packing her suitcase and evil, evil thoughts fill my head.

'Pops?' I call to her.

'Yes Mum!' she replies enthusiastically.

'Why don't you help Dad pull his t-shirt down for him?'

It's cruel, I know. But so is putting your family's future well being at risk because you want a go in a bloody pedalo.

'Okay Mum!'

Poppy skips over to where Jamie has the t-shirt just over his head and is contemplating the next tortuous move. She reaches up, grabs the hem and in a triumphant voice says 'let me help you Dad!'

'No, no, wait Poppy!' Jamie screeches, but to no avail.

With a mighty tug Poppy yanks the t-shirt down, scraping it over Jamie's lobster red belly.

You can tell he wants to scream at the very top of his lungs, but Jamie is a good father and he wouldn't want to scare his daughter that way. I am instead treated to the sight of his eyes bulging out of their sockets as he tries to contain the agony.

'Thank you sweetheart,' he tells Poppy in a high pitched, strangled whine, before shooting me a look of disgust.

I suppress the broad, smug grin that is threatening to envelop my head. 'Perhaps Poppy can help you with the rest of your clothes, Jamie? It might help you get packed a bit quicker?'

'No no! I can manage!' he moans and starts to awkwardly gather up his clothes. There are many ways to get a man to do what you want, but I can't think of a better one than aiming a well meaning seven year old in his direction.

Sadly, what I can't get Poppy to do is make Jamie walk any faster, so my daughter and I have to accompany C3PO and his bad bowels as he makes his turgid way back to the island and over to the jetty where the plane is due to take off. Still, at least I know what it'll be like to go for a walk with Jamie when we're both in our eighties.

As we shuffle our way towards the open plane door, I spy something out of the corner of one eye in the water about thirty yards away to my left.

With a grin of pure delight, friendly old Sylvester is paddling towards us on the pedalo. He looks to be in the absolute lap of luxury as he expertly steers the contraption around a couple of rocks and out around the plane.

I hear Jamie start to growl.

'Are you alright?' I ask him.

'That little bastard...' he hisses.

'What?'

'That little time travelling bastard. He's just rubbing it in!'

'You mean Sylvester? Be nice! He was very kind to Poppy and I while we thought you were fish food!'

Jamie growls again as Sylvester reappears from behind the tail fin of the plane, looking directly at Jamie with the most self-satisfied smile I've ever seen.

'Sod off Doctor!' Jamie shouts at him. 'I hope the bloody
Daleks
get you!'

In response, Sylvester simply laughs and pokes out his tongue at my irate husband.

With another growl, Jamie puts one foot up into the plane and moves painfully inside. But at the last minute he sticks his head back out and fixes the old man with another glare of pure malevolence. 'You know what?! I always preferred Colin Baker to you anyway! Everyone did!'

'Jamie! Get on the bloody plane!' I snap. For what feels like the umpteenth time that day I effect the apologetic smile and throw it in Sylvester's direction.

'Bye bye Mr Wizard!' Poppy shouts at the old man and gives him a wave.

Doctor? Wizard?
What the hell are these two going on about?

It's just as well we're leaving the Maldives, as I think the sun has well and truly got to the two other members of my family and boiled their brains.

You can imagine how much fun the ten hour flight back to the UK is, can't you Mum?

The pained shuffling through the airport is bad, the constant hisses and moans coming from the seat next to me is far worse. You'd think Jamie was sitting on a giant cheese grater, rather than a plane seat, the way he keeps going on. He’s also radiating an uncomfortable amount of heat from the sunburn. It’s rather like being sat next to a malfunctioning boiler.

It is with some considerable relief that we start our descent into Gatwick. If nothing else, the cold March drizzle outside should sooth Jamie's injuries somewhat and give us all a bit of peace and quiet.

'Good to be home,' he says to me as we shuffle through customs.

'Yes, it is,' I say in a distracted voice. I'm slightly afraid that Jamie's odd gait will look deeply suspicious, and at any moment we're going to get pulled over by a customs officer, so he can check what my husband has got stuffed up his arse to make him walk in such a funny manner.

Luckily, no such thing occurs and before you know it we're out of the airport and making our way back to the car.

I hadn't planned on driving home, but I'd rather put up with that than listen to more malfunctioning boiler, so I tell Jamie to lie down on the back seat for a rest, and have Pops up front with me.

Jamie doesn't protest, and is fast asleep by the time we hit the M3. This suits me fine, as it gives me a bit of peace, and allows me to concentrate fully on the road, which is no easy thing at nine thirty in the morning when you've had about an hour's sleep and are jet lagged to the eyeballs.

I breathe a sigh of relief as we turn into our road, and breathe and even bigger one as I pull into the drive. All I can see in my future is a nice hot bath and some crisp white bed sheets. I'm going to sleep for a fort -

There's a man outside the house, huddled in the
porchway
to stay out of the drizzling rain.

As I pull into the drive, he walks towards the car. The hood of his battered old black coat is up so I can't quite see who it is.

I switch the engine off, open the car door and climb out.

'Hello there,' I say to the man with tired curiosity. 'Can I help you?'

'Well, you can start by giving me a hug!' he says in a cheerful voice as he whips back the hood.

The blood drains from my face.

My knees go weak.

The world starts to swim away.

'Dad?' I say in a faraway voice.

Bet you didn't see that one coming, did you Mum?

No, neither did I.

Love you, miss you, and want you around right now more than ever.

Your tired and shocked daughter Laura.

XX

Jamie's Blog

Saturday 8 May

Things have been a tad fraught in the Newman household over the past few weeks.

This sentence makes me a master of understatement to the extent that I believe I should be allowed to wear a shiny golden hat with the words 'Master Of Understatement' emblazoned across it.

The reasons for the complete lack of tranquility, peace, or sanity, are twofold.

Number one: Laura's father Terry has turned up out of the blue after thirty years of absence.

Now, a long lost relative appearing on your doorstep the minute you get home from a disastrous luxury holiday is enough to send anyone into a state of shock, but when said long lost relative is the only parent you have left on the planet, the shock and surprise are magnified beyond all comprehension.

Given the fact that Laura has not seen her father in three decades, and given the fact that he's only returned after she's come into some money, you can understand that her levels of suspicion were absolutely stratospheric once she'd got over the initial shock of seeing the old bastard.

'What do you want?' Laura asks him in a thin, growling tone, holding one hand out to ward him off from attempting to hug her. As she does this, I open the rear door of the car and slowly get out, trying not to rub any more sunburned skin off on my clothes.

Terry shakes his head in apparent dismay. His long, grey thinning hair sways around his head as the drizzle continues to come down. 'Wow. I knew you'd be surprised to see me, but I was really hoping you wouldn't be mad.'

'Wouldn't... wouldn't
be mad
?' Laura responds in flinty fashion.

'Mum? Who is this?' Poppy asks her mother as she clambers out of the car.

'Nobody,' Laura tells her in a flat tone. This makes Terry wince.

From the looks of the straggly long hair and badly maintained beard, it appears Terry's hippy tendencies haven't deserted him as he enters his old age. I'm fairly convinced that at any moment he's going to start talking about bad vibes and dark auras. I can't say I see much of Laura in his features - she really does take after her mother. There's a hangdog quality to Terry's looks that Laura has thankfully avoided.

'I'm your
Grandad
, little ‘un,' Terry tells Poppy softly. 'Your long lost
Grandad
.'

Laura takes Poppy's hand. 'You are no such thing,' she snaps. 'Now I think you should leave.'

Terry looks disheartened. 'But I came to talk to you sweetheart! To see if I can, you know, mend things between us.'

'
Mend things
? There's nothing
to
mend! You left me when I wasn't much older than my daughter here. You're not part of my life! You never have been! You elected to leave me all those years ago, now I want you to do the same.' Laura walks Poppy around Terry across the front garden, giving the old man a wide berth.

It occurs to me that sunburn or not, I'm going to have to order this man to go away in as manly a tone as I possibly can. 'I think you'd better get out of here, Terry,' I tell him, lowering the octave of my voice slightly.

He points a finger at me and smiles. 'You're Jamie, right? Love your books, mate.'

'Do you?' I reply suspiciously.

'Yeah! They're great.' Terry's eyes go wide as he realises the implications of what he's saying. 'But Laura! That's not why I'm here! Your books I mean!'

She turns back to him. 'Really?' she says in disbelief. 'You mean that you haven't just turned up here after all this time because you've found out that my husband and I have done alright for ourselves writing books?'

'No!' he rubs his eyes. 'Well, of course that's how I heard about you and found you... but I'm not here for anything!' He puts out his hands, palms up. 'I don't want your money, Laura! I don't want anything from either of you.' He sighs. 'I just... I just saw your face in a magazine, and even though I haven't seen you since you were a little girl, I recognised it instantly, even before I read the article. And I just felt so bad that I didn't know you any better than anyone else who could pick up that mag and read it.' He walks toward Laura, arms still open. 'I've been a stupid, selfish, awful man.
All these years.
All I wanted to do was come see you. Come and apologise. To tell you that I am so, so sorry for everything I've done... and not done over the years.'

It's heartfelt, it's convincing, it's eloquent,
it's
raw.

And I don't believe a fucking word of it.

However, this is something I must sit back and watch. If I jump in now (sunburn notwithstanding) and get in the middle of this, I will come to regret it. I have to trust that Laura will make the right decision here.

My wife swallows hard, blinks away what I'm sure is a combination of rain water and tears, and fixes Terry with a hard stare. 'I have just got off a plane. I am tired, dirty and fed up. I do not need to be standing here having this conversation with
you
.'

'But - '

'You need to leave Da -
Terry
,' she tells him. 'I can’t deal with this right now.'

Well done
, I think.
Give the old bastard his marching orders.

'But you can come back tomorrow morning.'

What?

'I'll be in a better frame of mind then... and maybe I'll listen to what you have to say.'

I'm somewhat flabbergasted by this turn of events, but age has brought me wisdom, so I keep my thoughts to myself - for the minute at least.

Terry seems very pleased at this last minute reprieve. But then he would, wouldn't he?

'Okay sweetheart,' he says, backing away with his hands still out. 'That's fine, that's fine. I'll come back tomorrow and we'll talk then.' As he moves away, he comes closer to where I'm still standing by the car door.

'Watch it, pal,' I say in a dark tone as he almost backs right into me.

Terry looks around. 'Sorry mate!'

'I'm not your mate, Terry. I suggest you go away now -
quickly
.'

The old hippy doesn't need telling twice. He hurries off down the driveway and out into the street, turning back for a final time to give Laura a wave. 'I'll see you tomorrow!' he calls to her, before he flips the hood of his old coat up again, and wanders back towards the main road.

I carefully approach my wife where she stands watching him go. She catches sight of my expression. 'Don't say it, tomato boy.'

'Don't say what?'

'What I know you're thinking.'

I sigh. 'I don't think this is a good idea, baby. But he's your father. I'll go with whatever you say.'

Her eyes turn flinty again. 'He's not my father Jamie... at least not yet.'

Terry does indeed turn up the next day, bright and early. Discretion being the better part of valour, I decide to take Poppy down to the park for a few hours so Laura can bash things out with her father in private. Besides, I'm not that keen on Poppy hanging around the old codger, and getting her away from him suits me just fine.

By the time we get back home, Terry is thankfully gone, and I find Laura standing in the kitchen with a coffee in her hand looking deeply contemplative.

'How did it go?' I ask cautiously.

'I'm not sure. He certainly says all the right things. I don't think I've ever spent so long in the company of someone who felt the need to apologise to me over and over.'

'Blimey, and this is coming from a woman married to me,' I respond, trying to add a little levity to the situation.

'Quite,' she says with a half smile. 'I'm going to see him again,' she adds.

'Okay,' I reply, keeping things nice and neutral.

One eyebrow arches. 'I thought you'd be mad.'

'Oh, I'm mad, Laura. Just not at you. If you want to give him a chance, then I'm not going to stop you. Just understand that I'm not going to embrace the old sod as my father-in-law any time soon either.'

'Fair enough.'

So begins an extremely tentative campaign of father/daughter reconciliation.

Over the next few weeks Laura starts to see Terry more and more. They go for coffee together in town, she visits him in the flat he's renting a few miles away. He continues to apologise profusely for all the wrongs he's done her, she continues to listen and evaluate how honest he's being. I continue to not trust him as far as I can throw him - which of course starts to cause tension between Laura and I.

This tension only grows when, after a month, things between them have thawed to the point that she asks me if she can bring him along to my 40th birthday party on Friday.

Which, my friendly, happy reader, brings me to the second reason for why the Newman household has been so fraught recently.

I am turning 40.

Let me just repeat that in bold capital letters for added effect: I AM TURNING FORTY.

How the
fuck have
I allowed this to happen?

How the hell can it have come to pass that Jamie Newman has reached the fourth decade of his life on this little blue planet?

It's inconceivable.

What's made the whole thing ten times worse is that I didn't realise it was happening until about four weeks ago.

Oh, of course I knew
intellectually
that I was going to turn forty very soon, I'm not that forgetful. But on an emotional, visceral level, I'd managed to block the horror of the whole thing out, right up until the point my mother tells me she's arranged for a fortieth birthday party at her house one afternoon over coffee.

'What?' I splutter at her, looking up from my task of intently picking off a small bit of peeling skin from my arm. The sunburn had gone down nicely by this point, but I did resemble a snake in the middle of an annual shed, unfortunately.

'A birthday party, Jamie.
It's your fortieth. You can't let that go by without a party.'

'My fortieth,' I repeat in a stunned voice. 'I'm going to be forty.'

'Yes son, you are. And I thought it might be nice if I arranged things for you, instead of Laura. The poor girl sounds like she's got her hands full with her father returning out of the blue like that, so I'm sure she'd appreciate it.'

'Yes. Yes, she probably would,' I say in a light, sing song voice. For some reason the world has gone a bit grey around the edges.

'Are you alright?' Mum asks.

'Oh, oh, I'm fine mother. Absolutely fine.'

She rolls her eyes. 'You're turning forty Jamie, not dying.'

'Yes, yes. Turning forty. Not dying.' I sit there slack jawed for a moment. 'It's just a little... a little bit of a shock, that's all.'

'A shock?
It's not like it's a surprising turn of events, Jamie.'

'No. I'll concede that. But, there's been a lot going on. What with the books, and Terry, and sunburn, and... ' I can't actually think of another 'and' off the top of my head, but surely those three things are enough to distract anyone from their slide into old age, aren't they?