Matchmaker Cat (A Romantic Comedy Short Story) (3 page)

‘What’s that
noise?’ said Riss all of a sudden.

‘Are you
changing the subject?’

‘No, seriously,
what’s that noise?’

I paused. I
held my breath. I listened. A car went past on the road outside; a
bird chirped in a nearby tree; and there was a soft rumbling sound.
‘Oh, that’s just Chester purring.’

‘Just Chester?
Listen.’

I listened
again. And, Riss was right, there was something different about it.
It was a fuller sound than I was used to, and it was louder. I sat
up straight and scanned the lounge. I couldn’t see Chester
anywhere. That didn’t mean he wasn’t there; my cat is skilled in
finding little cubby holes to hide in.

I stood as
silently as I could. Riss stood too. I crept towards the TV because
I knew Chester often liked to sit there in the mess of all the
wiring where the ventilation holes of the satellite box blew out
warm air.

There, tucked
into Chester’s favourite spot, was a bundle of grey and ginger
tabby curled up together, both of them purring at different
frequencies in patterns that synced temporarily before becoming a
see-saw stereo of purr. Chester licked at Lindy’s fur on her face
like a mother cat cleaning a kitten. It was almost like they were
kissing.

‘Awww, look at
that!’ whispered Riss beside me. ‘Isn’t it cute?’

I had to agree,
it was.

I kept looking
at the cuddly bundle while, almost without thinking, my hand
reached out to my side and clasped Riss’s fingers.

‘It’s almost as
if,’ Riss whispered in my ear, ‘Chester planned it this way.’

‘That’s crazy,’
I said.

But - as I
continued to watch my cat fondle my boyfriend’s cat - I had to
question if he wasn’t just a little bit right.

* * *

Thank you for
downloading and reading
Matchmaker Cat
. Without the support
of you, the reader, writers like myself would have no audience. Why
not come and say ‘hi’ at my website: www.elizabethkyne.co.uk

Meanwhile, as a
bonus, here’s the opening to my novel,
If Wishes Were
Husbands.

Wraps of silver
foil stuck out of the head of the woman sitting next to me like the
spines of a tin hedgehog. While her highlights developed inside the
foil, she told the rest of the hair salon about her irritating
husband - whether anyone wanted to hear it or not.

‘I simply asked
him if he would mind hoovering the lounge while I was out,’ she
said, with much animated waving of hands.

‘Sounds
reasonable,’ replied the hairdresser - that's my hairdresser, by
the way, who was supposed to be attending to me.

‘That's what I
thought,’ continued the tin hedgehog woman. ‘So I came back from
the shops half an hour later to find he'd moved all the furniture
into the garden!’

‘No!’ said the
hairdresser.

‘I swear to
God!’ she said. ‘I thought he was a sensible guy when I married him
- what was I thinking?’

I leant forward
and picked up my cup of tea. Hairdressers bring you a cup of tea in
a white china cup and saucer these days. They'd even indulged me
with a bourbon biscuit on the side. So, while the other two women
gossiped, I brought the cup to my lips and breathed in a mouthful
of air from the salon. The taste of hairspray, shampoo and peroxide
hit my throat. I washed it away with a larger than anticipated gulp
of strong, milky liquid.

Saturday in the
hairdressers - a little shop sandwiched between a newsagents and a
chippy in the Elmhurst area of Aylesbury - was very busy. Apart
from myself and the tin hedgehog, a woman of about fifty sat with
her back to the sink having her hair washed and the flustered
manageress talked ten-to-the-dozen while she blow-dried another
customer. By the front door, a woman with a bright red fringe
processed someone's credit card from behind the reception desk
while answering the phone at the same time. Every now and again the
hubbub subsided enough to hear a golden oldie station broadcasting
Duran Duran through a radio perched on top of a rack of shampoo and
conditioner.

The bourbon
biscuit still sat, brown and tempting, on the side of my saucer. I
could resist no longer. As I crunched, the hairdresser lifted
several strands from the back of my head and clipped off a good
inch.

‘Are you
married, Rachel?’ she said

I almost choked
on chocolatey crumbs. ‘Hmm?’

‘I said, 'are
you married?'.’

What is it
about hairdressers that they think they have the right to probe
into your personal life?
Are you married? Do you have children?
What do you do for a living?
I was fed up with it, quite
frankly. You hit forty and it's not funny anymore. People look at
you and expect you to have all of those 'normal' things. If you
haven't got a husband and kids, then you better damn well have a
good divorce story, or a successful and fascinating career.

Not Rachel
Gosling. I'm the one who answers politely,
no I'm not married, I
don't have any children and I'm a PA in an accounts department
.
People's eyes glaze over and they start talking about the weather.
As far as I'm concerned, it's their bloody fault for asking in the
first place.

My hairdresser
waited for my reply, her reflection looking expectantly from the
mirror. Her name was Salina or Celine or something. She was young -
early twenties - just starting out on life and already with a
boyfriend (so she'd told me) and a job she seemed to enjoy. Also in
the mirror was my reflection; one I only half-recognised. My hair
colour had changed from its usual dyed blonde to a vibrant chestnut
brown and I was half way through having the length cropped back to
below my ear lobe. It was part of the new me.

A new me, I
decided, who didn't have to stick to the truth under
interrogation.

‘I am married,
actually,’ I lied on a whim.

‘Oh yes?’ said
the hairdresser, combing the long, damp strands of chestnut brown
hair yet to be cropped. ‘Does he put all your furniture in the
garden?’

‘Oh no,’ I
said. ‘My Darren's wonderful.’

I used to work
with a woman married to a Darren. The name seemed plausible
enough.

‘You don't hear
that very often from the women in here,’ said Salina. She glanced
over at the tin hedgehog and they shared a laugh.

‘I bet they're
newlyweds,’ she replied, turning her silver spiny head in my
direction. ‘Are you newlyweds?’

I lowered my
eyes, coy Lady Diana style, and smiled. ‘We are actually.’

‘How lovely!’
said Salina (or was it Celine?).

This was quite
fun.

My hairdresser
placed her hands on either side of my head and straightened it
before judging how short to cut the next section. ‘Where did you
get married?’

‘In a castle,’
I said, hiding my bare ring finger within the folds of my nylon
hairdressing gown.

‘Ooh!’

She was
interested now, really interested; much better than telling the
truth. ‘We wanted something romantic. Darren suggested a castle. I
said we couldn't afford it, but - bless him - he found this
wonderful place on the internet that didn't cost an arm and a leg.
Melcesine Castle, it's called.’

‘Where's that?’
She glanced up from snipping my side locks.

‘Italy,’ I
said. ‘Overlooking Lake Garda. It was beautiful. I didn't want to
go abroad at first, but English castles are so expensive and they
want you to invite thousands of people. In Italy, we could sneak
off on our own without inviting anybody.’

It was true.
Not about me getting married, but about the wedding venue in Italy.
I'd found it one drunken evening playing about on the internet.

‘My Mum would
kill me if I didn't invite her to my wedding,’ said Salina. She put
her hands on my head again and scrutinised me in the mirror. She
seemed satisfied with whatever it was she was looking at and put
her comb and scissors aside. She picked up a hairdryer from where
it hung on a slot on the wall. ‘When I get married--’

With a flick of
a switch, the hairdryer roared into life, blasting my head with its
fierce heat and drowning out the rest of her sentence.

It was strange
to see the chestnut brown shoulder-length bob emerge in the mirror.
Almost as if it were someone else's hair being shaped on my head. I
was used to bottle-blonde straggles down to the bottom of my
shoulder blades; a legacy from trying to disguise my first grey
hair ten years ago. Salina was doing wonders with the style; she
tugged out all my natural wave and managed to make the ends of my
hair curl under.

The roar of the
hairdryer stopped. It was suddenly quieter and cooler. Salina
combed through my hair and, amazingly, it stayed where it was put.
It never did that for me. ‘Spray?’

‘Um...’

Before I'd made
a decision, she'd picked up an industrial-sized aerosol. I downed
the last of my luke-warm tea before a perfumed, sticky mist fell
all around me, alighting on my hair, my shoulders and my lap.

‘There,’ she
said with finality.

She did that
thing hairdressers do with a hand mirror so I could see the back of
my head. I nodded my approval (does anyone ever say they hate the
back and demand it be cut all over again?) and she removed the
nylon gown from my shoulders. Wisps of my clipped hair fluttered to
the ground like chestnut brown confetti.

She took me to
woman with the red fringe at the front desk and dictated all the
things I'd had done that morning: permanent dye, moisturising
treatment, cut and blow dry, spray (they charged me extra for the
hairspray?!). It added up to an embarrassing amount. I handed over
my credit card and tried not to think about it.

‘Thank you,’ I
said to my hairdresser as I turned to go. ‘I'm sorry - I can't
remember your name.’

She'd done a
good job and I wanted to make note of who she was so I could
request her next time.

‘Susan,’ she
said.

‘Oh.’ I blushed
a little. So not Celina or Salina, then. ‘Thanks, Susan. See you
again.’

I left the
salon and walked down the street with my hair bobbing like a
shampoo commercial.

*

Sunday night
and my hair looked as good as when Susan gave it a final spray the
day before. I chose a pair of jeans, black T-shirt, short purple
cardigan and I was ready for a night out with the girls.

Not 'my' girls;
Sheila's girls. Apart from my Mum, Sheila was the only person I
knew in Aylesbury. It was the town I grew up in and the town I
turned my back on after leaving school. I went to university in
Leicester and ended up getting a job up there. I loved Leicester
because it gave me a chance to be independent, meet new friends and
have new experiences - but most of all, I loved it because it
wasn't Aylesbury. I didn't think I'd ever come back. Then I got
older, I started to think about my Mum getting older and I realised
it was time to go home.

Me and Sheila
had been best friends at school all those years ago. We kind of
lost touch when I moved out. Our lives went down different paths
and she became a memory of a spotty girl in school uniform I used
to know. Until one weekend when I was down visiting Mum and we
bumped into each other in the middle of Market Square. It was like
the intervening years hadn't existed. We must've stood under
umbrellas in the rain for ten minutes catching up on what each
other had been doing. We went out for a meal that night at the
eat-as-much-as-you-want-until-you-regret-it Chinese buffet down by
the back of Sainsbury's. I hadn't laughed so much in years.

We made an
effort to keep in touch after that - thank God for the internet -
and so when I moved back, she offered to take me out to meet her
friends.

I volunteered
to be designated driver for the night and pick her up.

Sheila had one
of those nice semis in Bedgrove at the posh end of Aylesbury.
'Nice' families live there, the estate agent had told her, mostly
because of the reputation of the local schools. Sheila had no
children, but 'nice' was what she wanted, so that's where she
settled.

I parked
outside her drive. No sooner had I turned off the engine than she
came rushing out of the front door and down the garden path.

‘Hi Rach,’ she
said, opening the passenger door and leaning in. ‘Like the
hair.’

The clock on
the dashboard said 18:56. Seeing as we'd agreed to meet at seven, I
couldn't see what all the rush was about. ‘I'm not late am I?’

‘The sooner I
get there, the sooner I can have a drink,’ said Sheila. She chucked
her oversize leather handbag with its abundance of buckles into the
passenger footwell and jumped in.

‘Bad weekend?’
I asked.

‘Bad week.’ She
rolled her eyes in a 'don't ask' kind of way and reached for the
seatbelt. ‘Are we going or what?’

I turned the
ignition. My trusty eight-year-old Fiesta roared into life. ‘The
Plough?’

‘The
Plough.’

If you didn't
know the pub was there, you wouldn't know the pub was there (if you
get my drift). It's set back off the Tring Road, just by the Esso
garage, so despite being on a busy route out of the town centre,
it's reasonably quiet. The car park was about half full so I
slotted into a space near to the entrance without a problem.

My nostrils
filled with the smell of cooking beef as soon as I opened the car
door. It's primeval power went straight to my stomach, making me
instantly hungry. The pub sign, with its picture of a rack of ribs
oozing with barbeque sauce, served only to intensify my belly's
desire to be fed.

We both got
out, I locked the car with a bleep and flash of indicators, and we
headed inside.

‘Thanks for the
lift,’ said Sheila, swinging her handbag over her shoulder. ‘If you
change your mind and want a drinkie, we can take a taxi back. You
can kip at my place if you like.’