Poisoned Cherries (21 page)

“Of course, if you’re interested in his offer.”

“If I’m what?
 
Of course I’m interested; I’ll jump at it.”

“Or for it,” I muttered, but she didn’t pick it up.
 
She was too busy planning ahead.

“Eight o’clock,” she said.
 
“Mmm, that’s early.
 
Oz, maybe I could stay at your place tonight.
 
That would make sense.”

“Maybe to you, but it might not sound too sensible to me.”

She waved a hand at me.
 
“Don’t worry about your virtue; it’ll be safe with me.”
 
I wasn’t sure; I’d been in that situation before, with Susie, and it hadn’t been.
 
“Please,” she whispered.
 
“Last night was awful, really, in that cell.
 
I really don’t fancy being on my own at home, not yet.”

I gave in.
 
“Okay,” I said.
 
“But I’m warning you, I’ll be locking my bedroom door!”
 
I don’t think she believed me.

We did a drive-by of her place and picked up some fresh clothes for the morning, plus her toothbrush and cosmetics.
 
I didn’t notice her packing anything that looked like a nightdress, but I let that pass.

It was going on for nine when we got back to the Mound; when I showed her the spare room and dumped her bag there, Alison smiled in a way that told me she didn’t regard the subject as closed.
 
I still did; I checked my resolve, and found it holding up under the pressure.
 
We were both hungry, but I didn’t fancy cooking that late, so I called the ever reliable Pizza Hut and ordered up a double whopper stuffed crust whatever, no garlic, please, paid by credit card.
 
There were a couple of bottles of Bollinger in the fridge, left over from the afternoon.
 
I opened one, poured two glasses, then settled down to watch some obscure football match on Channel 5, with the sound turned down so that the awful screaming commentator didn’t get on my tits.

The entry buzzer went ten minutes later.
 
Alison jumped up; I thought she was going to answer it, but instead she headed for her room.
 
I picked up the phone myself, and heard a female voice say, “Pizza,” managing to make even those two syllables sound broad Edinburgh.

“Top floor,” I grunted, then pressed the buzzer and, as had become my habit, opened the front door, ready for the lift’s arrival.
 
I was looking out of the window as I heard it open, but the voice from behind still took me by surprise.
 
“My, who’s the hungry one then?”
 
Outside, the lift closed again and headed for the street.

I turned to see Rhona Waitrose, with a Pizza Hut carrier balanced on the tips of the fingers of her right hand, and what looked like a script held in her left.
 
It was remarkable that I noticed these things, for she was wearing a pair of black patent shoes, a shiny raincoat, which hung open, and nothing else.

“I thought we might do a bit of early rehearsing,” she said, brightly.
 
Then her smile faded as Alison walked back into the room.
 
She was dressed much the same as Rhona, minus the raincoat and the shoes, and she was holding a champagne glass between breasts that did indeed seem to have grown since the last time I’d seen them.

‘..
 
. Only I see you’re auditioning this evening,” the pizza delivery girl finished.
 
“My mistake, sorry.”

“Hold on,” I said weakly, ‘it’s no mistake.”

She brightened up.
 
“Ah well,” the actress chuckled.
 
“I’m all for improvisation in my work.”
 
She looked at Alison, who seemed slightly bewildered, but not too bothered by the newcomer.
 
“What do you think, dear?
 
Does one go into two?”

“We take what we can get,” my ex replied, positively.

I thought through my options; I didn’t fancy any of them.
 
Well, that’s not true; I fancied both of them, but not in the same room, at the same time.
 
“Can I just settle for the pizza,” I suggested, ‘and let you girls sort things out for yourselves?”

They both laughed, in a tinkling harmony; then the bells stopped ringing, as the lift opened again.

“Someone left the street door open,” Susie called out, as she walked in through the open door, carrying her overnight bag.
 
“Surp .. .”

I’ve never seen a volcano erupt, but if I ever do, then like the song says, it won’t impress me much.
 
Not after seeing Susie go instantly ballistic.
 
“You bastard,” she screamed, as she dropped the bag, and advanced on me.
 
“You indescribable fucking bastard!
 
I am mug enough to fall for you, and to think that you feel the same way about me.
 
So I come through to bring some joy into your lonely life, and what do I find?
 
You’re waist deep in fucking whores!”

“Hey wait a minute!”
 
Rhona protested.

Susie didn’t even turn to look at her; she just threw out a hand behind her with a pointing finger on the end.
 
“You shut your mouth!”
 
she commanded.
 
Rhona obeyed.
 
As for Alison, she just stood there; her mouth was still hanging open, but no sound was coming out.

“Love,” I pleaded with her, ‘this is not what it seems.”
 
I wondered, idly, whether going down on my knees would help, but I decided that it would only make it easier for her to punch me in the mouth.

“Well, what the fuck is it then?
 
Which scene in your bloody movie is this?”

Behind her the door slammed shut.
 
We all looked towards it.
 
The tall, angular figure of Mandy O’Farrell stared back at us.
 
I was hugely relieved to see that she was fully clothed, even if she was as astonished as the rest of us.

“Jesus Christ,” she boomed in her full, rich contralto.
 
“Is there no security in this bloody building?”

I took advantage of Susie’s momentary distraction to seize her firmly by the arm and march her towards my bedroom.
 
“Mandy,” I called over my shoulder, ‘get these two out of here, dressed or otherwise.

“Alison, go home, go to Ross, go wherever you bloody like, but be back here for eight tomorrow morning!

“And Rhona, leave the fucking pizza!”

I shoved Susie into my bedroom, closed the door behind us, locked it, and turned back to face her, just in time for a small bare foot to slam into my testicles, and take my mind completely off everything else that had happened that evening.

Thirty.

It took me three minutes before I could think of anything but the pain, and another two before I could even begin to croak, let alone speak.
 
Fortunately, I’d fallen backwards against the bedroom door, making it impossible for Susie to get out.

It took me another fifteen minutes for me to get her to begin to believe me, and the best part of an hour before she was completely convinced.
 
Even then ... “But if I hadn’t walked in ...”

“I’d have eaten the pizza, love, honest.”

“You can have it now, then, if those bitches haven’t nicked it.”
 
She smiled at me.
 
“Afterwards, if you’re really lucky, you can have me.” I do not think I have ever felt more relieved in my life.

We decided to change the order of events.
 
Later, quite a while later, I went out to check that Mandy had indeed evicted the visitors, and to recover Susie’s bag from the living room.
 
The pizza was intact, if stone cold.
 
I squeezed it into the oven to reheat, then checked the champagne, on the kitchen counter.
 
It was warm and flat, but it was still Bolly, so I poured us a couple of glasses and carried them back into the living room.

Susie was waiting for me, in a blue silk dressing gown, sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked under her.
 
I handed her a glass; she sampled it and frowned.
 
“Were you wasting this on that cow Alison?”

“I was being hospitable,” I told her, ‘that was all.”

“I take it she was the one without the raincoat, the one with the fake knockers.”

“How do you know they’re fake?”

She snorted.
 
“At her age, if they were real they’d have started the long sad journey south .. . like mine.”

I sat beside her and nuzzled my forehead against them.
 
“They’ve got a long way to go, honey.”

“You say the nicest things; I might just stay the night.”

“Stay for good,” I suggested.
 
“We could move Janet and Ethel through here.”

“A nice idea, but I can’t; I’ve still got a business to run.
 
And anyway, I’d cramp your bloody style.”

“I don’t have a style to cramp, not any more.”
 
I looked at her.
 
“You scare me shitless, you know,” I told her.

“Good!”
 
she retorted, with a grin.
 
“That’s the way it should be.
 
Not that I believe it, mind.
 
I know you, Oz Blackstone; I won’t catch you off-guard again.”

“I didn’t mean that.
 
I meant that the way I feel about you scares me.”

“Does it make you happy as well, though?
 
Does it conjure up pictures of a house in the country and two point four kids?”

“Three point four, actually.”

“Be brave, then; face up to the prospect of life with me.
 
Think how brave I’m being; I’m taking a chance on a guy who slept with someone else on his honeymoon.”

“Yeah, but it was you I slept with.”

“So?”

I left her smiling and went off to dish up the pizza; I cut it into segments and laid them on a kitchen tray, then I picked up the champagne and carried the lot through.

“Rhona Waitrose hasn’t changed,” Susie said, when I got back.

I was taken by surprise.
 
“You know her?”

“Before she got mildly famous, she used to sing with a band in Glasgow.
 
They played at a club I used to go to, when I was fancy free.
 
She practically screwed the guitarist on stage, and they said that off stage she screwed the whole bloody band.

“You tell her from me that if she comes near you again, I will fix her, big time.”

“I think she may have worked that out,” I said, ‘but I’ll tell her,

discreetly’

“You do that.
 
The other slut, Alison; she’s the one in whose business I was going to be daft enough to invest, is she?”

“That’s her.
 
She doesn’t need our help any more though.”
 
I told her about Ewan Capperauld’s unexpected Galahad act.

“Very noble,” she murmured.
 
“What’s he like, the great man?”

“Takes a bit of getting to know, but he’s all right once the ice is broken.”
 
I told her about his run-in with Miles.

She whistled.
 
“Silly man, then; your friend Mr.
 
Grayson is definitely not someone I would cross.
 
There’s something lethal behind that smile.”
 
She frowned.
 
“He’s a bit like you in that respect.”
 
I didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not, but eventually I decided that coming from Susie, it probably was.

We finished the pizza, and Bolly, then went back to bed; I set the alarm for six-forty-five and we made love until we fell asleep.

When Darren Adam woke me next morning on Radio Forth, Susie was up and in the shower.
 
I decided that I liked that; it felt like home.
 
But maybe I also liked, just a wee bit, the fact that she was going back to Glasgow and leaving me to my own life .. . hell, I didn’t know.

She was ready for the road by quarter to eight, having called Ethel to make sure that the baby was okay.
 
“When will I see you again?”
 
she asked, as we stood waiting for the lift.

“The first chance I get,” I promised, and I meant it.
 
Listening to Susie talk to the nanny made me realise how much I wanted to see my daughter again too.
 
“I’ll see how today goes; if it works out, maybe I’ll be able to come through tonight.

“Not tomorrow night, though; the fun starts on Sunday morning, very early.”

She smiled.
 
“Sometime, I’d like to come through and watch you work.

Would that be okay?
 
Could you fix it with Miles?”

“Yes, I reckon I could.
 
Once I see the schedule, we’ll set something up.”
 
The lift arrived; I put a foot in the door, to hold it.

Her eyes narrowed, as a thought crossed her mind.
 
“Here,” she muttered, ‘that Rhona Waitrose.
 
Do you and she get to .. .?
 
You know what I mean.”

“We’ve got a clinch later on; nothing horizontal, though, and we both get to keep our kit on.”

“Hmmph!”
 
Susie grunted.
 
“That’ll be a change for her.”

She patted my chest.
 
“Right, I’m off.
 
Before I go, though, I’ll make you a promise.
 
No more surprises; thinking about it, I suppose I was taking a lot for granted.”

“No,” I said.
 
“I loved your being here .. . eventually.”

She patted my groin.
 
“Sorry about the kick in the balls.
 
It didn’t do any lasting damage, though; in fact..
 
.”