Reversing Over Liberace (21 page)

When I came back into the office, Neil and Clive, bless them, were handling my workload and Katie was waiting with an avenging angel face on. “Right. Time to talk. Clive, Neil, hold the fort.”

“Rightcha are love.” Uncomplainingly they went back to thumping my keyboard and frowning into my telephone.

“They'll probably produce the works of Shakespeare while we're gone.” My voice was tremblingly close to hysteria.

“Those two wouldn't recognise Shakespeare if he had a walk-on in
EastEnders
.” Katie hustled me out of the office and down the road to the Grape and Sprout, where Jazz was keeping a bottle of vodka company at a corner table. The two of them pressed me into a seat and Jazz poured me a drink. I noticed his hand was still shaking.

“I…” I began, but Katie shook her head.

“We're just waiting for the others.”

Others?
“Are you okay, Jazz?” I asked. He looked different today, less, well, less. No platform-soled boots for a start, and no enormous black coat. It was as though someone had taken him and whittled.

“I, Willow,” he pronounced so carefully that I wondered if he was already drunk, “am
incredibly
okay.”

He'd shaved off the goatee, too, and there was a thin, pale line around his face where it had been protecting his skin from the sun. Katie caught sight of this and began to giggle.

“You look like you're being haunted by your own beard.”

“I've turned over a new leaf. No more dark Goth. I am cleaning up my act.”

Katie and I looked at each other dubiously. “Last time you said that, it was because you'd found the Church,” she reminded him. “I hope we're not going to have any of
that
kind of thing again. It took me ages to get the smell out of the curtains after you'd practiced with the incense.”

“Yeah, but on the plus side I've got a great outfit. I'm just waiting for the first Tarts and Vicars of the season.”

Jazz had taken the Church as seriously as he took everything else, i.e., extremely, for a week. It was the celibacy that got him in the end.

“Who're we waiting for?” I asked, as another tiny ripple of miserable self-pity rolled its way onto my shores.

“I asked…oh, here they are. Over here, guys.”

To my slightly startled horror, Ash and Cal came through the doors, laughing together as though there had never been an awkward moment between them. “Oh God,
Katie
! I thought we were going to have a consoling drink and you two were going to tell me what an idiot I am.”

“Yeah, and then you were going to go right out, rationalise everything, and carry on as if nothing had ever happened, weren't you?”

“No. Well, yes, probably. But still, why did you ring those two?”

“Ash is really good in a relationship crisis. He tells it as it is, cuts the crap,” Jazz said, pouring two more drinks for the newcomers as they made their way over.

“And you invited Cal because you fancy him.” I turned fierce eyes to Katie.

“I invited Cal because he likes you and we could really do with an alternative perspective on things here, Will. This guy,
Luke
, he's got another girlfriend, definite. He's lied about it to you, definite.”

“He's a cheese face, definite,” put in Jazz.

“Er, yes. But you know all this. And look how miserable it's making you, trying to pretend you're not seeing what's right in front of you.” Katie poured me a drink but avoided my eye.

“But I didn't
know
.”

“Bull. You knew as soon as you read those messages. What else has he lied about?”

“Nothing.”

“Willow.”

“All right, so he moved out of the hotel without telling me. Big bloody deal. He had a perfectly valid reason for that.”

“And his brother? What the hell is
that
all about?”

“
I don't know
!” I stood up and shouted. Everyone else in the Grape and Sprout stopped talking and turned to look. Luckily they were all midafternoon wine drinkers, so their opinions didn't count. “I don't know,” I went on more quietly, once the chatter had resumed. “Maybe Luke's ashamed of James, maybe James is a gambler and lost the business on the wrong card. I don't know, but I won't condemn Luke without evidence.”

“Well,
duh
, darling, but how much
evidence
is it going to take to convince you?” Ash slouched in the seat next to me. “If you're determined to take his side, you could catch the boy
in flagrante
and still believe him when he said he was getting a splinter out of her tush with his tongue.” He downed his vodka in one and waved a hand. “Just dump him. Plenty more fish in the sea, if the holes in your net aren't too big.”

“Thank you, Oscar fucking Wilde,” I snapped.

“Oh, come on, you're not exactly choosy, are you? I mean, most of the guys you dredge up I wouldn't poke if my knob was on fire and they had Lake Windermere up there.”

There was a momentary silence as we digested this particular Ash-ism.

“But surely,” Jazz began, “if your knob
was
on fire—”

The conversation which broke out was overloud and overanimated. “Drop the man, Will. No excuses. He's
lied
to you.”

“Don't give him a reason. Or you could hint that he's fuck-useless in bed, that always gets them.”

“But we're getting married, we've bought a flat. Why would he do all that if there's someone else? And, I mean,
Dee-Dee
, what kind of a crap name is
that
, sounds like a bloody poodle.”

“Is he into animals then?” That, of course, was Ash.

“Not like you mean.”

“I might be able to help,” Cal interrupted for the first time and we all stopped talking to look at him. “I…I mean I could…there's ways…” he stammered his way through being the centre of attention.

“What ways?”

“Oh, Cal's into all the arcane practices.”

“Ash,” I said, warningly.

“I don't want to go into it, but there are things I could do, to find out.” Cal talked to me directly, into my eyes as though we were the only people in the room. The concentration stopped the stammer. “Only if you want me to.” And he held my gaze after he'd stopped speaking, which made my stomach tremble in an all-too-familiar way.

“'Scuse.” I dashed for the doorway and the lovely, convenient drain outside.

Chapter Twenty-one

I lay my aching head on the pillow and thought about what a stupid idea it was to try to get over emotional traumas by drinking. I'd stopped analysing whether my raving stomach was down to the effect Cal's eyes had on my psyche or the more prosaic effects of eight vodka shots per hour.

It was, predictably, three in the morning. A time at which all souls are at their lowest and thoughts immediately turn to picking at the biggest scab on the psychological knee. Me, I didn't even know where to stick the metaphorical fingernail. My mind felt like one huge raw wound now that Jazz, Katie and Ash had all had a good poke around in it. Even Cal had stuck his oar in, although admittedly only to offer his assistance.

Why was it that they all thought they had a say in my life? Did I advise Katie on how to bring up the twins? Give Ash the benefit of my experience of club-drug culture regarding sex and promiscuity? I don't think so. And yet they'd all given me their own versions of the ditch-the-bastard speech. Okay, so I knew that Luke wasn't the faithful type, much too good-looking and aware of it, but fidelity wasn't everything in a relationship, was it? There was trust, and respect and yes, right, I know that trust and respect are difficult if your partner is shagging the length of the street but, there's affection, too. Luke had explained that as a deserted child he had problems with physical affection, but he could still do sex. And sex is a very important part of any healthy relationship. Just ask someone who isn't getting any. Katie, come forward.

So, all in all, Luke and I had a lot going for us.

I rolled my head onto a cool part of the pillow—big mistake, because the whole room started rolling, too, and I had to close my eyes to stop it. But, on the plus side, I fell asleep again and woke up at eight feeling only slightly nauseous. Someone was pounding on my bedroom door.

It was Clay. “That bloke's back,” he said without preamble, sitting on the end of my bed and effectively pinning me down under the covers. At least he wasn't trying to fart on my head, the intervening twenty-five years having smoothed his social edges somewhat.

“What bloke?”

“And I've got a letter from the council. Apparently they're selling off Ganda's allotment. For building, if you please.”

“Yes, I did hear something.”

But Clay was off on one. “So I thought, what I might do, what I'd really
like
to do. I've been looking for some land to build my own house on, but I didn't want to go too far out of town. I want to design Modern Urban, do you see?”

I refrained from mentioning that his land was York allotments, not derelict warehouse in inner-city Birmingham, but it was obviously Clay's idea of urban. “Sounds like you've really thought about it. Excellent. Brilliant idea. Now, for the love of God,
what bloke
?”

Clay jumped up, his mind once more on steel and chrome. “Er. You know. The one that ate all the bread and I had to—”

“Go to Morrison's in your pyjamas. Yes, I remember. It's Cal. Where is he ‘back'?”

“Downstairs.” A look of horror crossed Clay's face. “God, I left him alone with the loaf!” He fled the room while I tried to fix my appearance so that I didn't look like a vampire porcupine.

 

 

 

“Morning.”

I don't know why it annoyed me that Cal sounded bright and breezy, but it did.

“Why are you here?”

He raised one eyebrow. “Don't you remember? Last night?”

I decided to try for comedy. “What, I didn't sleep with you, did I?”

“No,” he said into my eyes. “You
would
remember.”

Whoa, where did
that
come from? To cover what was quite a large confusion, I started “business with kettle and mugs”. Actually, my memories of last night were a bit scattered rather than being absent altogether. I knew I'd rung Luke and called off our date, pleading a sudden onset of flu. I knew that I'd carried on drinking with Cal and Ash after leaving Katie in the bar, that Jazz had gone off to visit OC, carrying a ridiculous number of fluffy toys (where had he hidden
those
when we'd been in the Grape and Sprout?) and, er. “Humour me.”

“You're having the day off and we're going digging.”

Oh, great. Here I was, feeling as though I'd stubbed my brain, and I was going
what
? “Digging?”

“You'll see. Come on.”

An hour later we were up on the moors, parking in the lay-by. The last time I'd been here Luke had parked on
this
spot and I'd been happy. No thoughts about other women. “Look, I'm wasting both our times here. Let's go back to town. I really should be at work anyway. It's not fair on Katie.” But Cal was ignoring me completely, swearing under his breath as he negotiated the trackway down to the house. The mud had dried in the brief hot spell we were enjoying, but this seemed to make things even harder for him. Instead of slipping and losing his balance, he had to contend with ruts and unexpectedly deep potholes. “Cal? Did you hear? I said I ought to be going back.”

Cal turned round, resting against one of the old oak trees that lined the path. “They said you'd do this. Katie and Ash and Jazz, they told me you'd try to deny anything was wrong. I'm looking on this as saving you from yourself, and I'm rather looking forward to it, if you want the truth. So you might as well shut up and go along with it. Right?” He crouched down suddenly and pushed aside some undergrowth until the trunk of the tree was revealed. Without its accustomed blanket of brambles and nettles, the bark looked nakedly pale. “Here. See?”

Intrigued, despite my misery, I bent down next to him. “What is it?”

“I carved this when I was ten. The tree was a bit smaller then. See, those are my initials, CM. Callum Moore. Bloody nearly cut my finger off doing the M and Mary slapped me sideways when she found out I'd used one of her good silver knives.”

“I didn't know your name was Callum Moore.”

“You do now. I was a miserable little guy back then, loner, reckoned no one understood me—hey, look at me now, nothing lasts forever. Right, that's you distracted, shall we go on?”

“God, you really are weird, aren't you?”

“They told me you'd do that, too.” Cal turned away and led the way farther on, out into the field.

“What?”

“Be rude. It's what you do, apparently. To keep people at a distance. One thing though, Willow.” He reached the gate and pushed it open, stood waiting for me to follow him through. “It's a bit too late.”

There were sheep in the field today, cropping down the overlong grasses and watching us in baa-filled distress. They'd eaten all the little white flowers and for some reason this made tears bubble up in my eyes. I scratched them away with a ferocious sleeve and followed Cal down into the yard. Instead of heading into the house, he produced a key and went straight to the locked barn, fiddling about with the padlock for a second. The air was suddenly overflowing with screaming siren noise. I clamped my hands over my ears but, unconcerned, Cal released the lock and went inside. Two seconds later the noise died.

“Sorry. Forgot I left the alarm enabled. Come on in.”

Cautiously I crept over the threshold. Inside the barn was all the equipment I'd remembered, plus a few extra pieces that I'd either not noticed, or were new. Cal wandered around throwing random switches, flicking the lights on and generally looking like A Man in Charge. He'd looped his hair back again, too, and tied it up, acquired the focussed and deliberate movements I'd noticed in him before when he'd been working.