River Deep (3 page)

‘But you’ll be there tonight? At eight, won’t you?’ he had pressed her, silently thinking he was insane to try and hold her to a time and a place that would take a sizeable miracle to arrange.

Stella had crossed the room and taken his face in her hands. For a moment Pete had been lost in the violet wheels of her eyes.

‘Yes. I’ll be there tonight.’ She had kissed him briefly on the lips, leaving him tingling, and then she was gone. For two thunderous heartbeats Pete had stood motionless in her wake, and then crumpled on to the bed.

‘How the fuck am I going to pull this off?’ he’d moaned, knowing that pretty much his entire future happiness depended on him doing just that.

It was just past nine a.m. when he’d got to the restaurant, and it was firmly shut, grilles pulled down across the huge plate glass windows, and not a sign of life in the minimalist dining room. Pete peered into the gloom and he thought he could see the faintest chink of light blinking through the swing of what must be the kitchen’s double doors.

‘Kitchen,’ he said determinedly and headed round the back. The thought had occurred to him then that turning up in his weekend jeans, the ones that hung round his hips with the hole in the knee, and his Leeds replica shirt might, on reflection, not have been the best idea. But he hadn’t had much time for reflection that morning. He hadn’t had time for anything much more than running around in a blind panic like a man about to face the axeman’s block.

The back door of the kitchen was opened on to a small courtyard and a young lad, maybe sixteen or seventeen, was taking in a delivery of fresh vegetables. Pete paused a few feet from him and shuffled.

‘All right?’ he asked mildly.

The boy raised his head and nodded, turning to go in.

‘Um, I was wondering, like. Any chance of getting a table here tonight? It’s an emergency.’

The lad turned back and looked at Pete, a slow grin spreading across his acne-bitten face. ‘This isn’t McDonald’s, mate!’ he said with a phlegmy laugh. ‘You have to book about three months ahead and you need at least two ton in your pocket to eat here. Sorry, try the Italian in the arcade, they can usually fit you in and their veal’s not bad.’

Pete regarded his grey and worn trainers and wondered how it had come to this. How he, a grown man of thirty-four, had been reduced to pleading with some spotty kid for his life.

‘The thing is, mate, I’m going to propose to her, my girlfriend Stella, that is. And it has to be tonight and it has to be here. Otherwise she’s going to leave me.’

The kid looked at him with a mixture of horror and contempt. ‘You’ve not heard of planning ahead, then?’ he said. He propped the kitchen door open with the veg and sat down on the concrete step, pulling out a packet of fags from his apron. He offered one to Pete, who didn’t really smoke but took it anyway, and sat beside him on the step. ‘Look,’ the kid continued, ‘I’ve been about, me. I’ve got a few birds on the go and, trust me, if your lass is that demanding you don’t want to be marrying her. You want to be sacking her. Pronto.’ He nodded at Pete’s shirt. ‘So what about last season then?’ he asked him.

Pete winced and shook his head. ‘You tell me how we got from playing in Europe to a relegation dog fight in just two seasons.’ He shook his head glumly.

‘Tell me about it. I’m Si, by the way. I’m sort of dogsbody to the sous-chef, when I’m not at college. But it’s all right. Training here means I can go anywhere once I’m qualified.’

Pete tried to look interested as he felt his small sliver of hope dissolve. He shook his head despondently.

‘It’s good you’re doing what you want. Just make sure you never get stuck in a rut. I guess by now I should have learnt,’ he told Si, taking a painful drag on the cigarette, ‘that I can’t stop Stella. If she wants to go, she’ll go, and she’ll leave me here waiting for her, living in the same old flat, going to the same studios every day, spending my entire life with Dougie the sodding Digger.’ Pete took another drag. ‘Sometimes I think if it was over, finally over for good this time, it’d even be a sort of relief, but …’

‘Dougie the Digger?’ Si’s head snapped up. ‘I bloody love Dougie the Digger!’ He leapt up and started singing the theme tune from the children’s show right there.
‘ “Dougie the Digger, Big and strong, He’ll always be there to put right what’s wrong!”
Fucking ace. I fucking grew up on Dougie, man.’

Pete stared at him and felt a curious mixture of pride and horror. ‘I never realised I’d been doing it for so long that actual grown-up kids had actually grown up on it …’ he muttered.

‘So then, man, what do you do, on Dougie?’ Si crouched down beside him. ‘Do you do the voice, do you? Hey, listen to this.’ He went into a faultless impression of Dougie’s rumbling Yorkshire accent. ‘ “Don’t worry, Mr Merry, we’ll have you dug out of the hole in no time. Come on, Skip!” What do you reckon? I could do your holiday cover or whatever.’ Si laughed and shook his head, so genuinely tickled by the idea, that Pete couldn’t help grinning in return.

‘I’m a model maker, the special effects bloke. I build and operate Dougie and some of the other characters as well.’

Si grinned and held out his hand. ‘You wait till I tell my mates I’ve met Dougie the Digger. Fuck.’ He paused for a minute and seemed to be mulling something over. ‘Hang on there a minute, Dougie,’ he said, disappearing into the kitchen before Pete could correct him about his name.

Pete waited, uncertain what he was waiting for or why. Twenty long minutes passed before Si came back. He dipped his chin and leaned in close to Pete, as if someone might overhear them.

‘Right, you’re in. Tonight at eight. Don’t ask me how I did it, and if anyone finds out, I don’t know you.’ He clapped Pete on the shoulder. ‘Oh, and Dougie, you’re booked under the name of Mr and Mrs Everson, OK?’

Pete had spluttered a reply and thanked Si profusely before leaving. He hadn’t really believed it had happened, and he’d had to double-check before he could allow himself a small celebration. For now at least there was still hope. As he had turned into the street where his building society was just opening, he had passed a bookshop with a display of Dougie books in the window.

‘Cheers, mate,’ he’d said, and then gone to get out two grand for an engagement ring.

He’d worried for the rest of that afternoon about whether 0.5 of a carat was enough for Stella. After ascertaining that Pete actually was a genuine buyer and not someone planning to do over the premises, the salesman had shown him a tray of rings in his price range. Pete had thought he’d get something with a bit more bling for his money, but apparently he’d need three times as much for a whole carat.

‘This ring is very good sir, good clarity, good colour and an elegant brilliant cut. Plus I’ll take off two fifty for cash.’

It had been over so quickly. The dream that he would one day be sure enough of Stella to buy her a ring had been in the back of his mind for so long now that he’d built up the whole scenario in detail. He’d meant to shop around to find the perfect ring that would sing out to her the moment she clapped eyes on it. He’d mentioned this to his sister once, but she’d laughed harshly and told him, ‘that one claps eyes on anything she can pawn later and she’ll be singing all the way to the bank!’ But then Jess had never understood Stella.

Well, what anyone else thought of all this didn’t matter. Pete just hoped that the ring he’d bought in less than half an hour would be good enough to keep her. After all, he hadn’t even checked the size. He’d held on to it tightly, concealing it in his pocket as he headed back through Headingly trying very hard not to look like a bloke carrying two grands’ worth of diamond. When he finally got in he found his favourite Stone Roses CD and put it on full blast. At once he felt all the energy, vigour and promise he’d been so certain of at eighteen. He’d have to get ready, have a bath, iron something, but right then, with the adrenalin pumping in his veins and his heart thundering in his chest, he had to dance.

And Pete remembered he had danced until his lungs were stretched to bursting and he was dizzy on the possibility of how wonderful life would be if only she would say yes.

The train had an unscheduled stop at somewhere called Berkhamsted due to signal problems. Looking out of the window Pete saw a young couple lift a buggy off the train and wheel it towards the steps. The mother was laughing at her little girl of maybe two as she tried to put on her dad’s sunglasses. That was what he’d been dreaming of that afternoon he’d danced himself stupid, not Stella on the other side of the world and him off teaching in some southern backwater called St Albans, even if it did mean a shot at working on a film. As the train pulled out of the station he caught a last glimpse of the couple briefly touching hands and exchanging smiles before they carried the buggy down the station steps.

He shook his head, and as the train entered a tunnel he gave his bemused reflection a companionable shrug. It was wrong, surely, and strange that he should feel like this. That he should feel so bereft and desolate.

After all, Stella
had
said yes.

‘All right, Mag?’ Sheila greeted Maggie with her habitual East End tendency to shorten every close friend and family member’s name to one syllable, no matter what the result.

‘All right, She?’ Maggie returned the compliment, glad to see her.

Sheila had worked in The Fleur for almost forty years and Maggie had grown up with her. Born in Bow, she had worked there for most of her youth – a real Bow Belle she often said, with all the young men eyeing her as she whizzed down the streets on her dad’s bicycle, her voluminous skirts billowing flirtatiously over the crossbar. When she was eighteen she had married the local war hero, a copper and amateur boxer ten years her senior. ‘Problem was,’ Sheila had told her once with her usual sanguine detachment, ‘he didn’t keep his fists to himself outside of the ring.’ For nearly two years she’d stood it, hiding her bruises from her friends and holding her head high, still playing the part of the feisty blonde. And then he’d beat her so badly she’d lost her first baby, a girl, when she was five months pregnant. The next day still bleeding and bruised, she packed what little she had and ran away, getting as far out of London as she could afford. She’d landed in St Albans, and she’d been working in this pub even before Maggie’s parents had bought it.

Sheila had never had another child, she’d never got remarried. ‘Well, I never got divorced, did I?’ she’d say with a laugh. ‘Wasn’t done in them days.’

Looking at her now, as she leaned against the bar, her hair still meticulously blonde, her thick gold chains looped around her neck and hoops in her ears, her make-up carefully applied, Maggie could see the eighteen-year-old Bow Belle still there, as clear as day. Years of smoking had kept her thin, and though her skin was etched with deep lines it was still taut and revealed good bones. She had often wondered if Sheila regretted the way her life had passed, but if she did she never mentioned it, never seemed to reflect on it.

To Maggie, Sheila was a second mum. Whenever she couldn’t stand her parents’ brand of hands-off parenting any longer she’d always turned to Sheila, who’d listen to her problems patiently and then tell it like it was. It was no exaggeration to say that Sheila had often saved Maggie’s sanity, if not sometimes her very life. Maggie couldn’t imagine life without her.

‘Where you off then?’ Sheila nodded at Maggie’s attire. She had spent all of this morning deciding what to wear, how to look for her meeting with Christian. Eventually she’d plumped for a shortish black linen skirt that accentuated her slimness, and a dark pink shirt, one that contrasted well with her dark looks and light skin. It was a shame she wasn’t getting her hair done until after the meeting, but she’d taken Sarah’s advice and spent some considerable time applying her foundation and concealer until you could hardly see the shadows and soreness around her eyes.

Maggie had done all she could to remind Christian of the things he loved about her: her large brown eyes, her smooth white skin that never tanned, her slim and slender legs. Perhaps now, after this short break away from her – which felt like a hundred years – he’d see her with new eyes and realise exactly what it was he was leaving behind. He’d see how well she was coping, how well she looked, and realise he couldn’t do it. Of course she hadn’t mentioned any of these half-hidden hopes and dreams to anyone, least of all Sarah or Sheila, who would both laugh in her face point-blank, but somehow Maggie felt things weren’t entirely over between her and Christian. They couldn’t be, not after everything they’d been through together, and that tiny feeling was pretty much all that kept her breathing.

After several minutes of practising keeping her voice level she’d finally called him yesterday, just after Sarah had gone. He hadn’t picked up and, wondering if he’d seen her name on his caller display, she’d left a hesitant message offering a time and place that they could meet. Today, Friday, at noon. She hadn’t wanted to seem as if she had no structure to her life, as if she could just fit in with him, although all she longed to do was to just fit in with him, just as she always had done, just as she was once sure she always would do. She’d waited all of Wednesday afternoon for his call, taking her phone with her to the loo and into the shower, and then, just as she went to bed, she’d noticed an envelope flashing on her mobile. He’d sent a text agreeing to the time and suggesting that the office would be better than the flat. She’d texted back OK and switched off the light, climbed into bed and stared into the darkness, wondering and waiting.

Sheila regarded her with her smokey grey eyes, still waiting for a response.

‘Oh, um, I’m off to see Christian to try and … finalise things. After all, we were together six years. There’s a lot that needs sorting.’

Sheila snorted, blowing smoke through her nose. ‘Too bloody right. You want to get half that flat for starters, and half that business. More than half of it. If it hadn’t been for you keeping it going he’d have run it into the ground ages ago with his fancy ideas.’