Take a Chance on Me (17 page)

Ash stared at his reflection in the mirror. Jesus, what was the matter with him? What was happening to his
face
?

Perspiration prickled at the back of his neck as he psyched himself up to try again. It had been bad before, but never this bad. OK, he might not have many best features in the physical sense, but his smile had been one of them. And most of the time it was fine. It wasn’t something you even thought about doing, was it? You just smiled at someone and it improved your face. He even had photographic proof, for God’s sake. He was perfectly capable of smiling in a normal, natural fashion.

That is, so long as Fia Newman wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity. In which case the muscles refused to contract in their usual way and went into some kind of awful rictus serial-killer grimace instead.

Ash took a deep breath and had another go. The prickling increased; there it was again, as he’d known it would be. Like impotence, once you’d experienced failure, the fear of it recurring never left you and the more likely it was to happen the next time, and the next…

OK, stop. Thinking about impotence when you hadn’t yet worked out how to smile in an acceptable manner was like worrying about your first Triathlon before you’d even learned to swim.

***

‘Great show this morning,’ said Frank, taking his order for chicken curry. ‘Loved all that stuff about the nun.’

‘Thanks.’ See? When it was Frank he could smile away, no problem. Then Deborah joined them and he did another one. Practice made perfect.

Deborah said cheerfully, ‘Did Frank tell you about the nun thing? He was laughing so hard he snorted coffee out of his nose.’

‘You could go on
Britain’s Got Talent
with that,’ said Ash.

‘Chicken curry for Ash, love.’ Frank waylaid Fia as she emerged from the kitchen and Ash felt the muscles in his face begin their familiar contortion. Jesus, this must be how it felt to turn into the Incredible Hulk. OK, just ignore it, ignore it and power on through, distract her with something else… yes, that’s it, distract her with your trademark lightning wit and dazzling charisma…

‘How about you? Did I make stuff come out of your nose too?’

Fia stared at him. So did Deb. There was a stunned silence that probably lasted a second or two but felt more like twenty. Great; probably the largest number of words he’d managed to string together while directly addressing her and
this
was what he’d come out with.

‘Sorry, sorry.’ Ash felt a great woosh of heat shoot up his neck. ‘I didn’t mean that. We were talking about something on my show this morning… the stripping nun… don’t know if you heard it…?’

‘No,’ said Fia evenly. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Oh. Well, it was funny.’ He didn’t mean to sound so defensive; it just came out that way, probably as a result of his clenched muscles.

She gave him a cool look. ‘Was it?’

Frank said, ‘Fia doesn’t listen to your show. She’s into Carmen Miranda and all that malarkey.’

A happy mental image flashed into Ash’s mind, of Fia scantily clad and dancing saucily towards him with an explosion of fruit on her head.

‘
Carmina Burana
,’ Fia corrected him. She smiled slightly. ‘I like classical music.’

God, bloody classical. Ash nodded. ‘Yeah? Me too.’

Her look of surprise said it all. ‘Really?’

What, did she think he was too thick to appreciate it? Too much of a heathen? ‘I do,’ said Ash.

‘How about opera?’

‘
Love
opera.’

Fia sounded as if she didn’t believe him. Ash shrugged defiantly, as if he didn’t care whether she did or not.

‘What’s your favorite?’ There was a note of challenge in her voice.

‘
Madame Butterfly
.’ Ha, take
that
.

‘By?’

‘Puccini.’
And that
. ‘Giacomo Puccini,’ he casually added for good measure.

‘What else did he compose?’

‘
La Boheme
.
Tosca
.
Manon Lescaut
.’
With knobs on
.

‘Wow.’ Grudgingly impressed, Fia said, ‘Didn’t have you down as an opera lover.’

Keeping a straight face was so much easier than trying to execute a smile that wouldn’t frighten the horses. In the same vein, pretending to be someone else was definitely easier than trying to be himself. Channeling Roger Moore as James Bond, Ash raised one eyebrow and heard himself drawl, ‘Oh, I’m full of surprises.’

Another stunned silence. Frank frowned and said doubtfully, ‘Are you trying to sound like… Roger Moore?’

For fuck’s sake. ‘I could give you the answer to that question,’ said Ash. ‘But then I’d have to kill you.’

The smiles were uncertain. It wasn’t remotely funny. Maybe he should kill himself and put them all out of their misery.

‘Anyway, I’d better get on!’ Breaking the silence, Fia said brightly, ‘I’ll bring your chicken curry out in a few minutes. Rice or chips?’

Ash loved chips. Only heathens ate their curry with chips. Telegraph-reading, opera-loving, sophisticated men of the world—and the women who found them attractive—turned their noses up at people who ordered chips with their curry.

‘Rice please,’ said Ash.

‘Bloody hell,’ Frank barked with laughter, ‘there’s a first. What’s up with you, lad? Trying to shift some of that flab?’

By the time Fia arrived with his food, Ash had formulated a plan.

‘There you go. Chicken curry with basmati rice.’

‘Thanks.’ There was an awkward pause while he watched her place a bowl of poppadums and a ramekin of mango chutney on the table. ‘So the thing is, sometimes we get given tickets to… er, things.’ Roger Moore had evidently done a bunk; Ash realized he was back to being his clumsy tongue-tied self. ‘At the radio station. So if I got some for… you know, something classical, would you be interested, d’you think?’

Fia paused, as if struggling to work out what he was actually saying. Finally she said, ‘Well, that sounds… brilliant. Yes, I would. Thanks.’

‘Great!’ Ash did his best to keep the adrenaline-surge under control. ‘Thanks… I mean, right, I’ll see what comes in! Probably we’ll have some in the next few days… because we get sent these things a
lot
…’ uh oh, he’d gone from tongue-tied to full-on burble in under ten seconds, ‘…and if you think it’s something you’d like to see, that’ll be great.’ OK, stop
saying
that word. ‘Better than us giving the tickets away in some stupid phone-in like we usually do. They always end up going to complete idiots anyway, like the drunk guy last week who won seats for
Don Giovanni
and thought he was going to see Jon Bon Jovi…’

‘Right, well, food to cook, people to serve.’ Backing away with a look of bemusement, Fia said, ‘Enjoy your curry!’

***

Casey Kruger was on the phone in the back of the car, loudly discussing offers for a potential book deal with his agent.

‘Mike, Mike, don’t let
them
dictate terms! What are you, a man or a mouse? Tell them if they don’t give us what we want, they can take a running jump, right? This is my story we’re talking about and I know what I’m worth. Tell ’em we can always go elsewhere.’

Cleo tuned out and slowed to let a lorry pull in front of her. This morning while she’d been getting ready for work, she’d been one of the nation’s best loved veteran actresses being interviewed on TV about her blissfully happy fifty-two-year marriage to her knighted actor husband.

‘Love at first sight? Oh good Lord no, the absolute opposite! When we first met I thought he was the most ignorant, obnoxious, awful man on the planet! If anyone had told me we’d end up marrying each other and actually staying together for the rest of our lives… well, I think I’d probably have thrown myself under the nearest bus!’

Which had made the interviewer laugh because as a love story it was both funny and a salutary lesson. But an about-turn like that had to be rare, surely. Cleo inwardly winced; the thought of it happening to her and Casey was too horrible to contemplate… that you could loathe and detest every aspect of someone’s personality, then somehow change your mind and eventually discover that you loved them after all… well, that was downright scary. And what did it say about your judgment?

‘Mike, are they the ones being difficult or is it you? Because I’m telling you now, mate, I can always find myself another agent.’ Pause. ‘OK. Yep. Glad to hear it.’ Ending the call and closing his phone with a click and a flourish, Casey said with satisfaction, ‘Ha, that shut the fucker up.’

To pass a bit of time and mildly torture herself, Cleo imagined actually
being
his other half. No squirming allowed. Physically Casey didn’t do it for her, but there was no denying he was an attractive male specimen still lusted after by many, many women. And maybe, beneath the surface, he had his good points. Well, he might have them. Very tiny and well-hidden beneath a hefty layer of smug-gittishness. He could turn out to be incredibly kind to animals, devoted to his frail grandmother, the kind of thoughtful man who never forgets to send birthday cards… he might cry at sad films, be wonderful with small children, rescue baby birds when they fall out of nests and lie cheeping piteously on the ground…

‘Holy crap, will you look at the size of the arse on that? And she’s got kids! That means some poor sod actually had sex with her! Must have been pissed out of his head!’

Cleo persevered. Maybe, deep down, he was shy and insecure and terrified of revealing his true feelings because he’d been hideously bullied at school.

‘Ha, geriatrics ahead! Quick, put your foot down, extra points for the one with the tea cozy on her head!’

Or his mother had fed him on stale bread and dandelions, and kept him locked day and night in a box.

‘Do you read much, Casey?’ Catching his eye in the rearview mirror, Cleo smiled pleasantly and said, ‘What’s your favorite book?’

There were so many ways he could confound her expectations and impress her. He could tell her he loved anything by Charles Dickens.

Or Tolstoy.

Or the biography of Nelson Mandela.

Or that book by the amazing Irish woman who’d devoted her entire life to building and running an orphanage in Vietnam.

‘OK, it’s the one I take with me wherever I go. My favorite book,’ said Casey, ‘is the little black one I keep all my favorite phone numbers in.’

He was grinning like an idiot. He
was
an idiot. If there was an iota of niceness in Casey Kruger’s body, it was buried very deep down indeed.

Absolutely typical. Just when you needed free tickets, the radio station turned into a ticket-free zone. The ones for this weekend’s big concert at the Colston Hall had already been given away in a competition to a farmer who insisted he was a huge fan of Prokofiev. Another pair, to see the opera world’s latest heartthrob tenor in London, had been awarded to an avid female fan whose winning chat-up line, should she ever be lucky enough to meet him, had been, ‘Hello, does this cloth smell of chloroform to you?’

Ash sat back in his chair and tapped a ballpoint against his teeth. The sensible thing to do, clearly, would be to hang on and wait for the next lot of freebies to arrive in the office.

But patience had never been his strong point. And having managed to inveigle himself into a situation that could almost call itself a date, waiting was now out of the question. Which meant buying the tickets himself. Fine, he’d do that.

Five minutes of web-surfing later, the deed was done. The expensive deed, what with the event being sold out and having to resort to eBay. Two tickets in the stalls had just set him back over a hundred pounds. Not that he cared, but it was going to be slightly frustrating having to pretend he’d got them for free.

Oh well, couldn’t be helped. Because it wasn’t a proper date, was it? If Fia thought he’d paid for the tickets, she would never agree to go along with him. More to the point, he wouldn’t have had the nerve to invite her in the first place. Because she thought he was an ugly awkward undesirable lump and he couldn’t blame her. He was stuck in mental quicksand, liking her more and more and becoming progressively more troll-like and dumbstruck in her presence. Apart from those brief, even more humiliating interludes when he was burbling rubbish.

Oh well, that was the joy of going to a classical concert. At least you were meant to sit in silence while all the action was going on. And when it came to the interval, he could write a script for himself beforehand, learn it off by heart, and stick to it. Yes, a script; that was the answer.

Sorted.

***

Frank greeted Ash and poured him a lager. ‘Eating here tonight?’

Ash glanced at the menu up on the blackboard. Even the thought that it had been written there by Fia in her own handwriting made it seem special and gave him a thrill. On the minus side, he wasn’t remotely hungry. Then again he didn’t want Fia to think her food wasn’t good enough and feel rejected.

‘She’s done the steak and mushroom pie again.’ Frank gave him an encouraging look. ‘Your favorite, isn’t it?’

What if she’d made it
because
it was his favorite? Ignoring the feeling of fullness in his stomach—dammit, he knew he shouldn’t have stopped for that KFC on the way home—Ash patted his stomach and said expansively, ‘How can I say no to world-beating steak and mushroom pie? Bring it on, Frankie-boy, and don’t spare the gravy!’

So much for looking his best in order to impress Fia. Since she’d started working here in the kitchen he’d put on half a stone. Oh well, some sacrifices were worth making. It was a matter of give and take. From now on, he’d give breakfast a miss.

His heart physically missed a beat when Fia emerged from the kitchen carrying two plates and looking more gorgeous than ever.

‘One gnocchi Dolcelatte, one steak pie.’ She gazed around the tables and Ash experienced a pang, instantly wishing he’d gone for the gnocchi instead. The kind of men who ordered pie were plain, dull, stodgy, and unadventurous. A man who chose gnocchi Dolcelatte was mysterious, exotic, debonair, and sensational in bed.

‘Yes, over here.’ Gnocchi man raised a weedy arm; he looked like a put-upon civil servant who’d been overlooked for promotion his whole life.

Ash exhaled. So much for stereotyping. Feeling fractionally better, he signaled to Fia that he was the pie. By allowing her to serve Gnocchi man first, he’d be able to tell her about the concert. Oh yes, it was all in the planning.

‘There you go.’ She flashed him a smile—polite? friendly? shy?—and put the plate down in front of him.

‘Hi.’ The muscles around his mouth flew into a mass panic at the prospect of smiling back and he felt them bunch themselves into a Munster-style grimace. OK, call in the distraction technique… ‘Gnocchi sounds good.’

‘Oh.’ Fia paused. ‘Don’t you want the pie?’

‘No… mean
yes
… I just meant it
sounds
amazing…
Gnocchi Dolcelatte
…’ Shit, he was doing it again. And this time, unbelievably, in a ridiculous exaggerated Italian accent. Hurriedly he concluded, ‘But that doesn’t mean it tastes any good, does it?’

She looked at him. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my gnocchi.’

‘I know, I know there isn’t, I didn’t mean it like that.’ Ash shook his head and rushed on. ‘Anyway, good news, I’ve managed to get hold of a couple of tickets for Richard Mills at the Colston Hall.’

At least he was capable of getting something right. Fia’s eyes widened and she let out a squeak of excitement. ‘Oh my God, for
real
?’

‘For real.’ Her whole face had lit up. Even her pupils had dilated. Why couldn’t that happen when she looked at
him
?

Fia held her breath and clutched her chest. ‘Which night?’

He might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. Ash said, ‘Tuesday.’ Because Tuesdays were her night off. This, believe it or not, was why he’d bought tickets for Tuesday night.

‘Yay, fantastic! Two tickets to see Richard Mills, I can’t believe you got them. You are such a star!’

Ash experienced a warm glow. This could turn out to be the best hundred and twenty quid he’d ever spent.

‘You’re going to get a free pudding for this.’ Fia was still beaming at him. ‘Cherry crumble, chocolate mousse, peach tart… take your pick.’

‘Well, I’m just pleased you’re pleased.’ Truthfully, her enthusiasm had exceeded expectations. Feeling himself relax fractionally, Ash said, ‘It should be good.’ Good? It had been a stroke of genius. He was already envisaging the evening, picturing them together having a drink beforehand, chatting together in the crowded theatre bar, all awkwardness forgotten as they bonded in a way he hadn’t—

‘Oh my God, it’s going to be so brilliant! Whoops, customers waiting. I’d better get back to work!’

By the time Ash had cleared his plate, he and Fia were practically married. And to think he’d imagined having to endure an evening of Richard ‘Look at me, I’m such a smoldering stud’ Mills would be a form of torture. They’d probably end up having the first dance together at their wedding reception to his overblown version of ‘O Sole Mio.’

Which, for someone whose all-time favorite song was Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter,’ was quite an achievement.

But that didn’t matter. Because it would be
their song
, a permanent reminder of the night they’d first got together, when he’d paid a fortune for two tickets and pretended he’d got them for free… how she’d laughed when he finally came clean about that little ruse…

‘Here you go.’ Deborah appeared, removing his empty plate and replacing it with a bowl of hot cherry crumble. ‘We’ve got one very excited girl in the kitchen. You’ve made her day.’

Confidence surged through his veins. Winking at Deb, Ash said, ‘That’s good to hear.’

‘I didn’t know you could get free tickets like that, through work.’

‘Well, every now and again. These just happened to come along at the right time.’

‘You’re so lucky. The only perks we get in this job are crisps once they’re past their sell-by date.’ Deb looked hopeful. ‘If you ever have any tickets for Take That going begging…’

‘Don’t hold your breath,’ said Ash.

Full to bursting though he was, he somehow managed to plow through the crumble. He’d just finished it when Fia came out again, a huge grin on her face.

‘Have your ears been burning? I’ve just called my friend Aaron to tell him what you’ve done. I can’t believe it. I’ve never heard him so excited. And he says thank you so, so much.’

Ash experienced a momentary flashback to the English grammar tests that had been the bane of his life at school: Describe what is wrong with the above paragraph.

He shook his head fractionally. ‘Why’s he saying thank you?’

‘Because I’ve asked him to go with me and he’s completely
besotted
with Richard Mills. I mean, seriously, you have no idea. Aaron is his biggest fan!’

OK, he knew what was wrong with that one. As the words ricocheted around Ash’s brain like sprayed bullets, he mentally rewound to the original conversation. Somehow a misunderstanding had arisen and—

‘Which is what makes it so perfect,’ Fia rattled on, ‘because imagine the waste if I took someone along who thought Richard Mills was just… you know, OK. And then I’d end up not enjoying it as much either. But having Aaron there is going to make the whole night even more fantastic, because he loves him so much.’

Ash wanted to knock Aaron’s head off his besotted, Richard-loving shoulders. Aloud he said with an edge to his voice, ‘If he’s that keen, I’m surprised he hasn’t already bought a ticket himself.’
Tight bastard, sponging off other people, hoovering up freebies
… ha, except they hadn’t been free, had they? Right, that was it, no way was he going to stand by like a mug and let—

‘Oh, but that’s the other reason it’s so great, because normally he’d have been there like a shot, first in the queue. But there’s no way he could afford it now,’ said Fia. ‘He’s totally broke.’

Hmm, wonder why. Hang on, might that be because the bloke’s a complete loser?

‘And he so deserves to have something nice happen,’ she carried on. ‘It’ll really cheer him up after the nightmare year he’s had.’

Ash briefly closed his eyes. ‘Who is this guy anyway?’

‘He used to run the little picture framing place across the road from Will’s mother’s shop. Aaron’s lovely, always helping other people with odd jobs they can’t manage to do themselves. He lived with his mum, then she got Alzheimer’s, and he had to spend all his time looking after her because she didn’t want to go into a home. So he ended up losing the business and running up debts… they had to sell their bungalow and move into a tiny flat. Anyway, Aaron’s mother died on Christmas Eve and he was devastated. I’ve been keeping in touch with him since then, just calling him every week or so to see how he is, making sure he’s all right. But this is the first time he’s actually sounded happy.’ Fia leaned forward and for a moment grasped Ash’s hand. ‘Thank you. Really, you’ve no idea what a difference it’s going to make. And it’s so fantastic to be able to do something nice for him, for a change.’

Oh for
fucking
fuck’s sake.

‘Don’t mention it.’ His heart lay like a lump of cold dead meat in his chest; Ash could barely bring himself to say the words. ‘My pleasure.’