The Queen of New Beginnings (19 page)

With no work booked for the next day, Alice treated herself to the luxury of a lie-in. She stayed in bed until nearly eleven o’clock and the only reason she dragged herself from the warmth of duvet heaven was because there was an insistent ring at the door. She had ignored the first ring. And the second ring. But whoever was down there hammering the bejazus out of the bell was plainly on a mission to spoil her day. Maybe it was important. Like the world was about to be hit by a meteorite.

She was wearing her warmest and thickest flannelette pyjamas—they were practically bulletproof, who knows, maybe even meteorite proof—so she didn’t bother with a dressing gown, but at the sight of Bob leering at her when she opened the door, she felt as good as naked. “Nice togs,” he said, leaning nonchalantly against the door frame and looking her up and down.

“Not working today?” she said.

“I’m having a day off.” His gaze travelled the length of her again.

“Is that for me?” she asked pointedly.

He tore his eyes away from the apparent allure of her flannelette body armour and looked at the parcel in his large, shovel-like hands. “The postman left it with us when he couldn’t get a response from you earlier.” He grinned. “Looks like I succeeded where he failed.”

“It must be your superior technique.”

The grin widened. “I’ve certainly had no complaints over the years.” He gave her a wink, just in case she’d failed to catch the double entendre. “So what’s with the sleeping in till nearly lunchtime?” he asked. “Recovering from a hangover after your late night out?”

“And what were you doing up past your bedtime spying on me?”

“Just keeping an eye on things. Somebody’s got to look out for you, Alice.”

“Any particular reason why?” When he didn’t reply but seemed to be working up to say something else, she jogged his memory about the parcel: it looked like the manuscript she had been expecting.

“I’ll take that then, shall I?”

He hesitated. “If I give it to you will you have a drink with me tonight?”

“If that’s how you usually ask a girl out, Bob, you might want to work on it. In my experience blackmail isn’t the best approach.”

“But I’ve used all my best chat-up lines on you and they haven’t worked. What else is left for me?”

Oh, what the heck, she thought. Why not put him out of his misery and have a drink with him? What would it cost her? And who else was asking her out for a drink these days? “OK,” she said, “what time tonight?”

“You’re serious?” He looked like he couldn’t believe his luck.

“I’m only saying yes to a drink, Bob.”

“Eight o’clock suit you?”

“That’ll be perfect.”

“And you’ll wear something nice? Something hot and tight?”

“Don’t push your luck, Bob, or you’ll feel something hot and tight wrapped around your neck, like my hands.”

His masculine pride firmly reinstated, he gave her the parcel and sauntered away. “See you at eight. Don’t be late.”

She closed the door and wondered if she had done the right thing. Was having a drink with Bob tantamount to handing him a condom with her name written on it? Probably. She blamed her rashness on last night. Too much rattling around in the past had addled her brain.

• • •

Showered and dressed and sitting at the kitchen table while eating a late breakfast of porridge and flicking through the newly delivered manuscript, she thought of the incongruity of having shared so much of her life story with a stranger. OK, not a complete stranger, but even so, it was still odd that she had confided in Clayton when she had never so much as breathed a word of her upbringing to anyone else. But then really, whom would she have wanted to tell? Certainly not any previous boyfriends. Not when they’d all borne an uncanny resemblance to Rufus. That would have really freaked them out. It would also have freaked her out to admit it.

She had never consciously chosen to date men that were carbon copies of Rufus—nothing could have been further from her mind when she’d taken the plunge at university and started dating—but that was the way it had gone. It was as if she had approached a pick’n’mix counter for boyfriends and asked for a quarter of dark, floppy-fringed hair, a quarter of olive skin, a quarter of penetrating blue eyes and a quarter of fatal charm. Oh, and if a sprinkling of arrogant bastard could be added, so much the better. They hadn’t always had that last quality, but many had. Whilst James Montgomery could in no way be described as a boyfriend, he had fitted the profile, just minus the arrogance.

Nobody needed to tell her that it wasn’t healthy to be drawn to Rufus clones. It wasn’t good. She really had to stop it. Yet how could she stop something she wasn’t conscious of doing until it was too late? Perhaps her evening out tonight with Bob would help to broaden her horizons. An evening in his company might make her consider a different sort of man. Just not Bob!

Breakfast dealt with, she decided it was time to tackle something that was long overdue.

• • •

She arrived at Well House late afternoon; the light was already fading. A lamp shone from one of the downstairs windows and the dented and rusting boot of a familiar car peeped out from the side of the house. Two clues that suggested the mistress of the house was at home.

The house looked just as it always had: in need of urgent repair. Alice thought how sad it would be when the inevitable happened—when George’s death would bring about the sale of Well House. The new owners would doubtless take the stone-built property by the scruff of its neck and transform it into a lavish country residence, stripping away all trace of its previous eccentric owner.

As she had always done, Alice went round to the back door. She was pleased to see that the same tarnished brass bell was hanging in the same place in the porch. The porch resembled an untidy potting shed more than a form of entrance; there were gardening implements propped against the walls, clay pots stacked into teetering towers, and parts of a dismantled hose surrounded a galvanized metal bucket. The bucket contained some murky water and when Alice looked up, she saw why; there was a hole in the porch roof.

She gave the bell rope a firm tug and waited. She suddenly felt nervous. George was the only living person who had known her since the day she was born and there was going to be some explaining to do.

“And about time too,” George said when she opened the door. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you’ve been avoiding me. Come in.”

The same George. No standing on ceremony. A wave of regret swept over Alice. New beginnings were all very well, but here was a very poignant reminder of what Alice had so decisively put behind her. Of what she had lost.

Ushered into the kitchen, Alice felt as though she had truly stepped back in time. Nothing had changed; it was as if she had been here only yesterday. A large, brutish rooster eyed Alice from the hearth rug in front of the Rayburn. He scratched at the rug, puffed out his chest, stretched his neck and strutted towards her. It was far from a flattering thought, but Alice was immediately reminded of Bob.

“Away with you, Percy!” George shouted. “Another step and I’ll take a broom to you.”

As if understanding every word, the rooster deflated himself and went back to loitering with menacing intent on the hearth rug.

“He’s full of hot air,” George said to Alice. “Take no notice of him. So what’ll it be? Tea, coffee or something stronger?”

“Since I’m driving I’ll take the safe option; tea, please.”

“Well then, don’t stand there like a spare part, grab a chair and sit yourself down by the stove while I do the honours.”

Alice did as she was told and carried a heavy wooden chair from the table over to one side of the Rayburn. Percy didn’t look at all happy with the arrangement and again raised himself up to his full adversarial height.

“Just give him a firm boot to his tail feathers and he’ll soon get out of your way,” George instructed. “Like most men, he’s all cluck and no peck.”

The tea made, George eased herself stiffly into the armchair opposite Alice. Alice had naively hoped that George would have defied the passing of the years, but she was unquestionably older. Not exactly frail, but certainly not as robust as Alice had remembered her.

“Right then,” George said with an unnervingly direct stare over the rim of her mug, “tell me all you know about my new neighbour at Cuckoo House.”

This was not the opening line of conversation she had been expecting and Alice took a moment to recalibrate her thoughts. She also felt just a tiny bit slighted. Didn’t George want to know what she had been doing all this time and what she was doing back here?

“And you can drop the charade about his name being Shannon,” George said. “I know as well as you do what his real name is. The day I gave him a lift to the shops, I saw a picture of him in a newspaper. That beard wasn’t fooling me.” A promise was a promise in Alice’s book. “I’m sorry,” she said with her best innocent face firmly in place, “you’ve lost me entirely.” George looked stern. “His name’s Clayton Miller, as in rhymes with Baby Killer, as posted on the Internet. It’s really quite disgusting what people can get away with writing these days. Did you know that there are people out there in cyberspace playing
Where’s Miller?
You know, like
Where’s Wally?
People with nothing better to do are sending in photographs of sightings of him all over the world. He’s everywhere: Swindon, Paris, Belfast, Mozambique. There’s any number of sightings of him in Bruges, supposedly following in Stephen Fry’s footsteps.”

Alice suddenly burst out laughing. “George, what in the world are you doing with the Internet? You never even used to have a telly. I remember you thinking a pop-up toaster was the last word in decadence.”

George bristled. “If I can find a proper use for something, I’m quite prepared to use it. I’m choosy, that’s all. And if you must know, I’ve joined an online bridge circle. Those chat rooms are interesting, aren’t they?”

Unbelievable, thought Alice. “You be careful,” she said. “You never know who you’re chatting to.”

“It works both ways,” George said with a sly smile. “So, and now that we’ve established we both know exactly who he is, how did our interesting visitor at Cuckoo House end up here? Did you have something to do with that?”

“George, I really can’t comment on—”

“Balony, maloney! Is he a friend of yours? Is that it?”

Alice could see she had no choice but to concede. “Look, I made a promise to him. Please don’t ask me anything else.”

The old woman slurped her tea noisily. “Fair enough. I can respect that.” Another noisy slurp. “He seems nice. I like him. Needs taking in hand, don’t you think? Is that what you’re doing?”

“I’m not really doing anything. And he’s not a friend either. I’ve only just met him.” Alice explained briefly about Ronnetta and the cleaning agency, which in turn provoked a line of questioning Alice had been expecting when she arrived. She told George everything, about her life after leaving Cuckoo House.

“Well, that’s all that neatly clarified,” George said when she had finished. “Apart from the one glaring omission of why you didn’t come and see me when you moved back up here. Or did you think I’d long since shuffled off this mortal coil?”

“You’ll never die, George. You’ll outlive us all. But to answer your question, I think you were a connection too far. If I’m really honest, I was worried you’d tell me something I didn’t want to hear.”

“Such as?”

“Such as my father might have been in contact with you at some point and…” Alice faltered. This was something she had steadfastly refused to let herself think about, that her father had tried looking for her, that he really had cared.

“And asked if I knew where you were?” George finished off for her. “Is that what was worrying you?”

Alice swallowed. “Yes. Did he?”

• • •

Clayton had been up all night. Once he’d got started, the words had poured out of him with an unstoppable force. It had been one of the best nights of his life. He’d written for most of the day as well. But now he could barely keep his eyes open and no matter how much coffee he drank, he simply could not stay awake a minute longer.

He decided to take a nap. He kicked off his shoes and lay on the sofa. He closed his eyes. Oh, that felt good. He wriggled a bit to get comfortable, adjusted the cushion under his head and then felt himself drifting. Drifting…drifting…drifting.

He was in a hot-air balloon, looking down on Cuckoo House. He could see Alice staring at him from the garden. She was waving and he was waving back at her. “Don’t go,” she called out. “Don’t leave me behind.” He floated away until finally he was hovering over the rooftops of London. The skyline looked like it did from that Mary Poppins film. He’d always loved the film as a boy; he’d secretly had a crush on Julie Andrews. He floated on, passing Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and then he was above Notting Hill, and oh, look, there was Stacey. And Barry. They were waving to him. “I’ve got something for you,” he shouted down to them. He leaned over the side of the basket to throw it to them. “This is yours,” he called out. “You left it behind.” “No!” they shouted. “
No!
” But it was too late. The bundle was tumbling through the air; faster and faster it went. It was unravelling. First a tiny pink leg appeared and then another followed by a head and two hands. It was a baby. “
No!
” he screamed. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

He woke with a massive jolt; his heart was thumping hard. He lay very still, waiting for his heartbeat to slow down. It almost had when his mobile rang. He leapt from the sofa and instantly regretted his haste. Light-headed, he snatched up the phone from where he’d left it on the desk next to his laptop.

“Greetings!”

“This had better be good, Glen,” Clayton snarled.

“Love and kisses to you, sweetheart. How’s it going?”

“You really want to know.”

“No, I’m just calling because I have nothing better to do. Of course I want to know.”

“I’ve started writing.”

Silence from the other end of the phone.