Welcome to My World (15 page)

Realising that Viv was unlikely to offer help any time soon – and recalling Chloë’s thinly veiled panic in her text – Harri surrendered to the inevitable. ‘I’ll start tonight.’

* * *

Unusually for a Friday afternoon in the salubrious surroundings of SLIT, time seemed to pass at lightning speed. Harri tried to make every moment last, to put off the inevitability of the task ahead of her, but despite her best efforts, five thirty arrived like an irate customer, demanding her attention.

‘You off anywhere nice tonight?’ she asked Tom, hoping he would delay her with his usual long-winded descriptions of the various pub routes he and his equally spotty mates were planning to cover.

But instead he went red and mumbled, ‘Mmmffh . . . gtta-date . . .’ before dashing out of the door.

Harri smiled hopefully at Nusrin, but she was mid-text and merely lifted an elegant hand in reply as she followed Tom out.

George appeared from his office, tie loosely hanging to one side and middle shirt button open, revealing a completely unwarranted glimpse of grey-white vest beneath. ‘Off you go then, Harriet.’

‘Don’t you want me to lock up, George?’ Panic was setting in. What was
wrong
with everyone today? Why choose this Friday to break the habits of a lifetime? George was usually long gone by now muttering something unconvincing about mountains of paperwork to do at home (the George Duffield code for ‘going for a pint at The Fleece’, the rowdiest of Stone Yardley’s three pubs).

‘Nah, you’re fine. Dave and the boys are meeting me here at seven, so there’s no point in going home. We’re heading for the bright lights of Birmingham tonight, on the prowl for lovely ladies!’ He brandished a blue and white striped plastic bag that could have only come from Jackson’s Chippy. ‘Got my gladrags in here, you see.’ He tapped the side of his nose and nodded sagely. ‘Preparation, Harriet. That’s what executive managers like myself are highly skilled in.’

Resignedly, Harri picked up her bag. ‘Right, well, I’ll leave you to it. Have a nice weekend.’

‘That’s if I can remember any of it,’ George called after her, swinging his hips in an alarmingly energetic impression of a rotund, balding forty-something strutting his funky stuff on the dancefloor. ‘When George Duffield parties, he parties like a pro!’

Harri smiled weakly and walked out, sincerely hoping that the ‘lovely ladies’ of the West Midlands would think better of going out tonight . . .

She made a deliberate detour to Stone Yardley’s Co-op, hoping that the tiny supermarket would live up to its Friday evening reputation and have only one of its four tills open to cater for the long queue of customers snaking angrily round its cramped aisles. Of course, this wasn’t the case: the Co-op was practically empty, with two cashiers patiently waiting to serve her. The supermarket had, quite clearly, received the same memo from the desk of The Big F as everyone else in Stone Yardley.

Ron Howard greeted Harri like a long-lost friend, offering a less-than-convincing performance of a poor, starving beastie as he followed her into the house, miaowing plaintively. Harri propped her bags of shopping on the kitchen worktop and reached up to grab a tin of cat food.

‘Very good, Ron. Don’t give up the day job, fatty.’

Seeing as nobody else in Stone Yardley was willing to help her delay the inevitable, she would just have to do it herself. She made a large mug of tea and took it upstairs, where she ran a warm, deep bubble bath, complete with candles. Pulling the small CD player from her bedroom as far as its flex would allow, she propped open the creaky wooden bathroom door with a travel book so she could hear the soothing tones of Newton Faulkner drifting in as she sank down amidst rose-scented bubbles.

Almost an hour later, she reluctantly climbed out. Dressing in her brushed-cotton tartan pyjama bottoms, one of Rob’s faded T-shirts (that, wonderfully, still bore traces of his musky aftershave, even after a wash) and her oversized white fluffy towelling robe, she pulled on a pair of vivid pink and white bed-socks (so lovingly knitted by Grandma Dillon’s decidedly shaky hands for her, last Christmas) and headed downstairs.

As soon as she reached the living-room doorway, the post-bags came into view, like four hulking shadowy gunslingers facing her at high noon.
Come on, punkette, make our day . . .

‘OK, it’s time,’ she said out loud, making Ron Howard’s ample backside twitch in surprise. ‘Let’s do this!’

Harri wishes she had worn a watch this evening: in the last-minute rush to get ready, she had forgotten to put it back on after her shower. She has a vague recollection of it lying on the duvet amidst her hastily removed T-shirt and jeans as she struggled into her dress and heels. Looking down at the band of white skin on her left wrist, she notices how much she has caught the sun in recent weeks. She smiles slightly. Stella has always told her that redheads don’t tan: so she must have been surprised when she saw Harri tonight. But then, not as surprised as everyone else was . . .

She wonders how long she has been in the grey-green confines of her self-appointed sanctuary. It feels like hours, but she can still make out the distant echoes of voices in the hall, so it can’t be that late – although it’s definitely too late for salvaging the one friendship she values most. Way too late for that to ever be right again.
Idiot
, she scolds herself, as she rubs the watch strap mark self-consciously and feels another wave of emotion beginning to break over her.

Harri groaned and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece through bleary eyes. It was 9.30 a.m. and she had spent most of the previous night opening letters from
Juste Moi
hopefuls. She had drifted off on the sofa around four a.m., grabbing a precious few hours of sleep, before waking at seven and dragging her concrete-heavy limbs upstairs for a shower in a half-hearted attempt to wake up. A large cafetière of extra-strength coffee now sat on her table amidst the various piles of replies: Contenders, Possibles, Contingencies and Not Likelies. So far, the latter was the largest by a considerable margin – presently consisting of around a hundred letters and one rather large ginger cat. Harri shook her head at the sight of Ron Howard snoring happily amidst the rejects. At least someone was happy to be in that pile.

‘There’s obviously no creativity when it comes to “Free to a Good Home” replies,’ she said to herself. ‘I mean, almost every letter I’ve trawled through starts like this one.’ She held out the offending missive like a barrister proffering damning evidence. Ron Howard opened one eye and flicked his left ear. ‘I never normally do this . . .’ – yeah, right – ‘I couldn’t help myself . . .’ – I bet you couldn’t – ‘when I saw you, I knew you were the kind of guy I’ve been searching for . . .’ –
purrrlease
–‘I’ve enclosed a photo, so you can see I’m not some desperate woman . . .’ She turned the handwritten page over to view the photograph stapled to the other side and instantly pulled a face. ‘Oh, my
life
– I don’t need shocks like that when I’ve hardly slept.’

She yawned and stretched her arms above her head to try to remove the stiffness in her neck. This was
not
how she had envisaged spending her weekend. She gazed wistfully at the bulky brown padded envelope lying unopened next to a vase of yellow roses Auntie Rosemary had given her earlier in the week. A new travel guide she had ordered online lay inside it –
Hidden Venice
– the latest insider guide to the city she longed to visit more than anywhere else in the world. It was waiting patiently for her to discover its manifold delights, something she had planned to indulge in all weekend, now relegated by the stacks of letters still to open.

Leaving the paper-strewn sofa, she walked over to the window and gently lifted the envelope from its resting place beside the roses. Her heart rate began to increase as she carefully opened the flap, reaching inside to pull the glossy-covered volume from its packaging. As the cover photo of Venice by night met her eyes, her breath caught in the back of her throat. She had seen this image a thousand times over the years, yet it never failed to send thrills racing right through her. Dorsoduro – even the name was enough to transport her to the place her heart most desired . . . Lights from the gondola piers and colonnaded balconies of elegant
palazzi
were reflected in the indigo-black waters of the Grand Canal, red and gold vertical trails rippling beneath the softly illuminated domes of the church of Santa Maria della Salute. It was at once familiar and strangely alien to Harri – her mother had bought her a postcard of this exact scene when she was at primary school for a class project and Harri had stashed it in her underwear drawer, only bringing it out when her mother had long forgotten its existence. From that moment on, it had taken pride of place beside her bed – first Blu-Tacked to the red and green poppy-covered wallpaper in her childhood bedroom, and later in a gilt-edged frame that had been a gift from her grandma when Harri was in her teens. ‘Here, put that dog-eared Venice postcard of yours in this, sweetie,’ Grandma had smiled, her sun-brown skin wrinkling at the corners of her ice-blue eyes as Harri threw her arms around her.

The faded, sticky-tape-repaired postcard still remained by her bed in its gilded frame now. It was the last thing she looked at before she closed her eyes and the first image she woke to see.

Venice claimed the largest shelf space by far in Harri’s travel book collection – with everything from travel guides, maps and first-hand accounts of living there, to cookbooks of Venetian cuisine and novels set amidst its majestic buildings and canals. Whenever a travel programme promised reports from Venice, Harri watched it avidly; whenever one of her friends visited the city, Harri was the first visitor upon their return, eager to hear every detail and view every photograph.

As time went on and more people learned of Harri’s long-distance love affair with the city, they brought her souvenirs whenever they visited Venice. Now she had a secret hoard of Venetian treasure – everything from kitsch snowglobes with Venice landmarks inside and tiny plastic gondolas, to local newspapers, a Venetian mask and guidebooks from the Basilica San Marco, the Palazzo Ducale and the Museo Diocesano d’Arte Sacra. Contained within a battered-looking printer paper box and hidden carefully under her bed, this was Harri’s private joy – something she hadn’t even shared with Rob.

Stella had been to the city several times, accompanied by someone a little wealthier and a little less in love with her than the previous companion each time. She had even visited Venice for a hen weekend with a gaggle of alcohol-fuelled female friends and once said she could see herself ‘popping there for a weekend alone’. Harri could think of nothing worse: for her, Venice was the ultimate city of love. Being there with someone you didn’t love or, worse still, being there on your own, seemed like the most tragic scenario. When she visited Venice, she promised herself time and again, she would walk there hand in hand with the love of her life.

She stroked the cover of
Hidden Venice
again and sighed. Looking back to the sacks and letter-covered coffee table, her heart sank and she put her book aside and returned to the task in hand.

Two hours later, Harri took a break. She was just about to make herself a sandwich when someone knocked at her door.
What if it’s Alex?
Panicking, she grabbed handfuls of letters, stuffing them behind cushions on the sofa and into the wicker basket beside her armchair. Dragging the sacks into the kitchen, she opened the broom-cupboard door and heaved them inside. The knock came again, echoing through the cottage, as Harri shooed Ron Howard from his bed of rejects and, at a loss for how to disguise the piles of letters already sorted, she grabbed a blue and white gingham tablecloth from the ironing board and threw it over the table, placing the vase of yellow roses in the middle. With a final check to make sure no offending items were on view, she straightened her jumper and made her way to the front door.

‘What on earth were you doing in there, Harri?’ Auntie Rosemary beamed, standing on the porch step, holding a large polka-dot cake tin in both hands.

‘Nothing.’ Harri tried her best to look nonchalant, but knew her deeply flushed cheeks were giving the game away.

‘Going through those dreadful letters, were you? Don’t look at me like that, Harri. I’ve known you all your life, remember. You’ve never been adept at lying – I can read you like a book. Now, can I come in?’

Smiling at her aunt, Harri bowed and motioned for her to enter.

When she stepped into the living room, Rosemary took one look at the coffee table and chuckled. ‘Ooh, nicely done, Harriet. The old “stuff-and-stash” technique, eh?’

‘When did you get so clever, eh?’

Rosemary sat down on the sofa and reached behind the cushion to grab a handful of crumpled papers. ‘You forget that I am the mother of your cousin James. The things he stashed under his bed when he was at home would make your hair curl even more than it already does, trust me.’

‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ ‘Excellent idea. So, how’s it all going?’

Harri grimaced as she poured hot water into the teapot, warming it like her mum used to do. ‘Slowly. Let’s just say that the Not Likely pile is growing at an alarming rate.’

‘You poor sweetie. Well, it’s a good thing I came round, then.’

By the time she returned to the living room with the tea tray, Ron Howard had smugly staked his claim on Rosemary’s lap. ‘I see you have a friend.’