Kitabı oku: «The Doris Day Vintage Film Club», sayfa 4

Chapter Six
Ain’t We Got Fun?

Claire woke with a start and immediately flipped herself over to look at her alarm clock. Sunlight was streaming through her thin floral curtains. Her heart was racing and she pressed a palm against her chest to calm it.

It was okay. It was still only just past seven. She wasn’t late for work. She yawned and collapsed back down into the mattress.

She’d crawled back into bed not long after delivering her note to her neighbour, thinking she might as well be comfortable as she whiled the hours away until she needed to get up, but she must have dropped off to sleep almost immediately. Hmm. It seemed she’d been right – her plan of getting all of those churning thoughts out of her head and onto paper had worked. She actually felt quite refreshed. Even that image of her father in his armchair was receding, getting fuzzier and less insistent.

She stared at the ceiling, her mind drifting, and it inevitably flowed until she was thinking of the letter. She replayed what she’d written inside her head, listening to herself as she read it aloud. After a moment, she pushed herself halfway to sitting, rubbed a hand over her face then through her hair. She’d thought the wording had sounded formal and firm last night. Now, in the mellow sunshine of a May morning, it seemed a little … well … snotty.

It would have been a better idea to just write the stupid thing so she could get some rest, but leave it on her kitchen counter instead of delivering it straight away. She smiled to herself. That was the beauty of actual pen and paper as opposed to electronic forms of communication. It wasn’t permanent, irrevocable, until it was in the hands of its intended recipient. With email that took a split second, but she’d bet her letter was still sitting on the bicycle saddle downstairs. She really didn’t think Dominic Arden was much of a morning person.

Maybe she should just go down and fetch it, have a little read … She could always seal it up in a new envelope if she still thought it was fine, although it did seem a bit of a waste to use two such fine bits of stationery on one such unappreciative man.

She flicked the switch of the kettle on as she passed by the kitchen and headed for her front door. Quietly, still in her love-heart PJs, she crept down the stairs and headed for the bike.

Ah.

Too late.

Damn that man’s nocturnal wanderings. Not only was her lovely envelope gone, but the bike had disappeared too. He’d definitely found it.

Oh, well. The tone might have been a bit sharp, but she stood by what she’d said. She stared at his front door. There was no movement behind the glazed top panels, no sound from inside. She let out a breath of relief. The confrontation would come eventually, but she was kind of glad it wasn’t about to happen right now.

Before heading back upstairs, she turned and crossed the hall to open the front door, but when she stared down at where her glass bottle of milk should have been all she found was a plastic two-pinter with a scruffy note taped to it.

Huh? Since when had the milkman been buying his supplies at Tesco? And why was he sending her notes? She paid her bill online these days.

Frowning, she ripped the note off then hooked the plastic carton over a finger and used her free hand to unfold the piece of paper as she trudged back upstairs.

When Claire was halfway up, she stopped.

Of all the …

Dear Ms Bixby, it started. Thank you so much for your very informative note.

Claire’s stomach dropped. The tone matched that of her letter perfectly, and she’d been right – it did sound snotty.

I’m sure we can all agree … it continued. Claire swallowed and started walking up the stairs to her flat again.

It was written perfectly reasonably and neatly – surprisingly neatly, actually, given that Mr Arden seemed such a pig the rest of the time – but somehow the words oozed sarcasm. Was that how her note had come across? She really hadn’t intended it to. She closed her front door, deposited the milk on her kitchen counter and carried on reading, picking up at the beginning of the paragraph again.

I’m sure we can all agree that you probably don’t need to have your nose quite so far into my business. What I do with my post and what I eat really is no concern of yours.

I will, however, concede that I shouldn’t have left my bike parked where it was last night, but I must admit I (wrongly) assumed that you would be safely indoors and watching Countdown with your cocoa by the time I came home, so I didn’t think it would be a problem. I apologise for that.

Claire bristled. This man didn’t even know her! How dare he start making assumptions about her like that, as if she was a hopeless spinster who had nothing better to do with her life? The fact that some nights she really was home quite early, often curled up watching trashy TV while she did travel research on her laptop was neither here nor there.

He might have hit the nail on the head – accidentally, of course; she couldn’t believe he had a perceptive bone in his body – but he didn’t have to make her sound like a dried-up old prune. She’d get around to dating and romance sometime soon; it wasn’t totally off the agenda, just not anything she was planning for in the immediate future. Besides, there was more to life than men, that was for sure. She didn’t need one to make her complete, as her mother had. If she did find someone she thought she could spend her life with it would be an enrichment, not a necessity.

She shook her head and returned to reading the letter.

So I apologise for leaving my bike in the hallway and for any inconvenience it might have caused you. I will try to keep it in my flat as much as possible. I have to say that I didn’t appreciate the little prank you pulled. I honestly thought you’d be above something like that.

Claire felt a blush creep up her neck. He was right. She was better than that. Most of the time. And there was she, just thinking he didn’t know anything about her. How odd. Maybe he wasn’t quite as much of a pig as she’d thought.

She sighed and shook her head. She didn’t know what had come over her last night. She’d just been so … so … after Maggs had given her the letter from her father. Just thinking about it caused that itchy warm feeling come back, tingling in her fingertips, swirling in her head. She clapped a lid on it and tried to ignore it as she went back to reading the letter.

I have to admit to ‘borrowing’ your milk this morning. However, I replaced it immediately and I shan’t be repeating this act of felony.

I have already dealt with the light bulb in the hallway, so that should cause no further problem. However, if you have any future concerns relating to our shared space, feel free to contact me. If you don’t, then please could you kindly butt out of my life? Perhaps I can suggest a hobby? Knitting or bingo. A social life. In any event, something to keep you entertained enough so that the urge to meddle doesn’t become all-consuming.

Yours very sincerely,

Mr D. Arden Esq.

Any goodwill her neighbour had created during his mostly reasonable letter evaporated. Not a pig? She was right about that! This guy was a fully blown warthog.

Mr D Arden Esquire? He was mocking her, just with those three little letters. It made her insides burn and her head spin. Before she had a chance to think it through, she ripped the little green cap off the plastic carton of milk and poured the whole lot down the sink. She didn’t want any of his milk! She’d go out and buy her own. She didn’t want to have any connection to him at all.

There were a few moments of satisfaction as she watched the last of it gurgle down the drain, but then she realised she’d run out of bread and the only thing she had left in the cupboard was cereal. She squashed the empty plastic container to put in the recycling with slightly more force than necessary. There was no way she was going to attempt Weetabix now. It would be like eating hamster bedding. There was only one thing for it.

She threw the carton in her recycling bin and stomped off towards her bedroom. She was going to have to go out for breakfast but, to be honest, the further away she got from here right now the better, otherwise there’d be blue lights and sirens and a puzzled Scenes of Crime Officer wondering how a man could drown in a pint-sized puddle of milk!

Chapter Seven
There’s Good Blues Tonight

Dominic rang the doorbell, balancing a bunch of carnations and a bottle of wine from the petrol station in one hand. A few seconds later, the door opened and there stood Pete, all bearded six foot five of him, grinning. He slapped Dominic on the shoulder. ‘Nic! Mate … come in. We’re a bit behind schedule. Hope you don’t mind if we eat a little—’

He was cut off by a high-pitched female shriek from the living room. ‘Sammy! Nooooo! Don’t you dare—’

Pete took off running, Dominic hot on his heels. They both burst down the hallway and through the living room door. There they found Pete’s wife Ellen, who was close to tears, and a small boy completely naked from the waist down.

Ellen put her hands on her hips, but her defiant stance was spoiled by the wobbling of her bottom lip. She looked at her husband accusingly. ‘He pooed on the carpet. I told him not to but he pooed on the carpet.’

Dominic stifled a smile as he spotted the offending article right in the middle of the rug.

Pete shook his head. ‘Sam … Mate … You know you’re supposed to do it in the potty. Where’s the potty?’

Sammy, wide-eyed and silent, pointed at the corner of the room, to a gleamingly clean Lightning McQueen potty. Dominic didn’t blame him. Who wants to poop in a cool car? They should have got him Hello Kitty to do his business in.

Dominic looked at Ellen again. Her eyes were wild and she looked as if she was about to crack. Her hair was hanging out of what might once have been a ponytail, and her T-shirt was doused with ketchup stains. What had happened to the cool, slick girl he and the rest of his mates had envied Pete for snaffling first?

Obviously, Pete saw what he saw too. He scooped up his son and handed him to Ellen. ‘Look, you deal with him and I’ll deal with—’ he nodded towards the lump of brown on the carpet ‘—that. Okay?’

Ellen nodded gratefully, then swept swiftly out of the room and upstairs.

Dominic couldn’t help grinning as Pete dealt with his son’s ‘accident’. ‘Nice work if you can get it,’ he quipped, as Pete went to fetch a pair of hot pink rubber gloves from under the sink. Dominic dumped the flowers on the counter, put the wine in the fridge, then watched, smirking, as his best friend dealt very efficiently with the mess, disinfectant and everything.

Pete just shook his head. ‘You wait,’ was all he said, and, despite the fact he had just had to clean up someone else’s poo, he was still relaxed and smiling. Dominic would have expected at least a couple of swear words. ‘Well, that pretty much sums up my life at the moment,’ he added as he peeled off the rubber gloves and disposed of them. ‘What’s new with you?’

Dominic launched into the tale of the bike and notes and the snotty upstairs neighbour. He’d only got to the bit where he’d tripped over the bike when Ellen returned, this time in a clean T-shirt, her hair down and with Sammy in his pyjamas. ‘There,’ she said, handing the boy back to his father, ‘you can deal with your son.’

Dominic raised his eyebrows in lieu of a question.

Pete grinned. ‘Anything smelly and revolting he does is apparently down to my genes. Ellie takes no responsibility for it whatsoever.’

Dominic chuckled. Ellen certainly had a point. He’d known Pete for ten years and there had definitely been a lot of smells and noises and other disgusting things at times.

‘Right, ‘Pete said, and hung his son upside down by the ankles. ‘We’re going to settle it once and for all … Where do poos go?’

‘Potty!’ Sammy yelled back. And then there was lots of giggling and shouting and squealing, mostly from the kid, as he tried to wriggle free of his father’s grasp.

‘So flipping well do them in there!’ Pete said, dropping his son head first onto the sofa and proceeding to tickle him.

‘Pete!’ Ellen yelled, from the kitchen that joined on to their large living room. ‘He’s never going to go to sleep if you get him all worked up like that!’

‘Okay,’ Pete called back breezily, continuing to tickle Sammy, but putting a finger in front of his mouth to indicate they should carry on quietly. Father and son grinned at each other, then Sammy surprised Pete by launching himself at his father and clinging round his neck like his life depended on it.

‘Luff you,’ he whispered into Pete’s neck.

‘Love you too, mate,’ Pete replied, his voice taking on a scratchy quality.

For some reason, Dominic found a bit of a lump in his throat.

‘Come on then, trouble,’ Pete said, standing then picking Sammy up round his middle. ‘Time to say goodnight. Mummy first …’

He disappeared into the kitchen and the clattering of pans stopped for a few seconds, then returned. ‘Don’t forget Uncle Nic,’ he said. Dominic expected Sammy to be shy, like he was last time he’d visited. Maybe a fist bump or a high-five would have done. But when Pete put Sammy down, Sammy rushed at him and gave him a hug almost as tight as he had done his father.

For a moment, Dominic wanted to just close his eyes and feel the warmth of Sam’s small body. ‘‘Night, monster,’ he said gruffly, as Pete picked Sammy up once more and headed upstairs. While he was gone, Dominic drifted in the direction of the kitchen in search of a drink.

He found Ellen in there wrestling a heap of pasta into a pan of boiling water. ‘Spag bol again, I’m afraid,’ she said, smiling ruefully at him. ‘I think we had that last time you came.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s home-cooked and I don’t have to reheat it in the microwave, so it wins on both counts. Besides, you make the best spag bol in Islington!’

‘Aw, you’re so sweet,’ Ellen said and left her sauce to come and give him a big squeezy hug. ‘We’ve missed you.’

Dominic hugged back. ‘I’ve missed you both too,’ he replied. And he really had. As much as he moaned about Pete, he and his wife were the one constant in his ever-changing world. He gave Ellen a kiss on the cheek and, as she pulled away, he said, ‘Can I help myself to a drink?’

Her mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, God. What must you think of me? I haven’t even offered you anything to drink! What do you want? Wine? Beer? Both?’

He smiled and opted for the beer. They chatted about nothing in particular until Pete came back down the stairs and joined them. He and Dominic rested their backsides against the counter of the galley kitchen and sipped cold lager out of the bottle. It was heaven.

‘Oh, yes!’ he said, after swallowing a swig. ‘I didn’t finish telling you about my upstairs neighbour.’ And he launched back into the story again, embellishing it here and there just to make Pete and Ellen laugh.

‘So, did she write back?’ Pete asked.

Dominic nodded, smiling. ‘You bet she did.’ He put his beer down and pulled a crumpled, folded envelope from the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Look at that.’

Pete took it from him and read it, chuckling, Ellen looking over his shoulder. ‘I’ve always thought you were “an unbearable, egotistical lout” myself,’ she said. And then the pasta boiled over. ‘Flip!’ she yelled. ‘That’s because you two are distracting me. Now get out of my kitchen so I can finish in peace!’

Pete saluted his wife and led the way back to the living room, where he and Dominic dropped down on different sofas. Pete handed the letter back.

‘Ah, I think your new pen pal is sweet,’ he said, giving Dominic a patronising look. ‘And she certainly is getting feisty in her old age! Maybe you should go and knock on her door, ask her out to an early bird dinner?’

Dominic looked at him. ‘Don’t be stupid. Why would I want to do that?’

Pete shrugged. ‘Because this is the closest thing you’ve had to a relationship in ages.’

The grin Pete wore as he finished his sentence got right up Dominic’s nose. He put his beer down on an end table and stared at his best friend. All traces of laughter had gone and his mouth was a thin line. ‘If you’ve got something to say, just say it.’

Pete held his hands up in mock defence. ‘Whoa,’ he said laughing. ‘What’s got your knickers in a twist?’

‘You,’ Dominic said simply. ‘You’ve been churning out the same old gag for years now. It’s getting a little old.’ Pete shook his head, still smiling, but there was a narrowing in his eyes. ‘It was just a joke, mate.’

Dominic picked up his beer again, took a long hard swig. ‘Well, it feels like more than that when you just won’t leave it alone. If this is your way of trying to tell me you think I need to find a woman and settle down, just come out and say it. Doesn’t mean I’m going to listen, but at least have the guts to be honest about it.’

Pete looked back at him warily. Dominic knew his friend well enough to know that Pete was weighing up whether he should just blow the whole thing off by making another joke, or be serious about it. Dominic was secretly hoping he’d do the former. Why on earth had he picked this fight? It was all that snarky letter writing going on between him and Ms Claire Bixby, probably. For some reason she’d got him all riled up.

Pete eventually cleared his throat and looked down at the rug, the exact spot where the poo had been when Dominic had arrived. ‘Well, I do think you’d be happier if you’d just—’

‘For crying out loud!’ Dominic waved the letter at him. ‘I’ve got one bloody busybody trying to run my life already. I don’t need you making it a double act!’

Pete’s rather bushy brows drew together and lowered. He glared at that spot on the carpet now. ‘Stop being so bloody oversensitive!’

‘I’m not being oversensitive,’ Dominic said tightly. No one had ever labelled him a drama queen – far from it – and he wasn’t going to let his best friend start now. ‘But it’s hardly surprising, is it? I only see you once every couple of months and it’s always that – or something like that – that are the first words out of your mouth. Admit it. You think there’s something wrong with me, just because I don’t want what you’ve got.’

Pete, whose expression was normally as jolly and open as a teddy bear’s, frowned and his jaw tensed. ‘Well, maybe there is something wrong with you. You’ve got to admit it, you’ve been on a romantic losing streak for a long time. It’s been years since you scared Erica away. She was a great girl, you know.’

Silence, thick and complete, fell in the living room.

Dominic saw Pete’s Adam’s apple bob. He knew he’d stepped over a line.

‘Well,’ Dominic said, draining the last of his beer and standing. ‘If you really think that, I might as well go.’ He was tempted to throw the bottle at the wall, but he knew that would upset Ellen, so he just put it down carefully on the end table and walked towards the door.

‘Nic! Mate!’ Pete began to rise.

Dominic ignored him. ‘Don’t you “mate” me,’ he said, as he passed his friend and walked out the door. ‘Mates don’t judge each other! Mates don’t tell each other what to do! Mates support each other’s decisions even if they don’t agree with them.’

And then he walked out the front door and into the annoyingly warm night. He’d have really liked the salve of cold air on his skin.

Ellen rushed into the living room, wooden spoon still in hand. She looked at the open door, and then at her sheepish husband sitting on the sofa. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she said wearily. ‘What did you go and say this time?’

*

Dominic rode his bike home with little regard for traffic lights or pedestrians. He was really tempted to throw his bike in the hallway and be done with it, but he hauled it back into his spare room, muttering under his breath as he did so. The computer was sitting on the desk, its blank screen staring at him. He might as well check his email …

But he didn’t check his email. Instead, he opened up his web browser and went to Facebook. He spent a while faffing around reading things on his timeline – ‘meaningful’ quotes, status updates about friends’ pets, silly quizzes that everyone knew were silly but still did anyway. He discovered his knowledge of rock lyrics was legendary, that his Hobbit name was Ogbutt Merryfoot and that if he were an ice cream flavour he’d be vanilla – which he was quite upset about.

Eventually, though, he clicked through to what he’d really come here to look at, even though he’d been kidding himself he hadn’t.

Erica’s profile popped up in front of him. She’d changed her picture, he noted. One of her on holiday, looking tanned and relaxed. She’d smiled at him like that at the beginning of their relationship.

His finger hovered above the mouse button. He should unfriend her, he knew. He was going to. It was just … It seemed a bit petty, especially as they’d been broken up almost four years now. There wasn’t any venom left between them. She’d moved on. New husband, twins, a house in the suburbs. And he’d moved on too.

Hadn’t he?

Even though he knew he shouldn’t, he clicked on her photos tab. Instantly, scores popped up. Erica out with the girls. Erica cuddling her babies. Erica smiling with her new husband.

Obviously, he hadn’t had trouble giving her what she wanted, what she needed. What she’d eventually told Dominic he was incapable of.

You can’t do it, can you? she’d levelled at him. You can’t go anywhere beneath the surface. Or you won’t … and I can’t spend my life with a man like that, a man who refuses to open up to me and doesn’t want me to open up to him. So I’m sorry, Dominic, the answer is no. I can’t – I won’t – marry you. Not unless you can change.

He closed his eyes and inhaled.

God help him, he’d tried. Really tried. But it hadn’t been enough for her and eventually she’d left, and he’d just got the offer to do that filming job in Madagascar, so he’d left too. Just started travelling. Hadn’t really, truly come home again. Not in his head and his heart anyway. It was easier this way. Why kill yourself trying to do something you weren’t cut out for? Better to stick to what you were good at, and what he was good at was travelling – and making films.

He didn’t want it anyway. That’s probably why he was rubbish at long-term anythings.

With a sigh, he realised he hadn’t been angry with Pete because he’d been wrong, but because he’d been right. He was going to have to apologise, wasn’t he? But Pete would just have to leave it alone after that, not go digging in that wound just because he could. It had been okay to rib each other like that when they’d both been young, free and stupid, but the dynamic had changed now.

He shook his head, shut Erica’s profile down and turned his computer off. Look who was poking at old wounds just because he could. Pete had nothing to do with his little pity fest just now.

Stupid man, he told himself. You’re happy as you are.

But, as he wandered into the kitchen to eat yet another tiny box of cereal – a poor substitution for Ellen’s spag bol – he couldn’t help thinking about what it would be like to have a little mini version of himself like Pete had, and just whether that might plug the growing hole inside him, the one that seemed to widen every time he got on an aeroplane.