Page 9 of The Three of Us
But, no, not Rick’s. She’ll go for a walk when she feels a bit better and find a pharmacy somewhere. She can’t go to Rick’s. It’s too close to home, and he might say something to Jack. Pat him on the back or give him a cigar or something. She can’t risk Jack finding out like that. Not yet. In fact, she’s not sure how she’s going to tell Jack at all. Or when. Or even if she should.
Chapter 8
Carly
As it happens, Anthony’s not that bad. He must be at least mid-forties, if not a bit older, so no way is he of any romantic interest to me, but he made good conversation, even made me laugh once or twice, and he didn’t slurp his soup or pick his teeth at the table. But he is not just the wrong age, he’s also very much the wrong type. And he’s shorter than me, by a good two inches, I’d say. The truth is, I just don’t fancy him.
When Anthony had followed my mother into the kitchen after coffee, insisting on helping with the washing up, I’d huddled up close to Sam and asked him just who exactly Anthony was, where Mum had met him, and why on earth she had thought he might be a match for me. It turns out he’s got the allotment next to theirs and they all sit and have a chat sometimes, if Mum pops down there with a flask of tea when it’s sunny. Sam gives him the occasional cabbage and Anthony repays the favour with a bag of raspberries or a few gooseberries. It seems he’s a fruit man rather than a veg one. He’d been there that morning, so Sam told me, doing some digging, but had told Sam he wanted to nip home to spruce himself up ready for their lunch engagement, otherwise they would have walked back to the house together. Nip, spruce… what sort of man talks like that? And engagement? I know he wasn’t talking about diamond rings, but still, the less said about that word the better.
Sam said he’d seen the warning signs in Mum’s eyes and had tried to tell her not to matchmake but she’d insisted she was doing no such thing, just being neighbourly, taking pity on a man who came across as a bit lonely, but I know her only too well, and it wouldn’t be the first time. It’s not that I blame Anthony. He probably walked into her trap just the same way I did. Oh, God, I wish she wouldn’t do this to me. Or to him, poor man.
I take the scrap of folded paper out of my jeans pocket as I bend to put them into the washing machine, and open it out. Yes, he slipped me his number as we rather awkwardly said goodbye in the hallway on Saturday, on some pretext of wanting to talk to me about a car insurance quote. I’ve only just remembered it’s there, but I have absolutely no intention of calling. If he really wants to talk about insurance, he can ring the office or visit the website like everyone else. I decide to treat our meal as a mercy mission and, whether the poor sod’s lonely or not, I vow never to repeat it, and certainly not to phone him, for want of giving him, or Mum, the wrong idea.
I screw the paper up and lob it into the kitchen bin. Bye-bye, Anthony with an audible H. Beggars can’t be choosers, so my mother keeps telling me, and there may not be many fish left in the sea, but I’m letting this one swim on by. I have my eye on a very different fish altogether. Jack’s back, all tall, tanned and handsome, and today is the day I am going to walk right up to him, in my smartest dress and my highest heels, and try to stop shaking long enough to manage a friendly not-too-blatantly-sexy smile, and show him exactly what he’s been missing all these years.
‘Got room in there for a couple of pairs of pants, Carls?’ Fran has just come tumbling into the kitchen with an armful of laundry. ‘Not worth doing a separate load.’ And, before I can answer, she’s stuffed her undies into the drum, closed the door and set the thing going on a full-length wash at forty degrees.
‘Those were jeans in there, Fran. You’ll end up turning all your knickers blue if you’re not careful.’
‘That’s fine. Who cares what colour they end up, so long as they’re clean? Not as if anyone’s going to see them except me.’ She laughs and dashes out again, grabs her bag and opens the door to the communal landing. ‘Must go, I’m late. See you tonight.’ The door slams behind her and I look at my watch. She’s right. She is late, which means, if I don’t get a shift on, I will be too. God, I do hate Mondays. I could have done the washing yesterday, instead of spending hours picking through my wardrobe for come-and-get-me clothes and scouring the make-up stands in Boots for blue eye shadow to match my eyes and just the right shade of lipstick to dazzle the man of my dreams. But here I am, as usual, leaving everything to the last possible minute and risking turning up in the office looking like I’ve just jumped off a horse in a gale-force wind.
I finish my coffee, dump the mug in the sink for later, take a final check in the hall mirror – front view, back view, close-up, touch-up – and I’m out of here, my ankle turning on the corner of the stairs as I try to remember how to hurry in heels.
I don’t want to do this in front of a room full of curious colleagues and I can’t think of any way of getting Jack on his own, so I have no option but to involve Suze. Since her questions in the pub garden, I have done my best to avoid giving her answers, but I can tell she’s bursting to know everything there is to know about me and Jack, all the when and where stuff that, so far, I have managed to keep her in the dark about. So, I wait for a quiet moment and whisk her off to the Ladies where I check that all the cubicles are empty before giving her a brief potted history of what did and didn’t happen between us five years ago.
‘Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow! So, what next?’ she says, jumping up and down with so much excitement that she manages to bash her elbow on the washbasin. ‘Will you hover by the lifts until he comes downstairs, or follow him outside at lunchtime, or just go right up to him at his desk and grab him? Oh, God, I do love a big dramatic moment. It’s what romance is all about, like something out of Romeo and Juliet, all that held-back emotion just waiting to erupt at any minute. I would so love to see his face when he meets you again after all this time…’
‘Yeah, okay, Suze. Hold your horses. A big dramatic moment is exactly what I don’t want. It’s just too… public, isn’t it? And extremely embarrassing for me – well, for both of us really – in front of a bunch of other people if he doesn’t want to know. Or doesn’t recognise me.’
‘Of course he’ll recognise you, you dingbat! How could he forget all those sparks you say were flying about between you? But it doesn’t have to be public, does it? We just need to get him on his own somewhere, that’s all. Give you both a bit of privacy.’
‘Which is exactly where you come in. To lure him out, away from his desk, distract him…’
‘There’s only one way I know to distract a man and I somehow don’t think that’s what you’d want me to do!’ she says, lifting her hands and wiggling her boobs from side to side.
I look at Suze’s ample chest and am glad to see she’s wearing a high-neck top for a change.
‘No, you keep those beauties to yourself, or you’ll have his eye out! And I want him in one piece, please.’
‘Spoilsport. What, then?’
‘Something work-related. Look up his extension in the internal directory and call him, say you’re having a problem with your software or something.’
She giggles and points to her breasts again. ‘No problems with anything soft here,’ she says. ‘Oh, you mean on my computer! Okay, so let’s say he takes the bait and comes down to take a look. Then what? You’ll have just swapped one set of gawpers for another.’
‘Not if we time it right. You just have to get everyone out somehow. Ask them all out for a lunchtime drink and troop them down to the pub. We don’t have to empty the whole ground floor. Just our little corner. Make up something you’re celebrating. They’ll know it’s not your birthday, but you could have won some money on the lottery or something and want to treat everybody.’
‘It could work, I suppose. Most of them will do pretty much anything for a free drink. And you’ll make some excuse to stay behind, I assume?’
‘Yep. And when he comes down to fix the PC, it’ll me sitting there, not you. What do you think?’
‘The simple plans are often the best. It could work. How long will you need?’
‘Who knows? Five minutes, fifteen, a whole hour if it works out and he feels the urge to catch up over lunch somewhere.’
‘Enough about urges. I don’t want to come back and find anything messy going on at my desk.’
‘Nothing like that, I promise. So, you’ll give it a try?’