Chapter 13

‘Sorry I’m late sir…Mr Poole…Ronnie.’  Lance scooted in, as urgently as though it were midday.  Ronnie’s amused gaze landed on the clock, which still read only five-to-eight.  He was grooming Lance as second in command, in lieu of his now virtually shiftless son, and they had adopted a routine of daily meetings.

‘I had to nip to my brother’s.  Alistair’s in Faliraki this week.  I’m getting his post in, that sort of thing, only haven’t had time these last couple of nights what with working over.  His place is right the way over town – traffic’s a nightmare.  More solicitors’ correspondence?’  He indicated the Howard Teece & Thomas masthead in front of Ronnie.

‘Yes, she’s making “a final attempt” to settle out of court, or else she’s taking us to court.  We have fourteen days to comply with her demands, following which “proceedings will be issued without further notice.”  Whoo, I’m scared!’  Ronnie dropped the letter and made mock hand shudders.

‘I take it we won’t be budging.’

‘Not an inch.’

A week after the golf club larks, came the next stage in Heidi’s Warwick-exorcism: the ceremonial tearing of the photograph.  It wasn’t an intentional ceremony; Heidi had such a hoard of handbags, she could rotate them in two-monthly succession, and in quest of a Lil-let exhumed a forgotten picture from a long-unzipped compartment.

She teetered out of the loos, flapping the picture as though it were newly developed and still drying.

‘Sshee this,’ she flashed the picture at Cassie, Zara and Robyn in turn before ripping it in her canary talons, ‘what a twat!  Well now he’s hisshtory!’

The lacerating face was dimly familiar to Robyn – but she banished the thought and raised her glass.  ‘Attagirl Heidi!’

‘We must get you hooked up again soon, though,’ Cassie trilled, in a panicky tone.
Heidi downed her neon cocktail and slapped the glass down like a navvy.  ‘No, ta, giving men a miss for a bit.  Gunna try and make something of my life, not relying on Wozzy or Daddy to support me.’

Cassie and Zara – only unmanned at present due to their respective partners, Chad and Marcus, watching rugby at Twickenham this weekend – were agog.

Robyn smirked.  This was her first night out with Heidi’s more traditional cohorts; her first time on the über trendy club scene they haunted.  They sat on lime green sofas, yelling to one another over the hammering dance music, while too-cool-to-smile types sailed by, either scrutinising the girls’ fashions or dancing with minimalist movement.  The vacuousness of it all hugely entertained Robyn.

These girls weren’t supercilious, like that Amanda at New Year.  They were very welcoming, just overly charmed by everything: Robyn’s hair, which she’d left to flow again this evening, and which they seemed fixated with stroking as though it were an animal; her ‘lad’s name;’ her receipt of an independent income.  She was a curiosity, though a friend now too by virtue of being the star florist doing Zara’s wedding.

Heidi’s ‘pack’ were quite fun, Robyn decided, so long as fun was all you sought from life. 

Wonder how our Emily’s doing now – loved up in a Cotswold paradise with Dommy-babes, no doubt.

They were invited.  Robyn had caught Emily just before her Alveley Manor shift on the night of the golf club party.

‘No,’ was Dom’s reaction when Emily relayed the offer to him next day, ‘er…we can’t.’

‘We?’

‘No, it was meant as a surprise, but I’ve booked us a little weekend away.’

‘Dom!’

‘A Valentine – er, pre-Valentine thing.  In the Cotswolds.  Broadway.’

‘You’re very romantic, but B and Bs are so dear down there.’ 

‘Not as dear as a flight to New Zealand.’  Dom’s gentlest voice oozed down the mobile.  ‘Mom and Dad left me a bit for luxuries.  It doesn’t all go on college books, you know.’

Nothing shut her up like ‘deceased parents’ references. 

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, course.’

‘Only I’ll have to let work know.  I’m down to cover another wedding that day.’

Brian Smeed, fresh from the Saturday morning McCain shift, was gnawing cheese on toast as his daughter heaved her overnight bag downstairs. 

‘Good to see you’re on your travels again.’

She ignored the sting in his tone.  ‘Yes, can’t wait.  The Cotswolds with Dominic are preferable to New Zealand without him.’  Emily’s own tone and smile were savagely saccharine.

‘Your boss wasn’t too chuffed about you letting them down, by all accounts,’ Thelma chipped in.  ‘Short staffed this week, aren’t you?’

‘Nice one, Sylv!’  Emily guessed the source of that morsel.  She peeled her bag open and angrily hurled her purse in.  Fond as she was of Sylv, her gossip was only fun when you weren’t its subject.

Thelma’s eyes were kindly cautionary.  ‘Just watch you don’t get into trouble on his account.’

‘Trouble’s what one gets into at school.  That’s Dom’s car, so bye-bye.’

Thelma hugged her daughter protectively.  ‘Be careful, love.’

Dom belted through Lower B – though not quite swift enough for the vicar, coasting back from Pyke’s with Su-Doku Monthly under his arm.

Emily didn’t wave, averse to inviting more gossip, though the ball-headed reverend did look at the car with interest.

‘That was the famous game show vicar, by the way.’

‘Oh.  Right.’

‘But stuff vicars,’ Emily skimmed her hand seductively along Dom’s knees, needing his reassuring touch, ‘tell me all about this guest house we’re off to.  You realise I’ve never been away with a man before, don’t you?  It’s you who’s having the honour of corrupting me.’

‘Always a pleasure.’  He caressed her hand – his was strikingly clammy.

‘Something to tell you about this guest house, though, I’m afraid.  It, er, isn’t!’  He laughed uncomfortably.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I thought about what you said.  The Broadway B and Bs are on the pricey side.  I can’t really justify it.’

‘So where we going?’

‘Hope you don’t mind, Em – my flat.’

‘Your flat?’

‘Disappointed?’

‘You could have let me know, sweetheart.  I’ve had to let work down, which has pissed them off.  And we could have gone out with Robyn tonight – in fact, do you still want to – I can text her – ’

‘Go on then, scupper our romantic weekend in,’ Dom said in punctured tones.  ‘I’ve spent time trying to set a scene for you, make my little bedsit homely, but if you’ve lost interest because nothing less than luxury in Gloucestershire will do – ’

‘No, Dom,’ Emily’s mobile was half out of her pocket, but she shot it back in, ‘I didn’t mean – ’

‘It’s OK, Em’ Dom turned from the wheel long enough to smile bravely at her, ‘I know you didn’t intend to be insensitive.  I’m not especially proud of my home either, but you did at one stage express an interest in seeing it, and now you’ve got an opportunity.  Bruce is away, see.  Still, perhaps you’re not so enthusiastic now you’ve got an idea of what a hovel you’re liable to encounter.’

Ice rocks were embedded in Emily’s stomach.  Everyone seemed against her at present, and she was thrown by the turn of the afternoon.  However, though scenes featuring Cotswold four-poster beds and country walks were fragmenting before her, Emily was not shallow and his implication she was affronted her.  ‘You know I’m not like that, Dominic.’

‘I’m sorry, my darling, it’s just – ’

‘You don’t have to take me to refined places, you know.  I’m hardly moneyed either.’  Her tone was more benign, tinged with a plea too, as their dates were starting to eat her New Zealand fund.  ‘That picnic in the car at Christmas was fun and charming for me.’

Dom looked at her with absolute love.  ‘It was.  I suppose I’m in the habit of wanting to impress.  And I was trying to overcompensate for your slightly rubbish Christmas present.’

‘Oh silly!  Chocolate can never be rubbish.’

‘But compared with that beautiful book you got me – ’

‘Let’s have no more talk of compensating or impressing, eh?’

‘OK,’ he grinned, ‘it can be petrol station sarnies all the way from now on.’

‘Suits me.  Now Bruce the moose is away, you say?’

‘Staying with his mother in Burnham-on-Sea.  There’d be no way I could ever have you over when he’s present.  You could say he doesn’t actively welcome overnight guests.’

‘Bit old-fashioned?’

‘Resents anyone who has a sex life, because he hasn’t had a bit for years.’
Emily smirked impishly, liking being in the ‘with a sex life’ category, and the naughty feeling of conducting it behind a prude’s back.  ‘Now tell me what you meant before by “setting a scene” at your place.’

‘You’ll find out.  Very shortly, in fact, because – ’ he manoeuvred down a short driveway and smoothly braked – ‘we’re here.’

‘Already?  Oh.’  She’d been inattentive to the road; hadn’t clocked a sign for either Logan Lane or Creighton Court.

Dom was out and, ever the gent, lugging Emily’s now ludicrously loaded bag up to the back door.  ‘Let’s get you in before you can see the worst.’

The vast Edwardian house wasn’t quite the hovel he’d painted.  In the ebbing afternoon light, it appeared basic rather than squalid.

One of the ground floor windows was taped up, bogey green paint was flaking round the doorframe, and a wheelie-bin the size of a Ford Focus was erupting with eight bedsits’ worth of rubbish. 

Dom bumbled about with his key, then the door jerked open and a gust of cannabis greeted them.  The flickering strip light bulb cast an eerie strobe effect on the banisters, which was sugared with dust.

‘Must mellow you out, living in this atmosphere.’ 

‘Let’s go up.’  Dom towed her hand, his stride to the second floor rapid and embarrassed.  ‘Now close your eyes.  Got them shut?’  He checked.  Emily giggled.  He guided her to a door – Flat 5, not that she knew that – unlocked and ushered her through.  ‘Open sesame!’

So this was the ‘scene’ he spoke of setting.  Pink rose petals carpeted the square room that comprised her boyfriend’s abode.  An elaborate bunch of the same blooms – petals in tact – crowned his tiny dinner table, which was laid for a meal and graced also with two scented candles.  Two bottles of Beaujolais and a pot bearing tonight’s dinner took up most of the worktop.

Dominic now deposited Emily’s bag, lit the candles, drew his curtains, switched off the glaring ceiling light and flicked on the CD player – in such confines he achieved this almost in one movement.

‘Aw, Dom, it’s lovely.’  It was really, now Emily could no longer see the dog-eared wallpaper and blobs of mould, the flowers and candle were out-smelling the neighbours’ dope, and 100 Greatest Power Ballads suffused the bedsit. 

There certainly isn’t a woman’s touch about this place, though.  Puts paid to Mom and Dad’s theories about him having a clandestine wife.

She twined her arms around Dominic; they savoured the feel of each other’s bodies.  ‘I’m so touched.’

‘Noticed where the petals lead?’  He was nodding to the floral path, his eyes full of innuendo.

This wasn’t their first time together, but certainly Emily’s first ever sex on a futon.  The slats banged her back at first, but the shabbiness appealed to the artist in her.  To a girl blessed with imagination, this Lenor-untroubled duvet could have been a diva’s eiderdown, and the experience was so cosy yet heady, it could scarcely have been surpassed on a Cotswold four-poster. 

After a little doze, they devoured the pot’s contents – chilli – a testament to Dom’s kitchen prowess.  One bottle of red was dead by dinner.  ‘This is way sweeter than any hotel,’ said Emily, spearing the second.  As they waded their way down it, a lovely conviviality flowed between them.  They chatted continually, with openness and ease.  ‘This was also well worth a bollocking from work,’ Emily added.

They left the pot to soak, and reclined on the futon, the only ‘seating’ alternative to the kitchen chairs.

‘Is this your parents?’  She spotted a framed picture tucked behind it, of a tanned couple chinking umbrella-festooned glasses.

‘Yes.  That one was taken in, er, Fuerteventura.’

‘What were their names?’

Dom took a gulp of wine.  ‘Paul and Liz,’ he remembered.

‘They look lovely.’

‘They were.’

‘I could come with you to the graves,’ she offered suddenly, ‘one day, if you could do with the support, I mean.’

‘You don’t have to do that for me.’  Dom jerked the sediment around his glass, then put it down.

‘I just feel so – I don’t know – naïve, I suppose, because I haven’t experienced any sort of tragedy.  Well only my grandparents, but I was tiny then.  I want to be there for you, Dom.’

‘Come here.’  He pulled her to him, stroking her beautiful hair, concealing his tears.  This cherished girl, sharing his wine in this unspeakable hole, had truly proven herself.  Perhaps it was time to cease testing her; to reveal the nature of his test?  He feared the consequences now, though.