A Summer Fling (22 page)

‘What do you mean “hump buildings”?’ asked Grace.

‘There’s this condition where people are sexually attracted to buildings.’

‘Get away,’ said Anna.

‘Honest! This woman was married to the Eiffel Tower. People were having relationships with fences and banisters and everything.’

‘That’s so made up,’ said Anna, shaking her head. ‘It must have been a spoof programme.’

‘No, Dawn is right,’ put in Christie. ‘It’s called “objectum sexuality” or “animism”. It’s the belief that inanimate objects have feelings.’

‘Oh aye, and how come you know so much about it?’ grinned Dawn. ‘You’ve not been knocking off the coffee machine, have you?’

‘My father was a lecturing psychologist,’ said Christie. ‘You’d be surprised how many strange and wonderful people conditions there are out there.’

‘I wish he was here now,’ said Anna. ‘I have this recurring dream that David Attenborough is a zombie but I really fancy him. I’ve always wondered what it means.’

‘It means you should stop eating strong cheddar after nine p.m., that’s what my nan used to say,’ laughed Grace.

‘I don’t get how anyone could fancy a building,’ said Raychel, downing tools and joining in with the conversation.

‘I didn’t get it and I watched it!’ said Dawn. ‘I thought it was a wind-up at first. There were even some women who were in love with the Berlin Wall and when he, I mean it, got ripped down they went nuts.’

‘So the Berlin Wall had more than one lover?’ said Anna with a naughty glint in her eye. ‘He was unfaithful? Gawd, there’s no hope for any of us if a pile of bricks can’t even keep it in its trousers.’

‘Well, Anna,’ said Dawn with a cheeky look on her face, ‘I just thought that if you don’t pull soon, you could always go and try to chat up the Town Hall.’

‘I wouldn’t want anything that big,’ said Anna with a sniff. ‘The bus shelter on the end of my street has nice slim windows. He’s more my type.’

‘You two should be on the stage as a double act,’ said Grace with a chuckle.

‘OK, here’s a question for you: which would you rather snog – a garden fence or Malcolm?’ asked Dawn mischievously.

‘The fence!’ they all said in unison and laughed just as they spotted the rejected choice make his way down the office on an obvious bee-line course for Christie.

They all had to sit hard on their giggles as his first words were, ‘I love the new furniture in here. My, Mr McAskill has really splashed out, hasn’t he?’

Christie didn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer. She gave him a fixed, courteous smile. She suspected (rightly) that he had finally started to realize that his attempts to charm a friendship with her had fallen on stony ground and, as a result, something dark and bitchy was forming in his psyche.

‘I just came to tell you that there’s a meeting for Heads of Department at two, were you aware?’

‘I have the email, yes,’ said Christie.

‘Lovely desk,’ said Malcolm, smoothing his hand over the surface before turning to grease back up the office to his own department.

‘Bet the desk would say “I’m not that desperate”,’ giggled Dawn, sending them all into fits.

The laughter caught up with Malcolm and he didn’t know what had been said but he suspected he was the subject of their hilarity. His growing resentment towards McAskill’s teacher’s pet shot up a few notches. The connection between her and the big boss was blindingly obvious and he would show up that blonde tart as McAskill’s fancy-piece the first chance he got.

John Silkstone was trying to find the right words as he worked with Ben, skimming adjacent walls with plaster. He couldn’t get Raychel out of his mind but he needed a bit more to go on before he told his wife about her.

‘Finding it different from London then, lad?’ he began as an opening gambit.

‘Aye. A lot quieter.’

‘And how’s the new flat?’

‘Smashing. Although it’ll take a bit of time to put a stamp on it. It’s all too
clean
at the moment.’

‘Well, enjoy it being clean before any bairns come along.’ He laughed. For a little boy, his own son couldn’t half make some mess.

He saw Ben flinch slightly, not much, as if John’s words had passed very close to a raw nerve.

He carried on plastering for a couple more minutes before starting up again.

‘So your wife’s from Newcastle as well then?’

‘Aye,’ said Ben after a telling pause.

‘Your family still up there?’

‘We’ve got no family. There’s just Ray and me.’

‘How old is your wife?’

Ben whisked around to John; he was gripping his trowel so hard that his knuckles were white.

‘Why all the questions about my wife, John?’

‘I’m just making conversation,’ said John, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. Placated, Ben started plastering again.

‘OK, I lied,’ confessed John. ‘It’s Raychel. She’s the spitting image of my wife and she’s been looking for her sister, Bev Collier, who ran away from home in the seventies when she was pregnant. That bairn would be about twenty-eight now. Can you see where this is going?’

Ben kept his back towards John and carried on working. His voice, when he answered, was calm. Too calm, too measured.

‘Aye, I can see what you’re saying. But it’s not Raychel.’

John had no choice but to let it drop for now. He didn’t want to push too hard, too soon. But he felt Ben’s tension from across the room and knew without any doubt now that the lad knew more than he was letting on.

Things were far from normal at Grace’s house. She was still suffering from the seismic shift that Gordon’s outburst the previous week had caused. Then, in the middle of her ironing on Thursday night, Paul had rung to talk about Laura and made her think even more.

‘He’s cracking up, Mum, and I think you might need to get him to a doctor,’ said Paul. ‘I know he’s always had a temper but this is getting ridiculous. Laura said you got hurt in the crossfire.’

‘It was an accident,’ Grace replied quickly.

‘Do you know, I was only little but I still remember him and Mum having blistering rows. She stood up to him and he just blasted her down. I remember her crying – a lot.’

Grace gasped. ‘You never told me that before.’

‘Well, it’s funny, but with all that’s happened recently, it’s like parts of my brain have been woken up and things have been coming back to the surface. I know you’ll say that time’s distorted what I remember and it probably has, but not that much. You’re so different to her – she fought him. You always backed down and let him have his own way. He never had any reason to shout and bawl at you.’

‘I’ve been married to your father for nearly twenty-four years, love; I think I know him quite well myself,’ Grace said, desperate to underplay this and not fuel any more bad feeling between father and children.

Paul sighed at the other end of the phone. ‘You married him for us, Mum. Laura and I know that. We’re not thick.’

Grace opened her mouth to answer but nothing came out. Her son was a wise and insightful man and he had known the truth of her situation, if not the whole story. Even when she had first come into their lives, she had realized there was a rift between Paul and his father and she had hoped to heal it. She never had and now they were totally estranged with little hope of ever reconciling.

‘We know he has never liked people breaking ranks, but this is something else. You must see that, surely?’

‘Paul, love—’

‘All I’m saying, Mum, is please, just humour me and take care, will you?’

The way he said it sent a shiver down her spine.

The next morning, as Grace was reaching for her coat, she was aware of Gordon’s scrutiny.

‘Haven’t seen that dress before, is it new?’

‘Yes, I got it yesterday in my lunch hour.’

‘Where from? There aren’t any clothes shops on your industrial estate, are there?’

‘No, but there’s one in Maltstone. It’s only a ten-minute drive up the road.’

‘Bit posh for work, isn’t it?’

‘It was only fifteen pounds in the sale. It’s hardly a Stella McCartney, Gordon.’

‘Who?’ said Gordon.

‘She’s a fashion designer.’

‘I’ll bring in fish and chips for tea,’ said Gordon, rattling the creases out of his newspaper and not acknowledging her answer.

‘Well, I’d be better picking them up on my way home,’ said Grace. ‘I’m going for a drink after work with the girls.’

‘Again?’ said Gordon. ‘How come you’re going out all of a sudden?’

‘It’s only a quick drink, Gordon. All five of us go after work. It’s nice.’

‘Getting some fancy ideas from them women you work with, aren’t you?’ he said with more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘Talking about designers and getting dolled up. Aren’t you a bit old for all that?’

Grace bit down hard on her lip.
Old, old, old
. Gordon hadn’t grown old, he was born old. She was fifty-five,
only
fifty-five. She liked clothes and yoga – and laughing.

She picked up her bag and said that she would see him later. Something about that last conversation she’d had with Paul stopped her dignifying his barb with anything else. Gordon was not a man to antagonize at the moment.

‘Hi, is that Anna?’ trilled the voice down the mobile into Anna’s ear.

‘Yes,’ said Anna. She didn’t recognize the incoming number and hoped this wasn’t a ‘we’re doing a customer survey’ because they really got on her nerves.

‘It’s Jane Cleve-Jones. Listen, Anna, slight change of plan. Vlad’s taken a lightning trip to Milan so we’re going to be shooting at your place tomorrow. We’ll have a good look at your wardrobe. We’ll be there first thing in the morning – that OK? Say eight?’

‘Really?’ Anna was flown into sudden panic. The house was a tip. And she couldn’t show them her real wardrobe because it was full of total crap!

‘Really. See you tomorrow,’ said Jane. ‘
Ciao
.’

‘Oy, are you part of this conversation or what?’ said Anna, nudging Dawn whose eyes were drawn to the cowboy guitarist and his sexy black quiff. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a 1950s film. He had waved at her when they first walked in and she was lost in watching him play.

‘Sorry,’ said Dawn. ‘I just love those guitars.’

‘Not in a “wanting to have sex with one” way, surely?’ said Christie.

‘Oh, don’t start all that again,’ laughed Dawn. ‘I’m still traumatized from watching that woman fondling a piece of fence. Not sure I’m ready for this week’s episode – it’s about women who have five hundred orgasms a day.’

‘Lucky cows,’ said Anna. ‘I’d settle for five hundred in a lifetime.’

‘There’s no cure either,’ said Dawn.

‘Who the hell would want to look for a cure?’ replied Christie with a snorty laugh.

‘Hope she doesn’t have a celebratory fag after every one,’ Dawn giggled.

‘Hey, Dawn, how are your wedding plans going?’ asked Raychel.

‘Oh, so so,’ said Dawn, the laughter dying quickly to a sigh. ‘Calum’s auntie gave us two thousand pounds towards things, so that was nice.’

‘It won’t go very far with the price of wedding paraphernalia these days,’ said Grace. Sarah’s wedding to Hugo had cost over thirty thousand. But then she had to have ‘designer this’ and ‘designer that’. She had every indulgence known to man that day. But a big wedding didn’t necessarily make for a solid foundation. Her son-in-law had an affair before he’d reached their second anniversary.

‘You don’t look very thrilled about it,’ said Raychel. ‘I was so excited when I got married, although we only had a register office do and none of the trimmings.’

Dawn hummed a little bit. ‘It’s not that I’m not excited . . .’
How to put this sensitively?
‘I just feel . . . like . . . as if . . .’

‘Spit it out, lass,’ said Christie.

Dawn huffed and came straight out with it, feeling immediately disloyal to her in-laws-to-be as soon as the words had left her.

‘I just feel that it’s not my wedding any more. I feel that it’s been taken over and my choices have been pushed into second place.’

‘Who’s doing that to you?’

‘Well . . .’ Dawn felt almost as if Muriel was looking disapprovingly over her shoulder. But who else could she talk to? And she badly needed to open up to someone and get a fresh perspective on things. ‘My new mother-in-law is quite a force to be reckoned with. She’s paying for some of the stuff and she thinks that gives her the right to choose. They’ve booked a karaoke and a beef dinner in a dingy pub and I wanted a band and chicken in white wine in a bistro . . .’ Dawn snapped her mouth shut before any more came tumbling out. She was already feeling painful prickles behind her eyes.

‘And what’s your fiancé had to say about it?’ asked Christie gently.

‘Oh, he’s a bit under the thumb. His mother’s, not mine. He just agrees with whatever she says. God, I’m sorry.’ A big fat tear broke through and rolled down Dawn’s cheek and she felt Grace’s hand upon her own.

‘Weddings are very stressful,’ she said in that lovely calm voice she had. ‘You try and make sure you get what you want though. Your mother-in-law has had her big day. This is your turn.’

‘I half-wish we’d just carried on living together and not bothered with all this palaver,’ said Dawn, blowing her nose on a tissue that she pulled out of her jacket pocket.
But you leaped on that drunken proposal Calum made, didn’t you, and you ran with it before he could sober up and change his mind?
She shook the thought away. Brains could be very cruel sometimes.

‘It’s your day, so stand your ground,’ said Grace. She would never have dreamed of interfering with Sarah’s plans. Not that she would have been able to. Sarah even dictated the colour Grace had to dress in.

‘What’s your Calum like then?’ asked Anna.

‘Quiet,’ said Dawn, thinking how to describe him. Quiet sounded more acceptable than comatose. ‘Laid-back, too laid-back really. He’s a fork-lift truck driver. Five years younger than me, medium height, slim build, blond hair, likes a pint.’
Pub every night, pub every Sunday lunchtime. Nap on Sunday afternoon and goes to his mother’s house for his tea every Monday for the Sunday dinner leftovers
. . .