Frisky Business (43 page)

‘I don’t have the energy to take my clothes off,’ Lesley said, crossing into the living room and flopping onto the sofa, ‘even if I could bear the cold.’

Everyone
else murmured their agreement.

‘Pizza time, then? There’s a takeaway in the village. Why don’t I go and get us all pizza, and you guys try and get a fire going?’

When she returned laden down with boxes of pizza and garlic bread, Romy found everyone tucked up in their sleeping bags sitting in front of a roaring fire. It looked like a convention of giant snails. A couple of bottles of red were open and warming on the hearth.

‘This looks cosy,’ she said.

‘Your sleeping bag is here, warming up for you,’ Ethan said, patting her bag in front of the fire.

‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, slipping off her shoes and jacket. She doled out the pizzas and burrowed into her sleeping bag. It was toasty warm and felt like heaven.

Kit poured wine and handed it around, and the air was filled with fragrant pizza steam as they all opened the boxes and began to eat. The fire hissed and sizzled as Ethan pushed another log into the flames, sending a rush of red sparks flying up the chimney.

Biting into her pizza, Romy closed her eyes in ecstasy as the hot dough and melting cheese suffused her with warmth and comfort. The wine was the perfect temperature and she felt all her muscles relax as heat seeped through her. She didn’t know when she’d felt so profoundly snug.

‘We’ve decided we should all sleep in here,’ Danny told her, ‘to be near the fire.’

‘Good idea. It’s only fair.’

‘And since none of us are taking squat off, we don’t have to worry about flashing our inappropriate bits,’ Kit said.

‘Should
we have a sing-song or something?’ Lesley said. ‘Since we’re sort of sitting around a campfire.’

‘Please, God, no,’ Kit said.

‘I can do better than that,’ Romy said. ‘I brought some games.’

‘Oh God, not board games,’ Kit groaned. ‘Let’s have a sing-song!’

Romy laughed. Kit had always mocked her love of board games, which he found excruciatingly boring. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a board game.’ She wriggled out of her sleeping bag and came back bearing a box. ‘Hedbanz,’ she announced.

‘Oh, I love that game!’ Lesley said.

‘It looks like a board game to me,’ Kit said, eyeing the box suspiciously.

‘Well, it’s not. You wear a headband with the name of someone famous on it, so everyone can see it but you. Then you have to ask questions to find out who you are. It’s very straightforward.’

‘It’s fun,’ Lesley assured him. ‘I’ll start.’

Lesley was Audrey Hepburn, which by some fluke she guessed very quickly. Then, Ethan was Abraham Lincoln, which took somewhat longer. Next, Kit wore a headband bearing the legend ‘Jesus Christ’. They had finished the pizza and were onto the second bottle of wine, and he still hadn’t got it. He knew he wasn’t an actor or singer, that he was male, vaguely political and possibly a revolutionary of some kind, but that he wasn’t Che Guevara. When he asked if he had magical powers, there was a great deal of consultation and discussion, but no one could quite decide how to answer.

‘Some people think so,’ Romy finally said.

‘Santa Claus!’

‘No.’

‘Give me a hint.’

‘Some
people believe you’ve performed miracles,’ Lesley said.

‘Harry Potter!’

‘You’re not fictional, remember?’ Romy reminded him. That had been one of his first questions.

‘I’m not fictional and I’ve performed miracles.’ He thought. ‘Saint … Somebody,’ he said, clearly racking his brain to come up with the name of a saint. ‘Oh, I know – the pope!’

‘Um … no. I don’t think he’s done any miracles, has he?’

Lesley said.

‘Saint Jude!’

‘No.’

‘Saint Joseph!’

‘No.’

‘Saint … Peter!’

‘No, but you’re getting warmer,’ Danny said.

‘Give me another hint.’

‘Okay,’ Danny said, scanning the ceiling as he thought. ‘You were at the Last Supper.’

‘Moses!’

Everyone laughed.

‘Moses wasn’t at the Last Supper,’ Ethan said, chuckling.

‘He wasn’t?’ Kit frowned. ‘Why not?’

Ethan shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe he was washing his hair that night.’

‘He did have a lot of hair,’ Lesley said. ‘And it was in rag order if those paintings of him are anything to go by. Frizz city.’

‘Well, in fairness, it can’t have been easy keeping your hair in good condition when you lived in the desert all the time,’ Romy said to her.

‘True. And in Olden Times too. They didn’t have any of the advanced technology shampoos and conditioners that we take for granted.’

‘Or
any shampoo at all – not even Sunsilk.’

‘God, yeah – total nightmare! I suppose unmanageable hair would have been a given.’

‘Okay, so I was at the Last Supper, but I’m not Moses,’ Kit recapped, bringing them back to the game. ‘Abraham!’

Romy collapsed back on the floor in a fit of giggles. ‘Abraham wasn’t at the Last Supper either.’

‘Well, how am I supposed to know who was there? I wasn’t the bloody sommelier.’

‘Yeah,’ Danny said, laughing. ‘Obviously we only know who was there because we were involved in the catering.’

‘There were only thirteen people at the Last Supper,’ Lesley told Kit gently. ‘Jesus and the apostles.’

‘I know that! I’m not a complete ignoramus.’

‘Well … why did you say Moses, then?’ she asked tentatively. ‘You mean … Moses wasn’t in the apostles?’ Kit asked, frowning.

‘You make it sound like a band.’ Romy laughed. ‘And now, The Apostles with their number one hit single!’

‘Yeah,’ Lesley giggled, ‘maybe he was in the original line-up but got kicked out.’

‘Because no one liked his hair,’ Romy said, giggling with her. She felt woozy and giddy, on a natural high from the pizza and wine and the relief of being warm.

‘Not with the hair again!’ Kit huffed. ‘Jesus Christ, can you—’

‘Yes!’ Lesley pounced.

‘Huh?’

‘Yes – Jesus Christ! That’s the answer.’

The following morning, Romy woke to the delicious smell of bacon frying. Still in her sleeping bag, she shuffled into the kitchen
to find Ethan and Kit presiding over a couple of frying pans, making an enormous breakfast. Lesley and Danny were sitting at the table expectantly, also still cocooned in their sleeping bags.

‘Ah, just in time,’ Kit said, smiling at her. ‘How do you like your eggs?’

‘Sunny side up.’

‘Same for everyone, then,’ he said. ‘That’s easy.’

‘There’s tea and toast,’ Ethan said, waving her to the table. ‘This’ll be ready in a minute.’

She pulled out the chair beside Lesley and sat down. ‘I can’t believe how well I slept,’ she said, rubbing her eyes.

‘Well, I’d say you had a lot to catch up on,’ Lesley said, pouring her a mug of tea. ‘And that cleaning was knackering. I ache all over.’

‘Me too!’ everyone chorused, comparing notes about sore muscles and stiff backs.

‘Dig in,’ Ethan said as he put a plate piled high with rashers, sausages, eggs, tomatoes and potato cakes in the middle of the table, and he and Kit sat down.

‘So what’s the plan for today?’ Kit asked as they all helped themselves.

‘Well, we’ve done the groundwork,’ Romy said, ‘so there won’t be much for us to do once the workmen get here, other than stay out of their way and keep them fed and happy. I want to go up and spend some time in the house – take measurements and stuff, so I can make some proper plans.’

‘And I’ll take a look around outside,’ Danny said, ‘and start thinking about a design for the grounds.’

‘And we can start clearing stuff out into the skips.’

‘Well, I’ll take care of the cooking, if you like,’ Kit offered.

‘Really?’

‘Sure. I’m a very good cook, you know.’

‘I
know. You both are,’ she said, looking between him and Ethan.

‘Learning to cook was kind of a priority when you grew up in our family,’ Ethan said with a crooked smile. ‘When all our classmates were doing football camps in the summer holidays, Kit and I would beg to go to cooking ones.’

‘And I’m used to catering for the masses,’ Kit said. ‘I told you I was a short order cook for a while in New York, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘That was probably my favourite job. The pay was shit, of course, but I had a blast.’

‘Well, if this breakfast is anything to go by, I’d say you have a calling,’ Lesley said. ‘It’s amazing.’

‘Fantastic!’ Danny agreed.

‘Okay, then – you’re hired,’ Romy said. ‘I just need you to come up to the house so I can go over my ideas with you, and then you can channel Jamie Oliver to your heart’s content.’

Shortly after they finished breakfast, a vanload of burly Poles descended on the house led by Stefan, Romy’s tenant, who was the biggest and burliest of them all.

‘Wow, this is impressive,’ Kit said as they poured out of the van and swarmed into the house. ‘It’s like one of those barnraisings you see in films.’

Once Romy had briefed them on what needed to be done, they infiltrated every corner of the house like a colony of ants, and soon the cottage was being transformed with impossible speed as they moved through it with methodical diligence. Leaving them to it, Romy and the others trooped up to the big house. On the doorstep, Romy handed out hard hats to everyone.

‘Hats
don’t suit me,’ Lesley said, trying to hand hers back.

‘Humour me,’ Romy said firmly, not taking the hat from her.

‘But they make my hair go all funny.’

‘Well, if a piece of ceiling fell on you, it could make your head go all funny.’

Lesley sighed, reluctantly putting the hat on. ‘See?’ she said. ‘I look like an eejit, don’t I?’

‘Well, at least you’ll be a safe eejit,’ Romy said, smiling as she put on her own hat.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Lesley said sulkily. ‘You look good in yours.’

‘Hardly.’

‘You do,’ Ethan nodded. ‘It’s very sexy.’

Romy met his eyes, and the way he was looking at her made her feel hot and prickly. She turned away to hide her blush.