Hard Tail (11 page)

I rang her up at once, thoroughly alarmed. Was she ill? Had the house burned down? Had Alex revealed himself as a secret someone-else’s-wife-beater and all-round bastard? “Kate, what is it?” I asked as soon as she picked up.

“Tim? Where the hell have you been? I’ve been leaving messages at the house, at your mum’s—”

“I’m at Jay’s,” I said, frowning. “So what’s the problem?”

“Oh,” she said, sounding a bit deflated. “How is he?”

“Well, you know—well as can be expected.” I was still confused.

“Why? What’s happened?” The worried tone was back, and I realised in a flash she didn’t know about the accident—after all, why would she? We’d already been history when I’d heard—not, admittedly, by all that long, but still, history.

“He broke his leg,” I explained. “That was what Mum’s call was about.” Naturally, Mum wouldn’t have spoken to Kate. I’d never been quite sure why, but they’d never got along all that well. Hence, I presumed, the un-forwarded messages. “So what were you so worried about?”

“Oh—it was just me being silly,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you weren’t at the house any of the times we went back, and you’d obviously not
been
there, and I just thought—but it was just silly of me.” She finished up the sentence at top speed, obviously wanting to change the subject.

I was grimly amused. “What, you thought I might have driven off a cliff or something? Don’t worry, Kate, I’m fine.” Saying it, I realised I was, pretty much. Yes, I’d had my moments of missing her—but speaking to her now, I was stunned to realise I didn’t want her back. We should never have been more than friends. “How are you and Alex?”

“Oh, we’re fine,” she gushed a little too enthusiastically for my liking. “Alex has just been promoted to partner!” Great. Not content with stealing my wife, he had to show me up in the career department too. “How’s your job hunt going?”

“It’s not. I’m looking after Jay’s shop until he’s back on his feet.”

“Jay’s
bike
shop? But doesn’t he have staff? Can’t they do it?”

“No.” It felt weird, and somehow wrong, to talk to Kate about Matt, so I changed the subject quickly. “Anyway, while you’re on—what are we going to do about the house?”

“Oh—well, we’re planning to stay at Alex’s. It’s a lot more convenient, really, for work. I suppose I just assumed you’d buy my half—when you get another job, of course. When do you think you’ll be getting another job?”

I bit back my initial, impatient reaction. Upsetting Kate wouldn’t get us anywhere. “I don’t know. I think we should put the house on the market. Who knows,” I added, inspiration striking, “I might get a job down here. It’d be nice to be nearer my family.”

“Are you sure?” Kate sounded dubious. “I thought you loved London.” There was a pause. “This isn’t some kind of midlife crisis, is it, darling?”

There was a moment of awful silence, which I rushed in to fill before she could apologise for the accidental endearment, which would have been even more painful than the original slip. “I’m only twenty-eight! I’m not having any kind of crisis. I’m just taking the opportunity to…re-evaluate a few things, that’s all.”

“Well,” Kate said brightly, “good for you. Um. I think I’d better go now—would you like me to sort out the house, then? Contact an estate agent, that sort of thing?”

“Yes, I think that’d be best.” Now I’d said it, it felt like my old life was disappearing at breakneck speed. It was an odd sensation—thrilling but more than a little unnerving. “I’ll be up during the week to pick up some more stuff—Tuesday night, probably.” I was hoping she still went to Pilates on a Tuesday.

“Good,” she said a little vaguely. I wondered if this was as unsettling for her as it was for me. Still, I was sure Alex would help her through it. Bastard.

“Good-bye, then, Kate. Take care.”

“You too,” she said. Just as I was about to hang up, she spoke again. “Tim?”

“Yes?”

“I really am sorry about all this.”

What do you say to something like that?
That’s all right
would be letting her off the hook a bit too easily,
Me too
would sound like an admission of shared guilt, and
So you bloody well should be
was way too confrontational.

“Me too,” I said in the end and hung up.

Chapter Eight

Monday morning, I got to the shop to find Matt sitting in the doorway waiting for me to unlock it. He gave a big smile when he saw me and unplugged his iPod from his ears while I checked my watch hurriedly.

“I’m not late, am I?”

“Nah, it’s me, I’m early.” Matt managed to stand up without falling over either foot, although it was a close-run thing. He winced as a stray shoulder hit the doorframe.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m fine. Just knocked it yesterday, that’s all. Came off the bike,” he added, his head down as he brushed off his jeans.

“Have a good day off?” I unlocked the door, and we stepped inside, the bell jangling cheerfully to welcome us.

Matt shrugged, lopsidedly because he only used his good shoulder. “It was all right. You?”

“Oh, you know. Did a lot of boring stuff; went to see Jay.”

“Yeah? How’s he doing?”

“Great! Well,” I amended as honesty kicked in, “actually he’s bored out of his mind. He was asking about you.”

“Yeah?” Matt looked pleased to be remembered—and a bit guilty. “I meant to go in and see him yesterday, but Steve wanted me to stay at home.”

What was this bloke, Matt’s keeper? “Well, you can pop in any evening after work. They’re very relaxed about it at the Spire.”

“Yeah? Maybe I’ll go in tonight, then.”

“Trust me, he’ll be glad to see you.” I had a thought and went over to grab the magazine from the bottom of the pile behind the counter. “Tell you what, you can give him this. A bit of porn ought to cheer him up no end!”

Matt laughed. “Don’t know what the nurses’ll make of it, though!”

I turned away to hide what was undoubtedly a sly expression.

It wasn’t the nurses Jay would have to worry about.

It was Mum.

The morning was fairly quiet—a few customers, a couple of deliveries and a bloke who wanted me to sign up to a directory of local businesses. It seemed reasonable, so I went with it, a little surprised Jay hadn’t done so already. During one of the lulls, I ambled into the back room to talk to Matt, finding him, as usual, hard at work. Didn’t he ever slack off when no one was looking?

He glanced up from the tyre he was fitting. “Problems?”

“No—just bored,” I admitted. I hesitated. “You know your Thursday night bike rides?” Matt nodded to confirm he hadn’t been suddenly and inexplicably struck with amnesia. “Well, I was wondering if you’d mind if I tagged along?”

“Yeah—no problem. That’d be great!” Matt looked genuinely pleased at the prospect, and I found myself smiling back at him.

“So how does it work?” I asked, leaning against the worktop.

Matt finished with the tyre and straightened, wiping his hands on his jeans. “We all meet up where we’re going that night—usually around half seven, quarter to eight. Then we go for a ride—that’s about it, really. If you give me your email, I’ll copy you in on stuff. I mean, we usually decide where we’re going to go the week before, then confirm it by email.”

“Great! I’ll give you my address now.” I looked around for a bit of paper and ended up ripping a bit off the back page of the repairs book. “Here you go.”

Matt looked at it, then grinned. “
[email protected]
?”

“Yes, well.
[email protected]
was already taken.” I cleared my throat. “Now, is there anything I need to bring along?”

Matt pursed his lips. “Well, some of the lads bring along a hip flask of something lethal, but apart from that… Wait, have you got any lights? We’re usually out past dark.”

“What, even at this time of year?” I was a bit concerned this might be a bit too much for me to handle.

“Well, it often takes a while to get going, and then sometimes we stop at a pub…”

I had a vision of a crowd of lycra-clad mountain bikers crashing through the forest trails getting progressively drunker until the word “crashing” became literally true. “Is that safe?”

“Oh—most of the lads ride out from home, so there’s no worry about drunk driving. And it’s the New Forest, not the Pennines. If you take a tumble, the landing’s usually pretty soft.”

That was…not quite as much of a relief as I’d hoped for. I made a snap decision to take the car for at least the first couple of times, so I’d have an excuse not to get wasted. “Okay, so these lights—do I need anything special?” Standard bike lights were more about being seen by cars than casting any actual useful light. I had a feeling cycling down a rough track in the total dark of the forest would require something a little more souped-up.

“Come out the front, and I’ll show you.” We trooped out to a thankfully customer-free shop—I’d been chatting out the back a little longer than I’d meant to—and went over to Jay’s bike light display. “You’ll need at least 250 lumens, but best to go a bit higher if you can afford it. The Exposure Toro is good and the 6 Pack is awesome. They’ll both do the job, and you won’t have to faff about with extra batteries and cables.”

Whilst a six-pack had long been on my list of desirable possessions, I’d always envisaged it as a set of really cut abs, not a type of bike light. I chose the Toro, in the end, trying not to wince at the price. Granted, it was bright enough—when I checked it out I saw coloured blobs in my vision for ages afterwards—but when did going for a bike ride get so expensive?

Looking at Matt’s enthusiastic smile, though, I couldn’t help feeling it was worth it.

I could have done with somewhere to go, Monday evening. Or at least something worth watching on telly. Like Jay, I had way too much time to think—and a vintage episode of
Midsomer Murders
just wasn’t enough to distract me.

And like Jay, what I was thinking about was Matt. Although I seriously hoped Jay wasn’t thinking the same things I was thinking… No. Jay was straight. He’d said that, and I believed him, because Jay wasn’t the sort to lie about it. If he’d been gay, he’d have just come out and said so and assumed everyone would be okay with it. And him being Jay, they probably would have been.

Whereas if it was me… I frowned, scratching Wolverine idly on the top of his head. He showed me those pointy fangs in a tuna-scented yawn, and settled down even more heavily on my lap. At least we hadn’t had any repeats of the cat-sick incident, so I’d been able to have a proper meal tonight—if you could call it that when it came in a plastic tub covered in clear film, wrapped in a cardboard sleeve proudly proclaiming it contained one of my five a day. The pasta salad Matt had brought in for our lunch had been orders of magnitude tastier and, I suspected, healthier.

Would it really be different if it was me? Coming out as gay, that was. Was I just misjudging everyone? If I could imagine them accepting a gay Jay, which from the rhyming point of view alone had to be a situation nobody wanted, why couldn’t I imagine them accepting a gay Tim?

But what would be the point? My leg was getting pins and needles, and I tried to stretch it out while still weighed down with cat. Wolverine opened one eye and dug his claws lazily into my thigh in warning. I sighed and surrendered to the encroaching numbness as the lesser of two evils.

If I did come out, what would I do? Make a pass at Matt? Try and persuade him to dump Steve and come out with me? Because, let’s face it, I was such a bloody catch—still technically married, jobless, and, when the house sale went through, homeless. Not to mention having spent nearly thirty years cowering in the closet. And the grey pubes—mustn’t forget those. Oh, yes, he’d definitely prefer my neurotic self to the bloke with the house in the New Forest and hot-and-cold-running ponies.

And anyway, looked at from Matt’s point of view, trying to chat him up would actually be kind of insulting. Like I was just assuming that gay men were incapable of fidelity and moreover, permanently up for it with anyone who offered. Even a posh tosser who didn’t know his arse from his axle and was standing in for Matt’s boss, for Christ’s sake. I punched a sofa cushion in frustration.

Wolverine startled awake, ears pricked and tail twitching. I tensed, anticipating multiple puncture wounds in a sensitive area, but he merely fixed me with an exasperated glare and settled back down to sleep. “Are you going soft on me?” I asked, incredulous.

Either that or his stomach was still feeling too delicate for any major bloodbaths right now. I stroked his back rhythmically, all too aware it was more for my benefit than his. Embracing my inner poof would be a stupid idea, I thought with a sigh. Even if I accepted Matt wasn’t going to be mine and tried to find another bloke, what did I know about gay relationships? Or pulling a bloke in the first place, for that matter? It’d be pretty bloody ironic if I came out as gay and then totally failed to find a man who was interested in me.

I’d have changed my whole life, exposed myself to ridicule, for nothing.