Woman Walks into a Bar (8 page)

Brendan thought for a moment.

“Because even if it makes you hate me, I didn't want you to think you'd been stood up,” he said. “Like I said, I want you to be happy.”

He stood a step closer until his forearm was touching mine.

“Look,” he said, “I know how to flirt with girls—it's part of my job. But when it comes to asking a woman I really like out, I'm terrible. I always mess it up and say the wrong thing.” He put his pint down and I thought he was about to pick up my hand, but he didn't. “I really like you, Sam, and you probably think I'm some kind of psycho now. But before I told you about John Smith, I thought you might like me too? You were always eyeing me up,” he joked gently.

“I was not!” I protested, laughing.

“No? Damn it,” Brendan said with a wry smile. “I've got it wrong
again
.”

I looked at him. He was joking but he looked so worried and sweet.

“You haven't,” I said, and the smile he gave me made me hold my breath.

“Every time I've seen you walk into the bar since the first time, I've wanted to tell you I like you,” he said, dipping his head so that it was closer to mine. “You go around meeting these losers, telling the whole pub about it as if it's one great big joke, and I've been wanting to ask you out, but I kept thinking what if I'm the next big joke?”

“You are quite funny,” I said. I was so happy I couldn't stop smiling like an idiot.

“I just can't stand seeing you go through more crap. It's been killing me,” he said. “So I'm asking you face to face, right now, whether you think I'm funny or not. Would you come out for a drink with me on my night off, Sam? Not here—somewhere quiet where we can talk. Will you go on a date with me? There, I've said it.”

For the second time that night it was like someone had turned down the volume on the whole room. I couldn't hear anything except my heart beating in my ears, and then I realized that I was laughing.

“Um,” I said, pretending to think about it.

“Sam!” Brendan protested.

“I will! I will,” I said, and then more quietly, “Of course I will. It's just that this is so funny.”

“Why?” he said.

I stopped laughing.

“Because I like you too,” I said. “I have for ages.”

Brendan and I looked at each other for a second longer, as if we had only just met for the first time. He picked up my hand, and I felt the warmth of his fingers holding mine.

“Can I kiss you now, then?” he asked me.

I didn't answer him, I just took a step forward and kissed him. I put my arms around his neck and felt his palms on my waist and kissed him. I think some of the bar staff cheered.

When we stopped kissing, Brendan looked at me.

“You're a great woman, you know,” he said. “Fantastic.”

“Thank you,” I said. When he said it, it felt true.

“I don't want to stop looking at you, or touching you or kissing you,” he said, his voice low and smiling. “But I've got to go back to work. Please say I can walk you home later?” He held my gaze, looking right into my eyes, and I thought there could be nothing nicer in the world than walking home with Brendan holding my hand, talking and joking, making me laugh and stopping to kiss me every few minutes. Because I somehow knew that was exactly how it was going to be with him.

“You can,” I said, smiling as I watched him go back behind the bar without taking his eyes off me.

Joy and Marie rushed up to me and threw their arms around my neck.

“You dark horse!” Marie said.

“Yeah, and anyway,” Joy said, pretending to be serious, “you just told me that you were giving up men for good!”

I looked at her and shrugged.

“Don't be silly,” I said. “I was only joking.”

Keep reading for a sneak peek of Rowan Coleman's next funny and heartwarming novel

The Runaway Wife

Available November 2013 from Gallery Books!

Dearest Rose,

Our meeting, though brief, has stayed with me and I wanted to write and thank you for your hospitality when I came to see you a few days ago. You didn't have to be so kind to a stranger turning up, unannounced, but you were and I am so grateful. Although you were not able to help me find the painting, everything you told me about your father was both fascinating and heartbreaking. Why is it, I wonder, that artists are so often capable of creating such beauty whilst doing such harm to themselves and others? I hope that one day you will perhaps be able to reconcile with him and find the answers to all of your questions.

I hope you will forgive me when I write that you are a remarkable woman and you deserve all the happiness, contentment, and love in the world. I, for one, know that I have never met anyone quite like you.

Yours,
Frasier

One

“Do you
know what time it is?” An irritated woman's muffled voice was just about audible from the other side of the door.

“I . . . I know, but this is a B and B, isn't it?” Rose asked. Her seven-year-old daughter, Maddie, snuggled into her neck, weighing heavily on her hip as she shivered against the cold. Despite it being the height of summer, fine needles of icy rain were driving down into the tops of their heads, and Rose had forgotten to bring Maddie a coat. There hadn't been time to think about coats; there hadn't been time to do anything but leave, grabbing a few damp and muddled items from the wash basket in the kitchen, and one oddly wrapped package, bundled up and secreted long ago, perhaps waiting for just this moment.

“Doors are locked at nine p.m. sharp!” the voice called back. “It's in all the literature. It's three o'clock in the morning. I've got a good mind to call the police.”

Rose gasped in a ragged breath, determined not to cry. She'd made it this far without crying; she wasn't going to let this disembodied voice break her when nothing else had.

“I know, but, please, I've come a long way and I've got a little girl with me. We just need a place to stay. I would have booked ahead, but I didn't know I was coming.”

There was some more muttering, a man's voice too, Rose thought, drawing Maddie even nearer into her body, trying to suppress the child's shivers with her embrace. As she did so, she tightened her arm on her other, less precious package, which was tucked underneath it: a smallish rectangular object that Rose had hurriedly wrapped in a blanket.

“A child?” The woman's voice came again.

“Yes, she's only seven.”

With a mixture of fear and trepidation, Rose waited as she heard bolts being drawn back and locks being released. Finally the heavy-looking, thickly painted wooden door drew back to let a slant of yellow light cut through the rain, making the drops dazzle and glitter. A woman of indeterminate age peered through the gap at the sodden pair, and then after a moment took a step back and opened the door wider.

“This is really most irregular,” she told Rose as she hurried into the hallway. “Knocking on the front door at all hours of the day and night. I've got my other guests to think of.”

“There
are
no other guests.” The owner of the male voice, a well-built bearded man in his late fifties, sporting a vest and jogging bottoms, smiled at Rose. “Don't you fret about it, love. It's no bother. I'm Brian and this is my wife, Jenny. Jenny, you take them up, give them towels, and I'll bring you both up a nice warm drink. Hot chocolate do you, little one?”

Maddie drove her face deeper into Rose's chest, her frozen fingers clinging on for all they were worth. Maddie was not a child who settled easily into strange surroundings, particularly when the circumstances that had brought them here had already been so traumatic.

“That really is so kind,” Rose said gratefully. “We'd love a hot chocolate, wouldn't we, Maddie?”

“Like I said, no bother.” Brian smiled. “Now, got any luggage you want me to bring in for you?”

“I . . . don't. No. There's no luggage.” Rose smiled weakly, lifting one elbow awkwardly to reveal her oddly wrapped package. “Just us and this.”

Jenny raised a skeptical brow, and clearly saw that nothing good could come of her latest and only guest. “I usually ask for cash up front, twenty-five a night. Presumably you've got cash?”

“Yes, I . . .” Rose attempted to reach into her pocket while still cradling Maddie and the package.

“For God's sakes, woman,” Brian said, shaking his head, “let the lass be. We'll sort the payment in the morning. Right, now . . . ?” He looked at her questioningly.

“Oh, I'm Rose, Rose Pritchard, and this is Maddie.”

“Right then, well, Rose here needs to get little Maddie into bed!”

“For all you know she might be an axe murderer,” Jenny muttered not entirely under her breath.

“Well, if she is, I'll wager she's too tired to chop us up tonight. Now stop going on and get up them stairs.”

It was only as Rose followed Jenny's considerable behind up the narrow stairs that she realized her landlady was wearing a rather risqué pink negligee, which floated above her on the steep incline like a jellyfish, showing flashes of her ample dimpled thighs. Dimly it occurred to Rose that perhaps Jenny and Brian were the axe murderers, but she was so tired, her body exhausted by the hours of driving and her mind reeling from everything that had happened, that if they were, she didn't think she could be bothered to run away twice in one day. After all, it had taken her most of her life to find the courage to make this first escape. Millthwaite, without any particular renown or importance, lost deep in the heart of the Lake District, was a village very few people had heard of. Except it was here, in a place that could perhaps most accurately be described as the middle of nowhere, that Rose was hoping against hope to find her second chance.

Jenny opened the door on a room at the top of the house, flicking on the light. It was a neat, clean little room, with narrow twin beds set about a foot apart, covered with pink candle­wick bedspreads. The small rose pattern on the wall­paper was repeated on the curtains and on the swags that hung over them, a style that had been fashionable about thirty years earlier.

“I've put you in here because it's got its own loo,” Jenny said as Rose sat down on a bed, still holding Maddie tightly as she laid her package down beside her. “There's clean towels there, and I'll put the immersion on, I suppose, if you want a shower.”

“Really, all I want to do is sleep,” Rose said, closing her eyes for a moment.

“And you've got no luggage but that thing?” Jenny asked her, standing in the doorway, her nightie floating around her with a life of its own. “Where have you come from again?”

“Broadstairs, in Kent,” Rose said, easing Maddie onto the bed and taking one of the folded towels from the pillow to rub her wet hair. Rolling onto her tummy, Maddie refused to show her face to the strange woman, or even the strange room.

“All that way and not even an overnight bag?” Jenny asked, her curiosity almost as naked as her considerable cleavage.

“No,” Rose said, hoping she was making it clear that she would not be drawn on the subject.

“Well, then, as you've ruined my and Brian's special night, anyway, I'll go and find you something to wear . . .”

“Oh, please, don't go to any trouble,” Rose called after Jenny, but she had already left, leaving the door open so that Rose could get the full effect of her righteous stomp down the stairs.

When she returned, minutes later, she had a few clothes over one arm, and two mugs of hot chocolate in the other hand.

“My youngest one, Haleigh,” she said, dropping a pink nightshirt with the words “Sex Bomb” emblazoned across the front in glitter. “She's on a gap year in Thailand, although don't ask me what a gap year is, as if you get time off from having a proper life to mess around in a foreign country. Anyway, she's only a slip of a thing, so about your size. And these belong to my grandson, my eldest's boy. They've got Spider-Man on but I shouldn't think she'll mind.” Jenny set down the mugs of chocolate on the bedside table. “She all right? Very quiet.”

“Very tired,” Rose said, stroking Maddie's dark hair. “And confused.”

“Right, well, breakfast's between eight and eight thirty. I don't take orders, you get what you're given, and if you want coffee you'll have to go to the shop and buy it. I don't hold with the stuff. Unnatural. Oh, and here's a key for the front door.
Do not lose it
.”

“Thank you,” Rose said, breathing a sigh of relief as Jenny gave her one more look of disapproval and then closed the door. Leaving Maddie sitting huddled on the bed for a moment, Rose went over and locked it, and then, turning back to her daughter, eased the little girl's damp top off over her head.

Maddie squealed in protest, resolutely keeping her eyes closed, refusing to acknowledge her radical change in circumstances. Change was the very thing that Maddie hated the most, and yet a few hours ago Rose had decided to rip her out of her home, away from everything she knew, and bring her here. Had she done the right thing? At the time it had felt like the only thing she could do, but was that ever true?

“Come on, darling, let's get you changed and we can get some sleep,” Rose said, doing her best to keep the tension and uncertainty out of her voice.

“Where's Bear?” Maddie asked, opening one eye.

“Bear's here. We never go anywhere without Bear, do we?” Bear was in fact a very flea-bitten rabbit that Maddie had been given as a baby, but Bear he had always been known as and Bear he would remain.

“Where's my book?” Maddie was referring to her history book on Ancient Egypt, which she'd begged Rose to buy after a day trip to the British Museum. Maddie had become obsessed by mummies, pyramids, and everything else Egyptian, poring over anything she could find on the subject, until she became almost as expert as any curator at the museum. She had read the book she was referring to literally hundreds of times and knew it by heart, but still Rose knew she would read it hundreds of times more. It was just one of her myriad rituals that she had developed recently that Rose had scarcely had time to dwell on or worry about. Young children were eccentric, that's what everyone said. This same everyone said that Maddie's obsessive behavior was nothing to worry about, and Rose chose to believe them, even though her instinct told her otherwise.

“It's here,” Rose said, pulling the tatty book out of her bag. Thank God it had been in there already, from when she'd taken Maddie to have an asthma checkup that afternoon, other­wise Rose was sure she wouldn't have remembered to take it with her.

Content for the book to lie unread on the pillow beside her head, Maddie let Rose pull off her crumpled and damp clothes and put on the pajamas. “I don't like Spider-Man,” she protested dimly, her lashes dropping with every rise and fall of her chest. Carefully, Rose eased her daughter under the covers, turning off the overhead light that glared from beneath a pink fringed lampshade, and after waiting for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the lack of light, she slipped the package, still wrapped in its ancient blanket—one that had used to grace Rose's cot when she was a very small child—­under Maddie's bed, took one lukewarm cup of chocolate, and climbed into the other bed, the smooth cool sheets very welcome against her hot, aching skin. Hoping that sleep would come quickly, Rose closed her eyes, yet even though her body shuddered with exhaustion and her eyes screamed to be shut, sleep would not come. Wearily, Rose leant back against the quilted-velour headboard, stared out the window into the dense wet night, and wondered, not for the first time since she'd started the ignition of the car and pulled away from home, what on earth she was doing.

A persistent knocking at the door finally forced Rose to drag her eyelids apart. She wasn't sure when she had finally fallen asleep, but it felt like only a few seconds ago as she rubbed her eyes and looked around, her memory of where she was, and why, coming back to her in heavy persistent thuds, in time with the beat of her heart.

“Hello?” she called out, dragging herself up in bed.

“Rose? Love, it's Brian. It's gone ten, darling. We didn't like to wake you before. But Jenny'll still do you a bit of bacon and toast if you're hungry?”

“Oh, sorry!” Rose called back, climbing out of bed and looking around for her clothes.

“I'll tell her ten minutes, then?” Brian checked, having obviously done some expert diplomatic work to secure her and Maddie breakfasts to go along with their beds.

“We'll be there in five!” Rose called, pulling on her knickers and skirt. Maddie was regarding her from her position partially hidden by the bedspread, her large blue eyes peering out over the top.

“Come on, darling, toast!” Rose said, beaming at her daughter, hoping the promise of her favorite food would lure her out from under the covers.

“It might not be my bread,” Maddie said, pulling the cover below her chin. “What if it's not my special bread? I like toast at home, not toast . . . here.”

“Well, it might be a different, nicer sort of bread. You won't know what you are missing unless you try it. Here, shall I help you put your dress on?”

“I don't want it if it isn't my bread,” Maddie said, referring to the only brand of sliced bread that she liked to eat.

Rose closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath. Really, when she'd decided to run away from her home and husband, she perhaps should have given more thought to Maddie's very particular dietary requirements. “Fussy” was how her teacher referred to her at school, but what she didn't realize was that anything different on her plate caused Maddie real anxiety.

“Just try it, for me. You never know, you might like it.” Rose smiled encouragingly.

“I won't if it's not my bread,” Maddie said miserably, adding as she trailed after Rose down the stairs, “When will it be OK to go home again? Before school starts back, after the holidays?”

Rose didn't have the heart to tell her the answer was never.

They discovered the dining room after opening a series of doors that led off the main hallway, finding first a guest sitting room dominated by a huge doll's house encased in glass, which Rose had to drag Maddie away from, and then an office containing a desk covered in piles of paper, with an ancient, almost historical PC sitting on top of it.

“This isn't a hotel, you know,” Jenny greeted Rose and Maddie as they finally made it into the small dining room, with about six tables all neatly laid, despite the absence of other guests.

“Well, it sort of is,” Brian said, winking at Rose as he picked up his keys and kissed Jenny goodbye before heading for the door.