Party Girl at Heart

by Karen Elaine Campbell

  The sun came out from behind a cloud and shone in through the window, glinting off the pots and pans in the rack which had been pulled up high on its chains, suspended over the kitchen table and Crystal had a sudden moment of inspiration. If Jazz thought that she was fretting over Lolly, it may just get her off the hook for the moment, without her actually lying to him. The rest she would have to work on.

  Jazz had no idea what was going on. “Why would the sight of me on the sofa make you think of Lolly?” he asked, puzzled, and why throw the pie all over the floor? You’re not making much sense Crystal.

  Crystal’s mind-numbing stupor was finally lifting and her brain slowly began to connect. “I saw you sleeping on the sofa and it reminded me that Lolly will be sleeping at Gran’s tonight. She left her bags behind here, in the hallway, earlier today. She’s going to need her things later; I was trying to turn around, to go back and fetch them and slipped on a bit of fish food or something on this silly floor. It’s really dangerous Jazz, we should get it changed or something. It really frightened me,” she added for good measure. It sounded plausible.

  Jazz frowned for a moment longer, then went over to the cupboards and began rooting around. “Where do we keep the dustpan and brush now?” he asked.

  “Ask Imogen,” Crystal retaliated, an edge to her voice, before she had chance to sensor her words.

  Jazz stopped mid-flow. “You don’t like this kitchen, do you Crystal?” he suddenly asked.

  What timing, Crystal thought. She didn’t have the strength for this conversation now. She took a deep breath. “No Jazz, I don’t.”

  “Then why did you let Imogen install it in the first place?” he asked, bewildered.

  “You didn’t give me a chance, either of you,” she stated baldly. There was no point in beating around the bush, they should have had this conversation weeks ago. She’d been pussy-footing around the issue for far too long. If she’d truly blown their relationship by sleeping with Phil this morning, then she at least needed to let him know what factors had been building up to this moment.

  “I thought you wanted a new kitchen?” he asked.

  “No, Jazz, I didn’t. I liked the one that we had already. This one fills me with dread. It’s clean, swanky, cold, hard and impersonal.” There, she thought, I’ve finally said it. I’ve finally put into words exactly what I think of this kitchen.

  Jazz scratched his head. “So, you want the old one back?” he asked.

  “It’s gone, weeks ago. The builders took it away on the back of their lorry, remember?” Crystal replied.

  Suddenly Jazz’s face broke out into wreaths of smiles, and he jumped up and took her hands into his own. “They may have taken it away, but it’s not gone. I couldn’t face trashing it, so I had it moved into storage, don’t tell Imogen, she’ll be horrified.” he added conspiratorially. “She couldn’t see past the worn paint and peeling varnish. My sister is concerned with germs and cleanliness, she had no eye for the beauty of the craftsmanship or the touch and feel of the wood. I know it’s a bit cheesy, but it was one of the reasons that I chose this house in the first place, it had a warm homely feel about it. This new kitchen has been a disaster from start to finish.”

  “I had no idea that you felt like that, no idea at all. I thought that you wanted a new ultra-modern space, with gadgets and gismos and things. You were plotting away with Imogen, choosing the new units and expensive, fancy equipment and neither of you even asked me what I wanted.”

  Jazz frowned. “Is that how it seemed to you?” he asked. His brow furrowed as he acknowledged the rebuke behind her words. “You said that you didn’t have time to bother with it, we thought we were helping, we were trying to take the work off your hands, so that you wouldn’t have to spend time on it.”

  Crystal looked down at her hands, held there between his, safe and secure. “Oh. Well, yes, Jazz, I did feel excluded. I thought you were both conspiring against me, actually,” she flushed, embarrassed.

  Jazz frowned, but he let the comment pass. “Look, Crystal, I’ve been a bit pre-occupied lately, and there’s a reason why I came home from the factory early today. I need to discuss something important with you,” he urged purposefully.

  Her pulse nose-dived, oh no, this sounded bad. He had a really serious look on his face, the kind of face that says ‘the cat’s died’, or worse, ‘I’m marrying someone else’. She really didn’t want to know, did she?

  Her phone had begun to ring and she’d used the in-coming call as if it was a life-line, hiding behind the anonymity, crouching down to pick up bits of apple pie and pie-plate from the floor as she spoke to Babs. It must be something important if Jazz had come home from work early, right in the middle of the day to discuss it with her.

  Her mind had not been on the conversation and she’d agreed to everything that her friend had said. She’d agreed to take part in this charity parachute jump when she was scared of heights, anything to keep her friend talking and avoid the ‘serious’ topic that was causing Jazz to frown so darkly.

  By the time she’d finished talking to Babs, Jazz had taken a call from the factory as the lunchtime shift had kicked in, and he was back off out of the door in a flash, reminding her that they would talk properly that evening. Only they’d still not had the conversation, even now, she realised. It couldn’t have been that important after all.

  The builders had turned up at the house a few days later though, to arrange to take the new kitchen out, apart from the fish tank. Jazz liked the fish, so they had been given a temporary reprieve.

  So, here she was early on a Sunday morning, sitting in her car at a deserted airfield waiting for a guy called Jonno to turn up and teach her how to catapult herself out of the back of an aircraft, or something. It was not a welcome thought. On the plus side, Phil had flown back to America that very same afternoon, and he’d not tried to contact her since, so she had the answer to that problem, for the time-being at least.

  In his neat little cottage, beside the village green, Bernard was up and dressed and reading the Sunday paper. Bernard loved Sunday mornings, best day of the week for him. The alarm was turned off, proper-like on the Saturday night, as they got ready for bed, and it wouldn’t be turned on again till late on Monday evening. Bernard had Sundays and Mondays off, Tom, the other full-time guard worked his shifts when he wasn’t there and Teddy covered in-between times. The young lad had picked up plenty of work since the factory had brought in the new shift pattern, and he covered if one of them was sick and such, as well.

  Tom was an old guy, like himself and Teddy was a youngster, just out of school. They made an interesting combination, the ‘two old codgers’ and the young lad, but it worked out well. They took good care of the factory and they kept their eyes and ears open, you never knew what kind of information might come your way, as people came in and out of the building, voices raised and such. The guards always knew what was going on, they spent time with the reception staff too, so what one didn’t know, the other found out, as it were.

  On this particular Sunday morning, Bernard was still in his dressing gown, sitting down at the small ‘Formica’ table that Maude kept shoved up against one wall in the kitchen, cosy like, for their informal suppers and casual meals. The dogs were both stretched out at his feet. Maude was busying around in their tiny cottage, fetching eggs from the fridge and cutting huge doorstops of bread from the loaf that he’d picked up from the village stores on his way home from work last night. They were having the ‘usual’ Sunday ‘fry-up’ today, same as every other Sunday morning for as long as Bernard could remember.

  “I still can’t imagine young Crystal doing a parachute jump, are you sure you got it right?” Maude asked, as she buttered the bread, carefully, making sure that she did right up to the edges of the crusts, just the way that Bernard liked it.

  “That’s what it said on the leaflets that she asked me to hand out to visitors to the building. She’s got some website address or other that you can go on and give
money to the charity and all.”

  “Well, I can’t see her doin’ it mesself, Bernard. Do you remember the hoo-ha that she caused when she got herself and young Jeremy stuck up the apple tree in the orchard? Hetty had to call in the fire brigade to get ’em both down again. They’ve always been scared of heights, those two. Jeremy only followed her up there ’cos she dared him to do it, little minx, he wouldn’t have gone up there otherwise.”

  Bernard grunted, “Yess’m, I remember that and all. I have me doubts about the whole thing. I wonder what happens if she gets up there and refuses to jump then, what would they do about that then?”

  “She’ll have to give the money back, that’s what. You can’t give people charity money if they don’t do what they said they would, I don’t reckon.” She broke the eggs into the frying pan, one by one. “So, have you sponsored her then?”

  “Not yet. I was waitin’ to see what everyone else was doin’. She’s havin’ a few lessons apparently, so I don’t suppose she’ll kill herself on the way down.”

  Maude flapped the tea towel at him and shook her head. “Bernard Watkins, you just stop that talk right now. That’s tempting fate, that is. Don’t let me even hear you talkin’ of such things in this house. She’s not going to fall to her death or anything on a charity parachute jump. They have all that health and safety stuff now, to make sure people are safe. Now, you make sure that you give her some money for her charity jump the next time that you see her, and tell her that it’s from me. Now, how do you want your eggs done, scrambled or boiled?”

  “Fried I think, sunny side up as them Yanks would say. Yessir, just like me, sunny natured and optimistic, that’s why you married me, remember?” he quipped as he went back to reading the newspaper spread out on the table in front of him.

  In Florida, Phil looked out of the side window and watched the tarmac disappear beneath the wheels of the aircraft as it came in to land. The plane touched down with barely a stutter as the pilot expertly engaged rear-thrusters and brought the jet safely in. He’d spent the whole flight lost in thought, and as Jeremy and Saskia and Carrie pulled baggage, jackets and belongings out from the overhead lockers he finally knew exactly what he should do. They were booked on an onward flight to Denver tonight, but he wouldn’t be going with them. He should never have returned to America without Crystal at all.

  Lolly had been ringing him five times a day from England ever since he’d returned home ten days ago now, and he’d been using work as an excuse to avoid speaking to her ever since. It was easy to pretend that they were on the road and incommunicado, but in reality they were not. If he didn’t fly back to England and sort this out, she’d only get on a plane and come out to LA to confront him, and he wasn’t sure that he could cope with Lolly here just now.

  If he went back to England, he could see Crystal again, try to work out where they went from here. He shouldn’t have run out on her like that, he should have stayed and talked things through with her, but when Olivia had turned up at the house unexpectedly, it had seemed like the best thing to do. The flights back to LA had already been booked, weeks ago, so it had been simple to fly off and leave all of his problems behind, but you never really outran your problems, he knew that. They simply came with you and taunted you, morning, noon and night.

  He couldn’t leave Crystal so easily though. She was there inside his brain again, just like before, only worse. Now he’d re-affirmed his carnal knowledge of her, she’d slipped under his skin, wrapped herself around his heart, super-glued herself to his psyche. Then there was Jeremy; every time he looked at Crystal’s brother he was immediately reminded that they were twins. They looked alike, sounded alike and even thought alike, it was spooky. The attitude that came across as ‘ballsy’ on Crystal, was not effeminate in Jeremy, just similar and vaguely unsettling, and it was doing his head in, he’d be paying a fortune to visit a shrink again at this rate, if he didn’t sort it all out.

  How was he going to break the new to Saskia though, that he was off back to England to chase Crystal? He couldn’t do it, not this time. She’d tell Jeremy and then they would both have him committed, or worse.

  “Phil? We’re down, the plane has landed.” Carrie shook him gently by the shoulder, concern etched on her face. “Are you okay?”

  He turned to look at Carrie, and realised that he had his answer. If he could get Carrie to pass on a message, he’d not need to face Saskia and there would be no way that she would guess what was going on in his mind. He rummaged in his pocket and turned on his phone. Immediately, twenty two text messages from Olivia pinged through onto his screen. He chose one at random, and pretended to read.

  He turned to Carrie, “Yes, yes, fine. It looks like there’s trouble at home though. Loads of messages from England, I’m going to have to fly back and sort out a few things with Olivia, she’s refusing to come back to The States.” His eyes flickered as he told the outright lie. “Has Saskia already disembarked?”

  “Yes, she and Jeremy have gone on ahead, we need to get moving and catch up with them, Saskia has the tickets for the connecting flight.” She eyed him speculatively, wondering what he was up to, he looked shifty.

  He pulled at his collar; it was hot inside the plane. “Have you got a pen and some paper in your bag?” He looked hopefully at the gold tote bag that she’d just pulled down from the overhead compartment.

  “Yes, probably, but what’s the rush? Saskia will be in baggage reclaim, you can speak to her yourself, Phil.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, but she’ll only come up with a hundred and one reasons why I can’t take a few days off to go back to UK. This is urgent Carrie, or I wouldn’t ask.”

  “You know that I’ll take the brunt of it, if you disappear off without speaking to her properly first, don’t you?” Carrie asked instead.

  Phil looked a bit sheepish, was he going to have to beg?

  “Don’t even think of pleading, I hate to see a grown man grovel.” Carrie forestalled him. “Just write the goddamned message quickly, before I change my mind. I ought to ring Olivia up myself and give her some advice,” she grumbled. “What on earth has got into her this time?”

  “Personal,” Phil replied, “and whatever you do, don’t ask her, or you’ll start world war three.” He added, darkly. There, that should put a stop to that one, he thought as pulled the sick-bag out from the pocket in front of his knees and began writing a message on it with Carrie’s gold sparkly fountain pen.

  “Hurry up, we’re the last ones on the plane now, the cleaners will be ready to get on and clean the place up,” Carrie muttered, as she read the message over his shoulder. “Saskia is going to blow a fuse when she reads that, couldn’t you have found something more suitable to write on, either?” she added, as she frowned at the sick-bag and squinted myopically at the message.

  “I’ll deal with Saskia, you just pass on the message,” Phil answered, remembering to tack on a belated ‘please’ as it looked like Carrie would argue. “Don’t hand that note to Saskia until she’s on the connecting flight to Denver and notices that I’m missing,” he added. “It will be too late for her to do anything about it by then.”

  Carrie nodded and whipped the message-bag out of his hands. She stared at him hard, “She’d better be worth it,” she warned.

  “Oh, she is,” he declared with conviction, his guts turning in knots as he remembered her lying there naked in his arms, long blonde hair splayed out against the red brocade of the sofa. His jaw set, belligerently.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of Phil,” Carrie snapped back. “I’ve never seen you this fired up over Olivia before,” she warned, “and I don’t like it, you’re acting completely irrationally, you know that, don’t you?”

  The stewardess approached them both, from the other end of the aisle, effectively ending their conversation. It was already way past time for them to disembark.

  Carrie bundled him along the aisle and down the steps, following him along the corridor that joined arrivals with
connecting flights. As Phil sidled past the baggage reclaim area, dragging his overnight bag along behind him and disappeared out through passport control, into the night, she made a right turn and followed the last of the stragglers from their flight, heading for Denver. Saskia was going to have kittens when she realised that Phil had done a bunk, but what could she do, she was only the hired help?

  At around the time that Phil managed to secure himself a seat on the next flight to London, Crystal finally ceased prevaricating and reluctantly removed herself from the safety of the car. She’d been sitting at the airfield since first light, watching the people coming and going and dreaming up excuses as to why she couldn’t possibly take part in the jump. All of her reasons sounded incredibly lame, even to her own ears. It was no good, she realised, she was just going to have to get on with it and hope that she didn’t do something stupid and end up squashed flat like a pancake. She had been counting the people as the cars pulled into the car park, and she guessed that everyone else was already inside the building now. One of the instructors had arrived in a flashy open top sports car with his short brown hair whipping about in the breeze and a huge flight bag stuffed into the tiny passenger space on the back seat. There had been an elderly lady in an equally ancient MG metro, she’d jumped out of the car in a sprightly enough fashion, but Crystal couldn’t imagine her parachute jumping, she must be one of the cleaners or something. Then a smart Range Rover had pulled in, a couple of giggling teenage girls had jumped out of the back of that and then disappeared off in through the front door of the building typing text messages one-handed and rummaging around with headphones and wires and electronic equipment as they went.

  A couple of men had arrived on push bikes, just a few moments ago, but otherwise the whole airfield was deserted. Crystal couldn’t imagine any place less suitable for this particular venture, it was hardly a hive of activity, and where were the radar and electronic beacons and other 21st Century technical gumbo that airfields were supposed to have? This place looked like it was stuck in a time warp, it probably hadn’t changed one bit since the last world war. She dragged her feet as she walked over to the entrance, but even so, she arrived far too quickly.