Love at First Fight

by Mary Jayne Baker

  Hattie smiled vacantly. ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Are you sure? I thought you’d still be walking on air, soon-to-be-Mrs Cal Kemp.’

  ‘Well, I am, but…’ She sighed and turned her phone over so Bridie could see the screen.

  Bridie frowned. ‘You’re watching the “Beauty With Jojo” channel? What for?’

  ‘She’s done a new series on bridal make-up. To celebrate her wedding to that hunky actor from the Regency thing.’

  ‘Conrad Benson,’ Ursula said with a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Lucky cow. I’d kill to wake up with that guy every morning.’

  Bridie was still looking at Hattie, who squirmed under her shrewd gaze.

  ‘There are other beauty vloggers you could watch,’ she said. ‘Why this one, Hat?’

  ‘Well, she’s supposed to be the best, isn’t she?’ Hattie sighed. ‘And… I guess I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘Sorry, are we missing something?’ Meg said, looking from Bridie’s keen stare to Hattie’s flushed cheeks. ‘What’s wrong with watching Jojo? Every man and his tarted-up dog gets their make-up tips from her these days.’

  ‘Go on, tell them,’ Bridie said to Hattie.

  ‘She’s Cal’s big ex,’ Hattie murmured.

  Ursula’s mouth dropped open. ‘You’re not serious!’

  ‘I wish I wasn’t.’

  ‘Cal really went out with Jojo Fitzroy? I mean, your Cal, Cal Kemp?’

  ‘Yeah. Long time ago, well before me and him met.’

  ‘But she’s worth a bomb,’ Meg said. ‘No offence to Cal, Hattie, but he’s a car mechanic from the arse end of nowhere. Where would Jojo even meet someone like him? Did he fit her a new spark plug or something?’

  ‘She wasn’t worth a bomb when they met,’ Bridie said. ‘She was just someone he got chatting to on a night out in Leeds with a group of mates: I was there. He was only twenty-one.’

  ‘How long were they together?’

  ‘Nine months. He was kind of besotted with her.’ Bridie grimaced. ‘Sorry, Hat.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Hattie said, trying to quash the uncomfortable twisting in her belly that arose whenever she thought about Cal with Jojo – or just plain Joanna, as she’d been before she rebranded. She looked at the frozen image on the phone. ‘She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?’

  ‘Nah, she’s nothing but lip fillers and falsies,’ Bridie said staunchly. ‘You don’t need that stuff to make you gorgeous; Nature already did it for you.’

  Hattie smiled. ‘I appreciate the loyalty, Bride, but we both know she looks great. She’s got Kate Moss’s bone structure and she talks like bloody Marilyn Monroe. Not to mention the fact she’s probably a multi-trillionaire by now. Every time I think about her with Cal, I feel like I gain a stone, shrink about four inches and develop a moustache.’

  ‘Why? Him and her are well in the past. Plus she’s married now, off living her best life for the benefit of the Hello photographers. There’s no need for you to compare yourself to her.’ Bridie raised her eyebrows at the other two. ‘Is there, girls?’

  ‘I can’t believe you never told us Jojo was Cal’s ex,’ Ursula murmured, a starstruck expression in her eyes. Bridie shot her a look, and she coughed. ‘I mean, Bridie’s right, Hat. Cal loves you now. Right, Meg?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Meg said, nodding. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t even stoop to asking Cal to ask Jojo to get you some signed photos of Conrad for us. Unless you wanted to, that is. Totally up to you.’

  Bridie shook her head. ‘You two are useless.’ She turned back to Hattie. ‘It’s true though: Cal and her have been over for years. I bet he never even thinks about Joanna these days. He’s too busy being head over heels in love with you.’

  ‘You think?’ Hattie opened her Facebook app to show them an old photo of Cal and Joanna at a nightclub somewhere. The young Cal had one arm around his girlfriend’s waist and was beaming like a lad who couldn’t believe his luck, while Joanna, in the tightest and shortest of little black dresses, looked askance at the camera with her familiar pout. She’d posted it to her timeline with the words: Thinking of you, babes, and a kiss.

  ‘She posted it this morning,’ Hattie said. ‘Cal was tagged in, so it showed up in my feed – they’re still Facebook friends.’

  ‘It’s just a memory from this day seven years ago,’ Bridie said dismissively. ‘It popped up; she shared it. That doesn’t mean anything, I do it all the time.’

  ‘Cal’s responded with a hug react though, look.’

  ‘Oh, he’s just being polite.’

  ‘A like react is polite. A hug is… well, a hug,’ Hattie murmured. ‘And what’s all this “thinking of you, babes” business?’

  Meg shrugged. ‘That’s just Jojo. She gushes, it’s part of her persona. Everyone’s “babes” or “sweetie” or “queen” in her vids.’

  ‘I never took to her,’ Bridie said. ‘She was friendly enough, but something about her always felt false to me. Whatever she might have going for her looks-wise, in personality she’s no Hattie Leonard.’

  ‘And we all know men value personality over everything, don’t we?’ Hattie muttered.

  ‘Hey. I thought I was the gang’s official man-cynic.’

  ‘You must be rubbing off on me.’ Hattie sighed. ‘I mean, I know Cal’s not like that. It hurts, that’s all, thinking he was once with someone like that and now… now he’s only with someone like me.’

  ‘Exactly, and thinks he’s the luckiest man in the world.’

  ‘You’re reading too much into this hug react, love,’ Ursula said soothingly to Hattie. ‘It’s an emoji, not another woman’s knickers in the glove compartment. If it bothers you, discuss it with Cal.’

  ‘No.’ Hattie forced a smile. ‘No, I know I’m being daft. I don’t want Cal to think paranoia over minor Facebook interactions is a taste of what our married life’s going to be like. The photo got me reflecting on the fact that his ex is this wealthy, glamorous celebrity and I’m just some dowdy little chemistry teacher who doesn’t know how to contour – that’s all.’

  ‘You’re the one he wants to spend his life with,’ Bridie said. ‘He asked you to marry him, didn’t he?’

  ‘I know.’ She put her phone away. ‘I’m being ridiculous, aren’t I? Early wedding jitters, probably. It just felt like a bit of a kick in the gut, seeing them together.’

  ‘You’re only going to make yourself feel worse watching her videos,’ Meg said. ‘Do yourself a favour and find another channel, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, girls. I’m OK now.’

  There was a knock at the door, and they all turned to see who it was. Mr Duxbury had appeared, with Adrian Verges, the deputy head, lurking at his elbow. Adrian caught Meg’s eye and smiled.

  ‘Ah, good. Just the young ladies I wanted to see,’ Duxbury said, barging in. ‘We need to have a quick meeting about the plans for the Duke of Edinburgh expedition. Mr Verges, you’ll take notes, please.’

  ‘Oh, what?’ Ursula said, groaning. ‘I’m not sure the management here understands the meaning of the word “break”. I ought to report you to the union, Eddie.’

  As Duxbury’s younger cousin, Ursula was able to get away with speaking to the head in a way none of the others could.

  He glared at her. ‘This is important. I’ve got your kit lists from the trekking company.’

  ‘Oh God, there’s kit lists,’ Ursula muttered as Duxbury and Adrian helped themselves to seats and Adrian took out a pad to make notes. ‘We don’t have to bring our own potties, do we?’

  Duxbury looked down one of the lists. ‘That’s not on here. Loo roll is though. I think if you get caught short between campsites, you’re just expected to make like the pope and do it in the woods.’

  ‘What? But we’re ladies!’ Meg protested. ‘We can’t be as disgusting as you lot, it’s not in our nature.’

  Duxbury shrugged. ‘Then you shouldn’t have volunteered, should you?’

  ‘You voluntee
red us, you rotten sod,’ Ursula said.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have been cheeky and answered back to the boss. See, you’ve learned a valuable lesson already.’

  He handed out a kit list each, plus a photocopied map that made absolutely no sense to Hattie no matter which way round she turned it. Hopefully Bridie, with her Duke of Edinburgh experience, could make more sense of it.

  She scanned down the kit list. Tent, one between two. Sleeping bag. Mess tin. Nope, she didn’t have any of this stuff: not even a torch. Cal and Ben were outdoorsy sorts though, so hopefully they’d have things they could lend. She only hoped the tent would come with instructions.

  ‘This is a map of the region we’ll be traversing, with overnight camping spots marked,’ Duxbury said, pointing them out.

  ‘And we’re supposed to be able to follow this, are we?’ Meg asked, squinting at her copy of the map.

  ‘It isn’t exactly rocket surgery, Miss Collins. Map-reading is intuitive.’

  Ursula snorted. ‘Intuitive, are you kidding? It’s just a load of squiggly lines and random triangles.’

  ‘There’s a symbol key on the bottom,’ Duxbury said. ‘Besides, the trek leader will be there to help you out if you get stuck.’

  ‘We’ll be meeting the kids at the campsites though, right?’ Bridie said brightly. ‘I mean, they’re supposed to be learning independence. We only need to supervise them camping; we don’t need to trudge over the moors with them.’

  ‘On the real expedition, yes, supervision will be minimal,’ Duxbury said. ‘For this training expedition, I want everyone walking together. It’ll help give them confidence for the final thing.’

  ‘Well, it was a good try,’ Meg whispered to her.

  ‘We’ve got twenty kids going. They’ll be in two-man tents, strictly segregated by gender, and I want you lot all keeping a careful eye on them.’ Duxbury shot a sharp look at Adrian, whose pencil had frozen in mid-air as he gazed dreamily across the table at Meg. ‘And it shouldn’t need to be said that the same rule applies to staff, by the way. Perhaps you might like to write that down, Mr Verges.’

  ‘Hmm?’ Adrian snapped out of his daydream. ‘Oh. Right you are, boss.’ He licked the end of his pencil and made a note of rule one. ‘No… shagging…’

  ‘Hem. Yes. Now the company who will be leading us are called…’ Duxbury consulted a piece of paper. ‘Grand Adventures. They will provide expeditionary equipment: OS maps, compasses and so on. I’m assured we’ve been assigned a very experienced trek leader after I told them my lot were going to be bugger all use.’

  Hattie sat up a bit straighter, casting a sly sideways glance at Bridie. Her friend’s face showed no glimmer of recognition, but Hattie had known the name immediately. Grand Adventures: that’s where Ben’s new job was. Could he be the experienced trek leader? God, how perfect would that be – the two of them in the great outdoors, bonding while they toasted marshmallows over the campfire and sang ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ or whatever happened on these things? The only difficulty would be keeping it quiet until they were actually out there and it was too late for Bridie to back out, which she almost certainly would if she knew Ben was going too.

  ‘OK, rule number two,’ said Duxbury, who seemed to swell a little with each self-important pronouncement. ‘No mind-altering substances. Everyone coming along will be searched before we set off. I think we all learned a lesson from the magic mushrooms some young scallywag put in the campfire stew a few years ago.’

  Adrian stifled a snort.

  ‘That’ll have been the year when you hoisted Mrs Camberwell onto your back and bounced halfway up Pen-Y-Ghent with her, will it?’ he said soberly.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Verges. Mrs Camberwell has been very understanding about that incident, knowing as she does that I believed at the time I was a species of rare wallaby rescuing her from a bushfire.’

  ‘Do you want me to minute that?’

  ‘No.’ Duxbury frowned. ‘Actually, yes. The minutes must be a true and accurate record of what’s been discussed. Everything we say must be written down.’

  Adrian shrugged and scribbled down ‘no drugs – may lead to wallabies’.

  ‘And as with the previous rule, this goes just as much for teachers as students,’ Duxbury said, fixing them with a stern frown. ‘No wacky baccy, no pills, no booze. I know what you lot are like.’

  Bridie groaned. ‘Oh, what, no booze? Come on, not even a bottle of wine to share after the kids have gone to bed? Surely we’ve earned that much mind-altering.’

  ‘I will not have Messington pupils going home to their parents and telling them the supervising staff were all three sheets to an ill wind. No.’

  ‘Right. So you’ll be leaving your fags at home, will you?’ Ursula said.

  ‘That… is not the same thing.’

  ‘Nicotine’s a drug, isn’t it?’

  ‘Surely a couple of bottles of wine between us is OK, boss?’ Adrian said, catching Meg’s eye as he obviously tried to ingratiate himself with her.

  ‘It is not. No wine. That’s my final decision.’

  Ursula shook her head. ‘You can be such an arse at times, Eddie.’

  ‘I’m a… well!’ For a second, Mr Duxbury looked like steam might be about to come out of his ears. ‘Ursula, you will respect my position. In this building, I’m your boss first and your cousin second. Mr Verges, I’ll thank you to write that down.’

  Adrian blinked. ‘What, that you’re an arse?’

  ‘Yes. Everything must be recorded.’

  He shrugged. ‘All right, you’re in charge.’

  Adrian went to make a note, but the lead in his pencil snapped.

  ‘Damn it,’ he muttered. ‘Sorry, boss. I’ll add it when I get back to my desk.’

  ‘Just make sure you do. I wish it to be minuted, so it may stand as a permanent record.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, Eddie,’ Ursula said, smiling brightly. ‘I’m sure we can remember that you’re an arse whether or not it’s written down.’

  ‘Right. The bell’s about to go so that will be all,’ Duxbury said, ignoring her. He stood up and waved a warning finger around all of them. ‘And remember. No wine. I have spoken.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, guys,’ Bridie whispered when he’d gone. ‘We’ll smuggle some there in shampoo bottles. That’s how we used to do it when we were kids.’

  ‘Unless you know where we could find some magic mushrooms,’ Adrian said. ‘I’d bloody love to see his wallaby impression.’

  Ten

  When Bridie arrived at the Garter on Saturday night Ben was there waiting for her, all dressed up in dark jeans, fitted T-shirt and a smart blazer. He’d claimed a corner table, a candle flickering merrily in the centre. He stood up when she joined him, smirking in a way that instantly made her suspicious.

  ‘Evening, Sweet Pea.’

  ‘Please don’t call me that, Benjamin.’ She nodded to the candle. ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Just a little mood lighting. Here, let me get that for you.’

  He darted to her side of the table before she could sit down and pulled her chair out for her.

  She cast him a wary glance as she took a seat. ‘All right, what are you playing at?’

  ‘Hey, it’s our first date. I just want to make sure it’s perfect, that’s all.’

  ‘You know very well it’s a planning meeting. I don’t date any more, and I certainly don’t date you. Did you order drinks?’

  ‘Yep. Pete’s bringing them over.’

  She glared at Ben when Pete turned up with a bottle of fizz in a wine cooler and two champagne flutes. Each flute had half a strawberry in the bottom.

  ‘For the lady,’ Pete said, putting one down in front of her with a flourish. ‘And for the… for want of a better word, gentleman. I hope you two have a lovely romantic evening.’ He winked at them before heading back behind the bar.

  ‘You think you’re pretty damn funny, don’t you?’ Bridie asked while Ben pour
ed them both a drink.

  ‘That would be a fair assessment, yes.’

  ‘I can’t believe you bought us bubbly. You are such an insane amount of bellend, Ben Kemp.’

  Ben smiled at an elderly couple who shot them a surprised look as they passed by. ‘Don’t mind her. It’s our first date, she’s a bit nervous. We’re going to have a wonderful time.’

  The couple hurriedly walked off, tossing worried glances over their shoulders. Bridie couldn’t stop her lips from twitching. It was pretty funny, to be fair.

  ‘All right, now you’re scaring the tourists,’ she whispered to Ben. ‘Can we get on with this meeting now, or is Pete Prince about to come back over with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs and a violin?’

  ‘You’re the lady to my tramp, sweetheart. We’ll do whatever you want to do, just as long as it ends up at my place.’

  ‘It ends in hopefully no more than half an hour, when we’ve got a plan for this Sten thing and I can go back to avoiding you until the day of the wedding.’

  ‘What, their wedding or ours?’

  ‘Ours, are you kidding?’ she said, laughing. ‘Quite apart from the fact you disgust me, I will never, ever understand what people see in weddings.’

  Ben shrugged. ‘Nor me, but most folk seem to like them. I think it’s to do with love or something. That’s what they say anyway.’

  ‘Surely you can be in love without mangling the business with a wedding. Once couples have been buried up to their necks in party favours and table plans and warring relatives and snotty flower girls and tantruming page boys, I’m surprised they can still bear to look at each other.’ She paused to take a sip of her fizz, which actually tasted like the good stuff: champagne, not prosecco. Ben had obviously developed expensive tastes while he’d been away. ‘All you get out of weddings is misery and debt, and then something like one in three marriages ends in divorce anyway. If it was me, I’d spend the cash on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday instead.’ She shrugged. ‘Might take the bloke, might not.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Weddings are so old-fashioned as well: all these stupid traditions about who speaks and in what order, who gives who away, when to lift the veil and whatever. It’s daft.’