Summer Daydreams

by Carole Matthews

  Chapter 79

  In a daze of confusion, I wander back to my own shop. Outside, I stand and stare at the window. Even though I say it myself, the display looks so appealing. It still doesn’t seem possible that my name is above the door. I sigh sadly. Pretty soon it may not be. I may be very grateful for Betty’s order.

  I don’t even know if we’ve got enough money in the bank account to cover this month’s rent and I can’t bring myself to look. I don’t even know if we have money for food, and we can’t eat naffing handbags.

  I let myself in, make a coffee and then go and sit in the office. Now that I’m alone, I try Olly’s number, but there’s no reply. He must still have his voicemail turned off.

  What should I do? I stare at the computer and the pile of post that’s mounting up on my desk. The letters all look like they’re bills and I know that I don’t have the means to pay any of them. I could do some sketches, think of some new designs, but what’s the point? I don’t even know if I’ll have a business beyond the next few weeks. I could be dependent on a few bags in Betty’s window rather than my own. I could be back on the market stall. I could be back in the chip shop.

  Sipping my coffee, I shuffle papers aimlessly. The doorbell chimes and I look up, heart in mouth.

  But it’s not Olly. It’s Phil.

  ‘All right, love?’ he says. I nod. ‘Bearing up.’

  ‘We were worried. Constance and me.’ He holds out a big, round tin. When I look inside, there’s some sort of pie topped with golden puff pastry. ‘Chicken and mushroom. She baked it for you, so that you’d have something in for your tea.’

  ‘She’s an angel. Tell her thanks.’

  ‘She was worried, love. You didn’t look like yourself at all yesterday.’

  ‘Jen’s been here,’ I tell him. ‘She’s been a diamond.’

  ‘I know. She said she was coming round. Wasn’t sure how you’d feel about that. All things considered.’

  ‘I’m fine. We’re fine. She’s coming to stay with me for a couple of days.’ I’m just hoping that, by then, Olly will have made contact. ‘Time for a coffee?’

  ‘No thanks, Nell.’ Phil pulls up a seat and lowers himself into it. ‘I wanted to see how you are,’ he says, ‘but I also wanted to talk business with you.’

  ‘I’m not turning out to be the greatest businesswoman of all time, am I?’

  ‘It’s a steep learning curve,’ Phil admits, ‘and you’ve had more than your fair share of bad luck.’

  Is it just bad luck or am I guilty of being too naive, too gullible?

  ‘I want to lend you the money, Nell,’ he says. ‘I can get my hands on twenty grand. Is that enough to get you out of this hole?’

  Shaking my head, I say, ‘I can’t take that from you, Phil. We already owe you enough.’

  ‘I’m not bothered about that, love. You know that.’ He shifts uncomfortably in his chair and I think how much I love this man. He’s been so good to me. Like a father. If Olly never comes home I am truly blessed by the other people I have in my life. ‘It’s just that I feel responsible for encouraging you to go out on your own. It’s a big step and maybe I pushed you too much.’

  ‘Oh, Phil Preston. Don’t even think that. None of this is down to you.’

  ‘I don’t want to see you go under. Not when I can help.’

  ‘The truth of the matter is that I don’t know if I’m going to carry on, Phil.’

  He recoils in shock. ‘But you must. You can’t give up so easily, Nell. You never know what’s just round the corner. Something big could be on the horizon.’

  Or there could be someone else out there waiting to rip me off, rob me of my hard-earned cash, undermine my family, and destroy my self-confidence. I sigh to myself.

  ‘Don’t give up, Nell. Promise me that. At least don’t do anything until you’ve heard from Olly.’

  ‘I promise.’ What if he doesn’t come back for weeks? Months? Or not at all? I don’t voice my misgivings.

  ‘Better go,’ he says.

  ‘At least your business is thriving.’

  ‘Couldn’t be better, Nell. Don’t think that I’ve forgotten the role you played in turning it around.’

  ‘I slapped a bit of paint about, Phil.’

  ‘You gave it a new lease of life. And me.’ Standing up, I kiss him. ‘You’re a lovely man.’

  ‘You’ve got a good one too, Nell. Whatever’s going on in Olly’s mind at the moment, don’t forget that he’s a good man.’

  ‘I won’t.’ I walk Phil to the door and he gives me a peck on the cheek. ‘Catch you later. Thank Constance for my dinner.’ He winks at me. ‘I’ve got a good one there, too. I’m not going to let her go easily.’

  ‘Too right,’ I say. ‘I’m hoping I’ll be coming to your wedding one day soon.’

  ‘You never know, Nell,’ he replies. ‘You never know.’

  That, at least, puts a smile on my face. It would be lovely if Phil and Constance could find happiness together. Doesn’t that prove that, despite everything, I’m still an old romantic at heart?

  Then, as I lift the tin with my home-baked chicken and mushroom pie inside it from my desk to take it safely upstairs, my phone beeps. I have a text message.

  It’s from Olly. Miss u, it says.

  All I type is, Come home.

  Chapter 80

  Olly had cracked and had texted Nell. He just needed something to connect him to home as he felt as his life had turned into a bad movie, and reality was something that was steadily slipping away.

  Now three days had passed and Nell had continued to text him regularly. He’d kept all the messages stored and read them over and over, but hadn’t replied. He wondered what she’d say to him when he eventually did go home. It depended on what happened next, he assumed.

  For three whole days he’d done nothing but sit outside the run-down offices of Home Mall. For three whole days nothing at all had occurred. For three long, hot, sweaty, sweltering, Miami days, he’d stewed in his rental car, eyes fixed on the door ahead of him. He’d talked everyday to Diego and Andrés who’d certainly become less wary of him, if not exactly friendly. But, so far, they’d been unable to find out anything more about the Codys than he already knew.

  Olly had taken to bringing sandwiches, fruit and soft drinks to keep him going through the day. But they were all warm and wilting long before noon. An ice-cold beer featured heavily in his daydreams. At night he returned to the serial killer motel and, when his wide-eyed wakefulness finally gave way to sleep, it was punctuated by nightmares about their home being repossessed and him fighting big dragons or snakes, or him running through forests that snatched at his clothes with Petal clutched tightly to his chest. It was fair to say that none of it was leaving him feeling rested.

  This morning, he’d been sitting there for three hours already. His shirt was melted to him and perspiration ran down his face. His hair was stuck flat to his forehead. He wondered just how much more of this he could take. Frustration was building up inside of him. This was necessary, absolutely necessary, but it felt so futile too. Before he thought he might give in to screaming hysteria, he got out and walked further down the alley to calm his nerves.

  ‘Hey, buddy,’ Diego called out to him. ‘Wanna cold soda?’

  ‘Please,’ Olly said. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  Diego and Andrés exchanged a laugh. ‘“Very kind”.’

  From somewhere in the back of the garage, Diego produced an ice-cold Dr Pepper. Olly snapped the can opened and gulped at it gratefully.

  ‘My God, that’s good.’

  ‘Hot work waiting there every day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long you meaning to sit it out, man?’

  ‘Not much longer,’ Olly said. ‘I’ll have to go home soon. I just didn’t want to go without my money.’

  ‘That’d be a tough break.’

  Perhaps neither of them realised quite how tough it would be.

  ‘I’m missin
g my little girl.’ Olly’s voice cracked. ‘I just want to get back to her. She’ll be wondering where her daddy is.’

  ‘You have a girl?’ Diego said. From his back pocket he produced a creased and grimy photograph of a pretty Latino girl with long black hair. ‘I have a baby girl, too. She’s called Sophia.’

  Olly reached for his wallet and produced his much loved picture of Petal. ‘This is Petal. She’s four.’

  ‘Same age as Sophia. She’s daddy’s angel. Your kid is a very beautiful little lady.’

  ‘I know,’ Olly said proudly. ‘Just like her mother.’ The men exchanged a grin.

  ‘Sophia’s mother is a bitch. Left me for another man.’

  ‘Oh,’ Olly said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  Diego shrugged. ‘Sophia is my life. Best thing that ever happened to me.’ He put the photo away. ‘I don’t often get to see her. One day I’ll make enough money to take her away from here.’ He glanced ruefully at his ramshackle garage. ‘We’ll go somewhere real nice.’

  ‘Petal’s my life, too. I’m doing all this for her,’ Olly admitted. With one last look, he also put his picture away. ‘That’s why I need to get our money back. I don’t want those bastards stealing her future.’

  ‘You’re right, my friend. Family is everything. We must never forget that.’

  It was a lesson that Olly felt he’d already learned. All he wanted now was to get on a plane and fly back to his wife, his child, to his old, safe life.

  Diego clapped him on the back. ‘Now I must work.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Olly crushed his empty can and threw it in the nearby rubbish bin. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

  Diego held up a hand in farewell.

  Olly walked back to his car and slid inside the baking tin again. Another long wait stretched ahead of him. He listened to the radio. He read about all the shootings in the local paper. It was as hot as hell in here. Despite himself, his eyes grew heavy. Eventually, he let his head sink back against his seat. On top of everything else, the bed in the Miami branch of the Bates Motel was lumpy and he could feel springs poking in his back. He didn’t like to think who’d slept in it before him.

  Chapter 81

  He hadn’t realised that he’d fallen asleep until he heard the purring of the engine of another vehicle slowly coming up the alley behind him. Olly blinked his eyes open as a Mercedes sports car passed by his parked car. It wasn’t a shiny, new Merc. It was sort of battered and creaking. Suddenly he was wide awake. He had a feeling in his gut about this and his insides turned to water.

  The car pulled up at the side of the Home Mall offices and his heart started to race. His palms, already sweating in the heat, grew slick with sweat.

  Someone clambered out of the passenger seat of the car. The bulky frame, the moon-face; they were familiar to him now. This was, indeed, the woman he knew from the newspapers as Lola Cody.

  He watched, eyes narrowed, as she waddled to the door of Home Mall. She wore white crops, a voluminous floral smock, flip flops and, of all the cheek, had one of Nell’s handbags over her shoulder. Probably the original sample that Nell sent her after the initial contact. That racked up Olly’s rage quota another notch. He watched while she unlocked the shutter and waited as it slowly rolled up.

  A moment later and her husband and partner in crime, Benito Cody, joined her. His bad Hawaiian shirt was barely buttoned across the ample circumference of his stomach. Clashing shorts in what must have been XXXL size skimmed his knees. Neither of them looked like they’d stinted on the pizza and burgers. He could take on these two. No trouble.

  They both heaved their lumbering bodies into the office. A second later, and before he had time to think better of it, Olly was out of the car and following them. The door was just about to swing closed when he stuck his foot in it. Lola Cody and her husband had entered the front office just ahead of him. He pushed inside and quietly dropped in behind them.

  ‘Hello,’ he said before they had a chance to get settled. Both of them spun round, open-mouthed with shock.

  Olly stared at them. They didn’t look like slick con artists; they looked like greasy no-hopers and he wondered how they’d managed to trick so many people. He felt stupid that he and Nell had believed their tissue of lies and had been taken in by them. If only they’d thought to come out and meet them, see their operation, before they agreed to part with any cash, then they would have seen them for what they were. Still, there was no time for what-ifs now. He was here and he wanted his money back and wouldn’t be going anywhere until he got it.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ Lola Cody said. Her voice was loud, brassy, and she was chewing gum. ‘We have nothing.’

  Clearly, they thought they were about to be robbed. In some ways, they were.

  ‘I think you do,’ Olly said. ‘In fact, you have something that’s mine.’

  The couple backed away into the corner of the room, up against one of the dented filing cabinets that lined it.

  ‘We don’t know who you are, man,’ her husband whined.

  ‘The name Nell McNamara mean anything to you?’ Their mouths dropped a little wider.

  ‘I’ve come to get our money back.’

  ‘We don’t have it,’ Lola said, but her eyes travelled shiftily to the safe tucked away in the corner.

  Just as he’d hoped. It looked like their cash was kept here.

  ‘Open the safe,’ Olly snapped. ‘I want our money back and I won’t leave until I’ve got it.’

  Lola’s husband lurched across the room, his bloated bulk swayed and wobbled and Olly knew instantly what he was targeting.

  From behind his back, Olly produced the baseball bat that had previously lived there. He was glad now that he’d decided to take it and keep it in his car as a precaution, as insurance.

  ‘This what you’re looking for?’ Benito Cody blanched.

  Olly casually tapped the baseball bat against his palm.

  ‘Now perhaps you’ll talk sensibly to me.’ Lola Cody was rooted to the spot. ‘Open the safe. Get out my money. All of it. Thirty thousand dollars. When you’ve done that, I’ll leave you in peace.’

  Neither Lola nor her husband moved.

  Olly slammed the baseball bat down on top of the desk. The wood splintered.

  ‘Do it!’ he shouted. ‘My patience is wearing very thin.’ The Codys both jumped and cowered away from him.

  Olly shocked even himself. He did the baseball bat thing because that’s what he’d seen happen in the movies. The worrying fact was that, as adrenalin coursed through him, he realised that he wanted Nell’s money back more than anything in the world and nothing, and certainly not these two fat, badly dressed crooks, would stop him. He had no idea that, inside, he was quite so scary. He wondered if he should adopt an outlandish karate stance but was afraid that it was a step too far, particularly when he was so rusty.

  ‘OK, OK,’ Lola Cody said. She sighed and, cursing under her breath, waddled towards the safe.

  ‘You,’ he said to her husband, ‘hands in the air where I can see them.’

  With a gargantuan effort, Lola bent down and knelt before the heavy metal door. Huffing and puffing, she turned the dial, this way and that. A moment later the safe sprang open.

  Now it was Olly’s turn to stare, open-mouthed. The safe was stuffed full of money. Piles and piles of dollars bundled together spilled out. There must be hundreds of thousands in there. All in readys. His eyes bulged as he tried to take it all in. Clearly in Lola Cody’s world, crime did pay. And really rather well, it seemed.

  ‘Thirty thousand dollars,’ Olly said. ‘That’s what you owe me. Count it out.’

  At a ponderous pace, Lola Cody pulled the bundles from the safe and let them fall to the floor. Olly now wished that he’d thought to bring his holdall with him. He hadn’t realised quite how big thirty thousand dollars was in cash. There was an empty cardboard box on the floor and he kicked it towards her.

  ‘In there,’ he instructed. ‘Quickly.�
�

  The woman pulled the box to her side.

  ‘Count it out,’ Olly barked.

  ‘One thousand, two thousand, three thousand,’ she spat out as she placed the money into it. Her husband, hands aloft, watched her unmoving. It looked like Lola Cody was the brains behind the operation. He was just a useless pile of lard.

  ‘Faster,’ Olly said. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  The speed picked up a bit. The minute the box was filled, he was going straight to the motel to collect his stuff, and then his next port of call would be Miami International Airport and back home on the first flight he could get.

  ‘Put an extra three thousand in there,’ he instructed. ‘That’ll cover the expenses I’ve incurred having to come out here and collect it.’

  Lola Cody curled her lip at that but silently complied. It made him feel better to think that she’d be picking up the bill for the skanky motel. If he’d been certain of the outcome, he might well have stayed somewhere nicer.

  Eventually, the box was full of money.

  ‘Done,’ she said flatly.

  ‘It had better all be there,’ Olly said. ‘The minute I leave, I’ll be counting it and you don’t want me to come back.’

  ‘It’s all there,’ Lola Cody said. ‘Now get out.’

  Still sparky.

  Olly wanted to hurt them, to make them pay for all the pain that they’d put him and Nell through, but that would just reduce him to their level. Getting their cash back would be enough.

  ‘This is justice,’ he said. ‘If it was my call, you’d be going to jail. For a long time. Be thankful that I’m only taking back what’s rightfully mine.’

  With that, he picked up the cardboard box. Thirty thousand dollars was quite a heavy load, but it felt good to have it in his arms at last. He’d keep the baseball bat for the moment. Just in case.

  ‘You’re finished,’ he said to Lola Cody. Whereas he felt like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

  He backed out of the office and into the Miami sunshine.