We Were On a Break

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘You’re not a lawyer any more, little brother,’ he said, proving my point and not caring one jot. ‘So don’t quote precedent, I want to see this hot piece.’

  ‘Then you’ve come to the right place.’ Jane threw her spare arm around my neck and kissed me on the cheek before pushing her sunglasses up into her absurdly shiny hair and taking a good look at my brother. ‘He is talking about the bar, isn’t he?’

  Chris, struck dumb, nodded.

  ‘Adam,’ Jane whispered theatrically, ‘is there something wrong with him?’

  ‘If I started to explain we’d be here all day,’ I said, no calmer for her presence. ‘Jane, this is my brother, Chris. He gave me a lift and apparently that means he’s entitled to be a pain in my arse for the rest of eternity. Is it OK if I give him a quick tour of the bar?’

  She sipped her coffee, pressing her lush lips against the white plastic lid of the cup, never taking her eyes off Chris.

  ‘I’ll behave,’ he promised with creaking words. ‘I’ll be good as gold.’

  ‘All right then,’ she relented, pulling a bunch of keys out of her pocket. ‘But only because you’re Adam’s brother and Adam’s the best.’

  She flashed me a quick smile before fitting her keys in the lock, wooden hoarding panels obscuring the windows, and opening the door with her hip.

  ‘Welcome to Camp Bell,’ she announced, holding her arms out wide to unveil the cold, dark and completely empty space. ‘So, Adam’s brother, do you love it?’

  He turned around a couple of times, catching my eye and raising his eyebrows before turning back to Jane.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ he said. ‘Best bar I’ve ever been in.’

  ‘Right answer.’ She switched on the lights and three bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling glowed yellow. ‘And when your brother has worked his magic, it’s going to be even more amazing.’

  ‘Is Jim here?’ I enquired as she put down her coffee and dropped to her hands and knees, burrowing under a pile of boxes with her arse in the air.

  ‘No,’ she called back, muffled by her hair. ‘He’s running late. He’ll be here in a bit, though.’

  Chris elbowed me aggressively in the ribs, his eyes firmly attached to Jane’s rear end.

  ‘Pack it in,’ I whispered with a shove that sent him staggering several steps over to his left. ‘Can you go now?’

  ‘There, that’s the heating on.’ Jane sat back on her heels and smiled up at the two of us from her knees. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Chris has to leave,’ I answered readily. ‘He’s going to buy his wife a present. It’s his son’s christening tomorrow.’

  ‘You should come,’ he said before she could react. ‘It’s going to be a real party. Not like your average christening at all.’

  ‘Is that right?’ she asked, looking at me for confirmation and not finding it. ‘A christening that’s a real party? On a Sunday?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he went on, entirely unaware of the gentle mocking in her voice. ‘We’ve got a marquee, I’ve hired a band, full bar, catering, everything. It’s not every day you christen your first-born, is it?’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ she agreed. I reached out a hand to help her to her feet and there was the same fizzing in my stomach when our hands touched. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t make it. I’ve no doubt it’ll be a fabulous occasion regardless. Is Uncle Adam excited?’

  ‘Beside himself,’ I assured her, clapping Chris on the shoulder as I made a move towards the back of the room. ‘Shall we have a look upstairs? I don’t want to keep you all day.’

  ‘I’ve got nowhere better to be,’ she replied, following. We both turned back at the same time to see my brother glued to the spot. ‘Are you joining us, Chris?’

  ‘No,’ I said before he could open his mouth. ‘He isn’t. Call me when you’re done.’

  ‘I’ll call you when I’m done,’ he agreed, still staring at Jane. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘Seriously though, is he all right?’ she asked as we disappeared through the back door and up the short, steep staircase to the second level. ‘He’s not like, special or anything?’

  ‘Oh, he’s definitely special,’ I assured her, feeling around the wall for a light switch of some kind. ‘But not in that way. I’m sorry, he’s married, so he’s forgotten how to talk to women.’

  ‘And how to look at them, listen to them and be within fifteen feet of them,’ she added, reaching out and turning on the lights. ‘He seems nice though.’

  ‘Does he? He was only here for a minute, you couldn’t get to know him properly,’ I joked. ‘Wow, this is all yours as well?’

  ‘It is,’ she said, skipping into the middle of the room with her arms stretched up over her head. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s great,’ I told her. It really was. I pushed all thoughts of Liv out of my mind and concentrated on work. The space was about half the size of the main bar downstairs but it was perfectly sized for what she had in mind. A cool, 1960s speakeasy, all sunken seating, low lighting and cool, ugly patterns. Definitely a hot spot for the cool kids. ‘We can definitely work with this.’

  ‘I’m so happy you like it.’ Her face was flushed and she held her hands behind her back. ‘It’s not like I’m not excited about the main bar, but that’s Jim’s baby, really, and I can’t stop thinking about this. It would be so nice to have something that’s just mine.’

  ‘I understand,’ I assured her. ‘I get that.’

  She grinned and did a little dance on the spot, eyes shining with such genuine joy that I couldn’t fight the same smile on my own face. I looked at her, her plush red lips, the shiny hair, wide set, dark eyes and insane body – and none of it mattered. She stopped being the sum of her parts and became something so much more. She looked at me and I saw someone who was entirely happy. Happy with her life and happy I was there to be a part of it. If Chris was right and things were over with Liv, if Liv was already looking for someone else, I would have to be insane to walk away from this moment.

  Fuelled by a confidence I didn’t really feel and the very idea of Liv so much as swiping right, with one quick and certain step, I moved towards her, slid my hands around her face, thumbs nestling under her cheekbones, fingertips winding into her hair, and kissed her.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Jane broke away, shoving me clear across the room and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She was unnervingly strong for such a slim woman.

  ‘What?’ I recovered myself, one hand on the wall, one hand in the air, my balls shrinking back up inside myself.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve got a bloody girlfriend.’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to.’ I was very confused. Confused, embarrassed, and still incredibly horny. It was shit being a man sometimes.

  ‘Why would I want to kiss someone who has a girlfriend?’ she asked, scrubbing at her mouth again until the skin around it was bright red. ‘God, Adam. That’s not on.’

  ‘But I thought …’ I ducked my head, ashamed. What an absolute, first-class wanker I was turning out to be.

  ‘Yeah, I like you.’ Jane began to calm, very, very slightly. ‘But I don’t get off with other people’s boyfriends.’ She looked at the floor, examining her ankle boots, and then back up at me. ‘You have still got a girlfriend?’

  ‘Sort of. I don’t actually know.’ I wondered how much damage I would do if I were to throw myself out the window. Even if I didn’t, I might still just die of pure embarrassment. Was that possible? It certainly felt possible. ‘Jane, I’m sorry. I’m such a dick, please don’t … I don’t know. I’m really sorry. I’ll go.’

  With her eyes closed, she sighed loudly as I skulked back towards the staircase, face flaming. It was beyond me how I thought kissing Jane might make anything better. Other than my brother before he got married, what kind of arse kisses someone when he’s still got a girlfriend? Even if said girlfriend might be seeing other people, it was still a dick
move. Especially given that said girlfriend might be seeing other people because she thinks I’m seeing other people. The thought that the entire situation might be a hole, all of my own making, made me feel light-headed and sick and desperately in need of a quiet lie down. Tom was right, what the fuck was wrong with me?

  ‘Adam, don’t go,’ Jane called, just as I reached the staircase, ready to run far, far away and never return. I looked back to see her, one hand on her hip, the other pressed against her forehead. ‘You don’t have to go. You just got carried away, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly, ready to agree to anything. ‘I did and I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘OK then.’ She seemed to be talking more to herself than to me. ‘But you need to know I won’t get involved with someone who is already involved.’

  ‘Right. I’m really—’

  ‘If you say you’re sorry again I’m afraid I’m going to have to glass you,’ Jane said with a tentative attempt at a smile.

  ‘One hundred per cent professional from here on out,’ I swore as the tension in the room began to ebb away into something more like awkward discomfort, still less than desirable but something I could live with for the time being as long as it meant I wasn’t fired. What a twazzock.

  ‘We can be friends,’ Jane relented, winding down her shoulders. ‘I want to be friends. But I’m not that girl, Adam. I wouldn’t do that to your girlfriend. It’s not right.’

  I nodded and she placed a hand on my shoulder as she walked back towards the steep, narrow staircase.

  ‘No, I agree, you’re right.’ I breathed in as she passed to give her as much room as humanly possible. ‘Just friends, totally cool.’

  She paused for just a second and held my eyes with hers and pressed a hand against my chest.

  ‘But I’m not saying that things couldn’t be different if you were single,’ she said before pulling away her hand. ‘But you’re not.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I agreed, breathless.

  With a nod, she jogged lightly down the stairs and I heard Jim’s voice call her name from the front door. Glued to the spot, I closed my eyes and waited for the feeling to come back into my legs. We were so far past a teaspoon moment. I’d need an entire canteen of cutlery before I could greet her brother with a straight face.

  Why couldn’t anything ever be simple?

  22

  I was lying on the settee, enjoying a particularly intense staring contest with the cat when I heard a knock at the door. Almost anyone who might be at my door in the first place had their own key and even those who didn’t would let themselves in, so I stayed put for a second knock before displacing Daniel Craig and traipsing down to see who it might be.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Clearly,’ my mother replied, shaking off her umbrella in the doorway and waiting for me to step aside and let her in. ‘I do hope Cassie gets better weather tomorrow, it’s been very up and down of late. The forecast is for sun but who knows what we’ll get?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, following her quick step up the stairs and holding out my arms for her discarded mac. ‘I didn’t know you were coming over.’

  ‘Clearly.’ She cast a disapproving eye over the flat as she stepped inside. I’d started cleaning up, really I had, but after a busy Saturday morning at the surgery, sitting down with a cup of tea and the last chapter of Wish It. Want It. Do It. had proven far too tempting. ‘Your father said the flat was a disgrace.’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ I argued, draping her jacket over an epic ironing pile and Daniel Craig slunk underneath, out of sight.

  ‘For you, no,’ she agreed, busying herself in the kitchen. ‘But then he didn’t spend a lot of time in your room as a teenager.’

  ‘Let me make the tea,’ I offered as she rifled through half-empty boxes of teabags, looking for something that met her approval. ‘You sit down.’

  ‘Your dad is concerned about the surgery.’

  Apparently she didn’t want to sit down.

  ‘And I’m concerned about you.’

  ‘No need to be concerned,’ I assured her. She turned her grey-blue eyes in my direction and I could see I wasn’t going to get off that easily. ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said, fully aware I was incapable of lying to her once she had insisted on ‘the truth’. It was as though she’d had a wicked fairy cast a spell on me at birth, I was powerless against that command. ‘It’s not like you to behave like this.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked, fighting the compulsion to tell her everything and genuinely curious as to how she thought I was behaving.

  Mum carried on making the tea, warming the pot with freshly boiled water, resetting the kettle and emptying the teapot into the sink before adding two teabags and pouring in the water.

  ‘You’re not yourself,’ she replied, one hand on the teapot, the other on her denim-clad hip. I looked down at my own ripped knee skinnies and then back at her sensible high-waisted, straight leg jeans. Thinking about it, hers were probably more on trend than mine. ‘I should have known when you turned up at your dad’s birthday in that dress.’

  ‘It was a very nice dress.’ I crossed my arms over my feeble bosom. ‘Possibly not entirely appropriate, I will give you that, but still, very nice.’

  ‘Not the word I would have used.’ She sat my one and only tray on the coffee table between us, two clean mugs with exactly half an inch of milk in the bottom of each and a steaming pot of tea in the middle. ‘First you run out on the party, then your dad says you’re giving him grief about the new vet.’

  I made a grumbling sound that couldn’t quite be considered words and reached out to pour my tea.

  ‘Leave it,’ Mum said briskly. ‘It needs two more minutes. Olivia, what’s the matter?’

  Until I met Adam’s family, I’d always felt like me and my parents were close but it turned out geographically that ‘nearby’ and ‘close’ weren’t exactly the same thing. Compared to Abi’s family, we were the Waltons. Not once had my mother slapped my father in the middle of parents’ evening and neither of them had ever declared the other a whoring witch in the nearest big Tesco, but at the same time we didn’t merrily spend time together the way the Floyds did. Adam actually chose to hang out with his parents; there was no such thing as a dutiful Sunday lunch around his house, it was all unlocked doors, ‘just popped in to say hello’ and Tuesday night fajitas. They had been on holiday together, as adults, more than once.

  I loved my parents, but even though I worked with Dad, we didn’t spend an awful lot of time together. If we were both in the surgery, it was because we were both busy and conversation outside of work stayed strictly superficial – who in the village had what illness, the price of eggs these days, whether or not someone had been cheating on Bake Off. And so Mum’s surprise visit was alarming enough without her wanting to have an actual conversation about actual real life.

  ‘Is it Adam?’ she pressed.

  ‘No, well, yes – but not just Adam.’ I couldn’t stand another second of this without the galvanizing power of tea. I grabbed the teapot, turned it twice, and poured it as my mother’s thin lips disappeared into her face. ‘I’ve got a lot going on. But I’m not giving Dad grief, I’m just not sure I agree with the way he wants to do things.’

  ‘That I don’t understand,’ she replied, pushing her wispy blonde fringe out of her eyes. ‘Your dad has been running that place since before you were born; why would you not want his help?’

  ‘I do want his help,’ I said, pulling on a loose thread left by a missing button on my shirt. ‘But I don’t want him telling me what I have to do with the rest of my life.’

  I knew how I sounded, the look on her face just confirmed it.

  ‘I’m not being difficult.’ I read her mind to save her some time. ‘But I don’t agree that getting a new vet in and taking me away from the animals to sit in an office doing paperwork is the best way to run the business. If he wants me to run the business he needs to let
me do it my way. Mum, I’m thirty.’

  Mum held my gaze, her eyes calm and steady, while I fidgeted in my seat. This was the part where she waited for me to confess, apologize and promise never to do it again. Only I hadn’t done anything wrong and there was no apology coming.

  ‘You could start acting like it,’ she suggested, ignoring my shocked gasp. ‘What’s going on with you and Adam?’

  Ooh, distract me with an insult then throw in the real question. Sneaky diversion from Addison the Elder.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ I told her, noting her tactics for future use. ‘We’re on a break.’

  She looked at me before she spoke and I flushed uncomfortably under the weight of her blue eyes. It wasn’t the usual ‘look at the state of you’ glance, she was really paying attention.

  ‘There are a lot of things I might have done differently with my life, if I’d had the chance,’ she began. ‘If I were your age, believe me Olivia, I’d be out there doing it all. But the one thing I have never doubted was the fact your father was the right man for me. I want the same thing for you.’

  ‘How do you know, though?’ I wasn’t convinced. As far as I was aware, and as far as I ever wanted to be aware, my dad was the only boyfriend she’d ever had. ‘There are what, seven billion people in the world and I’m supposed to know some bloke I met in the local supermarket is the one, just because? I haven’t even met all my Facebook friends in real life, let alone every eligible man on the planet.’

  ‘The world was a much smaller place for me and your dad,’ Mum replied, smiling for the first time since she’d walked through my door. ‘But it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been an international jetsetter, he would still have been the one for me. There’s a lot to be said for someone who understands who you are and where you’re from – don’t underestimate how much those things matter. It’s a lot more important to find someone who appreciates the things that made you who you are today than someone with a nice bum and a Ferrari.’