by J C Williams
“Of course I don’t mind. I came for my ice cream fix, after all, and it didn’t disappoint.”
“Great, just let me pop to the ladies. My bladder is like a thimble at the moment.”
For some strange reason, Hayley felt duty-bound to continue glaring in Helen’s direction and she surprised herself as scowling came easy to her. She panicked as Helen appeared to look in her direction and then to even start walking towards her. She quickly reasoned that they’d never met, but ‘Had she seen Emma?’ she thought.
Helen stopped by the narrow bridge that joined the two sides of the harbour to each other. She appeared to look impatiently at her watch as a man rode his bike over the metal structure towards her. The man then jumped off the bike and let it collapse against the black metal railings that enclosed the quay area.
He’d clearly ridden some distance — or was exceptionally unfit — judging by the dark sweat patches that had consumed his t-shirt. He removed his helmet and sunglasses, but with the sun directly behind him, all Hayley could see was a perfect silhouette.
Hayley felt somewhat voyeuristic, like she had a cameo in a cheesy soap opera — it was bizarrely compelling. She tilted her head and used the hair that fell on her face as cover to continue her observation.
The man gradually eased out of the shadows as he reached for something from the pocket of his shorts. They both quickly looked around them, like drug dealers checking the coast was clear. Hayley did actually contemplate that as a possibility for a moment. She got a clear glimpse of them both and slid down on the bench in an attempt to conceal herself. She placed the palm of her hand across her face and took one final look of confirmation through her open fingers.
“Shit,” she said aloud, “shit, shit, shit, shitting shit.” She received an alarmed look from a passing family who moved an extra step away from her, being careful to give her a wide berth.
She had to look again to confirm it, but sure enough, it was Jack. She leapt to her feet and stood directly outside the toilet entrance, using her body to obscure the view. She was willing them to move on. There was not a chance that Emma wouldn’t recognise him from this distance. She was starting to panic; she didn’t need the toilet but now had an overwhelming desire to go for a pee.
She’d always been a hopeless liar; her cheeks flushed when she wasn’t telling the truth and one eye appeared to move independently of the other.
“Emma… hi,” she said in a particularly squeaky pitch. “You okay? Nice wee?” Nice wee? What the hell was that? she thought.
“You feeling alright, Hayley? You look a bit peaky,” Emma asked.
“Fine,” she said, speaking at a comic and unnaturally accelerated pace. “Wonderful. Maybe caught a bit too much sun. That sounds right. Right, too much sun. Sun, sun, sun. Should we go? Let’s go. We should go. Ha-ha.”
Emma looked directly at where Jack and Helen were stood. Hayley closed her eyes and waited for the resulting reaction. There was none. She opened one eye slowly and by a sheer miracle, a coach had pulled up and begun unloading its jovial holiday-makers, obscuring the view at least for the moment.
Hayley took her by the hand and tugged gently, but firmly, leading them in the direction of the car which, fortunately, was parked on the opposite side of the seafront. When she was nervous she tended to waffle… a lot.
She was incessant on the journey home.
Emma wasn’t listening, still focused on the surprise of seeing Helen. ‘Should I have said, hello?’ she thought. ‘Perhaps I should have said hello.’
Hayley didn’t know what to do. She needed space to think. As much as she loved Emma, she was pleased to finally drop her off.
Emma was also relieved; her friend was being a complete nutter.
Hayley had hoped to see Jack stood in the window of their flat, as he often did, and she’d know it was a case of mistaken identity.
“No Jack, to meet you?” asked Hayley, hopeful.
“No,” said Emma. “He’s gone out for a big bike ride today!”
“Ha… aaah… wonderful,” said Hayley, now making strange noises. “Well, lots of love!”
Emma watched her drive off and for a moment wondered if she should have taken the keys out of the ignition, such was the state of the unusual behaviour.
Hayley drove to the main road and pulled over at the earliest possible opportunity. She reached into her handbag and grabbed her phone. She smashed the numbers into the handset and waited impatiently.
“Yes, hi, I’m good, thanks.” She bobbed her head trying to interrupt. “Peel. For an ice-cream. Yes, but listen, that’s not why I’m phoning. I need your help, Pete. I don’t know what to do.”
Pete was a drama queen who thrived on gossip like a panda does bamboo. He was discreet when required and had become a trusted confidant to Hayley, particularly when her sexual orientation first became known. She didn’t know where to turn, but knew Pete would know what to do.
She also knew that he would keep his mouth shut, particularly as those involved were his closest friends. He was as excited as anyone that they were having a baby and moving house. He was constantly coming into the shop with interior design ideas for the house, and the new baby would be the best-dressed child in the Western Hemisphere.
“Thanks, I’ll be there in about ten minutes, Pete,” she said, driving in a blur.
Hayley’s nervous energy had now drained away, replaced by a sickening feeling inside. She couldn’t get it out of her head how Emma would be sat alone in their flat, making plans for the future, while her boyfriend was meeting up with his ex-girlfriend behind her back. The realisation of what may happen when she found out was not lost on Hayley. She knew she’d have to tell her, but when, and how? She had half a mind to turn the car around and tell her.
She shook her head and gripped tightly onto the steering wheel. “Jack, what the fuck are you doing!” she shouted.
Pete was stood on the doorway of his neat end-of-terrace townhouse. He was wearing pink denim shorts, which provided a brief, welcome distraction. He stood with his arms folded and had an almost serene expression, like a senior clergyman preparing to take a confession from a guilt-ridden parishioner.
He moved down the path and opened the wrought-iron gate for her. He didn’t know what the issue was, but could tell from the tone in her voice that it was important. He leaned into her and gave her a firm, reassuring embrace. He took her by the hand and escorted her back into the house.
“The phone is off the hook and I’ve turned off the internet,” he said once inside. “We won’t be disturbed. Now what on earth is going on?”
Hayley was ashen-faced, unsure where to begin.
She gratefully took the glass of something sparkling from Pete and rubbed her forehead until it reddened.
“Pete, I don’t know what to do. It’s Jack, he’s cheating on Emma with his ex-girlfriend.”
.
Chapter Eleven
W omen have many wonderful attributes, too many to articulate, but certainly one of their more impressive was the ability to say one thing but mean the absolute opposite. For men, this can be confusing and, on occasion, mildly irritating. Emma was by nature easy-going and, more often than not, the one who would pull other people out of the doldrums. Jack had been ‘treading on eggshells’ for most of the previous evening and during the morning’s rush.
“Is, eh, everything okay, Emma?” he asked on several occasions.
“I’m fine,” she replied on several occasions. It was clear she wasn’t, but Jack was stuck between a rock and hard place: keep asking and annoy her, or don’t ask and annoy her. He reasoned that being pregnant would send her hormones haywire, but from experience, if you mention hormones, period timings, and other female delights, they often end up being thrown, with force, back in your face. Jack reasoned that he was best keeping his mouth shut.
At the shop, Jack was doing his best to keep out of trouble and scrubbed the tables nearest to the window. He gripped the cloth in his hand a
s he thought of his recent rendezvous with Helen. His phone buzzed in his pocket; it was a message from Pete. ‘Outside now, dickhead,’ it read.
Jack was unsure how to take this. Was it a statement or a command? Jack had not been a stranger to people wanting to smash his face in over the years, and the very phrase in the text message had been used on him on numerous occasions, once by a butch prostitute in Prague with questionable gender.
Jack re-read the text and peered out of the shop window. He ran his eyes up and down the street, but there was no sign of Pete. There was a side street opposite the shop with a narrow lane running off it. He could see a solitary head floating behind the building on the corner; it was Pete trying to look inconspicuous. When he was sure he’d caught Jack’s eye, Pete gave a firm hand gesture signalling him to get his ass over there — although from Pete there could have been several connotations.
Jack looked over his shoulder and Emma was busy serving two customers at the till. He moved cautiously due to the bizarre nature of the text. For a moment, he considered this may be an ambush. ‘Had Pete been kidnapped?’ he thought.
Once outside, Jack walked on the opposite side of the road to allow maximum visibility of the narrow lane. There was no obvious indication of foul play. Regardless, he held his palms out as he approached, poised to deliver a deftly-targeted karate chop.
“Pete, what are you doing skulking around back alleys, I thought the judge told you to stop that? And what’s with the abusive text?”
Without notice, Pete slapped him on the face. Well, the tips of his fingers made contact with Jack’s cheek. The contact was minimal — and in certain circumstance could be considered foreplay— but with the stern expression, the intent was clear.
“What the hell was that?” asked Jack, rubbing his face.
“You big shithead!”
Pete wasn’t fantastic with confrontation and the start of this conversation wasn’t going as planned.
“Okay, Pete, back up, what’s going on?”
Pete looked around to make sure nobody was within earshot before speaking. The coast was clear.
“You and Helen, that’s what’s up!”
Jack made a pained noise and fidgeted with the button on his polo shirt. He was clearly looking for something to say, but he had nothing. He just stared at Pete and, to the uninitiated, they looked like two lovers having a tiff.
“How do you know?” pleaded Jack.
Pete relished his reputation as the King of Gossip. He gave a long, deliberate pause before answering. “I have my sources,” he said with a dramatic flick of his head.
“Hayley?”
“Okay, that was a lucky guess, but yes, Hayley. Poor girl has been in tears since she saw you both together.”
“Shit! Is that why Emma has been so off with me?”
“What? Good god, no, she didn’t tell her. Emma saw Helen, but she didn’t see you turn up.”
“Hang on,” said Jack. “Emma’s in a shit mood with me because she saw Helen, but she doesn’t know that I met up with Helen?” He let that thought sink in for a brief moment. “Emma is going to go mental when she finds out.”
“Hayley didn’t tell her, but she’s in a right state, she doesn’t know what to do. What the hell are you doing having an illicit meeting with your ex? Are you having an affair? If you’re cheating on Emma, I’m going to take my shoe off and beat you with it— it’s got a heel!”
Jack looked like he was sucking a sour sweet.
“Pete, are you seriously asking me if I’m cheating on Emma? Have you seen Emma? — she’s drop-dead gorgeous. I’m punching so far above my weight that I’m waiting for a referee to throw the towel in. So, not only do you think I’m cheating on the most beautiful and wonderful woman that I’ve ever met, you think I’d want to get back with the bitch who ripped my heart out and left me and Horace alone?”
It was pretty obvious from the reaction that there was nothing going on.
Jack put his hands around his head. “If Emma has seen Helen,” he continued, “I’m going to have to come clean.”
“Emma isn’t mad at you because Helen is back, she’s probably just feeling insecure.”
“She will be when she knows I met with Helen!”
“Well why on earth did you meet her, then?” asked Pete.
“It’s your fault, anyway!” said Jack.
Pete screwed up his face. “How on earth is this my fault?”
“Because you delivered the bloody letter from her in the first place!”
“What? How’s that logical?”
“Aww, it’s not, I know.” Jack slid his back down the wall and crouched with his head resting on his knees.
“Why did she want to meet?”
“Who?”
“Barbara Streisand… who do you bloody think.”
“Sorry, Pete. I’m thinking of Emma’s face when she finds out. Right, Helen wrote to me about three weeks ago. I recognised the writing on the envelope straight off. It was the same as that on the chequebook stub when she cleared me out. Anyway, long story short, she heard about the success of the shop and wants her cut. She was happy to leave me with the debt when it was going down the pan, but a glimmer of hope and she’s trying to get her nose in the trough.”
“Tell her to fuck off!” said Pete thoughtfully.
“I did. Then another letter came, this time with some solicitor’s name across the top.”
“What the hell does she want? I never liked her anyway, that one.”
“She wants money.”
“I don’t understand, if she left you, how do you owe her money?”
“She’s on the lease for the shop, probably a finer point I should have had changed years ago. So… technically she still owns half of the shop with me. She’s trying to get her stubby fingers into the profit on the shop and because the other shops were spawned out of the ashes of this one, she thinks she can get some of that as well. Bitch.”
“Bitch!” said Pete in an even higher pitch.
“She wants fifty-thousand pounds to sign over the shop.”
“But can she do that?”
“Aww, I don’t know. I need to go and pay a lawyer and that’s going to cost. I met her to say I’d give her five thousand. I mean, I’d end up paying that on lawyers anyway. She told me to get lost. Do you know what? She didn’t even ask how Horace was. How the hell am I going to break this to him?”
“Let her take you to court, Jack. Let her spend her cash in the first instance.”
“How am I going to break this to Emma?”
“She’ll be fine. You should tell her sooner rather than later, in case someone else saw you and draws the wrong conclusion.”
“Like you two?”
“Well, to be fair, you can understand why. Anyway, if she wants money, tell her to get her ass in the shop and do some work.”
Jack shook his head. “It’s not the shop I’m overly concerned with, it’s the new house.”
“How can she possibly get her claws into your new house? And how does she even know about it?”
Jack’s shoulders dropped. “I told her, like the bloody idiot I am. I wanted her to know how well I was doing without her.”
“I’m still not with you. How can she have any claim on the house?”
“She can’t. But she’d take great pleasure in telling the bank that I don’t own the shop. I’ve got a mortgage on the new house and told them that I own the shop with Emma, therefore the profits are ours. As this would now appear to not be the case, I’ve lied on my bloody mortgage application. At best, they could pull the plug on the mortgage, at worst prosecute me for fraud. Pete, this is a bloody nightmare… and I’m getting a cold,” he said, wiping his nose.
Jack was still crouched, virtually in a seating position with his head in his hands. Pete could see he was upset and stood in front of him and placed his hands onto Jack’s shoulders. Pete didn’t speak and the two of them had a moment of quiet reflection, a moment of quiet reflectio
n rudely interrupted…
… by the siren of a police car that pulled to a halt at the end of the lane. Pete’s comforting gesture had placed him directly in front of Jack, whose head was unfortunately located in front of his crotch.
The sound of the siren had panicked Pete, who instinctively gripped harder on Jack’s shoulders and lurched forwards. As the concerned policeman climbed out of the car, Pete’s crotch was now firmly attached to Jack’s head, which left Jack struggling for breath. Desperate for air, he grabbed Pete’s buttocks in an attempt to move them but from a distance it appeared that he was initiating further thrusting action.
Pete jumped back and away from Jack and raised his hands to protest his innocence. To compound the current situation, Pete now had the snot from Jack’s nose dripping down the front of his pale blue shorts, although it didn’t look like snot in its current location.
“Okay, boys. Sorry to break up this little party,” said the policeman sarcastically. “We had reports of two men fighting, but it certainly looks like the two of you have made up now!”
“This is not what it looks like,” said Jack. He was interrupted by Pete, who was discreetly pointing towards Jack’s nose. The remaining source of the snot was now running down the side of Jack’s cheek. He wiped it away and began his vain attempt to rectify the situation. “Oh, I don’t believe this, I’m about to lose my house, my business, and now I’m going to be arrested for sucking you off.”
Jack desperately looked up and down the street. “Look, over there,” he said to the policeman. pointing to a CCTV camera. “That will prove I wasn’t… being overly friendly. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve had to rely on CCTV to get me out of a scrape, ha-ha,” he said nervously.
“Whatever, but you two are coming with me, and for the love of God, will you wipe that mess up… both of you.”
Jack warily opened the door to the coffee shop. He’d been stood outside for the previous fifteen minutes deciding on how best to tell Emma.
“Where the hell have you been?” said Emma, embracing Jack. “I thought you’d been kidnapped or hit by a car.”
