by Holly Martin
* * *
Libby was writing furiously, the words coming easier than they had for a long time, when she was disturbed by the buzzer being pressed insistently. She glanced at the bottom of her screen and realised she had written over two thousand words since she had left George earlier that morning. As the buzzer didn’t seem to show any sign of stopping any time soon, she rushed to the intercom, pressed the entry button without checking and flung open the door.
A big bunch of flowers were suddenly shoved into her face. Yellow roses. They smelt amazing.
‘Delivery for Miss Joseph,’ came a muffled voice.
She took them in confusion. ‘Thanks.’
The delivery man, who clearly didn’t get a lot of satisfaction from his job, mumbled something to himself, and left.
She took the flowers to the dining room table and admired them. They were beautiful. But who was sending her flowers? She took the envelope from the depths of the bouquet, and opened it.
To My Lovely Libby, I’m very much looking forward to our second date tonight, yours George x. PTO.
She flipped it over and read the message on the back.
Seven days before Christmas my true love gave to me…
She smiled, grabbed one of the roses and ran across the hall, letting herself into his flat. George was in the shower; she hovered for a second, then clamped a hand over her eyes, and pushed open the bathroom door.
‘Jesus, Libby,’ came George’s angry voice as what sounded like a bottle of shower gel clattered to the floor.
‘I can’t see anything.’
The shower was suddenly turned off and the cubicle door was opened. There was something very tantalising about having him naked and wet and so close. She stifled a giggle, as she heard him get out in front of her and wrap a towel round himself.
‘I just wanted to say thank you for the flowers, they’re beautiful.’ She risked a peep through her fingers, and thankfully he was now decent. She took her hand away and tried to gauge whether he was really angry. She brandished the flower as a peace offering and he took it begrudgingly.
‘The normal response is to text your thanks,’ he said, grumpily.
‘I’ll text you when I get back.’ She checked her watch. ‘I better get back actually. I did say I would pop up and see Kat later, what with Dave being out on the farm all day.’
‘Good luck. She’s one mad, scary pregnant lady.’
‘George! She’s not mad, she’s just fed up. I hope you’ll be more understanding when you have your own kids.’
‘Sorry, you know I love Kat, but you’ve got to admit, she has gone a bit… unhinged.’
Libby didn’t say anything, knowing it would be disloyal to Kat to do so, but she did think that poor Dave was having a bit of a rough time.
‘Polly and Linda are holding a cake sale at lunchtime, all the money they make this afternoon is going straight to the Lifeboat appeal. If I get back in time I said I’d go,’ Libby said.
‘Mmmm, I do like Polly’s cakes; I’ll probably pop along myself.’
‘You like Polly, you mean,’ she said, feeling a sudden unexpected surge of jealousy.
‘What’s not to like? A beautiful woman who can bake, she’s like my dream wife.’
George must have seen the frown on her face, because he caught her hand. ‘But I bet her bacon sandwiches aren’t anywhere near as amazing as yours. I hear rumours that there are white chocolate and raspberry muffins.’
‘I hear…’ Libby looked around to make sure no one could hear them, ‘that there’s rum and raisin fudge.’
‘Well, that’s definitely my treat then.’
‘I’m a very cheap date, George, one bag of rum and raisin fudge and I’m anybody’s.’
‘And what if I buy you every scrap of fudge in the shop?’
‘Mmmm, I wouldn’t let you out of the bedroom for a week.’
‘Jesus Lib, what are we still doing here, there’s fudge to be bought.’
She laughed. ‘Well, I’ll see you this afternoon for our date – if I don’t see you drooling all over Polly at the cake sale later?’
She left, suddenly vowing that she would learn to cook.
* * *
Wednesdays were Amy’s day off, in the sense it was the only day she didn’t work; well, not for money. She volunteered for the local charity Cancer Awareness. Her boss, Mia, was one of the most colourful people she knew and she loved her dearly. Mia had lost her own husband to cancer years before, and had since set up the charity to bring more awareness to people. Every Wednesday Amy would be doing something different, sometimes face painting in White Cliff Bay or selling cakes to raise money for cancer research, sometimes it would be liaising with the local surgery and taking a tour bus to nearby towns and villages offering free health checks and sometimes… her day was… a little bit odd.
She surveyed herself in the mirror, laughing at the costume that Mia had brought round the day before. If she thought dressing up as a blackberry was bad, this was a million times worse.
Today she was a penis. A seven-foot-tall penis complete with two large round hairy testicles that her feet had slotted into. Mia wanted her to promote awareness of testicular cancer. Amy’s job was to go up and hug as many men as she could and once they had calmed down from being attacked by a seven-foot penis, she was then to hand out a leaflet about testicular cancer and the importance of regular checks.
Mia certainly had a good imagination.
Amy had a short while before the taxi came, so she walked backwards and forwards across the lounge trying to get used to moving with the costume. The head of the penis kept dragging on the ceiling, rather painfully she imagined.
As she neared the back window, her heart dropped. The wind was up today and her little rotary line had been blown over. Her knickers that she had washed and hung out earlier were nowhere to be seen.
Opening the French windows, she stepped outside, wondering where they were. Then she saw a spotted pair, fluttering like a flag on one of the bushes that divided her garden and Judith’s. Shuffling closer, she saw to her horror that every single pair of her knickers – stripy ones, lacy ones, flowery ones – were now dotted over Judith’s garden like rare tropical butterflies.
What was the protocol in a case like this? Could she go round, knock on her door and politely ask for her knickers back like a kid asking for her ball? But what if Judith refused and spitefully kept all her knickers? Those were some of her best ones out there in the garden. Would it be best to forget them and buy a whole new drawer full? But that would still mean Judith finding them, and knowing her, she would probably think that Amy had done it deliberately. Realising that the only course of action was to retrieve them before Judith noticed, she shuffled closer to the small dividing wall at the top of her garden. The penis costume had taken ages to get into and she didn’t have time to get out of it and back into it before the taxi came.
She eyed the low wall and, praying that Judith wasn’t near her window, she took a deep breath and rolled herself over the top.
* * *
Judith was sitting in her lounge, bored. The book club she had started many years before had seemed a good idea at the time. But the ladies who frequented it were as dull as ditch water. They talked about their plants, their grandchildren, the latest cake recipes, none of which interested her. And the books they read, she hated every single one of them. Over the last four years, they had read and deliberated over Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Moby Dick, Middlemarch, War and Peace and even some of the works of Shakespeare. She had rented Much Ado About Nothing on DVD, rather than reading it, just so she could have something to talk about. She’d actually really enjoyed it, though that might have something to do with the rather lovely Denzel Washington, rather than the quality of the book. Upstairs, by her bed, waiting to be read, was Eclipse, the third instalment in the Twilight Saga, the latest story by Eve Loveheart and a romance thriller by her favourite a
uthor Nora Roberts. None of which she would admit to in front of these well-to-do ladies.
What Judith wanted more than anything was to go on a world cruise, where she could curl up on a sun lounger with all manner of trashy books en-route to locations she had only dreamed of. If only Marie hadn’t made her promise to look after Seb after she had gone, she would have left White Cliff Bay years ago. Her lifestyle bored her, White Cliff Bay and its elderly residents bored her. Nothing exciting happened; it was the same day in and day out.
She looked out on her garden as Brenda, the chairwoman of the Woman’s Institute, waxed lyrical about The Christmas Carol that they were reading. Brenda was talking about the character of Scrooge and how he hadn’t changed his ways because this was the right path but because he was scared of what the future held.
Suddenly a penis rolled over the wall of the garden and started shuffling around her hedges.
Had she gone mad? She had just been reading Eve Loveheart’s book that morning, the sex scene was quite detailed; with Chad’s very large manhood, was Judith now manifesting her very own large penis?
But as the book club grew deathly quiet, and they all turned round to look at the seven-foot penis as it strode purposefully round her rockery, she knew she wasn’t hallucinating after all.
Verity Donaldson, next to her, burst out laughing. ‘Well now, that’s not something you see every day.’
‘Disgusting,’ Brenda said, huffily.
‘I don’t think so, there’s nothing wrong with the male sex organ, especially not one that big, eh, Judith?’ Verity nudged her in the side.
Judith looked at Verity, and felt a smile spread across her lips. The first smile she had felt in five years. She liked Verity, she decided. She liked her a lot.
* * *
Libby sped up the drive of Two Hill Farm as quick as the windy road would allow. She beeped her horn at Big Dave as she drove past him in his tractor and he waved hugely. Pulling up outside the large farmhouse, she let herself into the cosy warmth of the kitchen.
‘Kat?’ she called, moving into the empty hallway.
‘Up here,’ sobbed Kat and Libby’s blood turned to ice in her veins. Taking the stairs three at a time she ran quickly into their bedroom. Kat was sitting on the bed, sobbing.
Libby quickly enveloped her into a big hug, not an easy feat considering how huge she was.
‘What’s wrong, what’s happened?’ she said, into the side of her hair.
‘I can’t put my shoes on, I’ve been trying for the last hour and I just can’t do it.’ Kat wiped her nose, noisily.
Libby sighed with relief, and pulled back. ‘Well, I can help with that.’
She kneeled at Kat’s feet, tugged her boots on and did up the shoelaces, then she heaved her to her feet, noticing she was wearing one of Dave’s shirts and his tracksuit bottoms today.
‘So, where are you going now you’ve got your shoes on?’
‘I was going to go down to the field and shout at Dave,’ Kat said, like a petulant child.
‘Well sure, that sounds like something worth doing … but how about I take you out for an ice cream instead, and then if you really want to shout at Dave when you come back, we’ll both go down there and throw our shoes at him?’
Kat wiped her nose again. ‘I do like ice cream.’
‘Well, you can have a sundae if you want, with marshmallows, and sauce and chocolate brownie pieces. Amy’s not working there today but she’s working nearby. If we’re lucky we may see a big penis molesting some poor unsuspecting men as we eat.’
‘A penis?’ Kat sniffed, her eyes lighting up.
Libby grinned. ‘I’ll explain on the way.’
* * *
Kat sat opposite Libby with love in her eyes. The sundae she had chosen, the triple chocolate, strawberry and coconut dream, was almost as big as her head.
Libby’s two scoops of mince pie ice cream looked tiny in comparison.
Sucking the chopped nuts off her spoon, Libby glanced out the window as the seven-foot penis chased a man down the road. The man looked genuinely terrified but Amy was unrelenting.
For a big girl, dressed in what Libby presumed was a heavy costume, Amy was very fit – the penis was moving very quickly.
She smiled. It was when Amy had been working for Mia that they had first met. Libby had been living in White Cliff Bay for about three weeks and had been driving back from Apple Hill along the windy lanes when Amy’s little red Mini had swerved across a sharp bend, cutting Libby up and ending up in a field of sheep that barely moved as the Mini came to rest amongst them.
Libby had leapt out to see if the occupant of the car was OK, but when the six foot tall, oversized breast struggled to remove itself from the innards of the Mini, its nipple getting caught in the steering wheel, Libby had burst out laughing. It had taken a full five minutes for the breast to get out of the car, and Libby had been almost powerless to help, she had been so crippled with laughter.
Eventually, Amy had emerged, the nipple looking decidedly deflated, apologised profusely, and they had been best friends ever since.
It was, she supposed, her fault that Amy had now developed this inappropriate infatuation with Seb. The Bubble and Froth hadn’t even registered on Amy’s radar until she made friends with Libby as it was on the far reaches of the town. Amy had moved to White Cliff Bay with a previous boyfriend two years before Libby had moved there, and once they had become friends Libby had persuaded her to come to the Bubble and Froth. Since then Amy had been coming two or three times a week. She had started doing the odd shift there and that was when the crush had properly started, though perhaps the reason for her working in the pub was because of the crush.
They had laughed about it, when it first started. Amy would talk, out of Seb’s earshot, quite lewdly, of what she would like to do to him. But they both knew that it wasn’t going to lead anywhere, like having a crush on Chris Hemsworth. But as the months went by, the feelings Amy had for him had gone from being a silly little crush to being full-blown head over heels in love. Libby felt for Amy, because Seb just didn’t see her like that, not at all. He was, as far as Libby could tell, still in love with his dead wife, and always would be.
Suddenly, outside, Amy stumbled and, as the penis came crashing to the ground, she managed to knock the poor man she was chasing over as well.
Kat nearly choked on her ice cream as she spluttered with laughter and Libby would have found it funny as well, if she had been watching a comedy sketch on TV and not her best friend hitting the ground so hard.
Leaving Kat to chuckle into her ice cream, Libby ran outside.
‘Get off me,’ said the man, struggling to extricate himself from under the penis.
‘Ow, my hair,’ came Amy’s muffled voice, somewhere near his groin.
The head of the penis was smacking the man in the face.
‘Stop moving, please,’ Amy whined.
Libby barged through the crowd that was already starting to form and fell to her knees as the penis and the man struggled.
‘Stop, both of you,’ she ordered and to her surprise they both froze.
‘Are either of you hurt?’
‘No,’ mumbled Amy and the man shook his head.
‘My hair is caught in his belt,’ Amy mumbled again.
Crouching closer to the man’s hips, Libby bent her head to have a look. Amy’s face was resting on the man’s crotch, a large chunk of her fringe trapped in the belt buckle.
‘You alright kid?’ Libby asked softly.
Amy nodded, then winced when it was clearly painful to do so.
Sliding her hands under the large penis, Libby very slowly, very carefully undid the belt. It was awkward, and her hand was almost certainly brushing against the man’s groin as well. Eventually, after a few minutes, she managed to free Amy from her constraints.
Amy sat up, smacking the man in the face one last time with the head of the penis.
The crowd around them now was huge – cle
arly this was the most entertaining thing that had happened in White Cliff Bay for some time now.
Deeply humiliated, the man scrabbled to his feet, and shooting Amy a scathing look, he barged his way through the cheering throng and disappeared.
Libby looked back at her, biting down a smirk.
‘Libby Joseph…’
‘Come on, Amy, you’ve got to see the funny side.’
She scowled at her.
‘Would you like an ice cream to cheer you up?’
‘That would drive Marcus mad, me going into his ice cream shop dressed like this.’
‘Then all the more reason to do it.’
Amy smiled wickedly and Libby stood and hauled her to her feet.
Amy followed her into the shop and sure enough Marcus came running round the counter, waving his hands at Amy to stop her.
‘No, no, no, you can’t come in here,’ Marcus said trying to push the penis out of the shop.
Kat’s laughing in the corner went up an octave.
Marcus was a small, very round man with a moustache like a walrus, but he had some strength in him. With Amy planting her feet and refusing to leave and Marcus trying to shove the penis out through the door, the head of the penis kept banging the bell above the door, so even if the customers hadn’t noticed the arrival of the seven-foot penis, they certainly had now.
‘Please leave,’ Marcus murmured, wrestling with one of the testicles as he tried to prise it back through the doorway.
Kat was now crying into her ice cream, finding it hard to draw breath she was laughing so hard.
‘Marcus, stop pushing, stop it,’ muttered Amy, ‘get your hands off me or I’ll sue you for sexual harassment.’
Marcus froze mid push, his face going pale.
Libby looked away so Marcus wouldn’t see her smirk. Amy had threatened Marcus with a lawsuit almost every week since she started work there. Every time they had a disagreement she threatened to sue him. Over the last six months she had accused him of sexism, ageism, racism on account of Amy being Welsh, heightism and weightism. She just had to mention the words solicitor or lawsuit and Marcus backed down.
