‘Come on,’ Harry said cheerfully, ‘we’ve got to get the pieces of willow first.’ He marched purposefully over to one of the trestle tables set up around the hall and grabbed a handful of willow branches.
Carmen turned and watched Violet, who was creating some kind of pyramid shape with the strips of willow. It seemed an unlikely shape if it was supposed to represent the male member. Maybe it would be decorated with phallic symbols?
She was just going to ask when her attention was taken up by the arrival of a stunningly beautiful man, well over six foot, with luminous brown eyes, regular features, and tanned – not a spray-tan tan but an outdoors, glowing, healthy tan. He looked just like the French actor Olivier Martinez with his dark good looks. In fact, he was so gorgeous Carmen was prepared to overlook the complete style no-no in her book – long black hair, pulled back in a ponytail. Plus he was accessorised with a small child, also not so good.
‘Daniel!’ Violet exclaimed, rushing over and hugging him. Pretty tightly, Carmen noted, maybe she was the girlfriend. Lucky girlfriend.
‘I’m so glad you and Millie could make it. You haven’t missed anything, we’ve only just started, but I know you could do it with your eyes shut anyway!’ She laughed, showing off a gold tongue stud – which was right up with Crocs on Carmen’s list of things she didn’t get.
Carmen was continuing to have a good old look at Daniel, well, borderline leer – pickings were thin on the ground in the hall, let’s face it – when Daniel turned in her direction and gave a broad smile, showing off white, even teeth. Well, hello! Carmen thought in delight, she might be surrounded by the Amish and wearing the hideous Crocs but she hadn’t lost her touch! As Daniel walked towards her, she could almost feel herself blush, and when he stopped in front of her she gave him her most flirty smile. Unfortunately it was lost on him as he bent down and said, ‘Hiya, Harry, how’s it going?’
Harry! He was smiling at Harry! Buggeration!
‘Give me five!’ Harry shot back. Daniel obliged and Carmen watched as the pair enacted a high-five routine that seemed to go on for ages.
Finally Daniel stood up and looked directly at Carmen. ‘Hi, I’m Daniel, and this is Millie, she’s in the same class as Harry.’ He pointed to a little girl with long blonde hair and a sweet face. ‘Jess said you’d be coming, nice to meet you.’
Ah, so this was why Jess wanted her to come to the workshop? There was a small pause when Carmen wondered if she should kiss him, as she was used to doing in old London town, but Daniel stuck out his hand, so she shook it, thinking, My, my, what a firm grip you have.
Carmen was about to ask him if he’d lived in Brighton long – unoriginal, but a start of a conversation – when Violet clapped her hands and shouted, ‘Okay, people, get lashing!’ and Daniel strode over to grab some pieces of willow and began expertly lashing them together. Carmen followed his lead with considerably less success. The willow seemed to have a will of its own and slid and slithered out of her hands; even Harry was better at lashing than she was. ‘So have you lived in Brighton long?’ she managed to ask.
‘Practically all my life. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.’ Daniel spoke quietly and seriously. ‘How are you settling in?’
‘I like it here. Of course it’s much smaller than London and I do miss the city.’
Daniel frowned. ‘Yeah, but London’s so busy, so full-on, no space, no room to breathe.’
Carmen was a Londoner by birth and loved the capital, thought it the best city in the world, second only to New York, but she detected that this might not win her brownie points with Daniel. ‘And it doesn’t have the sea. I love the sea.’ She said it with enthusiasm, hoping the comment would make Daniel realise that she was not a shallow urbanite, that she could appreciate nature.
‘I love it too.’ He rewarded Carmen with a smile.
She smiled back, and at that moment one of the pieces of willow she was trying to wrestle into place sprang back and nearly took her eye out. She was about to come out with an entirely justified Fuck! but Daniel put down his own pyramid-shaped construction and took the willow from her.
‘Tell you what, I’ll do yours and Harry’s, so long as you put the paper and the designs on it; it will still count.’
It took Daniel some five minutes to polish off the two shapes. Carmen supposed she should have been planning the design, but she was riveted by the sight of his strong, manly fingers working so quickly and expertly lashing – lashings and lashings of lovely lashing. Oh dear, she really had been spending too much time on her own.
‘All done,’ Daniel said, and Carmen looked at the two pyramid shapes in front of him.
‘Um, great, but they look absolutely nothing like a cock, do they?’ It was unfortunate that at that moment a random hush fell across the hall, so Carmen’s clearly enunciated ‘cock’ rang out clear as a bell.
Daniel looked at her in bemusement. ‘Why would they? That’s the structure for the lantern. The candle goes in the base and the whole thing will be covered in white paper decorated with designs relating to time.’
Harry and Millie were in fits of giggles, though Harry had first managed to splutter, ‘Carmen said the C word.’
Carmen wanted to retort that it wasn’t that C word, in case any of the Amish got the wrong idea and lashed her to the willow structures and burned her.
Carmen looked at Daniel. He must think she was such an idiot. ‘But I thought it was the burning of the cocks? Isn’t that why we’re here? It’s some kind of pagan, I don’t know, end-of-the-year ritual. I’ve only just moved down here, remember.’
‘It’s clocks,’ Daniel said quietly, his mouth twitching. ‘Burning of the clocks. It’s to celebrate the winter solstice.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ Carmen quipped back, though she was mortified by her mistake. ‘I was a bit worried that there might be some mass removal of children in Brighton by social services, because their parents forced them to make phallic symbols.’
‘So you’re all sorted now?’ Violet asked, advancing on Carmen. ‘It was good of Daniel to help you. Usually we expect people to make their own lanterns, it’s part of the ritual. And then when you come to burn it at the end of the procession, you can invest it with your hopes for the future and the things you want to let go of.’ She was smiling, but her eyes were not.
‘Put it this way, if Daniel hadn’t helped me, there would be no lantern to invest with anything. The last thing I made was a papier mâché lighthouse, painted red and white, with a washing-up liquid bottle for a base, when I was at primary school. My parents have still got it, not because it has any artistic merit whatsoever but because it’s practically the only thing I ever made that you could see what it was. It would be fair to say, Violet, that I am challenged in the artistic area.’ Yes, make her feel guilty for criticising her; she was bound to be so right-on she would hate upsetting anyone, even a lipstick-wearing Londoner.
Violet did not look guilty. ‘Why don’t you make a start on covering the willow structure with paper?’ She held up a lantern which was already covered in white paper and had a hook at the top for ease of carrying. ‘Here’s one I made earlier. Surely you can do that without enlisting Daniel?’ She seemed very possessive around the delicious Daniel; perhaps she really was his girlfriend.
Carmen looked over at the trestle table covered in sheets of black-and-white paper. That looked like a no-brainer. It was just a matter of slapping a bit of glue on the paper and then sticking it on the structure. Or not, as she found out a few minutes later when she managed to stick the paper everywhere but the lantern, including on the arm of her Alexander McQueen biker jacket. And she couldn’t take the jacket off as both her hands were covered in glue.
‘Harry!’ she hissed, flapping her arm around like a deranged bird. ‘Can you pull that paper off ?’
Harry did his best but only succeeded in getting it to stick more firmly to the delicate leather.
‘Here, shall I have a go?’ Daniel came t
o the rescue. Carmen held out her arm, hardly daring to look as Daniel deftly removed the paper with those very lovely, strong fingers. ‘It’s alright. It should come off, shouldn’t it?’ he said as they both looked at the sticky residue of glue which had left a snail-trail on the leather.
Carmen wanted to stamp her foot and shriek, ‘It’s Alexander McQueen, goddamit! Of course it’s not alright! I haven’t even finished paying for it yet!’ But she instinctively felt that Daniel might not approve of such an obsessive love of clothes. And she had to admit that, though Daniel was emphatically not her type – the long hair told her that – she did want him to approve of her. There was something incredibly sexy about him. Or maybe it was just those stunning good looks in the sea of Amish and that delicious hit of some woody aftershave that she kept getting whenever he was near.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Carmen said with more certainty than she felt. ‘So what’s next?’ she asked Harry briskly, trying to put on a brave face and channel all the women who had done amazing things in history – for instance, that suffragette who had jumped in front of the King’s horse and been killed, all in the cause of women getting the vote. She did not lay down her life so women like Carmen could witter on about leather jackets.
‘We have to cut out shapes from black paper and stick them on to the lantern,’ Harry informed her.
‘And that will be of clocks,’ Daniel said cheekily, maybe even flirtatiously.
‘Or anything inspired by time and space,’ Violet added pompously. ‘Like a constellation, stars scattered across the paper reflecting the enormity of the universe, and how we are just a small part of it.’
‘I’m going to do a rocket blasting off into space,’ Harry informed them enthusiastically. ‘Carmen, can you help me?’
‘Fine.’ Even she should be able to manage a rocket.
Some twenty minutes later Harry and Carmen had completed their lanterns – Carmen with stars and half moons, Harry with his rocket man theme. Carmen was a little concerned the rockets did look somewhat phallic. Daniel meanwhile had drawn and cut out shapes of a tall grandfather clock on one side of the lantern with the hands pointing to one, while black mice scampered up and down each side of the pyramid, each holding a number in their mouths. It was really striking.
‘Wow, Daniel – is that supposed to symbolise how time can run away with us?’ Violet asked earnestly.
‘Nope, Millie wanted me to do it. It’s Hickory Dickory Dock.’ He turned to Carmen and, grinning, said, ‘That would be dock, I said.’
Enough of all the cocks already! Carmen thought. She was starting to seriously overheat in her jumper, even though it was freezing in the hall.
‘Great,’ Violet said, a little tersely. ‘Well, perhaps we can tidy up now. Carmen, if you could be in charge of sweeping the floor that would be helpful, the broom’s in the corner. We really should leave the hall as we expect to find it.’
What, with a ton of crap on it? Carmen was so tempted to reply, but Violet was hot Daniel’s friend and Carmen did not want to upset her. So she shuffled off in her Crocs to get the broom. About two years’ worth of dust rose up to greet her as she started manhandling the practically bald broom across the worn floorboards. Jess was going to owe her for this big time. Everyone else had cleared everything away before Carmen was even halfway across the room and had collected a pile of dirt and dust and toddler detritus. She looked down at her black jumper and saw that it was attracting a dust colony all of its own, as were her skinny jeans. God knows what her face looked like.
‘Let me take over,’ Daniel came over. ‘You’ve had the worst job.’
Carmen blew her fringe off her forehead. ‘Thanks, are you sure?’
‘No problem.’ Daniel flashed his broad smile at her.
He was seriously lovely. Thoughtful, too. Maybe she could ask him for lunch, find out if he was connected to Violet or if there was another lady in his life. This really would be a fresh start, and then maybe she could stop thinking about Will, who might have short hair but was not as gorgeous as Daniel and was probably rubbish at lashing willow, and anyway had Tash. Carmen decided to nip to the loos and check on her appearance. She was smiling to herself as she shuffled out of the hall and headed for the Ladies.
Violet met her halfway there. ‘Finished already, Carmen? That was speedy.’
‘Actually, Daniel’s just finishing off for me.’
‘So you’re at a bit of a loose end? In that case, can you just clean the loos? Give the seats a quick wipe and squirt some bleach down them.’ She thrust a bottle of bleach at Carmen and a mangy-looking cloth. Eeow! Carmen was so shocked that she didn’t even protest but raced into the Ladies. Thankfully the loos were in pristine condition. Violet was obviously just trying to wind her up. Carmen threw the mangy cloth in the bin, did the bleach thing and scrubbed her hands. She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Thank you, Coco! The lipstick had stayed in place. She even had quite a healthy glow – it must be all the physical exercise, that and the delicious Daniel. She actually had an extra spring in her Crocs as she walked back to the hall where Daniel had finished sweeping.
He smiled as she joined him and said quietly, ‘I was wondering if you and Harry wanted to go and grab some lunch. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.’
‘Sure, and is it okay if I ask Jess and my friends along who are staying with me? They’re Londoners but they’re okay, honestly.’
Daniel looked a little confused – maybe he didn’t do her kind of humour – but said, ‘No problem.’
Carmen was so thrilled by the lunch invitation from Daniel that she was halfway down the hill leading into town before she realised that she was still shod in the evil crocs.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ she exclaimed, adding ‘Sorry,’ to Daniel as Harry and Millie shared another giggle. ‘I’m not used to being around kids, you’ve probably gathered.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Daniel replied, ‘I’m sure they’ve heard worse.’
‘Like Daddy,’ Harry piped up. ‘He’s always using the F word to Mummy.’
Carmen frowned, that didn’t sound like Sean. ‘I’m sure he’s not.’
‘Oh he does,’ Harry said cheerfully. ‘Last night he called her a fucking drunk.’
Carmen exchanged a worried glance with Daniel and wondered what to say in reply; she felt as if she was in uncharted territory. She was going to have to say something to Jess.
‘Sometimes grown-ups say things they really don’t mean,’ Daniel replied calmly. ‘Even though I think Carmen really did mean the S word.’
Although Carmen was shocked by Harry’s comment, Daniel had reminded her of the unbearable Croc situation. She simply could not have lunch with hot Daniel in plastic shoes more befitting the feet of garden gnomes. How on earth could he see her as a sexual being, unless he had a thing about garden gnomes in garish shoes, in which case would she really want to have sex with him? She sneaked another look at him and was treated to his perfect profile. Yes, probably.
‘I really must get my shoes.’
Daniel shook his head. ‘I’ve just seen Violet drive past us, she’ll have locked up. Don’t worry, I can get your boots tomorrow.’
Again Carmen tried to channel great women from history. Queen Elizabeth I, leading her troops into battle, giving her great, I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, speech. It still didn’t work; even Elizabeth could not have delivered such a rousing speech in dayglo plastic footwear. Never mind Burning of the Clocks, if she had her way it would be burning of the Crocs. ‘So shall we go to Wagamama’s and have noodles?’ Daniel put in. As Millie and Harry whooped their appreciation, Daniel added, ‘Would that be okay with you?’
‘Perfect, and I’ll text Jess and my friends and ask them to meet us there,’ Carmen answered. ‘But promise me no one will eat the big flat noodles in front of me, they really remind me of earthworms.’
‘They’re my favourites!’ Millie
exclaimed. ‘And anyway, earthworms are great, Daddy’s always telling me.’
Drat, cannot cross the child of the hot man. Carmen managed a smiled, ‘You’re right, earthworms are very useful. Where would we be without them?’
Wagamama’s was heaving. It seemed to be the rule that every long canteen-style table had at least two babies clipped on to it in child seats. Carmen did what she always did when in proximity to babies, she looked away. Sadie and Marcus were going to join them for dessert as they were yet to get up, and Jess was on her way.
Millie was busy twirling a large earthworm-shaped noodle round and round on a chopstick, impressing Carmen with her dexterity. Carmen had to use a fork to eat her chicken chilli noodles; she could use chop-sticks but didn’t want to risk food falling down her face in front of the über gorgeous Daniel. Of all the places to eat with a gorgeous man you didn’t yet know but wanted to, a noodle restaurant would be bottom of her list. But Daniel, like his daughter, was having no trouble neatly spinning his (thankfully thin) noodles round on his chopsticks.
So far Carmen had discovered four important facts – not easy as Daniel was quite reserved:
• Daniel ran his own garden design business.
• There was a Mrs Daniel but they were separated and had been for two years. Mrs Daniel was living in San Diego with her boyfriend. Sounded promising.
• Violet was not his girlfriend but a friend who had a child the same age as Millie.
• She, Carmen, really fancied Daniel, a feeling which she hadn’t experienced in real life outside of Will and fantasising about Russell Crowe in a very long time.
A Funny Thing About Love Page 15
