A Summer Fling

by Milly Johnson

  ‘Did we win?’ asked Raychel, rushing in at just turned nine o’clock.

  ‘You didn’t hear the result? Where on earth have you been all weekend?’ asked Anna with a good-humoured tut.

  ‘We’ve been doing house stuff,’ said Raychel. ‘I think we spent four hours in Ikea alone on Saturday. Sorry I’m late, Christie. I got caught up in a traffic snarl.’

  ‘I hadn’t even noticed,’ said Christie. God forbid she would ever be the sort of boss who made a fuss over a few minutes!

  ‘Sounds nice,’ said Anna, as a memory of moving into her present home with Tony bloomed in her mind. They’d gone mad in Ikea themselves and had to make three trips to take everything home. They had put the bed up first of all and he had insisted on christening it immediately.

  ‘Thank God Ben is such an ox. He should be on Britain’s Strongest Man. People were looking at him in awe carrying the stuff to the van. He put it all together in no time and all I did was make lots of cups of tea.’

  He sounded a good sort, did Ben, thought Anna. How come she never got one like that? How come she ended up with cheating pricks? She had never been lucky in love.

  ‘I’ll have the money for you all in the next couple of days,’ promised Christie.

  ‘We should save some of it and have a meal out with it or something to celebrate,’ suggested Dawn. She knew if she had it in her pocket, Calum would only ‘borrow’ it from her, with no intention of ever paying it back. And she could never manage to say no to him.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ said Christie. ‘Are there any nice pubs or restaurants around here?’

  ‘What about that new Thai place next to the Rising Sun pub up the road?’ said Dawn. ‘It’s only five minutes’ walk away. Ooh, Rising Suns again. Must be an omen.’

  ‘Fine by me, if everyone is in agreement? We’ll arrange something after the Easter break?’

  Everyone either nodded or mumbled and Christie was delighted to accept that as a definite yes then.

  There was a happy buzz in the office on Wednesday when Christie distributed well-stocked brown packets of horse-race winnings after her brother had accompanied her to pick it up, because she didn’t feel comfortable carrying that amount of money around alone. Each of them put thirty pounds into an envelope for their future celebratory meal. Christie mused what the others would do with their balances. She would buy more shoes and had exactly the pair in mind. She would bet that Dawn’s would go towards her wedding and Raychel’s towards her house, but what of Grace and Anna? They were harder to guess at. She wondered how they spent their treat money when they had any.

  Christie would buy a bottle of champagne with it, too, and raise a glass to her late husband, as she always did at this time of year. She revered Easter. She wasn’t a particularly religious woman, but she reflected a lot around the anniversary of her widowhood. She wished Peter had died when it was autumn or winter and not when the bluebells that he loved so much were starting to flood the forests, when everything in nature was awakening and coming alive; it seemed so unfair. She made sure she enjoyed this time of year for him, for both of them.

  Grace had taken it upon herself to set up a coffee rota, and Christie had insisted on being included on the list; she said she drank the stuff too, and wasn’t that much up her own backside that she wouldn’t make it when it was her turn. After Malcolm as an acting boss, Christie Somers was like a cold glass of water on a thirsty throat.

  Christie liked the smiles that had started passing between the women. It didn’t take anything away from their efficiency that they would share a brief natter about ‘that shade of blouse really suiting Grace with her colouring’ or asking, ‘What happened in Corry in the last five minutes last night, because the phone rang and I missed it?’ Christie was sure that if there had been an office thermometer to check, she would find that it was rising by a degree with every passing day.

  That evening, the later Dartley train was in when Anna reached the platform. She had missed her usual one after calling into Iceland for some bits and pieces. As she ran for it, she noticed the man in black on the opposite platform again. When his eyes landed on her, he looked as if he couldn’t believe his luck that he had seen her again. The thing she noticed most was that he didn’t just stare over at her, he appeared to be studying her, as Albert Pierrepoint might study a condemned man to determine how much rope he’d need for the drop. Then, to Anna’s abject horror, he pointed over at her. He was beckoning. Yeah, like she was going to go over to him. Anna’s heart rate increased. She jumped on the train, trying to ignore the fact that the man was still trying to attract her attention, waving at her now. She risked a direct look as the train started up. The man had gone. Then she noticed him descending the last step on her side of the platform. How the heck did he get there so fast? He must have flown across the tunnel above the track.

  Well, she supposed blackly, if he was a serial killer, what did it matter? Her life was over anyway. All she had to look forward to was an existence of dribbling and smelling of wee in retirement homes. Being forty was the first step on the slippery slope. She hoped, when he did eventually catch up with her, that his method was quick and painless.

  Chapter 17

  Vladimir Darq watched the train pull out of the station seconds before he had a chance to jump on it. Damn. He had found the one he was looking for and he couldn’t get to her. The first time he had seen the woman with the long chestnut hair, his inner radar had told him she was a sure contender. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind that night and knew by the next morning that no other woman would do. Every night he had waited at the train station for her to return and now she had and he had missed her. He thought of all the shopping she was carrying and it came to him then that maybe she usually caught an earlier train? Third time lucky. He wouldn’t miss her again.

  The building had that happy ‘last day before a break’ feel on Thursday. Dawn was going to be doing some more weddingy things and was all giddy about that; Raychel was joyfully twittering on about preparing for her house move and, though Anna didn’t bubble over like the others, Christie hoped she was looking forward to spending a quiet long weekend with her man and her cat. Only from Grace’s corner did she feel a cool draught. Christie noticed her staring into space on a few occasions.

  ‘Everything OK?’ she asked.

  Grace snapped her mind back to the here and now.

  ‘Absolutely fine,’ she said, convincing neither of them, but Christie didn’t push and Grace didn’t volunteer that she had the most awful sense of foreboding. It was something to do with Gordon, although he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary she could really put her finger on. Still, it was an annoying feeling that wouldn’t go away.

  The Easter holiday loomed long in front of Grace. Thank goodness there was a lovely Saturday afternoon with Paul to look forward to and Joe’s face to enjoy when he saw how many eggs the Easter Bunny had left for him at his grandparents’ house. If Gordon’s stupid smile didn’t scare away the Bunny from visiting, that was.

  Paul had been the last of her children to leave home over three years ago. It was only when he moved out that she realized how buoyant their company had kept her spirits. Once they were all gone, she felt increasingly as if she were struggling for air within the walls.

  At five o’clock, Christie bade her ladies a good holiday. The department was to be shut until Tuesday, for Easter. It looked, to Christie, as if Grace especially needed a restful break.

  Gordon had volunteered to take Grace to and pick her up from work that day. In fact,he had positively insisted on it. He wanted to take her car in for a service, he said, because he’d heard a rattle. Grace hadn’t heard any rattle, but there was no reason not to believe him. They hadn’t spoken much since the Joe incident on Sunday. Grace hadn’t even brought it up when Laura had gone home. What was the point? If Gordon didn’t want to talk about something, he didn’t talk about it.

  He was already waiting for her in the car
park when she came out of work. The car had been washed and polished and valeted inside, she noticed as she climbed into it. They both mumbled a hello at each other as she clicked herself into the seatbelt.

  ‘Did you get the rattle fixed then?’ she asked.

  ‘What rattle?’ he said absently, then, ‘Oh no, there wasn’t one. I must have been imagining things.’

  Grace knew then that he hadn’t taken her car into the garage. He hadn’t heard a rattle. He was up to something and her instincts were proved correct when he set off, taking an immediate right turn instead of the left that would have put them on the road for home.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Just a little diversion,’ he said.

  Grace was tired this week. Tired of witnessing even more divisions within her family, tired of having to watch her tongue in case she said something to inflame Gordon. She wanted to take the opportunity of a weekend with no babysitting Sable to have long baths, a nice glass of wine or two and a few hours’ quality reading time. She felt her batteries badly needed a serious charge-up. ‘Gordon, where are we going?’ she asked again wearily.

  ‘Never you mind,’ said Gordon with that incredibly annoying smile.

  ‘Gordon?’

  Gordon didn’t say anything and flicked on the right indicator as he approached the roundabout which told Grace they were taking the motorway south.

  Anna stood on the railway platform, heart thumping in her chest. The weirdo in black, thankfully, wasn’t there. Maybe she should have got any impending attack over and done with. She visualized a touching hospital scene where Tony rushed to her bedside and gently stroked the part of her skull which the stranger had stoved in with an axe. He would pledge undying love and come back to care for her and dab her face with cool flannels and kisses.

  The barriers dropped, the train came down the track and Anna’s hold on the new rape alarm in her pocket relaxed. A cool breath puffed onto the back of her neck. She turned to find the man in black behind her, his eyes locking with hers. She saw fangs, clear as day. She was going to feature in the Chronicle as the first woman in Barnsley to become undead, she thought, then everything went swirly and, finally, black. His gloved hands came out and caught her as she fainted.

  Chapter 18

  Anna came to seconds later, though it felt much longer, with a crowd gathering around her, the strange man cradling her in his arms on the ground and some silly cow running up and down saying, ‘Help, someone phone the emergency services! There’s a woman having a heart attack!’

  She remembered being helped to her feet, then the embarrassment set in as her consciousness swam back to the surface. She tried to look compos mentis in the same way a totally drunk person attempts sobriety, with about as much success. She kept saying, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ over and over again. But she heard that daft woman shriek, ‘You should have left her lying down. She needs a hospital. I’m St John’s Ambulance trained. I know these things.’

  But then Anna’s brain seemed to fast forward a little and the next thing was that she was being led over to the station café by some nice lady in an apron for a cup of tea with lots of sugar in it. Fast forward again some more seconds and Anna was sitting in a quiet corner, being pushed down on a seat by gentle hands. And Fang-man was sitting opposite her. She did a double-take and shook her head. Did vampires drink Yorkshire Tea, because this one did – and rip open and offer Cadbury’s shortcakes? She couldn’t remember that from her Bram Stoker edition.

  ‘Are you diabetic?’ he asked in a deep voice with a fierce accent reminiscent of black forests and dark castles in East Europe while he proffered the chocolate biscuits.

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘Well, I wasn’t this morning anyway.’

  ‘Then you passed out solely because of fear of me,’ the man said. ‘I am so sorry.’ He had pale skin and very black hair, past shoulder length and tied at the back. There wasn’t a hint of grey in it but it didn’t look dyed at all. His beard was the same colour, a thin, expert line that swept over a strong chin and square jaw.

  ‘I’m sure it’s not entirely your fault I fainted,’ said Anna, omitting to add that she couldn’t remember the last decent meal she had eaten and as a consequence she’d been having moments of light-headedness.

  ‘I have been waiting for you,’ the man went on. He had very blue eyes, deep as lagoons, with golden flecks in them, very odd in an attractive way. They were fringed with thick, black lashes that a woman would have killed for. His eyebrows were heavy and black too, arched and masculine, a small space between them above his nose.

  ‘Why? What do you want me for?’ said Anna defensively. ‘Why are you loitering around interchanges?’

  ‘Not loitering, searching,’ he answered. ‘And not just stations, but libraries, supermarkets, shops. I look for a woman.’

  Anna opened her mouth to reply but she hadn’t a clue what to say to that. Apart from ‘perv’.

  The man reached into his voluminous coat and pulled out a very stylish business card which he then handed over to her.

  Vladimir Darq.

  That’s all it said, plus a mobile number. How arrogant was that? Or supremely confident anyway. It smacked of someone who should be instantly recognizable. The funny thing was, the name did ring a bell although she couldn’t for the life of her remember where she had heard it before. Crimewatch?

  ‘What do you want with me then, Mr Darq?’ She pronounced it ‘Dark’. He didn’t correct her so she presumed that was right.

  Vladimir Darq slid off his gloves to get a better purchase on his mug. He had large but exquisite hands. The nails were black varnished but strangely that only added to his masculinity. He had an enormous gold ring on the middle left finger bearing the word ‘DARQ.’ It was his only ring, she also noticed.

  ‘You,’ he began, staring at Anna with such pale-eyed intensity that she felt herself blushing, ‘. . . you are the woman for whom I have been searching.’

  Nutter alert.

  ‘OK, that’s me going home now,’ said Anna, attempting to stand but failing.

  ‘Please, hear me out,’ he said, his palms open towards her. ‘Sit, listen. Five minutes. That’s all I ask.’

  Anna sat again because she had no choice. Her legs said no to any supporting requests from her brain and the moment she stood, the blood rushed from her head and she felt ever so woozy again. Not that she wanted him to know that, in case he took advantage.

  ‘My name is Vladimir Darq. I am a designer,’ he began.

  Yes, of course, thought Anna. That rings a big bell now. She’d seen him on fashion shows. Gok Wan had dressed some of his women in Darq gowns. If, of course, he was the real Vladimir Darq and not some saddo imposter. After all, Barnsley train station wasn’t exactly the place to bump into Laura Ashley, Coco Chanel and the like.

  ‘You may know me as a maker of gowns. Only gowns. But no longer!’ He waved away his entire collection of gowns with one sweep of his beautiful hand. ‘I have diversified into a new area – lingerie. I don’t want to design for A-list divas any more. I want to design for women who want to feel as if they are A-list inside here,’ and he thumped his chest where his heart was positioned. ‘I have a question: do you watch Gok Wan on the television?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna cautiously. Oh God, he was going to ask her to walk up and down the railway platform naked!

  ‘And do you watch Jane’s Dames?’

  ‘I love Jane’s Dames,’ gasped Anna. It was a new programme which competed with Gok’s shows, more or less the same formula, and presented by a young, gorgeous, no-nonsense style guru-in-the-making called Jane Cleve-Jones.

  ‘Jane’s Dames are making a new series. They have approached various designers – I am, of course, one of them – and each of us has a model that we intend to transform. My specialized area will be the lingerie. I need a woman who wants to feel beautiful, earthy – Darq, as I call it. I believe that every woman has a Darq side but alas, most women don’t even suspect it. Then I
see you and I know without a doubt that you are the one. I want you to be my model. I want you to inspire other women to wear my clothes. I want to design for women like you.’

  ‘Old, past-it lumps of lard, you mean?’ said Anna, with a mirthless little laugh.

  ‘Nu, not at all,’ said Vladimir Darq, leaning across the table, stroking one finger down Anna’s jawline and making her shiver in the process. ‘Women in their late thirties, early forties who think they are no longer sexy or maybe they have never felt that way. I see it in the slump of your shoulders that you do not feel desired. You have not learned that sex comes from within. I would guess that others have not made you feel very good about yourself. I am right, of course. You think that life has forgotten you.’ He took a strand of her dull brown hair and let it fall through his fingers.

  Anna felt the tears making their way up to her eyeballs and gulped them down. That small gesture in her throat was all Vladimir Darq needed to see to know he was correct in his assumptions. Not that he had had any doubt. He had too much confidence in his intuition for that.

  Anna puffed out her cheeks. Was it so obvious she was an unloved reject with about as much spark as a spent match in a canal, even to a total stranger across two railway lines? Boy, she must be a total minger.

  ‘No matter. I can transform you,’ whispered Vladmir Darq. His voice was like a velvet caress. ‘I can make you feel beautiful. I can change your life in less than eight weeks. And you will inspire other women like you to be beautiful. You will be the first of my beautiful Darq women.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ said Anna with a dry snort of laughter. The word had never been applied to her. No one had ever said; ‘Anna Brightside, you are beautiful.’ Or lovely, or pretty for that matter. In her teenage days, she lost count of the times she had got into conversations with gorgeous guys, only to realize halfway through that they were actually trying to get to her much prettier friend Caroline, with the dimples to die for and eyes like pools of treacle. In her twenties, she drew even less male attention, if that was possible, despite her flawless skin and hair the colour of autumn. Then, in her thirties, she met Tony, with his smooth banter and vociferous sexual appetite. Being the object of his lust had lifted her to some state of desirability. Until he dropped her for Miss Pert-Tits, of course. And now here was a bloke dressed up as a vampire telling her that he had magic underwear that would make her beautiful. At thirty-nine? After being as sexually alluring as magnolia paint all her life! Had he lost his guide dog? Or was he Care in the Community?