by Fiona Harper
She knew all of that. But it didn’t stop her feeling giddy when her phone pinged to let her know a new message had arrived.
Perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing, anyway. It showed her that, after more than two years of not even thinking about romance, maybe her heart was healing enough for her to believe that there were a few good men out there, that if she’d stumbled across one then she might be lucky enough to find another. This was a practice run for her bruised heart, safe exactly because it was doomed never to go anywhere.
That might seem like reverse logic, but all Claire knew was that for the first time in a very long time, she was starting to believe not all men were pathological liars.
Chapter Twenty
Everybody Loves a Lover
Maggs had thrown George a bone and had consented to let him give her a lift home, so Claire tidied up after the meeting on her own then made her way back down to the ground floor of The Glass Bottom Boat. However, as she turned the corner halfway down she spotted Abby at the bottom, surrounded by a group of boys who were blocking the doorway to the little courtyard at the back of the pub.
‘Oh, my God! Preston!’ one of the boys said rather loudly. ‘What happened to you?’ And he started laughing.
Another boy standing next to him snickered.
Abby’s face, which had looked so pretty – not just because of Grace’s make-up, but because she’d looked happy and confident – fell. She glared at the boy then pulled back her arm, swung and knocked his beer bottle out of his hand.
‘Hey,’ the boy yelled. “What d’you do that for?’
Abby didn’t say anything. In fact, she ignored him, too busy looking past him to the tall boy with slightly floppy hair who hadn’t made a sound so far. His eyes were wide, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. ‘Abs?’ he whispered, and all of sudden Claire just knew this must be Ricky.
Abby looked as if she wanted to say something. She shook her head and started to open her mouth, but that’s when Kitty and Grace arrived to ‘rescue’ her. They linked their arms with hers in a show of female solidarity and marched her out of the pub, leaving the group of boys with their chins on the ground.
Claire also marched past the boys, too intent on checking if Abby was okay to pay them much attention. She tried to peer over the heads of the people in the crowded lounge bar, but couldn’t see them anywhere. It looked as if the three girls had already made a speedy exit. She was just making sure when something made her do a double take.
It had just been a glimpse, but the sense of familiarity had been overpowering – a shock of slightly messy dark hair, a smile that was both cheeky and warm, the crinkle around the edges of a pair of brown eyes.
She ground to a halt in front of a pair of bar stools. ‘Nick?’ she said, quite a bit louder than she’d meant to.
He looked round, dazed. His friend too.
‘Claire?’ he said, his voice only a whisper.
He was with a guy. She felt a warm tide of relief rush over her. Thank goodness. She wasn’t ready to meet the wonderful girlfriend just yet. Not unexpectedly. Not when she hadn’t had a chance to prepare herself. ‘What are you doing here?’
He stood up, knocking his pint of lager and spilling a few drops on the dark polished bar. ‘It’s my – I mean, this is Pete’s local. Isn’t it, Pete?’ He nodded towards his large and burly friend in a checked shirt. Pete nodded dutifully, eyes wide as he looked her up and down. ‘Have you met Pete?’ he asked, looking back at her.
‘I have now,’ she said, smiling at the friend, who jumped off his stool, wiped his hand on the front of his jeans and offered it to her. ‘Nice to meet you, Pete,’ she said, shaking his hand firmly.
Pete was still looking a little discombobulated. He glanced towards the door. ‘Yeah, I … uh … live a couple of roads away.’ Then he swallowed and looked questioningly back at his friend.
Nick nodded. ‘Just down here having a pint, chewing the fat,’ he said, smiling, but his eyes still held a hint of the nervousness she’d spotted when she’d taken him by surprise. ‘How about you?’
Claire felt her stomach dip a little. As much as she carried no shame being the president of the Doris Day Film Club, she also knew that some people didn’t get it, thought she was a bit weird. She really didn’t want this man to be one of those people. ‘I attend a meeting in the upper room most Tuesdays,’ she said. ‘It’s a club.’
‘Ah.’ Nick nodded. ‘That makes sense …’
She frowned. ‘What makes sense?’ It was almost as if he was mentally putting jigsaw pieces together about her, and that definitely didn’t make sense. The man hardly knew her. And how could what she did on a Tuesday evening have any significance for him?
He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ And then he turned to Pete. ‘Isn’t that your phone?’
Pete patted his back pocket. ‘Don’t think so.’
Nick fixed him with a rather intent stare. ‘Are you sure?’
Pete stared at him blankly for a second. ‘Oh. Oh, yeah. Maybe.’ He pulled his phone out of his pocket and made a big show of checking it for any recent communication. ‘Yep,’ he said, glancing nervously first at his friend and then at Claire. ‘It’s Ellie. She’s having trouble getting Sammy to bed. I’d better—’ he glanced towards the door ‘—you know …’
Claire spotted his half-drunk pint on the bar. ‘But you haven’t finished your drink.’
Pete looked longingly at his lager. ‘I know,’ he said, and sent a hopeful look to Nick.
Nick didn’t move, didn’t say anything. Pete’s face fell. ‘But when duty calls – especially in the form of a sleep-deprived mother dealing with the terrible twos …’ He grabbed the glass and downed as much as he could in one go. When he’d swallowed, he said, ‘Nice to meet you, Claire.’ Then he shot one last look at Nick and he was gone.
Nick indicated the empty stool. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
Claire hesitated. ‘I don’t know …’
‘Come on,’ he said, flashing that slightly devilish smile at her. ‘It’s not long till last orders and I’d like to pick your brains about European destinations.’
She looked at the seat of the stool. ‘Okay,’ she said, and sat on it gingerly. It was business, after all, and they were in a public place. Nothing was going to happen. She shouldn’t feel guilty. ‘I’ll have a half of one of those,’ she said, indicating his pint.
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Really?’
She gave him a slightly cheeky smile. ‘I don’t look like the sort of girl who drinks lager?’ she asked. ‘What would you have picked for me?’
He shrugged. ‘You see, this is my problem,’ he muttered, almost to himself, then he looked up at her. ‘I’d have probably gone for the obvious.’
She settled herself more comfortably on her stool. She was starting to enjoy this. ‘Which would be?’
He let out a heavy breath, as if he knew he’d be condemning himself with his words. ‘Something smart and sophisticated. Wine, maybe. Dry. Or a cocktail.’
She kept smiling and gave a little shrug. ‘Well, I like those things too. It’s just that sometimes there’s nothing like an ice-cold beer.’
He grinned at her and signalled for the barman. ‘My thoughts exactly.’ Once he’d ordered, he turned back to her. ‘So, what sort of club are we talking about?’
Claire looked at him, then she took a deep breath. ‘It’s a film club. We meet and watch old films. Doris Day films, to be exact.’
He blinked. She could see the amusement playing behind his eyes as he digested that. ‘Doris Day? Don’t you think she was a bit …’
She straightened on her stool and stopped smiling. ‘A bit what?’
He shrugged one shoulder. ‘I don’t know …’
‘Old hat? Squeaky clean? Goody-goody?’ she suggested. She’d heard all those responses before. Usually from people who didn’t know what they were talking about.
He shook his head. ‘I was going to say “underrated”,
’ he said, his eyes glinting with humour, ‘but now you mention it …’
She punched him lightly on the arm, then instantly regretted it. It was contact. Physical contact. Even though it had been nothing more than a stupid playground gesture, her awareness of him had now rocketed four hundred per cent.
‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘My gran used to like Doris Day, but what’s the attraction for a modern woman like you?’
The barman placed their drinks down on the bar in front of them. Claire reached and took a sip before answering. ‘Well, the truth is that my grandmother liked Doris too, and she set up a fan club back in the fifties, and I ended up inheriting the job.’
Nick made a ‘too bad’ face.
‘Oh, no,’ she said quickly. ‘I really don’t mind. I’ve come to appreciate Doris in my own right. She’s an amazing woman. Not just for her talent, but for her strength.’
He looked confused.
‘You said she was a goody-goody … Well, that might have been her image, but the truth behind her life wasn’t quite like that. She could never quite understand how she got stuck with that label, but once she had, her fans were very reluctant to let her part with it, and her husband-slash-manager didn’t want to disappoint them.’
He smiled and sipped his beer. ‘You mean she was an old trout in real life?’
Claire shook her head. ‘Nothing like that. What you see coming through on the screen – that warmth, that charm, the honesty – by all accounts that’s the genuine Doris.’
He put his glass back down on the bar. The pub was getting rowdy now it was close to last orders and they were having to lean closer and closer to each other to have to be heard. ‘You’re right,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘If I had to find a word to describe how she comes across on camera, that’s it. There’s a real honesty about her.’
Claire smiled at him. It started off small but just kept on growing. ‘I’m glad you can see it,’ she said, forgetting to hide the warmth in her voice, forgetting that this was supposed to be a business chat. ‘That’s what I like most about her.’ She let out a heavy breath and looked away. ‘Honesty is a rare quality in this day and age.’
When she looked back, Nick was wearing a strange expression. He swallowed.
‘Anyway,’ she said, shaking herself slightly. ‘What I meant to say was that, despite the Technicolor perfection and all-American wholesomeness of her films, her life wasn’t like that at all. She went through a lot of hardship.’
‘Really?’ he said.
She bobbed her head and took another sip of her beer. ‘Did you know that she didn’t start off singing and acting at all?’
He shook his head, keeping his eyes on her the whole time.
‘She was a really talented dancer. So much so, that when she was thirteen, her and her dance partner won a big competition. She was all set to move to Hollywood to see just how far she could go when there was a terrible accident.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘It’s true. The night before they were due to leave there was a big farewell party. Afterwards, she went to go and get ice cream sodas with friends and the car she was in was hit by a train.’
His eyes widened. ‘Was anyone killed?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘They were lucky. But Doris had to be pulled from the wreckage. Her right leg was shattered. The doctors didn’t even think she’d walk again, let alone dance.’ She sighed. They were close now, faces only inches apart – it was the only way they could hear each other talk in the noisy bar – and she looked right into his eyes. ‘But Doris didn’t let it get her down. She didn’t mope or feel sorry for herself, like most people would have done. Oh, no. She started listening to the radio while she was stuck at home in bed, and pretty soon she started singing along to the likes of Benny Goodman, Glen Miller and especially Ella Fitzgerald. In the end, her mother took her to singing lessons, and the rest, as they say, is history.’
He was looking right back at her. Something inside Claire told her to look away to break whatever was zapping between his eyes and hers, but she couldn’t seem to make herself do it. ‘That’s an amazing story,’ he said.
Claire swallowed. ‘And that’s only the start of it,’ she said. ‘There’s more. So much more. She was working by fifteen, singing with big bands, travelling all over the country on tour buses with a bunch of older men, holding her own. And then there were the marriages …’
Nick let out a bark of surprised laughter. ‘There was more than one?’
She nodded. ‘Four, in fact. The first one aged seventeen to a man who later ended up killing himself. The rest … well, it’s a long story. But she’s still happy and sunny and trying to help people – and especially animals – the best way she can.’ She looked down at her lap, suddenly very serious, then back up at Nick. ‘She’s a survivor. Not just underrated, but underestimated.’
He looked back at her. The smile also gone from his face. ‘I’m starting to see that.’
For a long moment, neither of them said anything, and then the bell for last orders rang, breaking the spell.
She sat back on her stool, took one last sip of her drink then stood up. ‘I really should be going.’ Not just because it was late, but because she kept forgetting she really shouldn’t be socialising with him. If she were his girlfriend, she’d be a bit miffed if he’d bought another woman a drink. She’d be even more miffed that he was looking at said woman the way he was looking at her.
She made sure she stayed just shy of eye contact as she bid him farewell. ‘Well,’ she said, finally discovering the brisk, efficient business tone she should have been striving for. ‘It was lovely to see you again. Do get in touch about your travel plans when you’re ready. Bye, Nick.’
And, without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked towards the door, her spine as straight as a dancer’s.
‘Nick’ stared after her. And then he did the only thing he possibly could have done.
He followed her.
Chapter Twenty-One
Let’s Take an Old-Fashioned Walk
He didn’t have to check which way she went when she left the pub; he knew. Of course he did. She was heading home, just as he was. He jogged lightly until he caught up with her. She turned her head to look at him, but kept moving.
‘Are you stalking me, Nick?’
Nick. He could hear the extra ‘k’ when she said it. He didn’t know how, but he could.
‘No, I’m not stalking you. I just happen to be walking this way as well, and as long as we’re walking the same route, we may as well walk together. While I’m a big fan of girl power, or whatever everyone calls it these days, you’re still safer if you’re not on your own.’
He waited for the rant. Erica had given him one every time he’d tried to do something like this for her, accusing him of treating her like a weak, second-class citizen, but Claire didn’t say anything but, ‘Well, I’m sure I’d be fine on my own, but that’s very chivalrous of you.’ They carried on walking.
‘Doris came from that era, didn’t she?’ he said. ‘When men could hold a door open for a woman and still keep their heads on their shoulders.’
‘She did,’ Claire said, glancing across at him as they walked. ‘But she wasn’t old-fashioned at all. In her life and in her films, she was a front-runner for women’s liberation. She was the wage earner in her family, and she often played intelligent, successful career women, not delicate flowers. Either that or tomboys who could shoot or fix a car or throw a baseball better than the men she was with. You’ve got to love her for that.’
‘You have,’ he said, smiling, even though Claire was looking deadly serious.
She sighed and her pace slowed a little. ‘It was after watching On Moonlight Bay with my gran that I realised it didn’t matter if I was a bit of a tomboy, that I could still be that one day and then dress up in frills and bows the next, and still be all girl.’
He looked at how steady her stride was in her stilettos, the easy sway of her
hips in her fitted skirt, and shook his head. ‘I can’t imagine you as a tomboy.’
She stopped giving him the cool treatment and grinned at him. ‘Well, I was. I used to like to dig for worms and make mud pies with the boys that lived next door. At least I did until …’ She trailed off, the smile disappearing as quickly as it had arrived.
‘Until what?’
She shrugged his question off. ‘Let’s just say my father preferred I didn’t mix with them, that I was a little more ladylike. Besides, they were older than me and it got to the stage they didn’t want a little shadow with pigtails following them around.’
He let out a low chuckle. ‘Well, if you ever want to wear pigtails and follow me around, I promise I won’t complain one bit.’
That earned him a sharp look. Damn. He’d forgotten about the make-believe woman of his dreams. Better back-pedal, change the conversation to something else. Doris, perhaps. He seemed to pretty safe with that subject, mostly because then Claire was doing the talking and he wasn’t opening his big fat mouth.
‘So was Doris a tomboy too?’
Claire’s expression softened, but he noticed the way she changed her direction a little so they weren’t walking so close together. She paused as they crossed the road and headed down a side street. ‘You’re going this way as well?’
He nodded. ‘Take this route home every time I go to The Glass Bottom Boat.’
She frowned at his vague answer, but kept walking. ‘Yes, Doris was a bit of a tomboy. Like most women, there was more than one side to her. She liked dressing up in lovely clothes in her films, but she often didn’t once she got home, preferring to relax and just be natural. She didn’t really do the whole “Hollywood” thing, going to parties and premieres all the time.’
‘Really? Wasn’t she a really big star?’
Claire looked up at him, just briefly, then down at her feet as she walked. ‘She was. Number one female star in Hollywood for quite a few years during the fifties and sixties, but those things didn’t really matter to her. They were just numbers, she said, and once you’d got to number one, there was only one direction you could go.’
