Barefoot in the Dark

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  Chapter 10

  But the trouble with freedom, Hope decided, was that there were only so many varieties of it that were actually life-enhancing. The freedom to eat crisps in bed was good. The freedom to watch ‘EastEnders’ without a disparaging commentary was even better. The freedom to do what she wanted when she wanted and with whom she wanted was not all it was cracked up to be.

  Most freedoms, she decided, were not the holy grail they had seemed. They were simply manifestations of the fact that she had too many choices. The scary potentiality of her current state. The most fundamental of these was the freedom that was inherent in not being part of a couple, and while she was becoming perfectly used to, and even appreciative of, the many benefits of this particular state of affairs, it did not come without its downside. There was the sex, for a start. The freedom to moon about like some ditzy fifteen-year-old over a guy she hardly knew was becoming an unmanageable side-effect of that one. She picked up the half-finished cushion cover that had fallen on the floor beside the bed and wondered, not for the first time, if she was losing her senses. What was she doing? And had she really been up sewing so late? She couldn’t remember falling asleep. She shoved the cushion in with the others at the bottom of her wardrobe, and sighed. There was the love downside too. Hope didn’t want to head off down any love downsides right now, for sure – way too frightening – but on the other hand she had to dip her toe in the water sometime. Just as she couldn’t imagine celibacy as a life-style, she also couldn’t really see herself growing old without someone to grow old with. And now, as if to remind her, it was her first Valentine’s day as an officially single woman, and she was entirely without a Valentine.

  Hopeful or actual. Paper or flesh.

  But no. She was wrong. She’d got mail.

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Oh what?’

  Hope’s mother had come early, to take Chloe to school, because Hope had to go to the printers before work to check the proofs for the race registration forms. She closed the card again quickly, wishing it would dematerialise in her hand.

  ‘Aha!’ said her mother, plucking the card from her fingers. ‘Would that be a Valentine card?’

  Hope nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘How wonderful! A secret admirer!’ She opened the card again. ‘Oh, ho! Notso secret!’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Hope, dragging the brush through her hair and scowling at her reflection in the hall mirror. She should have expected it, shouldn’t she?

  ‘So who’s this Simon, then?’ asked her mother, putting the card on the hall table while she shrugged off her coat.

  ‘Simon Armitage. He works with me. He’s the accountant at Heartbeat.’ How could she face work today? Thank God she wasn’t going straight there. Her mother plopped her coat over the newel post and picked the card up again.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Late thirties. Brown hair. A bit overweight. Wears sleeveless sweaters. Jolly. Unassuming –’

  ‘And is he nice?’

  ‘No! I mean, yes, he’s nice. He’s perfectly nice, Mother. But he’s not nice. Oh, God. What a pain.’

  ‘A pain? How can it be a pain?’

  ‘Because it is, believe me.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s sweet. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, my girl.’ Her mother narrowed her eyes, the better to train them on her soul. ‘Nothing from your Mr Valentine, then?’

  Thinking about looking in Simon’s mouth made Hope feel quite queasy. Thinking about Jack Valentine made her feel altogether different. And nice though that was, she was beginning to wish that it didn’t, because it made her feel so anxious as well. But she couldn’t seem to help it. He kept invading her brain. She wished he’d phone her. When she’d seen him it seemed so, well, as if he might do. And yet he hadn’t. She frowned. ‘Mum, he is not myMr Valentine.’

  Her mother clucked dismissively. ‘You’d think with a name like that he’d send lots, wouldn’t you? I’ll bet he gets a fair few.’

  ‘I’m getting five, Gran.’ This was Chloe, who was still in her pyjamas and stumbling blearily down the stairs. Oh, to be nine again, thought Hope. To be nine and untroubled by the vicissitudes of love.

  ‘I don’t doubt that, young lady,’ said Hope’s mother, smiling. Hope glanced at her daughter and smiled too.

  ‘And just what makes you so sure about that?’

  ‘We did an arrangement,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t decide who I was going to send one to, so I told them all if they sent me one I’d send them one back.’

  ‘So you’re sending fiveValentines?’ said Hope’s mother. ‘You little minx, you!’

  Chloe arrived at the foot of the stairs and accepted the kiss Hope planted on her forehead.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said airily. ‘I just made that up.’

  Hope wondered if there was enough time to change her top, belatedly recalling that Simon had commented on how much it suited her the last time she wore it. God. Signals. Signals. She mustn’t send him signals. Did she have anything shroud-like upstairs?

  ‘Like mother like daughter,’ said her mother, chuckling to herself as she followed Hope out to wave her off. ‘You were always a right one with the boys. Bees round a honey pot.’

  ‘Huh. Whereas now all I get are the drones.’ Which was unfair. There was nothing wrong with Simon. She just wanted to kill him, that was all.

  ‘There’s no need to be so testy, love. You got a Valentine’s card. You should think yourself lucky. I’ve not had one for twenty-two years.’

  Hope went down to the car and got in, her day already altogether spoiled. She wasn’t feeling testy. Relieved, not testy.

  She had so nearly sent Jack one. So verynearly. Well, thank God she hadn’t.

  ‘You have heaps, you bastard,’ Patti announced equably when Jack arrived at the studios. ‘Heaps.’ She scratched her stomach. Today’s ring was green. Nestling in her flesh like the eye of a witch’s cat. ‘I only got seven,’ she went on. ‘And three of them are from that mad bloke in Neath. I thought the signal didn’t reach Neath, Hil.’

  Jack sat down at his desk. Big bloody deal. He surveyed the pile of envelopes in front of him. Getting Valentine cards simply came with the territory. He opened the top one without interest.

  “To Jack,” he read out. “The knave of my heart.”

  ‘Do you think he’s a stalker?’ Patti interrupted him. ‘I mean, listen to this. “Dearest Patti, will you come and pat me? Come sit on my lap and straddle my knees?” – yuk! That’s a bit near the mark isn’t it? And look, the postmark’s Cardiff.’

  Jack threw the card back on the pile. ‘You should be so lucky.’

  Later, once the show was over and they’d written most of the links for the next day, Jack sat and went through his pile of cards more carefully. A pleasing thought had wormed its way into his mind. There might be. You never knew. He fished out the latest letter she’d sent him about the fun run and studied her signature. For all he knew, any one of these cards could be from Hope Shepherd. Since seeing her again, he’d been thinking about her, often, despite his determination not to. Had even been into Smith’s and looked at cards himself. But he hadn’t bought one. For one thing, he’d felt a prize prat – the place had been teeming with women – and, for another, he wouldn’t know what to put in it. Valentines cards were just a commercial cash-cow, strictly for adolescents and girls. He scanned the remaining envelopes for matches, but none looked hopeful and he put the letter back in his drawer, feeling stupid. If he wanted to let Hope Shepherd know he fancied her he had only to call her up and tell her, didn’t he? How many times had he asked himself that question and found himself groping for a sensible answer? There was the niceness thing, of course, but Jack was reluctantly beginning to visit the notion that perhaps that wasn’t all there was to it. Perhaps his reluctance was more about him. Perhaps his hypothetical shag ’em and leave ’em mentality was not, in reality, about seeing w
hat was out there, but about avoiding any scrutiny of what was within.

  Christ. How did he get to be someone who did all this prevaricating? He blamed Lydia, he decided. Utterly. You couldn’t go to bed with someone like Lydia for fifteen years without some residual damage to your sexual self-esteem. He wondered if perhaps she’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen at birth. He flicked through more envelopes. He was halfway down the pile when he noticed one with distinctive spiky handwriting. Allegra Staunton’s, in fact. She’d used an italic pen and chocolate-brown ink. Like she always did. Where did you buy chocolate-brown ink, for God’s sake? He opened it with some trepidation.

  The card slid out easily – a stylish affair, hand-painted and assembled, by the looks of it. So very Allegra. There were no words on the front, just a collage thing – two hessian chillies, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  Inside the card, it said very little. Just ‘Jack – phwoarrrrrrr – Allegra’.

  She was, Jack reflected, slipping it safely away again, a very singular species of woman.

  It had been a busy afternoon, and an even busier evening. Jack still had a couple of pre-records to get done, and the last of these had become a protracted affair, the production assistant, who had fixed the thing up for three, having failed to point out that the subject of his interview (a crumpled academic they generally consulted on all matters sociological) was not in Caerphilly, as she usually was, but on an ‘Emotional Intelligence at Work’ seminar in North Dakota. And therefore, when they’d first called her, asleep.

  It was almost nine when he finally downed tools and made it home. There was another small pile of post for him on the hall table downstairs and, having got himself a beer, he went into the living room to go through it.

  He was no longer thinking Valentine card at this point, and had no prior expectations when he opened the typewritten white envelope. He was surprised, therefore, to find a card inside. No hearts on this one, just a bunch of pink flowers.

  Hope sprang eternal. Perhaps she was making a move after all.

  He opened the card and his heart sank immediately.

  ‘Dear Jack,

  Just to let you know I’m thinking of you today.

  Thanks for the happy times,

  Lydia xx’

  His first reaction was to laugh. The woman needed therapy. Or an Emotional Intelligence seminar. North Dakota would do the bitch nicely. His second was to feel really, physically, wall-punchingly angry. So much so that he was half out of his chair and heading for the phone before he stopped himself. Instead, he ripped the card neatly in two. And then four. And then eight. How dare she? How dare she! Patronising cow. He downed the rest of his beer in one swallow and stomped off to get another from the fridge.

  Chapter 11

  Jack had just finished emailing his youth team round-up to the Echo when the phone rang. It was Saturday evening. Ergo ‘Stars in Their Eyes’ and another exciting night in. He used to enjoy ‘Stars in Their Eyes’, in a slumming-it, detached, wind-up-Lydia sort of way. Now he just watched it. How sad was that? He padded out to the hall and stooped to pick up the receiver.

  ‘Hello,’ said a voice. ‘It’s Hope Shepherd. Are you in?’

  Jack wiggled his bare toes. This was a surprise. ‘I certainly seem to be,’ he said.

  ‘Only I’m around and about and wondered if I could pop by.’ She paused. ‘Er… I’ve got something for you.’

  A pleasant surprise. A very pleasant surprise. This was telling him something, and he really ought to listen. He nearly said ‘that sounds like an offer I can’t refuse’ but stopped himself. Too lewd. Too suggestive. She sounded a bit nervous.

  ‘Well, that sounds most intriguing,’ he said instead. ‘What sort of something?’

  ‘Ah. You’ll have to wait and see.’ He could hear a smile in her voice now. ‘About half an hour or so? Would that be OK?’

  She was calling from a mobile. He could hear white noise around her. ‘That,’ he replied. ‘Would be very OK.’

  By the time Hope’s car pulled up in the road Jack had done the two things most important in an unscheduled-female-visitor situation. Removed his boxer shorts from the bathroom floor and cleaned his teeth. He’d been in two minds about re-freezing the chicken tikka biriani he’d been defrosting for his supper, but in the end plumped for relocating it to the fridge. There was always room in the day for curry. Breakfast tomorrow, if need be.

  He opened the door even before she was through the front gate, a manoeuvre she was executing with a fair degree of difficulty, as she seemed to be more dustbin liner than person from his vantage point. He walked down the path to help her, wincing as his feet made contact with the cold ground. She had the grey coat-thing on again. And – hurrah! – the boots.

  ‘Dismembered corpse? Hippo?’ he asked her as he heaved the bag from her. She scooped some hair from her face with a gloved hand.

  ‘Thanks. It’s not heavy. Just a bit bulky. There.’ She carefully shut the gate, as per Leonard’s laminated instruction, and followed him up the path. He could hear her heels click-clicking behind him.

  The smell in the hallway was an unfortunate blend of cauliflower and damp carpet, and Jack was pleased he’d sprayed a bit of Ollie’s Ben Sherman anti-perspirant around before coming down. He must get some air freshener. He never seemed to think of things like that when he was shopping. But at least it had faded a little once they got up the stairs.

  He wanted to usher her into the flat but the bin bag made the action potentially dangerous, so rather than sending her flailing off back down the staircase he went on in. He heard her shut the door behind them.

  ‘So,’ he said, dumping the bag down on the sofa. ‘This’ll be the something, then, will it?’ She nodded, beaming at him. ‘So what is it?’

  She slipped her handbag from her shoulder and deposited her car keys in it.

  ‘See for yourself,’ she said, her expression a little bashful as she pulled off her gloves. ‘And you must tell me if you don’t like them. I won’t be offended. We can flog them off in the shop, no problem. So, you know. After I came round… well, I just wanted to do something. I just thought perhaps you’d appreciate something to… well… anyhow… I hope you don’t mind.’

  She was saying all this while he was fiddling with the knot that held the bin bag together. Unsuccessfully, because it needed pygmy fingers. Or girl’s ones. So in the end he just ripped it open, man-style. A jumble of large cushions burst out. Six of them. Three leather patchwork, three suede. In various shades of brown and distress. Like the ones he’d seen back at the charity office.

  And admired. Of course. ‘These all for me?’ he said, picking one up now and smoothing his hand across it. It was beautifully made. She nodded again and put her own hands in her pockets.

  ‘I just thought, with the flat and everything… well. Do you like them? I remembered the sofa was beige.’

  He was lost for words. No-one had ever done anything like this for him before. Been kind like this. ‘Like them? They’re great, Hope. And that’s really –’ Not ‘nice’, for God’s sake. ‘Really thoughtful of you. But you must let me give you something for them. They must have –’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ She took her hands out of the pockets and did the double hair-behind-the-ears thing. ‘I told you. I get all the jackets from the shop. It’s only a few cushion pads. And a bit of time. And as Kayleigh told me you’d said you –’

  Jack ditched the rest of her sentence by stepping forward and planting a wholesome, closed lips, what-a-pal smacker on her mouth. Then hugged her.

  ‘You are so sweet, you know that?’

  He let her go. She was scarlet. ‘I’m so glad you like them. They’ll work well in here.’ She reached across and picked up the empty bin bag, crumpling it in her hand.

  Jack thought the only thing that would work well in his living room was a hefty JCB with a pile-driver on the front. But who cared. They would work perfectly well on their own. They were classy. That’s what they were.
‘They’ll look just – well – perfect,’ said Jack, groping for some interior design vocabulary and failing. ‘A darn sight better than these manky things, that’s for sure.’ He strode around the room, plucking the old ones up. Cushions. Fancy that. Fancy her making him cushions.

  She was following his circuit now, placing the new ones where the old ones had been. Then she stood, hovering, while he shovelled the flowery ones into the back of one of the cupboards. Jack turned.

  ‘You taking your coat off, or what?’

  ‘Oh, right. I –’

  ‘Unless you’re in a rush or something.’ Jack suddenly wondered if she’d left her children in the car. But it was all right. She couldn’t have done. She was beginning to untoggle the toggles.

  ‘I’m not doing anything,’ he went on, to consolidate. ‘Just chilling. Heavy night last night. Stay for a while, why don’t you?’

  The coat was undone now and she slipped it from her shoulders. She was wearing the wool dress she’d had on when they’d first gone out to lunch. Well, now. Saturday night. Nothing doing. Frozen Indian. Crap telly. And now cushions. And Hope. Here, in the flesh, in her boots and her dress. And tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after… well, they could go hang. She was here. This was now. ‘Well, if you don’t have to dash off anywhere, let me get you a drink or something, yes?’

  ‘That’ll be great, thanks.’

  ‘Beer, beer or beer?’ He paused a moment in the kitchen doorway, taking in the legs as she sat down on the sofa. ‘Only joking. I have meths too.’

  She looked at him sideways. ‘A glass of wine would be good if you’ve got one. Just a small one. I’m driving.’ She sprang up again, and followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘Kids?’ he said, opening the fridge door as little as possible so she wouldn’t see how sad the contents were.

  She shook her head. ‘At their father’s this weekend. Back tomorrow night.’ She’d moved across the kitchen now and pulled back the net curtain that hung across the door down to the garden.