by Karen Clarke
How could he tell? ‘Thanks,’ I said, wishing I’d thought to check the fireplace myself. Feeling silly, I dropped some logs in the basket by the hearth, and passed over a bag of kindling. ‘I’ve some matches in the kitchen drawer, I’ll go and get them.’
‘No need.’ Craig reached for his rucksack. ‘I always carry some, just in case.’
In case of what? ‘Something I picked up on a survival course.’ He swiped at a smudge of soot on his nose. ‘If you can start a fire you can keep warm, have a light source, boil water, and keep predators away.’
‘Brilliant,’ I said. ‘That must come in handy.’ I was immediately ashamed of my sarcastic tone, but a faint smile tugged at his mouth.
‘Let’s just say, I’ve never needed to start a fire… yet.’
‘Good to know.’ I scanned the room, aware of how quiet it was, in spite of Craig rustling about. ‘Where’s Ollie?’
Craig arranged some kindling, placed a log on top, then struck a match and held it steady until the whole thing caught alight. ‘I told him to have a sleep.’ He pushed back onto his heels, watching the flames leap to life. ‘I hope that’s OK.’
‘But I haven’t sorted out his room,’ I said, realising I hadn’t had a chance to check out the new bed either. ‘The duvet and bedding…’
‘We sorted it out, while you were doing whatever you were doing in the shed.’
What did he mean by that? OK, so I’d been gone a while, but only because I’d wanted to talk to Erin. What had Craig said to Ollie while I wasn’t there? He was looking up at me, as if he could read my thoughts, a faint flush of colour on his cheeks.
‘He probably won’t pursue the fake girlfriend angle,’ he said, and I felt a flash of annoyance. Maybe I’d wanted to be Ollie’s fake girlfriend. I hadn’t had much luck being a real one, and perhaps a pretend relationship would have been fun.
‘He didn’t seem tired to me,’ I said, peevishly, ‘and even if he had been, surely he could have asked me himself if he wanted to have a lie down?’
Craig placed his hands on his thighs. They were broad hands, with faint dark hairs on the back. ‘Shall I go and wake him up?’
‘What? No, of course not.’ I shrugged my coat off. The fire was blazing away now, the heat scorching my cheeks. ‘I think I’ll just go and check on him.’
Craig’s eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t comment. We looked at each other for a moment, the only sound the crackling of wood in the grate. ‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ I said, when the silence stretched and grew awkward.
His voice stopped me at the door. ‘He’s a good person, Lily. He’s just… used to a different way of living, and getting his own way, and that awful show didn’t bring out the best in him.’
I swung round, clutching my coat. ‘I happen to like Ollie, and don’t need you to speak up on his behalf.’ Craig got to his feet and rotated his shoulders, as if to alleviate some tension. ‘Why did you even agree to work on the show if it was so awful?’
He stopped in the act of massaging his upper arm. ‘Agree to work on the show?’
‘You were glad enough to accept Ollie’s offer of a job, and yet—’
‘Just a minute.’ His frown deepened. ‘I got Ollie a place on the show, after I started working for the TV company that were making it. He’d been looking for a challenge and I thought, because of his background, it would be a good fit for him, but…’ his voice trailed off. Dipping his head, he rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I sometimes regret it,’ he finished.
I tried to think back, and realised that in my hung-over state I’d assumed that Ollie must have brought Craig onto the show, instead of the other way round. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘My mistake.’
He didn’t seem to have heard, his gaze lowered, as if there was something meaningful carved in the floorboards.
Keen to change the subject, I said, ‘You can put the kettle on if you like, and help yourself to a mince pie or two.’
Before he could reply, I slipped into the hall and hung up my coat, removed my boots and crept upstairs, careful to miss out the second step from the top where I’d noticed it creaked. My mind heaved with snippets of all the conversations I’d had since waking up, and I was overcome with an urge to crawl back under my duvet and have a sleep myself. Perhaps, when I woke, I’d realise it had all been a dream, and the only things I had to think about were my novel and what to cook for dinner.
My novel.
If Ollie was taking a nap, there wasn’t much point going back downstairs just yet. I didn’t fancy trying to socialise with Craig, and Mum wouldn’t be here for at least an hour – more if traffic was bad. I could take my laptop into my bedroom, and focus on some writing.
The door to the spare room was ajar, and I pushed it open to see Ollie sprawled on his front in the new bed, the duvet rucked up to reveal he still had his jeans on, though he’d shed his top, which was hanging over the back of the computer chair. One tanned arm was flung up, hiding most of his face, but from the rise and fall of his shoulders it was obvious he was deeply asleep.
Ollie Matheson was asleep in my spare room. It was so bizarre, it felt unreal. If I hadn’t left my phone in my coat pocket, I might have been tempted to take a photo and post it on Twitter. Imagining it, I bit back a giggle. No one would believe it was him. I crept closer, intending to pick up my laptop, and froze when a floorboard squeaked, the sound deafening in the silence. I couldn’t bear the thought of him opening his eyes to see me looming over him, like Kathy Bates in Misery.
I backed out and stood for a moment, holding my breath, but he didn’t even stir.
Perhaps I should go back downstairs. It wasn’t polite to ignore a guest, and Craig had got the fire going, as well as putting one out this morning, and he’d cooked quail’s eggs without complaining.
I entered the living room, with a smile in place, ready to make small talk and find out more about him – after all, a writer should be interested in people – and stopped dead when I saw him stretched out on the sofa, asleep.
One arm dangled towards the floor, and his face looked softer, his lashes dark against his skin. His foot twitched, as though he was dreaming about running, and I carefully picked a throw off the armchair and shook it over him.
The room felt cosy with the Christmas tree lights casting a warm glow, and the fire blazing – Craig had sensibly put the fireguard across – but I didn’t feel comfortable parking myself in the armchair.
I felt like a visitor in my own home.
My gaze fell on Craig’s open rucksack, where his notepad was poking out, and I remembered my earlier idea to write my novel by hand. Perhaps I could go to the café on the seafront, which Craig had mentioned, and spend an hour there before Mum turned up. It might be the last chance I had for a while.
The only problem was, I didn’t have a notepad. Why hadn’t I got a notepad? What kind of writer was I? Would Craig mind if I borrowed some sheets from his? I’d replace the pad, obviously.
Moving stealthily, I crossed the floor, keeping one eye on Craig. Clearly, his night in the car hadn’t been that restful after all.
As I eased the notepad out, it struck me that I could just as easily buy one. Perhaps from the newsagent’s, if it wasn’t too far away. About to put it back, I noticed the first page was folded over and covered with scribbled words and I couldn’t resist a peek.
Behind Closed Doors I read, in sloping handwriting that practically ran off the page.
Idea: talk to the people behind the Christmas lights. Ask what Christmas means to them. Human interest – could be humorous/personal stories/link with shots of the displays outside – do they reflect their inner life, or disguise some inner pain? Outside vs inside? Challenge the competitive element – do they really care about winning? Why??
Behind me, Craig gave a snort. I dropped the pad and held my breath, waiting for him to ask what I was doing.
His breathing deepened and, hot with relief, I stuffed the pad back in his bag.
&nb
sp; Picking up a discarded sheet of newspaper, I carefully tore off a corner, located Craig’s pen on the floor, and wrote Gone for some fresh air, back soon. Lily. I placed the note on the floor, where Craig would be sure to see it if he woke up, then slipped out of the room like a ghost.
Chapter Fourteen
I parked my car and rushed across the square to the newsagent’s, where, under Mr Flannery’s watchful eye, I found a basic reporter-style notepad.
‘Sheelagh told me about this Oliver bloke,’ he said, when I reached the counter.
I smiled politely, relieved she hadn’t yet spread the news about seeing him at Seaview Cottage. ‘His name’s Ollie, not Oliver.’
‘Never heard of him before.’ He took my money, probably disgruntled that I hadn’t secured Meryl Streep – or anyone else from the cast of Mamma Mia!
‘Don’t you read your newspapers or magazines?’ I cast an eye over the front covers. ‘I’m sure he’s been featured on their gossip pages.’
Mr Flannery laid his bony hands on the counter. ‘I don’t go in for gossip,’ he said, which I didn’t believe for a second. Everyone I’d met so far seemed keen to know what everyone else was up to. ‘I don’t understand this reality lark. Why would people want to watch ordinary people do silly things?’
There’s nothing ordinary about Ollie, I wanted to say, but mindful it might sound fangirlish I refrained. ‘There’ll be an update very soon,’ I promised.
‘I hope so,’ he said darkly. ‘Those tree lights aren’t going to switch on by themselves.’
I managed not to say that anyone could flick a switch if it came to it, and left him grumbling at another customer, who’d dared to ask if he had any paperclips. ‘We’re not a bloody stationery shop. Try WH Smith’s, up Main Street.’
Outside, I paused to admire the silver mesh balls on the fir tree planted in the square, which was wrapped in LED lights just waiting to burst into life. A chalkboard bravely proclaimed a ‘Special Guest’ would be doing the honours at 5 p.m. on 13th December, and that Santa would be handing out presents to children who’d been ‘good’.
I smiled, remembering my last Christmas at Kingswood Primary, and the children’s expressions when Santa – one of the dads dressed up – had popped in to tell them a story. They’d looked so joyful – until little Todd Lafferty, whose parents were ‘free-thinkers’ said, ‘Everybody knows that Father Christmas isn’t real,’ and the rest had burst into tears.
Across the cobbled square was the flower stall Jane had mentioned, its green-and-cream canopy strung with fairy lights, beneath which a rosy-faced woman, surrounded by buckets of flowers, was chatting to a customer. I didn’t recognise the woman, but there was a wheelbarrow nearby with Ruby’s Blooms painted on the side, so I guessed she must be Ruby.
Spotting Cooper’s Café on the corner of the parade – surely the café Craig had visited – I hurried over, keen to get out of the cold. The interior was warm and steamy, the air filled with chatter and laughter and the clink of spoons, against a background of Christmas music. After ordering a hot chocolate and a toasted teacake, I removed my coat, then sat at a table by the window. I ate slowly, enjoying the sensation of buttery dough and raisins on my tongue.
Outside, the sky was powder-white, and the wind had whipped the sea into foamy peaks. The tide was out, and the beach and pier were deserted. I dismissed the brief but ridiculous idea of going for a run on the sand. I kept a pair of trainers in my car, just in case, but the thought of going to get them wasn’t appealing. Anyway, I didn’t have much time. Leaning back, I wrapped my hands around my mug, and watched a couple of seagulls soaring high, before dive-bombing the choppy water.
If I hadn’t had guests to get back to, I might have taken a drive to Corfe Castle, recalling the last time I was there, when my brother Chris had decided to play hide-and-seek, wedging himself inside a stairwell so we couldn’t find him. Mum had grown hysterical, running around, pleading for help. I’d cried and wet myself, and Dad had finger-whistled as though Chris was a sheepdog, before bellowing his name. When the security guard found him, Chris confessed he’d stayed hidden for so long because we were ‘embarrassing’.
Smiling, I sipped my drink, enjoying the anonymous buzz of conversation around me, and Bing Crosby crooning ‘White Christmas’, and when the window grew too steamy to look through, I pulled my new notepad and a pen from my bag, and placed them on the table.
I thought again about what Craig had written, wondering why neither he nor Ollie had mentioned wanting to interview the neighbours ‘behind closed doors’. Perhaps they hadn’t got round to it; or Craig was planning a spin-off show of his own. How could I ask without outing myself as a snoop?
I pushed up the sleeves of my cardigan and doodled a couple of hearts in the margin of the notepad, and a whiskery cat that might or might not have been Marmite, then idly checked the time. Would Ollie and Craig be awake now, annoyed I’d gone out? Should I have left them alone in my cottage? Not that I had anything worth stealing, even if Ollie hadn’t been the heir to a fortune, and Craig’s camera worth more than anything I owned. I had nothing hidden away that I wouldn’t want them to find, and if either were tempted to rummage through my underwear, they’d be disappointed by my sensible bras and pants. And, considering how helpful they’d been since arriving, the cottage seemed more theirs than mine, anyway.
Impulsively, I accessed the Internet on my phone and tapped The Vampire and Me into a search engine. Once it had loaded, I fast-forwarded the clip until Ollie appeared – and wished I hadn’t. Erin had been right. Ollie was a terrible actor; wooden and stilted, sporting a disastrous moustache and a terrible Irish brogue. None of his natural charm came across, as he and his winsome girlfriend strolled through a night-time city, stalked by a vampire with a Colgate-white complexion and staring eyes.
I shut down the clip as Ollie – or Paddy, as he was unimaginatively named – turned to the vampire and shouted, ‘I know what your game is, sir,’ his accent dipping towards Liverpool.
Evicting the image of his panic-stricken eyes, I forced my attention back to my notepad and, after a moment’s contemplation, wrote: The sight of Carlos in his tight-fitting pants made Jessica’s heart race. I scribbled it out. I wanted to write something a child could pick up, without fear of them seeing a word or sentence their parents would be embarrassed to explain.
Jessica turned to the cameraman, a short, bad-tempered man with a scruffy beard. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for the show,’ she wept, throwing herself on his mercy. ‘It’s so shallow and unimportant.’
‘Remember, you’re under contract,’ he growled, his eyebrows wriggling like caterpillars across his forehead. Jessica rolled her eyes at him… I had an image of her eyes whizzing like marbles across the floor, and changed it to: Jessica tossed her raven hair back… Ugh. Too soapy.
Maybe I should write about what I knew. Wasn’t that what writing tutors advised? But I didn’t want to write about teaching. My career was forever tainted by the memory of Max’s wife barging into my classroom and shouting at me in front of the children. After she’d flounced out, one child had asked if the ‘nasty witch’ was coming back to put a spell on her, while another demanded to know what a ‘slut’ was.
With a shiver of revulsion, I blinked away the memory and turned to a fresh page. Perhaps a stream of consciousness would get things flowing. I tapped my pen for a minute then, catching the irritated glare of a woman at the next table, started to write: Once upon a time—
‘Hi, Miss Ambrose.’
I looked up to see Alfie Blake hovering by the table in the same baggy suit he’d worn when he showed me around the cottage. ‘You settled in alright, then?’
‘Oh! Yes, it’s lovely, thank you.’ His gaze skittered over the page in front of me and, thankful my writing was too untidy to read, I snapped my notepad shut. ‘I just popped out for a breath of fresh air,’ I felt obliged to explain. ‘But Shipley’s lovely, I really like it here.’
‘Oh?’ He
sounded so doubtful, I couldn’t help smiling.
‘It’s honestly not that bad,’ I said. ‘Look at that.’ I gestured towards the view, but the window was still foggy, and all that was visible was a giant penis someone had drawn in the steam, which I hadn’t noticed before. ‘I mean, it’s a very pretty place.’
‘S’alright in the summer, I s’pose.’ His tone was grudgingly polite, and looking more closely I noticed he’d lost the air of enthusiasm he’d had when he took up my challenge to push the house sale through. His shoulders sloped forward, as though weighted down with worry, and his curly hair looked limp.
‘How’s work?’
He rubbed the side of his nose. ‘’S’okay.’
‘Are you on your lunch break?’
Before he could reply there was a kerfuffle, and I looked round to see a pair of youths at the counter, grabbing some cake from beneath a glass dome while the assistant’s back was turned.
‘Oi!’ A customer had clocked what was happening and was rising from his chair, as the beefy boy squashed a wedge of carrot cake into his skinny friend’s spiky hair.
‘You’re such a twat, Biff.’ The boy scraped off the cheesy frosting and smeared it over Biff’s face.
‘DAZ, you absolute pillock.’
‘Language,’ said a woman I recognised as the Harassed Mum from The Christmas Lights Society meeting, with the twins in a double buggy. ‘There are impressionable ears over here, and you’re setting a terrible example.’
The skinny youth had the grace to mumble an apology, but Biff turned on her with a swagger and stuck two fingers up – the effect somewhat spoiled by lumps of cream cheese clinging to his acne.
The door to the kitchen swung open and a man I assumed was the manager emerged. ‘Get yourself back to college before I call the cops,’ he ordered, his face like thunder. ‘And you’re both barred. Again.’
‘Fuck’s sake, Dad.’ Biff deflated like a popped balloon as he reached for a serviette and scrubbed at his face. ‘You can’t bar me. Mum won’t let you and, anyway, we live upstairs.’ Grabbing his friend by the strap of his rucksack, he tugged him towards the door, pausing when he caught sight of Alfie. ‘Ooh, look, Daz, it’s Mr “convenient for local amenities”,’ he said, in a clipped, high-pitched voice.
