by JL Merrow
It wasn’t that I’d been getting cold feet, honest. We’d agreed he’d hold off giving notice at his flat until I’d got the house cleared out a bit, Phil’s wardrobe being (a) substantial and (b) not exactly the sort that’d take kindly to being kept in suitcases long-term. And then, well, I’d been busy—with Cherry’s wedding preparations, with our own wedding preparations, and occasionally even with actual paid work. So we’d pushed the date back to January, and then of course it’d been tax-return season. For me, that was, seeing as Phil had naturally got his sent in back in September, the smug git. I gave up expecting sympathy while I faffed about with shoeboxes full of invoices and receipts, fielding increasingly frustrated calls from my accountant about badly described business expenses dated over eighteen months ago.
I finally got it all sorted a couple of days before the thirty-first January deadline, which was when Phil informed me that he’d given notice a month ago and would be moving in the following weekend whether the house—and me—were ready for him or not.
I might or might not have had a few choice words to say at this point on the subject of unilateral decision-making.
But the make-up sex was worth it. And, a week in, while I might have the odd moan about him beating me to the bathroom in the morning, I had no real complaints about the new living arrangements. He’d been staying at mine most nights anyhow, so to be honest the only real difference was the amount of stuff in the house.
For a bloke who’d been living in a small attic flat, my Phil had a lot of stuff. Maybe it’d seem less once we got it all out of the boxes, which were currently stacked in the living room (the ones we were definitely going to unpack any day now), the hallway (the ones we were thinking about taking upstairs and hadn’t got round to yet) and our bedroom (the ones we didn’t have a flippin’ clue what to do with, like duplicated kitchen equipment and entertainment tech. They had been in the spare room, but it hadn’t seemed polite to ask Mike to stay in a bed he couldn’t actually get to without some serious mountaineering gear, whereas Phil was surprisingly un-put-out by having to climb all over me to get to his side of the bed). The cats were torn between appreciating the new sleeping and lurking places (mostly Arthur), and having a paddy over the unprecedented changes to their home environment (mostly, but not exclusively, Merlin).
Happy days.
Mike announced he was turning in soon after we got back from Greg’s, probably worn out from all that ganging up on me with my dad. He’d travelled up the day before, and we’d spent the previous evening making polite conversation and passing round the family photo albums—or, as might be, Mike’s phone and the new, turbo-charged laptop Phil had given me for Christmas, onto which I’d loaded a choice selection of pics of yours truly as a nipper, just on the off chance Mike might want copies. He had, as it happened, which . . . I dunno. I s’pose I still had mixed feelings about him having known from the word go that I existed, but never having got in touch. Maybe it was an older-generation thing—thinking a clean break was best for me and all that.
I mean, he was here now, wasn’t he? So he definitely cared about me.
It made for a funny old weekend, having Mike there. His presence, welcome as it was, definitely put a dampener on anything bedroom related. And while I felt strange talking to him about his family—the legitimate son and all—it didn’t seem right constantly interrogating him on the subject of my newly discovered Polish heritage.
Luckily I’m also half British, so was able to fall back on the weather, the England football team, and the state of the NHS as conversational topics.
We took him out for a Sunday roast at the Fighting Cocks, then put him on a train back west. Then it was time to start shifting all the boxes back into the spare room.
“When are we going to chuck out your old hi-fi?” Phil asked as, mission accomplished, we sat down on the sofa in front of the telly to enjoy a well-earned beer.
“What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Apart from being ten years old? I got mine less than a year ago. And it’s half the size. Doesn’t make sense for it to be the one sitting in a box.”
“Mine was here first.” Okay, I do realise that wasn’t the most mature argument I could have made.
“And it’s your house, your rules?” Phil said it so mildly there was a moment when I actually didn’t realise the big, deep pool of man-eating sharks I was hanging over by a thread that was fraying by the second.
“Course not!” I said—possibly a bit too heartily—once I’d clued in. “It’s our house, now, innit?”
Phil laughed, the bastard. “Nice save. So I’ll be getting my music system out of storage, then?”
I eyed my trusty old hi-fi sadly. It was looking a touch out-of-date these days, and at least this way I could stop feeling guilty about the dust piling up on top (and yes, I’m fully aware there was another potential solution, but trust me, it was never going to happen). “Fine,” I said in an appropriately martyred voice. “But we’re not chucking it out. What if, I dunno, your one breaks down?”
“Thought we’d make our own entertainment,” Phil said with a smirk. “In fact, why don’t we do that now?”
“Okay, you put the kettle on, and I’ll get out the Scrabble.”
Phil grabbed hold of me and started making his own entertainment there and then. And yes, there was a fair amount of knob-twiddling involved.
He’d known I wasn’t serious about tea and Scrabble. For one thing, my lack of enthusiasm for the game has been pretty clear since that time I got thrashed by him, Gary, and Darren over at their place, mostly because they knew all the obscure, high-scoring words and I didn’t. And for another thing, neither of us owns a set.
Darren brought his old mate over to see us at my house a few evenings later.
Our house, I mean. Mine and Phil’s.
Due to a failure in communication, me and Phil both went to answer the door, so when I opened it, we were side by side like we were practising for the receiving line at our wedding. Darren gave us a nod, clearly acknowledging the honour but disappointed at the lack of any red carpets being rolled out. “All right, lads?”
Standing next to Darren was a lady half a head shorter than him and about low-chest level on me, which I reckoned made her around four foot four. It was weird seeing Darren (a) without Gary in tow and (b) escorting someone smaller than he was. It made me feel all unnecessarily tall and loom-y, and trust me, that’s not a feeling I get very often. Of course, with his confident swagger—which somehow he managed to pull off while standing still, don’t ask me how—Darren always seemed a couple of feet taller than his actual height.
He turned to his companion. “Lilah, babe, this is Tom Paretski. And Phil Morrison,” he added as an afterthought, which was a turn up for the books. Usually I was the afterthought where Darren was concerned.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” she said with a cat-like smile.
I could see why Lilah Parrot had gone for a career in adult entertainment. Her plain V-necked T-shirt showed off her ample cleavage, and her skintight jeans hugged her full hips like they’d been made for her, which maybe they had—with her proportions, she’d struggle to get her kit on the high street. Tanned and with long, expertly bleached and straightened hair, she gave off sex appeal so strong even I could feel it—I mean, I’ve never fancied going to bed with a woman in my life, but meeting the luscious Lilah, I could suddenly imagine how, if I was single and she came onto me, I might be tempted to try switching sides for the duration.
It was unnerving, to be honest. Was this how married blokes in denial felt when they had a midlife crisis and realised they actually preferred blokes? I sneaked a glance at Phil, and was relieved to find he was still the one who revved my engine.
From what Darren had said about knowing her way back when, I’d assumed she’d be around his age, early forties maybe, but if she was, she was wearing it well. Her makeup, which was also expertly done, was eye-catching rather than subtle, and accen
tuated the vivid blue of her eyes, which were large and beautiful.
And staring straight at me with more than a hint of Is he all there?
Right. Words. Words would be good. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you, Mrs. Parrot,” I said, thrusting out a hand and narrowly missing whacking her on one well-rounded boob. “Come on in.”
Her handshake was more of a squeeze. “Gawd, your mum brought you up proper, didn’t she? Call me Lilah, love. We’re all friends here, ain’t we?” She gave her cowboy boots a good old scrub on the doormat, rather than the dainty shuffle a lot of women do, as if they’d be mortified if any grot actually came off their shoes.
“Lilah, then. And I’m Tom. Fancy a cup of tea?” I asked, because she wasn’t wrong about my mum bringing me up proper.
“You’re a lifesaver. I’m gasping, here. Just a dash of milk, please. No sugar.” A woman after my own heart.
“Phil? Darren?” They both nodded. I let Phil show our guests to the living room and went out to the kitchen to flick the kettle on and get out some proper cups and saucers. Not because my mum brought me up to (although she did) but because according to Phil, you can tell a lot about a client from whether or not they rattle the cup in the saucer. Then I shook out some choccy biccies onto a plate, remembered Darren was with us and doubled the quantity, and was in the living room with the tray in a jiffy.
“Here you go, love,” I said, handing Lilah her cup. Phil had got her and Darren settled on the sofa and was sitting back, fingers steepled in that I’m about to listen intelligently, see me pointing at my brains with both hands way.
She took the cup with nary a rattle. I doled out the rest of the cups, turfed a protesting Arthur out of the remaining armchair, and sat down.
Nobody took a choccy biccie, except Darren, who took the whole plate and sat back, munching happily. He obviously felt he’d done his bit by bringing her here and the rest was up to us.
Phil grabbed his notepad and flicked it open. “Right, Mrs. Parrot, in your own time, would you like to tell us what happened?”
Lilah arched a perfectly formed eyebrow. Any minute now she’d tell me she was here to see the organ grinder, not the monkey, and things really would go pear-shaped.
“Uh, Phil’s best with all the routine stuff,” I said quickly.
She took a delicate sip of tea. Still no rattle. “Like I told Darren, it’s about my husband, Jonathan. He’s buggered off.”
“How long’s he been gone?” Phil asked.
“Nine days.” That was pretty precise, none of your waffling about whether it was last Tuesday or Wednesday, and for that matter, not a lot of hair-tearing, either. “I got home one day and he’d scarpered.”
“Did he leave a note?”
She shook her head.
“Take much with him?”
Lilah paused, then let out a long breath. “He took a bag. Not a big one, mind. Only a few casual clothes. None of his nice suits.” She seemed miffed about that. I deduced they’d been a present from her.
Heh. Maybe I was cut out for this detective business, after all.
“And what about his place of work?” Phil asked.
“Well, he wasn’t going to carry on turning up there, was he? He worked at my sister’s place,” she explained at our blank looks. “It’s an antiques showroom not far from where we live. The Old Smithy.”
If I had a pound for every place around here called “The Old” something or other . . . I still couldn’t afford to shop in them. At least it wasn’t Ye Olde.
“And where’s that?” Phil bored on. In the drilling sense, I mean. Not the can’t-keep-my-eyes-open sense.
“Pluck’s End.” Lilah grinned. “The posh bit.”
You had to warm to the way she said it. Like she was dead chuffed she’d made it far enough to buy a house somewhere upmarket.
If Phil was warming to her, he hid it well. “And have you spoken to your sister about it? Has she got any idea why he might have left home?”
“Oh, I know why he left.” She humphed. “Got fed up with the straight life, didn’t he?”
Phil’s nose twitched at that one. “He’d been in trouble with the law before you knew him?”
“What, my Jonny?” She snorted. “He ain’t that sort of bent.”
My cup rattled loudly in its saucer. All of them turned to frown at me. “Sorry,” I said, and flashed a smile that didn’t seem to work on anyone.
Mind you, my Phil’s got a great poker face. “He had same-sex relationships before you knew him?” He waited for her nod. “What makes you think he’s gone looking for that kind of thing again?”
Her lips tightened. “There’s been plenty of evidence, believe me.”
“So why do you want him found?” I blurted out.
She turned her big, lovely eyes on me. “I miss him.”
Poor girl. “How long have you two been married?”
“It’ll be two years in August.”
That was optimistic of her, in the circs. Then again, it’d be hard to divorce the bloke if she couldn’t find him.
“And the kids want their dad back,” she added.
“You’ve got kids?” I let out in unwary surprise.
Lilah’s chin came up. “Yeah, I got kids. What you saying? You saying I can’t be a good mum and work in porn?”
“Course not,” I said quickly. “Just impressed how you’ve managed to keep your figure looking so good.”
She cackled. “Oh, I like you.”
Phil coughed. “So have you any idea where he might have gone? Old friends, lovers . . .”
She dismissed his question with an eye roll, and turned pointedly to me. “Oh, I know exactly where he is. I just need you to find him for me.”
I blinked. “Come again?”
“Know where I met him? Camden Market, working one of the stalls. That’s where he’ll have run back to, if I know my Jonny-boy.”
“So, uh, why don’t you . . .?”
She sent me a withering look. “You ever been to Camden Market? Like the Mines of bleedin’ Moria, that place is.”
I blinked. Somehow, despite the background in film, she was the last person I’d expected to reference Lord of the Rings. Wasn’t it a bit, uh, stereotypical about dwarves?
“Pan’s effing Labyrinth,” she went on. “You could hide a bloody elephant down there. If I set one foot in that place, he’ll hear about it and he’ll scarper. They’re well tight, that lot, and look at me. Come on, look at me. Think I’m going to get away without being recognised? I can put on a wig, but I can’t do nothing about my height, now can I? ’Sides, half of ’em know me from when me and Jonny was first going out. Or professionally.” She gave another catlike smile.
Phil coughed. “So you want someone who’ll be able to get close to your husband without arousing his suspicions. What then?”
Lilah flashed him a frown, as if she reckoned the monkey was getting above his station, and then switched the smile back on when she turned to me. “You give him a letter from me. Something physical. Something he can’t press a button and delete.”
Uh-huh. “Divorce papers, is it? Court summons?” Threats of actual bodily harm? I didn’t say the last one out loud, obviously.
Her eyes went very wide. “Course not. Just a little note to tell him I miss him and want him to come home.”
“You tried texting?”
“He ain’t answering. He took his phone with him, but for all I know he dropped it down the toilet first chance he got.” Again with the miffed expression, suggesting that’d been another token of her affection. I was surprised someone with all her personal charms felt the need to keep buying the bloke presents, but maybe she was the generous sort. I mentally added ten percent to the hourly rate I was planning to quote her.
Then I took it back off again, feeling bad about taking advantage of an abandoned wife.
“Email? Messenger?” Phil asked.
Lilah leaned forward in her chair, a move which made her cleavage even more pr
ominent than it had been already.
Not that I noticed. Obviously.
“I’ve tried everything,” she said, and added a pout I reckoned would have any straight or bi bloke adjusting himself in his trousers.
Was it me or was it getting flippin’ hot in here? I’d have to have a look at that thermostat after she’d gone. I loosened my collar with a finger. “Right. Well. S’pose we’ll see what we can do?” I glanced over at Phil for confirmation, and narrowed my eyes at his smirk.
“Did you bring the letter with you?” he asked.
She pulled a brown envelope out of her bag and handed it to me. It was the sort you could get an A4 sheet of paper in if you folded it double, and was fat enough there must have been at least a dozen sheets in there. Little note, my arse. It was sealed up with heavy-duty sticky tape, just in case me and Phil might have had any ideas about steaming it open.
“And photographs of your husband? To make sure Tom knows he’s found the right bloke? Like you say, there could be any number of people hiding out in the market. Wouldn’t want him to deliver the letter to the wrong man.”
Another envelope, this one unsealed. I peeked inside, then spread the contents out on the coffee table. There were half a dozen photos, including one of what must have been the two of them on their wedding day. Lilah was radiant and anything but innocent in a tight white dress, carrying a bouquet of big, papery red flowers, while Jonny-boy stared at the camera with a shell-shocked expression on his mug.
Mind you, that could be in a good way, couldn’t it? After all, he was . . . Well, all I could think of to say about him was that he looked like any other ordinary white bloke you might meet on the street or down the pub. In his late twenties or early thirties, not unattractive but not model standard either, and about my height, at a guess.
It was a bit of a mystery what Lilah had seen in him, to be honest. Still, they say love is blind.
I snuck another glance over at Phil, but he was busy studying the photos.
