An Autumn Crush

by Milly Johnson

  Juliet opened the door. ‘Please come in,’ she said, and she stood aside to let Florence, who preferred to be called Floz, Cherrydale in and gave her a good look up and down from behind. She was tiny, height-wise – about five-foot two – with long wavy dark-red hair and a fifties-style curvy silhouette. From the front she was awfully pink-faced from rushing up the stairs. She also looked too meek and mild for Juliet’s tastes, and as if she’d not exactly been at the front of the queue when they were giving out a sense of humour. And she had the accent of a wing-commander. Great, Juliet thought. This one was probably a right snob who would look down on everything. What a waste of a chuffing day off work for both herself and Coco this was turning out to be.

  ‘I’m so sorry again that I’m late,’ Floz repeated. ‘I had to stop the traffic to pick up this little limping hedgehog and it didn’t go down particularly well with one shouty man. I couldn’t have left him hobbling like that. The hedgehog, not the shouty man, I mean.’

  ‘You’re here now,’ super-smiled Juliet, thinking, Here we go again.

  Whilst she put the kettle on for the hundredth time that day, Coco gave a still shaky Floz the guided tour. The vacant room was the smaller of the two bedrooms, but it was still gigantic compared to Floz’s present arrangements, apparently. It was L-shaped too, and the ‘L’ part would be perfect for her as Floz worked from home and needed a mini-office.

  They moved to the lounge to have coffee then. As she drifted past Coco, he caught the gentlest scent of late-summer strawberries from her. His smile curved upwards in response to it. Floz set her handbag down on the sofa and it toppled off and out fell, amongst the other handbag detritus, a tiny book – The Art of Being Happily Single.

  Floz looked mortified. ‘I’m so sorry again. I’m such a klutz.’

  Her cheeks re-flared up like red traffic-lights and Juliet felt a sudden and surprising wave of pity. But it was Coco who rescued her.

  ‘I’ve read loads of those sorts of books,’ he said warmly as Floz got all flustery trying to stuff all her things back in. ‘The Rules, Women Who Love Too Much, Get Rid of Him . . .’

  ‘. . . Women Are From Venus, Men Are Up Their Own Anuses . . .’ put in Juliet.

  ‘. . . He’s Not That Into You,’ said Coco, with a sad sigh. ‘Why Men Lie and Women Cry . . .’

  ‘How to Find a Man Who Isn’t a Complete Berk,’ Floz added. And she smiled and suddenly looked like a different person. One with a 1,000-watt lightbulb inside that had suddenly been switched on. Even her eyes were smiling. Mischievous bright green and shining, they were the eyes of a small child beaming out: ‘I’ve got a frog in my pocket.’

  Juliet’s intuition tore up the list with all other possible candidates on it and threw it behind her because of that smile. Yep, it said. She’ll do. The crazy hedgehog-rescuer with the very nice speaking voice and self-help book in her bag was The One.

  She proffered the chocolate digestives and Floz took one with a very smiley ‘Oooh’ of delight. The deal was sealed.

  And that was how, by seven o’clock that night, Floz Cherrydale had introduced her suitcases and her boxes to the floor of her new bedroom and was sitting on her new flat-mate’s sofa picking from the Great Wall takeaway menu, watching Emmerdale and drinking celebratory measures of Baileys.

  Chapter 2

  Juliet’s phone rang just as she had taken her coat off in the office. It was Coco, being his deliciously nosy self ringing her, as he liked to, five minutes before he opened up his Perfume Palace in the town-centre shopping mall.

  ‘So how was your first night with your new flatty then? Anything happen after I left?’

  ‘Like what?’ teased Juliet.

  ‘Any goss?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Ooh, you are awkward this morning. Is this what you’re going to be like now you’ve got a new friend?’

  Juliet laughed. ‘That is so rich coming from someone who drops me like a hot brick when he’s got the tiniest glimmer of a love interest.’

  ‘I can’t help it if I’m an obsessive,’ sniffed Coco. ‘Doesn’t she speak nicely? Not like you, you common tart. Ooh, and what perfume does she wear?’

  ‘How the bloody hell do I know?’

  ‘Whatever it was, it had a hint of strawberries in it. Delightful.’ He made a mental note to ask Floz the next time he saw her.

  ‘I think Floz must like strawberries. She’s got little pictures of them on her wall, and when she opens her door, the smell of them wafts out of her room.’

  ‘Aw bless,’ smiled Coco. He knew that anyone who smelled like Floz Cherrydale could be nothing other than a darling soul.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Darren?’ Juliet asked softly.

  ‘Nope, still nothing,’ said Coco, his smile falling to the ground on hearing his last lover’s name. ‘That’s three weeks, six days and fourteen hours now. Not that I’m counting. I still think he will ring. My intuition is strongly telling me that I’m on his mind.’

  ‘No, sweetheart, I don’t think you are,’ replied Juliet. She wasn’t the sort of person to lie to Coco and give him false hope. What would be the point of that? When a man was full on with his attentions then suddenly disappeared and didn’t answer phone calls or texts, he was not going to suddenly reappear with a viable excuse. Unless he had died – then he was still unlikely to turn up.

  ‘Okay,’ said Coco, trying not to give way to an inner surge of rising emotion. ‘Change of subject. What do you know about Floz so far then?’

  ‘Not that much,’ said Juliet. ‘She’s single, as you might have gathered from that book she dropped, works from home making up jokes and poems for the greetings-card industry, drives a Renault – all boring stuff

  ‘That it?’

  ‘’Fraid so for now, kiddo. No doubt we’ll get to know more in time,’ said Juliet. ‘I like her. We had coffee together this morning. She gets up quite early to start work.’

  ‘Such a shame she isn’t Guy’s type,’ said Coco, who never missed a good match-making opportunity.

  ‘I thought exactly the same,’ sighed Juliet.

  Yes, it was a shame that Floz was so small and red-haired and eggshell crushable. Had she been tall and statuesque and blonde, Juliet would have grabbed her brother and frog-marched him over to the flat to meet Floz five minutes after she moved in.

  ‘You could have gone double-dating,’ said Coco, with glee. ‘Floz and Guy and you and Piers.’

  ‘Oh, don’t get me going. He’ll be here any minute, breathing the same air as me.’ Juliet melted at the thought of having a little bit of her boss inside her – even if it was just his exhaled breath in her lungs.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Coco. ‘How about something to occupy the time between now and you becoming Mrs Winstanley-Black?’

  Ooh, that sounded good, thought Juliet. She mouthed the words ‘Juliet Winstanley-Black’ and thought it made her sound like a magistrate. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Internet dating.’

  ‘Internet dating?’ echoed Juliet. ‘What’s brought this on?’

  ‘I’m bored,’ said Coco. ‘I’m seeing all the same faces at all the same clubs and I want some fresh meat.’

  ‘Get to Barry the Butcher’s then on Lamb Street.’

  ‘Ho ho. Marlene my Deputy Manager met her fiancé online. And her cousin is going out with an architect that she met on the same Singlebods site. So they aren’t all Jeremy Kyle rejects that sign up to these things. Oh come on, it’ll be fun. And I need something to take my mind off Darren.’

  At that moment Juliet heard the velvet voice of Piers Winstanley-Black say ‘Good morning’ to the receptionist.

  ‘Okay, count me in,’ hurried Juliet. ‘Laters. He’s here,’ and she had just enough time to end the call, run her fingers through her long, black sheen of hair and stick out her tits.

  Amanda and Daphne, who shared the same office, were also having a quick hair-primp and straightening their backs. Would he come in
and choose one to go upstairs to his office to ‘take something down’? they all hoped collectively.

  Piers Winstanley-Black. Owner of a prestigious family hyphen and, as from four years ago, partner at Butters, Black & Lofthouse where Juliet had worked since leaving college and was now the most efficient legal secretary in the history of the place. Not that it stood her in good stead with ‘the boy from Ipanema’ as her twin brother Guy called Piers. Just like the song, Piers Winstanley-Black was tall and tanned and long and lovely with a flashing white smile that made Simon Cowell’s look grey by comparison. He drove fast cars, wore sharp suits that accentuated his broad shoulders and trim gym-toned waist, hand-made shoes and expensive Italian aftershave of which Coco would have mightily approved. Despite being months away from turning forty, he had never married – although Juliet suspected he had a little black book full of women just waiting for him to call and propose. He emerged every so often from his own arse to acknowledge his gorgeousness and witness himself sending a million champagne bubbles of erotic shivers down female spines. He did well to milk it now for all it was worth, since in ten years’ time, Juliet thought, he might have jowls like a Basset Hound and a bald patch the size of Mars.

  Despite all three women having puffed themselves up with breathless anticipation, his eyes didn’t even touch any of them as he passed by the open door. There was obviously a long wait to be had until Juliet could carve her double-barrel onto their joint four-poster bedhead.

  Daphne let her breath out. ‘If I were only twenty years younger . . .’

  ‘You’d still be fifteen years too old for his tastes,’ laughed Juliet. ‘Even Amanda is too old and she’s twenty-five.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ huffed Amanda. ‘Plus he likes blondes with legs up to the ceiling and boobies like beachballs.’ At four foot eleven with short dark hair and a AA chest, she knew that Piers Winstanley-Black was more likely to look at blonde Daphne than her.

  ‘If I roll my boobs up from my knees, I might be able to turn his eye,’ chuckled Daphne.

  ‘Daf, don’t be gross. And I do believe it’s your turn to put on the kettle,’ said Juliet, in her best mock-authoritarian voice.

  ‘Aye, lass,’ said Daphne, getting to her feet. ‘A cup of tea instead of sex. Story of my life.’

  ‘And sadly mine,’ replied Juliet, wondering what the magic key was to make Piers Winstanley-Black see her with man eyes. There had to be a key – with men there always was.

  Chapter 3

  Juliet’s parents managed to restrain themselves until Sunday before they called by on the ridiculous pretext of borrowing a hammer.

  ‘Dad, you’ve got more hammers than B and Q and Wickes put together!’ laughed Juliet down the door entryphone.

  ‘Yes, but I can’t find my pin hammer anywhere,’ said Perry Miller. His real name was Percy but the last person ever to call him that was a horrible old nun, Headmistress of Holy Family Infant School, County Cork.

  ‘And it takes two of you to come over and carry it back, does it?’ Juliet went on, winking over at Floz.

  ‘Oh, let them in and stop teasing,’ said Floz, whose eyes lit up like green emeralds when she smiled. ‘They just want to make sure you haven’t opened up your home to a homicidal maniac.’

  ‘Come on up then,’ sighed Juliet, pressing the lock-release button. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Floz braced herself for their scrutiny. Years of shutting herself away at home to work had made her shy of strangers. She really need not have worried though, because Perry and Grainne Miller breezed into the flat, embraced her like a long-lost daughter, and soon they were all sitting at the dining-table sharing a pot of tea and a tin full of date-and-walnut scones which Grainne – ‘Call me Gron’ – had brought over.

  Grainne and Perry were a very tall couple and Juliet was physically like both of them. She had her father’s cheeky grey eyes and high cheekbones and her mother’s large generous mouth and sexy small gap between her front teeth. Grainne’s hair was short and greying now, but it had been long and jet black in her youth; curly though, where Juliet’s was poker straight. Perry had a lovely thick head of snow-white hair and the air of a very calm and gentle person.

  ‘So, what is it you do for a job then, Floz?’ asked Perry, looking over at the tower of notebooks on the dining-table which she had been perusing that morning.

  ‘Don’t be so nosy, Perry,’ Grainne admonished him, her soft Irish accent as strong now as it was when she moved to Barnsley forty-five years ago.

  ‘I’m not being nosy,’ said the placid Perry. ‘It’s called making conversation.’

  ‘I don’t mind answering,’ Floz said and laughed. ‘I’m a freelance greetings-card copywriter.’ She was forced to elaborate in response to the blank looks the Miller elders gave her. ‘Basically, I sit at my computer and churn out jokes and rhymes day after day. The greetings-card companies buy them from me.’

  ‘Well, would you believe that?’ said Grainne. ‘I never thought before who writes all the stuff you get on cards.’

  ‘Mum will have bankrolled your companies in her time,’ said Juliet. ‘She sends cards for any occasion. “Congratulations on getting rid of your big spot”. “Sorry to hear you’ve fallen downstairs and bust your skull open”. “Well done on throwing your scumbag of a husband out of your life”.’

  Grainne jumped up and went over to the handbag she’d left with her coat by the door.

  ‘That reminds me.’ She came back holding a red envelope which she presented to Floz. ‘It’s a “Welcome to your new home” card,’ she beamed.

  ‘See?’ said Juliet. ‘QED!’

  ‘Thank you, that’s very kind of you,’ smiled Floz, wondering whether to open it in front of everyone or save it until later. She decided on the former as Grainne was waiting with a wide arc of grinning anticipation on her face. Inside the envelope was a card with a big bun on the front with doors and windows in it. Inside, the message read: Welcome to your new home, with lots of love from Grainne, Perry and Guy Miller.

  ‘Thank you, that’s very thoughtful of you,’ said Floz. ‘Is Guy the cat?’ She knew that the Millers had a cat because there was a photograph of her father holding one on Juliet’s kitchen noticeboard. An ancient black cat, with one eye and no teeth. Obviously Guy wasn’t the cat, from the hilarity that comment caused.

  ‘He’s my twin brother,’ said Juliet. ‘He lives with Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Well, he lives in the granny flat adjoining our house,’ added Grainne. ‘I’m not sure he’d like to be classed as still living with his parents.’

  Juliet turned in her seat and fiddled in the drawer of the dresser behind her. ‘Look, this is him,’ and she handed over a photograph of herself standing in between two huge men dressed in wrestling gear – one with flowing white-blond hair, and with a fur waistcoat on, the other with jet-black floppy curls and Perry’s grey eyes, fringed with thick, dark lashes. Floz gulped. Square-jawed, tall, muscular Guy Miller was an absolute hunk. She felt her heartbeat quicken inside her.

  ‘That’s Steve Feast, Guy’s best friend.’ Juliet pointed to the blond man. She said his name in such a way that Floz guessed he wasn’t one of her bosom buddies. ‘And that is my brother. Where is Guy by the way, Mum? He’s not been around yet for me to introduce him to Floz.’

  ‘He’s been working flat out at the restaurant,’ replied Grainne. ‘Poor boy is exhausted. That Kenny is a bloody slave-driver! I don’t know why Guy doesn’t tell him to stick his job.’ Grainne’s blood began to boil when she thought about the many liberties Kenny Moulding took with her son, making him work such long shifts.

  ‘Oh now, Gron, the man has been good to Guy in his own way. He’s always paid him very well for his services,’ countered Perry, taking his pipe out of his pocket and clenching it between his teeth. He didn’t light it in anyone else’s house, he just liked the comfort of it on his lip.

  Grainne huffed. ‘Money is not everything, Perry. It doesn’t buy you happiness.’r />
  ‘Yes, I totally agree with you on that, my dear Gron. Still, it’s nice to have. Oils the wheels of living.’ Perry disarmed his wife with a smile. Floz thought it might be impossible to have an argument with such a calm and diplomatic man. He should have been serving in international peace-keeping missions. ‘So how many card firms do you actually work for then?’ Perry continued quizzing Floz.

  ‘Seven,’ Floz answered. ‘Though I get a weekly brief from a firm called “Status Kwo” and they’re the main suppliers of my bread and butter.’

  ‘What do you do then? Do they send you some pictures and you have to write around them?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Floz. She picked up a file and opened it to show Perry pages full of thumbnail black and white images. ‘They send me these pictures on a disk and I write copy for them, depending on what occasion they’ve asked me for. For instance, this picture of a woman swigging back a glass of wine – well, I could marry that to some copy for Mother’s Day about a mum going for it and over-celebrating, or it could be a best friend card, about only drinking on days with an “a” in them, or it could be a Get Well card about eating grapes to get better but only when fermented and bottled. That sort of thing. Sometimes . . .’ She rifled through the file for another brief ‘. . . all I get is an instruction to write rhymes for Father’s Day or Valentine’s Day. Then I’ll send them in and their illustrators work around what I’ve written.’

  ‘What a nice job. Is it well paid?’

  ‘Perry Miller! You are obsessed with money today.’ Grainne was disgusted her husband would be so cheeky as to ask that.

  ‘It pays the bills,’ replied Floz, grinning at Grainne’s comical display of embarrassment. But she also knew they must all be thinking that it couldn’t pay that much if she was in her mid-thirties and having to share a rented flat. She didn’t enlighten them with details about her circumstances, but moved quickly on to show Perry an example of her weekly briefs from Lee Status – loony maverick owner of Status Kwo.