Rumor Has It

by Jill Mansell

  Which gave Lou long enough to discard her third outfit and instead change into the first pair of jeans, an olive green boat-neck T-shirt, silver flip-flops and a plaited green and silver leather belt.

  'Perfect.' Solemnly Tilly nodded; bless her, Lou was desperate to impress someone.

  'What about the earrings? Too dangly?'

  'They're perfect too.'

  'No… hang on.' Lou turned and galloped back up the stairs. Two minutes later she returned with medium sized sky-blue hoops in her ears. 'Is that better?'

  'Fine.' Bemused, Tilly said, 'Don't you have silver hoops?'

  'Yes, but then it all might look too coordinated, you know? As if I'm trying too hard.'

  'Oh right. In that case, definitely the blue ones.' Tilly just hoped Eddie Marshall-Hicks appreciated all the effort that went into not looking as if you were trying too hard.

  Lou checked her watch. 'Is it quarter to eight?'

  'Yep. Ready to go?'

  Deep breath. 'Do I look all right? Should I wear different shoes?'

  'If you change them, your belt won't have anything to go with.'

  'Then I'd be completely uncoordinated and that's no good. OK,' Lou made up her mind. 'I'm ready. Let's go.'

  The key turned in the ignition and nothing happened.

  Tilly tried again. The car still didn't start.

  'Are you playing a trick on me?' said Lou.

  'No. Hang on, don't panic.' Inwardly panicking, Tilly took the key out and fitted it in again—hopefully better this time—then pumped the accelerator and gave it another go.

  Still nothing.

  Lou said, 'What's wrong with it?'

  Tilly flicked the bonnet switch under the dashboard and jumped out of the driver's seat. If she knew what was wrong, she'd be a me chanic, but there was just a smidgen of an outside chance it might be something screamingly obvious, like when you spent ages wonder ing why the hairdryer wouldn't work then discovered it was because you'd plugged the straightener in instead.

  Except, disappointingly, there were no unplugged hairdryers in the engine. Everything just looked grimy and oily and as incom prehensible as engines always did. With Lou at her side, hopping agitatedly from one flip-flop to the other, she gingerly tugged and poked at a few mysterious tube-type things.

  When she tried turning the key again, all she got was grimy oily fingermarks on the steering wheel.

  'I'm missing the disco.' Lou began to hyperventilate. 'It's already been going for twenty minutes.'

  Making a fashionably late entrance paled into insignificance compared with making no entrance at all.

  'Everyone's going to be having fun without me,' Lou wailed.

  'OK, go and get the Yellow Pages. Find the number of Bert's company and we'll call him. I'll keep trying here.'

  Lou raced into the house and Tilly tried polishing the ignition key with her T-shirt, just in case it made that all-important bit of differ ence. Well, you never knew, did you? Especially when it came to cars.

  When Lou reappeared she was clutching the Yellow Pages in one hand and the cordless phone in the other. 'Hello? Hi, Bert, this is Lou Dineen. Can you come and pick me up from home in, like, thirty seconds?'

  Tilly's heart went out to her when Lou's face fell.

  'No, that's no good. OK, thanks, bye.' Ending the call and thrusting the Yellow Pages on to Tilly's lap, she said, 'He's picking up a fare in Malmesbury. Can you find another number? Oh God, why does this have to happen to me?'

  Eight o'clock came and went. The line to the next taxi firm was engaged non-stop and the waiting time for the third was an hour and a half. Lou's friend Nesh had gone away with her parents for the weekend. In desperation, Tilly tried calling Erin but there was no reply and her mobile was switched off.

  'This is so unfair.' In a panic now, Lou began riffling through the Yellow Pages again. 'Does this count as an emergency? Would the police be cross with me if I dialed 999?'

  She was joking, but only just. The phone rang in Tilly's lap and she snatched it up, praying it was Erin returning her call. 'Hello?'

  It wasn't Erin.

  'Hi, it's me.' In the midst of all the panic, it was odd to hear Jack sounding so relaxed. 'I know I've missed Max, but can you pass on the message that the electrician's finishing off at Etloe Road tomor row morning, so he can get his crew in there after midday.'

  'Who's that?' Lou had found another cab number to try and was marking it with her finger.

  'Um… fine.' Distracted, Tilly said to Lou, 'It's not Erin.'

  'Get them off the phone then,' ordered Lou.

  'And if you've got a pen handy, I've found a number for a new marble supplier he might be interested in.'

  'Say it's a matter of life and death.' Lou gave Tilly a nudge.

  'Er… I don't have a pen…'

  'Is everything OK?' said Jack.

  'Um…' It wasn't easy to concentrate, what with Jack murmur ing in her left ear and Lou buzzing like an agitated wasp in her right. 'Sorry, Jack, it's just—'

  'JACK?' Lou let out a screech and grabbed the phone, nearly taking Tilly's ear with it. 'Why didn't you SAY? Jack, where are you? The car won't start and we're stuck here and I'm missing my disco…' His Jaguar shot up the drive seven minutes later. Lou catapulted herself into the passenger seat and declared, 'You are my most favor ite person in the whole world.'

  'Thanks so much.' The sight of Jack still caused Tilly's heart to leap into her throat. 'We were desperate.'

  'No problem. I'll drop Lou and come back, see if I can figure out what's wrong with the car.'

  Tilly stammered, 'Oh, you don't have to. Really. Max can call the garage in the morning and—'

  'Excuse me, can we argue about this another time?' Lou shook her head in disbelief. 'In a teeny bit of a hurry here! Can we please go?'

  Chapter 27

  'MY HERO,' SAID TILLY, when Jack returned thirty-five minutes later. 'My life wouldn't have been worth living if Lou had missed her big night.' Checking her watch, she added, 'That was quick.'

  'I can be speedy when I have to be. And I did have Lou sitting next to me, bellowing, "Faster, faster."'

  'Thanks, anyway. And for coming back. Although I don't know how you're going to fix the car, now that it's dark. I can't find a torch anywhere.'

  'I don't know how I'm going to fix it either.' Jack grinned as he followed her into the kitchen. 'I'm rubbish at cars. Never mind, we'll leave that to Max. Stick the kettle on. We've got until ten to ten, because Lou wants to be picked up at ten past.'

  'You don't have to do it. I can call a cab.'

  'Not a problem. Nothing else on this evening anyway. And my rates are very reasonable.'

  Was that a provocative remark? Did he expect her to ask how she could repay him?

  'Tea or coffee?' said Tilly.

  'Coffee, black, one sugar.' He smiled slightly. 'You forget how exciting discos are when you're thirteen. I remember having a crush on a girl called Hayley and wondering how the hell I was going to get her away from her friends so I could kiss her.'

  Tilly passed him his coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. 'Did you manage it?'

  'Oh yes, I was very suave. I told her the headmaster wanted to see her outside, and that I had to take her.'

  'Suave and devious. So, what did she do when you kissed her?'

  'Carried on chewing her chewing gum and asked me to buy her a Coke. Actually, that's not true.' Jack paused, remembering. 'She asked me to buy her and her three friends a Coke. Each.'

  Tilly started to laugh. 'And did you?'

  'No! I told her I didn't have enough money and she said oh well, in that case, I couldn't afford her. And then she went back inside.'

  'So you haven't always been irresistible to women.' She loved the way he could tell a story against himself.

  'God, no. The first few years were disastrous. But you live and learn.'

  'Was Hayley pretty?'

  'Very. Although obviously I hope she hasn't aged well.'
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br />   'All those years ago and still bitter.' Grinning, Tilly pointed her teaspoon at him. 'You just have to chalk these things up to experi ence. Like the boy who blabbed to everyone in school that I padded my bra with tissues.'

  'Cruel,' said Jack. 'I went out with a girl when I was fifteen and she told all her friends when I tripped up and fell flat on my face outside the cinema.'

  Telling stories against yourself was all very well but Tilly couldn't quite bring herself to share the one about wetting herself whilst watching Mr Bean. There was such a thing as too much information.

  'One boyfriend took me home to meet his mum and I had to pretend to really like this casserole she'd made for dinner. It was awful, full of gristle and arteries and grungly bits.' Tilly shuddered at the memory. 'And after that, his mum made it every time we went to his house. She always said, "Come on in and sit down, pet, I've done your favorite!"'

  Jack pointed his own teaspoon back at her. 'Unless she didn't think you were good enough for her precious son and that was her way of getting rid of you.'

  'Oh my God, I never thought of that!' Caught in a light bulb moment, Tilly excitedly flapped her hands. 'And I've actually done it too! Years ago, I was seeing this guy and I was cooking more and more horrible meals for him, and it wasn't until he complained about them that I realized I'd been doing it on purpose!'

  Jack raised an eyebrow. 'You mean…?'

  'I didn't want to be with him anymore, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings either. I'm not like you,' said Tilly, 'I don't like being the one to do the finishing.'

  'You leave it to the man to do the dirty work. So you don't have to feel guilty.' He looked amused. 'What happens if they don't want to finish with you, though? If they don't want to let you go?'

  She shrugged. 'I just make myself horribler and horribler until they do.'

  Jack reached for his coffee. 'And is that what happened with the last one? Max told me you came home from work one day and he'd moved out of your flat.'

  Hmm, so did that mean he'd been asking Max about her? Tilly said, 'That's right, he did.'

  'Because you'd been horrible to him?'

  'I wouldn't call it horrible. I just… distanced myself.'

  'So that's why you weren't devastated when it happened.'

  'I suppose.' She took a sip of her coffee. 'He just wasn't… The One. God, it's a funny business, isn't it? You can line up ten thousand men and know immediately that nine thousand nine hundred and ninety of them aren't your type. So then you're left with ten who are possibles and you have to narrow it down by a process of elimination. And it can all be going really well, you can think someone's perfect in every way, then they do or say one tiny thing that makes you realize you could never have a relationship with them.'

  Jack's smile broadened. 'I've never thought of it like that. So you'd end up rejecting ten thousand men before you found someone you liked. That's kind of picky, isn't it?'

  'I don't mean finding someone to just go out on a date with. I'm talking about the one person you'll end up sharing the rest of your life with. And as you get older, you naturally get pickier.' Struggling to explain, Tilly went on, 'When I was at school, all the girls used to imagine being married to the three or four best looking boys in the class. We used to practice writing our new names in our exercise books. Hmm, Nick Castle's quite cute, how does Tilly Castle sound? Or Liam Ferguson with the long eyelashes. Hang on, let's try that for size, Tilly Ferguson…' She mimed scribbling her signature with a flourish. 'Hey, that looks great, we should definitely get married!'

  Jack said gravely, 'You see, that's the thing about being a boy. We never did that.'

  'Well, you don't know what you missed. It was fun! And there were other things you could do to work out how happy you'd be together. You'd write out both your names, one above the other, then cross out all the letters you had in common, then add up the ones that were left and divide the boy's final number into the girl's, and if it made a whole number, you were a perfect match.'

  His face was a picture. 'You're kidding. You seriously did that?'

  'Many, many times.' Oh yes, it was all coming back to her now. 'And if you didn't get the answer you were hoping for, you had to find out what their middle name was, factor that into the equation, and start all over again.'

  Jack looked dumbstruck. 'Hang on. Girls at school used to ask me my middle name!'

  'Now you know why. That's what they were doing. On the bright side,' said Tilly, 'all that endless tinkering around with numbers did wonders for our mental math.'

  Amused, Jack said, 'And do girls still do this?'

  'I don't know. I haven't thought about it for years. We'll have to ask Lou.' Tilly grinned. 'I know whose name she'd be doing it with. Eddie Marshall-Hicks.'

  'Lou's got a boyfriend?' He sounded shocked.

  'Not yet. Ask Lou and she'll tell you she hates him. But we've seen them together at school,' said Tilly. 'There's all this flirty stuff, chasing each other and pretending there's nothing going on. It's so sweet, they obviously fancy each other like mad but can't bring themselves to admit it.'

  Jack nodded wisely, then tilted his head to look at her. 'Ever done that?'

  Hang on, was this a trick question? Did he mean here? Now? With him?

  'God, yes.' Tilly nodded vehemently. 'When I was fifteen, I had a huge crush on this boy who used to catch the same bus as me in the morning. He used to look over at me. I used to look at him. This went on for weeks and I knew he liked me. Then he started smiling and saying hello, and every morning I'd practically faint with excite ment. I knew nothing about him, but he was my whole world. I imagined us being together forever. We'd get married and have three children, two girls and a boy. And each day, I'd start an imaginary conversation with him that would get the ball rolling. But in real life I was sitting there, waiting for him to make the first move, because what if I said something first and he snubbed me?' Crikey, where had all this come from? She hadn't even thought about the boy on the bus for years.

  'So what happened?'

  'Nothing. For months and months he caught the same bus every morning. Then one day he just stopped and I never saw him again.' Tilly shook her head ruefully. 'I like to think he was abducted by aliens. I couldn't believe he'd disappeared like that, without letting me know he was going. In the end, I decided his parents had made plans for the family to emigrate and didn't tell him until the last minute, just bundled him on to a plane so he didn't have a chance to say good-bye. But I can't tell you how upset it left me. I was in bits!'

  'And you never even knew his name. If that happened in a film, you'd bump into him again.'

  'But it didn't, so it won't. Anyway, I learned my lesson. Grasp the nettle. Don't waste opportunities. Never let a chance slip by.'

  'Which is how you came to be working for Max, living here in this house. And you're glad you did, aren't you?' He sat back in his chair, dark eyes glittering. 'So it works.'

  Distracted by the look he was giving her, Tilly said, 'How about you then, when you were at school? Ever have that thing where you really liked a girl and didn't know how to tell her?'

  He tilted his head to one side. 'Because she might have rejected me? Oh yes.'

  'Really? Oh, that's so sweet! I wasn't expecting you to say that.'

  Jack looked appalled. 'Sweet?'

  'Sorry, but it is. I can't imagine you nervous, even at school.'

  'Well, I was.'

  'And what happened? After all the flirting, did you finally pluck up the courage to ask her out?'

  He nodded solemnly. 'I did. But she explained it probably wouldn't be a good idea, what with her being my math teacher.'

  Tilly just managed to avoid spraying coffee. 'Your teacher! How old was she?'

  'Twenty-five. And I was seventeen. So that was that, she turned me down.' Jack paused. 'But three years later she called me up out of the blue and asked if I'd like to meet up for a drink. So it took a while, but I got to go out with her in the end.'

/>   At nine forty-five, leaving Betty asleep in her basket, they set out to pick up Lou.

  'I hope she's had a good time.' As they sped along narrow country lanes, Tilly pictured the scene in the school hall. 'What if Eddie asked her to dance? Or what if he didn't? What if the slow music came on and all Lou's friends got asked to dance and Eddie was too shy?' She pulled a face as another thought took hold. 'Or what if he asked some other girl instead? Oh God, poor Lou, and she was just left on her own, propping up the wall, pretending she didn't care…'