She clenched her fists in frustration. She knew how to put the fucking place in profit if he’d just listen. But it was useless to try and force her views into his closed little mind.
Moving her practice to The Stables had seemed such a great opportunity. She’d been looking for a house in Middledip village and to have a treatment room near the neighbouring village of Port-le-bain, rather than in Peterborough, a fifteen-mile, traffic-angry drive away, had made the house purchase financially viable.
But the lucrative horde of clients spilling across the lawns from the luxurious hotel rooms of Port Manor had proved to be a figment of Nicolas’s business plan; and sometimes Liza found herself shuddering at visions of bailiffs turfing her out of her house, snatching her little black-and-purple car and sending her down Port Road to beg a room in her sister Cleo’s house. A house that would have no spare rooms, soon, when baby Gus’s cot was moved from beside his parents’ bed to the last available bedroom.
So Nicolas had a point. Insulting clients was idiotic. She breathed in slowly, from her abdomen, to steady her voice. ‘I’m sorry. It sounded jokey in my head but it was inappropriate. I’ll apologise to him—’
‘I don’t want to hear it.’ Nicolas passed his hand over his face. His skin gleamed white and unhealthy, like overcooked pasta, and his voice came perilously close to wobbling. ‘You’re repentant now but in five minutes you’ll be making jokes about me coming the big boss. Overreacting. Having a hissy fit. Because respect and supportiveness are pretty much absent in you, aren’t they? What was yesterday’s little love bite? Oh, yes. “Nicolas practises seagull management – getting into a flap and shitting over everything”.’
Liza winced. ‘I didn’t mean it in a horrible way.’ Which sounded feeble, even to her ears. ‘We’ve always exchanged friendly insults. You call me Stroppy Knickers.’
‘Well, you are.’ Finally, Nicolas smiled. But Liza didn’t like the smile. It was as if he actually felt sorry for her. ‘And the longer I know you, the less friendly I’m finding your insults. Of course, anyone who’s drowning in financial mire is likely to have a sense of humour failure when he hears you pissing off paying clients.’
Heaving a big sigh, he steered her to her chair, before perching his beachball behind on the desk. He looked like a man determined to tick a bad job off his To Do List. ‘You’ve had your practice here a year, Liza, and it’s been stormy. I made allowances when you explained what had happened in your personal life. You’re a great therapist and we’ve all put up with your “friendly” insults, because the clients love you and I thought you’d mellow as you left your problems behind.
‘But the centre’s bookings are dropping.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s nearly four. Do you have any more clients today?’
She met his eyes, stricken. ‘What do you mean, “all”? “We’ve all put up”, you said.’
Nicolas shifted, looking suddenly uncomfortable. ‘We’re only a small team here, aren’t we?’
‘Imogen and Fenella? Even Pippa?’ Young Pippa, on the reception desk, had only left school last year and still seemed to Liza like a baby animal, all big brown eyes and long legs.
Nicolas sighed, pushing back a lock of lank hair. ‘I’m afraid so. Do you have more bookings today?’
‘No,’ she admitted, voice small.
A long silence. She looked down at her white, ballet-slipper shoes. Nicolas’s brown shoes faced them, as if the footwear was having its own confrontation. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I hadn’t realised I was taking out my problems on you all.’ She and Nicolas always sparred, but Pippa? Fenella? Imogen? She’d thought they were a sisterhood.
Clumsily, Nicolas patted her hand. ‘I think you’ve had plenty of opportunity to realise before this, Liza.’ He hesitated, before adding, heavily, ‘I’m sorry if this seems unsympathetic after what happened with Adam but my back’s against the wall and I can’t afford your erratic ways. I’m fighting to build the centre and the rest of the team doesn’t need a difficult person.’ He paused again, as if bracing himself to say what had to be said. ‘The centre needs investment and more clients and I’m meeting some people tomorrow morning who might bring both. So, I’m putting you on notice to move your practice elsewhere by the first of December.’
Liza’s stomach flipped like an acrobat. ‘What?’
Nicolas went on relentlessly. ‘I’m just glad that you’re working the afternoon and evening tomorrow, because at least I know you won’t come out with some outrageous crack whilst they’re here.’
She found her voice. ‘Nicolas, things aren’t working out as I hoped, either, but you can’t possibly expect me to find new premises and move in less than eight weeks!’
‘Actually, I have your signature on a piece of paper that says I need only give you four. I’m sorry it’s come to this, Liza.’ He didn’t waver, even though he must know she was staring disaster in the face.
But, belatedly, she realised that Nicolas was going to do whatever it took, because he had his own disaster to stare at. And it was every bit as big as hers.
Driving through the gates of Port Manor and along the lanes to her house in Middledip village, the late afternoon sky suited her mood. Cold and grey: darkness on the horizon.
She parked her black-and-purple Smart car outside 7 The Cross, which waited, cosy in the gloom.
The Cross, which, having only three legs, wasn’t a cross at all, marked the centre of the village. Familiar with Middledip from the years Cleo had lived there, Liza liked that, in contrast to her anonymous former life in a modern box of a flat in a suburb of Peterborough, any villager might be encountered at the nearby shop or garage, or at the pub.
Number 7 was attached to its grand neighbour, The Gatehouse, which had been empty, but was currently showing a light in every one of its windows. The new people must have moved in.
The Gatehouse dwarfed dear little number 7 and, since its render had been painted blinding white and the stone sills and lintels shiny black, outshone it, too. Liza was glad her house still wore its unpretentious red brick, shaded with age, even if its two storeys were squat beside the Gatehouse’s lofty three. It seemed bizarre that the two houses were joined – like the local squire marrying his kitchen maid. But, there they were, sharing a wall. Goodness knows what gate The Gatehouse had ever been the house to, unless it was some relic of the Carlysle estate. More likely, some earlier occupant of The Gatehouse had simply decided it was posh for a house to have a name, rather than a number. And it did have a garden gate; maybe that was it.
As Liza slid from the car, huddling into her coat for the brief journey up number 7’s six-foot front path, an iron-grey middle-aged woman appeared through The Gatehouse’s imposing black-painted front door. ‘Good evening.’
Although she didn’t really feel like going through the friendly neighbour ritual, Liza paused, key in hand, and summoned a smile. ‘Just moving in? Welcome to Middledip. I’m Liza. If you haven’t unpacked your kettle yet, I could make—’
‘I’m Mrs Snelling,’ the woman interrupted. ‘Is that your little house? It adjoining ours was nearly a deal breaker.’
Any intention of offering a cheering cuppa instantly vanished from Liza’s mind. ‘It’s been “adjoined” for about a hundred-and-fifty years. It didn’t grow overnight, like a zit.’
Mrs Snelling somehow managed to make her unsmiling face smile even less. ‘But then I realised that we could make you an offer, and break through – it’ll be useful space. My mother might like to live downstairs and we can make the upstairs a guest suite. If we paint the exterior, the two properties will blend nicely.’
Liza laid her hand protectively on her plain front door. ‘It’s my house, not useful space. And painting these lovely bricks would be vulgar.’ Stabbing the key into the lock before Mrs Snelling could reply, she almost fell into the sanctuary of her hall, trying not to wonder how much longer her house would be her house. No practice equalled no money; if she couldn’t manage the mortgage payment
she’d have to sell. And now here was bloody Mrs Snelling waiting to annexe it. She flipped on the sitting-room light. ‘I won’t sell you to that rabid old bat,’ she reassured the room. But if she let the bank repossess it then they wouldn’t care who they sold it to, which would probably mean a delightful bargain in Snellingland. Useful space for people who already had acres of it.
Dropping her ski jacket over the back of the sofa, rubbing her chilly hands along the radiators, she made for the primrose-yellow kitchen and warming ginger tea, sitting at the small pine table to drink and think. Above her, the ceiling airer was hung with three copper saucepans, a dark blue glass ball, a drying top and leggings, and a bunch of lavender that, though it bathed her in its scent, failed to soothe her. She stared at the rain pattering at the window and wondered what the hell she was going to do. Her reflection stared back, pale hair and pale skin above dark green uniform. ‘Liza Reece,’ she asked it, ‘how has this happened? How could you upset your workmates? You need to return to the sunny, cheerful Liza that everyone knew and loved, this instant. Smile!’ She gave a great cheesy grin. ‘Wipe those frowns from your forehead.’ She smoothed with her palms, physically reminding her brow how it was meant to be. Unlined. Serene. ‘Stop worrying.’
How? The frown tried to repucker. Hastily, she plastered her forehead flat again. ‘By doing nice things.’ She summoned up a fresh smile. ‘Like ringing Angie and Rochelle.’ The smile became real and she reached for her phone.
Two hours on, curled in a corner of a leather sofa amongst the bright lights and chatter of the coffee-fragranced Starbucks in Long Causeway, she was glad she’d made the effort to jump into artfully frayed jeans and blue cowboy boots and drive to Peterborough. Angie and Rochelle were curled into the brown-leather tub armchairs opposite, hair long and highlights blonde; Angie a sort of sixties’ bouffant puff at the back of her head, Rochelle a cheerleader’s ponytail. Today’s look was ripped jeans and flat shoes—one pair grey, the other a pleasing purple.
Rochelle beamed over her latte. ‘This is mega. We were beginning to think you were avoiding us.’
‘It’s only a few weeks since you came over,’ Liza protested.
‘Yes, we go to Middledip.’ Angie cradled an Americano. ‘It’s you coming to civilisation that doesn’t happen.’ She waggled her eyebrows. ‘Give us an update.’
Liza felt her smile stiffen. ‘A bit crap – I’ve lost my treatment room. I was hardly making enough to get by, but it’ll take ages to find a new place, so I’m not sure how I’m going to pay my mortgage. Or run my car.’ She tried to think her brow flat. But it might have puckered, just a bit.
Rochelle looked aghast. ‘Are you being made redundant?’
‘The self-employed don’t get made redundant – or get redundancy payments. They just go bust.’ Liza sighed.
Angie’s eyes brimmed with sympathy. ‘Is Nicolas having to close the treatment centre? I saw on Look East that everyone is cutting down on non-essentials. I can see why alternative therapies might be losing money.’
‘He’s not shutting down.’ Liza had ordered a frappuccino, though the weather was miserable and the caffeine and calorie count must have been enormous. But there was something about the cream whirl and the spiral of chocolate sauce that made her feel better about finding herself in such a complete mess. She ducked her head to the straw and sucked up icy coffee spicules from beneath the flamboyant topping, then stirred slowly, watching the cream and chocolate sauce mix with the coffee slush.
When she lifted her eyes, Angie and Rochelle were waiting like parents who knew the weaknesses of their child and were creating a silence to be filled with the appropriate confession. She sighed. ‘Nicolas wants me out.’
‘What?’ breathed Angie. ‘Liza, you’re brilliant! Has he gone insane?’
Liza shook her head. She had to suck up a little frappuccino before her throat would allow her to speak again. ‘He heard me swearing at a client – the client asked me out and I seem to have lost the knack of gracious refusal. And Nicolas told me’ – deep breath, swallow – ‘that everyone’s fed up with me making them the butts of my stupid jokes, and now that I’ve moved into driving clients away … He’s got someone lined up who, apparently, has both money and a fresh client list to bring to the party.’
Silence.
‘Was he creepy?’ Rochelle frowned.
‘Nicolas?’
She waved her hand. ‘No! The customer who asked you out.’
‘Client,’ Liza corrected automatically. ‘No.’
‘Smelly?’
‘Ugly?’
‘No, he was pretty hot.’ She paused for thought. ‘He’s got this kind of young Kevin Costner streaky dark blond thing going on. Or Eric from True Blood – kind of golden. Leonine. With Daniel Craig eyes.’
‘Ooh, dirty blond.’ Angie shivered. ‘I love a dirty blond. What else?’
‘He’s obnoxiously, quietly overconfident.’
‘Like Spike, from Buffy?’ suggested Angie, hopefully.
Rochelle snorted. ‘Spike’s platinum blond, not dirty. How can someone be quiet and overconfident?’
Liza shrugged. ‘It’s like anything he says, he expects to happen. He did deign to discuss why I didn’t want to go out to dinner with him but it was plain that he thought he could find a way to make it happen. He has a determined mouth.’
Angie made wide eyes. ‘Pass him my way.’
Rochelle was more cynical. ‘Married?’
‘No,’ Liza had to admit, ‘he’s fresh out of a relationship. But that wasn’t the point. I just didn’t want to go out with him. And knowing I completely overreacted makes me feel like an idiot.’
Drawing her frappuccino glass a little closer, she sucked the creamy coffee goo up, tiny sip by tiny sip, signalling how much she no longer wanted to talk about Dominic Christy.
Rochelle hooked Liza’s hair back from her face. ‘You used to love being asked out.’
‘That was then.’
Angie frowned. ‘Why have you been horrible to the others at the centre?’
‘I hadn’t realised that I had. But now Nicolas’s brought it up, I’m going to have to talk to Fenella, Imogen and Pippa.’ Liza groaned.
‘And isn’t it up to you how you speak to your clients?’
‘In a way. But the benefit of having several therapists under one roof is the potential for sharing clients around. Having – hopefully – loved their reflexology treatment, a client might be receptive to trying ear candling or Indian head massage with Fenella, or hot stone therapy and aromatherapy with Imogen. Nicolas says that me chasing away custom risks dragging the whole centre down. And, of course, we pay him a commission on every fee, so the fewer I receive, the less I pay him.’
Rochelle snorted. ‘Just don’t swear at any more customers. Go to work tomorrow and apologise, be repentant, penitent, whatever you think it needs. Sorted.’ She sat back, draining her cup.
‘And what about the mad fools Nicolas’s got lined up to take my treatment room? No. The whole Stables set up isn’t working for me, not just because Nicolas wants me out but because he’s a crap businessman. It ought to work, to have a treatment centre in the grounds of a posh hotel, with all those guests coming and going, but Nicolas has this stodgy old business model and doesn’t want change to come within shouting distance of it. He likes to present himself as the boss, but he’s just a glorified landlord, managing the premises, contributing little but taking a salary out. I know that Fen and Immi are worried, too, but they’re being a bit ostrich.’
Rochelle frowned in thought. ‘Can you become the investor? To keep these other people out? Then you could make all your whizzy changes.’
‘I might be able to raise some money, but that doesn’t resolve Nicolas being dead weight, or us pulling in different directions. Getting more deeply involved with him and his finances would make everything worse.’
Angie patted her arm. ‘You should at least try and stay where you are until you’ve got somewhere line
d up. I’m sure the others realise that you’re not yourself. Everyone knows that Adam did this to you, Lize.’
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ she said, automatically.
‘Yes, it was!’ they chorused. ‘It was the way he and his nightmare of a mother handled the break up that knocked all the stuffing out of you,’ Rochelle added. ‘What does Cleo think about what’s happened?’
‘I haven’t told her. She’s got her hands full with baby Gus suffering from horrible colic. She and Justin haven’t had a night’s sleep since he was born and she’s extended her maternity leave. She’d probably tell me that I need to get out more.’
Angie dropped her cup back to the table with a clatter, eyes shining. ‘Yes, you do. With us. We’ll take you to clubs—’
‘Pubs to start with,’ Rochelle amended. ‘Let her work up to clubs when her good-time muscle memory comes back. Friday, Liza?’
‘Um … OK, thanks,’ agreed Liza, not feeling equal to resisting, but wondering if she really felt thankful. Friday was only two days away.
Angie twinkled at her. ‘And you ought to see men again, Lize, just to cure yourself of Adam.’
Chapter Three
Hands slid from Dominic’s feet, to his legs; stroking, trickling. The woman was working her way up his body. Hands cool. Mouth hot.
In an instant he was hard and aching. He wanted to move, to pull her closer, to get her out of her clothes … but his limbs were disobedient: light yet heavy, as if he both floated in water and was pinned to the bed. He was aware of his nakedness, of her hair falling over her face, brushing his skin, tingling, prickling.
He watched. Wanting her. Wanting more.
Slowly, slowly, she turned her face and she was Liza Reece, wearing that grin that he’d glimpsed: conspiratorial, mischievous, lighting her eyes. Blue eyes. Laughing. Small soft hands. Stroking.
Waiting.
He wanted to say, ‘Don’t stop!’
He wanted to rise up and over her and find her mouth with his.
Dream a Little Dream Page 3
