‘Crawly pig,’ Viv and Tammy said in unison as Mrs Elkins and her trolley rolled away.
‘Diplomatic pig, if you don’t mind,’ Doll poked out her tongue at them.
‘It’s probably about the only good thing about having a baby,’ Tammy said, being rude with a chocolate eclair. ‘You get to eat loads. Being pregnant must be the pits. What happens to your belly button?’
‘It sticks out a lot more,’ Viv said through the squirty jam stage of her doughnut. ‘At least mine did. Why?’
Tammy lifted her uniform top. Several rings and two diamonds glistened in her navel.
‘Flipping heck! If I were you I’d keep your legs crossed until you reach The Change,’ Viv advised darkly. ‘God knows what pregnancy would do to that lot. You’d probably explode and kill the midwife with the shrapnel.’
The door swung open and Joel shouldered in from the swirling midday gloom. All the twin sets and scarves turned and devoured him with hungry pale-lashed eyes.
He grinned across at Doll’s table. ‘Ah, superb. The whole surgery staff setting a perfect example to the patients. How much sugar is there in that lot? Enough to erode the enamel on every tooth in Hazy Hassocks, and then some.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Doll pulled out another chair. ‘Sit down and shut up. What do want? The usual?’
‘A mug of sweet milky coffee, two iced buns, a custard doughnut and a meringue, please. And I bet you never spoke to my predecessor like that.’
‘Your predecessor,’ Doll informed him after she’d given the order to a now smiling Mrs Elkins, ‘was always so high on Novocain that speaking was rarely on the agenda.’
‘Whereas,’ Viv beamed at him, showing perfectly flossed molars, ‘you spend all your time getting high on Mitzi Blessing. Oh, on her little cakes I mean, of course …’
Joel laughed. ‘Oh, of course. And because I don’t want to embarrass Doll, I’m not going to expand on the shenanigans in the village hall.’
‘Bugger,’ Doll said cheerfully. ‘Anyway, Mum’s told me most of it. The kissing thing was a bit of a brainwave.’
‘What?’ Joel frowned. ‘Don’t tell me your mother still thinks I was really only causing a diversion to save the village hall for her Baby Boomers? That it was all for Tarnia’s benefit? Doesn’t she realise that the kissing thing, as you call it, was for real?’
‘No,’ Doll picked up Danish pastry crumbs with her forefinger. ‘I honestly don’t think she does. Even though the rest of Hazy Hassocks can see it spelled out in letters twenty feet high, Mum can’t.’ She looked across at Tammy and Viv who were soaking it all up like the latest instalment of their favourite soap. ‘And yes, this does seem a bit weird. Discussing my mother’s love life – but I’m not selfish enough to think she doesn’t deserve one.’
‘With me?’ Joel made a space on the table as Mrs Elkins arrived with his order.
‘Of course with you. Mad as it seems, you know I think you’re made for each other even if Mum can’t see it.’ Doll pushed her plate away with a sigh. ‘Look, if the kissing thing and public declarations don’t work, you’ll just have to find some other way to convince her, won’t you?’
Mitzi parked the car behind the bank and retrieved her handbag from the back seat. The short drive to Winterbrook from Hazy Hassocks had been pretty scary due to the ever-thickening fog. She really hoped it wouldn’t be foggy on Christmas Eve for the wedding. She’d always pictured Doll’s big day as blue skied, clear, sunny and frosty. Fog would make everyone’s hair frizz and completely ruin the photos.
The wedding was one of the main reasons she was here in Winterbrook. In the few days since the impromptu success of the Green Gowns at the village hall, she’d finalised the wedding breakfast menu. Of the more exotic dishes on offer, the Green Gowns were now modified – less saffron and far less chlorophyll – thus providing the right amount of spark without starting an orgy, and should also mean everyone stayed flesh coloured. The Dreaming Creams had become sleekly streamlined, and the Mistletoe Kisses were, well, okay, still in prototype form. The rest of the food was easily concocted from Granny’s more basic recipes, and Otto and Boris at The Faery Glen had recently thrown in a proper wedding cake as their gift to the happy couple.
And after Tarnia’s unexpected endorsement of her cooking she’d also managed to run off some rather nice little menus and price lists for Granny’s Goodies on her laptop. Having scattered the flyers all over Hazy Hassocks, she now intended to leave them in public places in Winterbrook and see what happened. But first she was on a far more personal mission.
The bank, always gothic, loomed out of the yellowing fog like a Transylvanian castle. The lights were hardly visible. Mitzi shuddered and hurried inside.
She looked around the foyer at the stuccoed walls, carved wood and chandeliers. Whatever changes Troy and Tyler had brought to the bank’s admin systems, nothing else had changed. Joining the snaking queue waiting for a counter position to become vacant, Mitzi felt rather uncomfortable. She’d been so loath to leave the bank, but now … her life had changed in so many ways. She was liberated, fulfilled, happier than she’d ever been in her life. Troy Haley had unwittingly done her a massive service.
Hopefully she’d be able to return the favour.
Eventually reaching the counter, the clerk behind the toughened glass was a stranger. And about twelve and a half. And, according to her name badge, called Kelly-Jo.
‘I want to close my accounts,’ Mitzi said cheerfully. ‘Both of them. Current and savings. I’m transferring them to the building society in Hazy Hassocks now they offer a banking service.’
‘Right-oh,’ Kelly-Jo said cheerfully. ‘But you didn’t need to come in y’know. The building society could take care of it online. All done on the Internet these days, right?’
‘Yes, I’m aware of that. I’m not senile,’ Mitzi said testily. ‘I just wanted the satisfaction of seeing my accounts closed in person, of my last ties with this place severed.’
‘You what?’
‘I used to work here,’ Mitzi said. ‘I worked here all my employable life. They suddenly decided they no longer needed me. I am now in the happy position of not needing them either. So, can you arrange for the balances to be forwarded to my new bank accounts?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ Kelly-Jo tapped various numbers into her computer. ‘I’ve only been here two weeks. It’s okay. How long were you here?’
‘Thirty-five years.’
‘Frigging hell!’ Kelly-Jo forgot all her customer-service training. ‘That’s, like, for ever!’
‘It seems like that now, yes …’
Mitzi smiled to herself. It actually seemed like someone else entirely who had bustled in here every morning, neatly groomed, and worked diligently for eight hours a day, and then gone home – in the early years to Lance and the girls as youngsters, and then latterly to an empty house. But that grown-up, orderly Mitzi, with her routines and her ties and her worries, was a world apart from today’s Mitzi with her jeans and boots and chunky sweater, vivid red hair, sort of embryo herbalist business, village organiser, madly in love with a far-too-young but very sexy dentist.
‘An’ I bet you never even had computers,’ Kelly-Jo said breathlessly, her fingers skimming over her keypad. ‘Didja?’
‘No, we had ledgers and scales and we wrote with pens and used typewriters and Roneos for copying and added things up with our brains and sometimes Comptometers—’
‘Come again?’ Kelly-Jo looked flummoxed. ‘Blimey – it must have been like the Dark Ages.’
‘Oh, it was,’ Mitzi agreed cheerfully. ‘All done? Lovely. Thank you very much – shall I just sign them? Okay. Now, would it be possible to see Mr Haley?’
‘Troy? Yeah, sure. Take a seat an’ I’ll give him a bell.’
Mitzi sat and waited.
Chapter Twenty
‘Come in quickly, Lulu.’ Lavender, a scarf tied snugly round the cycle helmet and wearing mismatched mittens, pulled open the door. ‘I’m surprised
you ventured out tonight. The fog’s very dangerous.’
‘I’ve only hopped over the wall,’ Lulu grinned. ‘I don’t think anything awful is likely to happen to me just coming from next door. Is Shay ready?’
‘I’ll just find out. Come in and sit down. Lobelia will keep you company.’
Lu shivered and pulled the Afghan more closely round her. ‘It’s okay, I’ll go up—’
‘You will not,’ Lav said sternly. ‘Shay knows the rules. No entertaining ladies in his room.’
‘But he’s not and I’m not – I mean, we’re a couple now and I only wanted to hurry him up a bit.’
‘You,’ Lavender frowned, ‘may have lax morals, but we maintain certain standards in this house. I’m well aware that Shay spends nights at your house. Lobelia and I, while afraid of the alternative, prefer to imagine that Mitzi puts him up in the spare bedroom.’
Lu grinned. ‘Not a chance. But I accept you have house rules. Sorry.’
‘That’s all right. I was young once, you know. Not that Lobelia and I ever shared our beds with young men, of course. It was different in our day. We were saving ourselves.’ She sighed. ‘We might just have saved for a little bit too long … Now you go into the sitting room and have a warm.’
Big, big oxymoron, Lu thought as she pushed her way into the mushroom and mustard room which was far more clammy and cold than the foggy night outside.
Lobelia, wrapped in several hand-knitted patchwork blankets, her football socks pulled way over her knees, was huddled in front of a paraffin stove which was giving off asphyxiating fumes. ‘Hello, Lulu – oh, don’t you look pretty. Is that a new frock I can see under your furry coat? I had one just like that when I was a gel. Are you and Shay going somewhere nice?’
‘Just out in Winterbrook, I think.’ Lu tried to stop her teeth from chattering and her eyes from watering. ‘Are you sure you’re warm enough? Why don’t you light the fire?’
‘Because we can’t afford it. It’s not easy living on pensions, you know. And our savings went years ago. If it wasn’t for Shay’s board and lodging money we’d be in dire straits. We’d be found dead in our beds, killed by cold and starvation. We often talk about it of an evening just to cheer ourselves up.’
Lulu sat as close as she could to the paraffin stove without being knocked senseless by the fumes and felt awful. She was so looking forward to moving in with Shay one day … to renting their own flat in the village somewhere … to share being together … to being able to wake up and just stare at him as he slept.
And now, if he moved out of the Bandings, they’d be destitute. And she couldn’t move in here and starve and freeze with him because Lav and Lob wouldn’t allow it and – oh, bugger.
‘Are you coming to watch us in Hair?’ Lobelia asked, hitching up her socks with knotted purpling hands. ‘Shay says he’s swapped shifts so he can be there.’
Lu nodded. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world. I think it’ll be the biggest laugh Hazy Hassocks has ever had.’
‘It’s not a comedy – is it? Maybe it is? That would explain a lot of things. To be honest, dear, I don’t really understand it at all but it’s got some lovely tunes and we’ve had such fun at the rehearsals. Very clever of your mother to galvanise us older people the way she has. The Fayre was really funny with everyone going green. Ah, here’s Shay.’
‘Hello sweetheart,’ Shay pulled Lu to her feet and kissed her. ‘Wow. Nice dress. Especially with the fake yak boots. Christ it’s cold in here.’
‘We were just saying,’ Lob nodded at him, ‘that your money and the extra lovely bits and pieces you buy us makes such a difference. We couldn’t manage without you now, dear.’
‘And I couldn’t manage without you and Lavender,’ Shay kissed Lob’s cheek. ‘It’s like having two very special extra mums. Don’t wait up for me – I’ve got my key.’
‘We won’t wait up—’ Lavender, wrapping her scarf more snugly round her head, appeared in the doorway ‘—because we know you’ll probably be staying next door. We don’t approve, you know that, although we understand – but, and this has to be said, Lobelia, you know we’ve been worrying about it for ages – we’re worried that you might want a reduction in your rent for the nights you’re not here and—’
‘Don’t be daft.’ Shay grinned at Lavender. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that. You know that isn’t even on the agenda. Now you two keep warm and for God’s sake put the fire on. I keep telling you I’ll pay the bill. You can’t sit in here freezing all night. It’s like an icebox – and I don’t want to be shovelling you into my ambulance with frostbite, do I?’
‘God,’ Lu said, her fingers entwining with Shay’s as they scuttled down the path through the fog, ‘I knew they didn’t have much money but I always thought they were just, well, careful. I know Mum and Flo and other people in the street have always helped them out with food and stuff over the years, but I had no idea they were quite so broke.’
‘Boracic,’ Shay said as he unlocked the car and they both waved goodbye to Lav and Lob who were standing on the doorstep. ‘And they don’t eat properly and they won’t use any heating – and I’ve told them over and over I’ll take care of all the bills. Christ this fog’s getting worse. I’m glad I’m not working tonight. Probably be a mass of RTAs.’
The heater kicked in almost straight away and Lu shrugged out of the Afghan and fastened her seat belt, then leaned across and kissed Shay properly.
‘Ooooh – that’s better. Couldn’t do it in front of Lav and Lob. They’d already lectured me on my morals – or lack of them.’
‘They’re museum pieces,’ Shay agreed after he’d kissed her back in a most satisfactory manner. ‘And barking mad. But lovely with it. And now very much my responsibility.’
Lu nodded as the car inched forward through the fog. She wouldn’t have expected anything less from him. Shay was a very compassionate man. It was one of the things she loved most about him – well, once you left out the phwoar factor bits of course – and she knew he’d never abandon the Bandings.
She giggled. Niall had left her for a designer-dressed corporate ladder climber – with Shay she was playing second fiddle to a pair of slightly crazy geriatrics.
‘Maybe you could get them to drop the cycle helmets, though. I mean, I know they misinterpreted what you said about them having to be worn all the time but people laugh at them which is sad, and—’
‘No way. Ninety per cent of body heat is lost through your head. At least while they insist on wearing the helmets at all times they stand some chance of surviving in that damn icebox.’ Shay sighed. ‘We’ll just have to try and win the lottery for them. They’d qualify as a Good Cause all on their own.’
‘Mmmm … if we could afford to buy a ticket in the first place,’ Lu snuggled against him in the darkness, her hand on his faded denim thigh so that she could feel his muscles contract when he changed gear. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Lorenzo’s – with a detour first.’
‘Wow. Lorenzo’s? Brilliant. Thank goodness I wore the posh frock.’
She always insisted on paying her way when they went out as Shay’s paramedic’s salary was as abysmal as hers was, so Lu did a quick mental calculation to see if her wages would stretch to a meal and a drink at Lorenzo’s and decided they might – just.
She smiled across at him. ‘We’ll be able to take a really swish doggy bag home for Lav and Lob, won’t we? And where’s the detour?’
Shay didn’t take his eyes from the road. The car’s headlights seemed to be hitting a solid wall of fog. ‘Wait and see …’
‘The RSPCA kennels?’ Lu leaned forward and peered through the gloom. ‘Is this the detour? Oh, brilliant. We haven’t seen the puppies for ages. I wonder if they’ve all been rehomed by now?’
Struggling back into the Afghan she shivered in the damp murkiness. Shay pulled her against him as they headed for the kennels’ brightly lit office.
‘Ah, hello. We were expecting you,’ the recepti
onist beamed. ‘And right on time too, despite this awful weather. Come on in.’
Lu pulled a quizzical face as they hustled along the corridor. Expecting them? Who was? They didn’t usually have to make appointments. They usually just wandered into the kennel area unannounced.
The cages and runs, warm and cosy, were suddenly alive with dogs and cats, wagging tails, wriggling bodies in welcome. They all greeted Shay and Lu as old friends.
‘Have all the puppy farm puppies been rehomed now?’
‘Not quite all.’ The pretty kennel maids were eyeing Shay with ill-concealed delight. ‘But thanks to your callout, we’ve managed to close one huge enterprise down and that’s led on to several others across the country. We’ve rescued dozens and dozens of bitches and their pups thanks to your tip-off. We’re very grateful to you all. Ah, here’s Roger.’
Roger, one of the local RSPCA inspectors, greeted Shay and Lulu almost as warmly as the four-legged inmates had done.
‘Thank you so much for turning out tonight. Nasty weather. Right – is everything in order?’
‘More or less,’ Shay nodded. ‘Just the one stumbling block which we discussed earlier but I’ve made arrangements to get that covered so …’
Lu frowned. ‘I’m not usually slow on the uptake, but could someone tell me if I’ve missed something here? A sentence? An entire conversation?’
Roger and Shay and the kennel maids all laughed. Lu was even more perplexed.
‘Your young man here has arranged an early Christmas present, or rather several,’ Roger beamed, handing her a chunky booklet. ‘This is the first … we’re recruiting for trainees at the moment and …’
Lu squinted down at the booklet. Then she squealed in delight.
‘Application forms to train as an RSPCA Inspector? ME? Wow! That’d be just brilliant! But I can’t! I mean, it’s a career and I’ve never … I mean – oh, what about Hed and Biff? I couldn’t let them down … Oh, and but – I can’t drive and I’m rubbish with mobile phones and computers and—’
Hubble Bubble Page 23
