He raised the cupcake towards his lips and paused with it centimetres from his mouth.
‘What? Oh, sorry, I apologise too, Chloe, for calling you glamorous.’
‘Er “glamorous”,’ I repeated, waggling my fingers.
‘I apologise for calling you “glamorous”,’ he said, waggling the fingers on his spare hand.
He moved the cake closer to his lips… his lovely soft lips and peered at the footballer.
‘So, as I was saying, how is Carlos?’
‘Carlos is happy playing football, talking about football and cars, and playing absolutely no part in my world thank you,’ I replied.
Zachary nodded, grinned then opened his mouth and bit off the fondant footballer’s head.
‘Perfect. This tastes even sweeter for hearing that news.’
‘Hey, remember half that cake is mine!’
Hurley cruised towards us with Heidi at his side. She had one hand on the back of his wheelchair and bags of goodies in the other. Her smile was so big, it occupied most of her face.
‘Sorry, pet, I really didn’t mean to leave you in the lurch,’ she gasped, ‘but we lost track of time.’
She gazed at Hurley, who was also beaming.
‘Is everyone having a hilarious time at this flea market other than me or did Sylvia sell you two some of her happy pills?’ I said with a frown.
‘Eh no’ – Heidi held up her bags – ‘but we did get some lovely homemade fig jam, a jar of chilli chutney, three pairs of hand knitted wool socks…’
‘Perfect for the snow,’ Hurley interjected.
‘Cosy toes,’ they giggled together with such giddiness it made me want to throw up on the spot.
‘And a delicious carrot cake from a lady on the other platform.’
Heidi stopped pointing when she saw the look on my face. Zachary shoved the rest of the cupcake in his mouth.
‘Well that’s just great,’ I huffed, ‘so while I’ve been cleaning up here, you’ve been off buying lovely cakes from the competition.’
Heidi put a pink mitten over her mouth and mumbled a woolly apology.
‘Don’t worry about it, I’m glad you had fun,’ I said sulkily. ‘But God knows where Roxy got to. She went to the toilet about an hour ago and never came back. I hope she’s OK.’
Hurley and Heidi glanced at each other and laughed.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘we saw your friend getting on the Metro about an hour ago. I think she was heading for town.’
‘Perfect,’ I pouted, ‘just put a handle on me and call me a mug.’
I bent down and picked up the Tupperware boxes. Heidi tramped across in her wellies, smiled at me sweetly and lifted Roxy’s holdall.
‘Here,’ said Zachary, reaching for the folded up table, ‘let us help you.’
‘Load me up,’ said Hurley, gesturing towards his lap, ‘don’t worry I can’t feel them anyway.’
I guessed it would take a while to adjust to his humour.
The four of us loaded up, said our goodbyes to George, his new lady friend and Jessica the starey-eyed doll (who I imagined would be in future sitting at the dinner table with them and going for Sunday drives in George’s Ford Mondeo) and headed out of the station. Hurley was a masterful wheelchair driver but, from time to time, Zachary’s hand reached out to guide the wheelchair through drifts of snow and over the sheet ice that had formed as soon as darkness fell and the temperature plummeted. We made polite conversation for most of the five-minute journey to my flat, most of which involved Heidi and Hurley recounting how they had become friendly at the clinic during Hurley’s rehabilitation. I asked how he had come to be there in the first place. In hindsight, it was never going to be a happy story.
Hurley explained how he had crashed his motorbike on an icy bend while racing to get to a job he hated. He had been paralysed ever since. I pushed back tears that glistened on my eyelashes as he calmly told the story.
‘I’d been promising Malachy I would start a business with him for years,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘but I just wanted to make sure I had enough money. To be financially secure before I took the risk, you know?’
I nodded. I knew.
‘So I kept doing this awful job, working for this horrible guy who treated us all like something on his shoe and every day I got a little bit later and a little bit later because I didn’t want to be there. So then this one day in January, there was snow and ice, a bit like now and I was even later than usual. I knew my boss would lose it so I went a bit too fast and’ – we stopped outside my flat and he held out both palms – ‘here I am. Shame I didn’t quit earlier hey?’
I bit my lip and said nothing, my sinuses pulsing as the tears threatened to explode out of my tear ducts. I glanced at Heidi who was gazing at Hurley as if he had just burst out of a golden lantern. Zachary stood beside him, his eyes trained on the icy pavement. It was safe to say the romance had been sucked out of the atmosphere. Hurley clapped his hands together and smiled.
‘Huh, trust the guy in the wheelchair to depress everyone. If I were you, I’d push me off down this hill and run!’
We all laughed lightly, glad of the excuse.
‘Just out of interest,’ I said as I searched in my pockets for my keys, ‘what was the business you wanted to start?’
Hurley’s face broke into a heart-melting smile. Beside me, Heidi’s heart melted.
‘Well see that’s the happy ending,’ he chirped, ‘thanks to this fellow here.’
Hurley reached out and lightly jabbed Zachary’s arm.
‘He jacked in his job and we started our events company together. 3D Events for the three Doyles. He promised me that he would give up his swanky sales job and that we would do it together if I survived this thing. That promise was all it took for me to fight. I tell you, if it wasn’t for Zachary here, I’d have given up a long time ago.’
I sighed, my breath appearing as a cloud before floating towards Zachary. The more I found out about this man, the more I wanted him. The more I suspected he was either taken or was out of my league.
‘What events do you organise?’ I asked as I climbed gingerly up the icy steps to my flat and unlocked the door.
‘Parties mostly,’ said Zachary with a self-conscious cough.
‘Ee I love parties. What kind?’
Heidi clapped her mittens together.
Zachary followed me up the steps and placed the table and bags inside the door.
‘Well I can’t imagine you as a clown,’ I said, ‘and you’re far too fresh faced to be a raver.’
He laughed, his teeth glinting in the light of the streetlamp.
‘No, no glow sticks in this cashmere coat.’
We climbed carefully back down the stone steps to join Hurley and Heidi on the pavement. Hurley opened his mouth to speak but Zachary beat him to it.
‘It’s all sorts of parties really,’ he said, wafting his hand, ‘conferences, birthdays, charity nights, that sort of thing.’
I touched my forehead.
‘Oh don’t talk to me about charity. Not after my disastrous attempt at fundraising today.’
Heidi wrapped her arm around my shoulders.
‘That wasn’t your fault, pet, you put so much effort into those cakes and they were fab.’ She turned to Zachary and Hurley and nodded. ‘They were, before we threw them at each other.’
‘I believe you,’ Zachary laughed, ‘I tried one.’
‘I didn’t,’ Hurley pouted.
I pointed up the steps, my keys jangling.
‘Well I’ve got more indoors if you want to come in. It’s not very wheelchair friendly but just tell me what to do and I’ll help.’
It felt as if the four of us were on some sort of double first date and I wasn’t entirely sure of the etiquette. I was sure, however, that I didn’t want Zachary Doyle to go home just yet.
Zachary glanced at his watch.
‘That’s very kind, Chloe, but we really must go.’
My heart sank. H
e reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.
‘We were only supposed to be at the market looking for inspiration for our parties as we do every weekend and’ – he gestured towards the moon – ‘we seem to have been gone all day.’
‘Ma won’t mind,’ said Hurley, his eyes firmly focused on Heidi who appeared to have lost the power of speech.
‘We’re late already, Hurley, and you know how she’d starve rather than serve dinner up to herself before we get there.’
‘You all live with your mum?’ I asked perplexed.
There was something rather unappealing about grown men still living with their mothers. Forgive my generalisation but it just made me think of them all sitting in front of the television in a musty semi-detached wearing knitted Christmas jumpers and eating reheated dinners off floral plastic trays on their laps.
‘No, no, we just promised we’d be there tonight for dinner. She rattles around at home and Malachy will probably be out with one of his dates. It’s been a long time but she still gets really lonely since my dad passed away.’
‘Thank God,’ I guffawed.
‘Oh, not about her being lonely,’ I added quickly, ‘about you not… oh never mind.’
Zachary flicked his hair out of his eyes and raised an eyebrow. Heidi and Hurley moved away from us, their heads huddled together as they said goodnight.
‘Right well, we’ll be off but’ – Zachary opened his wallet and pulled out a card – ‘I was in the middle of asking you at the market about whether you would reconsider this cake business. I’m struggling to find the right thing for our Christmas party and I just think your cupcakes would be something a bit fresh and different, especially combined with your haute couture idea.’
My hand froze on the card.
‘Is that what you wanted to ask me?’
‘Yes. Why?’ He tilted his head. ‘What did you think I was going to ask you?’
I hopped from one foot to the other.
‘Nothing,’ I snorted, ‘I didn’t think anything at all. I’d forgotten about it actually.’
I snatched the card and shoved it in my pocket.
‘I’ve already got your card anyway, you gave it to me when… when you’ – I nodded towards the flat – ‘that time you came over and…’ I coughed.
‘Carlos,’ Zachary nodded knowingly.
Great. Now he even insisted on remembering his name. Why had I ever let Roxy talk me into entertaining the idea of dating a footballer?
I shoved both hands into my pockets, safe in the knowledge they would not be required for any more interesting pursuits and glanced up at Zachary. The streetlamp behind him shone through his locks of thick hair, surrounding him with a halo, his face in darkness. I saw the whites of his eyes disappear and reappear when he blinked.
‘Well now you have two cards just in case you lose one,’ he said.
His hand reached out and touched my elbow.
‘Call me. You have to know despite today’s events that your cakes are special.’
Yes, more special than me, apparently.
So all he had been looking for was party inspiration, not romance.
‘What are you afraid of?’ he asked so directly it made me jolt.
‘Afraid? I’m not afraid,’ I replied petulantly.
He shrugged and rubbed my elbow.
‘Then do it.’
The fiercely independent businesswoman inside me rose briefly to the surface. Who was he to tell me what to do? I had got far enough in life, thank you very much, without him prodding and poking me along the way.
Or not as the case may be.
‘Thank you for your concern, Zachary, but I have come far enough in life without your advice and without having a man tell me what to do.’
‘Oh, right, I see.’
‘And I understand business, probably even more than you do.’
Zachary turned to look at Hurley whose face was hidden somewhere behind Heidi’s pink bobble hat. There was the distinct sound of kissing. The cold Christmas disco was over and, as ever, I was the wallflower standing to one side discussing business and waiting impatiently to go home while my friend played a merry game of tonsil hockey.
‘Well, if you do happen to make a unilateral decision in my favour, maybe you could call me?’ said Zachary, his intonation rising at the end to suggest a question rather than a statement.
‘Maybe,’ I replied, stubborn to the last.
I kissed Zachary smartly on the cheek and managed to prise Heidi off Hurley without his lips being sucked off his face. We all said goodnight and then Heidi and I walked up the steps and into the flat. I say walked but Heidi floated on a lusty cloud that carried her down the hallway, into the lounge and lowered her serenely onto the sofa.
‘Ee Chloe, was that not just the most perfect day ever?’ she sighed.
‘Oh yes, just per-bloody-fect,’ I muttered as I opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of white wine from the rack.
‘The market, the snow, the handsome gentleman,’ she carried on in a singsong voice, ‘I feel like Julia Roberts in a rom com.’
I kicked the fridge shut with a force Thierry would have been impressed by and grabbed two glasses.
‘I know’ – Heidi sat up and clapped her hands, her face aglow – ‘let’s curl up here and watch one. Glass of wine, two best friends, a lovely film, perfect end to the perfect day. What do you fancy?’
I slumped beside her on the sofa and rammed the corkscrew forcefully into the cork.
‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ I growled before filling my glass to the brim.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Leave to cool
What was I afraid of?
It was my first thought when I awoke, the question running through my head like a giant banner flapping behind a bi-plane.
My second thought was Hurley’s tragic story about not having had the courage to start his own business until his life was turned upside down. Literally and metaphorically.
My third thought was, why did I open that last bottle of Pinot Grigio?
Holding my head with one hand and the duvet with the other, I climbed out of bed, picked my clothes off the floor and padded out of the room without waking Heidi. She made a noise like a blocked drain when she slept and I had been woken several times by a sharp jab in the calf from her Wellies, which she had forgotten to remove in her euphoric, drunken state.
In my efforts to budget since my redundancy, I had cut back on heating so the bathroom felt like the ensuite in an ice hotel. I quickly pulled off my pyjamas and hopped into the shower and turned my skin red with the scalding water. Without bothering to dry and style my hair, I slapped on minimal make-up, pulled a thick woolly hat over my ears, shoved my feet into Ugg boots, scribbled Heidi a note, grabbed my keys and left the flat. I was on a mission and if I stopped to think about it too long, I would chicken out and change my mind.
I was going to visit my parents.
The drive to Embleton in Northumberland took the best part of an hour and a half. My ten year-old Golf did not get much exercise because of the good public transport system in Newcastle. I had always favoured reading a paper on the Metro on my way to and from work and letting the train driver do the work rather than sitting in a traffic jam. It was also rare that I ventured far enough at weekends to give the car a good run in. As a result, on this icy late November morning, it seemed to react to the drive like an old man with achy joints suddenly being asked to take part in the Great North Run, groaning and shuddering through the slush. The heater struggled to raise the temperature above zero and the radio seemed incapable of tuning itself, only crackling into life whenever a terrible song was playing.
I did remember to fill up with petrol at the supermarket before venturing north into the countryside, but I forgot to check the wipers before flicking them on to clean the dirty snow and grit from the windscreen. The right one had frozen to the base of the window so the rubber covering ripped off when I flicked the lever. For th
e rest of the journey, I played a game of either driving with zero visibility, or hearing a spine chilling sound like nails on a blackboard as the metal wiper scratched semi circles into the windscreen. Needless to say, by the time I drove past the spectacular ruin of Dunstanburgh Castle majestically guarding the coastline, which let me know I was five minutes from the parental home, my mood was too grey to appreciate its beauty. That mood turned to black when I pulled the car into the gravel drive of my parents’ home, turned off the engine and sat for a moment to prepare myself.
There was something difficult for many adults about coming home. Not that the increasingly ramshackle stone bungalow where Jango and Jemima lived had ever actually been my home, but the feeling was the same. I could walk up the driveway a confident, polite, relatively successful, fully functioning thirty-something but the minute the door opened and I stepped into my mother and father’s domain, a chemical reaction would occur in my brain to turn me into a petulant, moody, argumentative teenager. I vowed to myself, as I stepped out of the car and came face to face with a ten-foot reconstruction of an Easter Island Tiki made out of fibreglass and mirrors, that today would be different. Today I was going to smile, to be friendly and accepting and enjoy my parents’ company.
‘What the fuck are you staring at?’ I hissed at the Tiki before tramping up the drive towards the mosaic front door.
Despite being located in a pretty rural village, my parents’ house was resolutely quirky and individual inside and out. A sculpture garden greeted visitors, as did a tribe of handmade creatures that lived in the trees lining the multi-coloured gravel driveway. The mosaic door matched the mosaic, brightly painted window frames and the porch, which was filled with a cacophony of wind chimes. I grimaced when I reached up for the doorknocker, which was fashioned into the all too distinguishable shape of a penis. I was sure it kept stuffy local busybodies and Jehovah’s witnesses at bay, but in my opinion it was free love taken a step too far when I had to greet my dad after just having held a giant, black penis in my hand.
‘Clover, to what do we owe the honour of your company?’
‘It’s Chloe,’ I muttered, leaning in to kiss the air beside his greying ginger sideburns that stuck out from his cheeks like the brushes on a car wash, ‘and I was just passing so I thought I’d drop by.’
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