Slightly Foxed

by Jane Lovering

  “Tamar?” Oh God, my voice sounded horribly weak. “Is that you?”

  “Alys?” There were so many unspoken questions hanging in her voice that I was surprised her voice box didn’t break down. “Why?”

  “Oh, Florence asked me to ring to ask Piers if he’d seen her white shoes.” Pathetic, Alys, just pathetic. “How are you?”

  “Puking like a goddamn dog,” she answered, most unTamarlike. “Feel like shit. And Piers goes to Aberdeen and leaves his phone behind. Don’t know what he was thinking, I reminded him. D’you know what he said? He said that anything anyone wanted to say, could wait until he saw them. Well, that’s just great, there he is in Bonny Scotland, and his phone keeps ringing while I’m chucking.”

  “You could always turn it off. Oh, ginger biscuits always worked for me when I was throwing up.”

  “Ginger…” Her voice trailed away and the phone went dead. I smiled down the receiver, ashamed of myself for the tingle of glee I felt at perfect, impeccable Tamar being continually overcome with the urge to vomit. But bloody, bloody Piers leaving his phone when I needed, wanted, ought to get in touch.

  I piled back home to the cold shoulder from Grainger and a trail of clothes which led from Florrie’s room to the door and meant she’d probably gone out for the evening to spread the good news about her modelling among her friends. Knowing the friendship levels of teenage girls, I hoped she wasn’t expecting them to be delighted for her.

  I slouched around, picked myself an outfit to wear to the model agency tomorrow, something which made me look reasonable and would not provoke people into asking where I thought Florrie got her looks from. It was ten o’clock now. Twelve hours until Piers came floating by expecting…what? Me to go with him? Seriously, would he expect that? Or would he be realistic, hoping for a peck on the cheek and no hard feelings? How would he feel when I wasn’t even here?

  Was it too late for Florence to cancel her meeting? Tell them someone—something had come up for her mother? But that wouldn’t exactly give them the impression that she was a committed career girl, would it? Oh God. Seventeen hours until he left the country. And I couldn’t even reach him to explain. And Florence needed me.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Twenty to ten. Florence and I were still sitting outside an office. She was reading Vogue and I was visibly twitching. Not that I was going back of course. Piers could leave without seeing me. Twenty minutes and he’d be gone.

  “Mum.” Florrie laid Vogue down, reverentially. “You know Tamar and Dad? And the baby?”

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. Florrie had taken the news suspiciously quietly. “What about it?”

  “I’ve been thinking. I mean, I love Piers and everything, but he’s not my real brother, thank God. Jeez, the way he’s been lately, I’d hate to be related—”

  I restrained myself from snapping “what do you mean” only by biting my lip. I’d not even considered how Florrie would have reacted to Piers and I. Not that I needed to worry about that. Now it was over.

  “I think it’ll be really great to have a proper brother or a sister.” She looked at me shrewdly. “One that doesn’t fancy my mother.”

  I developed a sudden, and incredibly intense, interest in the magazines.

  Ten minutes.

  The door opened at last and a pretty dark-haired girl and over-made-up mother were ushered out. Florrie and I looked at one another, raised our eyebrows and entered. Sat on plush chairs. Florrie and the woman behind the desk talked. I fidgeted.

  At five to ten, I snapped. “Look, can I just sign the papers please?” Florence and the woman stared at me. “You like Florence, she likes you, you’re obviously not recruiting for the white-slave trade or child-labour market. Can I sign what I have to and go?”

  More staring, then the immaculate woman with her shiny hair and taut face smiled. “I admire that,” she said. I looked down at myself in case she was talking about my skirt or bag. “No, I really admire your forthrightness. It’s refreshing. Most parents are so obsequious, so, like, please take our daughter on, have our house, we’ll sell you our kids, just let our daughter be a model.”

  “Can I sign then?” Four minutes.

  Leaving an astonished Florence and an admiring agent, I fled through the front doors into a taxi and snapped out my address. It might work. Piers might have got held up in the traffic. He might have been late getting back. Why was I so desperate to see him this one last time?

  We arrived at the flat and I propelled myself out onto the kerb, hearing, as the taxi pulled away, the unmistakeable sound of the Porsche’s big growly engine changing down to hit the main road at the other end of the street.

  “Piers!” I screamed at the top of my voice, pointlessly I knew, and set off at Olympic standard down the road. “Piers, wait!” I reached the junction just in time to see the yellow car make the tight turn at the lights and disappear off into the thinning traffic under the walls, exhaust blarting and engine shrieking. I could make out Piers, hair flung back by the wind, wraparound shades on as I panted to a stop outside the newsagents.

  There was absolutely nothing I could do. I limped back indoors and stood at the window. Maybe I should phone him? And say what? Sorry I missed you. Goodbye? If he’d picked up my voicemail, he’d assume I didn’t want to see him again anyway. Wouldn’t he? I mean, the message had been clear enough if a little rambling, hadn’t it?

  Oh bugger it. Bugger everything. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

  Surely it was just frustration which brought the tears to my eyes. Only the irony of the situation which made me snatch up Caspar from his comfortable position in front of the food bowls. Merely anger at my own weakness which sent me into the quietest room in the house to sit on the toilet seat, weeping from somewhere deep inside my chest and hiding my face in the soft kitten fur.

  I felt ragged inside. As though some vital, elemental part of myself had been dragged out through my chest and left me with a gaping hole where something had been. The feeling was familiar. The last night with Piers. I’d cried like this, then. The same feeling of loss, when I’d told him that I couldn’t see him again, that we could never love like this again. Only that time, he’d been there holding me. I could pretend that the words meant nothing. Even as I said them he’d kissed them away.

  I’d lost him. Lost the feeling that he gave me, the feeling that I could stretch up and touch the sky, grab great handfuls of it. I wanted that feeling again. Not to be tied into a life which was stable and safe, but to be free to have a life which was scary and edgy and risky and might just make me happier than I’d known I could be. Who cared about the mistakes of the past? That was then. This, very painfully, was now.

  Piers. It was real. What I thought I’d felt for him but not dared to admit even to myself. Was real. Had been real.

  I loved him.

  I wiped my eyes on the cat again. Caspar squeaked once in protest but seemed to sense that I needed something warm to hold onto and butted his little nose into my face, clinging to me with his claws. I welcomed the tiny painful sharpnesses into my flesh. I deserved the pain. I’d sent away the man who understood, who cared. Piers, whose presence had finally filled that emptiness inside me which had been there forever. And now I was realising all this—it was too late.

  What had I always said to Florence? Make sure you find a man who wants to be your friend first? And what had I done? Found that very man, then let him get away. What the hell had I been thinking?

  Ring Piers. I should have rung him. He’d probably have his phone off now, on the road, then he’d be at the airport, then he’d be in the air and then—a deep shudder inside. I could barely get my head around the thought. He’d be gone for good. And besides—the sound now piercing my self-created isolation chamber—somebody was ringing me.

  Should I answer?

  “Hello.” My voice sounded heavy, unlike me.

  “Hey, Ally.”

  “Piers!” The rush was incredible, sudden sweetness pouring i
n, like a vein full of sugar. “I…”

  “What happened? I came by. Assume you’re not coming.”

  “Piers, I love you. I’ve been bloody stupid.”

  “Yeah, I know. Shit, woman, are you going to open this door or not?”

  “What?”

  A deep sigh at the other end of the phone. “I’m standing on the fucking doorstep now. You gonna open?”

  I carried on talking as, dazed, I made my way to the door. “I saw you leave, I missed you—ran after the car.” Even after I’d opened the door I carried on speaking into the phone, watching him answering me with his own phone held to his ear. “I thought you’d gone without me.”

  “Nearly did. But then I thought. That voicemail wasn’t exactly one hundred percent clear, y’know? Never believe anyone telling me to fuck off until I can look in their eyes while they say it.”

  “Do you know something?” I was just about whispering into the receiver. “You are such a poser.”

  Carefully, gently, Piers reached out and pressed the button to disconnect the call. “Yeah.”

  We missed the flight. And the next one. Piers eventually got us booked on a flight which left from Heathrow and would take us via New York (“Some real cool clothes in NY. Bought this jacket there.” “Really? I assumed you’d mugged a pimp. Ow!”) which gave me time to arrange that Jace—over the sound of her smugness—would take the cats to live with her for the meantime.

  And to attend Mrs. Treadgold’s funeral.

  As I cried, winding my fingers through Piers’s at the graveside, Mrs. Treadgold’s words came back to me. With your true love, you feel that you don’t have to hide. And through my tears came a quiet smile at her surety that Piers and I had been a couple. The knowledge that the love that she’d seen in my eyes had been for him, not as I’d thought for Leo. That Mrs. Treadgold, Jacinta and even Piers had known me better than I’d known myself. Because I’d been so scared of repeating past mistakes.

  “I’m not hiding any more,” I whispered, dropping a small wreath onto the surprisingly tiny coffin. In deference to Mrs. Treadgold’s obsession, the wreath had been worked into the shape of a basket of kittens. “I think I’m found.” Then I looked at Piers, modestly dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, hair respectfully tied back and my heart began to pound. “Or, at least, I’m completely lost in the right way.”

  Postscript

  A year later

  I lay on a reclining chair, stretched out beneath the Argentinian sun. Florence, visiting from Italy, lay beside me and a small table between us held tall glasses of chilled water. Ice cubes clinked, but apart from that the only sound was the filter on the swimming pool humming gently to itself.

  A shadow fell, cooling my skin. “Hey, Ally. How’re you doing?”

  I struggled to sit up. “Piers, you’re back!” Shading my eyes against the sun, I could see him if I squinted, tall and sun-tinted with fair highlights coming out in his hair. He leaned over me and his lips brushed my rounded stomach.

  “What, stay away from my girls for longer than I have to? Nah.” Then his voice lowered, words for me alone. “Can’t be away from you, Ally. Love kinda does that to you.”

  I laughed, rubbing a hand over the itchy, taut skin. “Yes, and love does this to you as well. Come on, baby, give your daddy a damn good kicking, show him how much you appreciate him being away.”

  Our unborn daughter rolled lazily beneath my hand and gave her father a leisurely boot. Florence opened her eyes and regarded us from a prone position. “God, you’re disgusting, you two. Can’t you keep your hands off each other?”

  I pointed at my six-month pregnancy. “Evidently not,” and Piers grinned.

  “You’re just jealous, Florrie. Don’t worry. Any day now the boys will come knocking.”

  Florence gave her stepbrother the contemptuous look he deserved and flopped back down onto her sunlounger, adjusting her sunglasses for optimum coverage.

  Piers perched alongside me, stretching his long legs out and arching his face up towards the sun. Without looking he reached out and grasped my hand, weaving his fingers through mine. His touch pressed the ruby ring against my palm and I glanced at it.

  “What you grinning at, Ally?”

  “Nothing.” The smile took over my face, my voice. Even the baby seemed to be absorbed in it. “Just life.”

  And suddenly everything seemed so simple.

  About the Author

  In a now discredited experiment, Jane was raised as a human being. She lives in the North of Britain with her semi-nomadic family of singers, dancers and mathematicians, and is believed to be the first person to need inoculations and a visa to enter her own house.

  She has a patient fiancé, a love of books and sanity that is no longer visible with the naked eye.

  To learn more about Jane Lovering, please visit www.JaneLovering.co.uk. It’s largely bonkers, but the pictures are lovely. Send an email to mail@JaneLovering.co.uk or join her Yahoo! group to get the latest news on Jane’s books, win stuff and chat with other readers.

  It’s all happening at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/janelovering.

  There’s also www.myspace.com/janelovering. But, you know, save it until you’re feeling strong.

  Look for these titles by Jane Lovering

  Now Available:

  Reversing Over Liberace

  Life, love and unlikely legacies.

  Reversing Over Liberace

  © 2007 Jane Lovering

  Willow runs into Luke, the university lust-of-her-life, ten years on and this time around he’s interested—she’s lost twenty pounds and found fashion. But their meeting turns out to be no accident. What is Luke really after, Willow or her new inheritance?

  Her best mate Cal is gorgeous and…well…gay. Then reveals himself to be more than a mild, unassuming computer geek and she is no longer sure exactly who is telling the truth or who to trust.

  Is anyone in her life what they seem to be?

  Add to the romantic confusion, twelve pairs of rubber boots, two elderly spaniels, a pregnant sister and the unexpected contents of a matchbox and you get a funny, touching story of a woman in search of revenge and getting what she needs, rather than what she thinks she wants.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Reversing Over Liberace:

  “Luke?” Katie was waiting when I put the phone down, her scandalometer clearly reading into the red. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” I trilled. “Well, not exactly, we just had a bit of a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

  “Oh, right, about him moving out of the hotel and stopping at the showroom instead?”

  “Ah, no. This was another misunderstanding. A different one.” Buoyed up and riding on the tide of goodwill that Luke’s admission had brought, I told Katie the full background to last night’s little, ahem, indiscretion on the lip frontage. When I’d finished, she frowned.

  “Do you and Luke ever actually, y’know, talk, Wills? Or do you spend all your off-duty time shagging and communicating in mime?”

  “What?”

  “You do seem to have an extraordinary number of misunderstandings, don’t you? For a couple who are supposed to be so deeply in love that they’re planning to get married, there’s a lot he doesn’t seem to tell you about. And, please God, if you’re going around kissing strange men, the reverse is also true.”

  “Cal…it wasn’t…it wasn’t that sort of kiss.” I said indignantly. “And of course Luke and I talk, don’t be stupid. It’s just, you know how prone I am to grabbing the wrong end of the stick and using it to beat myself.”

  “Yes, but the stick does have to be held out for you to grasp in the first place.” Katie put her hands on my shoulders and looked me deep in the eyes. “I’m worried about you, Will. Okay, so Luke might have good reasons for all the misconstructions that have gone on, but it’s more that they’ve happened than what they’ve been about that worries me.”

  “Well, my dear, worry no m
ore.” I twirled around on my chair. “I’m going to suggest to Luke that we move into the flat next week and start living together properly. It can’t be comfortable for him camped out in the showroom, and we might as well start getting it all together. How do you feel about wearing peach for the wedding?”

  “Will, if it makes you happy I shall wear a whole fruit salad,” she said solemnly.

  “Willow.” The door opened and Neil came in. “Bloke for you in the front.”

  “Good Lord, it speaks. Evolution in action.”

  “Shut it, frosty knickers.”

  “What, Clive not with you? Was the separation a success?”

  “And you can shut up an’ all.” Neil grinned. “Dunno ’oo he is. Some weirdo. Bit of luck, he’s a mad axe murderer.”

  He wasn’t. It was Cal, loitering about in the front office, looking at the photographs on the walls. (Man Rescues Tortoise—Pictures Inside.) “Hi.”

  “Hello.” Katie was hanging around by my left shoulder like a conscience-devil. “How are you?”

  “Fine. I came to…” Cal clocked Katie and began to stammer. “I…I…you, yesterday…quite…upset.”

  “Everything’s sorted now, just another misunderstanding,” I said smoothly. Well, I could have belched every word and next to Cal’s delivery it would have sounded smooth. “Cal, Katie.”

  “Oh, so this is the guy with the lip action. Pleased to meet you, Cal.” And Katie turned round to face me and half-whispered, “Fuck me, Willow, you didn’t tell me he was such a ride. I mean, look at him.”

  “Forgive my friend, Cal, she has a form of Tourette’s. We normally keep her locked up for her own good.”

  Cal smiled broadly and Katie went “phwooooarrrr” in my ear. “Chuffin’ hell, will you look at the eyes on your man?”

  “And she’s Irish. Happily married. Quite respectable.”

  Katie leaned over the desk towards Cal. “But prepared to be unrespectable, if the offer’s right.” She pursed her lips and Cal’s smile grew slightly broader.