“Yes,” I eventually say. “It’s so hard. This… squalid life of drugs. Please don’t sack me. I’ll get help!”
It seems to work because Stone pats me kindly on the shoulder, and with tears in his eyes, tells me to take some time off. Go to rehab, whatever, he’ll pay. My job will be waiting for me.
Wow. What a nice guy.
He’s right. Not about the drugs thing obviously, but about the time off. I simply cannot be in work while this is happening. Better to take a little time off than get fired altogether.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you so much.”
Stone clamps his mouth shut, does a kind thumbs up and lumbers back off into the shop.
After whipping my apron off I run out from behind the counter (avoiding all eye contact with Marie, who I’m sure I can hear growling) grab hold of Meg’s hand and drag her out into the bustle of Piccadilly. Without a word I quickly march us over towards the oak benches by the fountains and try my best to explain to her what I think is going on.
I tell her everything that has happened since this morning, and apart from a few gasps and ill-concealed giggles, Meg has listened with an unlikely calmness.
When I’m finished she takes hold of my hand, looks searchingly into my eyes and says:
“Are you still pissed?”
“No!” I yell, frustrated. “Please believe me. No one bloody believes me.” I cross my arms and resist the urge to stamp my foot.
“Calm down,” Meg says sternly, surprised by my yelling, which we both know is completely out of character for me. “Let me get this straight. You think that last night when Brian tried to hypnotise me, he ended up hypnotising you instead?”
“Yes!”
“And that as a result of that hypnosis you have no control over what you say. That you can’t help but speak the truth, and only the truth, even if it’s subconscious?”
“Yes! It just blurts on out. It’s terrible. Awful!”
“But... Brian was a complete fake. Everybody in the pub saw that. He didn't manage to hypnotise me, so how would he have hypnotised you. Without even trying!”
I shrug. “I’m not sure he was a fake. I don't know. Maybe I’m extra persuadable. I have a weak mind. Plus, I found this card in my bag.” I hand over The Amazing Brian business card. “I don’t even know where it came from.”
Meg examines the card, frowning, before glancing suspiciously from side to side as if trying to find a hidden camera or a psychiatrist or something.
“Okay.” I huff. “I’ll prove it to you. I'll prove that this really is happening to me. I know. I’ll try to tell you a lie, but I won’t be able to. I’ll tell you a lie about something easy… I don’t know, my age.”
Meg obliges me and waits patiently.
I take a deep breath and prepare to tell the lie. “Okay. Here goes… I’m fifty five years old,” I blurt.
That’s odd. I told a lie. I can tell a lie. And that weird bubbling urge to tell the truth feeling wasn’t there.
Now Meg looks even more confused and, fishing around in her bag for her phone, announces that she is going to call Olly and get him to take me home to bed, because I’m clearly unwell.
“Wait. No,” I plead. “It didn’t work that time. I don’t understand.”
I slump back onto the bench and put my head into my hands. I think carefully back to the events of this morning, over my entire conversation with Olly. And then it occurs to me. The urge to tell the truth only happens when I’m asked about something. I’m sure of it.
“Ask me a question!” I demand, grabbing Meg’s phone and putting it back into her bag. “I think it only happens when someone asks a question.”
Meg ponders for a second before saying:
“Well, that was the point of the hypnotism last night. To get the audience to ask me questions. That I was only supposed to tell the truth when someone asked me a question.”
She’s right! That’s it!
“Go on then. Ask me a question. But make sure it’s something I wouldn’t really want to answer. That way, you’ll know I’m not lying.”
Meg nods and rubs her hands together. “Right. Let me see… Okay. Do you ever pick your nose and eat it?”
“No! Ick,” I state immediately, the bubbling need to answer overtaking my brain and my mouth. There it is. That feeling! It only happens when I’m asked a question. I look up at Meg haughtily. “See!”
Meg huffs and folds her arms. “Well that’s no good. You could be lying!”
Fair point.
“Okay. Try again with another question.”
Meg purses her lips in concentration, and then her face lights up.
“Fine. Remember that time at the upper sixth disco when you went missing for half an hour and told me you got locked in the toilets, even though I checked the toilets and you weren’t there?”
“Yes,” I say, my face beginning to burn up because I know exactly what’s coming next.
“Where were you really?”
“I was in the art studio.”
Meg gasps, her eyes widening. She bites down onto her bottom lip
“And what were you doing?” she whispers.
Oh no!
“I was snogging Mr Francis!” I cry before covering my face with my hands. “And his breath smelt like pipe. It was horrible!”
Mr Francis was the sixth form head of art. He had a beard. It was grey. In my defence I had had two entire bottles of red wine beforehand. Okay. There was no defence.
Meg yelps and does a tiny jump up and down. “No! That’s disgusting.”
“He had the look of Sean Connery,” I reason.
“Nat, he had the look of Bill Oddie. Ew!”
She's right. Oh Gad. I’m so embarrassed.
“That was supposed to go with me to the grave.”
Meg is laughing so hard that tears are trickling down her face. And then she stops and inhales sharply, as the realisation of what I’ve just revealed hits her.
“Ohmigod Natty. You’re hypnotised.”
At last.
“I know! That's what I've been trying to tell you. What will I do? If I don’t fix it, I’ll never be able to make it up to Olly. I’ll never get married!” At the thought of Olly, tears spring to my eyes.
“I have to fix it Meg. I have to.”
Meg’s face becomes serious and she examines the Amazing Brian card she’s still holding onto. She runs a thumb over the back before looking back up into my eyes.
“Well, my malleable brained friend. Looks like we’re going to be taking a leetle road trip.”
“What? Where?”
“The village of Little Trooley,” she says reading from the written address on the card.”
“But before we go anywhere, you have to do something, and it’s extremely important.”
“What is it?” I breathe.
“Put my flipping cardigan on. I can totally see your nipples through that top.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
TEXT FROM: DIONNE
RU going to have a Brazilian before the wedding?
REPLY TO: DIONNE
No. x
“I thought Yorkshire was just around the corner from Manchester,” I grumble as we zoom along the motorway in Meg’s Beetle. We’ve been on the road for an hour already. Olly is still not returning my calls and texts and tweets and voicemail and Facebook messages. Meg is insisting that in order to brighten up the despondent mood our soundtrack for the journey is Disco Fever – The Best 70’s Songs in the Universe, Ever.. And while I’m not a fan of disco music, I must admit that all the songs about ‘freaking out’ are very apt.
“It’s North Yorkshire,” says Meg, pointing at the sat nav on the dashboard. “Which is more than double the distance of West Yorkshire, so it’ll take at least another hour.” She shoves one hand down the pocket in the car door and tugs out a battered A to Z which she chucks at me. “Here. Find Little Trooley in there. Should keep your hands away from your phone for five seconds. Let Olly calm
down. He’ll ring you back when he’s ready.”
Normally I’d agree. There’s nothing creepier to a guy that a trillion missed calls from a girlfriend. Needy McNeedyson. But with Olly, I get the feeling that he’d like how hard I’ve tried to get in touch with him. He’d see it as a sign that I care. That I'm sorry for what I said. Nevertheless I put my mobile back into my bag, take the A to Z and flick through it.
After five minutes of staring at a page full of green I spot it. It’s a tiny little patch in the shape of a figure eight. Little Trooley. Running through the lower circle of the figure eight is a river and then - signposted as a landmark - Truth Springs Waterfall. Sounds pretty.
I’m tracing my finger across the line of the river when Meg turns down the radio.
“Natty, can I ask you a question?”
The yearning to answer appears right away. The effect is like a switch being flicked on. My brain feels like it's humming. I'm alert and I want nothing more than to supply an answer to Meg's question. It's the most peculiar sensation I've ever had.
“Yes you can,” I reply. “But watch out. You don't know what kind of secrets I may reveal!” I laugh, but it doesn't quite ring true. I feel a tad nervous at the prospect of another embarrassing question that I won’t have any choice but to answer.
“Do you love Olly?” Meg asks simply.
Oh.
“What? Yes of course!” I say at once.
Intense relief floods through me as the truth makes itself known. Not that I was worried about the answer or anything. Obviously I love Olly! I frown at Meg, a sudden feeling of indignation prickling at my chest.
“Why on earth would you ask me that?”
“Ah, no reason,” says Meg brightly, carefully overtaking the car ahead of us.
“Seriously. All the questions you could have asked and that is the first one you choose?”
Fancy asking a silly question like that. Whether I love the man I’m going to be marrying in a few weeks! So daft.
“It’s just…” Meg starts. She clears her throat and continues. “It’s just. I thought you might not, you know, really... I don’t know why. You obviously do.”
I frown at her.
“What I mean is…” she clears her throat. “You just seem so… settled.”
I goggle at her. “That’s the entire point of getting married! Being settled!”
“No, I know, well. You went from zero to settled in about a month.”
“I knew he was the one,” I say simply.
“There hasn’t been a honeymoon period. The passionate bit. You never argue.”
“Passion is overrated,” I say fervently. “I want to spend my life with him, Meg. Reliable is way more important than passion. Jeez. It’s a GOOD thing that we don’t argue. My mum and dad argued all the time and you know how that turned out!”
“Sorry. Ignore me,” says Meg. “I shouldn’t have said anything. “
“No,” I sniff, folding my arms and looking out of the window. “You shouldn’t have.”
Meg leans down into her bag and pulls out a family sized pack of Maltesers. She opens them with her teeth and passes them over to me.
“I am sorry, Nats,” she says. “Are you still my friend? Here’s a peace offering of Maltesers. Will you forgive me?”
I hear a hint of mirth in her voice. What a manipulative bugger! “Of course,” I answer in truth. “Yup. Your best friend. And yes, you know full well I'll forgive you.”
She grins at me, mouth full of Malteser. “Do you see what I did there?”
“Yes I did. I’m not impressed. It's not on to take advantage of someone under a hypnotic spell.”
“Cos THAT happens all the time.”
I roll my eyes and pull out my phone again and type out another message to Olly.
I love you. Please just forget what I said this morning. I’ll come to yours later. Please ring me. N xx
As the message sends I feel a rollercoaster type lurch in my stomach. What if he can’t forget what I said? What if he calls the wedding off? What happens then?
“We’ll get this sorted, Nat,” Meg interrupts my thoughts as if reading my mind. “We’ll be there soon. We’ll get Brian to clap or do whatever he has to do to unhypnotise you, you can stop spilling all your secrets and it’ll be absolutely fine.”
“I know,” I say, quickly brushing away a tear from my eye. “Everything will be fine.”
A while later we come off the motorway and navigate long twisting roads surrounded by fields and farms. As we drive further north, the weather turns colder, and the roads are laced with a thin coat of ice. Meg slows down, manoeuvring the winding roads with caution.
We pass a sign welcoming us to the civil parish of Apperdale. I begin to feel a lift in my mood. We’re near to Little Trooley now. And to Amazing Brian. And with Brian, the return of my mind and mouth control.
It is going to be okay. I keep my fingers crossed.
I roll the window down and enjoy the feel of the icy wind stinging my face. Meg flicks the iPod onto some nineties Britpop and blasts it up. Halfway through Blur’s Parklife we come across a rickety white post with the words ‘Welcome to Little Trooley – Home of Hobbs Yorkshire Bread’.
“Ooh, look!” I exclaim. “This is where Hobbs Yorkshire Bread comes from. I love that stuff.”
“Maybe they’ll sell it cheap here,” Meg ponders. “See? There might just be a bright side to this disaster.”
I tut.
“Yay. My fiancé might call off our wedding and I might never get my job back because my boss thinks I can't get through the day without illegal substances. But at least I’ll be able to console myself with carbs. Lots and lots of carbs.”
Meg smiles in sympathy. “We’ll sort it, Natty. We will. We’re here now any- … oh, wow, look at this place!”
I sit straight up in my seat and gasp as, quite unexpectedly, we drive through a small, tree-lined clearing and straight into a fairytale.
Little Trooley village green is seriously attractive. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Actual chocolate box cottages of all colours surround us, dotted in a haphazard semicircle around a large pond that leads off to a narrow river winding its way through lawns and vibrant flower beds. To the left of us there’s a post office and a busy little newsagents, outside of which stands an old fashioned red phone box. In between the shops a slender path slopes steeply upwards and is lined on one side with a long row of beautiful honey-coloured stone houses with pointy roofs. It’s like something from Midsomer Murders, only without the terrifyingly high rate of homicide.
“Ooh, look at the pub!” says Meg clapping her hands together in glee.
In the centre of the village green directly behind the pond stands a pretty pub declaring itself ‘The Old Whimsy’ with a small black and gold painted sign. Its large pale bricks and navy painted bay windows are partly obscured by frost sparkled English ivy and on the huge wooden front door hangs a mistletoe wreath twinkling with fairy lights.
Up in the distance behind the pub, portly, pale green hills sit against the wintry skyline. I can see what looks like a massive hotel or a manor house and further down in the valley, a vast church steeple makes for a gorgeous view. There’s even some sheep and cows hanging out up there too. Sheep and cows!
It’s really stunning. A sharp contrast to the red brick jungle and kebab shops of Manchester.
“Bloody hell! I cannot believe Amazing Brian lives here,” I say as we drive down the cobbled road and park in a little car park by the pub. “You’d have to be loaded to afford one of these houses.”
“Ooh. Maybe there’re lots of rich men here! Rich men looking for young, nubile wives. Awesome.”
I roll my eyes and dig out the hypnotist card from my purse.
“Well, we can’t stay long enough to find out, I’m afraid. I’m getting me unhypnotised and then I’ve got to get back to Olly… It says on here that Brian lives at number 40 The Lilliput Cottages.”
We look aroun
d.
“Lilliput Cottages are those ones up that road. There’s a street sign.” Meg points to the sloping road between the post office and newsagents.
“Brill. Be careful though, Meg,” I say, looking sternly down at her dangerously high heeled boots. “It looks pretty icy.”
I soon find out that trainers are the absolute worst thing to wear when attempting to walk up an icy road with an incline. While Meg bounds along in her heels with no problems, I slip and slide, my stomach plummeting each time I think I’m about to go bum over boobs.
I grab onto Meg’s arm for balance.
“Ew. You’re getting all sweaty,” she yells, but doesn’t pull away, bless her. I use the arm not clinging onto Meg to surreptitiously wipe my cardigan (Meg’s cardigan) sleeve over my damp forehead. Man, I’m unfit. I really should go to the gym.
“I’m actually fearing for my life right now,” I pant as I my legs slide outwards. “Are we nearly there? Woaaah!”
“We’re at number twelve. A bit longer. Be strong!”
In concentrated silence, we plough on up the road. Meg almost dragging me as I slide here, there and everywhere like an elephant on roller-skates.
We finally reach number forty and pause for breath.
Brian’s house is separate from and larger than the others in the row. It’s really pretty with winter roses growing around the front door and a silvery grey thatched roof hanging low over the imposing building.
“Well, hellooooo Brian!” Meg wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. “If I’d have known he lived here in this big old house I’d have been much nicer to him last night. Still… I can always make amends.” She reaches discreetly into her top and hoists up her boobs so that they spill out of the tight navy halter she’s wearing.
“How do I look?” she asks, wetting her finger and wiping mascara crumbs from under her eyes.
Yours Truly Page 6
