The Not So Perfect Plan to Save Friendship House: An uplifting romantic comedy

by Lilly Bartlett

  That’s why we’ve been huddled in the office for the last half-hour. Callum’s not returning June's calls.

  ‘He didn’t ring the day after dinner, but he did say he’d have loads of work on, so I didn’t think anything of it. He sent me a text that night. But then I didn't hear from him for a few days after that, so I rang him. I only meant to do it once, but then I wondered if he was out of phone reception. You know how dodgy phones can be at festivals with everyone clogging up the signals. I thought he might be out in a field somewhere not even knowing that I’d rung.’

  ‘How many calls, June?’

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Then she sighed. ‘Oh, five or six. The first day.’

  ‘No, June.’

  ‘More after that, plus messages. Every time he’d ring me back I ended up phoning multiple times before he rang me again. I got crazy. I was just so relieved every time he rang.’ She puts her head into her hands. ‘He thinks I’m a stalker. Now he's not even picking up.’

  There were tears in her eyes. ‘You were right. He didn't like who I really am.’

  ‘No, June!’ God how I wished I’d never said anything. Now she’s blaming herself. ‘You did what any normal person would. It’s not unusual to want to talk to your boyfriend. There shouldn’t be rules about how many times you talk to each other or who calls who. If he’s being weird about that, then he’s got the problem, not you. He should be ringing you back! In fact, I’d be furious with him if I were you.’

  Our conversation carried on like this, with me saying what every good friend would. It’s not you, it’s him, the wanker.

  I’ll completely backpedal on everything if he turns up here tomorrow with flowers saying he’s been in hospital or his phone was nicked.

  ‘You didn’t imagine anything, June. He definitely did like you.’

  ‘Maybe in the past tense,’ she said. ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘I have no idea. I’m so sorry.’

  She went to the office door, closed and locked it. Then she fell into my arms and sobbed her eyes out.

  I’d like to kill that bloke for making her so miserable. How dare he, after chasing her for months and months and acting so loved up. One little stalker episode and he runs away? The spineless worm.

  ‘Art class!’ Rosemary knocks on the office door just as June’s touching up her make-up. She should be able to get away with saying she’s got allergies. September is known for it around here.

  ‘Are you okay to go?’ I ask her. ‘I’ve got to get the pies in, but I could get Terence started if you like.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Keeping busy is good. Will you stay with us, though, just at the start? I might need backup.’

  I push up the sleeves of my chef’s whites. ‘I’m right behind you.’

  It’s safe to say that the women aren’t welcoming Terence into their home with open arms. In Dot’s case, it’s more like a closed fist. And she’s in art class today too.

  Nick carries all the easels and chairs to the garden. The leaves aren’t turning yet, though the borders are looking pretty bare. ‘What are you working on today?’ he asks Rosemary.

  ‘I thought we’d try trees,’ she says. ‘I had an idea about capturing them in all seasons. Maybe the same tree throughout the year on the same canvas, like a time-lapse.’ She turns to Nick. ‘You’re not planning to cut any of them down, right? Because it’d be a shame if someone’s subject disappears halfway through the study.’

  Nick promises not to make any drastic changes to the scenery.

  Terence is ambling across the lawn towards us. ‘Where do you want me for this?’

  ‘How about Wales?’ Dot mumbles. She’s got her own paint box, a present from her son last Christmas. He also gave her a beret, but she doesn’t wear that.

  ‘Anywhere you like, Terence,’ Rosemary says. ‘The idea is to choose a single tree.’

  There are only five in the class today. Sophie claims she’s not got an artistic bone in her body, so she never comes. And Laney only turns up if someone happens to see her just before. Sisters Ruth and Shirley are here, though. They might prefer to work in yarn, but they like to keep their hand in with most arts and crafts.

  Everyone starts off to find their subject, as Rosemary calls it. Ruth and Shirley pick the same white birch, but they sit on opposite sides of it. They like to have different perspectives, but not too different. That’s probably why they married brothers.

  Rosemary heads straight for the cedar trees on the border with Terence’s cottage.

  And Terence follows Dot. ‘Find your own tree!’ she shouts at him.

  ‘I am finding my own.’

  ‘I mean away from me.’

  ‘I’m not near you.’ He continues to trot after her. He should get some credit. He is trying to be friendly. He’s just picked the wrong person to try it on.

  ‘Thanks, Phoebe, I’m okay now,’ June tells me when I start to follow her back to her office. ‘I need to get some work done.’

  ‘All right, but I’m going to check in on you in a bit. Fair warning, you’re going to get sick of the sight of me.’

  She smiles a wobbly smile. ‘That’s what friends are for.’

  Tears prick my eyes as I go back to my kitchen. My heart is breaking for June. To see that disappointment in her face. I know how she’s feeling. It’s so hard to get over the realisation that you’ve so completely messed everything up, and all the blame that goes with it. How do you forgive yourself for making such a stupid mistake? Why are we all so good at carrying this guilt around with us?

  Nick wanders in. ‘Want a tea?’ he asks, reaching around me for the kettle. His citrusy cologne smells better to me than any baking cake ever could. ‘I can’t wake up today.’

  ‘I didn’t sleep well, either,’ I tell him. I wonder what kept him up. Never mind. Don’t want to know.

  My heart leaps into my throat when he grabs my hands. ‘We need some exercise to get the blood moving. Come on. Jumping jacks.’ He starts flailing his arms and his legs as if they aren’t attached to the same body.

  False alarm, I tell my hope. He’s not being romantic. He’s just being silly Nick. ‘I am not exercising with you. Especially not like that. Do you need me to ring 999?’

  He laughs. ‘Zumba, then. Come on, feel the rhythm.’ He starts blasting some hoo-hoo-hoo drummy noise from his phone. ‘If you won’t come to the Zumba–’ and I never do ‘–then the Zumba will come to you.’ His arms swing about as he marches in place. ‘You can do it.’ He starts wriggling his hips and chest-pumping to the beat of the drum.

  ‘I beg you, please stop doing that in my kitchen.’

  ‘Turning you on?’ He laughs.

  ‘I can hardly control myself…’

  His strutting falters as he catches my eye.

  I blush. ‘Maybe we’ll just have a tea instead,’ he says, turning off the music. ‘Hey, Phoebe?’

  Something about the way he says my name gets my attention.

  ‘Do you want to get another drink with me some time?’

  My heart doesn’t seem able to accept what my brain knows. Or else it wouldn’t be pounding right now at the thought of a date with Nick. Who is not in a position to date, I remind myself. He might not think it’s a big deal to be with two women at once, but I do have some pride. Why should I have to share while he gets everything he wants?

  I’m saved from having to go into that, though, because just then, Tamsyn appears in the kitchen.

  ‘Nick, here.’ She hands him his sweatshirt. It’s the black one that makes his eyes go dark as wet coal. ‘You left it at the house.’

  I don’t know how much more of this roller coaster I can take. If I were at Alton Towers, I’d have already been sick.

  Nick looks embarrassed. As he should. He’s been at Tamsyn's house. Taking his sweatshirt off. Amongst other things, probably. Now I feel as if I’ve just done a thousand jumping jacks.

  ‘Thanks,’ he mumbles.

  ‘I’m leaving no
w, Phoebe,’ she says. I could say no, but we both know I’m not really her boss. Besides, I want her and her Nick-stripping ways out of my sight.

  ‘You and Tamsyn are close,’ I say to Nick when she’s left. I mean for it to come out exactly as accusatory as it sounds. ‘If you’re leaving clothes at her house.’ I couldn’t feel any more awful. We may as well get everything out in the open and make it official.

  ‘I’m not leaving clothes at her house,’ he says.

  ‘Nick, come on. You left your sweatshirt. That’s why she’s just handed it back to you.’ He can’t honestly try to deny that. ‘Why don’t you admit that you’re together?’ I almost say that it makes no difference to me, but those words stick in my throat.

  ‘Phoebe, it’s a little complicated, but please believe me when I say that we’re not. Do you think that we’re sleeping together? Because we are not.’ His eyes are begging me to drop it. I’d love to, if it meant I could stop imagining them together.

  ‘Fine,’ I tell him. ‘It’s none of my business anyway. You can do what you want.’

  ‘I’m not, though.’

  ‘You’re not what?’

  ‘Doing what I want,’ he says. ‘I want to have a drink with you.’

  And I want Tamsyn not to be bringing Nick’s cast-off-in-a-moment-of-passion clothes to work. We may as well both be disappointed. ‘I’m sure you could find plenty of people to have drinks with you,’ I say. Miniscule as it is, I do have some pride left. I’m sure that’ll make me feel better about taking the high road. Maybe once this searing sadness wears off. ‘There’s always Tamsyn.’

  ‘I thought you knew me better than this, Phoebe.’

  ‘I think I do, Nick.’

  He leaves without making his tea.

  Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I do believe Nick and Tamsyn aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, and that they’re not actually sleeping together (since that’s the technicality that Nick seems to be claiming). Now imagine that I do go out with him. We’ll have an amazing time. I know that much. Which will just make me like him more, and I’ll want to see him again, and again, until it feels like we’re a couple. Only we won’t be a couple, because all the while that I delude myself into thinking that he’s mine, Tamsyn will be there too, maybe thinking the same thing.

  I might be happy in the short term but, ultimately, I’m going to get hurt. I need to keep telling myself that, because right now my head is no match for my heart.

  I’ve just put the pies in to bake for lunch when I hear the women’s raised voices in the dining room. ‘You did it on purpose!’ Dot is shouting when I kick open the kitchen door to see what’s happening. ‘We’re not stupid.’

  The women are all lined up against Terence, holding their canvases in front of them like shields.

  ‘I can’t help it if you’ve got an overactive imagination,’ Terence says. ‘It’s a tree.’

  ‘It’s not a tree. It’s a… phallus. Phoebe, isn’t it?’

  Leave it to Terence to offend the women with a painted willy. I suppose on the plus side, at least it’s not the real thing. ‘Let me see.’

  Well, even though it’s green and leafy, there is definitely a resemblance.

  ‘You women have dirty minds,’ he says. ‘That’s not my problem.’ Then he smiles wickedly. ‘I’ll look forward to painting my tree through the seasons, especially when it gets its growth surge in spring.’

  ‘Disgusting,’ Dot announces. That’s starting to sound like Terence’s new nickname.

  I guess you could say that, given the iced buns we served at the open house, this is really just tit for todger.

  Maggie is at book club again this week. It’s going to take us all some time to get used to seeing her. She’s as stoic as usual, though she doesn’t blank Sophie when she dares to smile at her. Laney is the only one who doesn’t seem to notice that Maggie is scary. You’d think they were best mates, which is so odd because of all the people you wouldn’t expect Maggie to tolerate, Laney has to be near the top of the list. Not because there’s anything wrong with Laney. She’s warm and friendly, light-hearted and funny and, well, that’s the opposite of Maggie.

  June’s come too, although I’m not so sure that’s a good idea after Dot called Callum Mr Bingley last time. If they tease her about him tonight, she might crumble. As it is, she has had to claim week-long allergies to explain her red puffy eyes. ‘You both get them?’ Nick asks us.

  ‘Why, are my eyes red?’ I look at June, who shakes her head.

  ‘In the spring,’ he says. ‘You suffered terribly, don’t you remember?’

  ‘Oh, yeah…’ I say. I did claim pollen attacks after messing things up with Nick over Seth. ‘Yes, same thing.’

  I’m grateful to see the tiny smile that raises in June. I’ve gone back and forth all day about whether I should just ring Callum myself. He wouldn’t recognise my number and might pick up. I could even ring his business. Then he’d definitely get on the phone and I could explain that June’s not really crazy. My head says it can’t do any harm at this point. He’s not talking to her anyway. Though my gut tells me there’s still the tiniest chance that he’ll eventually come around on his own if I don’t meddle.

  I want to do something, but it has got to be the right thing. I feel so helpless watching her suffer like this.

  ‘I’d like to raise a point before we start, please,’ Sophie says. ‘What about letting men into book club?’

  All the women say no at once.

  ‘Don’t bite my head off, I was only asking,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe you’re so against the men being here. It’s like you want to live in a nunnery.’

  Max doesn’t seem to understand the women’s feelings any more than Sophie does. He’s got even more adverts out around Ipswich.

  Dot glares at Sophie over her glasses. ‘We’re here because we want to be in a women’s home. What’s so strange about that? There are plenty of mixed options for people who want to live with men.’

  I hope Dot’s not suggesting that option to Sophie. They may argue over Sophie’s meal dictates, but they’ve never seriously fallen out before.

  ‘We don’t want to live with men, Sophie,’ Dot goes on. ‘That means we don’t want them in our book club, either.’

  ‘We have let Nick in,’ Laney says.

  ‘He’s different,’ says Dot.

  ‘You mean I’m not really a man,’ he adds. ‘No, it’s okay. I don’t mind at all.’

  Dot smiles. ‘We like you, Nick. Unlike the male residents who’ve been foisted upon us. Sophie, it would get too disruptive if we open up the group. Besides, the books we read are more for women.’ She glances again at Nick.

  ‘No offence taken,’ he says.

  ‘Who wants to allow men in?’ Sophie asks. Predictably, she’s the only one who raises her hand.

  ‘You’re overruled,’ says Dot. ‘No men. Except Nick.’

  ‘Who’s not really a man,’ Nick adds.

  It’s a relief when we start talking about the book. We’re up to the part where Mr Collins, the boot-licking clergyman who’s looking for a fitting wife, visits the Bennetts. Then, to Lizzy’s dismay, her best friend, poor Charlotte, accepts his proposal.

  Dot reads aloud from her tattered copy: ‘“I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins's character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.”’

  ‘I don’t think I could have done it,’ I say. ‘I hate that she’s sold out for money. She’s not in love.’

  ‘You can understand it, though,’ says Nick. ‘She can’t survive on her principles. Charlotte needs money to live and stay respectable. I’d probably do the same thing in her shoes.’

  June and I trade glances – because isn’t that what he’s doing anyway? Between going out with Tamsyn and the way he kisses up to Terence and Max, he’s setting himself
up pretty well.

  ‘But what if they fall in love later?’ Laney asks. ‘Then it won’t matter how they got together in the first place. Love can grow with time, can’t it? I think it can.’

  ‘Esteem can grow,’ Maggie says, startling us. It’s as if the armchair has just spoken. ‘A kind of love can grow. But not romantic love.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Laney asks. ‘People can fall in love after the fact. Sometimes friends do.’

  But Maggie seems definite on the subject. ‘You mean the feeling of being in love? That’s only lust. “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”’

  ‘Who said that?’ June asks.

  ‘Shakespeare,’ answers Dot. ‘“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”’

  ‘Shakespeare again?’ I say.

  Maggie nods.

  ‘I don’t think Jane Austen wanted the reader to think that Charlotte would be truly happy with Mr Collins, either,’ says Dot. ‘She had quite a lot to say about it. “Nothing can compare to the misery of being bound without Love, bound to one, & preferring another. That is a Punishment which you do not deserve.”’

  Maggie’s eyes appraise Dot. ‘From her letters. You’re a scholar,’ she says. ‘She had a lot of advice about marrying for love, didn’t she? “I am perfectly convinced that your present feelings, supposing you were to marry now, would be sufficient for his happiness; but when I think how very, very far from them you are…” excuse me, I mean “how very far it is from Now, & take… and take everything that may be… what may be…” No… “everything that may be, into consideration, I dare say… I dare not say ‘determine to accept him.’ The risk… the risk…”’

  She looks around the room, horrified. ‘Excuse me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Laney asks.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again as she rushes for the door.

  ‘What just happened?’ Nick asks.

  ‘I think she got embarrassed about forgetting the lines,’ I say.

  That gets a snort from Laney. ‘I don’t know where I am half the time. If I let that bother me, I'd never leave my room.’