By the time I’d reached the museum in Kensington, I had decided, completely and utterly, that this was the worst idea I had ever followed through in my entire life, worse than the time I thought that that guy’s motorbike would substitute for him not having a personality, and it took a wrist fracture to convince me otherwise. I tried to remember one single boyfriend I’d ever had who hadn’t accidentally made me break a bone, and gave up in disgust. Great. Even if he was nice I was still going to wind up in hospital somehow.
I wasn’t even sure I’d recognize Finn. And he even had a stupid fish name. God, what was I doing? It was a nice, warm spring day, and I could be lying indoors on the sofa watching TV. But no, here I was, tarted up even though I looked like a road accident victim, going off to meet some spawny pervy speccy git who thought I was porno-nurse.
This is always the way with me. Plus, I have Teenage Daughter of Nastily Divorced Parents Syndrome, which means, as people like to tell me late at night when I make only the teensiest complaint about my love life, that everyone I ever date will be:
• The exact opposite of my father, as I hate him so much
• Exactly like my father, as I hate him so much
• Some sort of freaky revenge on both my parents
• Doomed to disaster right from the start as a way of trying to get my parents’ attention
• Doomed to disaster right from the start as I have never learned how good relationships worked
• Doomed to disaster right from the start as some sort of genetic fate
• Doomed to disaster right from the start as I am a Bad Person
That last one is my guess – plus, whose relationship has ever not ended in disaster? The best way out you can ever hope for is death … But this is why I’m not in therapy, although I wished I was on my way there – or anywhere – the second I saw Finn, standing awkwardly outside the entrance. He seemed as unhappy to be there as I was. God, why do we put ourselves through crap like this?
‘Hi!’ I said over-enthusiastically. ‘Hi! Er … it’s Holly …’
He looked at me confusedly for a second. For God’s sake, he’d asked me.
‘Hi! Oh, sorry, ha ha. My God, what happened to your eye?’
‘Ehm … a mental patient hit me.’ Almost true.
‘Oh my God, you poor thing. What were you doing on the psychiatric wing?’
‘Ehmm … just tidying up,’ I said vaguely. Oh God, I couldn’t put up with this for an hour and a half. When he went to pay for me, and I saw it was thirteen pounds for us to get in, I realized I had to act.
‘FINN!’ I screeched, as he handed over his Visa. ‘Don’t hand over that card.’
‘No, really, I’ll pay,’ he said.
The swotty girl assistant held on to the card enquiringly.
‘No, it’s not that. Ehm, Finn, I think we’re going to the Natural History Museum under false pretences,’ I gabbled. ‘Ehm, I’m not a nurse.’
He looked at me, confused.
‘Sorry … are you a nursing student?’
‘No, I mean, I’m nothing to do with nursing at all.’
‘I think it’s illegal to impersonate a nurse,’ said the assistant helpfully. I shot her a hard stare.
‘It was a … silly joke I was playing with … err, Kate,’ I hastily improvised. ‘She bet me I couldn’t pretend to be a nurse all evening and … well, here we are!’
‘Kate playing jokes,’ said Finn meditatively. ‘Never seen that happen.’
Neither had I.
‘I’m so sorry that I dragged you all the way here … It was stupid. I’m really sorry. I’d better go.’
‘Oh, great,’ he said. ‘You actually turn up to tell me you’re going.’
‘I’ll go round with you,’ said the swotty assistant eagerly. Finn must give off swotty scientist love vibes.
‘Haven’t you seen it?’ I asked her rudely.
Then there was a silence.
‘Well, bye then,’ said Finn.
I looked at him again. He was wearing baggy old cords and a short-sleeved shirt with a pen sticking out of the top pocket, as well as a tweed coat, but – no leather patches. He seemed sweet, confused and not entirely unlike a grown-up Harry Potter. The assistant was already beckoning over her supervisor to tell her she was going on her break.
‘I get in for nothing,’ she whispered confidingly to Finn. Hang on, girlfriend! This was my date!
‘Well, better make that one, please,’ said Finn. ‘Can you do a student concession?’
‘For you, I’m sure,’ said the girl, simpering greasily.
‘Don’t you want me to come then?’ I said sulkily.
He turned round.
‘I’m sorry, I thought you’d gone.’
‘Well, you know, I’m here now.’
The assistant clucked her tongue against her teeth. Finn thought about it.
‘Is your name actually Holly?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I promise.’
‘What do you do, Holly?’
‘Ehmm … astronaut?’
He smiled for the first time.
‘Sounds good enough to me. Two please,’ he said to the girl, who looked like she wanted to decapitate me with one of the velociraptor teeth they sold in the gift shop.
‘So … who are you?’ he asked, as we went up the rather sad lava-themed escalator.
‘Really, nobody,’ I said in shame.
‘Nobody at all?’
‘I’m Kate’s flatmate.’
‘Well, there you go,’ he said. ‘That makes you brave, for a start.’
‘And I work as a florist.’
‘Really?’ His face lit up. ‘I’m much more interested in botany than medicine, although of course one feeds so much into the other …’
‘I don’t know anything about botany either.’
‘Really? Oh, you should. Did you know there’s a kind of orchid that fills itself up with sticky stuff, like a pool. Then, when wasps come by, they go in and get so wet they can’t fly out again. The only way out is through a tunnel at the bottom, where the wasp gets stuck and covered in pollen before he’s let out. It’s like a car wash.’
I was impressed despite myself, and more so when he led me to the case holding it, and pointed it out to me.
‘See? There you go – do you see? Orchidae Coryanthus. It’s kind of like a theme park for bugs.’
‘So do you just know everything about science then? Is that what you do?’
‘Good gracious, no,’ he said, laughing at the very thought, as if knowing the properties of Orchidae Coryanthus off the top of his head could possibly be conceived as knowing quite a lot about science.
‘No, really, I just dabble in some things. I am a kind of physicist.’
‘A kind of physicist? I didn’t know they had different kinds.’
‘A few, yes. I’m into string theory.’
‘You look at pieces of string to see what they do? Are snakes involved?’ I asked, glancing anxiously at a particularly long and malevolent one stretched out in front of us, thankfully in a case.
‘Well, on a very small level. You see, particle physics only works when we pretend gravity doesn’t exist, but if you want to use quantum and not just classical theory, then string theory can help close the gap.’
‘Oh, I see. No, hang on, that makes no sense to me at all.’
‘OK, ehm … just think of the world as a kind of resonating guitar string.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s a very beautiful theory,’ he said. ‘It means the world plays like music.’
‘What, even the person who punched me?’
‘Did they soar like a butterfly and sting like a bee?’
‘No, she hit me like a cow.’
‘Did you tell her you were a nurse too?’
‘Noo! I’m sorry about that.’ But he was laughing. ‘I got bullied at my last job. So I decided to leave and someone was obviously going to miss me.’
‘You poor thing. You should just tell people you walked into a bus shelter. That’s what I usually do.’
‘Why, do you get beaten up a lot?’
‘No, but I do walk into bus shelters.’
We were standing in front of an enormous grizzly bear, and I took the opportunity of Finn studying it closely to study him closely. Well, it was all natural history, after all.
He was tall, and had extremely curly brown hair sticking out in every direction. He wasn’t skinny and elegant like Addison, but well built and solid. Round dark eyes peered out of what were obviously bottle-thick glasses. I thought longingly for a moment of Addison’s long lashes and dark pools, then snapped myself back to the present.
‘Why are you called Finn?’ I said, as he examined the grizzly’s paw prints and I made little growly motions to myself. ‘Are your parents famous shark people or something?’
‘Ha! Good variation. Well, it beats the fish-finger theory. Actually, it’s Feynman. My father was desperate to have a physicist in the family. Richard Feynman was a physicist,’ he added, seeing my blank face.
‘Why didn’t he just call you Richard?’
‘That would have been too obvious.’
‘Wow. What’s your middle name?’
‘Lavoisier. Just in case the physics didn’t work out.’ He sighed, and I declined to question him any further.
We stood pondering the great blue whale for a long time, until I realized it wasn’t actually real and got a bit pissed off with it. I was so full of relief, though, that the date wasn’t turning into an unmitigated disaster that I managed to hide it.
‘So why do you work at that wankerpit then?’ I asked him.
‘Where?’
‘The City.’
‘Oh, yes. I’m doing research there. It isn’t very interesting.’
‘It’s interesting to me.’
‘Really? Do you want to hear the advanced mathematics?’
‘Ooh, is that the time?’
‘See?’ He regarded the whale glumly. ‘Actually, I hate it. I’m trying to formulate whether the stock market works along roughly the same lines as other living systems, and all people seem to be interested in pointing out is that they have “considerably more money than you”.’
‘That must piss you off,’ I said. ‘If it helps, I’m probably poorer than anyone you know.’
‘It’s not really the money that bothers me,’ he said grumpily. ‘Want to go halfers on an ice cream?’
I’d started to feel that Finn and I were getting on surprisingly well. OK, his nose was a little pudgy, and he talked a lot about science, but here we were, doing a nice, adult, educational thing on a Saturday afternoon, and sitting out on the grass, eating ice cream and watching the duty tourists going crazy with boredom round South Kensington. He didn’t seem like a perv, though. Which begged the question …
‘Why’, I asked, biting into my Magnum, ‘did you ask me out?’
He looked at me, blinking in the mild sunshine, his eyes slightly enlarged behind the thick spectacles.
‘Sorry?’
‘Ehm … you know, why did you ask me on a date? If it isn’t a nurse fixation, ha ha!’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.’
However, he suddenly began to flush, and clearly did understand. I also began to understand something, and started to give him a run for his money in the flush department.
‘Ermm, I didn’t mean … I mean, sorry, but I just wanted someone to go to the museum with; I normally go alone … I didn’t mean for you to think …’
‘What else would I have thought?’
‘I don’t know. I’m terribly, terribly sorry,’ he stuttered. ‘Really, it wasn’t that at all.’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with me?’
‘Nothing, no, nothing … but I would never just ask someone out like that. I mean … I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes, you said that,’ I said sulkily, standing up whilst trying to keep my ice cream upright – not the most elegant of procedures. Finn stared at me in disbelief.
‘I mean … can’t we be friends?’
‘Finn, that’s what you say when two people have actually had a relationship and it’s been deeply passionate and then it all goes wrong. Which, despite the big fish, has not happened this afternoon.’
‘Fine.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, once again I apologize for the misunderstanding, and it was nice to have met you. Oh, and the “fish” was a “mammal”.’ And he held out his hand.
I hate it when somebody does that. Some people just have no sense of the appropriate drama. I didn’t take his hand but muttered ‘bye’ and stomped off, cheeks high with humiliation. And, naturally, I had to stand that way, waiting for the lights to change, two feet in front of him, whilst he watched me in amazement. Shite.
‘I HATE bloody scientists and I HATE bloody dates which are the bloody Schroedinger’s Cat of dates/non-dates!’ I hollered, as I slammed through the door three bloody quarters of an hour later, after being thrust up against tourists’ armpits as the Circle Line attempted to take the scenic route.
‘Where are the bloody Jaffa Cakes?’
Josh was prostrate on one of the sofas watching Bette Davis with his usual devotion.
‘It’s Penguins, sweetheart – don’t you remember? We still have a hundred and sixty-six to get through since you went to the supermarket. Date not go too well?’
‘You could bloody well say that.’
I stomped into the kitchen. Amazingly, Kate was still there, and still in her dressing gown. This was unheard of. She had hooked up an extension line to the phone in the hall, and her mobile was now connected up to her laptop computer, and she appeared to be continually switching between the two. The pager lay to one side, discarded, as did two cold pieces of toast, and there was a fax buzzing away in the corner which I’d never noticed before.
‘Hey there,’ I said, but she made no sign to show she’d heard me. ‘Can I eat this bloody toast?’
She shrugged her shoulders, so I ate it anyway.
‘Any luck?’
She noticed me at last and looked up, her face drawn.
‘Kate, it’s only the first day. You know, no self-respecting bloke would phone you on the first day after you’d met. Especially one as cool and pretty as John … Thingy. You’d think he was pathetic and needy and you’d probably turn him down.’
Kate nodded like an idiot.
‘But he said he would.’
‘Yes, but he’s also a bloke. Those two things cancel each other out.’
She regarded me with narrowed eyes.
‘How did your date go?’
‘Fine. Oh, and also, why didn’t you tell me he was a prick?’
‘Finn?’ This startled her out of her reverie, although she still kept half an eye on the phones. ‘What happened?’
‘You were there at your birthday, weren’t you?’
‘Ehm, yes, I would have thought so.’
‘You heard him ask me out, didn’t you?’
‘Well, I heard him ask if you wanted to go to the Natural History Museum.’
‘That’s a date, right?’
‘Ehm … why? What else did he say? Dinner? A drink afterwards?’
‘He didn’t have to say anything! You don’t ask someone somewhere just because you want to go there.’
Kate raised her eyebrows.
‘Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I reckon when he found out I wasn’t a nurse, he changed his mind and made out that it was just a friendly thing all the time.’
‘Really? Well, maybe it was. To be honest, though, Holly, it didn’t seem very like Finn to just start chatting a girl up out of the blue. He got some ribbing for it the next day, and seemed a bit surprised when the Jameses started ripping the piss. Certainly, I’m not used to seeing him being that forward – quiet as a mouse, normally.’
‘What? You knew about this?’
‘Of course not. I’m just saying, maybe he didn’t mean to ask you out, and you made an honest mistake.’
‘Well, of course, you’re being incredibly reasonable about it, because it’s not you who had to listen to stupid theories of FLOWERS for two hours by that annoying, geeky IDIOT.’
‘Oh well, it won’t bother you that he doesn’t want to go out with you, then.’
‘It DOESN’T.’
We both sighed. Kate picked up the pager and checked to see if it was on.
‘God, Kate,’ I said, counting it out on my fingers, ‘let’s see: you gave him your home number, your office number, your mobile, your car phone, your pager your e-mail and your fax number …?’
She nodded miserably.
‘I think we’re just going to have to wait for the law of averages to kick in,’ I observed, ‘whereby he misdials another number, and gets you.’
Josh called a house meeting the next morning. Or rather, he ran up and down the corridor at 8 a.m. banging a ladle on a saucepan and yelling, ‘Fire! Fire! Everyone out!’ Then, when people put their heads round their bedroom doors blearily, he grabbed them and pulled them round the kitchen table.
When I got in there I couldn’t tell if Kate had even gone to bed or not; she was still sitting in the same spot, walled in by electronic communication devices. Amazingly, Addison was there too, blinking in the daylight. He seemed extremely uncomfortable.
I’d never seen him during the day before. Properly lit, he was even more beautiful: the strong curve of his upper lip, and the fathomless depths of his heavy-lidded black eyes making me want to rush back out of the room to put some lipstick on – until Josh caught me, and forced me back down.
‘OK, everyone,’ he announced, ‘this has got to stop.’
I trembled for a moment as I remembered cutting my toenails in the bath, however he didn’t point directly at me but continued:
‘I want this to be a nice happy home for my friends, not some sort of love harpy madhouse,’ he said, as sternly as he could, which wasn’t very. We all stared at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Just look at the situation,’ he said. ‘We’re all obviously deeply bad at running our own love lives.’
‘I’m doing OK,’ I said, untruthfully and petulantly.
‘Holly, you can’t tell the difference between a love life and a school trip, OK? Addison, you just seem completely uninterested …’
Addison was tapping something into a computer about the size of a pea, and didn’t even look up.
‘… and Kate, I’m worried about your mental health.’
‘Huh?’ she said listlessly.
‘What about you?’ I said.
‘Hum,’ he said. ‘And, yes, perhaps I could improve on my own love life.’
‘Michael Jackson’, I said, ‘has a better love life than you.’
‘So, we’re just going to have to do something about it.’
‘Like what?’
‘I think we should have a house-warming. We’ve never had one. And, I think we should all have to ask one member of the opposite sex.’
‘… or the same sex, if you felt that way inclined,’ I pointed out.
‘Thank you, Holl, interjection accepted … We should all ask one member of the opposite sex who is definitely single and whom we think would be suitable for someone else who’s coming – and then they ask someone too!’ he finished triumphantly.
‘What??’
Even Addison stopped tapping, looking up with a hunted animal expression on his face.
‘It’s called a singles party. I read it in Vogue. You invite a single person, and they bring along a single friend, who brings along a single friend, etcetera etcetera etcetera. It’s a “fabulous and frivolous way to find a mate,” says Vogue.’
He was clearly completely over-excited about his idea.
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Kate, still slumped into her chair. ‘You realize that if we do that, within about five minutes you’ll have invited every single single person in the entire world?’
‘It’s exponential,’ mumbled Addison. ‘But, if you got them all to stand close enough together, I think they could fit on the Isle of Wight.’
‘What if some of them are burglars?’ I asked.
‘Guys! Have you no excitement?! No imagination?!’
‘Addison,’ I said gravely, ‘can I ask you as my single friend?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Ehm, can I ask you then, as my follow-up?’
‘Yes! Ooh, that means I’ll have to ask you again now.’
‘No! No! Come on, guys! It’ll be fun! Please! I’ll hire the caterers!’
Josh believed everything he read in Vogue. As, of course, you should.
‘You’ll get caterers?’ I asked, fatally. Well, I’d never been to a party before where catering didn’t mean half a bowl of peanuts with a cigarette stubbed out in it.
‘Oh yes – if it’s going to be a proper party.’
‘I doubt I’ll be able to make it,’ said Kate. ‘John and I will probably be out that night.’
‘Uh huh,’ said Josh carefully. ‘But say he’s working abroad that night – you would come, wouldn’t you?’
Kate shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t care. Sure.’
‘But don’t ask that Finny bastard,’ I said. ‘He’ll make the punch explode or something.’
‘Excellent!’ said Josh. ‘I’ll get the invitations printed.’ Printed? ‘Shall we say … three weeks on Saturday?’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Kate asked him.
‘This is our year,’ said Josh. ‘This is our summer. People always get it together in the summer. And we should all do it together this year, seeing as we’re all here together, all single, all still young, all supportive of each other …’
I snorted under my breath.
‘… I mean, by this time next year you’ll be thirty.’
Kate didn’t say anything but got up to leave the room, her face like thunder. As she reached the door, however, she accidentally on purpose dropped one of Josh’s Wedgwood teacups – the family-heirloom ones he wouldn’t let me use, only Kate because she was so careful – on the floor. It smashed everywhere.
‘Jeepers!’ said Josh.
‘Oh, did I break something of yours?’ said Kate. ‘So sorry.’
I couldn’t say that Josh’s party idea didn’t excite me. Here, finally, was a chance to get Addison on his own, without me being drunk, in a proper copping-off situation. I had started to dream about him, with the two of us managing to use his computer chair in a variety of surprisingly inventive ways. And he was my fantasy too; it normally went something like this: Kate and Josh decide to run away to sea to be sailors, leaving Addison and me to run the house by ourselves. After some delightfully romantic faffing around – he inadvertently sees me through a gauze curtain over the bath, we go to outdoor markets and laugh loudly, we somehow find ourselves having a glorious night at the opera, that kind of thing – we sit one night in front of the roaring fireplace (currently choked up with bird nests and also illegal, but never mind) and he rests his head on my shoulder and says, ‘Holly, I have never experienced human companionship before, and now I cannot remember why, as I am clearly not weird or anything. But thank God I have found you. Please, never leave me.’ And I say, ‘OK,’ and then we have Olympic-standard rumpy-pumpy. I ignored my worries in that area – e.g. the fact that Addison flinched if one so much as brushed past him – by telling myself that he would be a natural.
I could tell by a footfall where he was; by the gentlest tapping, how engrossed he was in his work; but somehow I couldn’t go into his room during the day – it took the wee small hours and that quiet sense of magic you sometimes feel then. I wanted Addison and I to be special, and that meant not accidentally seeing his dirty underpants. I had it bad.
Kate did not get up from that damn table the whole day. Josh, who was humming about merrily planning party doilies, tried his best to be sympathetic.
‘Skates, do you know what I think?’
‘Hn?’
‘I think there’s a reason he didn’t give you his full name.’
‘Hn.’
‘It was dark in that bar, wasn’t it?’
‘Thank God,’ I added. I was trying to iron a shirt to wear for my first day at work, and making a crappy job of it.
‘Was it dark in the restaurant you went to?’
‘We went to Momo – it’s pitch-dark in there. Proper Moroccan, you see. No electricity.’
‘Not Le Caprice?’ I said, disappointed. They both stared at me.
‘No one goes there,’ Kate said. She can’t have been that depressed if she was still up to sneering.
‘No, me neither,’ I said, and tried to make the sleeves stay in the same place long enough for me to flatten them – unsuccessfully.
‘Well,’ went on Josh, ‘I thought he looked a bit famous. Maybe he was someone famous and was trying to hide it.’
Suddenly it struck me who John Thingy looked like – that guy from all those awful films where he had long hair and the whole world had been destroyed except him and he had to drink his own piss.
‘Oh-my-God,’ said Kate.
‘You mean …’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Josh, shaking his head portentously.
‘It’s impossible,’ I said. ‘Although he did have an American accent.’ I turned to Josh.
‘You would have noticed,’ I added. ‘Somebody would have noticed.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Kate again.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Josh. ‘I mean, you don’t usually expect to see major international film stars in South London. He must have been travelling incognito. Trying to see if you liked him for himself.’
‘I’ve heard they do this kind of thing all the time – haven’t you seen Notting Hill?’
‘He talked about Los Angeles quite a lot!’
‘There you go then – proof.’
‘Oh my God. I had a date with Kevin Costner!’ Kate rushed off to the bathroom.
‘What are you up to?’ I asked Josh.
‘Come on, what would you rather do: get dumped by some ferrety-faced married schmuckmeister or some ferrety-faced international superstar?’
‘You’re a good man.’
‘Too good,’ he said soberly, following Kate out into the hall, yelling, ‘He probably got called away the next morning to give out an Oscar or something. Don’t blame yourself! He’ll probably make a film about you!’
‘Yeah, and that one can be shit as well,’ I thought, but I kept it to myself.
I was early the next morning, wearing my white shirt, which was almost spotless, and a pair of trousers. I only had one pair of trousers and couldn’t believe that the person who invented the concept for women had done us any favours whatsoever, but they were black and smartish and looked quite a lot like what Chalitha had been wearing in the interview, so I was going along with that. I got a bit of a shock taking off on my bicycle, as the traffic was rather different at 8.30 a.m. than it was at 9 p.m., so I managed to get nearly killed three or four times and be hollering a gypsy curse on all white van drivers by the time I screeched to a halt beside That Special Someone. Mrs Bigelow was unlocking the door, and looked up with a faintly shocked expression on her face.
‘Ah, Miss Livingstone.’
I dismounted in an ungainly fashion, which I think included flashing my pants at her.
‘It’s Holly. Hello again. Ehm, is there anywhere I can put the bike?’
She stared at me as if I was a Martian.
‘No.’
We stood there, facing each other.
‘OK then …’ I checked around, and, for want of anything better, connected the bike to the nearest lamppost, in prime person-tripping and vandalism position. Mrs Bigelow watched me all the while, her several chins seeming to wobble reproachfully at me.
Finally, she opened the door and let me back into the shop I had seen only briefly the previous week.
It was small, with a floor covered in black rubber and the familiar heavy scent of flowers. Buckets of bouquets and posies sloshed around near the door, ready to be put outside for schoolchildren to pinch from. On the wall were several prominently displayed certificates from the Chelmsford School of Horticulture, made out to a Marilyn Gloria Bigelow.
She bustled through officiously.
‘Now, here is the telephone,’ she announced, pointing to the telephone. ‘Incoming calls only, if you don’t mind, unless you have to speak to suppliers, or me, or Mr Haffillton.’
‘When might I need to speak to Mr Haffillton?’
She fixed me with a glare.
‘Never! I am the only person who communicates with Mr Haffillton!’
I nodded my head as if this made sense.
The phone rang suddenly.
‘Ah. Now, Holly, listen carefully: this is how we answer the telephone. Good morning, That Special Someone, how can I help you?’
Her helpful expression changed quickly, however, and she shot into the phone: ‘You’d better make it quick, you procrastinating minx, or I’ll be letting Mr Haffillton know, do you understand?’
Then she slammed the phone down and resumed her beatific smile.
‘That was Chalitha. She’s been a trifle … held up, but she oughtn’t to be long. Now, through here, this is our staff room.’
There was a tiny chair behind a curtain, with a kettle on a shelf and a sink. There was no window, only a fluorescent bulb.
‘We each bring our own tea, coffee, milk, cups and sugar; that makes life a lot easier, don’t you find?’
I nodded in a way that indicated that in fact I found this the apotheosis of efficient tea-making.
‘Ten minutes break in the morning and the afternoon, and forty-five minutes at lunchtime – quite generous, don’t you think? Mr Haffillton always was most … generous.’
I tried to work out why she was talking in the past tense. Maybe he really was dead, and they just propped him up for formal occasions.
‘The vans deliver at ten from the markets – do check the merchandise, they’re never above trying to pass off those rancid African daisies, and it makes me most upset, do you understand? Then the orders for the day will be HERE –’ she stabbed a long, deadly pink nail at the wall – ‘and you start making them up immediately. Then you phone the collection boys …’
It seemed rude to enquire who the collection boys were –
‘… They’re positively indolent, and they get the tips, but we can’t do it without them, unfortunately. Don’t let them get away with anything, and keep an eye on them when they’re in the shop. Now, have you got your NVQ in wedding floral artistry?’
I confessed that I hadn’t. She let out a large sigh.
‘Ohhh well. Perhaps we’ll wait until we’re on the job for that, shall we? Right, must be off, Chalitha will be in soon, one supposes. You do understand that I can’t open the till until she gets here – you don’t seem like a thief, dear, but they’re everywhere, you know?’
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, worried that she was going to leave me.
‘Oh, you don’t think this is the only project Mr Haffillton has up his sleeve, do you? Oh no, I am the Executive Sales Director, and I’m extremely busy. But remember, be polite on the phone. And we do check all outgoing calls, you know, so don’t think about trying anything – not that you would, I’m sure, but you never know, people have relatives all over the world these days. I’m sure that girl will be in shortly; normally we run an extremely tight ship, but she’s officially been delayed, hopefully not in an accident or anything like that …’ She appeared to fantasize about the possibility for an instant. ‘No, I’m sure it wasn’t. Now, you have got everything straight, haven’t you? Orders off the phone, orders on to the nail, orders off the nail, orders through to the boys. I’m afraid you won’t be able to take a break until Chalitha turns up, but then you don’t appear to have any tea with you, so that won’t be a problem anyway, will it? Bye!!!’
And she disappeared in a flash of polyester. I stared after her as she sped down the road, then slowly looked round the small shop. I remembered vaguely a TV show where people would be set up with new jobs, left on their own, and then gunge would be thrown at them, or someone pretending to be the President of the United States would phone up or something, and sighed. Also, suddenly, I was gasping for a cup of tea.
I wandered around the shop, picking at stray bits of ribbon, examining the stock – mostly dusty house plants – before the day’s delivery turned up, and praying that the phone wouldn’t ring.
Worse happened, though. The bell at the door of the shop went off as an enormous greasy hulk stooped his head to come in. He was wearing a filthy old leather jacket and jeans holed and stained with oil, and his hair was long. In fact, he resembled a Status Quo fan from the eighties, and, as such, made me shudder. He popped his motorcycle helmet on the counter about a foot away from me and rubbed his stubble contemplatively with the heel of his hand.
‘’Oo are you?’
‘I’m Holly Catherine Livingstone,’ I replied, trying to sound insouciant. ‘Who are you?’
He grunted by way of response. ‘Where’s Charlie, then?’
I had no idea whom he meant.
‘Are you in the right flower shop?’
‘What? Course I am. Are you?’
‘Yes.’
We were at stalemate. He looked around cautiously, just in case he had, in fact, walked into the wrong flower shop.
‘So ’as, Charlie, er, left, yeah?’
‘He might have done … I’m new.’
He shook his head in disbelief. I noticed he was wearing one of those really visceral heavy-metal T-shirts – somebody’s eyeball being punctured with a nail – and I tried not to concentrate on it.
‘Yeah, all right then … sorry.’
‘No problem!’ I said, pleased with how well I’d dealt with my first customer.
‘If you see ’er, right, tell ’er Gareth was looking for ’er.’
‘Well, of course, I wouldn’t know her if I did see her – but, as I said, no problem!’ I replied jauntily.
He backed out of the shop, pausing at the doorway to look around it suspiciously one more time, as if I might have hidden her in one of the pot plants. Then he shook his head again, and the next thing I heard was a little hairdrier motorbike engine kicking into life. I patted my hands successfully, and started putting the flower buckets outside, using a black marker pen to strike out all the unnecessary apostrophes.
Eventually, whilst bending down by the kerb, I realized someone was watching me, and straightened up very slowly. The longhaired, dark-eyed girl from the interview was studying me appraisingly. I wiped my hands on my trousers and spluttered a bit.
‘Hi … Chalitha …’
‘Chali,’ she said dismissively, marching into the shop, ‘that’s what most people call me.’
‘Ah,’ I said, then thought about it. ‘Ah,’ I said again.
I followed her into the back, where she slung off a black PVC mac and started touching up her already heavy eyeliner in a mirror the size of a cigarette packet.
‘Ehm, I think someone was in here looking for you.’
‘Really?’
‘A big bloke. I didn’t realize it was you and told him you didn’t work here. I’m sorry …’
‘Did you? Was he big and greasy with stupid long hair, and did he smell?’
‘Ehm … well, yes, to all of the above.’
‘Excellent!’ Someone smiled at me for the first time that day. ‘Where did you say I’d gone?’
‘Nowhere in particular.’
‘Good. But specifics are better – he might follow me there. Next time, could you tell him I’m in Bhutan?’
‘Not a problem.’
She grinned again.
‘Did the old witch get you started?’
‘She … ehm, Mrs Bigelow was very helpful.’
‘Really? Maybe she’s had a brain transplant. Cup of tea?’
‘Yes, please.’
I followed her through to the little kitchen. Chali was about nineteen years old, and today was wearing tight black leather trousers and a ripped top. Her silky black hair came down to her bum – something I had always longed for as a child – and she had matching gold hoops in her ears, nose and lip. She was gorgeous.
‘OK, always use Biggie’s tea,’ she instructed, picking up the box of Earl Grey. ‘And if she asks you, deny it. You have to get your fun where you can around here.’
‘How long have you been working here?’
Chali snorted and raised her eyes.
‘One hundred and forty-seven years. Milk and sugar?’
‘Yes, please.’
We took our teas back into the main shop and sat down.
‘God, I had a killer night last night. Do you go clubbing?’
There is nothing I despise more than being made to dance in public in front of sulky teenagers in very little clothing whilst paying four pounds for a bottle of water.
‘Yeah, you know … occasionally.’
‘Right, where do you go?’
I searched my brains desperately, but all I could remember was the one down from my school where I grew up.
‘Erm … Cinderella’s Rockefellers?’
Seeing her disbelieving face, I hastily added, ‘It’s ironic.’
‘Oh, cool. That sounds like a right laugh.’
‘It is.’
‘God, I got in at four this morning, E-ing off my head at Fabroche.’
I smiled politely.
‘That’s why this job isn’t so bad in the long run – they don’t care what you do, s’long as you turn up occasionally. Biggie gives you a bunch of shit, but you don’t need to pay attention.’
She let out an elaborate yawn and went to open the door to the delivery men.
‘Yo. Just dump them anywhere, as usual, boys.’
The two men brought in several boxes of flowers in different shapes and sizes and dumped them haphazardly on the floor. Chali ignored them, signed the chit without reading it and sighed theatrically at the pile. So far we hadn’t had a single customer and the phone hadn’t rung once.
I went over to start opening up the flowers. Sure enough, the African daisies were rancid.
‘Who left the job before I came?’ I asked, unwrapping the plastic carefully.
‘Oh, no one,’ she sighed. ‘Really, you’re here to keep an eye on me, because I was turning up later and later, and the shop wasn’t opening at all.’
‘Why don’t they just sack you?’ I said, before it had passed across my brain censor control. I cursed inwardly.
‘They can’t – Mr Haffillton’s my uncle and thinks the sun shines out of my arse. And he only really runs it as a hobby – he’s minted, and he likes flowers. You can’t imagine how much that annoys Biggie.’
I started to feel a bit sorry for Biggie.
‘So, do you feel up to babysitting duties?’ She lit a cigarette.
I thought about it. Babysitting was definitely one up on where I’d just come from.
‘Sure!’
‘Excellent. Listen, do you know any singers?’
I thought about Josh singing in the bath and dismissed the image immediately.
‘Not really.’
‘Shame.’ She tipped some cigarette ash into one of the flower buckets. ‘That’s what I really am, see? I’m just getting a band together.’
‘What kind of band?’
‘Kind of bhangra gangsta, do you know what I mean?’
I could see immediately why she thought I might know lots of people in those kinds of bands and nodded my head sagely. Finally the phone rang.
‘Yeah?…Stodger. Yeah … No, I have left, yeah … No, I just came by to pick up some stuff, innit? I’m going to Bhutan … Yeah, it’s in Peru, innit? … Maybe a year, maybe two … No, I don’t think you can motorbike all the way there. There’s an ocean or summink … No, I’ll write to you. I will … Yeah. OK. Bye.’
She slammed the phone down, and reverted back to her normal voice.
‘Where did you meet him?’ I asked, genuinely curious.
‘Oh, he said he was putting a band together,’ she said dismissively. ‘So I slept with him and everything, and next thing he’s round here like effin’ Hugh Grant every day of the week.’
I wasn’t surprised. His gratitude must have been overwhelming.
The day passed in an easy round of selling the occasional bouquet, rearranging the occasional arrangement, cups of tea, and one and a half hour lunch breaks. I could tell I was going to like it here. Mrs Bigelow returned about four thirty.
‘Hello, Biggie,’ I said, quite innocently. She stared at me as if I’d just bitten her.
‘It’s Mrs Bigelow, as I thought you knew.’
‘Erm, yes, sorry, Mrs Bigelow.’
‘Did you have a busy day? You!’ – indicating Chali – ‘Cash up, please, madam, if it isn’t too much trouble.’
‘’Ave you forgotten how to count again, Biggie? You ought to get out more.’
Biggie hissed at her and pretended to talk to me whilst watching Chali like a hawk. This didn’t surprise me; Chali had already informed me that she used the float to supplement her meagre income, so I merely stared straight ahead in a neutral fashion until I was dismissed with a sniff from Biggie, suggesting that if I really, really behaved myself, one day I might get a set of keys.
It was bliss coming home when it was still light. I banged in the hall joyously shouting, ‘Hi, honeys! I’m home!’ and went straight through to the kitchen to start chopping onions for Josh.
I nearly threw up when I saw Kate was still there.
‘What??? Are you OK? Did you take the day off work?’
‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘I left early.’
‘What happened – did the junior doctors form an action corps and get you released?’
‘No … I just felt like an early night.’
Josh popped his head round the door. ‘Holly, is that you? Can you take over suicide watch for me?’
‘OK.’ I nodded.
‘Oh, and if you’re chopping those onions, could you do them a bit finer this time?’
‘OK, MR PRISSY.’
I sat down carefully. ‘Ehm, Kate, you know, sometimes, bad things happen to good people.’
‘Bugger off.’
‘Okey-dokey. Read my lips. He – is – not – going – to – phone – you. OK? You had a lovely night, he was clearly a dickhead and you will never hear from him again. But look on the bright side: at least you didn’t take your knickers off, and that’s what I’d have done, so reclaim your self-respect, girl. Comprendez? Capisce?’
Kate looked at me with pained eyes. ‘Holly?’ she said weakly.
‘Yes?’ Tough love. It always works.
‘Would you mind watching the phone while I go to the toilet?’
‘Argh. If he phones whilst you go to the toilet I am going to tell him you hate him and put the phone down on him, as it will save you the bother of doing it in two years time if you actually had a relationship with this man.’
‘You don’t know him!’
‘Neither do you! You think he’s Kevin Costner!’
She shrugged. I shrugged back at her and picked up the bag of onions, as she started manhandling her mobile and her pager into her dressing gown pockets and sidled backwards out of the room with the phone cord.
I hollered for Josh.
‘Do something with her.’
‘Sorry, darling – you know how much she listens to me. Why don’t we all have a nice dinner and forget about it?’
‘Huh.’
Kate marched back into the room.
‘OK, that’s enough,’ she announced stridently, picking up the various bits of electric equipment.
‘Oh no!’ I whispered to Josh. ‘She’s reached breaking point! This is where she starts really beating up on herself for standing around waiting for a man to phone and then decides to get drunk, then phones up all her ex-boyfriends at four o’clock in the morning and berates them for treating her so badly, then falls asleep in a pool of her own vomit and wakes up overcome by self-disgust and remorse.’
‘I give up,’ said Kate. ‘This is ridiculous. I am an adult, after all.’
Josh sniggered at me.
‘Glass of wine, Holl?’
‘And my old address book, please,’ I replied glumly.