Page 63 of The Trouble With Love

‘No, he was a perfect gentleman.’ Isobel poured tea and Megan put a rather depleted looking plate of biscuits on the table. ‘Quite sweet, really. Very cute too, Holly. You certainly have a good taste in men.’

‘So, any news from you? Any men hell bent on making you the centre of their world?’

She did comedy-disappointment-face. ‘Sadly, no. But it’s all right, like I said. I’m coming to think that I’m better off without one. Mum and Dad are talking about making the house over to me and going off to live in Australia when Dad retires next year, and between work and redecorating, I don’t think there’ll be time for a man.’

‘They’re not like horses, you know. They can manage to do most things for themselves, men.’

‘Oh, you know what I mean. I want to be able to remodel the house without having anyone distracting me. I’m taking an evening class,’ she added proudly.

‘In not being distracted? Gosh. That’s a bit specialised isn’t it?’ Megan dunked a biscuit in the hot tea and dribbled consequent chocolate down her chin.

‘In interior design. It’s an old cottage we’ve got, sixteenth century, and I want to do it up as close to the original plans as possible. If it works I’m thinking of starting up my own business, sort of fifteen-hundreds’ bed and breakfast.’ Now I came to look at her, Isobel was looking better too. Her acne seemed to be clearing up finally and her hair had extra shine. It might not have been her wish coming true but she clearly had a new lease of life.

‘Pallet and pottage?’

‘So, Holly. I take it that you didn’t collect my candles and go straight to the police?’ Vivienne sat opposite Eve, a poised cup and saucer on her lap and a cat staring down from her shoulder.

‘Ah. Yes. Been meaning to talk to you all about that . . .’

On the way home in the car Megan finally lost her boggle-eyed expression. ‘He held you at gunpoint? And locked you in a shed,’ she said wonderingly. ‘And Kai rescued you?’

‘Only technically. I was well on the way to rescuing myself, but the bomb went out. Good grief, that’s a weird sentence.’

‘God, Holl.’

We were silent again for a bit, watching the hypnotic windscreen wipers fighting the downpour. It had begun to rain with a vengeance and going anywhere at the moment was a bit like sailing the Atlantic. ‘It was frightening,’ I admitted at last. ‘I got taken in by the whole “looking sexy” thing, and by the time I realised that he was as mad as the Planet of Spoons, it was too late.’

‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ Megan nodded wisely. ‘And I was thinking about what you said before. About Rufus. He does treat me like a goddess, and it’s my own stupid fault for not being more specific with my wish that I’ve got a big hairy dog instead of . . . well.’

‘A big hairy man?’

‘Yes, that. But then, I have met more men since I’ve been walking Rufus than I ever did at work. It’s not noted for its straight male demographic, British Home Stores but it’s amazing how many people will come and talk to you when you’re out with a dog.’

‘There you go then. You’ve got your wish, but just obliquely.’

‘Obliquely? Those are pillars, aren’t they?’

‘Obelisks, Meg. But maybe that’s the price we’re paying for doing the spell with all those weird photographs and bits cut out of books and things. I mean, my excitement is very odd, and then there’s Nicky’s wish . . .’ I had to explain the whole ‘girlfriend with big tits’ thing then and Megan didn’t stop sniggering all the way back to her flat.

‘It does serve him right a bit,’ she said. ‘But it makes you wonder. If it’s all gone, um, oblique, then what about Vivienne? And Eve? And why hasn’t anything happened to Isobel?’

I shook my head. Things were moving in such mysterious ways that they were positively heading the Ministry of Silly Walks, but was it just my imagination? Would everything have happened this way anyway? Were we all guilty of falling for the, very human, desire to be able to put the universe into order? Or . . . I felt the fairy-fingered tickle of wonder rise up my spine . . . was there really more to this ‘magic’ than I realised?

‘I’ve got an address.’

‘That’s nice. So much better than the old no-fixed-abode thing which, I have to say, wasn’t really working out for you.’

‘Ha.’ Kai swept a load of crumbs off the table and then gazed around in search of something. ‘Have you seen the vacuum cleaner? Cerys must have left it — I’d have noticed if she’d tried to smuggle that back to Peterborough, surely?’

‘With the amount of stuff she had? I doubt it.’

‘What did she do, stuff it in a giant condom and make Nicholas carry it up his backside?’ Kai opened a cupboard and peered inside. ‘And there’s pickled beetroot in here. That has to be Cerys, I hate the stuff. God, I miss her.’

Not as much as I miss Nicholas. My hand still wandered to the telephone receiver every morning, my heart thumped whenever I saw a text from him ping onto my phone. It felt like a death in the family. Knew I had to let him go, to let him make a life for himself, ashamed of how it felt . . . Ashamed of the blank hours, hours I had used to spend running up to his flat to make sure he’d eaten, washed his clothes, taken his meds; it was only now that I was realising how many of those hours there had been.

‘What’s this address then?’ I tried to distract him, well, both of us. We were still skirting around our relationship like a couple of deserters from a battlefield trying to avoid capture.

‘From the PI in Leeds. Strange, really.’ He sat down on the newly uncrumbed table, putting his feet up on one of the stools and picking at a thread on the knee of his jeans. ‘She only lives a handful of miles from here. Think, I could have walked past her in the street without knowing.’

---