Page 21 of Waiting for a Bright New Future

“It’s just that you’re looking rather dapper.”

Dapper. She made him sound like an old man. He’d showered and changed into what he’d thought was a semi-smart outfit of beige chinos and an open-necked blue shirt. Clothes that he rarely had occasion to wear. He’d checked his brown slip-on loafers were clean and placed by them by the door. Dapper. That wasn’t the image he wanted to project. “What do you mean?”

She turned from the mirror, pursing her lips together before she spoke. “You’ve got a clean bib and tucker. Seems over the top for a bowl of soup alone in the kitchen.”

“Dapper — do you mean old fashioned?” He tried to keep his voice light.

“Compared to a twenty-year-old on a hot date — yes, old fashioned. Compared to other fifty-something males nervously trying to impress — you’re absolutely up to the minute fashion-wise.”

Her words swiped a rug from beneath him and he landed flat on his back.

“Enjoy! And say hello to Jayne for me.” Florence blew a kiss over her shoulder and was gone.

For a weird moment Stuart wondered if she’d bugged the telephone. Then he realised that parting shot was a wild guess, designed to wind him up. He slipped on his shoes and pulled together the jigsaw of his confidence, pushing ‘dapper’ from his head.

Jayne opened the door as soon as he knocked. She had her jacket on and handbag over her shoulder. “Bye, Mum!”

“Aren’t you going to invite Stuart in so I can have a look at him?” Lillian’s voice competed with the theme tune of a soap opera.

“You know what he looks like and we’ll be late.” She pulled the door shut behind her and smiled at him. “I am so looking forward to this.”

It was the same smile that had peppered the excitement of his sixth-form years and stuck in his memory for nearly forty years. He felt a shiver of anticipation inside and smiled back at her. “Me too.”

He wondered if he should hold her hand. Jayne hadn’t made it clear whether this was an actual ‘date’ date or a ‘just good friends’ date. They walked side by side without touching.

“I saw little Miss Superstar going out. How do you two get on?”

“Fine. She can be a bit . . .” He stopped mid-sentence, surprised to find himself not wanting to be disloyal to his lodger.

“In your face?”

“Yes. But she means well.”

“Not your type though?”

He glanced sideways at Jayne. “No.”

Jayne nodded as though he’d given the right answer and switched the subject to a work colleague whose cat had a mystery illness and was costing a fortune in vet’s bills.

“Pets are like children,” Stuart said. “You can’t put them to sleep just because they cost too much.”

“I don’t see the attraction in pets. Especially cats. Cats don’t show loyalty — they’re free spirits and always on the take.”

Stuart was saved from shifting his views towards Jayne’s by their arrival at the restaurant. When they’d ordered, he moved the conversation to the subject Jayne wanted to discuss.

“How’s Lillian?”

Jayne took a breath and touched the gold pendant on her collarbone. “Not good. She wakes at all times of the night and goes outside. Sometimes I hear her and sometimes I don’t. When I do, I bring her back inside and settle her down again but then I can’t get back to sleep. There’s all these worries going round in my head.”

Stuart remembered the orange pools of light on the flagstones outside the kitchen window. But it didn’t tally with the capable woman who’d been a rock the day his father died, or the fun ‘aunty’ who’d always remembered his childhood birthdays with a brightly wrapped non-educational gift.

“When Mum was looking after Gran, she didn’t have to combine it with a full-time job as well. Some days I’m so tired I can only operate on autopilot. You must have noticed the change in Mum as well? She really worries me.”

“Apart from that business with the ring and sometimes forgetting her shoes, she seems the same as usual to me,” he said. “Insomnia’s common.”

“I took her to the doctors.” Jayne paused as the waiter brought their starters and poured wine. “She wasn’t happy about going but I said it’s better we know what we’re up against.”

Stuart popped a mushroom into his mouth and immediately regretted choosing a dish with garlic in the name. If Jayne did see this evening as a date with a proper kiss at the end, the taste in his mouth had just ruled it out. If he qualified for a ‘next time’ he’d go for prawn cocktail.

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