Page 2 of Her Fixer Upper

She looped her arm through mine and marched me around the corner to The Taps, the perfect venue for our little gang of teachers because it was too close to school for the sixth formers to dare venture in, and too new for the more traditional members of staff to bother with.

She waved cheerily at the barman. ‘G&Ts all round, please, Rog. And make them doubles. We deserve it after the week we’ve had. My treat,’ she insisted as I started to protest.

The quiz turned out to be a lot harder than I’d expected and it definitely brought out my competitive side. Our team hunched together in the corner, fierce whispers going back and forth as the answer paper filled up and the pile of empty glasses grew larger.

While we were in the middle of a passionate debate over whether it was the first or second Harry Potter book where Harry and Ron crashed a car into a Whomping Willow, Leila seized my arm and pointed at the next table.

‘The PR posh boys are at it again. Look at that guy on the bar stool Googling away on his mobile phone. Could he be any more obvious? Pathetic.’

‘I’ll go and have a word,’ I said, the combination of a double gin and tonic with a day of dealing with naughty schoolkids giving me an unaccustomed sense of self-confidence. I was in no mood to mess around.

‘Freya, don’t…’ hissed Leila as I strode across.

I stood in front of the man and cleared my throat. ‘Hand it over,’ I said, fully in teacher mode. In fact, I only just managed to stop myself from telling him he should do his top button up and comb his hair so he didn’t look like he’d just got out of bed.

He was so startled he started to do as instructed, before he caught himself.

‘I beg your pardon? Are you accusing me of cheating in the quiz? Because I certainly was not. I was checking my emails and…oh my goodness, Hutch, is it you?’

Ηe rose from his seat, his face breaking into a huge grin. The smile was unmistakable, even though the last time I’d seen it its owner had been a gangly pre-teen, certainly not the stubbly, broad-shouldered man who stood before me now. But there was still that slight awkwardness in his tall frame, and his brown eyes were as warm and sparkling as they used to be – eyes full of mischief, our teachers always used to say, generally followed by an indulgent smile. Always mischief, never malice.

‘Charlie Humphries, I don’t believe it!’ There was a catch in my voice when I greeted him. It had been far too long since we’d spoken, and it was strange to hear my childhood nickname spoken in a resonant bass when the last time I’d heard him call me it his voice had been a ringing treble. I fought the urge to reach out and grasp his hand to check that he was real, and not a figment of my imagination. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you got a job in London after you finished travelling.’

I felt a pang of nostalgia for the rose-tinted past when the pair of us had been so inseparable that I was frequently mistaken for his actual twin sister. When I’d had to move away because my mum got a new job, it had felt like the end of the world, but despite our grand vows to remain best friends no matter what, the pressures of distance and new friendship groups had meant we’d drifted apart, until as adults we’d become mere acquaintances who only kept in touch by following each other on social media. Our interactions on there were so rare that the algorithms didn’t even bother showing me updates about him anymore.

‘London? No thanks,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s my sister’s domain. I love visiting her there, but I’m always happy to jump back on the train to Yorkshire. Having done more than my fair share of country hopping, I can confidently say there’s no place like God’s own county. What are you up to nowadays? How have things been?’

I laughed. ‘I think I’d probably be better off answering the first question rather than the second. If you’re wanting the full lowdown on how things have been since we were kids, we might be here all night. I’m teaching history, and working at the school down the road. My folks moved back too when they took early retirement. How about you? Are you working in PR now?’

Charlie looked confused.

I gestured at the blokes who were braying with laughter at the table near him, slapping each other on the back with pleasure at the dodgy addition one of them had scrawled on the photo of some poor woman in the picture round.

Charlie pulled a face. ‘You think I’m with those guys? Thankfully not. I didn’t realise when I came in here to drown my sorrows that it was quiz night and by the time I did, I’d already got a drink, and this was the only place left to sit. No, I run my own agency, doing all the social media for various local businesses. I suppose it’s PR of a sort, but I like to think it’s a different art, more about engaging with customers on their level, and helping them to see the real people behind the brands. I can be creative and have some fun with it.’

‘Wow, good for you. How amazing to run your own business and be your own boss.’

‘You’d think,’ he said, looking suddenly downcast. I thought of his throwaway comment that he’d come in here to drown his sorrows and wondered if I should ask him more. But before I could say anything, Leila came across waving the answer sheet towards us.

‘Hello hello, who’s this then? And why is he distracting you from the serious task of winning our dinner?’

Charlie held his hand out. ‘I’m Charlie, and I used to be Freya’s partner in crime. We were next to each other in the register at primary school thanks to our surnames, and we became known as Hutch and Humph…’

‘…The Terrible Twosome,’ I finished off for him with a laugh.

Leila raised an eyebrow. ‘Freya as part of a “Terrible Twosome”? Now that I would love to hear more about. You must come and join us, Humph, and tell us all Freya’s dark secrets so we can use them to blackmail her when she eventually becomes headteacher.’

I pulled a face at my friend’s generous ambition for me. Leila swiped her hand in the air as if brushing away my doubts. ‘She’s going to get there one day, sooner than she believes,’ she told Charlie. ‘Right, you look like the kind of guy who could contribute some useful knowledge to a quiz team. Ringers are always welcome. Better than Googling like the PR poshos, anyway.’

‘I don’t want to intrude,’ said Charlie.

‘You wouldn’t be intruding,’ I hurried to reassure him, not wanting him to disappear off so soon after we had been reunited. ‘It would be nice to catch up. And trust me, once Leila’s got an idea into her head, there’s no saying no to her.’

‘Hello, Pot, this is the Kettle calling you black,’ retorted Leila. ‘Come on, Charlie, I think your speciality might be the music round, and that’s up next.’

We settled back around our table and as Leila had predicted, Charlie turned out to have an excellent ear for song artists and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the years in which certain singles were hits. But although he seemed to be enjoying himself, I couldn’t help worrying about his reason for coming to the pub in the first place. It might be several years since we’d last spent time together, but I still cared for my old friend and wanted him to be happy.

When the last round had been marked and the results announced – despite Leila’s protestations that they’d been cheating, we missed out on first place to the PR boys – I finally had the opportunity to ask Charlie what was up.

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