Page 19 of Hit For Six
‘Throw me this ball.’ Monty interrupted, shocking everyone in the room and jumping on the opportunity to hijack the meeting for once and for all.
He produced a cricket ball from the pocket of his trousers, hidden beneath the dress. Monty aimed it at his father, who definitely hadn’t lost his reflexes, catching it before it hit several expensive objets d’art off his desk.
‘I’ve warned you, Montgomery. And for heaven’s sake, take that blasted apparel off! You look like David bloody Beckham.’
Monty wasn’t one for vast coverings of tattoos but he’d take the compliment. Becks had been an awesome sportsman and he could rock any fashion item under the sun.
‘Who wants to be a volunteer?’ He ignored his father, who couldn’t resist rubbing the ball against his thigh as if he was a paceman at Lords playing the traditional version of the game. He hated it when Frederick called him Montgomery. Especially in the workplace. The air became thick with silence and everybody looked awkward, even if some of the people around the table reported directly to Monty and not his father. Ultimately, they knew who paid their mortgages. ‘Fine, I’ll pick someone at random: Athena, would you come here, please, and stand to my left?’
Athena rose reluctantly and stood at Monty’s side. She couldn’t exactly refuse when she was one of his departmental managers.
‘Right then, Frederick.’ Conversely, Monty always called his father by his full name in the workplace. ‘I want you to tap back into your childhood sporting days and lob the ball as if you’ve just hit a six. Don’t worry about the windows. As you’ve probably guessed, we’re going to recreate Friday’s scene. Athena is besotted with me.’ He broke off at this point and looked at hisstartled colleague in earnest. ‘For fictional purposes only.’ She visibly relaxed and he trained his eyes on the faces around the meeting table. ‘I’ve given her the cold shoulder and now she’s going to get her revenge while I intercept the ball. But before any of that happens, I’m going to do a quick circuit of the room so you can individually inspect the ties on my dress, which are currently fastened securely in a trio of small bows.’
Frederick looked far from amused but Monty knew that he’d play ball. Literally. If only so they could move on and he could lecture him in private later. And what a lecture it would be. Monty couldn’t recall having ever challenged his father to such an extent and in front of so many people. But Lola was worth it. For the mere sixty or so hours that he’d known her, she deserved this. Even if he never saw her again.
Monty walked around the table’s edge, only moving on to the next person once every head had nodded its assent at the fastenings of his dress. True, it would have been easier to do this with the actual Beau-re-mi garment but he was a muscular guy and he had no idea if the Bath branch would still have it in stock. There was no time to lose hunting through every room in HQ to see if somebody had a sample that would stretch across his frame.
Feeling emboldened by the feedback, he returned to a confused Athena, whose eyes were scanning the faces of her colleagues in the hope they might offer to exchange places.
‘As I position myself to catch the ball, I want you to gently tug at me as if you’re opening somebody else’s Christmas present,’ said Monty, matter-of-factly, gesturing to the bows on his left.
‘This is utter tosh!’ cried Frederick.
‘But imagine a camera’s pointing at you,’ Monty continued, determined to ignore the way his words must be grating on his father. ‘Speed and discretion are of the essence.’
‘Okaaaay,’ Athena replied.
‘Frederick, would you do the honours, please?’ Monty instructed, deadly serious.
Monty’s father picked his jaw off the floor and somehow composed himself briefly enough to throw the ball at his son, red-faced, hard and admirably precisely. Everything happened like clockwork after that. Athena could have been a magician. As Monty’s hands secured their grip on the ball, reenacting the final journey of Friday’s six, he felt a light pull at his side as she grabbed all three bows in her hand and his dress slipped from the opposite shoulder, falling to the floor to create a fabric puddle at his feet.
‘And this comes courtesy of a voile reenactment! So, you see, the very unique design of the asymmetrical Beau-re-mi dress actually lends itself to opportunists, regardless of the fabric. No.’ Monty shook his head in sync with his pointer finger. ‘That’s too tame a word.’ He paused to reflect on how better to phrase things. ‘What I’m trying to say is… Athena has perfectly demonstrated that the leech in the Panama hat standing next to the female victim at the cricket stadium is, in fact, the one behind all of this. Those flimsy ties were pulled by His Truly, in turn coaxing the rest of the garment to slip away from the woman’s body, framing her as an exhibitionist.’
Monty let out a deep breath in readiness for his parting shot.
‘And now we need to put out anurgentstatement of apology to the press.’
He wanted to add that Lola should be gifted a huge bouquet of flowers, but all of this would backfire if his father sensed that he somehow knew her. So Monty stormed out of the room, not waiting to take in the expressions on his colleagues’ faces. But when he’d got halfway down the corridor to the hotdesk banks, he realised he’d forgotten something and popped his head back around the door.
P.S. It’s a woman’s prerogativenotto wear a bra.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lola
Lola returned tothe office, eking out her morning walk to no avail. She should have been skipping to work knowing that Julian was away, but she felt as if somebody had put her in one of those centrifugal force machines you got in a science lab. Nothing looked the same anymore from any vantage point. And even when she managed to snatch a second of normality, everything turned one-eighty degrees on her.
She would just have to find a way to breeze in as usual and pretend nothing soul-destroying or weird had happened on their team building Friday. And that she hadn’t just made another giant mistake by desperately taking on a second job where, once again, she’d been reduced to a laughing stock. Oh, and that she hadn’t turned down the man of her dreams last night after a kiss which may not have quite lasted the two and a half minutes of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman’s legendary smooch, but whose intensity could have rivaled it.
Yes, move along, people. Nothing to see here.
Which musical theatre protagonists could she attempt to channel this time? It was a toss up between the no-nonsense Mary Poppins and go-getter Elle Woods from Legally Blonde.
‘Cup of tea, Lola?’
Stingy Suzy jumped on her the moment she arrived. Lola had to do a triple take. Suzy had never played waitress in the office! Something felt seriously afoot.
‘Th-that would be nice, erm… thank you?’
