Page 19 of A Touch of Magic at the Comfort Food Café
‘Right. Well, I love a good story. There’s a pub not too far from here. Can I persuade you to join me for a drink?’
‘Ah, no, I don’t think so, thanks. I have work to do, and it’s late, and?—’
‘And you can’t think of any more excuses?’
He smiles at me, and I worry that my knees will actually buckle. That smile should come with a health warning, and I suspect he’s totally aware of how lethal it is.
‘Well, Aidan, I don’t actually have to think of an excuse, do I? I can simply say no.’
He looks mock-upset and holds his palm to his heart, staggering around as though I’ve shot him. It’s silly, and it makes me grin.
‘Please?’ he says, once he’s stopped playing around. ‘Truthfully, I haven’t spoken to another human being in two days. You’d be doing me a favour.’
Ha, I think, I know that feeling. Maybe he’s a writer too, and spends his whole life cooped up in front of a screen. Apart from the beachfront runs. And the sunsets. And the trips into the village to buy pounds and pounds of rare and bloody steak.
‘Well, when you put it like that, maybe,’ I reply. ‘As long as you answer one question.’
‘Anything. I’m an open book.’
‘Are you a werewolf, a vampire, or any other kind of supernatural creature? Because the ladies in the café have their doubts that you’re entirely human…’
He laughs again, and it is obviously something that comes easily to him. I like that. I like people who don’t overthink, who just embrace the moment. They have no clue how lucky they are.
‘Well, now, that would be telling. I kinda like the idea that I’m a man of mystery. It makes me a lot more interesting than I actually am… Now, can I interest you in the pub, m’lady?’
Chapter Eight
We end up throwing my bike into the back of his jeep, which is huge, black, and smells of animals. I immediately like it, and think it possibly smells even better than the jacket I am still wearing. As he hoists it effortlessly into the big boot, poor Loo-ise rolls out of my basket.
He pauses and stares at it in confusion. Possibly horror.
‘What the hell is that?’ he asks, picking her up and peeking beneath her crocheted skirt to find the toilet roll she came with. ‘Some kind of English voodoo doll?’
‘Yes,’ I reply, raising my eyebrows. ‘Whenever I want to make someone in a purple ball dress and matching bonnet suffer horrendous pain, I stick a pin into this. I don’t have much call to use it, there being a distinct shortage of women who dress like this in the twenty-first century.’
‘Ha. Well, that’s a pity– I’d like to bring back hoops and bustles.’
‘I’m not sure they’d suit you.’
‘That, m’lady, is where you’re wrong,’ he says, grinning at me as he closes the boot. ‘I’d look hot as Hades.’
‘What’s with the m’lady thing?’ I ask as I fasten my seatbelt. He flicks the heating on, and I see that the car is actually quite luxurious, despite the smell. ‘I know I’m old enough to be your mother, but really, it makes me feel ancient!’
He glances across at me, and for once looks quite serious. ‘I’m thirty-three. There’s no way you’re old enough to be my mother.’
Thirty-three. Good lord, he’s a baby really. Not that it matters.
‘Well, I’m forty-nine, so technically I could be. If I was an early starter.’
Which, of course, I very much was not. I was so shy as a teenager that there was no chance of me even going on a date, never mind actually having sex. It took me until I was twenty-one to down a bottle of tequila and seduce one of Sally’s medical student pals. Well, I suppose it was less of a seduction, more of a drunken encounter that neither of us could clearly remember in the morning. I just wanted to get it over with so I wouldn’t end up as the world’s oldest virgin– or at the very least Essex’s oldest virgin.
‘Well, you know what they say,’ he replies, easing the car onto the road, ‘age is just a number. And believe me, when I look at you, I very much do not see a mother figure. M’lady is… Well, look, I don’t know what it is. Other than it’s classy, like you, and it was the name of Rebecca De Mornay’s character inThe Three Musketeers, and I watched it as a kid and really liked her…’
‘Oh lord. It’s worse than I thought then. We’re separated by different versions ofThe Three Musketeers. Mine will always be the seventies one with Oliver Reed in it. This is a huge issue. What will we find to talk about?’
He navigates the car down the now completely dark country lanes, and I’m glad I’m in this beast of a jeep instead of cycling. I’d have made it home, I’m sure, but it would have been hairy.
‘I don’t know. Maybe we could watch the one Eva Green made a few years ago and see if we can find common ground?’
