Page 4 of The Price of Love
There was a moment of silence. Then I blew my nose and Bree rubbed her eyes with her sleeve like a child would.
‘But Booter and Snag?’ she said. ‘You have to admit, Wills, they are horrible, even for dogs.’
I sensed the movement as three pairs of eyeballs turned towards me. I loved my sister, absolutely (although I’d never quite forgiven her for the Barbie incident when I was six), despite her somewhat pragmatic nature, but her cleanliness and tidiness fetish drove all of us to want to run round her immaculate house wearing muddy Wellingtons.
‘Perhaps,’ I said carefully, ‘it was because you’re the only one of us with the time and space for two spaniels.’ Plus looking after something other than yourself and the obnoxiously self-satisfied Paddy will be good practice, I prevented myself from adding. A well-placed kick under the table made sure that Ash didn’t make the point either. Secretly I knew Ganda had thought Bree was far too obsessive about her house and he would have delighted in the chaos the dogs would bring. He was probably up there now, chuckling down on our discomfiture.
Ash poked me with the wine bottle. ‘Okay, yeah, I can go with all that, and let’s face it, who else would he have left hisbooks to but Ocean — but twelve pairs of waders? What did he expect me to do, take my friends fly-fishing?’
Since all Ash’s friends thought that fresh air was a dangerous perversion, this was unlikely to be the case. I shrugged.
‘Well, I’ve got to be going. Paddy will be home at half past six and I have no idea what I’m doing for dinner.’ Bree aimed a quick kiss at my cheek. ‘Wills, why don’t you come down next week for Sunday lunch? Paddy’s got some kind of work do on the Saturday, but he’ll be back by Sunday morning.’
Oh goody, I thought, torn between my dislike of Sundays, when I always felt like the only single woman in York, and my hatred of Paddy. ‘Sounds nice, thanks.’
‘And I’d better . . .’ Ocean stood up, too. ‘Bye.’ In contrast to Bree’s fussy farewell my brother simply melted into the darkness. Flint had taken all the used cups through to the kitchen, which left me with Ash.
‘One less Sunday on your own,’ he remarked, handing me the bottle he’d been drinking from and picking up his helmet. Ash always had the knack of sensing my feelings. ‘You really must be down, Will, if you’d rather spend it with Mrs Housewife and the Champion Prick.’
‘They’re not so bad,’ I said. ‘And it does get a bit lonely round here when everyone I know is coupled-up. Not you and Ocean, obviously, but Katie’s got Dan and the boys, and Jazz’s always at band rehearsals or flapping around in the shallow end of the local dating pool.’
‘I could introduce you to some of my friends.’ Ash crammed his bleach blond crop into his helmet and raised the visor.
‘No, thanks.’ I walked with him to the front garden where he wheeled the huge bike backwards out of the gateway, manoeuvring it carefully onto the road and throwing his leg casually over the saddle. ‘I’m not quite ready to be a fag hag just yet.’
‘They’re not all gay.’
‘Name one who’s not.’
He snapped down his visor, ignited the engine and muttered something over the roar. I flicked him the finger and slapped his red-leathered shoulder and he rode off, waving a hand.
‘Willow,’ Flint called from the doorway. ‘Your phone is ringing.’
I took my phone from him, presuming that Katie had successfully fought her twins into bed. ‘Hello.’ Then, noticing that Ash had decelerated to take the corner, I let out a wolf-whistle of the magnitude only truly mastered by someone with older brothers. It clearly penetrated his padded concentration, because he raised two fingers and cornered tightly, knee almost to the pavement.
The phone was silent in my ear for a second. After a moment a male voice said carefully, ‘Is that Willow?’
Oh shit. ‘Um. Yes, hello, Luke. Um. I was just . . .’
‘Not interrupting anything, am I? I mean, is this a good time to call?’
I rushed back inside the house and upstairs. ‘No. Yes, I mean. It’s fine.’ He had the loveliest voice, too, did I mention that? Softly spoken and with a gentle hint of an accent. (His father was Welsh and he’d grown up on Anglesey. Oh, I knew all there was to know about Luke Fry. I could have had him as aMastermindsubject.)
‘I thought you were talking to someone.’
‘Only my brother.’ Oh, be still my heaving stomach. ‘Actually, could you hold on for one second?’ I flung the receiver down on my bed and rushed to the bathroom, teeth clenched, but in the event only managed a couple of retches over the sink before the feeling was gone — but this was still unusual, telephone conversations never usually affected me. ‘Hello, sorry about that.’
‘Look, Willow, I was wondering, if you’re not busy or anything, we might have that get-together I was talking about? Maybe tomorrow? If it’s not too short notice for you? I thought, perhaps, towards evening?’
Diffident. That in itself was cute. He obviously wasn’t one of these drop everything when I call types, just nicely deferential, but I’d played this game before and knew the moves. Never agree immediately, it makes you sound desperate. Pretend your life is so crammed with wonderful experiences that he’ll have to join a queue for your attention. When I say ‘played the game’, really I’d just read a lot, none of the guys I’d found myself dating had been ‘game players’, except one, who’d had a thing for chess.
‘Well, I am a bit busy.’
But he spoke again, almost over the top of me. ‘Only I heard you telling that guy in the bar that you weren’t doing anything, so I thought . . . sorry? Did you say something?’
‘Me? No, just clearing my throat.’
We agreed to meet at the bar by the City Screen at seven, and he rang off, leaving me breathless and dizzy with the speed of it all. Luke Fry. Oh . . . my . . . God.
