Page 77 of The Price of Love
‘I don’t know. Is Cliff’s some sort of bar?’ I took the wine bottle from him and somehow everyone else slipped away and we were encased in our own little bubble of quiet. ‘It would beat down on one knee by a heap of dogshit anyway.’
‘Ah, anything would be better than being proposed to by a heap of dogshit.’ We’d not long been out of bed and he looked it, all tousled and unshaven.
‘God, you’re sexy.’
‘Look who’s talking.’ As he pulled me against his hard body (oh yes, he was sexually insatiable, I’m not sure who’s up for casting in the role but they’d better be able to portray the appetites of Casanova) I looked up over his shoulder and found myself fighting free of his embrace.
‘Shit.’
‘What?’ Hurt, Cal took a step back, let his hands fall to his sides. ‘What did I do?’
‘Not you, over there. It’s Luke! What the bloody buggery ishedoing here? He’s supposed to be in Wales.’
‘It’s all right, he hasn’t seen you. Us. He’s far too busy with what he’s doing.’
From behind the cover of Cal, I peered out to where Luke was standing. He’d obviously been walking past and got caught up in the crowd scenes surrounding Jazz’s proposal. ‘He wouldn’t be here on purpose, would he? No, the gig wasn’t advertised. Jazz set it all up by himself. Well, I know now why, but he’ssupposedto be inWales.’
No, Luke was not in Wales. Instead, he was with a dark-haired woman.Nadine. Maybe he had seen me, and was working on his cover story for whenInoticedhim. I couldn’t take the risk. I took another few steps away from Cal.
‘Christ, I’ll be glad when next weekend is over.’
It was no good. I couldn’t risk that Luke had already seen me. Thank God Cal and I hadn’t been doing anything more than talking.
‘Luke. Hello, I thought you were off to Wales this weekend.’ It was the devil that made me walk over there, face stretched in a welcoming smile. I could have just made a call-me gesture across the intervening space. But a little demonic part of me wanted to know how fast Luke reallycouldtalk his way out of a situation.
‘Willow, how lovely to see you. We were on our way somewhere and we saw the crowd and . . . decided to come over.’
‘Yes, we’ve just finished. Hello, Nadine, fancy seeing you here, too.’
Oh, Willow, you complete bitch. Poor Nadine, she’s done nothing to deserve this. But Luke had obviously primed her. ‘Hello. I’m talking to Luke about showroom things.’
I could have followed this up. Icouldhave forced her to talk for ages, to elaborate on the story that Luke had toldherhe’d toldme, whilst all the while knowing that she thought he was someone, somethingelse. But she looked pale and her face was hollowed and scared-looking. She was wearing a summer dress and my already suspicious eye detected a small bump under the waistline.
‘Look, Will, I’d better get on. Nadine is showing me where the council regulations say that I have to put my car park. There’s been a bit of a mistake, you see. IthoughtI could have it round the side, but, apparently, I have to have it somewhere away from the surface drains.’
He was eyeing me up and down as he spoke and I had a brief shiver of guilt. Was it obvious from looking at me that I’d spent the previous night wrapped around Cal? Did I look sexually sated? I thanked God for the blush-red cheeks that the combination of performing and the oppressive heat had brought. But no, it was just Luke. Ogling my breasts as though he wanted to rip my bra off there and then.
‘Talk to the face, ’cos the boobs ain’t listening,’ I muttered. ‘Nice to see you again, Nadine. I’ll call you, Luke, okay?’
Nadine granted me a cool nod, sucking her cheeks in as she did so. Luke looked over at Cal. ‘I see you’ve brought a friend, too. You’ve got so many male friends, Willow, I’m surprised you’ve got time for me.’
Oooh, Mr Clever. Not only had he managed to spin an on-the-spot story, but he’d managed to draw attention to Cal in such a way as to make me feel guilty. He’d ended his phrase witha self-deprecating little laugh, but I knew it for the warning it was. ‘You mention Nadine, and I’ll point out that you seem to be running around with half the male population of Yorkshire.’
I’m sorry. My parting remark probably means that my karma is now in negative figures and I’m going to have to suffer reincarnation as a jam-jar cover, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘I’ll see you soon, Luke. I’m really looking forward to next weekend.’
I saw Nadine blanche further and hurry away before she could throw up at me. Having spent the past twenty years as the thrower-upper, I was in no hurry at all to be on the shoe-splatty end of things. Although, I swallowed, experimentally. I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d thrown up. Cal and I had a relationship. God, yes, did we ever, and I hadn’t been sick on him for ages. Maybe I had finally ‘grown out of it’.
* * *
We all went back to the house. Cal had promised to cook dinner, Jazz and Bree were high on each other, and even Grace was stunned into an unusual silence by the general air of bonhomie and levity which hovered around us all.
‘I think’ — Flint raised a glass — ‘that I’d like to drink a toast to Ganda, for all the changes in our lives.’
‘I’ll drink to Ganda, but I’m not sure what you mean.’ I moved the bottle to one side, so that Cal could put down a steaming dish containing apple and ginger-wine pie. ‘I didn’t get what he intended me to from his inheritance. I suppose you got the allotment, but Bree got Booter and Snag.’
‘Which, kind of indirectly, got me Jazz.’ Bree grinned. Since the advent of herself and Jazz as a couple, she’d become a lot more relaxed. Gone was the super-housewife personality. All right, she’d never be Slob of the Century but even so, only this morning I’d seen her throw a crisp bag at the bin, miss,and not instantly get up to throw it away properly. ‘It was when hekept coming round to help walk the dogs that I realised what a gorgeous man he really is.’
‘That and the hours of hypnotism he put in,’ Ash whispered to me. ‘It was like Derren Brown with spaniels.’
