Page 82 of A Spell of Midlife Mayhem

Or was I off track?

Maybe.

***

MY PHONE RANG AND WOKE me the next morning. Sunlight peeked from around the edges of the blinds, so it wasn’t the middle of the night. As I grabbed the phone, I checked the time. It was 6 am.

I groaned, partly from being woken up, but mostly because the caller was Terry. ‘Hello?’

‘Good morning, love of my life.’

‘Leave it, Terry. Why are you calling?’

‘Two things. I guess you haven’t seen the email yet.’

My body and mind were warring between wanting to go back to sleep and wanting to be alert. I sat up to tilt the odds towards alertness. ‘What email? I haven’t checked my emails for a day. I’ve been busy.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Never you mind. What email?’

‘From the estate agent. The house sale has fallen through. The buyers couldn’t get finance after all.’ He didn’t sound upset about it.

‘We’ll wait for another offer, then.’

‘Don’t you see, Heather? It’s a sign that it’s not meant to sell. It’s a sign that we’re supposed to be back together. In our home.’

‘No, Terry. It’s only a sign that the buyers couldn’t get finance. What was the other thing?’

‘Oh, that. I’m at the airport.’

My stomach crawled. ‘Which airport?’

‘Heathrow. Hey, it’s enormous. I’m in a line waiting to pass through Immigration. There must be hundreds of people here.’

Good. That will delay him. ‘Go home, Terry. I don’t want to see you.’

He ignored that. ‘I’ll find a place to stay and then I’ll come over to your aunt’s house and fetch you. We’ll go home as soon as we can book return flights.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’ I did a mini fist-pump. I said ‘no’. Yay, me.

‘Look, just tell me your aunt’s address, and we can talk it over.’

A smile spread across my face. Thanks, Rose. She might have told Terry I was in the UK, but she hadn’t told him exactly where I was.

And neither would I. Eventually, he’d lose patience or run out of money and go home by himself.

‘Heather? What’s your address?’

‘I’m in Birmingham.’

‘Birmingham? I could have sworn Rose said you were in London or nearby.’

‘Maybe she got mixed up.’

‘All right. I’ll call you when I get there. This queue is moving at last.’ He rang off.

I chuckled to myself. The bastard had given me the run-around for years. Time for him to get a dose of his own medicine.

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