‘Mum, please,’ I implored, ‘give me a break, eh?’ I unhooked my handbag from the back of the kitchen chair and stood up.
‘Where are you going?’ my mother asked, stubbing her ciggy out on her coffee saucer.
‘Tesco. I need some shopping.’
‘You’re running away from me,’ she accused, narrowing her eyes through an exhaled plume of smoke.
I tutted. ‘Mother, if I wanted to run away from you, it wouldn’t be to Tesco.’ I grabbed my car keys from underneath a wrinkled apple languishing in the fruit bowl on the table. ‘I’d choose somewhere far-flung, on the other side of the world, where you wouldn’t be able to hound me to attend your dinner parties and cosy up to Margery Jackson’s buck-toothed and bespectacled unmarried son.’
‘What is it with you, Hattie Green?’ my mother frowned. She always called me by my full name when irked, probably because she knew it irked me. It was high time I abandoned my old married surname. ‘I’ll have you know,’ she sniffed, ‘that Mark is a very nice boy.’
‘He’s nearly forty-three. Hardly a boy.’
‘You’re forgetting that you’ll be that age on your next birthday.’
‘Thanks for reminding me.’
‘And Mark doesn’t have buck teeth. He just has an unusual dental arrangement. And what’s wrong with wearing glasses, Hattie? You wear them sometimes! I’ve seen you, reading those soppy romances, a pair of specs perched on your nose. You could do a lot worse than Margery’s boy.’
I refrained from saying that surely I could also do a lot better? I had nothing against buck-toothed bespectacled men. I just didn’t want one for a boyfriend. Nor, for that matter, did I even want a boyfriend.
‘You’re still a nice-looking woman, Hattie, but you don’t make the most of yourself. It’s almost like you deliberately want to be unattractive.’
‘Cheers,’ I said huffily, patting my scruffy hoodie’s pockets for my mobile phone.
My ex-husband had once told me that I looked a bit like Cameron Diaz. These days I looked more like another Cameron. David. My mother had a point.
‘Looks fade, Hattie. You need to stop being so fussy about a potential suitor.’
Only my mother would use a word like ‘suitor’.
My son wandered into the kitchen looking for something to snack on. Like most sixteen-year-olds, Fin was perpetually hungry. He picked up the battered apple from the fruit bowl and eyed it suspiciously.
‘This looks a bit past it,’ he said.
‘Like your mother,’ Mum murmured.
I ignored her, took the apple from him and chucked it in the bin.
‘I’ll buy some more,’ I promised.
‘Never mind the apples,’ said my mother to her grandson. ‘It’s Saturday, and your mum is prepared to spend tonight in front of the telly. Please tell her, Fin, that it’s about time she got herself a boyfriend.’
My son gave me a sympathetic glance. He was quite used to his grandmother’s matchmaking attempts.
‘If Mum wants a boyfriend, Granny, I’ll help her get one on Tinder.’
‘Tinder?’ my mother queried. ‘What’s that?’
‘A dating app. You download it to your mobile phone. It’s more or less how everybody meets these days.’
My mother looked shocked. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’
Fin shrugged. ‘Busy people with busy lives seem to like it. Cuts out the middle person, Granny,’ he said drily.
But his words were lost on my mother who, even now, was beginning to look distracted as her thoughts no doubt wandered to the possibilities of suggesting a little soirée with pals Edith and Rose. Both of them had middle-aged sons who were recently divorced, and both women were desperate to see them remarried. Edith and Rose wanted their spare bedrooms back, and they were fed up washing size-nine socks and ironing a mountain of man-size shirts. In my village there was a small army of frustrated seventy-something females who’d had their golden years rudely interrupted by balding sons too broke paying maintenance to get back on the property ladder.
‘Right, I’m off,’ I said to Fin. ‘Anything you want in particular, other than apples? Or any special requests for dinner?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, rubbing his hands with glee. ‘Let’s have thinly sliced smoked salmon for starters, fillet steak for main, and something full of sugar and cream for pudding. Oh, and a bottle of Tesco’s finest wine, Mother Dearest, with which to wash it all down.’ He grinned mischievously, instantly reminding me of his father. Thinking about Fin’s dad immediately caused a shadow to pass across my mind. A second later the shutters came down. My son was going to be heartbreakingly handsome one day. I just hoped he didn’t break hearts. Like my ex-husband.
‘Unfortunately my budget doesn’t run to that delightful menu, but I’ll buy a tub of Tesco’s poshest ice-cream.’
Once, I’d been a commuter to London, earning a tidy sum. Now much older and far less confident, I was no longer up to date with essential techie skills. These days my income came from walking the dogs of those who spent their days in glass-fronted City offices. Occasionally I provided doggy board and lodging when those same folks jetted off to the Maldives or America and didn’t want to use kennels. I got by.
‘Actually, don’t worry about cooking for me, Mum,’ said Fin, opening the fridge and extracting a yoghurt. ‘I’m going around to Ryan’s house later. His parents usually order a takeaway.’
‘That sounds nice,’ I said, salivating at the thought of a korma on the sofa. I’d give Jo, my fellow singleton mate and good neighbour, a ring a little later on and ask if she was up for some company this evening. ‘I might get a supermarket curry for myself and Jo. We can enjoy eating it while watching Take Me Out.’
‘Pity you don’t both write in to ITV and ask to be contestants,’ said my mother, standing up. ‘I suppose I’d better get back to your father. I left him out in the garden filling the patio pots with flowers. You could do with something to brighten up your little garden, Hattie. Do you want me to ask Dad to put something together for you?’
‘That would be lovely,’ I said, relieved to be talking about something as mundane as winter pansies, and not blind dates. ‘Thanks, Mum.’ I moved round the kitchen table and kissed her goodbye. ‘Will you be in when I get back?’ I said, turning to Fin.
He did a seesaw motion with one hand. ‘Not sure.’
‘Well if I’m not back before you leave, make sure you let Buddy out before locking up, then put him in his crate with a chew to keep him occupied.’
Buddy was my rather fat, food-obsessed rescue beagle. I could see why so many of the breed ended up unwanted. Virtually untrainable, with a penchant for eating anything foolishly left around, Buddy had a low boredom threshold. He was quite partial to chomping his way through chair legs or banister spindles, was a dab hand at opening kitchen cupboards fitted with child locks and would think nothing of upending the bin in his quest to seek out leftovers. Despite being the naughtiest dog in Vigo Village, he was also the most loving, and soulmates with Jo’s black Labrador, Buttons, who we often walked with.
‘Yeah, I’ll see to Buddy,’ Fin assured me.
‘Good,’ I said, slinging my handbag over my shoulder. ‘See you later.’
I followed Mum to the front door. This was accomplished swiftly because my terraced cottage had no hallway. One simply stepped from the garden path straight into the lounge, and from there it was a few paces to the kitchen.
I’d lived in my cosy – okay, miniscule – two-up two-down ever since Nick and I had parted company. My mind briefly flitted back to married life. Two years ago, home had been a contemporary detached property in swish Sevenoaks. These days I rested my head under the beams of Honeysuckle Cottage, which sounded charming enough and, indeed, was. But the old bricks were crumbling from Vigo’s frequent winter fogs that always added another layer of moss to the uneven roof tiles. Thankfully, now that February had arrived, the promise of milder weather hung in the air, and the previously dark afternoons were steadily growing lighter. Nick had hated dogs, so the first thing I’d done when we’d split up was visit a beagle re-homing centre. Buddy had no complaints about Honeysuckle Cottage’s postage-stamp-sized garden, where we sat companionably together during the temperamental British summers. In the old days, I’d hopped on planes with Nick and flown off to foreign sunshine, Fin holding a hand between us… but those days had been stormy for reasons that were nothing to do with the weather. Our marriage had been volatile. Full of tears and pain. My husband had been a serial adulterer. I’d grimly hung in there, telling myself that it was my fault he’d behaved the way he did, and blindly hoped that one day my husband would cease his extra-marital activity, and we’d all live happily ever after. And for a while, I’d truly thought we’d achieved this. Harmony had reigned for longer than ever previously experienced. Until, on a whim, after dropping Fin to school, I’d driven to a mate’s house for an impromptu coffee and catch-up, and been surprised to see my husband’s car parked outside her house.
Pippa Brown was everything I wasn’t: diminutive, stunningly beautiful, immaculately turned out. Nick had always taken the micky out of Pippa and her stockbroking husband, Brian. ‘Watch out,’ he’d say, at Parents’ Evening, ‘here come Mr and Mrs Boring-Brown.’ They were the sort of couple who always looked at each other adoringly, finished each other’s sentences, and never seemed to have a cross word. Which just goes to show that you never know what goes on inside somebody else’s marriage. Pippa and I had gravitated towards each other at the school gates when our kids had started secondary school. Both of us had been trying not to cry as we’d watched our boys disappear into the enormous building wearing their too-big blazers and terrified expressions. We’d laughed at ourselves for being so overprotective and hastened off to the local coffee shop to bond.
Over the next three years I thought I’d got to know Pippa very well, including all her secrets. But obviously she’d held one back. Why else would I be puzzled as to why my husband was in her house while her own spouse was out at work? Knowing that Pippa rarely locked her back door when home, I’d passed through the side gate and stepped into the utility room. Laundry was swishing around in the washing machine while a tumble drier rumbled away. My footsteps had gone unnoticed, such was the racket going on upstairs.
My bowels had lurched as I’d climbed Pippa’s staircase, the bile rising to my throat as I’d made my way along the landing to Mr and Mrs ‘Boring’ Brown’s master bedroom. There had been nothing drab about the full technicolor discovery of Nick spread-eagled across Pippa’s Laura Ashley bedding as she’d impersonated a pneumatic drill, her waterfall of long red hair rippling down her back. Even now, all this time later, an inner part of me shrivelled at the memory of my handsome husband and beautiful friend bonking the living daylights out of each other. As my mother had said at the time, any man and woman who had surnames that sounded like a dreary paint chart were surely welcome to each other. But all that had been two years ago. I’d sworn off men ever since, and had no plans to change this. Until a mind-bendingly surreal experience in Tesco’s aisle three.
Tesco was packed. Valentine’s Day was less than a fortnight away and the supermarket was awash with heart-shaped red balloons. At this time of the year I usually avoided the greeting card aisle, but as so many shoppers seemed to be having a chinwag and blocking the other aisles, I found myself taking a reluctant detour. I trolleyed past soppy gift teddies, my eyes firmly averted, steadfastly ignoring red velvet hearts held in stitched-together paws, plastic eyes looking soulful with sewn-on red lips puckered in a kiss.
My mind wandered back to the last Valentine’s Day I’d shared with Nick. He hadn’t really been a hearts-and-flowers man but, despite that, had made a romantic gesture and whisked me off to our local Italian, Serafino’s Cucina. This was before the Pippa fiasco, of course. The restaurant had been full of loved-up couples holding hands across candlelit tablecloths. Our marriage had been back on an even keel, and I’d tentatively reached across the cotton gingham, taking Nick’s hand in mine. He’d looked up from the menu, an expression of surprise on his face. I’d smiled at him and curled my fingers around his. He’d smiled back and allowed me to hold his hand for… ooh, a good five seconds… before gently reclaiming it as the waitress came over. The food had been delicious. The wine delectable. I’d overheard another couple at the table next to us reminiscing about their wedding day. The man had been telling his silver-haired wife that she’d looked a vision in her white gown and hadn’t changed one bit. I’d studied Nick under my eyelashes as we’d worked our way through the meal. Had we changed? On the outside, not really. We were a few pounds heavier and had the odd grey hair. But it was on the inside – the side that couldn’t be seen – where all the emotional scar tissue criss-crossed around the heart. Another layer had been added later when I’d discovered the waitress’s phone number in his jacket pocket. Oh yes, I often did discreet searches through Nick’s clothes when the ‘signs’ came along.
On this particular Valentine’s Day, the signs had appeared when I’d returned from the restaurant’s loo, and noticed my husband sweeping a hand through his hair as his eyes sought out the young woman dressed from head to toe in black, a snow-white apron tied around her slim waist. Later, after finding the incriminating piece of paper bearing a telephone number, I’d confronted him. He’d been outraged.
‘How dare you go through my pockets!’ he’d yelled.
‘And how dare you keep doing this to me!’ I’d yelled back.
‘Don’t you act all Miss Virtuous with me,’ he’d said, stabbing a finger through the air. I’d been the first to look away.
Now, I looked away again, as I passed the sloping shelves full of cards bearing flowery illustrations and declarations of love. However, my exit from the hateful aisle was blocked by a lone man heading towards me.
‘Excuse me,’ I said politely, trying to wheel my way around him. For a moment we trolley danced, going in the same direction and therefore unable to pass. We both laughed at the same time. The man took this as his cue to speak.
‘Trying to escape the Valentine aisle, eh?’ he grinned and tutted, and I saw his eyes quickly check out my ringless left hand.
‘Yes,’ I smiled, adopting a rueful expression. ‘As far as I’m concerned, this section of the supermarket is akin to hell on Earth.’
‘Ah, a woman who has been burned.’
‘Maybe,’ I replied. I was still smiling, but the smile had gone brittle around the edges.
‘Er, look,’ said the man hesitantly, a sudden shyness entering his tone, ‘I know I don’t know you or anything… and you might think I’m being outrageously forward, but… do you fancy having a coffee?’ He nodded his head at Tesco’s Costa corner, which, admittedly, was emitting delicious smells of ground coffee beans.
I stared at him in surprise. He was handsome. Very handsome. If my mother had been with me, she’d have physically dragged the pair of us over to the Costa corner and then whipped out her diary and asked when we both had a mutually convenient date to pop into Sidcup Registry Office on the way home. But the last thing I needed was a gorgeous-looking stranger issuing an invitation for coffee. It might not lead to Sidcup Registry Office, but it could potentially lead to my heart being broken. And that was a no-no. I took a deep breath.
‘Thanks, but no thanks. I just—’ I shrugged helplessly. Hopelessly. ‘I can’t.’
And before the man could say another word, I put my head down, tucked my elbows in, and pushed my way out of the hateful aisle full of red roses and romance.
As I headed off to aisle three, I pondered, what exactly was true love? Whatever it was, Nick and I hadn’t had it, although it had taken me far too long to come to that realisation. Pippa and Boring Brian surely hadn’t had it either, despite the dewy-eyed looks they always gave each other. Why else would Pippa cheat on Brian? Not that he’d ever found out. She’d begged me not to tell him. I hadn’t deigned to respond, but much as I’d wanted to lash out and blast a few holes in her marriage, I wasn’t the sort of person who deliberately hurt an innocent. And Brian was innocent.
I sighed heavily. Why on earth was I thinking about the past? It was Mum’s fault. All her manic efforts to constantly pair me up with Mr Lonely of Longfield and Mr Desperate of Dartford. The only men currently in my life were my father, my son and my delinquent dog. And that was enough. It was at that moment my mobile phone rang. I glanced at the caller display and pursed my lips.
‘Mum,’ I said.
‘I was just thinking about you,’ she began.
‘Funnily enough, I was doing the same,’ I said wryly.
‘Aw, that’s nice,’ she said, blissfully unaware of me blaming her for my gloomy reminiscing. ‘Now I know I only saw you half an hour ago, but I’ve just got home and was telling Dad about you being all on your own tonight, and he said why don’t you come over and join us for dinner? What do you think, hmm?’
There was something about my mother’s tone that instantly had me on red alert. She sounded almost desperate for me to accept her dinner invitation. Now, why would that be?
‘Thanks, Mum, but I have the evening all planned out. It’s just me, Buddy, possibly Jo, a supermarket curry, and the telly.’
‘Ah, yes, the dating programme.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Ooh, I know!’ she said, practically squealing at her sudden light bulb moment. ‘Forget Jo, and watch it here with us. What do you say? Eh, Hattie? C’mon,’ she wheedled. ‘And anyway, Dad’s put together a tub of flowers for your patio, so you could take it home with you afterwards.’
‘Tell Dad thank you, but I’ll drop by and pick it up tomorrow.’
‘No, no, Hattie,’ she said, her tone unexpectedly emphatic. ‘I absolutely insist you join us for dinner.’
‘Mum, I only saw you a little while ago. Why the sudden invitation?’
‘Well, Fin said he’s having a takeaway tonight, so we thought we’d get one too. And we’d love you to join us. That’s all.’
But my mother wasn’t fooling me. I smelt a rat.
‘Who else will be there?’
‘Who else?’
‘Is there an echo on this line?’
I heard a gasp of frustration crackling down the handset. ‘If you must know,’ she hissed, ‘Margery’s here. She was just passing, but your father invited her to stay for dinner. I know I’m a brilliant cook, but even I can’t rustle up something amazing at such short notice. So we’re having a takeaway.’
‘And let me guess. Mark is there, too.’
‘Er, I’m not sure, let me think, erm…’
‘Oh, Mum, spare me the charade. I can hear him laughing in the background with Dad.’
Apart from Mark’s buck teeth and specs that looked like they’d come out of a Third World recycling bin, the man had been bestowed with a laugh that made Sid James sound refined.
‘Ah yes,’ said Mum brightly, ‘you’re quite right, he is here. Fancy that!’
‘Yes, and I don’t,’ I said pointedly. ‘Apart from anything else, I can’t possibly leave Buddy alone for too long.’
‘Bring Buddy with you!’ Mum cried.
‘Are you mad? The last time he came to your house, he chased poor Wilbur up onto the drinks cabinet and barked incessantly.’
‘We’ll put Wilbur in one of the bedrooms and shut the door,’ said Mum. ‘So that’s a yes then?’
‘No!’ I howled, causing another shopper to turn and stare in my direction. I huddled over the mobile phone, speaking low into the handset. ‘Listen carefully, I shall say it only once.’ For one surreal moment I felt like I’d dropped into a scene from ’Allo ’Allo. ‘I do not want to spend Saturday night with Mark Jackson. Not this week. Not next week. Not ever. Understood?’
‘Well really, Hattie, I do think you’re being terribly ungrateful,’ said Mum, adopting a hurt tone. I rolled my eyes at the shelves of baked beans to my left. Why did my mother do this to me? And why was I made to feel so guilty? But before I could answer her, something extraordinary happened. Something enormous appeared in my peripheral vision. Something large, and white, falling from the ceiling. Too late I realised that the sign for aisle three was zooming through the air. As it caught me with a glancing blow, I automatically threw out my hands to fend it off, and sent a shelf full of Mr Heinz’s products cascading everywhere. My feet came down on rolling tins and, like a cartoon character frantically running but getting nowhere, there were a few seconds of panicky activity before I tipped backwards, head slamming painfully against the hard floor. My last coherent thought was that I now had a legitimate reason not to spend the evening with Mark Jackson. And then everything went black.
When I came to, there was no sign of my shopping trolley, or the scattered cans of baked beans, nor any shoppers looking shocked with their mouths formed in a perfect O. I appeared to be lying down on a large comfortable sofa in an equally large and comfortable room. On the far side, enormous picture windows opened to the veranda overlooking a panoramic view of green hills. I blinked. Strange. I’d not seen those hills before. In fact, I wasn’t aware of any hills in the town of Sidcup. But then again, the back of Tesco ran adjacent to the A2 and actually, yes, didn’t the A2 run through a rather verdant stretch? Perhaps I had simply never noticed these hills before as I’d shot along the dual carriageway in my car.
‘Ah, you’re awake,’ said a male voice.
I sat up, swivelling my neck as I did so. A good-looking guy in white jeans and a matching open-necked shirt was seated in a winged armchair to my right. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. There was a hazy recollection of seeing him somewhere before but… no… it was eluding me. It was as if a veil had been flung over a distant memory. Probably due to the bump on the head. Or maybe it was because he reminded me of the American actor Bradley Cooper, so just seemed familiar? For one fleeting moment, I wished I’d bothered to put on some make-up this morning. That thought had barely registered in my brain, when I dismissed it. Why are you thinking about making yourself look attractive, Hattie? That’s the last thing you want to do. Especially when the guy is a looker like this one. He has ‘heartbreaker’ stamped all over him.
‘Don’t stand up,’ he said quickly, as I made to swing my legs off the sofa. ‘Just rest for a moment. Take some deep breaths. That’s it, well done. That was quite a bump to the head. How are you feeling?’
‘Er, fine, thanks,’ I answered, carefully sitting up. I had no recollection of leaving the shop floor. I must have blacked out for a few minutes. How odd. After a wallop like that, I’d have thought a headache would have been an absolute cert. After all, that was an almighty smack I’d taken. A part of me winced as I recalled the sound in my ears before I’d lost consciousness. It had been like eggs cracking. Automatically, I put up one hand and tentatively touched the back of my head. Everything was intact. It didn’t even feel bruised. How peculiar. ‘Are you the manager?’
‘No,’ he said, giving me a kind smile. ‘The manager here is a big shot, and pretty busy right now with other matters.’
Ah. So this guy must be second in command. The assistant manager. I raised an eyebrow at the casual clothes. Perhaps Tesco liked their upper echel. . .
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