A Spring Affair (27 page)

To Lou’s horror and delight it was Mr Clarke who received them into his inner sanctum on the following Tuesday, the same business manager who had interviewed them for their first attempt at
Casa Nostra
. Lou took as much care now as she did then in presenting their financial case to him, dropping the proposals off beforehand so he had a chance to go through them. This time, they had some capital so didn’t need to borrow as much as before. Deb had savings and Lou, unbeknown to Phil, had a nest egg tucked away too. She’d started squirrelling funds away for the
Casa Nostra
project years ago and, though it fell through, she’d never stopped adding to the account. After Phil’s affair, it became a security blanket–just in case history repeated itself and she found herself needing a new place to live. She’d actually felt deceitful in keeping it secret from him. Something, however, had always stopped her from telling him about her private stash and she was glad of that now.

Mr Clarke gave a nervous laugh as he recalled Lou leaping over the desk to kiss him when he had agreed to the bank lending them the money to finance their project three years ago.

‘I hope you’re going to stay in control this time when I deliver the good news,’ Mr Clarke said.

‘
When
–not
if
?’ said Lou, hardly daring to breathe.

‘You’re giving us the money?’ said Deb.

And as he nodded, Lou leashed in the desire to let history repeat itself and settled for a vigorous handshake instead.

Mr Clarke had to admit to being somewhat disappointed.

The next stop was the solicitors to sign the lease and then Deb ran off to work, leaving Lou to pay Tom a cheque and start the fun business of ordering equipment.

This was it. Debra Devine and Lou Winter were in business.

‘Tom, I can’t pay you the rent,’ said Lou, with the chequebook held limply in her hand.

Tom came round to her side of the table, already loosening his belt.

‘Then I’ll have to exact what you owe in other ways. Get on the bed, Elouise, and take all your clothes off…’

There was a loud knock on the flat door which shook Lou out of her daydream and almost gave her a heart-attack. Tom walked in to find her quite red-faced.

‘I’ve just seen you come up. Wow, you look hot!’ he said.

Had he really said that or was she still dreaming?

‘Are you all right? Shall I open a window for you?’ he went on.
Oh, that sort of hot. Stupid woman
.

Lou put her hands over her cheeks. ‘Oh, er, just excited,’ she said.
You can say that again
, echoed her
ovaries. ‘We’ve just been to the bank–we got the finance!’

‘Fantastic!’ Tom beamed. ‘We’ll have to celebrate.’

‘We signed the lease and I just came back to write you a cheque for the rent.’

‘Lord, there’s no rush for that,’ said Tom.

He seemed to have substituted his grinning thing for that intense caring look that a parent gives to a small child on his first day at school. His grey eyes were soft and intently trained on her face.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Lou. Had she smudged her make-up? Did she have something green and leafy in her teeth?

‘No, there’s nothing,’ said Tom, giving himself a mental kick up the backside. ‘I was, er, just thinking that maybe you could both pop around to the house and we’ll crack open a bottle of champagne.’ That invitation was as much a surprise to Tom as it was to Lou. He hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort, not consciously anyway.

‘That sounds nice,’ said Lou.

‘Good. Right, well, I’m a boring bloke with no social life, so you pick any evening and come round and I’ll cook something. Italian?’

‘Wow, super nice,’ said Lou. ‘We’re pretty boring too, so I think any night will be good for us as well.’

‘Tomorrow then?’ said Tom.

‘Fine by me. I’m sure it’s clear for Deb too.’ She knew it was because they had arranged to go to the pictures, but this seemed a much more unmissable event.

‘OK,’ said Tom quickly. He needed to get away and stand in front of a mirror and practise how to look at
nice people whose husbands, he knew, were having an affair.

Phil was virtually beating Sue Shoesmith off with a stick. It was all very nice to be so sexually desired but he didn’t really want to have an affair again–and affairs, to him, were anything more than snogging. The last time had been a big mistake. Susan Peach was a sleazy barmaid who paid him some attention when Lou was neglecting him for her stupid café idea. He had never meant to let it get that far. He was flattered, and the idea of going out for an innocent meal with someone who looked at him with such adoring eyes wasn’t doing Lou any harm when she didn’t know about it. However, when Susan had unzipped his trousers under the dining table and started
doing things
, there was no way he was going to stop her. After that, he figured he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and as Lou was virtually ignoring him, he had the perfect excuse for his behaviour, should he need to explain himself. Anyway, he doubted it would ever come to that, seeing as he hadn’t been found out the other two times he’d done the dirty behind his wife’s back. So wasn’t it just bad luck that in the grotty, back-of-beyond place he had picked to take Susan Peach for a meal and a grope, there was her best friend Deb with a group of her cronies. It was very hard to pass it off as a harmless drink in a quiet corner with a business associate, when his tongue was trying to tie knots in Susan’s tonsils and her fingers were wriggling about in his flies.

He had expected Deb to call into the office and rant and rave at him. What he didn’t expect in a million years
was for her to go marching round to Lou to tell her everything. He didn’t like to recall Lou’s face that day when he walked in from work. She looked as though she’d had all her stuffing taken out. It had been far easier to pack a bag and run away than sit there amongst all that devastation.

He was in the wrong–what more was there to say? What good would analyzing it all have done either of them?
Hit and run
.

He went round to Susan’s place and she took all the immediate guilt and pressure away from him with some very energetic sex, but three weeks later, her tiny dank flat, a constant stream of Australian soaps on the TV, a diet of takeaways, oven chips and Walls Balls and constant references to the divorce proceedings she presumed he was now going to initiate, were driving him stark staring mental.

In the end, Phil had gritted his teeth and turned up at the house, hoping that Lou would be so upset at the prospect of spending Christmas alone that she would let him in to talk. He wasn’t looking forward to all those questions and tears, but if it got him home again without too much muck-racking he reckoned it would be worth it. He had a suitcase full of dirty clothes and a bag of prepared excuses about why he had left her, which amazingly he had never had to use. She just pulled him back into the house and never mentioned it. If he’d known how easy it was going to be, he’d have been back a fortnight sooner.

Now he just wanted life to return to how it was before all that stupid skip business starting kicking off. No Deb on the scene, no talk about stupid cafés and
businesses and less of Lou’s lip–then they could get back to being happy again. He would do whatever it took to achieve that. Lou would thank him in the long run, when their marriage was better than ever.

He texted a suitable reply to Sue’s steamy request to do various things to her with strawberries. There was no harm in it–they were just words that he didn’t have any intention of backing up with actions. His resolve was firm. He wanted to live his life with the Lou who gave him sex on Sunday mornings and cooked him lamb dinners. He was happy with her.

Lou was very much on Deb’s mind too. She had never got over the feeling that she could have tackled it so differently last time. She could have confronted
him
rather than lay everything on her friend. So what about this time–what could she do?

Despite promising Tom that she wouldn’t interfere, and despite promising herself the same thing, she waved goodbye to Lou outside the solicitor’s office and set off in the opposite direction from the bakery, towards the industrial estate where
P.M. Autos
was situated.

She parked around the corner, took a deep breath and marched into the showroom, straight past Bradley, with his oily welcoming smile that dropped like a brick when he saw that she was about to barge into Phil’s office.

‘Oy, missus, you can’t go in there,’ he called, in lumpy pursuit behind her.

‘It’s all right, Bradley,’ said Phil with a calm smile. ‘I’ll deal with this lady.’ He imbued the word ‘lady’ with all the qualities of ‘trouble-making cow’.

‘How can I help you, Debra? Coffee?’ said Phil, coolly
pouring one for himself from his percolator. He had nothing to fear from his visitor.

‘Of course I don’t want a coffee and I think you know why I’m here,’ snarled Deb.

Phil opened his hands in a gesture of supplication. ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea why you’re here, Debra. I presume it’s not to catch up on old times.’

‘
Maltstone Arms
, weekend before last, you and a bimbo eating each other alive–
that’s
why I’m here. I know you saw me, so let’s cut the crap. Didn’t you learn anything from last time? How much more shit are you going to put your wife through, eh?’

‘What has my life got to do with you, Debra?’

He’s calm, thought Deb. Too calm.

‘Finish it, Phil, or…’

Phil’s eyes rounded. ‘Or?’ he urged.

He wasn’t smiling, was he? Deb looked at his twinkling blue eyes. Her brain did a few quick machinations and came up with a ridiculous but oddly plausible explanation.
It couldn’t be possible. He wasn’t that sick, was he?

‘My God, you
want
me to tell her you’re having a fling, don’t you?’

Phil affected shock. ‘That’s ridiculous. I think you’d better go,’ he said. ‘But I will tell you that I’m not finishing my “friendship”’–and the emphasis he put on the word made it sound anything but innocent–‘with
Sue
.’

‘You evil bastard!’ said Deb. ‘You even picked someone with the same name. Was that stage-managed?’

She didn’t resist as he ushered her out of his office.

Could this have gone any better? Phil gloated. He knew Deb wasn’t physically capable of keeping this sort
of information to herself. Last time had proved that much.

Deb walked to her car in total astonishment. There was nothing she could do to stop Lou getting hurt–really hurt. She couldn’t tell Lou–then again, she couldn’t
not
tell her. She would just have to carry on as if everything was normal and hope that this time, their business venture was Lou’s salvation when the big crash came.

Lou spent an exciting Wednesday ordering more equipment and distributing the flyers that she had designed to some of May’s regulars. They were invitations to the grand opening in eight weeks–1 August. By a wonderful coincidence, that was also Yorkshire Day.

May was closing up at the end of that week and the builders were coming at seven on Monday morning. And at number 1, The Faringdales, Keith Featherstone would have finished the bathroom by the time she got home. His men were presently grouting the wall tiles. They seemed decent enough guys. Lou felt slightly guilty that they still thought they were in the running for the café business, but she quickly overcame it. It was the builder’s own fault that he hadn’t got the contract, after all–not hers.

And since her dramatic exit from Lou’s house, Michelle had bombarded Lou with text messages and phone calls, the full spectrum from whining to suicidal, from pleading to bitter. Lou deleted them without reading or hearing them and Tippexed her out of her diary. Michelle was out of her life.

Lou picked up Deb from the bakery to go to Tom’s house. Mrs Serafinska had a lovely cottage next door to it and had let Deb wash and brush up in her bathroom rather than have to drive home and all the way back.

‘You look nice,’ said Lou. Deb had on a navy-blue dress and a matching long jacket, and wore impossibly high stilettos that she walked on with the same ease as Lou did in flats.

‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ said Deb, giving her a longer than usual hello hug. ‘And you’re getting even thinner.’

‘Give over!’

Lou was wearing a lilac shirt and a complementing violet jacket which picked out the Irish-green of her eyes. And she
had
lost more weight recently. It wasn’t just a physical thing, though, that she appeared lighter. It was as if she had been given a transfusion of helium and could float into the air at any minute. Deb didn’t want to be around to see her plummet to the ground when the news about Phil’s latest affair punctured her spirit.
God, what a mess
. Deb rallied herself.

‘I’m going to make you a Brando, that’ll fatten you up,’ she said.

‘Oh, so you’ve created it!’

‘Nearly. I think I know where I’m going with it.’

‘What’s it going to be made out of?’ asked Lou excitedly.

‘Wait and see, my darling, wait and see…’

They pulled into Tom’s drive in Lou’s car. The lights were on in the house, glowing softly behind half-open blinds. It looked extremely cosy for a large house.

‘We should have got a taxi,’ said Deb, suddenly realizing that Lou couldn’t drink much as she insisted on driving.

‘It’s OK,’ said Lou. ‘Remember, I’m supposed to be at the pictures watching Orlando Bloom. Turning up home drunk in a taxi might blow my cover story slightly.’

Tom greeted them at the door, in very nice jeans, a beautiful soft blue shirt and a loosely knotted tie that was lopsided. His hair was tousled and his face looked harassed.

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ he said. ‘I’ve invited two professional cooks for dinner and I can barely boil an egg. How stupid am I? Let me take your coats.’

Clooney was trying to get to Lou, wrestling his canine excitement at seeing the biscuit woman against his recent training that forbade him to jump up. He settled for lots of tail-wagging and happy whining instead.

‘Clooney, get out of the way,’ laughed Tom. He was all fingers and thumbs, first dropping Deb’s coat, then Lou’s. Deb took control, telling him to bugger off back to what he was doing while she hung the coats over the ball on the staircase newel post. Clooney retired to his basket in the hallway with his teddy bear and shoe-shaped chew for now.

The ladies followed Tom into a very nice farmhouse kitchen with a big chunky wooden table in the middle. It had a recipe book open on it. Tom had put on an apron with the lettering emblazoned across the middle:
Abandon hope all ye who I enter
.

‘Like the apron. Very saucy,’ said Deb, with a wink.

‘Oh, go away!’ he said. ‘You aren’t supposed to see it.
And you aren’t supposed to be in here either. I’m nervous enough as it is.’

‘Is it one of May’s?’ Deb teased as he pushed them out of the kitchen.

‘Yes. Now go in there and open some wine. The bottle is in there and so is the corkscrew.’

Lou and Deb went into the dining room, still holding the bottles of wine they had brought with them. There was a CD playing soft rock music and wall lights gave the room a gentle and friendly glow. Three place-settings had been laid at one end of the grand table. There were fresh flowers in the middle and bread-sticks–and the biggest pepper-mill Deb had ever seen. She lifted her eyebrows suggestively at Lou, whose laughter pealed through to Tom in the kitchen. He smiled in response. He bet it was something to do with his pepper-grinder.

‘OK, ladies,’ he said, coming into the room soon after with a huge bowl of pasta and a large garlic and tomato pizza bread. ‘Please be seated.’

Lou and Deb sat opposite each other and left him at the head of the table.

‘I never asked if you were vegetarian or liked seafood or anything, so I hope this is going to be all right,’ said Tom. ‘I kind of played safe.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything I don’t like,’ said Deb. ‘Ooh, whitebait,’ she remembered. ‘How can anyone eat whitebait?’

‘What about you, Lou?’ said Tom, breaking off some bread.

‘Lamb,’ said Lou, not needing to even think about that. ‘I hate lamb.’

‘Ugh, me too,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘Never have liked it. School-dinner lamb–I could retch thinking about it. Agnes Street Infants…’ He shuddered at the memory and didn’t continue.

‘Exactly,’ said Lou, with a smile of absolute concurrence. ‘Lots of fat and mint sauce.’

‘Offal as well,’ said Tom. ‘Brains and hearts. My Uncle Tommy loved them. I remember seeing them once boiling up in the pan, bobbing about…’

‘Will you two shut up,’ said Deb through a mouthful of breadstick. ‘You’re putting me off.’

‘Sorry,’ said Tom. ‘Well, let’s talk about you two making loads of money instead, although you can do that quite happily by yourself,’ and he turned to Lou with his smiley grey eyes.

‘What’s this then?’ asked Deb with sudden interest.

‘Tom’s got this idea that I make counterfeit money,’ Lou told her, in mock exasperation.

‘Well, feel free to print me a few fifties, Lou. Ooh–and talking of making money,’ said Deb, reaching over for her bag, ‘before I forget–here, this is for you,’ and she handed Lou a telephone number on a Post-it note.

‘Mrs Serafinska’s number,’ she explained. ‘We were talking about you and your clutter-clearing. She’d like you to help her.’

‘Help? In what way?’

‘Clearing some clutter, perhaps?’ Tom suggested with gentle sarcasm. ‘It’s only a guess, mind.’

Deb punished him with a good-humoured glare. ‘I’m being serious. Lou, she’s been widowed for over three years now and never cleared out Bernie’s stuff.
She happened to say she wished she had professional help.
I
happened to say that I knew a professional who could help.’

Lou nearly spat out her wine. ‘I’m not a professional!’

‘Four days at one hundred and fifty quid a day says you are.’

Tom nearly spat out
his
wine.

‘Come on, Lou,’ Deb said. ‘These professional-clutter clearers charge over a grand and a half just for a consultation. Take her through the same process you did.’

‘Deb, I don’t know…’ Lou’s brow was creased in doubt.

‘She’s a lovely woman. She’s determined to get some help and she’s prepared to pay. If you don’t want the job, she’ll go to someone who probably hasn’t got half the experience you have for twice the price. Pleeease!’

Lou considered it. What harm would it do? And if Mrs Serafinska wasn’t happy, then Lou wouldn’t charge her.

‘OK, I’ll give her a ring. It might be fun to clear some stuff again–I’ve really missed doing it.’

‘Hey, you can use my skips,’ said Tom. ‘But I’ll take a cheque this time. That last batch of Queens had pierced noses.’

And they laughed and ate pasta and sweetcorn and asparagus and peppers and mushrooms and garlic bread and washed it down with nice crisp Chablis and grape juice for Lou. Then Tom popped open the champagne and they raised a glass to their culinary venture. And then they ate something sloppy which Tom said should have been a baked Alaska, except the ice cream had all melted. The meringue, however, had an interesting
crunchy toffee taste, which seemed to perfectly complement the coffees and minty chocolates that followed.

‘It was crap, wasn’t it?’ said Tom, as Lou helped him clear the plates.

‘No, it was lovely, Tom,’ said Lou, meaning it. This evening wasn’t just about the food, it meant so much more. Her eyes were sparkling like the champagne in the glasses as she stared at Tom’s big, wide back as he bent down at the dishwasher. No man had ever cooked her a meal before. Actually, no man had ever made her a cup of coffee before either. And no man had ever made her feel like this. (Except possibly Starsky–she’d had one mighty crush on him years ago.) Her head was full of ridiculous, wonderful feelings that were zapping and fizzing around inside her. They were the bolts of electricity she had dreamed of having for a man, whilst she was reading her
Jackie
magazine. She’d never had them though, not even for Phil, and had put them down to love-folklore until now. Yes, she had fallen in love with Phil, in a comfortable, coupley way, but her heart had never sparked like a night full of fireworks sending reverberations down to her toes just because she was near him, like it was doing now because she was near to Tom Broom and his blue shirt.

He straightened up. God, he was so big. God, he was so close.

‘Here, let me have those,’ he said, his large square hands reaching out for the plates. She passed them over carefully, taking great care not to accidentally touch him nor daring to look up at him, because if she did, he
would have seen everything in her eyes she wished she were free to say.

Deb came into the kitchen.

‘Hey, great loo, Tom. Huge bath, but I suppose you need one.’

‘Are you trying to say I’ve got a big bottom?’ joked Tom.

‘Well, you’ve got a big everything else,’ Lou joked, then realized what she’d said. Oh crap–that came out all wrong!

Tom raised his eyebrows and folded his arms. ‘Oh, is that so? And how would you know that?’

‘I meant big house, big…dog, big…car, big…hands…er, house.’

Double crap. She didn’t mean to say hands either.

Tom didn’t move, just continued to stare at her with amused annoyance.

Deb, who had taken care to have just enough wine to relax her, but not enough to say anything she shouldn’t, was bent double in the corner with laughter.

‘Oh, get stuffed the pair of you,’ said Lou, turning away and noticing as she did so the time on the kitchen clock. It was later than she expected. Phil would be hopping about in the kitchen wondering why his dinner wasn’t making itself.

‘Oh damn, we’d better go,’ she said, like Cinderella at the ball, but willing to risk the wrath of magic for a few more moments in a Prince’s company.

Deb went into the hall and retrieved their coats. Tom helped Deb on with hers. Lou got into hers before he could offer.

‘Tom, it was wonderful, thank you.’ Deb threw her
arms around him, giving him a great big tipsy kiss and a tight hug.

‘Thanks, Tom,’ said Lou quietly but with a warm smile. ‘It was nice. Really nice.’

He bent and kissed her cheek, but this time, as his lips left her, his arms enfolded her in an unexpected and tight squeeze. His scent filled her nostrils, the washing powder his shirt had been washed in, the lasting note of some musky violety after-shave, his skin…She staggered backwards when he let her go. Her brain was mush and in danger of seeping out of her ears. God knows what state she’d be in if he ever bonked her. Not that she’d ever find out.

Deb hugged her goodnight as the car pulled up at her ‘bijou’ flat, as the estate agent had described it–‘poky’ as everyone else did.

‘You smell of Tom,’ said Deb.

‘Are you sure you two don’t fancy each other?’ said Lou.

‘Lou, I love you to death but you can be so thick at times,’ said Deb, blowing her a half-drunken kiss.

Phil was tucking into beef chow mein, fried rice and prawn won tons on a tray and watching a football match on the monster TV in the lounge.

‘I had to send out for this,’ he said, pointing down at it. ‘I told you I was going to the pictures,’ said Lou.

‘I didn’t expect you to be this late,’ said Phil, looking purposefully at the clock.

‘Phil, it’s half-past nine. Even Cinderella got two and a half hours more parole than this.’

He stabbed up the volume on the remote control to a childish degree.

The magical night out was over. Cinderella was back to the same old routine.