Guilty Feet (27 page)

It was at that moment that I suddenly remembered I needed to visit the bathroom—and who did I meet on my way there? Why, my best friend Cass, of course.

She tried getting past me, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.

‘What the hell do you mean by bringing him here without at least warning me first?’ I snarled as I led her roughly into the sitting room, where we could be alone.

‘I thought I was doing you a favour after what you said last night.’ She’d gathered herself by now and sounded defiant.

‘Did he know I was going to be here?’

‘No. I thought he might not come if he knew.’

‘Great!’ I said. ‘Have you any idea how embarrassing this is?’

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Because he knows that you have an alter ego?’

‘Precisely.’

‘But it’s not all about you, is it? He probably feels bad as well, for thinking you broke into his flat.’

This was getting worse by the minute.

‘You talked about that?’

She nodded. ‘And I told him the reason you set up the date with Sarah was because you were so upset about it.’

My mind was galloping over the hurdles at some imaginary race meeting.

‘And he’s OK about it?’

Cass rolled her eyes. ‘I wouldn’t go that far, but apparently Aisling is.’

‘Aisling knows! Oh, God,’ I groaned.

‘I wouldn’t worry too much about her. I get the impression that she’s on your side.’

I couldn’t bear the thought of all these people discussing me as if I was a strange laboratory specimen. I just wanted out of there.

‘I’m going,’ I said.

‘No, you’re bloody well not,’ Cass said crossly. She looked at me warningly. ‘You’re not going to spoil my party. You’re going to stay here and behave like an adult for a change.’

***

I spent a good ten minutes in the cloakroom, and then crept back to the dining room, hopeful that Dan might have taken the initiative and headed for home.

There weren’t many people left in there now. I could see the girls, huddled together in the corner, and I could hear what sounded like Irish folk music coming from the sitting room. I was about to see what was going on in there when I noticed Dan’s head over the top of the girls’. I recognised the look in his eyes.

I’d seen it often enough before, at parties, when young women got wind of what he did for a living and cornered him for information about their idols.

And, because old habits really do die hard, before I realised what I was doing I dived in and rescued him.

‘Your mothers are asking where you are,’ I lied to all six of the girls, and when they looked about to argue with me I lived up to my new grown-up image. ‘And I want a quiet word with Dan, so do as you’re told, like good girls, now, and leave us alone.’

There was a lot grumbling, but I stood my ground and within a minute the dining room had cleared. There was just Dan and me left, and we stood there looking at one another for a few seconds.

Until he reached out to me and pulled me into his arms. And kissed me until my knees buckled.

And then, as if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, he let go of me, smiled politely, and suggested we join the others.

Chapter Twenty Three

He left it two full days, that is
forty
-
eight
hours
, before he phoned me. During which time I went over the evening hundreds, possibly even thousands of times in my head. And the whole thing seemed—as everyone says about extraordinary events—exactly like a dream. A very strange dream in this particular case.

After that knee-buckling kiss we’d wandered into the sitting room, by which time Jennifer Perrez had kicked off her Doc Martens and was giving an Irish set-dance demonstration in her orange caftan. Which was surreal enough, but it didn’t end there. Over the next couple of hours the furniture was pushed back and each and every one of us, whether we liked it or not, was expected to learn and perform several routines. It was fortunate for Jennifer that our numbers amounted to two perfect sets of eight, and—mad and unexpected as it all certainly was, and as much as most of us tried to object in the beginning—we ended up having a very good time.

Dan was a popular choice of partner, of course, and I didn’t get a look-in with him. But throughout it all there he was, glancing my way once in a while as we occasionally skimmed past one another throughout that bizarre night, giving absolutely nothing away.

Afterwards, he’d gone his way and I’d gone mine. I had begun to believe that I’d imagined the whole dining room incident as I waited for the phone to ring. And as is often the case in such matters, the call finally came when I’d just about given up on him.

At ten minutes past nine on Monday evening, soon after I got back to my parents’ home after work.

He spoke without any preamble.

‘Have you checked your Hotmail lately, Sarah Daly?’

I felt my face colour at this reminder of my embarrassing little deception.

‘No,’ I said, swallowing with a gulp.

‘Well, do it now,’ he told me firmly, and then disconnected.

With a thumping heart I went straight to my laptop and checked into Sarah’s account—something I hadn’t done for quite a while. I found several messages waiting for her, but it was the last one, dated today, that I opened first.

Dear Sarah

I presume you haven’t read the others, but no matter now.

I just wanted to say that I think our acquaintance with you has done us—both me and Jo—good, and I want to thank you.

And now, can you tell her to get her sad ass to the front door? Because I’m freezing my nuts off out here...

Dan

I did exactly as instructed, and when I opened the door there he was.

And then he did it again. He stepped over the threshold, pulled me towards him, and kissed me until I could no longer stand without assistance.

Epilogue

I took over Libby’s vacated flat after Christmas, which I had Feng Shui’d first by Sid’s mother, Jennifer, to rid it of any bad vibes left by its former occupant. Dan and I both agreed that we shouldn’t rush straight back into living together—and so far it’s working out fine. He gets to play whatever music he wants, and I get to go out to clubs whenever I choose. Not that I
choose
too often these days. And we always get to spend the nights together.

While we were getting reacquainted again Marco and Nic started seeing each other—briefly. She rang to tell me one day at work, and I think she imagined that I’d be upset. She obviously didn’t know I was back with Dan, and I didn’t choose to enlighten her. Not then, anyway.

It only lasted until Marco went to Spain for Christmas—during which time he seduced his father’s beauty queen wife and brought her back to Leeds with him. Understandably, it didn’t do his new relationship with his father very much good, and it all ended rather abruptly.

Nic wasn’t very pleased either, apparently.

I learnt all this from Giovanna—who might have seemed fine about Marco getting in touch with his father, but who admitted to me when it was over that she hadn’t been all that happy about it, really. And, although she didn’t approve of his behaviour, she said that she preferred the beauty queen to Nic any day.

And at least she gets to spend more time with my father these days. Since Marco could hardly object, after what he’d done, Giovanna has moved into my old flat with my father until they can find something bigger. She still does most of the cooking for the café, but if it works out long term with Marco and the beauty queen—who seems to love working at the Italian—Giovanna is considering passing on her famous recipes.

Sid and Cass remain extremely happy—though in Sid’s case you have to know him quite well to realise this. And, whereas I’ve always tended to think of Cass as fairly predictable, I’d never have predicted that she would marry within six months of meeting someone five years her junior. They’ve planned the wedding for the last week in May, and I, along with the six Foster and Perrez sisters, have agreed to wear a pale peach meringue and play my part as bridesmaid. But then I do owe her one.

Steve is going to be invited as well, I understand, and if he’s still going out with Aisling then she’ll be invited too. I hope so. She’s become a very good friend of mine now, but I’m not so sure that Steve will be able to hold her interest that long.

One person who definitely won’t be there is my mother.

Luckily for Matt, our strategy worked a treat. She soon got tired of sexual experimentation once she realised it wasn’t having the desired effect. She’s currently travelling around the States on Greyhound buses, and according to the last e-mail I received from her she’s thinking of moving on to Australia with some people she met along the way. She has agreed to sell the house on Piper Hill, and the divorce from my dad has been set in motion.

I told Dan the other day that, despite everything, we have a lot to thank Libby for. I’d just been telling him what I’d learned through the grapevine—that she’d been thrown out of the flat by her new bloke and that she’d got her own back by trashing his car.

He seemed a bit taken aback by my comment, but
I
knew what I meant all right. I haven’t forgotten his remark about me turning into my mother if I wasn’t careful, even if he has. It stung bitterly at the time, but that is the way of truths, I’ve learnt. They hurt like hell. I’d been heading that way for certain, and I’d probably never have realised it if Dan and I had got back together too soon. If Libby hadn’t lied about Aisling and kept us apart.

It isn’t the only lesson I’ve learnt, but it is the most important.

And if it works out long term with Dan, then great. But if not it will finish for the right reasons now, because it has properly run its course. And not—most definitely not—because I’ve turned into my bloody mother.

That, I am certain now, is
never
,
ever
going to happen.

If you enjoyed
Guilty Feet
by Kelly Harte you might be interested in
Deranged Marriage
by Faith Bleasdale, also published by Endeavour Press.

Extract from
Deranged Marriage
by Faith Bleasdale

Prologue

At some stage in life, most people make a marriage pact. This arrangement is an undertaking to marry someone as long as you are both unattached by the time you reach a certain age.

There are certain guidelines to follow when you are entering such a pact:


You should be much younger than the deadline you set as the marriage-pact age. This gives both parties ample time to find their destined life partners before the agreement expiry date.


It has to be a verbal commitment. No lawyers need be involved in this type of contract.


Both parties should feel vulnerable and unloved before entering the agreement.


Both parties must be intoxicated.

If you adhere to these simple guidelines, then you have made a successful marriage pact. However, the rules do not end there. They carry on into the aftermath of the ‘deal’:


Once made, it must be forgotten. A distant memory, only recalled when you are both happily married to other people.


The main condition is that once made, you do not ever intend to carry out the pact. Because destiny will wash your true love up on to your shore. It’s a bit like panic-buying: when you hear there’s going to be a shortage of something, you buy because you have to, not because you want to.

Take a word from the wise, as my mother would say, because I am now wise. I was twenty when I made my marriage pact. Without knowing the rules, I failed to adhere to some of them. Yes, I was drunk, as was he. I was vulnerable, as was he. I wasn’t in love with him; he wasn’t in love with me. We had set a ten-year deadline—adequate time to find the true loves of our lives. However, we failed, by ignoring the simplest of the rules: we didn’t make a verbal agreement, we produced a written one.

We didn’t stop there, we rolled drunkenly to the local off-licence with it and asked the man behind the counter to witness the ‘document’. Looking back, I think we took the intoxication rule a tad too far. Afterwards, we left our wayward path, returned to the rules, and forgot about it.

Then, one fateful day, it all came back to haunt me in the most unimaginable way.