Hobb's Cottage: A Short Story (5 page)
And I never even asked his name…
“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” Susie charges though the coffee shop like a paratrooper and hurls herself next to me on the sofa. My daydream evaporates and for a split second I’m totally thrown to be back in the coffee shop rather than on the cold railway station.
“Aren’t these totally worth being late for?” Rummaging through her bags Susie plucks out a pair of platforms that even the Spice Girls in their hey day would have baulked at.
“Let me go and buy us some lunch,” I say hastily, knowing from experience that she’s about to unpack every single item. “Latte? Cheese and ham panini?
“Lovely, but a skinny latte, please! I’m on a diet.”
I smile. Susie lost all the weight she carried at school a long time ago but old habits die hard. I leave her gloating over her shopping but when I return she’s peering at my notes, her brow corrugated with concentration.
“Why can’t you read
Heat
like everybody else? You’re such a brain box.”
“Stop talking and eat your lunch,” I order, plonking down my tray. “I’ve got to get back to work soon.”
“Work? But it’s Saturday! Your day off remember? We’re going to Oxford Street and then clubbing in Ealing. You promised!”
“Suze, I can’t afford a day off right now. There’s an exhibition coming up and the post of Assistant Directorship of the Egyptology Department in the offing. I’m flat out.”
“I don’t know how you can bear it in there with those mummies,” shudders Susie. “It’d creep me out, especially if I was on my own at night. I’d be pooing myself.”
Late at night has to be my favourite time at the museum. No visitors and no noise. Just my lab, my research and me. Perfect.
“What on earth would you be worried about?”
“Seeing a ghost, of course! The MOL must be crawling with them.”
Susie loves all things paranormal. Our flat’s crammed with crystals and psychic magazines. Her idea of heaven is to curl up in front of paranormal
TV show
Totally Spooked
and watch celebrity medium Lilac Delaney trying to commune with the dead, although why any dead people would want to talk to a woman who wears more makeup than a drag queen and rolls her eyes like a dying horse is beyond me.
“Suze,” I say patiently, “there’s no such thing as ghosts. When you’re dead you’re dead.”
“So
you
say, but nobody’s actually proven that ghosts don’t exist, have they?”
“That’s a fair point,” I concede, “but since I spend most of my time in Museum of London which, according to you, is crawling with ghosts surely I’d have seen something by now? Maybe a mummy stumbling down the corridor like something out of Scooby Doo?”
“OK, I agree that sounds a bit daft.” Looking abashed Susie returns her attention to her lunch. “So, if you’re not coming shopping I suppose you’re going to blow me out tonight as well? No clubbing in Ealing?”
“I’ll be there,” I promise, rashly. “It just might be a bit later that’s all. I promised Simon I’d go through some notes with him.”
Susie’s eyebrows shoot into her fringe. “Sexy Dr. Simon? Is there something I should know?”
“Simon’s just a colleague.” I say as I do an impression of an Edam Cheese. Drat. Why do red heads blush so easily? It’s so unfair. As if corpse white skin and freckles aren’t enough to contend with.
Susie stretches out her hands and pretends to warm them on my scarlet face.
“Wow! Look at the colour of you! You really fancy him, don’t you?”
“What are we? Fifteen?”
“Don’t change the subject, Cleo Rose Carpenter. This is
me
you’re talking to remember? You looked just like that when you fancied Duncan from
Blue
!”
That’s the problem with having a best friend who’s known you since you were eleven - you can’t get away with anything. I’ve spent years trying to live down my embarrassing teenage crushes and fashion errors, or at least live them down as much as I can when I have Susie on hand to remind me. Thanks goodness I never told her about my Christmas stranger. She’d still be on about him now.
Unable to meet her gaze I look down at the table, suddenly fascinated by the crumbs scattered across the sticky surface. If Susie takes one look at me now she’ll know the truth, the painful, awkward, unprofessional truth, which is that I totally and utterly fancy my newest colleague. Since he arrived I’ve struggled to focus on anything else. This so is not like me! Normally I am totally career focused and, give or take a few dates now and then, pretty happy with being single. Life might be a little lonely sometimes but at least it’s under control. My pulse never races and I certainly don’t find myself checking my hair and makeup in the display cases every five minutes just in case I
accidentally
bump into somebody. I’ve never regarded any of my colleagues as anything other than respected academics, probably because they’re only slightly younger than some of our exhibits, so to suddenly be working with an Egyptologist who’s not only brainy but also sex on a stick has totally thrown me.
“You do fancy him!”
I admit defeat. Of course I fancy our new Egyptologist, not that there’s much mileage in it because every female with a pulse in the MOL fancies Simon Welsh.
“Come on, babes, ask him out!” Susie urges, “He sounds perfect. After all, what are the chances of you ever meeting a fit guy who’s as obsessed with dead Egyptians as you?”
She has a point. The odds of my winning the Euro millions are probably higher and I don’t even buy tickets. But ask Simon out? No way! Imagine if he said no? Just thinking about how humiliating this would be makes my skin prickle with horror.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Chicken,” says Susie.
She’s right. I’m such a chicken it’s a miracle Colonel Sanders doesn’t coat me in eleven secret spices and serve me up in a KFC bargain bucket. When it comes to guys I’m useless. Unlike Susie, who can flirt for England, I just get quieter and quieter. They probably think I’m really rude when the truth is I’m just shy.
Dr. Simon Welsh is the newest addition to our faculty. I don’t think anyone’s arrival has ever caused such as stir at the MOL, not even the exhibits for the Tutankhamen exhibition! Not only does he have very recent field experience and an impressive list of published papers behind him but he’s also Calvin Klein model gorgeous. When he was introduced at his first department meeting our Departmental Assistant, Dawn, was practically drooling all over the minutes and her eyelids batting so much she looked deranged. Even our secretary looked flustered and gave him all the custard creams. I’d kept my face impassive and listened intently to Dr. Welsh’s presentation but I hadn’t heard a word because I’d been far too busy sneaking glimpses at those sleepy denim blue eyes and his slow, sexy smile. When a lock of corn coloured hair flopped across his face I had to practically sit on my hands to stop myself leaping forward to brush it away.
So for weeks I’ve been a nervous wreck. I’ve done my best to avoid Simon but on the few occasions we have met my tongue’s turned itself into a pretzel and I‘ve hardly been able to say a word. Which is ridiculous. I’m twenty-nine! Surely I’ll be back to normal soon?
“Anyway, never mind Simon,” continues Susie, who knows me well enough not to push the issue. “I’m your oldest friend and as such I deserve some quality time. You even blew me out on my birthday last week so you have some serious grovelling to do.”
“I was working!”
“That’s a crap excuse but because I love you I’m going to let you off,” she says sternly. “But on one condition.”
Susie’s conditions are not for the faint hearted. The last one involved me tackling a pile of ironing so high that NASA could have used it for the Mars mission.
“Which is?”
My best friend reaches into her bag and pulls out two tickets. Passing one to me she says quickly, “Annie from work got them for my birthday but she’s going away and I really don’t want to go on my own. Please come with me, Cleo! Please!”
“Lilac Delaney: An evening of clairvoyance and mediumship,” I read. “No way, Susie. You have got to be joking.”
“Come on, Cleo, please! You’re always letting me down.”
“Just because I don’t always want to join in your social whirl doesn’t mean I’m letting you down. I pay all my bills and the rent on time, don’t I? And who bailed you out last month when you’d forgotten to pay the council tax and spent the money on some ridiculous new bag?”
“It was really funky,” mutters Susie, looking guilty.
“So
you
get a funky bag and
I
get to pay the council tax? I think that makes me the world’s best flat mate.”
“You’d be an even better one if you came to see Lilac Delaney with me. What have you got to lose? It’s not as though you actually believe in any of it.” Susie narrows her blue eyes thoughtfully. “Unless you’re scared that something’ll happen and you’ll be proved wrong, Dr. Cleo oh so skeptical Carpenter?”
“Hardly,” I snort. “I just don’t want to see you get ripped off, that’s all. And before you say it I know you believe this woman’s genuine, you poor deluded girl.”
“So prove me wrong? If we go and it’s total bollocks I promise I’ll agree with you, forever. I’ll never ever mention paranormal stuff again!”
Because this sounds too good to resist I find myself agreeing to accompany her to see the famous psychic. All in the name of research, obviously. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I will be proven right.
In twenty-nine years the only thing that hasn’t let me down is my research.
Ruth Saberton is the best-selling author of
Katy Carter Wants a Hero
and
Escape for the Summer
. She also writes upmarket commercial fiction under the pen names Jessica Fox, Georgie Carter and Holly Cavendish.
Born and raised in the UK, Ruth is now based in Grand Cayman for two years. What an adventure!
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