Never Too Late (8 page)

whether it was worth trying to sneak into Bishop’s Lounge

Bar for an illicit vodka or whether they’d be thrown out

before they got beyond the golden syrup-coloured tongue

and groove pine that now decorated the lounge.

On Boxing Day, the monument was where the local

hunt started and at ten in the morning the place would be

thronged with stamping, snorting horses, aching to go,

Tonight it was deserted; the biting December wind and

torrential rain had driven away even the hardiest villager.

They drove down the hill past the row of pretty terraced

cottages that faced the pub and past the butcher’s shop with

its familiar red and white awning. Over the stone bridge, past

the schoolhouse and up the other side of the hill to where

the Lodge stood alongside vast, crumbling stone gate posts

with an ancient oak tree standing sentinel beside them.

As houses went, Olivia’s old home was beautiful, if totally rundown. A medium-sized Georgian building with an overgrown box hedge in front of it, the Lodge was an almost exact replica of the big house which had stood a : mile further up the tree-lined avenue.

The big house was long gone and a fledgling estate of

mock-Tudor houses stood in its place now. Olivia’s parents hated the estate, grumbling at how the residents ruined the area.

Looking at the huge unswept piles of leaves clogging up

the drive outside the Lodge, and at the loose slates ready to

slide off the roof, Olivia thought it was definitely a case of

the pot calling the kettle black.

‘Are we there?’ asked Sasha, sitting up and rubbing her

eyes sleepily at the sound of Stephen putting the handbrake

on.

‘Yes, honey, we’re here,’ Olivia said fondly. ‘It’s very wet, so let’s get your raincoat and hat on.’

She ignored Stephen, whose face resembled a French

aristocrat’s about to see the guillotine for the first time.

Carefully tucking Sasha’s silky hair under her furry brown

hat, Olivia spoke gently to her. Sasha was always a little

grumpy when she woke up and needed gentle handling.

‘We’re going to see Granny and Granddad and they’ve

got lots of lovely presents for you for Christmas.’ I hope,

she thought to herself, knowing how useless her parents

were at remembering things. ‘And I know that Santa has

lots of special presents for you too because you’re such a

good little girl …’

‘Ready?’ interrupted Stephen brusquely.

‘Yes.’

They ran to the front door, Olivia clutching Sasha’s hand

and trying to hold her own rain hat on at the same time.

Amazingly, her mother was watching out for them and

threw open the front door as they reached it.

‘My dears,’ croaked Sybil de Were in her forty cigarettes-a-day voice. A skinny white-haired apparition in

a long, tweedy skirt worn with a polo-necked jumper and

moth-eaten pink shawl draped around her shoulders, she

gestured them into the gloomy hallway with a hand

holding a half-smoked cigarette.

‘Do come in. Excuse the cold. The heating’s off. Blasted

thing went yesterday and we can’t get anyone to fix it.’

Olivia didn’t have to look at her husband to know that

his face had darkened to French-aristo-looking-Mp-at-theguillotine-blade-and-listening-to-the-drum-roll expression.

Still holding Sasha’s hand, she went into the hall, feeling

a blast of cold air hit her. Cold air mingled with the

combined scent of cat pee, mothballs and unaired rooms.

Wonderful. If she didn’t die of pneumonia first, Stephen

would kill her with rage. How she loved Christmas.

CHAPTER THREE

Cara opened one glued-up hazel eye sleepily and stared at the alarm clock. Only five to eight. Good. Stretching an arm out from under her blue-striped duvet, she thumped the snooze button, rolled over and went back to sleep.

Nine minutes later, the clock erupted again, its shrill tone dragging her from a wonderful dream which involved a juggernaut, a giant tennis racket and her boss, Bernard. In the dream, Cara was standing at the edge of the motorway, wielding the tennis racket as she back-handed Bernard into the path of the juggernaut. Satisfying wasn’t the word for it. Why did you always wake up at the best bit of dreams? Cara wondered as she rolled over on to her back, raked a strand of tangled black hair from her face and toyed with the idea of getting up.

Only last week she’d been on the verge of an orgasmic five a.m. encounter with George Clooney when the burglar alarm in the flat next door had gone off; destroying any hope of getting George’s naked manly arms around her. Talk about coitus interruptus.

‘Cara!’ yelled a voice. It was Phoebe. Are you up yet? You’ll be late.’

Since she’d fallen in lust with the bureau de change

man who worked at the counter beside her, Phoebe had

been sickeningly keen on getting up and going into work

in the morning, Cara thought gloomily.

Until he’d arrived on the scene - ‘He shouldn’t be

working in the bank. He should be in films,’ Phoebe

drooled regularly - her flatmate had been just as bad at

getting up as Cara.

They’d spent many companionable mornings cannoning

sleepily off each other in the cramped avocado green

bathroom, grabbing tights, knickers and bras from the line

they’d haphazardly erected over the bath. Well, Phoebe

had grabbed tights. As one of the most junior graphic

designers in Yoshi Advertising, Cara worked right at the

back of the building where no client ever set foot, so she

and her two lowly colleagues got away with wearing very

un-office-like clothes - in Cara’s case, her ancient art

school flea market stuff, none of which required barely

black ten deniers. Or even ironing, for that matter.

At least when Phoebe had been similarly workshy,

they’d had time for breakfast. As she was always the

slightly more organised of the two flatmates, Phoebe was

in charge of getting the Pop Tarts ready for their hasty

departure: two each to be munched on the jog down

Leinster Road to the bus.

However, for the past month, Phoebe had been legging

it out of the flat by ten past eight so she was on time to get

to the counter beside Mr Bureau dc Change for a little

pre-work chit-chat. And Cara, who needed to be shouted

at to get up, tended to doze off again so that when she did wake up, she barely had time to wash the previous day’s mascara traces off her face, never mind stick the Pop Tarts

in the temperamental toaster.

‘Cara!’ roared Phoebe. ‘I’m going. ‘Bye.’

She’d better get up, Cara thought dozily. It was the last

day of work before Christmas and Bernard Redmond had promised he’d dock the wages of anyone who skived off after the Christmas drinks party in Bellamy’s last night. He

was such a sadist he meant it too. It had been a good night,

though, she thought. Well, the bits she could remember

had been good. Those last Tequila Slammers had been a

mistake definitely. But her head didn’t feel too bad …

She stretched languorously. So did the other person in

the bed, one hairy limb reaching Cara’s long leg and

rubbing up against hers lasciviously. Shocked, she shrieked

as if she’d been electrocuted and jumped out of bed so fast

that the duvet lifted off the bed, creating a breeze that

redistributed all the dust in the room.

Who was in bed with her? What the hell had she done

the night before? And, Jesus, Cara thought as a wave of numbing pain ripped through her skull like a thousand drums being pummelled in unison, her head hurt.

‘Whadidya do that for?’ muttered a voice she knew all

too well. ‘It’s freezing.’ The figure in the bed huddled the

duvet around it again.

The small hairs on the back of Cara’s neck reverted to

their normal position, although the throbbing in her skull

continued unabated. Eric. She’d slept with Eric. Again. She

wanted to kill herself

But there was no need, Cara thought dismally as she

slumped down on the side of the bed and stared at the

fluff-covered floorboards she hadn’t hoovered for at least

two months. Everyone in the office would kill her when

they found out.

The folks at Yoshi Advertising never missed a chance to

poke fun at somebody and sleeping with Eric was a

surefire way to get so much fun poked at you that you

died in the process. Erie.

She hadn’t thought there was enough tequila in all of

Mexico to get her into bed with him a second time.

Although from the way her head felt, she’d imbibed a fair

percentage of Mexico’s alcohol output.

Clutching her aching head, she wondered exactly what

she’d done and why she’d had to do it with him?

The firm’s twenty-three-year-old motorbike courier, Eric

was a leather and Brylcreem disciple, believing that the

combination of his motorbike leathers and slicked-back

dark hair rendered him irresistible to women.

After a disastrous - for her - one-night fling last January

following the firm’s birthday party, Cara decided that Eric

would be much more irresistible if he occasionally hung his

tight-fitting leathers out to air and washed his hair instead

of slathering it with a fresh coat of Brylcreem every morning.

The other reason he wasn’t ideal dating material was

obvious as soon as he opened his mouth: Eric was a heavy

rock fan and always talked as if he’d stepped momentarily

out of Aerosmith’s tour bus after a serious gig.

He was also, at around five feet six, a full four inches

shorter than she was and since Eric’s taste appeared to run

to petite, sexy blondes, like the office’s dainty receptionist, Cara had no idea why he was attracted to her in the first

place. Tall, strapping - Amazonian’ Phoebe always said

loyally - and without a petite bone in her body, Cara’s

unruly ebony curls, hazel eyes, milky white freckled skin

and aggressively masculine style of dress meant she was a

million miles away from the archetypical platinum-haired

rock chick the courier usually went for. But then, she

groaned to herself, he was hardly her type either. Necessity

wasn’t the mother of strange bedfellows - booze-laden

Christmas parties were.

‘Morning, babe,’ Eric growled, sitting up in the bed and

leaning over to grab Cara’s waist with one hairy hand.

She swiftly slid off the edge of the bed and stared down

at him, looking with disgust at the designer stubble, bleary

eyes and grease-ridden hair. She’d have to boil wash the

pillowcase to get it clean.

It was then Cara realised she was wearing a faded black

T-shirt she didn’t recognise. On her tall frame, the hem

ended about four inches below her crotch, revealing

goosepimpled white legs that hadn’t seen a razor in months.

Angling her head to read it, she saw that Shake Your

Moneymaker was emblazoned on the front in huge lettering.

‘Cool, huh?’ Eric said, admiring both his T-shirt and

Cara’s nipples, which stood out like football studs courtesy

of the flat’s non-existent central heating. ‘The Black

Crowes, great band. Hey!’ He leaned out of the bed and

felt around on the floor. ‘You got any smokes? I can’t find

mine.’

‘No,’ she said waspishly, wishing she hadn’t shaken her moneymaker the night before. If only she could remember to what extent she’d shaken it.

But she couldn’t bring herself to ask Eric what they’d

done. It was quite bad enough that she’d been so plastered

that she’d brought him home in the first place, without

letting on that she’d been so drunk she didn’t even know if

they’d consummated things. Cara shivered at the thought.

Sex with Eric. Damn Pete for starting that bloody Tequila

Slammer chicken game. And damn herself twice as much

for participating in it.

There was also the knotty question of contraception.

Cara desperately wanted to ask Eric if he’d actually used

anything. Her sex life was so non-existent that there was

no point being on the pill and she’d never had a cap or

IUD. In fact, her last sexual encounter had been nearly a

year previously. With Eric. Which meant a spur-of-the

tequila fling with him could result in more than just a sour

taste in her mouth. Her head throbbed at the thought.

Please let them have used something.

‘Comin’ back to bed, babe?’ asked Eric, patting the

sheets invitingly.

She glared at him, furious with herself and therefore

furious with him too. ‘You’ve got to go, Eric. I’m late for

work. I don’t have time for this.’

He gave her a cheesy grin. ‘That wasn’t what you were

saying last night,’ he smirked. ‘Come on, everybody’ll be

late this morning. Everyone’ll expect us to be late too …’

he added meaningfully ‘… after the way you were all

over me last night.’

Cara’s stomach lurched. So she’d thrown herself at the

motorbike courier in full view of the entire firm? Wonderful.

At least she’d started the festive season with a bang.

‘Come on,’ he added huskily. ‘For a big girl, you sure are

hot. Let’s have another go on the merry go round, babe.’

Me started to drag the duvet down to waist level, no doubt

to display his manly charms.

Cara felt the nausea part of her hangover kick into