An Autumn Crush (6 page)

Like the whole Miller family, Steve wished that Guy would find a good woman and settle down. He was sure and steady and built for having a family to work for and enjoy. And he really deserved a
bit of happiness after all the shit he had been through. Different sort of shit to what he himself had been through, but shit all the same.

Guy swung his giant holdall over his shoulder. ‘If I tell you, not a word, and I mean not one bloody word to Juliet.’

‘You can trust me to be discreet,’ returned Steve, mortally affronted.

‘Aye, well I can’t trust
her
,’ said Guy. In the School of Indiscretion, his twin sister was Headmistress. A horrible memory flashed past of his secret Valentine’s
card to Michaela Hall being outed (design courtesy of
Blue Peter
two nights previously: cornflakes packet, sticky-back plastic, school glue, red poster paint and Trill budgie food). He
couldn’t listen to Chrissie Hynde singing ‘Talk of the Town’ without breaking out into a cold sweat.

‘So, what have I not to tell Juliet then?’ said Steve, at the end of his patience. He pushed open the door which creaked arthritically and they walked out into the warm mid-August
night air.

‘It’s this new flat-mate of Juliet’s. I made a right arse of myself last night in front of her.’

‘Oh aye, what did you do? Trip over the coffee-table and land at her feet?’ Steve laughed.

The look that Guy threw him told him he wasn’t far off the truth.

Steve listened to Guy’s recollection of their first meeting. The way Floz looked small and vulnerable, snuggled up in a spotty dressing-gown, and how, just for a moment, he’d had a
panicky flashback to Lacey. And he finished up by telling Steve how he’d made the most unchivalrous and puerile exit imaginable.

‘It’s not exactly a big deal, is it?’ said Steve. He knew Guy’s type of woman – long and leggy with golden hair, give or take the unfortunate blip that was tiny,
dark Lacey Robinson. ‘Anyway, why are you so bothered what a short bird dressed up like a Dalmatian thinks of you?’

Guy exhaled a long, heavy breath. ‘Because she was bloody gorgeous.’

Just as Guy was admitting to Steve how blown away he had been by the sight of her even with no make-up and big red eyes, Floz’s mobile rang and she picked it up
immediately on seeing the name on the screen.

‘I need ten really saucy Valentine’s cards prontissimo,’ said Lee Status, his voice breezing down the line with his usual confidence. ‘At least two blow-job jokes and a
few “nice-tits” poems, if you don’t mind.’

Floz laughed. ‘No worries, Lee. When do you want them for?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Don’t you want any nice, sweet, secret-admirer ones?’ suggested Floz.

‘Nope. The youth of today are sexually aggressive and don’t bother with foreplay. They head straight for the genitals.’

‘Okay,’ sighed Floz. ‘I’ll have them done for you tonight.’

‘Thursday morning’s the deadline really,’ he said, and the phone cut off immediately. Lee Status was a busy man with no time for excess chit-chat.

Her head didn’t begin whirring into action straight away, as it usually did after a brief was received. Instead Floz wondered how she would feel receiving a card telling her that she had
nice tits. She must be getting terribly old because it wouldn’t really have made her melt, even if George Clooney had sent it to her. Surely Valentine’s cards should be romantic, not
too slushy, with a soupçon of spice – like the one Nick had sent from Canada. A white background with a tiny heart on the front and inside the words:
I just want to pick you up,
bring you over here and love you.
Her own heart flared at the thought of it and she stamped it down again. No point in nudging those thoughts back to life.

She’d not really understood what had happened there. Why a romance full of such honesty and promise had just ended so abruptly, why he wouldn’t answer his phone or reply to her
emails. It had been eighteen months since he cut off all contact but, as she found out, from her thoughts merely brushing against the memory of that card, the hurt lingered still.

She obviously scared men. She only had to think back to the previous evening and that first encounter with Guy Miller. It had taken mere seconds of being in her presence to have him tearing off
at warp speed with such a look of horror on his face that she’d had to check in the mirror to make sure she hadn’t suddenly grown snakes on her head. That scene had haunted her ever
since. Had he seen the flash of attraction in her eyes and been revolted by it? Or scared he’d be turned into stone? Well, just in case, the next time she encountered the big twerp, she would
show him that his idiotic behaviour hadn’t affected her in the slightest and that she had no designs on him whatsoever. She would be as aloof as an ice-queen.

She opened up a file on her laptop and named it
Val-risqué
then let her mind wander down the avenue of smutty jokes. Not for the first time she thought that maybe her destiny was
to write about love for other people, and never receive it herself.

Juliet floated through the front door of Blackberry Court the next evening with Coco ‘in tow’. She had just spent the last hour in the illustrious personal space of
Piers Winstanley-Black and his cloud of expensive aftershave. She was sure his pupils were dilated when they made contact over the
Brownlee vs Goldman
file. It wasn’t her imagination,
he was edging closer to her net, she could feel it. But like a patient fisherman, she would wait until her trout came near enough to tickle.

And to top a very nice day, the delicious aroma of stew curled up Juliet’s nostrils as she pushed open the flat door.

‘Oh. My. God. What is that beautiful smell?’

‘Beef hash and dumplings,’ answered Floz, who was sitting at the dining-table scribbling work-notes. ‘I made enough for a few helpings if you’re interested.’

‘Oh, you divine creature,’ said Coco, kicking off his shoes. ‘I’m deffo staying for tea. I’ve only had a Crunch Corner all day. Are we having cake afterwards? I
should have desserts to hand at all times with my sugar levels. Marlene’s off sick and we had a right rush on so I couldn’t even run out to Greggs.’

‘I knew you’d be a perfect flat-mate, Floz,’ smiled Juliet, sliding off her stilettos and wiggling her toes. And that was the truth too. This was only Floz’s seventh
evening in Blackberry Court but it seemed as if she had been there forever. The flat felt warmer and it was so nice to come home to the lights on and company and smells like these.

‘I thought Guy had been round again and brought us dinner,’ said Juliet. She saw a little head-shake from Floz when she mentioned his name and wondered why they seemed to have taken
such an instant aversion to each other. She didn’t expect them to start snogging when they met, but neither did she expect whatever had happened at their initial meet to scar them both for
life.

When Floz mentioned that Guy had popped around on Monday night, she hadn’t said much more than he had forgotten she had moved in and was embarrassed by that. No, he hadn’t introduced
himself properly, in fact he had been in and out within a minute. Yes, Floz had presumed from his physique and looks that he was Juliet’s twin and not some burglar who happened to have a key.
Juliet noticed how clipped Floz’s tone was as she recounted the story. For whatever reason, she hadn’t been impressed by Guy. Juliet wondered if he had had his scary Heathcliff face on
when they met.

Juliet being Juliet had then rung Guy on his mobile and demanded to know why he hadn’t told her he’d been around and met her new flat-mate.

‘I’ve been too busy!’ he snapped.

‘What – helping
Steve Feast
out with his stupid wrestling?’ huffed Juliet. She had a special tone reserved for her brother’s best friend – one of disdain and
dislike, but tempered with the slightest begrudging gratitude for all he had done for Guy in his dark days.

‘Anyway, what did you think?’ she went on.

‘Think about what?’ hedged Guy, not wanting to get drawn into verdicts.

‘Floz – what did you think about her?’

‘I didn’t think anything about her,’ said Guy. ‘She was half-undressed when I burst in so I made my excuses and left.’

And he refused to be drawn on any more detail than that. From this, Juliet deduced that Floz hadn’t made an impression on him either. Which was a shame because he was far too nice to be
alone and it might have been good for them both if there had been a mutual attraction. Even if Guy was the boy she used to batter with her Tiny Tears doll and fight with over their jointly owned
Stylophone. (She always won, despite the size difference because it was imprinted in his DNA: ‘Thou shalt always be gentle with the fairer sex.’)

There were so many ostentatious sods out there charming the drawers off women – and gay men, as Juliet had seen with the disaster that was Coco’s love-life – with frilly false
promises that Guy and his quiet non-flash solidity was totally overlooked. Correction, with his height and build he couldn’t fail to pull in a first glance, but he never managed to secure the
second – and that was the important one.

Juliet popped the cork out of a bottle of Cab Sav and poured three generous glasses.

‘Here, stop working and have a swig,’ she said, nosying over Floz’s shoulder. ‘What are you writing?’

‘Valentine’s cards,’ replied Floz. ‘Smutty ones for Status Kwo.’

‘ “I think you’re super smashing, I just love you to bits. I cannot wait to kiss you. And squeeze your gorgeous XXXs”,’ Coco read over her other shoulder.
‘What a brilliant job you have, Floz.’

‘Not exactly Keats, is it?’ she smiled back at him.

‘It would work for me,’ mused Juliet. ‘If Piers Winstanley-Black sent it, anyway.’

‘Who’s Piers Winstanley-Black?’ asked Floz.

‘You haven’t told her about PWB yet?’ Coco feigned a faint. ‘You must be the only person in the universe who isn’t aware of his name.’

‘Ignore him. Piers is only the most gorgeous man in the universe,’ replied Juliet with a girly sigh. ‘Solicitor, thirty-nine wonderful years old, eyes the colour of a Caribbean
sea and lips like red pillows.’

‘Yuk,’ said Coco. ‘You were doing so well until you got to the lips part, Ju.’

‘Single?’ enquired Floz.

‘Absolutely,’ said Juliet with vehemence. ‘I don’t lust after any taken property. Not after what happened to me.’

‘What happened to you, Juliet?’

‘You haven’t told her that either!’ gasped Coco. He sank onto the sofa and got ready for the floorshow.

‘Where to begin?’ laughed Juliet, reaching in the drawer behind her and pulling out a half-eaten box of Thorntons which she handed over to Floz to choose from. Even in that they
matched – Juliet preferred all the pralines, Floz didn’t. Jack Sprat and his wife didn’t have anything on them.

‘Well, I was married to Roger for six years,’ Juliet began. ‘Last July – two weeks after our anniversary, when he bonked me in every room of our brand new three-bedroomed
house – I came home early from work to find him rather courteously preparing to pack a suitcase for me.’

Floz’s mouth dropped open.

‘Apparently, our marriage was over. And it was all my fault.’ There was a brief pause whilst Juliet grabbed a couple of pralines and Floz’s mouth sprang further open.
‘Roger explained that all the little things that had once attracted him to me had become big things that revolted him. Somewhere along the line I had ceased to be amusing and become raucous.
Stopped being saucy and become vulgar. I was no longer a voluptuous goddess but a fat cow. That was the reason, he said, why he was having an affair with my best friend, Hattie.’

‘
Our
best friend,’ amended Coco. ‘We had all been at school together since nursery. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t spotted it. My intuition is usually as sharp
as Sinbad the sailor’s cutlass.’

‘Blimey,’ said Floz, for want of a better word. ‘What did you do?’ She wouldn’t have fancied being the ‘best friend’ after Juliet had found that
out.

‘I let him have his say, of course,’ purred Juliet, in the manner of Fenella Fielding in
Carry On Screaming.
‘Then I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and chucked
him and the empty suitcase out of the front door. Then I threw the contents of his wardrobe out of the bedroom window for him so
he
could pack
his
suitcase instead of mine. Oh, then I
rang one of the solicitors I work with.’

Karren Brookside was an evil Bitch Queen from hell. She didn’t just get blood for her (female only) clients, she got the veins, arteries, all internal organs and both testicles. Then she
served them up on gold plates with a nice 1945 Château Pétrus. Karren Brookside made Hannibal Lecter look like Anne of Green Gables.

‘Roger’s balls were in his wallet – so that was the best place to kick him,’ said Juliet, who seemed to be enjoying the story of her divorce. ‘He was begging me to
take him back and forget and forgive everything after a month of Karren’s savagery.’

‘But you didn’t?’

‘No, I did not,’ replied Juliet, horrified that Floz had even considered she might. Unlike her brother, Juliet had always had a great sense of self-worth, and woe betide anyone who
tried to mess with her.

Juliet had made her errors with men in the past, but once she had realized she wasn’t top of their agenda, she had cut and run. Her first boyfriend, Pete, was a nice enough bloke but when
she twigged that all those cosy nights in were because he didn’t want his mates to realize he was seeing a rather large lady, he was history. Then there was Gary, who never turned up without
bringing chocolates and spent a fortune on taking her out for meals, insisting she have dessert. She thought she had landed a lottery win to find a man who celebrated her curves so
enthusiastically. Then she discovered his secret stash of American videos: huge women-whales being fed cream cakes, unable to move and totally dependent on their feeder. After finishing with him,
it took her weeks to look an eclair in the face again.