An Autumn Crush (7 page)

‘What about you, Floz?’ asked Coco. ‘How’s your love-life been?’

Floz looked a bit shy to have the spotlight shone on her.

‘Couple of boyfriends in my teens but nothing that serious, married for ten years to Chris. We just drifted apart and divorced three years ago.’

That was a bit boring, thought both Juliet and Coco, who had been hoping for more of a trade-off of information. Coco pressed for more.

‘How do you just drift apart?’

‘I don’t know. We just fell out of love with each other.’ Floz shrugged shyly.

‘No one since?’ poked Juliet.

‘No one,’ replied Floz too quickly. ‘What about you? Anyone since Roger?’

‘No,’ said Juliet flatly. ‘No, no one since him – I’ve been saving myself for Piers Winstanley-Black. But a year is a long time to go without sex. If we ever do get
it together he’ll find my fanny full of cobwebs,’ she chuckled, making Coco shriek with disgust. ‘I don’t know how you’ve done three years of celibacy,
Floz.’

‘I’ve only done a month,’ said Coco. ‘And that’s been bad enough.’

‘What’s your story, Coco?’ asked Floz. ‘Is that your real name?’

‘It is now,’ he nodded. ‘You can tell her if you like, Ju.’

Coco covered his ears whilst Juliet leaned over to Floz and whispered, ‘His real name is Raymond, but he hates it. One must only ever refer to him as Coco.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Floz, who couldn’t think of anyone who looked less like a Raymond. Probably because one of her headmasters had been called that and he was a huge, square man
who played rugby and spoke with a Lee Marvin voice. ‘Is that because you’ve got eyes the colour of cocoa?’

‘Floz, I’m in love with you,’ said Coco, clasping his hands together with delight. ‘What a lovely thing to say.’

‘No, it’s because he wants to be Coco Chanel,’ said Juliet. ‘His shop is covered with pictures of her. Plus it’s his favourite perfume.’

‘Anyway, back to my love-life: awful.’ Coco ripped a tissue out of a nearby box.

‘He falls in love at the drop of a hat. And they’re all dysfunctional bastards,’ cut in Juliet. ‘He couldn’t pick a good man if he landed in his lap with a
recommendation from God Himself.’

‘I don’t know what happened with Darren,’ said Coco. ‘One minute everything was fine, the next he wouldn’t answer my texts or take my phone calls. He just
disappeared. No explanation, no goodbye – nothing.’ His eyes filled up with bright tears.

‘Silence is a cruel weapon to use,’ Floz said gently.

‘I know,’ agreed Juliet. ‘Not having the decency to say “we’re over” to someone is gutless and vicious. And Darren would have known that Coco would rip
himself apart over it to find the reason why it happened. Not that he cared enough to spare him that.’

‘You’ll have heard this before, but you really are worth more than that sort of treatment.’ Floz’s voice was soft and kind. ‘It’s not respectful – and
do you really want a man who treats you with such little thought?’

‘I know,’ said Coco, dabbing his eyes. ‘At least, my head knows, my heart has a little catching up to do. Of course, he may just be taking some time away to sort his feelings
out. Men are like elastic bands, apparently . . .’

‘Coco, what possible excuse could he have? Unless he was the new Terry Waite and had both hands tied to a radiator by international terrorists, there is absolutely no excuse at all for
that sort of crap behaviour,’ said Juliet, a little impatiently now because they’d had this conversation too many times. ‘I can’t understand why you’d want him back
anyway. If he did have the absolute cheek to turn up in your life again, I would tell him to f—’

Coco clamped his hands over his ears as Juliet launched into a diatribe.

‘Closure helps to move us on,’ said Floz, counterbalancing Juliet’s Ian Paisley-type rant with her own softer perspective. ‘It’s hard when you don’t get
it.’

‘Coco, I’ve told you before: if they don’t give you closure, you have to take it for yourself. His gutless, bastard silence is all the sign of closure that you need.’
Aware that her words were hard, Juliet put her arm around Coco and pulled him into her shoulder. ‘Floz is right, you are worth so much more. And your dream man is out there somewhere with
your name tattooed on his arse.’

Coco half-laughed, half-cried at that.

‘Least he wasn’t a pervert like the one before.’ Juliet winked at Floz. She knew telling that particular story would cheer Coco up.

‘Perfume rep. Courted me, moved in with me and then decided he wasn’t sure if he was fully gay. He wanted to sleep with a woman to see if he’d like it. How bloody disgusting
can you get,’ snarled Coco through gritted teeth.

It made Floz giggle to see Coco shivering at the thought of such a major perversion.

‘I think we all need a decent boyfriend,’ Juliet said, remembering Coco’s recent idea. ‘
Yeeesss
indeedy. Let’s sign onto a site and find some hot males. They
are as rare as rocking-horse dung at this age.’ She made a grab for her laptop on the bookshelf, opened it and logged on.

‘Try
singlebods.com
,’ chirped Coco. ‘That’s what Marlene used. She said it’s the best one at the moment.’

‘So you don’t fancy your brother’s friend Steve then?’ Floz asked Juliet.

‘Steve Feast? You are so joking.’ Juliet laughed hard. ‘He’s a complete and utter knob. Always has been.’

‘He went to school with us too,’ explained Coco. ‘He was always pulling Ju’s plaits or running off with her hat so she would chase him.’

‘And he grew up to be even more puerile,’ continued Juliet, topping up the wine glasses. ‘I used to see him in pubs picking up two women at once on his shoulders to prove how
strong he was or showing off his muscles with cut-off T-shirts.’

‘He’s all right, really,’ put in Coco.

‘No he isn’t, Coco. He’s a big ponce. Always chasing women and none of them stick around very long – which tells you something.’

‘He’s been a very good friend to Guy,’ Coco added – then, from the look that Juliet threw at him, realized he shouldn’t have said that. ‘Whoops.’ He put
his fingertips to his lips.

Floz wondered what Coco had said that was so wrong, but didn’t feel as if she should ask.

Juliet pulled her focus back to the job in hand. ‘Okay. Right, you go first, Floz.’

‘Not a chance,’ Floz said. Her voice was as firm as her vocal cords would allow. ‘I don’t want to do internet dating.’

But Juliet didn’t hear her. She was on a mission now. ‘What’s your ideal man look like?’ she asked.

‘I’m really not interested—’

‘Oh please,’ said Coco, giddy as a kipper now and clapping his hands excitedly. ‘It’ll be a laugh, especially if we all do it. We’ll put your details in
first.’

‘Not interested in the slightest.’ Floz was adamant. Juliet, however, had a bit of a problem hearing the word ‘no’. She tried a different tack to persuade Floz to join
in.

‘Okay then, humour me: if you were to do this, what would he look like? I promise I won’t do anything with the information. I’m just being nosy.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘Okay then.’ Floz tried to think. If she painted her ideal man, Juliet would pick up on the fact that she was describing Guy. Guy who obviously hated her on sight so much that he
backed off from her like Count Dracula did from Van Helsing. So she lied and plumped for everything that was
not
Guy sodding Miller. ‘Not too tall, fair hair . . . brown
eyes.’

‘Dress?’

‘Suit.’

‘Job?’

‘Something in an office, I think.’

‘Oh please do it with us,’ begged Coco. ‘It will be such a laugh.’

‘No,’ said Floz, with steel in her voice. ‘But if you two are adamant, then take my advice: be very careful. Don’t pick someone too far away to meet up with, and when you
do click with someone, arrange to see them as soon as you can. You don’t want to fall for someone who doesn’t really exist as they paint themselves. Meeting them is the only way to
determine if you really fancy each other or not.’

‘Oooh, you sound as if you’re speaking from experience, Floz,’ said Juliet, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

‘No,’ returned Floz. ‘I’m speaking from much reading of magazine articles, much watching of
Jeremy Kyle
and good old-fashioned commonsense. Be very, very
careful.’

Floz lay in bed that night unable to get to sleep because something had awoken inside her. Feelings she had pressed down on for so long sprang up like an escapee jack-in-a-box
and wouldn’t be squashed down again. And it was all Juliet’s brother’s fault. She couldn’t understand why he had affected her so much and why it stung that he had run off
like that. How dare he make her feel that bad about herself? She careered between hurt and anger, both emotions keeping away the possibility of any sleep. She hadn’t fancied anyone in ages
– in fact, she’d wondered if she ever would again. Then in swanned Guy Miller and made her realize that her heart was more than capable of revving up interest in someone. The trouble
was, when a heart opened, vulnerability was the first thing to rush in.

The Guy Miller episode combined with the Valentine’s brief had stirred up deeper and more dangerous memories. Thoughts of Nick Vermeer had loomed large and colourful in her head again and
would not lie still.

Two and a half years ago, she’d signed up for
languagepals.com
only to help brush up on her written German skills and pass some time in the lonely evenings after her divorce. She
wasn’t looking for romance, especially not on the internet – that infamous playground for charlatans and love-thieves. Then Canadian Nick Vermeer had hooked up with her, offering his
services.

Apart from the German, it was obvious from the first that they had nothing in common. He went hunting, owned guns and liked to fish whereas she didn’t know one end of a rod from the other.
‘I’ll teach you,’ he promised. He loved the great outdoors but her vision of hell was full of camping equipment. Yet she found herself writing to him, for hours, instant messaging
him, then after four months he rang her. She floated for hours after hearing his voice, which was exactly as she wanted it to be: a soft, masculine drawl, confident, witty and very, very sexy.

He sent letters, cards. She reciprocated, sending his letters to a post office box, because he was in the middle of selling his house in Osoyoos, a log cabin on the edge of a forest. From the
pictures he sent of the outside, she just knew that the inside would have huge fur throws over the furniture and a log fire burning in it at night.

Then Nick made plans to come over and visit her because their connection was something mad that had hit him from left field and he needed to discover if the chemistry was as much there in the
flesh as it was in their written words and voices. There was never a hint of gratuitous smut in his letters – he was a perfect gentleman – though they brimmed with the promise of
passion.

Floz had started researching where to take him when he came over. They talked excitedly on the phone about the lovely restaurants they’d eat in, going to London and taking in a show, and
the drives through the countryside they would do. If all went well, he said he would bring Floz over to Canada in the fall, because he said that if she saw it in that season, she would never leave
it. Then suddenly, just after Valentine’s Day last year, all contact from him ended. Floz had been bereft. She checked Canadian newspaper sites on the net to see if he had been injured or
killed, because surely there had to be a serious reason why he wasn’t in touch any more – but found nothing. And then she discovered that his profile had been erased from
languagepals.com
.

Yes, she knew exactly what poor Coco was going through. Even now, after all this time, the tears were too close to the surface for comfort when she thought about Nick Vermeer. They had been
intensely connected for a year and she still mourned the loss of him from her life. His disappearance had felt like a death.

Guy nursed his second pint in the Lamp. His body might have been sitting opposite Steve, but his brain was elsewhere.

‘You’re a right bundle of laughs tonight, considering you’re on a night off,’ said Steve, polishing off his drink and nudging his empty glass against his friend’s.
‘Another one?’

‘Aye, go on then,’ sighed Guy. He might as well stay here with Steve as wander back to the empty flat that was attached to the family home in Maltstone. He had never considered the
Rosehip Gardens flat as anything more than a bolt-hole, somewhere to lay his head, despite the fact that he’d been ‘laying his head’ there for too many years to think about now.
The marriage and matrimonial-home thing had eluded him so far. What happened with Lacey, ten years ago, had sent him running from life. He didn’t want to get close to a woman again and open
himself up to all that potential hurt and confusion and crippling guilt.

Then he had to go and see Floz Cherrydale.

Somehow the combination of that silly dressing-gown, her large watery eyes and a perfumed cloud of strawberries around her had set off a primal explosion inside his chest cavity, sending the
blast down to every neurone and blood vessel in his system. He had been knocked sideways into a pit so deep he doubted he’d ever be able to climb out of it.

He had replayed the scene in his head so many times that, had it been videotape, it would have snapped through over-use. His heart was fluttering like a bag of moths as he cringed afresh at the
memory of him barging into the coffee-table and sending everything scattering to the floor. He didn’t even stop to help clean up.

He exited the memory with a shudder, as Steve returned with two pints.

‘You should ask her out,’ he said.

‘Who?’ asked Guy innocently.

‘You know who I mean, you berk,’ tutted Steve. He was actually quite excited that Guy was fancying someone. He was always trying to get him to go out with Gina, who more or less
slavered like a hound over a bone whenever Guy was within touching distance. But after a lifetime of knowing him, Steve was all too aware that Guy was a man of straight lines. He wouldn’t
have gone out with anyone he didn’t fancy. He never had – not even when their hormones were raging as teenagers. Sex and affection were inextricably tangled up for him. But this was
encouraging news. Guy had seen the woman once and was already hooked. Love was a curious beast, he had to admit. Then again, that’s probably why he was in love with two very different women
himself, neither of whom would deign to give him the time of day.