Flights of Angels (28 page)

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, her voice cold and clipped, as if she might suspect him of preparing a dish with which to poison her.

‘Dinner,’ he said.

‘Oh.’

‘Wine?’

She nodded.

‘There are two glasses chilling in the fridge.’

He watched as she opened the door and took out the glasses and bottle of white. ‘Lovely,’ she said, her voice softening a little.

‘Why don’t you put your feet up. Everything’s taken care of in here.’

‘Okay,’ she said, and he watched as she sashayed into the living room, a great smug smile on her face.

Simon smiled too. Not because he was taking pleasure in cooking a meal for the woman he loved, but because he was looking forward to dessert. A dessert that was arriving at about eight o’clock.

Half an hour later, they were sat at the table eating. In typical Felicity mode, she hadn’t apologised or explained her dramatic exit earlier that day, but had dived into a conversation about the soft furnishings they simply had to have if the house was to look half-way decent. Well, it wasn’t
exactly
a conversation, because Simon’s contribution was to nod occasionally. Instead, he ate his food and watched Felicity’s pink glossed mouth moving ten to the dozen.

How could anyone become so animated when talking about cushions and curtains, he wondered? Was it a female thing? No, surely not. He’d never heard Kristen go on about pelmets and valances, and he certainly couldn’t imagine Claudie getting excited about swags and tails. It must just be a Felicity thing. There had been a time when he’d have argued with her, trying to persuade her that there was very little point in throwing hundreds of pounds worth of chintz around a modern semi, but he didn’t have the inclination tonight. Besides, he thought, his sofa would never know the pleasures of an Indian tapestried cushion.

‘So which do you prefer?’ she asked, waking him out of his reverie.

‘What?’

‘No,
which?
’ she said sarcastically. ‘Burgundy or Violet?’

‘Er, violet, definitely.’

‘You think so?’

Simon nodded. ‘Definitely.’ He felt the urge to guffaw but managed to suppress it.

‘I’m not so sure.’

He smiled to himself. She had a habit of asking for his opinion,
demanding
his opinion, and then disregarding it completely, but he didn’t care because it was ten to eight.

‘Violet really wouldn’t go with the throws I’ve got in mind,’ she said, turning round and indicating to the sofa; the sofa he felt sure Felicity would have taken with her when she’d left him seven months before if only she’d been able to fit it in her suitcase.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘burgundy’s a good colour too.’

He could see the mechanics of her mind in action. ‘You’ve got me all confused now.’

‘Don’t worry about it. It will all work itself out, I’m sure.’

She turned back round and threw him a smile. ‘You are sweet,’ she said, reaching across the table and squeezing his hand.

‘No I’m not.’

‘You are,’ she insisted, taking a sip of wine. Simon was just about to get up for a refill when he heard a car pulling up outside. He paused for a moment and, sure enough, the doorbell went.

‘Are you expecting anyone?’ Felicity asked.

Simon looked across the table at her. Her expression was soft and, for a moment, he almost forget that it could be any other way. Almost.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m expecting someone.’

‘Who?’

He walked through to the hallway and opened the door.

‘Ah! Simon!’ a huge female voice boomed from out of the darkness.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘How lovely to see you.’

‘It is no such thing.’ The woman, whose chest seemed to proceed her by several seconds, pushed past him and stood in the middle of the hallway, glaring into the living room. ‘Felicity.’

It was only one word, but it had Felicity on her feet in an instant.

Kristen took a pace back from the wardrobe and reviewed its contents. ‘There’s a lot of grey in here,’ she said.

Claudie nodded. ‘But I suit grey.’

Kristen face filled with doubt. ‘Nobody suits grey,’ she said. ‘Now, what you need is a serious injection of colour.’

‘Colour,’ Claudie repeated, knowing full well that her idea of colour and Kristen’s idea of colour were completely different. Where Claudie would choose claret, Kristen would choose scarlet. Claudie’s colours whispered; Kristen’s yelled from the rooftops.

‘Yes,’ Kristen mused, ‘colour. And lots of it. We can’t have you walking round Paris looking like a shadow. And you should know that, being French.’

‘I suppose,’ Claudie said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. ‘But I guess I haven’t been feeling very colourful lately.’

Kristen sat down next to her, placing her hand on top of Claudie’s. ‘What you’ve got to try and do is to take some of the colour from all those musicals you keep watching, and translate them into clothes. Think - yellow brick road blouses, ruby slipper red jumpers-’

‘Yuck!’

‘Or Glinda-pink trousers.’

‘Kris!’

‘Yes, maybe a bit much to ask.’

‘Definitely,’ Claudie agreed, thinking of Glinda floating down from the heavens in her glorious pink bubble in
The Wizard of Oz
.

‘But you’ve got to do something.’

‘I will,’ Claudie promised. ‘I’ll go shopping tomorrow.’

‘And you
promise
not to come back with a pile of clothes in various shades of grey?’

‘I’ll do my best. But pewter’s really in at the moment.’

Kristen gave her a warning look.

‘Okay! I promise.’

Marjorie Maddox was wearing a little blue bobbly hat like one of the Liquorice Allsorts that everybody leaves at the bottom of the box. But it wasn’t the hat that Felicity was staring at in disbelief.

‘Well?’ her mother boomed.

‘Mother? What are you doing here?’

Her mother tutted like a machete. ‘What a fine question to choose in the circumstances.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Felicity looked from her mother to Simon and back again in obvious confusion.

‘Simon’s told me everything,’ Mrs Maddox sighed. ‘And I must say, I think he’s handled the whole thing admirably.’

‘What thing?’

‘Oh, you are a silly girl,’ her mother puffed, her brass buttoned cardigan seeming to burst at the seams. ‘I have better things to do with my time than drive across the country to pick you up whenever you’re in trouble.’

‘But you don’t need to pick me up. I’m staying her - with Simon.’

Mrs Maddox’s eyebrows rose superciliously. ‘That’s not what he told me.’

Felicity glared at Simon, but he merely shrugged back at her.

‘You’ve got yourself into a fine mess this time, haven’t you? Not even knowing who the father is! That wasn’t how we did things in my day,’ Mrs Maddox said, her Girl Guide persona firmly in place. ‘Now get that suitcase and get it in the car.’

Felicity’s eyes caught sight of her suitcase at the foot of the stairs. ‘When did you do that?’ She looked at Simon, her eyes burning. ‘You bastard! How could you do this to me?’

‘Oh, it was easy,’ he said.

‘FELICITY!’ her mother barked from the car.

Felicity stood under the harsh glare of the hall light which had been robbed of its shade seven months ago.

‘By the way,’ Simon said, ‘don’t worry about all the money you owe me from when you cleared out our joint account. You’re going to need it more than I am.’

Felicity opened her mouth to retort but her mother yelled again, and he watched as she struggled down the driveway with her overloaded suitcase.

Simon couldn’t stop himself from waving as she glared at him from the front seat of the car. Felicity and her mother deserved one another. If there was one person who was meaner and tougher than Felicity, then it was her mother. Simon tried to picture them together in the months to come and could hardly keep his smile to himself. There wasn’t much he’d managed to do right in this world, but packing Felicity off to her mother’s was a stroke of pure genius.

Talking of packing reminded him of his holiday. He rubbed his hands together in excitement, thinking of Paris. It was only three days away now. Thank goodness he’d sorted himself out in time. Kristen was going to be so proud of him.

He wandered through to the living room and said a quick hello to the fish.

‘Think yourselves lucky I’ve got rid of her,’ he grinned. ‘She would’ve had you guys swimming round in burgundy water.’

For somebody who generally preferred book shopping to clothes shopping, Claudie wasn’t doing too badly. She’d spent all of her lunch hour on Tuesday and Wednesday shopping for clothes, and today was her last opportunity to grab some last minute items before her trip to Paris the next day.

Claudie smiled to herself. Here she was, jetting off to sample spring in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. She and Kristen were going to have such fun.

She tried not to think about the amount of money she’d spent, but it had to be done. She supposed she couldn’t go round looking like a nun forever. Instead, she tried to focus on the positive aspects of her shopping trip: the gorgeously feminine jumpers in the softest of wools. And she’d managed to steer away from the pewter and the mushroom she’d favoured of late, choosing amber and lilac instead. She was really quite proud of herself.

For a long time, the world had lost its colour, and Claudie had felt as if she’d lost hers too, wearing a limited palette of navies, browns and greys. She was still a long way off resembling a butterfly but at least the shopping trip was helping her to break free from her colourless chrysalis.

Then she’d bought a brand new pair of long black leather boots that fitted so snugly against her legs, they were like a second skin. And then she’d done something incredibly rash. She’d bought new underwear. It seemed silly to buy something she didn’t really need, but the magic of Paris was beginning to weave its spell over her, and the pearly lace creations had just begged to be taken home.

After she’d made her purchase, she had a second look around the lingerie department, thinking about the weekend ahead.

Paris. Wasn’t it the most beautiful word? For a moment, she wondered what Luke would have thought about a trip to Paris, and just knew he would have hated the idea. Paris was such an un-Luke sort of place. She’d desperately wanted to go with him, but he’d always teased her about it.

‘Claudie, I’m not going to sing and dance with you by the Seine. That’s not real life, and it certainly isn’t me!’

She hadn’t minded the not singing or dancing bit; the thought of Luke breaking into a spontaneous ballet routine was laughable, but she would have liked to have gone to Paris with him. But Luke had always felt trapped in cities. He’d needed to see the mountains or the oceans. That’s why they’d gone to Wales on their honeymoon. Land of waterfalls and valleys, forests and mountains. If only he hadn’t gone back there.

‘Claudie?’

Claudie froze, her hand hovering dangerously close to a pair of strawberry coloured knickers. She turned round. She knew who it was, and she also knew there was nowhere to hide in the underwear department. ‘Hello, Daniel.’

‘How are you?’ Daniel asked, striding forward and filling the aisle with his bulk, his dark hair swinging as he came to a standstill.

‘I’m fine,’ Claudie said, thinking it absolutely typical that she should be caught in the most embarrassing department of the store.

‘Good,’ he said, his smile nervous. ‘You look well.’

‘You too.’

He scratched his head. ‘Shopping?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and then wondered what he was doing in the women’s underwear department. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so self-conscious. Shouldn’t he be just as embarrassed as her? ‘Just getting a few new things. You know,’ she said.

He nodded, looked around, but quickly returned his eyes to Claudie, a beautiful blush colouring his face. They stood for a moment in awkward silence.

‘Look,’ he said at last, scouring the floor with his piercing blue eyes, ‘I’m really sorry about what happened.’

Claudie looked down at the same patch of floor. ‘No, it’s okay.’

Daniel shook his head. ‘I was way out of order.’

‘Me too,’ she said, and he looked up at her. ‘I’m sorry I reacted so badly. I hope I didn’t hurt you?’

‘No. No. And I don’t blame you. I’m a complete moron sometimes.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘I am,’ he said grinning. ‘Anyway, I’ve been meaning to ring you to say I was sorry. I didn’t want to leave things like that.’

‘But where have you been staying? I’ve been worried about you.’

Daniel laughed. ‘There was no need. I’ve met somebody.’

‘Have you?’ Claudie’s voice rose as if she’d inhaled helium.

‘Yeah,’ he nodded enthusiastically. ‘She’s great. And you won’t believe it, but she’s coming to London with me.’

‘Really? Isn’t that rather,’ she paused, looking for the right word, ‘sudden?’

‘It is - yeah! I can’t quite believe it myself. But she’s got some contacts down there, and even thinks she can get me sorted with a job.’

Claudie’s eyebrows leapt up an inch. Daniel in a job? With a girl? ‘Gosh, Daniel, that’s terrific. I hope things work out for you.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, and there was another awkward silence.

‘So, I guess this is goodbye, is it?’ Claudie asked.

‘I guess so.’ Daniel took a step towards her and gave her a hug. Claudie smiled, although she still felt a little anxious after what had happened last time. Nevertheless, she allowed him to hug her, holding her breath as he squeezed the living daylights out of her with his mammoth arms. The Gale brothers certainly knew how to give a decent hug, she thought. None of that half-hearted air-kissing, shoulder-squeezing for them. If their recipients didn’t need resuscitating after they’d finished with them, it wasn’t worth giving.

‘Anyway,’ he said, stepping back a little, ‘you wouldn’t want me hanging round Whitby, would you? I mean, this is your stamping ground.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, but secretly wondered if it would be such a good idea seeing Luke’s double round the town all the time.