Reversing Over Liberace Read online

  “What’cha muttering about? You goin’ bloody loony on us then, Will, or what?”

  I looked up from my computer screen to see Neil and Clive, the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the front office, hanging over my desk. “What?”

  “All this chuntering away to yerself, soundin’ like you’re as barmy as”—a gesture—“the Lady of the Lake down there.”

  The lady in question, namely Katie, could be heard singing a Killers track from the filing room, which was meant to be soundproof but wasn’t because the boys hosted farting competitions in there and the tiles had fallen off. “No, I was just…”

  But Neil and Clive had lost interest in me and my amusing foibles and were taking themselves off to annoy Katie. She gave much better value in the irritation stakes since she had a far wider vocabulary of expletives and, because of the twins, was always slightly sleep deprived.

  “No, really, Luke,” I continued to myself as I absentmindedly typed in the wording for a badly written advertisement. “I am so terribly busy. Maybe next month, sometime.” And then the telephone rang, making me jump. “Hello, York Echo, how can I help you?”

  “You can let me take you out for dinner tonight.”

  “Luke?”

  “Sorry, yes. But if it makes it any better, I’m covering for Brad Pitt.”

  I laughed out loud without thinking, and the rumpus from the filing room stopped. “Bloody ’ell, that’s it. She’s laughing to ’erself now,” I heard Clive mutter.

  “Tonight? Are you sure?” I lowered my voice to a semi-whisper.

  “Now, let me see, if I move Fearne Cotton to Thursday and put Cat Deeley on hold until next week—yes, Willow, I’m sure. I’ll pick you up at seven thirty, okay? I mean, will that be all right?”

  I agreed, I must have done, because the next thing I knew the tiny office was full of Neil and Clive and their body odour, with Katie elbowing her way past the lot of them shrieking, “Have you got a date?”

  Neil shook his head. “Fuck me, about time.” Neil and Clive didn’t know about my little problem with men, you see. Oddly enough, I was never troubled in the digestive department by either of them, my tastes running to men whose neck measurements are a fraction of their IQs rather than double it. “Tasty bit like you shouldn’t be moping about on ’er own. Tell ’er, Clive.”

  “Yer. ’S right.”

  Morecambe and Wise they weren’t. When they left, I brought Katie up to speed on the current Luke situation. Obviously she’d had a blow-by-blow breakdown last night when I’d got in, plus a military-style debriefing over the coffee machine this morning, but I was always up for another round.

  “Whoa, two nights in a row? He must be keen.” Katie sounded almost wistful. “He didn’t, um, he didn’t remember me at all, did he, Will?”

  “We didn’t really talk about university much,” I lied. Luke had failed to remember anything about Katie apart from the fact that she’d been my friend, until I’d half-jokingly reminded him that he’d asked her out once.

  Katie carried on. “I mean, he didn’t seem shy. Not when he chatted me up. Seemed perfectly at ease, actually. You know, cocksure, like he knew exactly what he was doing.”

  I loved Katie dearly. As she always said, we had far too much dirt on each other to ever be enemies. So I didn’t tell her what Luke had told me. He’d been part of a group of science students who looked down on us arts-and-humanities types and he was too shy to go against peer pressure by chatting me up. One night, however, he’d got raving drunk and had somehow ended up asking Katie out in the hopes that she’d introduce us. Telling Katie he’d only talked to her because he was drunk would go against the whole spirit of sisterhood. Plus, she might hit me.

  “Where’s he taking you?” Definitely wistful now. Poor Katie. Since the birth of the twins, she and Dan regarded putting the wheelie bin into the driveway as an evening out.

  “No idea. He didn’t say. I’d better not wear the red dress again.”

  Katie and I looked at each other. “This might be a case,” she said, portentously.

  “For the black chiffon!” I finished. Demure at the front, but low cut at the back, it somehow managed to say “I’m pure and untouched” and yet growl “come and get me, big boy”. “As long as he wants to take me somewhere reasonably grand. I really can’t go into Burger King, not without knickers.”

  “Well, he’s got cash, hasn’t he? What was it you said he did, something to do with classic cars?”

  “Yes, he and his brother have got a car-import business, bringing classic cars from all over the world. Luke’s been in the States for the last year, setting up a franchise in Boston. His brother’s out there now sorting it out. They’ve got another one in Milan and Luke wants to open one up here in York. He’s come to check out the competition, look at the market, plus he wants to buy a house here in the city.” The words “and settle down” hung in the air, large enough to bang your head on.

  “Sounds perfect.” Katie picked up another armful of potential filing. “But make sure he takes you somewhere really nice. You deserve it, Will—you really do.”

  “Thanks.” I turned back to my screen with a coy smile to myself. Yes, I did deserve it. I deserved Luke Fry and his sexy violet eyes, his beautiful hands and his lovely pert bum. I felt as though I’d been on hold for the last ten years, marking time with nearly-good-enough boyfriends, as if I knew that one day Luke would come back and claim me.

  The illusion of perfection continued into the evening. Luke picked me up in a black BMW at seven thirty on the dot, drove me confidently down a confusing maze of streets whilst telling me how good I looked, and pulled up outside a country house which could have made a living doubling for Windsor Castle.

  “Through here, Willow.” Luke placed his hand on the small of my back to guide me into a crystal-and-candelabra-filled room. For a moment his hand lingered almost imperceptibly on my pantless buttock and I was sure that it shook slightly. His hand, I mean, not my buttock.

  Luke ordered for both of us, in impeccable French (mine is better, but I was taught languages by a drunken ex-Madame from Marseille. Thank my parents), then raised his glass in a toast. “To starting again; it may have taken me ten years to get you here, but I’m bloody glad I made it at last.” We’d just taken a first sip when there was an outburst of tiny, tinny music, as though an ice-cream van had driven into the plush hallway and was plying its wares outside the cloakroom. “Bugger.” Luke fished in his pockets. “I know it’s bad form to leave it switched on, but, ah.” With a deft finger he located the phone, sprang it open and glanced at the caller display. “Oh, shit.”

  I stared at the tablecloth, tracing the damask pattern with a fingernail. “It’s fine, Luke. Take the call. Our food won’t be here for a bit anyhow.”

  Luke chewed his lip, gazing down at the screen of his phone. People were starting to look. “It’s not important.”

  “It could be though.”

  “No. It’s not.” Sudden, definitive. In one swift movement of his hands, as though he were wringing the neck of a troublesome chicken, he turned the phone off and thrust it back into the deep recesses of his pocket. “Business, that’s all. James, probably wanting to twitter on about some new deal he’s got going down.” Luke turned his full smile on me. “He’ll be horrified when I tell him that he interrupted my date with the woman I’ve been thinking about for the last ten years.”

  “Have you? Really?”

  “Really.” His hand reached across the tabletop, took mine easily, naturally, as though this was date seventy-five, not number two. “Willow, I—”

  “Mr. Fry, sir.” Over Luke’s left shoulder appeared a man so generically waiter that I couldn’t have picked him out of a line-up. Even if all the other linees had been seven-feet tall, dreadlocked and covered in tattoos. “You have a telephone call, sir.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, sir. In the foyer, sir, if you would like to follow me.”

  Luke flicked me an apologetic g
lance as he followed, offering me a shrug and comedy-raised eyebrows. I used his absence to give the menu a quick once-over. This was one of those places where they look as though they’ll demand your first-born if you can’t pay the bill. I thought that I must recommend it to Katie. She’d gladly hand over both her first-borns for a meal she didn’t have to wash-up after. The waiter topped up my wine again and shortly afterwards Luke was back.

  “I am so sorry, Willow.” He genuinely looked it. His mouth was drawn down into a tight line, his skin furrowed across his forehead. “It was just James being a complete pillock about some figures, that’s all. It could have waited until tomorrow, but he’s a bit of an old woman when it comes to the accounts.”

  “Well, it must be hard when you’re running on different time zones. Must be, what, early afternoon in Boston?”

  Luke flashed me an odd look, then shook his hair back and took my hand again across the table. “Anyway. Where were we? I believe I was telling you how great it is to have met up with you, having spent the last decade running through all those conversations we should have had, if only I’d had the guts to ask you out.”

  As the evening continued, we fell into many of those conversations. Life stories were exchanged, or at least, edited highlights were bandied around. I might have talked up my English degree a trifle, and I didn’t let on that I knew Luke was skating over the surface of the truth when he told me his mother had died and left his father to bring up James and himself. As I think I told you earlier, I knew an enormous amount about the young Luke Fry, and the whisper had been that his mother had run off to Amsterdam with an Egyptian nude deep-sea diver.

  And, do you know the best part? I was only sick once. Between starter and main course, which was even better because I would have hated to have wasted those scallops—they were delicious. I made it to the Ladies in decorous time, pretending I needed to check my makeup. God, could things get any better?

  “Goodnight, Willow. I hope you don’t mind me not coming in or anything, but I really ought to go and call James, make sure he’s over his panic.” The BMW pulled up outside my house and Luke leaned across me to open the door.

  “No, of course.” I went to slide off the leather seat, but he stopped me with one hand on my shoulder.

  “I wanted to…” Long fingers tipped my face towards him, lips shaped like the most delectable dessert descended on mine. I closed my eyes and lost myself totally in the elastic kiss. “See you tomorrow, Will,” he whispered.

  Did I say things couldn’t get any better?

  Chapter Five

  “He sounds a bit iffy to me.” Jazz cradled a pint and looked up at me over his Guinness moustache.

  “Why? Because he wants to go out with Willow? Why does that make him ‘iffy’?” Katie leaped to my defence.

  “Oh, I dunno. He just sounds a bit, full on, yeah?”

  Now, before you start getting ideas, Jazz doesn’t think of me in that way, if you know what I mean. We did have one extremely embarrassing moment way back, when we briefly entertained the notion of going out together as more than mates. But that was in the days when we both wore advanced dental appliances, he was still called Jasper, and our combined puppy fat could have built a litter of Great Danes. Since then we have been happy to be friends and give one another the uncensored version of the truth about our chosen romantic partners. Katie actually thinks Jazz fancies my sister, but I like him too much to hope this is the case.

  “I mean, you only met him last week and this is the first time we’ve been able to get you out for a drink.” Jazz mouthed another swirl of beer. “I tried to ring you last night and there was no answer.”

  I’d heard the phone ringing as Luke and I had fallen, giggly and entwined, through the front door, but I’d been a little bit otherwise engaged. “What did you want?”

  “Another pint, please, Will, if you’re offering.”

  “Sod.” But I went to the bar anyway. It was nice to be drinking with the gang again. “Why did you ring, then?” I asked as I got back.

  “Only wondering if you’d be free to sing on Sunday night. We’ve got a short-notice gig in the Basement Bar.”

  “But isn’t there anyone else?”

  “Nah. Big Rosie’s off down to Devon for the weekend, won’t be back.”

  “Go on, Will, you haven’t sung for ages.” Katie leaned forward at me drunkenly. “And, I mean, Luke sounds lovely and everything but”—a quick glance to Jazz for support—“you still need to do stuff on your own.”

  There was a slow-spreading warmth inside me that had nothing to do with the rapidly ingested beer. Luke had promised to come to lunch at OC’s on Sunday. If I had a booking in the evening, he might stay on and watch the band (in my imagination I was shining in the spotlight already) and then, maybe, I might be able to persuade him to stay overnight.

  Katie noticed my slight frown. “Wassup, Wills?”

  “No, nothing, really. Just wondering, when you and Dan got together, how long was it before you went to bed? Together, I mean, obviously.”

  Jazz gave a smutty snigger. “About twenty minutes I should think.”

  “You know, Jazz, not everyone is as sex-obsessed as you.” Katie drained her glass. “It was, let me see, we went out on the…” Her lips moved and I felt better. I’d begun to wonder. Was it me? I fancied Luke so much that it was driving me crazy. We’d kissed, quite a lot, and he showed every sign of enjoying it, if you know what I mean. But there had been no attempts on his part to take things any further. I was sure he wasn’t gay (see my earlier comment), and from things he’d told me about previous relationships, I didn’t think he was in thrall to any religious save-it-for-marriage cults. So, was it me? “Seventeen hours.”

  “Does this mean that you and Wonder Boy haven’t done the thing yet?” Jazz shuffled his feet in barely suppressed excitement. “Willow Cayton, you have definitely lost your mojo.”

  “Mojo? Those are little sweets, aren’t they?”

  “Your ‘thing’, you know. Your ‘it’.”

  Katie and I looked at one another. “He’s so obnoxious when he’s pissed,” she said. “And don’t ask me to take him home. He’s got his Frankenstein remedial boots on again. Couldn’t pick him up with a forklift.”

  “Nah, we could just leave him here.”

  But Jazz unfolded himself to his full, not inconsiderable height and peered down at us. “I shall make my way home under my own sht…steam, thank you, ladies.” He drained his glass. “Willow, I will meet you at four in the Basement Bar for a soundcheck on Sunday.”

  “That’s tomorrow, Jazz.”

  “Sho kind to remind me. Yes. Tomorrow.” Gathering his dignity around him, which stretched it pretty tightly, he stalked from the bar.

  “He looks like a clothes peg from Castle Dracula,” Katie remarked. “But, pissed as he might be, he has a point. Are you and the delicious Mr. Fry not yet making the beast with two backs?”

  “We’re taking it slowly. After all, we’ve waited ten years, a few more days won’t kill us.”

  “All right, no need to be defensive.” Katie emptied her glass. “Well, better go. Meeting Dan in half an hour, we’re off to the pictures. His mum is having the twins for the afternoon. First time in three years.”

  “Great. What are you going to see?”

  “The way I feel, the insides of my eyelids comes top of the list, followed by the contents of Dan’s trousers. Anyway. Take care, Will.”

  Once Katie and Jazz had gone, I felt suddenly flat. Saturday afternoon. Two o’clock, to be precise, and the rest of the day and evening stretched ahead of me as empty as oh, I don’t know. Name me something emptier than the prospect of a Saturday night alone with the monotonous silence broken only by my beery pizza burps and early evening TV. Luke had apologised profusely, but said he had to work on Saturday—promised to be at my house in time to drive us out to OC’s for lunch on Sunday, so what was my problem? I had, as Jazz so kindly pointed out, seen him every night this week.


  I wandered home, couldn’t think of anything else to do. British Summertime had officially started last week, so it was raining and cold. Clay had flown back to Beijing so there would be no one to share a takeaway. God, I was miserable. The misery deepened when I turned into my street and saw Ash perched across his bike in full gear, with his helmet on his lap, swinging one foot in the running gutter and obviously waiting for me. Saturday, and Ash didn’t have a date? I ducked in case the Apocalypse was creeping up behind me.

  “Hey.”

  “What?” I fumbled sullenly in my bag for the key.

  “No, nothing. I thought…you doing anything tonight?”

  I flashed him a quick look. But apart from his helmet-hair, he looked normal. For Ash. “It’s not like you to ask that. What’s happened?”

  “Happened? Nothing.” Ash pushed past me in the hallway and flung himself down full-length on the chesterfield. Leather met leather with a creaking like a boned corset under pressure. “I just wondered if, hell, I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet, all right?”

  I paused on my way through to the kitchen, watching Ash pose. There was definitely something different about him today. “You’ve taken all your piercings out,” I realised suddenly.

  “Well, not all of them.” He grinned up at me. “Only the ones you can see.”

  I grimaced. I’d been treated, along with Jazz and Katie, to a blow-by-blow account of the agonies of Ash’s Prince Albert. (Jazz still couldn’t look Ash in the face without tears of sympathy welling up.) “Thanks. I’ll have to go and lie down in a dark room to expunge that particular mental image. So, what’s happening with losing all the metal? Afraid you were going to fall through the earth’s crust?”

  Ash shrugged a skinny shoulder. “He doesn’t like…look, I just fancied a change. You coming, or what?”

  “How far?”

  “Up onto the moors. Thirty miles, no more.”

  “All right then, if you promise to go slowly. You know I hate riding pillion. Oh and I’d better get my gear on, hadn’t I.”