Regan knew it was going to be hard to stay mad with this guy for long, especially when he brought food as an apology. Could this be a match made in heaven? She gave him directions to the studio on the proviso he wouldn’t alert anyone to the fact she was living there.
Regan tidied her stuff into the corner and covered it with the throw, because old habits died hard. She waited excitedly for her knight in shining armour to appear, complete with chicken chow mein.
There was a gentle tap on the door and she whipped it open making him flinch slightly. ‘Shhh,’ she said, beckoning him inside and shutting the door quickly. It was raining and a chill wind was picking up. Charlie put down the bags on the drainer and looked about.
‘Welcome to my temporary abode.’
He was giving reassuring head bobs but she could see he was taking it all in. He pulled two bottles of wine from one of the bags. ‘I didn’t know if you preferred red or white, so I bought one of each.’
‘That is exactly what I prefer,’ she said, getting two mugs off the mug tree.
Charlie gallantly let Regan have the chair, whilst he perched on an odd little wooden stool with a round seat that you had to spin to get it to go up or down. Regan had forgotten to point out that she didn’t have any plates or cutlery, but Charlie had brought free chopsticks and passing the containers to each other and eating directly from them was actually quite fun.
‘See, no washing up,’ she said, when she could eat no more. ‘Although I will wash up the chopsticks – they’ll come in handy.’ They were a step up from the coffee stirrers.
Charlie sipped his wine and surveyed the studio. ‘I know you said it was basic but … I kind of expected you’d have a bed.’
‘Nope. This is it. But it’s more than a lot of people have.’ A picture of Kevin out in the wind and rain instantly sprang to mind.
Regan tidied up the cartons and used an odd-looking arty tool of Cleo’s she’d found to cut the cake into slices. ‘So, firefighter, huh?’ She took a bite of the cake to stop herself from making any lame jokes about firemen’s poles or long hoses.
‘All my life, apart from brief stints as a waiter and a dustman.’
‘That is pretty awesome, being a firefighter … not a dustman.’
Charlie gave a modest shrug. ‘I’m not academic but I’ve always known I needed to have a job with a purpose. Something that added some value to other people’s lives.’
Regan felt instantly inadequate. She’d never felt like that at all. She was starting to think her dad was right aboutthe whole Nissan Micra analogy. ‘I don’t know what the hell I’ve been doing with my life.’ She finished her cake and licked her fingers.
Charlie chuckled. ‘I’m sure you’ve done plenty.’
‘Nope. I’ve been bumming around, basically, doing as little as I can get away with.’ She marvelled at her own honesty. She took a swig of her wine, wincing at both the clash of wine with chocolate cake and how little she had achieved. Friends from school were married and had kids in tow but that had never been an ambition of hers. If she thought about it she’d never really had any ambition. Even the school careers advisor had suggested a job as a fishmonger might suit her, and whilst that was a perfectly good job, it wasn’t exactly setting her sights high. She feared invoices clerk at BHB Healthcare had been the peak of her career. She chuckled to herself and Charlie scrutinised her.
‘So, what now?’ he asked.
Regan drank more wine and sighed slowly. ‘I fired off some job applications from the library. Thank you for that tip,’ she said. ‘I’ve uploaded my CV to a few job sites, too, so hopefully in a couple of days they’ll be beating my door down.’ She tried to sound optimistic but she didn’t believe it herself.
‘There are other options.’
‘Like?’
Charlie looked like he was going to lean back on the stool and then thought better of it. He put down his wine and went over to the corner to the box Regan had brought from the office – not as well tidied as she’d thought. He returned with Regan’s lottery wish list.
‘I keep thinking about this,’ he said, waving it near her but just out of reach.
‘Don’t remind me.’ She drained and refilled her Cookie Monster mug.
‘I think this is an excellent thing to have done.’ If Regan had worn glasses she would have been looking at him from over the top of them right now. ‘Bear with me. You wrote this because, like all of us, when we think about winning the lottery we think it is the key that unlocks all our dreams. So this list,’ he tapped the paper, ‘is a true list of the things you really want to do with your life.’
‘IfI won the lottery,’ she added.
He shook his head. ‘Regardless of winning. You still want to do them; you just need to find a way of achieving them without the money.’
Regan laughed and then saw his expression was serious. She needed more wine. Charlie topped up both their drinks and picked up his Hong Kong Phooey mug, eyeing her speculatively.
Regan snatched up the list. He was being ridiculous. She scanned them. ‘Which of these is even vaguely possible without tons of cash?’
‘Well, the bottom one is, but we’ll come back to that.’ She scanned it quickly; the last item was ‘Get new hot boyfriend who doesn’t nag or wear button-up pyjamas’. She looked back up again slowly; this was a promising development. Charlie was looking thoughtful now. He tapped a bullet point towards the top of the list. ‘How could you help your dad out?’
