It turned out that I’d been right. George’s slippers were soon replaced by even better ones with more luxuriant fur, and Mum built new lives for the three of us. I grew up and met Vince and somehow agreed to live in his parents’ house, and be his back end – and here I am now in the middle of Shugbury watching the bus pull away. The driver stops, indicating, waiting for a car to pass by. And something clicks in me as I jump up and start waving frantically. ‘Wait!’ I yell. ‘Please wait!’
At first, the driver doesn’t seem to spot me. His focus is fixed on the road. Then he turns and his gaze catches mine, and there’s a nod of acknowledgement in my direction – and I run.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Vince
‘Vince, d’you have a minute?’ Deborah has swept into the kitchen, looking tense.
‘Yeah, sure! Everything okay?’ Vince jabs his phone back into his trouser pocket and snaps to attention. He’s been trying to get hold of Kate, who seems to have disappeared. She’s been in a weird mood from the minute she walked in. Vince has searched the house for her; the garden too, in case she’d let Jarvis out for a pee. So whereisshe?
Deborah grimaces and beckons Vince into the hallway. Obediently, he follows. If truth be known he’d follow Deborah into a swamp filled with leeches, or even a packed TK Maxx on a Saturday afternoon – such is the allure of her magnificent body and lustrous copper hair that reminds him of... well, the only coppery thing he can think of are heating pipes, so not that. But something anyway. Something shimmery and seductive.
She indicates the bathroom door. ‘I really need the loo, Vince. Someone’s been in there for ages...’
‘That’s weird.’ Frowning, he gives the door a sharp rap. ‘Hello?’
No response. He raps harder. ‘Anyone in there?’ They both wait, exchanging exasperated looks that Vince savours like the first sip of a delicious cocktail; the one that rushes straight to your head. There’s a whole lot more he’d love to exchange with Deborah. The situation right now is less than ideal, with someone hogging the bathroom – have they fallen asleep in there or what? – and a small pile of dog vomit slowly setting like porridge in the corner of the hall. Even so, he’s grateful that they are alone together for once.
Vince knew Deborah way back in secondary school here in Shugbury. The kind of alpha girl who was good at everything, she’d run with a far cooler crowd than he did and always seemed to have some good-looking bastard on her arm. With his scrawny build and volatile complexion, Vince didn’t get a look-in.
When he’d first mooted to Kate that they should move to Shugbury he’d been aware of the obvious benefits. Mainly, they’d own a home outright, and no longer be paying rent to that dopey pothead pixie. Vince was sick of their Bethnal Green flat and the way Kate was always out, either working at the museum or with her many friends. Even when she was home there was always some mate of hers popping in and hanging out in the kitchen, like Ingrid (‘Ingo’) from the museum, Julian and Shawn from upstairs (‘Jules, Shawny’) and her oldest friend Tash, all of them sipping endless coffees or wine depending on the time of day. Thankfully, as Kate seems to prefer nipping back to London to see friends, rather than inviting them here, that doesn’t happen anymore.
But one entirely unexpected bonus of moving here is that Deborah turned out to be living at the end of their street. Incredibly, she is now his friend. Vince should be cool with that. Yet somehow, whenever she’s around, that acne-prone thirteen-year-old rears up in him and he’s desperate to impress. Tonight she’s wearing a snug-fitting deep green top that shines like wet ivy and a long black pleated skirt that flows elegantly as she jiggles about. He’s imagined – many, many times – that she’d be firm and powerful in bed, possibly smacking him around a bit and certainly leading the way. It would be like shagging the figurehead of a ship.
‘Vince?’ Her voice snaps him back to reality. ‘I’m sorry but Ireallyneed to use your bathroom...’ Of course, that’s why she’s jiggling.
He bangs on the door again and shouts, ‘Can you hurry up please? Other people need to use the facilities!’ They wait a few more moments. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone in there,’ he surmises. ‘The door must’ve jammed. It’s happened before—’
‘Oh, God. What a pain,’ she exclaims.
No, no,Vince thinks.This is actually brilliant.He suspects Deborah knows he gets flustered around her – enjoys it, even, and encourages him by flirting. That time when she’d brought round a home-made Christmas pudding, having gathered that Kate never bothered to make her own: ‘I make mine early then feed it with brandy over a few weeks,’ she’d explained. ‘That way, the flavours can deepen and penetrate.’ He’d had to grab onto the kitchen radiator for support, and knocked off Kate’s vest that had been drying there. When had his wife started wearing thermal undergarments?
However, Vince suspects Deborah only likes him because he’s funny. And deep down, he wants her to see him not just as this hilarious guy who has audiences falling about with his self-deprecating repartee about being a useless fuckwit. He wants her to understand that that’s just his public persona, his brand. And that actually, underneath all that, he’s a capable man who owns a spirit level – at least he thinks there’s one somewhere – and one of those metal tape measures that shoots back into the silver casing. He even changed a tyre once. At least, he watched the AA guy do it. But it was so straightforward he could’ve done it himself.
Vince bangs on the bathroom door one more time and looks at Deborah, baker of three-tier cakes made of velvet when his wife can barely heat up a Lidl sausage roll.Yes,he thinks,it’s actually great that it’s jammed itself shut.Vince can tackle a bathroom emergency and show her the kind of man he really is.
Only now Colin seems to have caught a whiff of the drama, and has barrelled through to the hallway to ‘help’. ‘You can’t just break the door down,’ he announces.
‘I’ll have to,’ Vince says coolly. ‘No other way of getting in.’
‘Seems a bit rash, mate. That’s all I’m saying.’
He glares at Colin, willing him to go away and dance in his appalling fashion to the Bowie track that’s currently playing. The minute he discovered that his neighbour is a PE teacher, Vince took against him. At school Colin is known as Mr Carse. Vince imagines the fun the kids have with that.
Serves him right, Vince reckons. What an awful breed those gym guys are, humiliating the non-sporty kids who can’t vault over that horse thing that’s not even a horse; it’s just this massive wooden structure that small children are expected to—
‘I’ll have to go home,’ Deborah announces, cutting into his thoughts. ‘I’m bursting, Vince—’
‘No!’ he shouts, more forcefully than he intended. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort it.’ He’s conscious now of puffing out his chest, of readying himself to slam his bodyweight into that door. He’ll probably hurt his shoulder, but it’ll be worth it. In his fantasies he’s imagined doing something heroic, like scrambling onto a garage roof to rescue a mewling kitten – and Deborah just happens to be strolling by. Obviously, he’s enjoyed fantasies far naughtier than that, involving velvet cake topping and penetrating her Christmas pudding – no, no, not her pudding, the other thing; it’s a soupy swirl of rampant desire now. He’s drunk, Vince realises. He’s sweating too, which must be unattractive. Somehow he manages to drag his focus back to the matter in hand.
‘You don’t wanna break it,’ Colin reiterates.
‘What wouldyoudo then?’ When is the sporty elf ever going to fuck off?
Colin plants his hands on his weirdly skinny hips. ‘I’d ease out the hinge pins and then gently lift the door at the knob end—’ Vince sniggers but catches Deborah giving him a sharp look ‘—while supporting the other side of the door and separating the hinges and sliding a pry bar under the door to take some of the weight...’
Vince gawps at him, uncomprehending, as if Colin is speaking in Russian.
