One
‘You’ve booked a last-minute romantic break for you and Ted?’
The look of incredulity on my best friend, Erin’s, face didn’t exactly fill me with confidence as I paid for our hot drinks and we headed towards the one vacant table in The Corner Café, our favourite meeting place to catch up with each other’s news.
I should’ve waited until we sat down before I told her, but I was excited, and I’ll admit, more than a little anxious about my spur-of-the-moment booking. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer and I blurted it out the moment she joined me in the queue.
Momentarily lost for words, I nodded and forced a smile
‘Do you actuallyknowyour boyfriend?’ A deep frown replaced Erin’s previous expression and her perfectly shaped brows knit together as she pulled out a chair and draped her bright blue faux fur jacket over the back of it.
All my doubts came flooding back, and I tried to think of something brilliant to say in response as I removed my almost identical jacket – but in red – and hung mine on a hook on the wall beside our table.
We’d bought the jackets together in the January sales, laughing because so many people said we looked like twin sisters rather than best friends, and we’d agreed some years before that we should dress the same sometimes, just for fun.
It was true. We did look remarkably similar with our blonde hair and green eyes – an unusual combination as most blonde-haired people we knew had blue eyes. Erin said that was just one of the things that not only made us special, but meant we would always be best friends. My hair was a little shorter and more of a golden blonde than Erin’s icy white, and my eyes had a hint of hazel whereas Erin’s were emerald green. Plus, Erin was an inch or two taller, and one size larger than me, but from a distance, we looked virtually the same.
‘I … I thought it would be … a lovely surprise.’ I pulled out my chair and sat opposite her, brilliance having failed me, yet again.
Erin snorted derisively. ‘It’ll be a surprise all right, but as for lovely…’ Her words trailed off as she shook her head and leant towards me, her long blonde ponytail swishing back and forth like a wagging finger. ‘Have you gone completely mad, Lucy?’ She stared at me as though she expected a serious answer to that question.
I managed a laugh, but even that sounded slightly maniacal, and when the small, wafer thin, chocolate heart sitting on top of my hot chocolate, sank beneath the mountain of whipped cream and disappeared, it was as if it had taken my own heart with it, along with all the remnants of my joy and excitement about my up-coming week away.
‘You think I’ve made a mistake?’ I mumbled, plunging my spoon into my drink to retrieve the chocolate heart, but it was only half its original size by the time I managed to scoop it out and it was more of a gooey blob than anything resembling a heart.
I usually removed the little chocolate token before it sank, The Corner Café having added wafer thin chocolate shapes to all its cream-topped beverages for as long as I could remember. Throughout the year, each one symbolised something related to the month, or a special occasion. The first two weeks in February had always been a chocolate heart. From the fifteenth onwards, it was usually a snowflake, or a cloud, or a raindrop, dependent upon the weather.
‘A mistake?’ Erin bit her chocolate heart in half, having removed hers from her own hot chocolate the moment she sat down, and she shook her head again. ‘A mistake is an understatement. Unless you plan to go on this romantic break alone. You’ve been dating Ted for over a year. How many days has the man taken off work in that time?’
I glanced across the table and met her piercing green eyes. ‘None.’
‘And how many weekends has he worked even though his job only requires him to be in his office from Monday to Friday?’
‘Erm. I’m not sure, exactly.’
That was a lie, and we both knew it. One of the things I sometimes moaned about to Erin was the number of hours my boyfriend spent working.
Ted was an accountant, and he was always in great demand. I had no idea accountants were so popular, until I started dating Ted. He checked his phone every few minutes, night, and day, and he received and sent more texts in one evening than I did in one week. It was the only thing we argued about. Well. Not exactly argued. Ted didn’t argue. Politely disagreed about, would be more accurate.
‘Ball park figure,’ Erin demanded.
I shrugged pathetically. ‘About half.’
Erin raised her brows and fixed me with a hard stare.
‘Okay,’ I admitted grudgingly. ‘Almost every weekend. But sometimes it’s only one of the days. And sometimes only mornings. And, because he worked for most of Christmas and I only saw him briefly on Christmas Day, he promised me on New Year’s Eve that he’d spend more time with me once the January deadline was over. That he’d make more time for our relationship. He even said we should try to find the time to go away together for a few days in February. So this week away will be perfect.’
Erin didn’t seem convinced. ‘Are you sure about that? The evidence so far is not looking good.’
Erin was a Detective Constable in one of the MITs (Major Investigation Teams) within the Metropolitan Police. She had always wanted to be a police officer, even as a kid, and she was a really good one. Not that she had ever told me much about her work, thankfully. Murders and such weren’t things I particularly wanted to hear about and Erin was, and always has been, one of those people who keeps everything close to her chest.
Although, when one of our friends was toying with the idea of becoming a crime writer and had questioned Erin about her job, Erin had gone into quite a lot of detail at the dinner table. I’m not sure if it was her description of a rather grisly murder, or the prawn curry our host served at that dinner party, but a few people left the table saying they weren’t feeling well.
Sometimes, when we were chatting, Erin made me feel as though I was sitting across the table from her in an interrogation room. Which was exactly how I was feeling at that moment, and I was half expecting her to ask me to sign a confession.
‘I, Lucy Parkes, confess to the crime of doing something utterly stupid, by booking a break away for me and my boyfriend, Ted, knowing full well that the chances of him actually wanting to go away, are remote, to say the least.’
Of course, Erin was right. She always was.
