Chapter Ten Gonna Wash That Girl Right Outta My Hair
When I got home, I’d hoped for a relaxing bath to ease the hurt but it wasn’t to be.
‘Patty, have you seen my face cloth?’ I bellow from the bathroom. Rather than a sarcastic reply there’s a silence, which usually means trouble, so I march down the stairs and into the living room where she’s sitting with a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression.
‘Which face cloth?’ she asks, as if it’s normal to have hundreds of the things.
‘The one I use for my face. The pale-blue one with a little duck embroidered in the corner.’
‘Oh.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ My emotions move from annoyance to fear.
‘I put it in the laundry basket after I’d used it,’ she says.
‘What did you use it for?’ I ask.
‘What do you think I used it for? Washing myself, obviously.’
‘Washing your whole body with my face cloth?’ I’m horrified.
‘What’s the problem?’ Patty says with a cheeky grin. ‘I went back to front.’
‘AARRRGGGHHHH,’ I scream, trying to get that image out of my head. ‘It’s a face cloth. The one I used to soak in warm water then place across my forehead and eyes to smooth out the wrinkles while enjoying a deep relaxing bath. I’ll never be able to do that again! Every face cloth will remind me of you and your fandango!’
Patty finds my horror highly amusing and I can see she’s bursting to laugh out loud.
‘And besides,’ I add, ‘it’s front to back!’
That does it — she roars with laughter and gets up and starts swiping an imaginary towel between her legs.
‘Back to front, front to back,’ she says while miming the actions. ‘I guess I shouldn’t tell you the rest.’
‘Could it get worse?’ I know that it’s just about to.
‘I did my legs too and had to wipe the hair removal cream off. Giving it a wipe rather than just washing it off gets all the stray hairs that hang on for dear life.’
I stand with my mouth agape. ‘Wiping depilatory cream off your legs with my face cloth?’ I repeat, to which she nods.
‘It was the first thing to hand.’
Then a thought strikes me.
‘Please tell me it was only your legs,’ I beg. Patty simply shrugs and I retch.
I pick up a cushion and throw it at her then head back up for a shower. I certainly can’t face the bath, not now.
* * *
Next morning I’m up early with a fire in my belly. I haven’t had much sleep as I lay thinking about Michael and why he might have stood me up without so much as a text message. I haven’t told Patty about it. I pretended that our date went well enough but I wasn’t sure it would go anywhere. I cannot face telling her that once again my love life is a disaster, especially when hers is flourishing. The plan I decided on in the middle of the night was to give Michael twenty-four hours to tell me why he didn’t turn up and after that, I just forget about him. I know that I could call him and ask — that’s what Patty would suggest — but he knew the time and place and he definitely has my number now, so I really cannot think of a reasonable explanation for the no-show.
Fake it ’til you make it. I sigh as I fill the kettle. I’m wearing a full face of make-up and am dressed to kill. I might feel sad but I’m not going to show it. I make myself a coffee and put some bread in the toaster thinking about that feeling. I don’t know Michael well so it’s not really about him as a person, although I did think that we got on well at the New Year party and I liked him. And maybe it isn’t sadness that’s sitting like a heavy lump right in the middle of my rib cage; I feel as if I’ve failed. And I seem to keep failing — at this aspect of my life anyway. Husband, Ed and now Michael, all completely different people with different reasons for not working out but still the same end result — I’m standing here on my own. The toaster pops rather loudly in the silence of the kitchen so it jolts me out of my contemplation. I sit down with my breakfast and inhale deeply; the warm bready smell is very comforting and with the creamy butter half melted in, it’s like a little hug. No wonder people turn to food in times of crisis — it rarely lets you down. When I’ve finished I get ready to leave and before I open the door, I inhale deeply and mentally recite an affirmation three times: You are strong, you are wonderful and today will be great.
* * *
Throughout the journey to work, I think back to the life coaching session I had with Caroline last year. It helped me to see what I really wanted in life after the divorce and kind of gave me permission to go after it. Back then, my priority was the business and getting a love life was something I knew I would want in the future but was in no hurry. Perhaps a year is too short a timeframe for both me and Michael? Just because my ex-husband, best friend and daughter have all found someone doesn’t mean to say that I need to do the same. Patty was single for several years after her husband died so perhaps I’m trying too hard. It’s just that I seem to be watching all my close friends and family setting sail with new partners while I’m left alone on my little desert island. Would that be so bad?
‘Wow, someone means business today,’ says Charlie as I walk through the door of the shop and shake the image of me talking to a coconut out of my head (even Tom Hanks had Wilson).
I give him a twirl and tell him that we are going to knock the sales targets out of the park today.
‘Go, Angie,’ he replies as we both sit at our desks and fire up the computers. ‘So how did the date go?’
He had to make small talk, didn’t he?
‘Jury’s still out,’ I say without looking up from my screen. Again, I’m not lying just not telling the whole story. Charlie takes the hint and changes the subject.
‘So, if you want to make us lots of money, you could focus on the Seville trip — it wouldn’t hurt to have it sold out early,’ he says. ‘Find us some people who want to learn Flamenco — or at least watch it.’
‘That’s exactly what I was thinking,’ I say. ‘And as my mother wants to learn to waltz, I was wondering whether a dance holiday programme might have legs.’
Josie crashes an imaginary cymbal at my pun.
‘Jiving, jitterbugging, jumping legs,’ adds Charlie and I smile in response.
Focus, that’s what I need today and that’s what Mercury Travel gives me. There are always events which impact on the travel industry — events that are completely out of our control and in many cases can destroy businesses — but it’s also true that you get out what you put in and I’m about to give this all I have.
The Seville trip is set up and we’ve taken a number of bookings, so I need to find some groups that might want to take up the rest of the spots. Vienna is the natural place to go to learn to waltz and although both places are very grand and elegant, they’re different in character so there’s a chance that people might want to book both. I’d like to arrange the Vienna trip for the spring — as much to help Mum’s bucket list as see the city when it’s just waking up. I wonder to myself whether a round-the-year programme of dance holidays would work? Our customers could learn beautiful dances in beautiful cities. I don’t know much about the origins of dances so need to do some research. The obvious place to start is watching reruns of Strictly on YouTube, so I plug my earphones in and pull up some of the dances that have the highest viewing figures.
I should have known this would be a rabbit hole that I’d fall down and not emerge from for a very long time. It was simply magical watching the dances and costumes while listening to that wonderful music; I could have been distracted for the whole day if it weren’t for Charlie pulling out one of my earplugs to tell me I was humming ‘The Blue Danube’. I look up and see the customers he and Josie are serving smiling at me; I give them a little wave and say that I’m organising a very beautiful trip so they’d better keep an eye on our website.
Then I get back to work. I think I’ve got it; I don’t want these to be long-haul trips, just short breaks, so that excludes North and South America, which is a real shame because so many of the popular dances were created there: samba, tango, cha-cha, swing and jive. All in the most viewed videos but all invented too far away. However, I’ve thought laterally about this and have come up with a way of including one of them without the long journey. When Charlie’s customer leaves I print off some notes and ask him to join me in the break room.
‘We plan a trip per quarter and we already have Seville planned. It’s advertised as a Flamenco trip but we could see if we can find a tango instructor too as it’s huge there,’ I tell him. ‘Vienna in spring for the waltz, Italy in summer for jive...’
‘Italy?’
‘Yes, there’s a huge jive and lindy hop festival there every year,’ I tell him, showing him the details. ‘There are workshops and beginner lessons bringing together dance teachers from the UK, Amsterdam and Italy. It looks fabulous and all we have to do is get people there.’
‘The lesson will be in English, won’t it?’ Charlie asks the question all of our customers will.
I nod and tell him they will, but the food, company and culture will be truly international.
‘Then,’ I continue, ‘come Christmas, we take our guests to the one place everyone who watches Strictly Come Dancing really wants to go.’
‘Blackpool Tower Ballroom,’ he says with a big smile on his face.
‘Precisely.’
We both like the sound of it but I have to check it out with a few people to see if it’s likely to be commercially successful. I get back to my desk and look up some local ballroom dancing schools. They’re likely to know if a schedule like this already exists and they may have ideas on marketing it. Filling the Tower Ballroom would be a huge undertaking so I’ll need some partners for that, but pulling it off would be incredible.
I call the dancing schools and schedule some meetings after explaining why I need their expert opinion. Everyone agrees to meet up and some sound quite enthusiastic about the initial idea. I’ll have to meet them all in the evenings either after or prior to the classes starting and I’m even invited to join in a taster class. Having something to do after work is certainly a better option than hanging around waiting for Michael to call, so I take them up on their kind offer.
Satisfied that I’ve done as much as I can on the trip, I get up, stretch and head to the break room, where I make us all a coffee. When I get back into the shop, Patty is standing there with her hands in front of her holding what looks like a box of cupcakes. I put the coffees down on Charlie and Josie’s desks then turn to my friend, who hasn’t moved.
‘Are they for us?’ asks Charlie. ‘I could do with some afternoon sustenance.’
‘They’re for no one but my bestie Bo-Peep and no one else can ever use them,’ she replies, holding the box towards me.
‘Use them?’ repeats Josie. ‘How the heck do you use a cupcake?’
I walk towards Patty and peer more closely at the box, wary that there may be some trick involved here.
‘Ha-ha, very funny,’ I say as I realise what they are. They’re not cakes but face cloths folded up into the shape of cakes. They’re done really well and look delicious. I have to say as gifts go, I’d be devastated thinking I was about to tuck into one of these only to find it’s terry towelling and am actually pretty disappointed right now.
Patty picks one up and presents it to me.
‘Thought you’d like this one in particular,’ she says through a snort of laughter. ‘It has a cherry on top just to remind you of me.’
Obviously I throw it straight back at her, hitting her on the nose. She launches one at me and a towelling cupcake barrage starts. We’re breathless in minutes and collapse into chairs laughing and gasping for air. When I was doing my affirmations this morning, never did I think that the day would end as it began — with the most ludicrous facecloth showdowns imaginable.