5. Chapter 5
As Jack pulled up outside her house, Lucy’s bottom greeted him, sticking out of the passenger door of her aged car. On the top of the car perched one silver sandal, three balled-up jumpers, an umbrella stuck in a partially open position, a blanket, a pair of wellies and half a jar of mayonnaise. Lucy emerged from the car, red-faced and swearing, holding a paper coffee cup and a brown apple core.
At least she ate fruit on occasion.
She dropped them into a black bin bag.
‘Just getting the car sorted,’ Lucy puffed.
Jack folded his arms.
‘Why are we going in your car? Mine is somewhat more roadworthy.’
Lucy eyed up Jack’s two-seater sports car.
‘Because we are going somewhere for several days, Jack, and that,’ she jabbed a finger at his car, ‘only has enough boot space for a clean pair of pants and a toothbrush.’
‘Wait—I was supposed to bring clean pants?’
‘Ha ha.’
Lucy dropped a very blackened banana peel stuck to a crisp packet into the bag. Jack eyed Lucy’s tracksuit bottoms and Fleetwood Mac T-shirt and glanced at his watch.
‘At least it’s not a health hazard,’ he mumbled. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready?’
‘Well.’ Lucy blew hair out of her eyes. ‘These are the shoes I am wearing to the wedding.’
She pointed at the silver sandal on top of the car.
‘Right. So… you’ll be hopping all weekend?’
‘That’s one option.’ She rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘Or I could find the other one. And you could help.’
‘Or,’ Jack held the bin bag as Lucy emptied a pack of melted lemon sherbets into it, ‘you could take different shoes. Seeing as we’re supposed to be leaving about now.’
Lucy ignored him and muttered from somewhere down behind the driver’s seat. ‘It’s in here somewhere, I know it. Where are you?’
She emerged with an empty can of de-icer and another shoe that did not match the shoe already sitting on the top of the car.
‘Ha! I’ve been looking for you!’ she announced to the newly recovered shoe.
‘Luce, much as I’d like to hang about here and admire your growing collection of single shoes, we need to get going, or we’ll hit traffic, and the drive will be a nightmare.’
‘Okay, sure, I’m just making some room in here, clearing a few things out of the way,’ Lucy puffed cheerfully from her position bent double in the rear seats.
She handed out an old copy of Homes and Gardens.
‘Keep that.’
A handful of scrunched-up crisp packets, five coffee cups and a large diamante earring.
‘Bin that.’
She brushed off her hands and gathered up all the items from the roof of the car.
‘Won’t be long now,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Come on in.’
Jack made a silent prayer for patience and was glad he had suggested leaving earlier than strictly necessary. Experience had told him Lucy needed a time buffer, to account for the fact she’d be at least sixty minutes late being ready for anything more complicated than a relaxed drink with friends. He followed her into the house and ducked as he stepped through the low doorway into the living room of the old cottage.
The person who said how you do one thing, is how you do everything, had not met Lucy. While her car was a low-level bio-hazard, her home was a cosy, neat sanctuary. The living room smelt of geranium and lavender, emanating from a little oil burner on the windowsill, and the faint waft of fresh coffee drifted through from the kitchen. Books lined one wall, and colourful cushions were scattered across the overstuffed cream sofa.
‘Back in a jiffy!’
Lucy abandoned her haul of items from the car onto an armchair and disappeared upstairs. Jack could hear her pottering around as the old floorboards creaked before Bonnie Tyler started pounding out, overlaid with Lucy’s squalling. He listened. Not only could she not hold a tune, she didn’t seem to know all the lyrics, either, but she didn’t miss a beat. He sank into the old squishy cream sofa and considered the overstuffed bookcase covering the wall opposite. There were definitely more books than the last time he was there, squeezed in sideways on top of already packed shelves, photos of friends perched in frames wherever there was a little space. A well-thumbed copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, with a Dulcetcoombe bookmark sticking out of it, threatened to topple over the shelf edge.
He could hear the shower running upstairs, and Ella Fitzgerald replaced Bonnie Tyler, as Lucy crooned along to ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me.’ Jack smiled to himself and flicked through the books and magazines on the coffee table. He was immersed in a surprisingly interesting article in Homes Gardens about how crafting is good for your health––and was wondering if he should be taking up knitting—when there was a clattering on the stairs.
‘Ta da!’
Lucy bounced into the room, arms in the air as if she’d just completed a perfect dismount off the parallel bars. She was barefoot—perhaps there was a real shoe shortage in this house—and humming to herself as she sauntered past him in a yellow summer dress, the afternoon sunlight turning her damp caramel hair a warm honey colour as she passed the window.
Jack reached for another magazine. ‘Darling?’ he called as he flipped the pages of a two-year-old copy of Country Living.
Lucy appeared in the doorway, looking suspicious.
‘Why did you call me darling? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Jack said innocently. ‘I’m getting into character as your boyfriend.’
‘Humph.’ Lucy narrowed her eyes and disappeared back into the kitchen.
‘Darling,’ he called, grinning to himself, ‘we really can’t do this again. We have to deal with this.’
Lucy reappeared, gulping a glass of water, and gasped, ‘Gotta hydrate. And deal with what?’
‘The tension your constant lateness puts on our relationship.’
Jack lifted the magazine to hide his grin and flicked to an article about water gardens.
This weekend was going to be fun.
‘My constant…. What are you talking about?’
‘I’m getting into character, thinking about how we are as a couple, what irritates me about you, what creates tension in our relationship. Your lateness is definitely a flash point for me.’ Jack landed on an article about female shepherds. ‘I’m also thinking your casual attitude to shoe ownership is a concern.’
‘I think you find everything about me charming and are deeply indulgent of what others might see as my flaws,’ Lucy said. ‘After all, you are a fake boyfriend, so we can make this the ideal relationship. You can find my lateness amusing, and in return, I promise to find your condescension endearing.’
‘I am not condescending,’ Jack protested. ‘I admit to being occasionally patronising.’
‘That’s exactly what a condescending person would say,’ Lucy retorted.
Jack skimmed an article about someone who had left a stressful career as a lawyer in London and now made cheese for a living.
‘I’m thinking I call you darling,’ he hid behind the magazine, ‘and you call me big man.’ He stared at a picture of a converted lighthouse and clenched his jaw as he tried not to laugh.
Lucy burst out laughing and spilt some of her water.
‘Ha! Forget it. That’s not going to happen. I’ll decide what my pet name for you is. I’m thinking…. cupcake.’
‘Ummm, no. How about dream machine?’ Jack countered.
Lucy snorted into her glass. ‘Okay, not cupcake. I think maybe bunny is the way to go.’
Jack shook his head firmly. ‘I won’t reply if you call me bunny.’ He flipped a page. ‘But if you were to call me captain…’
He buried his face in the magazine, his shoulders shaking.
‘Captain?! Call you captain?!’ Lucy howled, doubling over and clutching at her side. ‘Captain of what, exactly? Okay, yes,’ she laugh-gasped, ‘I will call you captain. Just to watch you spend the weekend explaining to people that it’s got nothing to do with military service or owning a boat.’
Jack closed the magazine and tossed it onto the coffee table, dislodging a coaster that said Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
‘Okay, not captain then. Maybe you should stick with the usual ones. You can call me honey.’
‘Okay, honey, it is. And you can call me darling or,’ Lucy looked mischievous, ‘Angel. That’ll work.’
Jack snorted.
‘We’re trying to make this relationship believable, Luce. People will think I don’t know you at all. I’ll see what inspires me in the moment.’
The smile disappeared from Lucy’s face, and she held out a hand in front of her.
‘Jack, please don’t embarrass—’
‘Hey.’ He held up his hand and cut her off, ‘I’m an artist—let me work.’
He made a face like he was trying to channel his muse.
Lucy looked like she was regretting asking him to come, and for a moment, she seemed uncertain as she hovered in the doorway, her expressive grey-green eyes full of questions. It surprised him how quickly she had gone from laughing at the silliness of the ruse to real concern.
He watched as she fiddled with her glass.
‘It’s just….’ She stopped and took a breath. ‘I can’t get much right where my family is concerned.’
He could see she was chewing over how to explain herself.
She gave a half smile and counted off on her fingers.
‘Wrong degree, wrong job, living in the wrong part of the country, not married—or even engaged. And they like to go over what I could do differently—better—when we’re together….’
In a small voice, she added, ‘I’m just trying to give them less ammunition for the weekend, by bringing you. Not more.’
Her shoulders sloped, her eyes were wide and pleading, and she looked as if she was trying to fit herself into the corner of the room. He wanted to pull her out and tell her she was fabulous, just as she was. Then she seemed to collect herself, as if surprised she had said those words aloud. She shook her head, swigged the last of her water and put the glass down smartly on the coffee table.
‘Just so long as you know I am mentally taking note of aaalll of this,’ she gestured in his direction, ‘and will file this away for future reference, whatever you do to me this weekend.’
She was back.
‘Do to you? Lucy,’ Jack said in his most soothing voice, closing the magazine, ‘what a thing to say.’
He sank back into the sofa and spread his arms wide.
‘I am here for you this weekend.’
A short time later, Lucy, still barefoot, shoved one last bag onto the rear passenger seat, along with the missing silver shoe which had turned up in the kitchen. She dusted off her hands, as if she’d completed a big and messy task.
‘Okay, I think that’s it.’
Jack eyeballed the bags, squeezed in around a box of clothes Lucy swore blind she’d drop to the charity shop on the way back, even though they’d been in the car for three months already, and a meditation cushion that had to stay in the car or she’d forget to return it to Cassie—again.
Jack perched his bag on top and quickly closed the door before anything else could escape from the car.
Lucy tiptoed over the cobbled front yard back to the house.
‘Just gotta grab my purse,’ she called.
‘Yeah, and some shoes!’ Jack called back.
Lucy re-emerged moments later, purse in hand, flip-flops on her feet, jangling her keys.
As she closed the door, she dropped the keys amongst a cluster of poppies in the border and bent down to retrieve them.
Jack whistled.
Lucy spun round and glowered at him.
‘What are you whistling for?’
Jack shrugged.
‘Just showing some appreciation for your bum.’
Lucy sighed and put her hands on her hips.
‘Are you in character now?’
‘No,’ Jack said. ‘I’m just saying, you’ve got a nice bum. It’s an objective fact.’ He grinned. ‘And it’ll make it easier for me to be in character. This boyfriend,’ he waggled a finger at his chest, ‘tends to get a bit handsy after a few drinks.’
Lucy squinted her eyes at him and locked the door.
‘Actually, I think you’ll find he’s deeply respectful and keeps his hands above the waist.’
‘Fine by me,’ Jack said, and winked at her chest.
Lucy grinned and sighed.
‘Stop being a perv. It’s not a good look on you.’
‘But how will I get good at it if I don’t practice?’ Jack whined as Lucy threw the car keys at him.
‘Oi, those nearly hit me in the face!’
‘That’s what happens to pervy men—things get thrown at them.’
Lucy opened the passenger door.
‘Oh, I see. I’m driving, am I?’ Jack said, jiggling the keys.
‘We’ll take it in turns,’ Lucy said. ‘You lost the first coin toss.’
‘What coin toss?’ Jack grumbled.
‘Come on,’ Lucy said cheerfully, patting the driver’s seat. ‘Hurry up, or you’ll make us late.’