Chapter 34
Time passed so quickly. A month went by in the mere blink of an eye with us barely noticing. We were lost in our love. And that love was just going from strength to strength.
It was Valentine’s Day, and I couldn’t get enough of it. In the past I would always roll my eyes at the most pointless day in the calendar. I would inform anyone who cared to listen that Valentine’s was just a capitalist construct and anyone who bought into all that nonsense was a complete nincompoop. Well, who was the nincompoop now? Oh yes, that would be me. Because I was bloody loving it! Bring it on. All of it. I just couldn’t get enough, from the padded hearts to the horny red devils and all the other cheesy nonsense in between. I was in love, and that was to be celebrated every day, but especially on February 14th.
So tonight, to celebrate Valentine’s, we were going out for dinner with Lottie and Leo. Although we were loving time on our own, it was great to be able to do couply things now too. Like going to the pub quiz with Adam and his friends. It turned out I actually quite enjoyed the simpler things in life. I had even forgone my normal white wine or vodka martini to try a half pint of the local ale, and it really wasn’t too bad. Not likely to be my preferred tipple of choice, but OK once in a blue moon.
I proved invaluable on the “guess the famous face” round, being the only one surrounded by sci-fi fanatics who hadn’t the foggiest who Kim Kardashian was. I surprised myself by how much fun it was. Even Adam wasn’t as bad as I had first thought. I was ashamed of myself for never giving him more of a chance. I’d felt he was the dullest man on God’s green earth, and believe me, he was still deadly dull with his monotone voice and talk of all things animé, but he was a good soul and he was a great friend to Seb. So for that reason I would tolerate him and make things nice.
Lottie was completely over the moon at how things had turned out. She boasted that it was her part in playing matchmaker and intervening, when necessary, that had finally got us together. I couldn’t deny the part she had played in it all, and I would be forever grateful.
Lottie had left it up to me to decide where we should book our meal. So, I let Seb have the deciding vote. Needless to say, it was going to be somewhere where fine dining was frowned upon and where half the menu was designed to be eaten with fingers and a napkin stuffed under your chin to catch the inevitable drips. But that was fine by me.
I had learned that a good relationship was all about give and take: even if that meant giving your Spanx a good old workout and taking a pack of Rennie’s with you in your handbag for the inevitable heartburn later.
I sat across the table at The Fat Belly Deli, and smiled lovingly at my man.
He was looking particularly gorgeous in his new shirt and jacket. We had gone shopping that afternoon and bought him a few new bits and pieces. Of course we’d got some items for me too. I still hadn’t lost my passion for fashion, now that I had discovered other passions could be great fun too.
I suppose I had Jocasta to thank for persuading Seb out of his rut, style-wise. For he certainly scrubbed up well now. He was far more delicious than anything described on the restaurant menu. And the 28-day well-hung beef had nothing on him.
Seb was in heaven. The restaurant was the type that sold meat by the pound: half a cow cooked to your liking with a mountain of chips on the side. You could pick whatever sauce you wanted to drizzle on your hunk of beef, ranging from the delicious-sounding red wine and shallot to the frankly stomach-turning chocolate and bacon bits.
Seb had carefully chosen the 24 oz cut of beef to come with a hearty side of mac and cheese, onion rings, skin on fries and corn on the cob. His preferred sauce, after much deliberation, turned out to be the rather sedate creamy mushroom.
He looked at his food with almost as much adoration as he lavished on me. I didn’t mind, though. I was just happy that he was happy. And anyway, it meant that next time we dined out it would be my choice, and there was a lovely new sushi restaurant I was dying to try. Seb was not a fan of sushi; he preferred his fish big and battered. He had once told me that raw fish was not for dinner, it was for scraping off the bottom of a trawlerman’s boot.
I watched him tuck into his food with gusto, and I felt a little wave of emotion sweep over me. I really adored him. How could I feel such tenderness while watching him eat a corn on the cob with butter dripping down his chin? But I did.
“Good choice for restaurant, Seb.”
Leo commented with obvious approval.
He was nearly as enamoured with his food as Seb, having also plumped for the steak, slightly smaller than Seb’s, but with a plethora of side orders and a blue cheese sauce accompaniment.
Lottie smiled at him affectionately. I couldn’t help but notice the look she gave her man was akin to the one I had just given mine. It was fair to say we we’d both been impaled by Cupid’s arrow.
She, like me, had plumped for a lighter option and was having a chicken dish with a medley of winter vegetables. Neither of us wanted the meat sweats later. She did, however, dunk a carrot spear into Leo’s cheese sauce to liven it up a little.
“So, what happened to Jocasta then?”
I looked to Seb to answer.
He paused from wolfing down his meat. Something I also hoped to be doing later.
“In all honesty, we don’t really know. She left immediately after Lila dropped her bombshell, claiming there was a family emergency, and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of her since. It’s fair to say that Fluck is hopping mad. It’s left the firm seriously understaffed.”
“Yes, and possibly left his staff seriously over firm,” I quipped. I couldn’t help myself.
After Jocasta had made like pigeon shit and hit the road, many things had come to light. Firstly, the fact that Fluck and his wife were no longer together. The surprising part was that it had absolutely nothing to do with what he had been getting up to with Jocasta on his swivel chair.
It seemed that dreary old Dinah wasn’t quite as beige as we had all thought. In fact, she had walked out on Fluck with her bags neatly packed, well over a month ago. She was now to be found in and around Vietnam with her new boyfriend, photographing the near extinct snub-nose monkeys for a wildlife magazine.
We had discovered from someone Seb knew that worked at Leeds Leads that Mrs Fluck had run away with their lead photographer after she had met him at the fashion show. Once he had fulfilled his brief and snapped all the images he needed, plus a couple of lucky ones, namely the tattered sign and Fluck’s bony enraged face, he had retired to the bar for a quick drink before returning to work.
That was when he met Dinah. They had felt an instant connection between them. They struck up conversation, and as they say, the rest is history. Or rather geography and Southeast Asia, it would appear.
Fluck had never noticed his wife’s interaction with another, much younger man. It was fair to say he was as mad as a meat axe that day, and raging to all and sundry that he was going to be a laughing stock at his golf club. But then again, he barely acknowledged her at the best of times. His eyes were never fixed in her direction.
But once she had gone from his life, maybe never to return, all that had changed. Now his eyes had been truly opened. The truth was that he missed his wife and regretted all the years he had taken her for granted. He was lost without her. He became a sad shambolic shell of the man he once was. And that was really saying something, because he had always resembled an extra from Zombie Apocalypse as it was.
Once we had discovered this bizarre plot twist, it put a slightly different spin on things. Yes, it was still seriously gross that Fluck and Jocasta had been getting up to fiddly diddly in the workplace after hours, but at least he hadn’t been cheating on his spouse. And maybe due to what had happened in his personal life, a serious error of judgement could be somewhat excused.
Even when he had been in my office acting unusually cheerfully, it had been his way of dealing with the grief at the breakdown of his marriage. While I thought he was strutting around like the cat who had got the cream, he was in fact putting on a show for the world. Giving the impression that all was good, when in fact he was crumbling apart inside.
But that left Jocasta very much still in the frame. She was the undeniable villain of the peace. For one thing, she was the one claiming to be single, but I knew that was a big fat lie. Fluck was in fact the single one. I really couldn’t fathom out her motives.
Leo’s voice interrupted my thoughts. He was holding the solid menu in the air and looking around the table expectantly.
“So, are we all too stuffed, or is there a bit of room left for pudding?”
Seb leaned back in his chair, his normally slim physique looking a little rotund in the gut area from the sheer amount he had scoffed.
He let out a barely audible groan.
“I don’t know if I could, I’m fit to burst. But pass us the menu, Leo. It wouldn’t hurt to have a little look.”
Leo passed it across the table to Seb, and once he had it in his hands his eyes lit up like a pinball machine, obviously impressed with the range of sweet treats Fat Belly Deli offered.
“Oooh, I might just be able to squeeze a sliver of jam roly poly in, though.”
He shut the menu with a decisive snap.
“It’s my favourite, after all, so it would be rude not to.”
Lottie shot me an amused glance, which I returned.
My phone beeped on the table next to me. I quickly moved my paper napkin away as it was concealing half of the screen. It was a text message from a number I didn’t recognise.
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you meet me tomorrow for a coffee, 10am Gourmet Delights? I really need to talk to you… Jocasta”