Chapter 15
Will loved his dad in a way that filial duty dictated, but he didn’t love him. He wanted to, but Chris hadn’t really done that much to earn his love. He didn’t really get his son, he didn’t know
what made him tick, and he thought it was weird that Will wasn’t into football, because he couldn’t understand that other
people might think differently about things. And that was probably why they were in the aftermath of today’s debacle, because
his dad wouldn’t have considered that Polly might not be up for a surprise wedding. His mother was his dad’s female equivalent,
self before others always, and Shauna was her mini-me. Will was the family anomaly, and he was glad about that. He wouldn’t
have blamed Polly at all for leaving his dad, if that’s what she was planning to do, and the emptied wardrobes and packed-up
boxes rather indicated that she was. Yes, they all knew about the affair because he’d introduced the “new woman” to the family
the same week Polly had left, and it was obvious they’d been seeing each other for ages. But two weeks later, she dumped him,
and then Polly came home. Will remembered seeing Polly not long after and noting how thin she was, how fragile and sad. A
year later that sadness was still hanging around her, a gray aura like a November rain cloud.
“I can’t believe she could show me up like this,” Chris was saying in a voice that wavered between anger and disbelief. “I
mean, how could she do this to me?” he protested, throwing his hands up in the air.
Will was at the end of his tether with his father’s victimhood.
“How could you do this to her?” he spat out, unable to stop himself.
“What?” said his father, sister, and aunt in unison.
“You surely can’t be on her side,” Shauna added.
“It was a weird idea,” said Will.
“Nonsense. It was beyond romantic,” Camay said to that.
“Ha. That dress, though,” said Shauna with a delighted shriek of laughter. “I’ve never seen anything so horrific in my life.”
I have. Your face , Will almost threw at his sister, except it would have been puerile.
“Slightly voluminous, I thought,” said Ward.
Camay gave her husband a scathing look. “Thank you, Gok Wan.”
“You must have had an idea that she wasn’t happy,” said Will to his father.
“None,” said Chris. “We were happy.”
“Clearly not,” said Ward with a huff.
“Did you ever take her out? To restaurants, the cinema, a hotel? Do coupley things?”
“Will,” began his father, an impatient edge to his voice, “when you’ve come in from work at daft o’clock, the last thing you
want to do is get togged up and go out again. Polly wasn’t bothered about all that stuff. She was a homebird, like me.”
“I’m guessing not that much of a homebird if she’s just flown the nest,” said Ward, on his third malt. Camay would have to
drive the BMW back home. A small compensation for missing out on that lamb.
“When was the last time you said ‘I love you’ to each other?” asked Will. He thought that might be a quick guide to the state
of their relationship.
Chris waved that stupid question away too. “I don’t know. We didn’t go in for sop like that.”
“I think getting your ducks in a row first might have been a good idea,” said Ward, fingers creeping toward the Chivas Regal
again, “before outlaying all that expense.”
“I thought they were,” said Chris with a groan. “After... last year, I said we should think about the next step.” He nodded emphatically.
“What does that even mean unless you’re Neil Armstrong?” said Will.
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Chris insisted.
“No, I wouldn’t have said so,” said Ward.
“Oh for God’s sake, of course it is. We’re okay for money, we’ve got good pensions, nice cars, this house, secure jobs—there
is only one next step. And we’d get a tax advantage being married.”
“Tax advantage,” Will echoed, deadpan.
“Will, you see things differently when you’re my age. You look ahead to the future and... security and things.”
“Worth doing for tax alone,” put in Ward, nodding enthusiastically. “But of course if you had married, all preexisting wills
would be revoked, you do know that? She’d have got everything if you popped your clogs.”
Shauna gasped loudly and Will tried to hide a smirk. She hadn’t been aware of that, then.
“Don’t panic, love. I was going to suggest doing new wills to her after the wedding. This is my house and it goes to you and
Will when I die.”
“And they say romance is dead,” said Will. He was ready for running off from them all himself. He knew how Polly felt.
“Look, darling, there were only friends and family there today,” said Camay, putting her hand comfortingly over her brother’s.
“They’ll have nothing but sympathy for you. You mustn’t dwell on the embarrassment and humiliation, because it will fade away
very quickly. And if people are going to laugh at you behind your back, let them. That will say more about them than you.”
“Thank you,” said Chris, wishing she’d shut up trying to make things better, because she really wasn’t any good at it.
Camay kept up the smile as she said, “Mind you, I’ll still have to give you the bill, Christopher, even though it was all
a terrible exercise in waste. I expect the hotel staff had a good feed.”
“Couldn’t you have just asked her to marry you, Dad?” asked Will.
“She’d clearly have said no, and then you’d have saved yourself all this bother,” said Ward.
“Well, that’s very helpful, Ward, thank you,” said Chris with a sneer. He poured himself a glass of malt before Ward drank
it all.
Shauna slunk upstairs. She wondered if there was something in the room with all Polly’s stuff in it that might point to what
she had been planning. She hoped she’d find something satisfyingly incriminating.
Orville Bell had the misfortune not only to be named after a giant green duck but to be known by the contraction “’Orrible.”
He was a low-level scrote and always would be with that moniker. It didn’t bother his girlfriend Tina, who thought it was
quirky, but it bothered him more with every year that passed. Others in his orbit had equally insalubrious nicknames: Cockeye,
Davy Strong Fingers, Shagger Corbett, but at least theirs had an element of masculinity about them, whereas his was just scummy
and also cast in cement, so there was nothing he could do about it. He did need to do something about the predicament he was presently in, because he owed Billy the Donk a car. He’d been sent out
on an easy steal and he’d smoked too much herb on the night in question and missed the window of opportunity. And now he was in trouble unless he came up with the goods—and
quick. Or stumped up the heavy cash penalty which Billy had leveled at him for cocking up.
He had an uncle in Slattercove who’d given him more pep talks than he’d had hot dinners, and at the end of every one, Orrible had promised to change his ways, and yet he never had.
Uncle Benny had a fleet of burger vans that served the area.
He didn’t have to work himself, yet he still chose to bring a van up here to this remote spot.
Orrible had been wondering why that was for ages, so he’d eventually gone on a detective trail.
He’d discovered that his uncle always parked up and stuck a notice in the window that he’d be back in half an hour, but he would go missing for much longer.
And that was because naughty married Uncle Benny spent all those stretched-out “half an hours” in a nearby cottage in the company of a blowsy widow with bouncy bleached-blonde curls and even bouncier breasts.
He’d hung on to that ace card until he needed to play it—and that time was now.
Desperate situations called for desperate measures, and a bit of blackmail had to be done.
So Orrible set off to the beauty spot to catch up with his uncle. But what did he find parked up there but a black car, the
type that had a very juicy catalytic converter underneath, and a lone woman sitting on a bench—presumably the owner. No one
else around. As he walked toward her, he saw her smile at him and he wished she wouldn’t because that was going to make things
so much harder.