The Fix Up, page 2
“Oh yes, and back to the subject in question.” Thomas waggled his finger at her. “There has got to be a good reason why you don’t want to go. Apart from being anti-social and anti-weddings, and not over that arsehole Stu, I sense a mystery.”
He was like a truffle hound on the scent.
“I am so over him,” Arietta said indignantly. The note she’d got that morning had been for her information only. Thank goodness she’d thrown it in the shredder. Why did some people enjoy being bitchy?
There was no answer to that.
“Earth to Arietta.”
She jumped. She’d forgotten she was having a conversation with Thomas
“This is me, you’re talking to, love,” Thomas said. “He who knows you as well as he knows himself. Well, almost. The sod hurt you, and you wouldn’t let me hurt him back.”
“Yes, okay, he did, but that was then, now I’m just wary and off men. Present company apart…as long as you stop this interfering.”
“Stopped,” Thomas said hastily. “But spill the deets over why the invitation and why the antipathy.”
“No mystery,” Arietta said, resigned to telling him everything—almost everything—as she spooned coffee into her stovetop coffee maker and slid it onto the hot plate of her Aga. “Just someone trying to be superior, and I’d guess they think they’re rubbing my nose in it. Which they aren’t, but I bet my next royalty cheque they wouldn’t believe that even if I swore it on oath.”
“I need more.” Thomas sat on top of the work surface, as close to the Aga as he could without burning. “Lots more. What’s better than coffee and gossip?”
Arietta rolled her eyes. It didn’t matter how many times she complained about his preferred seat, he just grinned and carried on doing it. One day he’d burn his bum and it would be his own fault.
“Bride or groom?” he asked as he began to juggle the salt and pepper pots. “As I have no idea what it’s all about it is still a mystery to me”—he began to sing It’s a Mystery in a very tuneful voice—“spill the beans. Who?”
“Both, sort of, but I suspect it’s the bride.” Arietta grabbed the condiment set before all the contents ended up on the floor and put them down out of his reach. Then she handed him a cup of coffee and sighed. “She was a bit of a bitch, and that’s doing bitches a disservice. Ditto if I said a cow, to cows.”
Thomas raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes. “Ooh…you’re not usually spiteful. Tell me more, sister mine.”
It was Arietta’s turn to roll her eyes. “Oh all right, Mr Nosy. Let’s sit in the conservatory and I’ll give you chapter and verse.”
“Done.” He jumped down and tweaked Arietta’s nose. “Let’s go.”
“Anyone would think it’s the story of the century and it’s really not,” Arietta said as they settled in the sun-warmed room. She watched two robins eyeing each other up with suspicion and smiled. Her garden wasn’t large but she loved it. This room and her study both overlooked the lawn, pond and bird table. Contrary to popular belief, she was never distracted from work by the view. It gave her inspiration. Many a hero in the historical romantic crime stories she wrote had had his complicated love life resolved as she’d stared out of the window.
Thomas coughed ostentatiously. “Earth to Ari.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said automatically. He always made it sound as if he’d deliberately dropped the “H”. “Okay, well, you remember when I first went to St Andrews, to uni? I shared a flat with four other people?”
Thomas nodded. “Yeah, you, Jan, Daisy, Helen and someone I don’t remember. Long hair she tossed around at every opportunity and over-plump lips. Do you think she’d had them done? She definitely needed her roots done.”
“Miaow.”
Thomas laughed. “Got the claws out,” he agreed. “She had to be a cat to upset you. What was her name again? I can’t keep calling her trout lips.”
“Kristin, who called herself Krystal, and regarding her lips, who knows? Her roots, yup, always two-tone but not by style. Several years older and evidently she’d swanned around, ‘trying to find herself’—that’s a direct quote by the way—before she chose to go to uni. She wasn’t with us for many weeks. She got a feller, got fed up of actually having to work and got a better offer from Daddy. Went to live the life of a…well, a well-heeled lady in London, I guess.”
“It’s her wedding?”
Arietta nodded. Thomas whistled. “And you’ve kept in touch?”
“Oh no, never heard from her since she left.” Which Arietta decided was a plus. “Weird or what?”
“Then why now?” Thomas sounded as puzzled as she felt. “‘Weird or what’ is about right.”
“Ah, that’s the rest of the story.” Arietta sipped some coffee then put the cup down. It must had been her mood because the best Kenyan blend tasted like cardboard. Soggy, cheap cardboard. That was annoying. She was limiting the amount of full strength, full flavour, full-on caffeine coffee she drank every day, so for one not to be up to par didn’t seem fair.
“You remember for a few weeks back then, in the first few weeks of my first year, I said I was sort of seeing a bloke?” she asked. “He was a post grad. I wasn’t sure about him, but was prepared to give him a chance? He had… I dunno, something about him that was appealing. Up to a point, I guess. He had an appalling taste in socks. Anyway, we had a barney and I told him to sling his hook? You were in Spain filming that TV series where you played an alien, so all my angst was by phone and email?”
“Oh yeah,” Thomas said fervently. “When I got back all fired-up and ready to kick ass, you told me to calm down, it was well over and done with. I’ve never seen you so…so disgusted, I guess. You never did say why, though, and I was too much of a gentleman to pry.”
Arietta laughed. “Get it right, love. You were too much involved with that pretty blonde who called you Tommy. Or was it the one who lisped and called you Th…hom…uth and kept sending you pouty kisses?” She mimed blowing him a kiss with her bottom lip stuck out. “And cwoowtie pie.”
“Susie and Loretta,” Thomas commented with a reminiscent smirk. “I’d forgotten them. Ah, to be young and have stamina. Actually, it was neither then. They came, they went, I was gutted. Until it was Maybelle Fortune. Lovely Maybelle. She married a vicar and has six kids at the last count. Even one named Thomas. Lives in Cumbria. I get a Christmas card every year. And stop changing the subject.”
“I wasn’t,” Arietta said indignantly. “Well, not very much,” she added with honesty. “And it’s boring, the old, old, story. I met him in my first few days at uni. He tried to monopolise me and didn’t take kindly to me not letting him. Then, after only a couple of weeks, he wanted to have sex. I didn’t. Too much, too soon. I mean, you and the parents had drummed into me…be sure, and I wasn’t. We were having a heated discussion about it in the communal lounge when Kristin walked in and said, well, if I didn’t want sex with him, she did.” She smiled at the memory as Thomas let out a long whistle. “Not good.” With hindsight it was humorous, but it hadn’t been at the time. Kristin had sent her a malicious smirk as she had spoken. It had been obvious by her snarky comments she’d been smitten by the guy and most annoyed he’d chosen Arietta to ask out.
“Oh…my… And?”
“He said, ‘last chance, babe’, to me. I said not interested, too much too soon, and I didn’t realise he was that desperate, so he shrugged, said my loss.” She snorted. “I said not really, plenty more fish in the sea, less needy, not much of a loss.
“He said I was well named—he’d thought my initials were HRC and said it was short for hah-archaic. Then he said to Kristin, ‘yeah, why not’.
“She said to me, ‘All’s fair in sex and war’ and they walked out of the room together. I laughed loudly, well, it was laugh or throw things and I wasn’t stooping to that. Not wanting to be around to hear anything—the walls weren’t that thick and we already knew she was a screamer—I went down to the union.”
Thomas spluttered his coffee. “Oh my a…” He shook his head in mock sorrow. “Look what I missed. Luckily.”
“You better believe it. Anyway, I met up with the others, had a good slag-off fest and lots of dodgy cocktails. Eventually we meandered back, slightly mellow, shall we say, and her room was empty. Just a toothbrush and a packet of contraceptive pills on the bathroom floor. Mega oops there, we reckoned. Even so, that was the last we saw of her in the flat. We were told she’d changed halls. For a while after that you’d see the pair of them arm in arm, or tonsils against tonsils all over the place. The term ended, and then… No one saw her again. Nor him.”
“But it’s over, what, fourteen years since then,” Thomas pointed out. “Nothing since then?”
“Not a lot. I did hear third or twentieth hand about six or seven years ago that he was working for her father, who has a multi-million-pound company recycling rags, and that she was modelling.”
“The rags?” Thomas said and almost fell over as he snorted. “I’d love to see it.”
Arietta punched him. “Idiot. I never saw her name mentioned anywhere afterwards, so who knows. Anyway that’s it. A non-story. I don’t half know how to pick ’em.”
“I don’t get it.” Thomas ignored her woe is me remark, picked up two pencils and began to juggle with them. “Why has she suddenly decided to ask you to her wedding?”
“I’m guessing that’s got a lot to do with her groom,” Arietta said and sniggered. “All those years and…” She did the ‘da…da…dah daaah’ out loud.
“You mean?” Thomas smiled, very wickedly. “You mean…”
Arietta nodded. “Whatever the pair of them have been up to in the meantime, the bloke I ditched is the groom to be.”
Thomas howled. “Ohh, the cat she is. You have to go, you cannot miss it. Don’t you have a handsome, hot-as-hell bloke tucked away? Someone to make her drool? Someone you can ask to be your partner?”
Arietta rolled her eyes. “Nope.” Droolworthy men in her orbit were few and far between, as in zilch, none she wasn’t related to. “The only one of those is you. Stop grinning, you sod, I was going to add allegedly, though I can’t see it myself and frankly you’re too well-known for anyone not to know you’re my brother. Plus you’d be mobbed and I’d be stuck in the corner as Ari-no-mates.” She couldn’t stand the thought of Kristin’s smirk if she turned up alone. “I’ll send my apologies and say I’m at some writer’s convention in Ulan Bator or somewhere.” That sounded sort of plausible, and she had a mate who could mug up some tweets if need be.
“Tut, tut.” Thomas shook his head in mock sorrow. “What is that our dear mama always says about liar, liar, pants on fire?”
“She also says if you have to lie, do a big one,” Arietta pointed out. “And I’m doing that. Mega big. Though I might say Hong Kong and go visit Jan. She’s still out there.”
“Ah, the lovely Jan. Still refusing to admit I’m the love of her life?” Thomas patted his heart. “Gutted, I am.”
“’Fraid so.” Arietta looked at him curiously, struck by the wry note in his voice. “Would you like to be?”
“Gutted? Nah. The rest? Who knows,” Thomas said in what Arietta decided was a cryptic manner. “Dammit. I really wanted to find out what Pannerburn Castle was like, even if it’s second-hand. You’re cruel, love.”
“That’s me.” She didn’t mention his change of subject. On the odd occasion that Jan and Thomas were in the same vicinity, sparks flew, and Arietta had long wondered why, made her own conclusions and decided never to interfere. “When you get your Oscar, you’ll just have to treat yourself,” Arietta said, unmoved by his ‘woe is me, poor deprived male’ expression. He was a bloody good actor and used that at his convenience. “Or just be brass-necked and go and have a look around. It’s only on the other side of the loch. Not far as the crow flies.” Although a lot longer by road. “Now make yourself comfy with the paper or something while I write my sorry, but thank you note and sort out something to eat for lunch.”
“I’ll need to slip into the village and buy a paper.” Thomas patted his pocket. “Wallet in place. You write your scaredy-cat note and I’ll pop it into the post box for you. Anything else you need?”
“Nope.” Arietta nipped back into the study, found an appropriate card and scribed her apologies. She handed it to Thomas with a flourish. “Are you happy with my pâté and stuff for lunch?”
“Well, duh. Look, my last attempt. Are you sure you’re not letting what happened with them and that bloody Stu cloud your judgement? I mean, you should go and say sod ’em all.”
“I shouldn’t go and be miserable. Which I would be. To say nothing of bankrupt and not able to feed you when you visit. Now are you going to give it a miss and give over, shut up and let it be and stop for lunch, or have me throw a hissy fit and chuck you out?
“Shutting up. Lunch, please.”
“Great. It’ll be ready when you get back. Here you go.” She handed him an envelope. “I’ve even found a stamp for it.”
Chapter Two
Several days later, that, Arietta thought, was that. It was a pity because after she’d researched Pannerburn Castle, she hadn’t been able to help a pang of regret that she wasn’t going to experience some of its hospitality, but such was life. The price of a room, even when it wasn’t for such an event as the wedding she’d been invited to, would wipe out a large chunk of her hard-earned royalties, and, if she were honest, she had better things to spend her money on. As the central heating boiler was making alarming noises, she had a feeling that was going to be one of them.
Resolutely, she put the whole thing out of her mind and concentrated on rescuing her Regency heroine from the clutches of a white slaver without recourse to screaming for help—or the hero. As ever, once she started to write, she was oblivious to anything else.
The roar of something loud and close by made her jump, and a line of xcvbnm,**#fbn appeared on her manuscript. Arietta swore, deleted it, pressed Save and got up just as the doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting a visitor, it wasn’t bin day, and as far as she knew she had no parcels due. Probably someone lost. There weren’t many weeks when someone didn’t knock and ask if she was the local bed and breakfast—not a chance, she hated fry-ups in the morning—were they on the road to the town—no—and on one occasion, Pannerburn Castle. The answer to that was, not unless your car is an amphibious vehicle. Arietta wondered what this visitor would want.
She pulled the front door open to see a body next to a kick-ass motorbike. In the mandatory leathers and a crash helmet with “Hot rods and hot bods” inscribed on it, the rider looked lean, mean and dangerous. Arietta put her hand to one side and fumbled for the spray can of coloured water she kept handy just in case she needed it. As all self-defence sprays were illegal in the UK it was, she reckoned, as good as anything. She had one of those shrill noise-making gadgets as well, but living where she did doubted anyone would be able to hear it. Plus, she was of the opinion a sharp dig with her nails into somewhere vulnerable would give her time to run or slam the door, lock it and call the police before any would-be assailant recovered.
He turned to walk up the path to the door. To say the cock-of-the-walk male strut was menacing was an understatement. Arietta panicked and slammed the door in his face just as he reached his hand out to…to what?
She had no intention of discovering that.
Arietta leant on the door, her chest heaving and her pulse racing. Who should she contact?
Thomas?
He was miles away, but hopefully would tell her what to do.
The doorbell rang as she began to thumb in Thomas’ number. She missed a digit and swore. Why the hell hadn’t she just gone into the recent calls directory?
Because I’m flustered.
“Arietta, look out of your window and you’ll see I’m not a threat.”
He knows my name?
“Go upstairs if you think it’s safer. I’m no danger to you, but I realise I might look like one.”
Might? Understatement of the century.
Arietta checked the bolt was across and the chain on before she headed upstairs to the landing window, which overlooked the front doorstep. She opened it cautiously and peered out. Not too far, just enough to see what—or who—was below.
The guy looked upwards. “Hi.”
She nodded warily. “Hi.”
Whoever he was bowed—dramatic or what?—and removed his headgear to reveal a shock of copper-coloured curls to his shoulders. He—it was definitely a he—shook his head so the curls danced all over the place and nodded. “Hi again.”
Arietta blinked.
Oh…my…it isn’t…is it? Him? On my doorstep? Of course not. Stand-in copycat lookalikes were really excellent these days. However, why? It wasn’t her birthday, no one had intimated she needed a whatever-o-gram, so what was going on?
“Arietta Clare, I presume?” The said hot bod grinned, and his deep green eyes crinkled up at the edges. Contact lenses could do an amazing job. However…talk about drool central. “Nice to meet you at last. You are everything I was told you are, and more.”
It was his voice. What did he mean by ‘at last’, and ‘everything’?
Recognisable, even though with the overlong hair and lack of a beard it wasn’t easy. “And you are?” No way was she going to presume he was who she thought he was. And if he was, why was he there? “Who has said what, why and when?”
That’s enough who, why, what, when and was to confuse anyone.
He smiled. One of those if you could bottle it you’d make a fortune smiles.
