Strange Relationship – Version X Chapter 004: In The Car

Kitchen looking like the morning after Glastonbury; check. Clothes strewn over chair in corner of bedroom; check. Caitlin wearing expensive perfume and even more expensive underwear, which remains indecently undisturbed; check. Caitlin wearing expression displaying equal parts sexual frustration and annoyance whilst staring into darkness; check. The clincher – is there medium tending towards heavy snuffling/snoring from somewhere to my right? Of course there is. Once all the above boxes have been ticked, the conclusion can only be that Richard is spending the night.

At first I was quite pleased. In fact, it would not be unfair to say that a month ago I would actually have been quite excited by the prospect of having my boyfriend stay over for the night; something about it making us seem like a real couple. However, in view of the events of the past week or so, I am rather underwhelmed by today’s events, and distinctly underwhelmed by tonight’s lack of events.

It was nice that he called me at work to say that he was unexpectedly free tonight and wanted to come round. I might even go so far as to say that it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. However, once I saw him unpacking supermarket carrier bags I knew that things were not going to go quite as I would like.

You see, Richard likes to think of himself as a master chef, some sort of experimental kitchen whizzkid. The reality is that if there were such a program as ‘Vaguely Incompetent Chef’ Richard would be stood on that podium every time – it’s not that he’s bad, but his cooking technique relies on pairing unexpected ingredients and hoping that the results pass FDA guidelines on being fit for human consumption. Think Dr. Moreau’s island for food, and you’re somewhere close.

But that’s not the worst bit, bad as it sounds. I haven’t got to the bad bit yet, but I needed to go through that preamble so that you would understand why the bad bit is quite so bad, and what it is bad in relation to, because it sounds fairly innocuous. Richard likes to have a glass of wine while he cooks.

He’s quite a burly chap so he thinks he can take his drink. Because it takes him so long to do things (which is strange, seeing as everything about his cooking style seems so spontaneous) Richard can easily go through a whole bottle of red, and is usually into a second before he even sets the starter on the table. Then we have a bottle or two with the meal, and another couple of drinks when we’ve settled down afterwards. At one point, I swear to God, I looked up at Richard and the grim reaper was stood behind him. But he wasn’t wielding a scythe, he was waggling a crooked little finger at me and grinning, and I knew that the curse of brewer’s droop had already ended any chance of sex for me tonight.

Still, I tried. I managed to get him into bed at a relatively early hour, before he had chance to complain about being tired. The red set with black lace came out, as did the Chanel. My attempts at seduction were as futile as George Bush’s attempts at apelling. Richard was already in bed when I came out of the bathroom, and snuffling/snoring by the time I’d got into bed. And that’s a full recap of my day, starting with unexpected and welcome surprise, veering towards domestic anarchy, and ending up with equal amounts of predictability and monotony.

Until my phone beeped to say I had a text.

Strange Relationship – Version X Chapter 003: Discovery

The Red Dragon is, I suppose, my local, in that it’s the closest pub to my house. Saying that it’s not actually terribly close, being about a fifteen-minute walk away, and I didn’t frequent it a great deal. Richard loved the place though, being equidistant from his house in the opposite direction, and hence we spent a few Sunday lunches there followed by a walk back to his house. I wasn’t all that keen on eating there, what with owning my own restaurant anyway, and I always felt a little put out that Richard knew all the other patrons so well, whilst I often felt like an arm-adornment. I’d arranged to meet Richard – well, it had been arranged by Richard for me to meet – there.

Swirling the ice cubes around my diet coke, I waited for the inevitable text message to say that Richard would be late. Even the text message was late this time. When it did come through – at 8:45 it arrived fifteen minutes after Richard himself should have – I merely glanced through for an indication of when he would be here, not bothering with the excuses. Sighing to myself, I smoothed down my dress and prepared for the wait.

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” came a cheeky voice from behind me. “No, that one won’t work on you. How about, call heaven quick, there’s an angel missing? No, wait, I’ll get it in a minute. Get your coat, you’ve pulled? What’s a worm do? Any of them likely to let me buy you a drink?”

He was tall and athletic, not bronzed exactly but with a weathered look, the sort of tan you only get from working outdoors, and I had a vision of him digging holes in roads for the council which instantly made him less attractive. Still in muddy shorts, so probably a stray from the boisterous group of young men that had obviously just finished football training (although I suppose it could have been rugby. Wasn’t cricket though, I could tell that much). Nice smile and cheerful eyes. Reasonably gorgeous, actually, but a little too pretty for my liking. Listen to me, I sound like a connoisseur of young men already.

Strange Relationship – Chapter 2 (Version 3)

Standing at the bar, sipping a iced diet coke, I check my watch again. I don’t like unpunctuality, and I’m fairly sure that if an Englishman had drawn up the seven deadly sins it would be on there. Actually, make that an Englishwoman. This Englishman obviously has no compunction about leaving a lady standing at the bar. And then I see him making his way over, and there’s the most curious feeling in my chest. I assume it’s some form of tummy upset and resolve to do an extra fifteen minutes of yoga tonight to sort myself out.

“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, couldn’t get off the phone. Honestly, parents, they fuss over me like I’ve just left home.” I hope he doesn’t see my little look of derision, I’m almost certainly old enough to be his mum. “You okay? No delayed after-effects from your little trip?”

“Umm, thanks for that,” I say, unsure of what else to add to it, or indeed, why I am even here.

Strange Relationship – Prologue and Chapter 1 (Version 2)

It was a Saturday morning in early May, and Caitlin could see the sun streaming through a crack in the curtains. Her alarm clock told her it was just after nine. She smiled and stretched out her arms above her head in an effort to shake a little of the lethargy out of her body. She knew she should get up, but she did like a lie-in at the weekend. She thought she’d give it five more minutes, and curled up in a ball with her hands between her knees.

She tried to work out her itinerary for the day. She was going to have to go shopping at some point, because she knew the freezer was all but empty. She’d recently over-come her fear of getting into a car again, a problem since the accident, and she was going to find herself a runabout. Her son-in-law Ben had promised to help with that when he’d been to football, and she was looking forward to their shopping trip together. She smiled at the little white lie.

She was just looking forward to seeing him, full stop. She’d seen him most days since the funeral and when she wasn’t actually with him, she spent most of her time looking forward to seeing him. They had become very close, like best friends. They talked all the time. She knew, for example, that a couple of times he’d been asked out on dates since the funeral, and each and every time had declined the invitation. They told each other everything. Oops, she though, there’s another lie. I’ve never told him how crazy about him I am.

Since the first time her daughter brought him home she’d suspected she had a crush on him. There was something in his eyes that made her want to give herself to him totally. She would be with him, staring into his eyes, and she would realise he’d stopped talking and was waiting for an answer, and she’d have absolutely no idea what he’d just said.

The Red Dragon Social Club – Chapter 3

Jayne and Laurent

It was a balmy early summer evening when Laurent’s convertible drew up the long drive leading to the Lomas’ home. The gravel crunched under the tyres as it rolled to a stop by the front door, and Laurent saw the curtains twitch. Seconds later Jayne was at the door, waving to him with a flirtatious smile. Awkwardly, he waved back, uncomfortable with the level of intimacy displayed in her smile. As she walked towards the car he looked her up and down. She was wearing a tailored white blouse, curving over her breasts and gathered at her slim waist, and a knee length black skirt with a daringly high split revealing black stockings, whilst her long naturally blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. She had a body that a woman half Jayne’s 45 years would be proud of, something she worked at very hard. As she put on her sunglasses she saw Laurent looking her over, and she smiled. Once in the car she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, asking where they were going. He smiled but never replied. Jayne knew that he was still uncomfortable speaking English, but also he was generally what novelists would describe as the ’strong, silent type’. He turned up the volume on the CD player and accelerated away.

Gallagher & White – Chapter 1

The theft was reported at around nine fifteen, when someone investigated the cause of the draught in the stockroom. Lord Gallagher, the owner of the museum, was informed some ten minutes later and was not amused, although his notorious temper was itself tempered by the small scale of the crime. The most perplexed amongst his staff was the buyer, who had successfully bid on the painting at auction only the previous week. The painting itself had only just been delivered, and indeed had not even been opened, and yet the warehouse supervisor was absolutely adamant that that was only thing missing.