Page 42 of Loving Netta Wilde

So there he was, all set to hold out an olive branch and then she pulled up with that attitude, like it was all his fault. He should have been thinking about how much he was missing her, even though she was just a few feet away. Instead he was thinking about how she was comparing him to Doogie and wondering just how badly he was coming off. New man Frank? What a joke. He was just the same self-conscious fool hiding away from the obvious. Doogie Chambers was here for one thing only. To take Netta away from him. He’d as much as said so atthe family meeting with that comment about it being hard to get over stuff. Hard to get over Netta is what he meant. So he’d come back for her. And Frank was just standing by and letting it happen.

He busied himself preparing the small bedroom for its makeover. When that was done, he put on some music and made a start on dinner for two.

Colin came in just as he was preparing the rice. He sniffed the air. ‘Mmm, that smells good. Curry?’

‘Yep. Chicken.’

‘Excellent. I haven’t had a decent curry in ages. Have I got time for a quick shower? I’m filthy. Been cleaning out a dead man’s shed. Hasn’t been touched for two years.’ He was extremely jaunty for a beaten-up homeless man who’d spent the day carrying out an unenviable task.

‘Yeah, no problem.’

When Colin came back down, he was even jauntier. ‘Anything I can do?’

‘You can get some bowls and cutlery out.’

‘For how many?’

‘Two.’

‘Okay.’ He said it in that way people did when they wanted you to know they were in the middle of working out what was going on.

Frank ignored the inference. If Colin was hoping he’d spill the beans he was out of luck. ‘D’you want beer or wine?’

‘You can’t beat a cold beer with curry.’

‘My sentiments exactly. Can you get some out of the fridge?’

Frank set the food out on the table and refused to think about how wrong it felt to be getting on with Colin Grey.

Colin heaped curry and rice into his bowl and wolfed it down. ‘This is really good. There’s something about curry and chickenthat works so well, isn’t there? I used to love the chicken bhuna at the Rajdoot. Have you tried it?’

‘No. I’ll make a point of trying it next time I’m in there. Have you not been in there yourself lately?’

‘No, it’s been off limits for about a year now. Meat and fish for a lot longer. Arianne and her mad theories. She insisted on cooking everything herself.’

‘It’s possible to make some great veggie meals these days.’

‘Not if you’re Arianne it isn’t. She can turn a slice of hot buttered toast into a lump of charcoal coated with an oil slick.’ Colin ripped off a piece of naan bread and used it to scoop up more curry. ‘Which reminds me, Netta’s cooking’s improved. Her culinary skills weren’t exactly as dismal as Arianne’s, but they were a bit basic. I generally did the cooking.’

Frank stopped eating and gave Colin the evil eye. ‘I guess that was because you weren’t working all the hours to pay the bills and feed and clothe the family.’ The cheek of the fella. In spite of all that he’d done to Netta, she’d taken him in, and this was how he repaid her.

‘I didn’t mean it as a criticism. She really couldn’t cook. It didn’t bother her. She found it funny. We both did. We’d have a good laugh about it actually.’ Colin took a slow drink of his beer. ‘This might come as a surprise to you, Frank, but we did laugh quite a lot in the early days. We did actually get on. By the way, why aren’t you over there tonight?’

Frank carried on with the evil eye. He wanted Colin to know he could see that he was twisting things around to suit his own ends, just like Netta said he would. Well Frank could do that too. He could twist with the best of them if he had to. ‘I thought you might want some company. It must be lonely over here on your own, night after night.’ He wanted to add unloved and unwanted but that was a twist too far and Frank wasn’t that cruel.

Colin’s expression changed to a satisfied smirk. ‘Oh I get it. You don’t want to be over there. It’s him, isn’t it? Chambers.’

‘Not true.’ Shit. The twisty fecker had seen right through him.

Colin leaned back. ‘Any chance of another beer?’

‘Help yourself. I’ll have one too.’

Colin flipped the tops off the beer bottles and handed one to Frank. ‘I understand how you feel.’

‘Is that so?’ It was a strange kind of duel this. The two of them were dancing around each other verbally, both saying things and not saying things but still conveying the meaning.

He rolled the beer bottle in his hand. ‘Personally, I tend to measure my life before and after the second coming.’

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