Page 49 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
11
Gone, but Not Forgotten
As usual, the choice selection of slaves-for-a day at the vicar’s annual charity auction includes our own resident author, Cass Leigh, Marilyn Monroe look-alike Orla Murphy and Clara Williams, whose talk at the WI on recycling knitted garments was voted the most popular of the year…
Westery and District Voice
I almost forgot that I had a Crypt-ogram to do earlythat evening.
Orla had talked me into carrying on (but not as Wonder Woman), though I was adamant I wouldn’t do stag nights any more, and if it weren’t for keeping the Batmobile on the road I would have given up after the fiasco with poor old Clive.
This one was a children’s party in the next village, so I tried not to look too alarming: no greenish pallor, just my natural ashen complexion,and my hair flowing its own dried-blood red over my shoulders.
When I sang ‘Monster Mash’ only one little girl cried, and they were all amazingly quiet. One of the mothers offered me a job as her permanent nanny on the way out, but I expect she was joking.
Jane was waiting for me in the car, since we were going tothe King’s Arms for dinner straight afterwards. She’d seemed strangely reluctantto be seen driving about the lanes with a vampire, and on the way there had swathed her head in her pashmina like a pastel-tinted babushka. Now she insisted I took my teeth out before carrying on.
Fussy.
I twisted my hair up and secured it with a big diamante comb that I kept in the glove compartment for the purpose. ‘There, perfectly normal,’ I told her, wiping a layer of crimson from my lipswith a tissue.
‘Don’t you want to go home and change?’ she suggested. ‘It won’t take long, and that crinkle velvet dress you’re wearing not only makes you look like a superannuated hippie, but it clings so much you look twice as big as you are!’
‘Jane, I’m not fat, just naturally curvy, and if I like my clothes I don’t care what anyone else thinks.’
‘Max?’
I considered it. ‘He used to likethe way I dressed, it’s only in later years when he started to go stuffy that he complained. But we never actually go out much when he visits except to the pub, so there’s nothing to dress up for. Besides, I choose clothes I like and feel comfortable in, not dress to please him.’
‘And I suppose you told him so?’
‘I certainly did.’
‘I don’t think you have ever had the least idea how to get andkeep a man,’ she said acidly.
‘Well I must have done something right or it wouldn’t have lasted this long.’
‘If you’d played your cards right when he first fell for you, he’d have left Rosemary and married you.’
‘Yes, I think he would: but how could I have insisted that he left her, when she was an invalid? And I tried not to fall in love with Max – that’s why I got the job and moved here withouttelling him. But he found me eventually.’
‘You always were putty in his hands,’ she said scathingly.
‘That’s the problem – there’s just something about Max.’ I frowned. ‘Therewassomething about Max. I mean, no matter how logically I thought things out and realized I ought to end our affair, as soon as I saw him again I just couldn’t do it. It’s still a bit like that when he phones, if he putshimself out to be charming, but he doesn’t always bother any more.’
‘Why should he? He’s got you anyway.’
‘Not necessarily,’ I said with dignity.
As we walked into the bar I said: ‘Orla and Jason are probably already here, so I’ll introduce you, and then—’
I stopped dead, because standing at the end of the bar was a tall man with his back turned to me, and an awfully familiar, broad-shoulderedback it was too. A mane of too-long, glossy dark hair fell over his shoulders, hair that would feel like springy silk to the touch …
My mouth went dry, and waves of hot and cold swept over me like a speeded-up version of the four seasons.
‘It never happened, Cass: all you have to do is shut that door on the whole thing and convince yourself it never happened. You were drunk, so maybe you onlyimagined it anyway.’
Yeah, right. Easy. Thank you, voice of my conscience.
