Page 9 of The Promise of Tomorrow
‘It’s lovely and cool if I’m frying. I’d have been boiling in that jumper I wore to the office.’ He ran a hand over the beading and stared over her shoulder for a moment. ‘Don’t save anything for best, I say, because you end up never wearing it.’
Elena couldn’t help admiring how the sparkly metallic top hung on him as if he were aVoguefashion model. Whistling, he went into the kitchen, with a natural strut that would beguile the audience of any catwalk show. The doorbell rang. Elena pulled a puzzled face and slid across the bolts. She opened the door and faced an elderly man with a grey beard, beaming with the perfect flash of white that only dentures provided.
‘Tahoor? Everything all right? What on earth has brought you out in this rain? Come on in,’ she said and gestured with her hand, heart sinking a little. What did he want?
Tahoor strode in looking pleased with himself, raindrops pelting down now. He pulled off his hood and rubbed his hands together.
‘I’ve come round to introduce myself to your young man,’ he said and beamed. ‘Held off as long as I could, with my darling Isha’s voice ringing in my head, telling me I was being a nosy old so-and-so. Yet she would be so happy for you, my dear. And for me. My prayers have been answered. This cul-de-sac is distinctly lacking when it comes to men. Finally one moves in!’ He clapped his hands.
He had a point. Most of the cul-de-sac was home to women like Elena. Cherry, over the road, had got divorced and stayed put with the children. Beth had bought her long-term partner out, after they split. Whereas Julie and Sandra married each other last year. There were Deidre and Ivy too – they’d lost their husbands within months of each other. Tahoor really was outnumbered.
‘Where is he?’ Tahoor hissed. ‘So glad that you’re finally one step closer to marriage, what with your big three-o approaching.’
‘We’re not… Rory and I are definitely not… And in any case, I?—’
‘Nice to meet you, Tahoor,’ said Rory, having thrown downthe tea towel, and hurried over, catching the end of their conversation. He put an arm around Elena and gave her a smacker of a kiss.
She gave Rory a glare as pointed as one of the kitchen knives. His eyes had filled with mischief and Elena braced herself, waiting for talk of weddings and honeymoons. Or comments from Tahoor about how the time was now nearing when she could finally leave her job and have children. She’d given up explaining that she’d still had many ambitions for her career. However, he’d gone very quiet and was pulling at his beard, eyeing Rory up and down. He’d pinned his hair back, whilst cooking, with one of Elena’s hair grips, and Tahoor studied the flimsy sparkly top and compass bracelet.
‘Oh…’ The old man cleared his throat. ‘My mistake. I thought you two youngsters… Jolly good. I went to Julie and Sandra’s engagement party, you know. I’m all for… Hurrah the BLT community.’
‘It’s LGBT,’ mumbled Elena, and she bit the insides of her cheeks, praying she wouldn’t catch Rory’s gaze again.
‘BLT stands for bacon, lettuce and tomato,’ said Rory in a controlled voice.
No… Elena, couldn’t hold it in. Rory was trying not to laugh as well.
Tahoor rubbed his forehead. ‘I suppose that means you and Elena aren’t…’
‘No, we’re not. But not because I’m gay. I’m as straight as Elena’s parking.’
‘Gosh. Super straight then. It’s just that top, it reminded me of my late wife’s gold sari that she wore to our daughter’s wedding. Very nice,’ said Tahoor. ‘So, Rory, m’laddo, are you watching the football at eight? City versus Liverpool. Go the Blues! It’s so long since I’ve had company during a match. Noone in my daughter’s family is a fan. I used to watch with a married friend. He’d come over with his wife, and she and Isha would catch up on each other’s news and cook. But I don’t see him so much now that I’m not part of a couple.’ Sadness had crept into his voice with those last words.
‘Oh, Roryadoresfootball and would like nothing more than watching men kick a ball around for ninety minutes,’ said Elena smoothly. ‘Please. Do stay and watch with him.’ Rory stood next to her looking as if he wished he’d poisoned the stir-fry. Tahoor’s face had sprung to life. Her chest pinched slightly. Perhaps she should have done more since his wife died in the spring. She’d taken his daughter Yalina’s number, agreeing to act as a go-between in emergencies, and Elena went round once a week, to check he was okay. But she’d never actually invited him in for a drink, despite lovely Isha often insisting she went into theirs for her homemade cardamom tea cake.
It would be fine, him staying for the match. She’d have no regrets over this, despite his attitude to her career and insistence that it must be terrible for her having to work until a man gave her a ring and got her pregnant. ‘A fizzy drink, Tahoor? Or juice? Coffee? Have you eaten? Rory, do take his coat…’
‘Thanks, my dear. I won’t get in the way. You get on with your housework or cooking, whatever you were doing. Right, after you, Rory, and let’s hope we’re not subjected to any of those bloomin’ woman commentators…’
6
RORY
Rory collapsed onto his bed.Please, if there’s a god out there, never make me sit through another football match. A smile waved across his face, like the City and Liverpool fans in the crowds. He rolled onto his side and stared out of the window. The moon shone brightly as if smiling too, happy that rain clouds had cleared. He’d walked Tahoor home. Rory let out a groan. The old man had been so delighted with a bit of male company that he’d invited himself over to watch another match next week. It was the stick insects all over again. When was Rory going to learn to say no?
Elena had disappeared upstairs during the match. It had been odd how, earlier in the evening, whilst he was cooking, she seemed to have completely vanished. She definitely hadn’t been in her bedroom or its bathroom, nor her office. Her blushed cheeks had given away that, for some reason, she hadn’t wanted him to know what she’d been up to.
Elena Swan seemed easy to read at work – hardworking, organised, popular with the staff. So what had she got to hide at home?
Tahoor had asked Rory in as he was having trouble bleeding a radiator in the bedroom he slept in, the biggest at the front of the house. On the way out, Rory had noticed the elderly neighbour had a burglar alarm, but not a single bolt on his door, nor a CCTV camera either, like Elena’s. They clearly weren’t standard fittings for each house in the cul-de-sac. Since moving in, Rory was increasingly struck by how safety-conscious Elena was. Their sporadic chats, away from the office environment, had revealed that she’d never got blind drunk, nor even flown on an aeroplane. Nothing especially unusual about that – unless, like Elena, you mentioned those things with a voice tinged with regret.
Yet she wasn’t shy. Her rendition of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ at the karaoke, last night – well, a duet, in fact – had proved that, although she had looked awkward at the start and shot off the stage as soon as the last note played. Elena held her own with colleagues, never afraid of a heated debate. On a department night out, in the spring, when a youth stole Caz’s handbag, she was the first to give chase. In the summer she’d asked the manager of the coffee shop next door to work, out for a drink, but he was taking a break from dating, she’d explained to Gary one lunchtime in the staffroom, when Rory was in there making a coffee. She’d been fine about it, so rejection didn’t scare her either. Yet during the last couple of months, now that he gave it some thought, Rory had sensed a change. Elena had been late to work a few times, until she got used to a new route to the office. She’d muttered something about avoiding an accident hotspot. She’d stuck down a rug by the department’s entrance with double-sided tape, even though no one had ever slipped on it. As for the milk she used to drink a couple of days past its use-by date if it smelled okay, Elena now took her coffee black. Elena’s careful modus operandi at home looked new, too. The boltsshone as if recently screwed on, and she’d mentioned in passing that she’d only got the CCTV installed a few weeks ago.
Unless he was over-thinking. He ate ham a week past its use-by date and would use any rug to surf across a smooth floor. As for taking an aeroplane trip, he’d once enjoyed a wing-walking experience. Who was to say which one of them, he or Elena, was more out of the ordinary? But imagine living your life according to so many rules. He leant against the bed’s headboard. It was none of his business why Elena had been so upset at work, why she erred on the side of caution, nor where she’d disappeared to earlier.
It wasn’t.
Even though he couldn’t forget the terror on her face, when she’d slipped.
