Something Borrowed Read online

  Anyway, would she do B for Big or C for Carlhuna? Too many probables. ‘No, just a regular front bottom shape will do. Thanks. Just a little less hair, please.’

  ‘If you’re sure. Though, that could take a while.’ The wax was just a little too hot as Madame Sheena/Shona/Sheila schlepped it onto Chloe’s inner thigh. Then she rolled up her bright cerise sleeves. ‘Okay, darling, take a big deep breath and let it out slowly. I’m going in.’

  CHAPTER 5

  AS IT WAS, it took more than a while and now Chloe was running late. Not running as such, because Sheena/Shona/Sheila hadn’t been as adept with the waxing silks as she could have been, and Chloe’s inner thighs schtuck together painfully as she rushed towards Covent Garden.

  Every step made her feel exactly as she imagined Velcro to feel—if it were part of the human anatomy—every rip apart was an exquisite agony. She was beginning to regret not wearing any tights, but the only possibility of relief was the gentle breeze that blew up her skirt as she half strode, half hobbled across the square, the meet cafe in sight.

  Well, it certainly was busy—no opportunity for any axe wielding here, she mused with relief. Her phone vibrated in her pocket as she squeezed through the door someone was holding open for her.

  Jenna: All okay?

  Chloe quickly texted back: Not met him yet TXT again in 15

  ‘Reminding yourself of what I look like?’ A voice from behind had her turning round. There stood a man, maybe three inches shorter than she was and grinning nervously. His strawberry-blond hair was pulled back into a little neat man bun. He had nice eyes. Palest blue. Yes, he was the man from her laptop, no need to check. ‘Chloe? Right? I thought I might have to have a sneaky look at your picture again too. Mind you, it makes little difference what with Photoshop these days. You, however, look just like you did on Chat. Reassuringly. Although, quite a lot thinner. I’m Carl, and I’m garbling. Sorry.’

  ‘Hi, Carl. It was just a text; I wasn’t checking your photo.’ She waved her phone at him then didn’t quite know what to do next. What was first date etiquette? As she pondered this conundrum, he tiptoed and leant towards her face, clearly about to kiss her hello. She ducked to the left at the same moment he ducked to her left too. Their foreheads grazed. Her cheeks heated. Her heart pounded. ‘Oh shit. Sorry. I’m not good at this.’

  ‘Me neither. Over here. Come sit down.’ He walked her to a table that had a guitar propped against it. Oh God, please don’t let him sing. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please. Just black, and filter if they have it.’

  ‘Got it. I’ll be back.’ Which would have been fine if he hadn’t said it with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent. But, well, clearly he liked a joke. That was a good thing. Wasn’t it? A man with a sense of humour was very sexy. Usually. Sometimes? So far, so good. Height notwithstanding. But they could deal with that. She could stick to flats for the wedding— couldn’t she?

  She was all about compromise these days. She’d learnt her lesson the hard way. There are two people in a wedding, Chloe. Who’d said that? Ah yes, Vaughn Bloody Brooks; a fine time for him to jettison himself into her thought processes. Suddenly, she felt herself trembling just a little, her heart doing a strange thumpety-thump. First date nerves. Obviously.

  Then Carlhuna was back, still smiling. ‘Your coffee will be here in a minute. She said she’ll bring it over. It was four pounds fifty. You don’t half pick the expensive places.’ He stuck his hand out, and it took her a second to realise he was asking for the money for her drink.

  Fair enough. Days of equality, and all that. She rooted around in her purse for change. ‘I’ve only got four pounds thirty.’

  ‘You can owe me the rest, or pay me back in kind.’ He winked, pocketing the coins.

  God. Really? So soon? She didn’t even know his surname. Was that the way things were done these days? Hello, here’s a coffee. Fancy a shag? ‘Oh. Okay. I’ll give you an IOU? Twenty pence?’ She made a play of looking for a piece of paper, finally settling on a napkin and writing IOU 20p, signed, Chloe.

  Carl shook his hand and screwed the napkin up. ‘It was another joke. A very bad one. Look, I’ve never done this…’

  ‘Me neither.’ Her sense of humour seemed to have fled along with her courage.

  ‘Okay, so we’re both rubbish; that’s one thing in common, right? There must be other things? Let’s start.’ He straightened up in the chair and leaned across the table as if it were a job interview. Actually, it felt like one. ‘Tell me about yourself, Chloe? Why are you single?’

  ‘Er… I’ve just got out of a ten-year relationship. Well, three months ago. And I’m trying… this… out. You?’ Another thing on her hit list for Jason: making her do awkward small talk with a miserly musician midget.

  Carl picked up his guitar, glancing at her. ‘Sorry. It helps me relax. This whole dating thing makes me nervous.’ Then he started strumming. It wasn’t horrible, or intrusive, or bad. It was just strange. Please don’t sing.

  It was a tune she’d heard around the place. No. No, actually, for the love of God, it was the tune she’d chosen for her and Jason’s first dance. How bloody ironic. TheBigCarlhuna hummed a bit then, ‘My heart’s so full…’ He grinned. ‘No, I’m not going to sing to you, don’t worry. I’m just trying to decide where to start. We were married for a couple of years, together for eight all up. Didn’t work out. I was doing the circuit trying to make a living, you know; gigs, bars, clubs and she wanted me home. We grew apart. No. No, we didn’t. She fell in love with someone else. Bloody cow.’ His eyes glistened, and his voice wobbled. ‘You’re my first, since… Since she left.’

  Please don’t cry. God, she couldn’t spend all her time with him wishing the poor man to please don’t… cry, sing… kiss me. He clearly wasn’t over his ex.

  Chloe didn’t want a man trying it on with her just to get over an adulterous wife. She didn’t want to be the rebound woman. That brought a whole load of problems she didn’t want to deal with. She had enough already trying to drum up business to pay her sister and put food on her niece’s plate.

  But maybe things between them could grow to a slow burn. She wouldn’t be his rebound woman then; she’d be his real woman. A musician’s muse. It could be fun. Maybe. He could pluck those guitar strings and sing through those thin lips, gaze adoringly at her through his nice eyes. But he had a sickly pale skin that told of endless nights in bars and sleeping during the daytime. He was a musical vampire. With no sparkle. She tried to imagine TheBigCarlhuna standing on a box and kissing her, his intense gaze piercing her soul.

  She checked her body for any kind of reaction to that thought. No gentle flutter, no zing in her freshly plucked nether regions, no yearning of any sort. Nope. Nothing. Nada. Zero.

  There was no chemistry.

  These things took time.

  To try to help her relax, she crossed her legs, but a searing pain ripped through her—a sort of kind of zing, but not at all the zing she was looking for.

  Then she couldn’t uncross them. Not without a bit of extra effort.

  No. She couldn’t uncross them. Full stop. And she wanted to. In fact, uncrossing her legs suddenly became the single most pressing thing on her brain. Some relief. Fresh air. Ungluing.

  But it wouldn’t be a simple uncrossing. It felt like it would be a giant rip of flesh.

  So, she kept them crossed. And tried to focus on him instead, and not on the tight stickiness—super strength glue—at the top of her thighs. ‘I see, so she left you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  She tried to distract herself further away from the pain and looked more deeply into those pale blue eyes to summon some kind of proper zing. A horny zing. A sex driven zing. A craving. A fierce urge. But no. Nothing.

  But she sure as hell wanted to uncross her legs.

  There was no fighting it; she had to uncross them. ‘Oh! Ow!’

  ‘You okay?’ He put the guitar down and covered her hand with his; it was warm
and a little sweaty. ‘You look a bit… overwhelmed.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks, honestly.’

  She wasn’t. Not at all.

  Bad enough that she felt as if someone had set fire to her nether regions, but now what to do about the hand? Here she was skin-on-sweaty-skin, and she still felt nothing. No zing or tingle. She almost laughed; she’d even felt a tingle with Vaughn Bloody Brooks, although that had been a whole mix of anger and frustration and humiliation.

  And directly on cue, as she thought about Vaughn’s face, her heart began a strange upbeat again. She willed it back to slow and pushed away her odd response to him. He just made her angry over and over.

  So, great, some kind of response to prove she was still alive came from her nemesis, but she couldn’t summon up so much as a frisson of a tingle with Big Carl here.

  Big Carl, eh? Well, he clearly didn’t mean his height, so…? She took a surreptitious look at his feet. No. Average-sized feet. Which left…?

  Things might have got interesting. If only there was a tingle.

  And that got her thinking about Vaughn again. Go away, she chastised the image in her head. This time, it was of when she’d been on top of him in the church. His mouth so close and so angry. The spark in his eyes.

  Probably not a good sign if she was with one man and another, albeit annoying man, kept intruding on her thoughts.

  The coffee arrived at the same time as her phone beeped. She took it out of her pocket and saw the words OKAY? CHECKED FOR AXES? And smiled. Then flicked a quick horizontal thumb emoji to her sister; the jury was still out.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said to Carl, as he stopped strumming again and frowned. ‘That was rude of me. I thought it might be important.’

  ‘Your get-out plan?’ His phone buzzed on the table, and he gave her a shy grin. ‘Mine too. You can’t be too careful about who you meet. Women can be axe murderers too, you know.’

  ‘That thought had never crossed my mind.’ And with that, all fear fled. Carl seemed okay. A little short, and a little sad, but okay. He was worried about the same things; he’d been through the same experience. Maybe she could help him not be sad?

  Oh, what the hell—she might as well be honest. She sipped some coffee, which was hot and strong and fortifying for her needs right now. ‘Look, cards on the table, Carl; I don’t suppose you’re free a week on Saturday? I have a wedding to go to, and I really need a date.’

  ‘Not your wedding, I hope?’ He tipped back his ponytailed head, showing a row of straight white teeth, and laughed. ‘That would be hilarious. Groom doesn’t show up and guest steps in. Only, stranger things have happened.’

  Hilarious indeed, and far too close to the truth. ‘No, actually, I’m a wedding planner, and I don’t normally take a date, but this is a friend’s wedding, and she said I could bring someone. I thought it’d be fun.’

  ‘I’ll check.’ He swiped his phone a couple of times, and she noticed he had manicured fingernails, which she wasn’t sure about, at all. Just a little too pointy, and a little too long. He shook his head. ‘No, sorry, I’ve got a gig that night. I can do tomorrow night? How about a drink? We could go for a pint? Somewhere a bit cheaper than Covent Garden, though.’ His hand was back on hers, oddly unnerving.

  ‘I’ll just check my diary.’ Unsure about how good a liar she was, Chloe dragged her hand out from under his and grabbed her phone, deflated. If he wasn’t going to be her wedding date, then should she lead him on?

  She crossed her legs again, but not without a searing pain that pinged from the top of one of her thighs to the other and brought swift tears to her eyes. ‘Ow!’

  ‘Do you have…?’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t know how to put this. Do you have Tourette’s? Only you keep squealing for no apparent reason. And that’s fine, you know. We all have little foibles, and I’m totally okay with it. In fact, I’ve got—’

  ‘No. I don’t have Tourette’s.’ And please don’t add anything else to my list of please don’ts… Okay. She was going to have to sort this out. Right now. ‘I’m… I’m just going to the loo. Back in a mo.’

  She shuffled, in not a little pain, semi-cross-legged to the bathroom where she darted into the first empty cubicle, hauled up her clothes and took a good look.

  Oh. My. God. Little bits of fluff from her blue woollen skirt had rolled itself into tiny balls and attached to the leftover pink wax bits in the creases of her thighs. Down under she looked like a hairy mammoth crossed with a smurf. Frantic, she started to try to pull the fluff off, but, Oh Holy Mother… Her underneath… What? Tiny red spots. She’d either had a reaction to the wax, or the fluff, or a lethal combination of the two? A smurf with measles.

  Please don’t sing, cry, kiss me or try anything else on until I a) feel tingles, b) no longer resemble a pox-ridden blue dwarf.

  Her phone rang. The cavalry, thank God. ‘Hey, Jenna.’

  ‘Why are you answering?’

  ‘Because you rang. Why are you calling?’

  ‘We didn’t have a code sign for thumbs horizontal. What does it mean?’

  ‘That he’s okay,’ she hissed. Having de-fluffed as much as she could, Chloe pressed the phone to her ear, secured it with her shoulder, dragged down her skirt and went out to wash her hands. ‘But unavailable for next weekend, unfortunately. A little short, and shy and sad. More to the point, though, any tips on gentle fluff removal from raw genital areas?’

  ‘What the hell, girl?’

  ’Never mind, I’ll just have a bath when I get home. He won’t be seeing that tonight.’

  ‘But? Do you like him?’

  Did she? ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. He seems okay. He has a guitar.’

  ‘Is that good or bad?’

  ‘Aaargh. I just don’t know. We’re planning a drink tomorrow. A real drink, with alcohol and everything.’ Maybe that would help with the tingles? Chloe pushed the bathroom door open with her bottom and stepped back into the cafe. ‘Got to go. I’ll keep in touch. See you—Oh. Oh, great. Charming.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Chloe looked around the café. There was no sign of man nor instrument. ‘He’s gone. Taken the guitar and everything. Gone.’

  She wandered back to their table and her half-filled cup of expensive coffee. There was her screwed-up IOU in a little puddle of coffee spill with scrawly spidery writing on it. Limp and sad-looking, just, she realised, how she imagined she must look. ‘He’s left a note on a napkin: DaydreamBeliever, sorry to disappoint but I didn’t feel any chemistry. You seem nice, but you’re just not my type. Didn’t want you getting your hopes up. Good luck. Carl.’

  Getting her hopes up? He wished. He’d gone, just like that, when she’d been feeling sorry for him?

  Sad thing was, she found it hard to really care about TheBigCarlhuna’s jilting. She felt precisely… nothing, about him. She supposed that proved to her it wasn’t meant to be.

  She didn’t remember dating being so awkward, or was it that it hadn’t been? She and Jason had hit it off immediately. They’d been in the same group of friends hanging around at school, and it had felt inevitable that they’d get together.

  The rest of her life didn’t feel inevitable at all now. It just felt kind of bare. A whole fresh canvas, Jenna would say.

  Chloe screwed up the note again and threw it into the half-filled cup. Another one bites the dust.

  One thing did niggle her, though; what was it about men that they couldn’t look her in the eye and let her down gently? Why did they all take the coward’s way out and run off before facing her?

  In truth, the only man who’d been honest with her was Vaughn Bloody Brooks, and that had been some showdown, but he’d at least had the decency to turn up.

  And why, in heaven’s name, did every thought keep turning back to him today? All it did was remind her of what she needed to do to save face next week and gave her a bad case of the jitters.

  Chloe sighed and made her way towards the covered market for some
serious window shopping—scarves and jewellery this time, not men. At least there was a chance she might find something she actually fancied here.

  Ah well, she didn’t have to worry about her blue-rinsed nether regions anymore.

  Back to the drawing board.

  JENNA

  Three years ago…

  Sender: [email protected]

  Nick,

  Thanks for your card and emails. Obviously you heard about Ollie and thanks for your thoughts and the flowers at the funeral.

  It was sad. So very sad. One minute he was there being my husband, planning a life—a good life, Nick, with a baby on the way and a wife who adores him. Sorry, adored him—that seems such a final way of saying things. And a big contract on the horizon that meant we could finally plan our first proper home. The next minute, he was gone. Run over by a lawyer who was texting while driving and who’s trying to wheedle her way out of prison.

  I don’t think she’s ever been married, and she doesn’t have any kids, and I don’t think she has any idea what I’m going through; otherwise, she wouldn’t make us relive it over and over by refusing to take responsibility.

  So, I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while and that I couldn’t see you when you came back to visit your mum. I’ve been lost in a black hole. I mean, totally lost, Nick, and I don’t know how to pull myself out. I have this beautiful baby girl who has his eyes, and every time I look at her, I see him, and it hurts so badly all over again. She’s adorable, I can see that, but I only do what I have to do to get through this and to keep her safe.

  I’m scared to love her. I’m scared to go through all that again, Nick. What if I lose her, too? I could because now I know that there is no safety net out there. Ollie’s accident was just one of those random things that happens. Something that you see every week in the papers, and you gloss on over because it’s not relevant. But it is. I grieve now for every lost soul I read about—somebody’s husband, somebody’s son, somebody’s father—it’s like having my chest ripped open again. Raw. I feel raw. And I can’t ever let myself love someone so much that I feel this much pain without them.