“It was business.”
She said nothing, but turned her head away as I drove out of the station towards the A60.
“I’m glad to see you back.”
“Thanks.”
This stuff is really hard work. I don’t have to do it with Nuala. If I did, she wouldn’t listen anyway, so I don’t bother.
“Was it a good course?”
“Yes, excellent. We had another very interesting discussion in the bar last night.”
“Right. Optimising footfall?”
“Customer interactivity. Mr Cavendish was particularly knowledgeable on the subject.”
Now she was trying to make me jealous. But this is Stones McClure she’s dealing with. It doesn’t work. Why should I be jealous of this hyphenated Cavendish plonker when I was already planning on getting shut of Lisa anyway? He was welcome to her. Let them get interactive together. I didn’t care.
Lisa turned towards me then, and smiled at something she seemed to find in my face. Women are supposed to be sensitive and intuitive, aren’t they? But she obviously couldn’t read what I was thinking at that moment, or she wouldn’t have decided to be so nice to me suddenly. She leaned across the car and kissed me on the cheek. It was quite a long kiss to say I was only the chauffeur. And her hand rested on my leg too. This somehow put a different slant on things, and my thoughts began to turn to how we could fill in the time until I found the right moment to tell her she wasn’t wanted any more.
“Are we going back to your place?” she said.
I nodded and put my foot down. The Subaru surged forward and we hurtled through Warsop at seventy miles an hour, which is always the best way to see it.
“We also had a session on the one-to-one feel good experience,” she said.
“Now you’re interesting me. I can manage that one.”
Barely more than three hours, Lisa later brought me a cup of coffee. I was still in bed trying to get my energy back from all the effort. My eyes were just about open, and as I drank the coffee I watched Lisa wandering about the bedroom. She seemed to be taking clothes out of her bags and putting them away in my wardrobe and drawers. She was moving my own stuff aside to do it, and tutting over the untidiness.
This was such a bizarre thing for her to be doing that I thought I must still be asleep and dreaming. She’d left odd things lying about occasionally when she stayed overnight, but there’s a line you don’t cross when you aren’t actually living with someone. You know what I mean, don’t you? Chucking the other person’s odd socks on the floor to make room for your knickers and tights is definitely over the line. Okay, the sex had been good, but it looked as though the crunch was coming. Lisa was pushing me too far here. It was time to have it out.
“Where are you going?” she wanted to know when I started to get dressed. What was this, had I suddenly gained a nanny?
“I’ve got some business to do downstairs. Phone calls to make.”
“Oh no, you don’t. You’re taking me out.”
“But—.”
“No buts. Get your jacket on.”
Well, that’s women. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Give them six inches and they think they own you. I reckoned Lisa had a big shock coming. She was really on her way out. I’d have to tell her soon, and let her know about Nuala. When the time was right.
I put my jacket on. “Where do you want to go, then?”
“A craft centre. It’s time you bought me something nice.”
“Oh.”
So I had to take her to Rufford. Twice in two days? I was starting to look like a regular. I might apply for a season ticket.
And of course I bought her something nice in the craft centre. Well, if that had been all that happened at Rufford, I could have put up with it. A bit of misshapen pottery, or a sweater with lumps of fluff sticking it out of it, followed by a small hole in my wallet. That would have been okay. Even when we had to go for coffee and cake in the Buttery restaurant, that wasn’t too bad. It isn’t the sort of place we have in Medensworth. We had to sit and behave ourselves, and talk quietly, without swearing too much, so as not to upset the old biddies and make them choke on their Darjeeling. I can put up with that, see? I’m not a complete yob.
But accidentally bumping into Michael Holles-Bentinck-Cavendish while we were there? That was taking things too bleedin’ far.
First we’d taken a glance at the Abbey, to see how far the restoration had got. I was happy to see the plastic sheeting and scaffolding had gone off the Jacobean south wing, which is almost all that’s left of the sixteenth century house. The north and east wings had to be demolished after the army had finished with them.
“Thank goodness it was the south wing they managed to keep,” I said, showing off. “It’s the bit with Savile’s cupola on it.”
“Salvin,” said Lisa.
“Eh?”
“The architect who designed the cupola and the west front was called Salvin. He designed Thoresby Hall too.”
“Yeah. I knew that.”
So we did the craft shop bit, and I bought Lisa a set of hand-made bowls and jugs. They had no colour to me, just being a sort of patchy brown, like the stains left on your plate after a hot beef curry. But Lisa seemed to like them — and at that price, she damn well ought to think they were hand-painted by Picasso.
This artistic reflection made me think about my visit to the sculpture park the day before. I broached the subject while we were in the Buttery. We were eating Battenburg and fairy cakes and drinking coffee strong enough to melt your false teeth into a plasticine model of the Peak District.
“Lisa, love.”
“Yes, Stones?”
“You know that Charioteer thing in there. What’s that all about then?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It looks like a duck falling off a plinth to me.”
And then I saw him. He drifted in through the doors of the Buttery while we were only halfway through the cake. He was ponced up to his eyeballs and had a look on his face as if he expected all the old biddies to rush round him begging for his autograph and a sniff at his socks. Lisa had her back to the door, so I spotted him first. She saw my expression, followed my gaze, and did her double take. She was very good, an Oscar candidate if ever I saw one. Better than that soap actress shaking her tits on the telly, anyway.
“Oh, it’s Michael Cavendish, look.”
“Don’t forget the hyphens,” I said. “Don’t make him sound as though he’s just some ordinary bloke.”
She waved. Cavendish clocked us and began to walk towards our table. I shoved in the rest of the cake and stood up with my mouth so full that I couldn’t say what I was thinking. But Lisa had her hand on my arm, hanging on to my sleeve. She’d grabbed my punching arm too. Sneaky.
“Why, hello there, Lisa. What a wonderful surprise to bump into you here.”
“Amazing, Michael. But it’s lovely to see you again so soon.”
They beamed at each other for a minute, while I reflected how they’d gone from Mr Cavendish and Miss Prior to Michael and Lisa since I last saw them together. That’s what comes of getting interactive. Then Cavendish pretended to notice me for the first time. It was as if he’d just trodden in something unpleasant that the Golden Retriever had left behind on the terrace.
“And your brother too. How nice.”
I’ve never heard anybody put so many different meanings into the word ‘nice’ without having to write their own dictionary. It made me choke so hard I spat crumbs of Battenburg onto his trousers. Judging from his expression, Cavendish took this gesture exactly the way it was meant.
“I don’t suppose you’ve given any more thought to my proposal, Lisa?” he said, dismissing me from existence.
“As a matter of fact, I have,” she said.