Фиона Гибсон – The Great Escape: The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy from the summer bestseller (страница 8)

‘And I’ve got stuff to wear anyway,’ Josh mumbles, looking down at his crumb-strewn plate.

‘I know, but I thought you might like something new.’ Regaining his composure, Ryan rolls his eyes good-naturedly at Hannah. How he manages to scrabble together these reserves of patience, she has no idea. Perhaps it just happens when you have children. You suddenly develop this bottomless well of kindness and goodwill.

‘You’re not going to turn down your dad’s offer of new clothes, are you, Josh?’ Hannah asks lightly.

‘Well, I’ve got plenty of T-shirts and jeans.’

‘Right, so which T-shirt were you thinking of?’ Ryan asks with a snort.

‘Dunno. My dark green one maybe.’

‘The one with the rip in the shoulder?’ Ryan laughs. ‘Sure, that’ll look great in the photos, Josh.’

Josh stares at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Photos?’

‘Yes, wedding photos, like people usually have when they get married,’ Ryan says with exaggerated patience.

‘What’s wrong with my T-shirt?’

‘Well, apart from the rip, it does tend to whiff a bit even when it’s been washed,’ his father explains, ‘like something’s actually embedded in its fibres and will never come out, even if I boil-wash it which I’ve done on several occasions …’

Daisy starts giggling. ‘You smell, Josh. That horrible T-shirt stinks of BO and even washing powder can’t get it out.’

‘And it’s age nine-to-ten,’ Ryan reminds him, ‘and you’re fourteen, Josh, if I remember rightly. Now, I know you’re fond of that T-shirt but we could be radical and buy you something in the right size.’

‘Oh, Josh can wear whatever he likes,’ Hannah cuts in. ‘It’s not going to be formal, is it, Ryan?’ She smiles at his son. ‘It’s probably best to wear what you feel happy and comfortable in.’

‘He’s not wearing that T-shirt,’ Ryan mutters.

‘I just don’t think it’s worth falling out over …’ Hannah glances at Josh. Instead of responding, and being grateful to her for not trying to cram him into a suit, he takes a big gulp of orange juice, wipes his lips on his cuff and allows his mouth to hang open, as if airing its interior. Trying to decipher these kids is a bit like learning to drive, Hannah decides as Ryan shoos them upstairs to fetch their schoolbags. In fact it’s harder than driving because at least she was able to pay for a teacher. As far as Hannah is aware, there’s no British School of How to Handle Daisy and Josh.

‘I’d better be going,’ Hannah tells Ryan, trying to quash the trace of relief from her voice.

‘Okay. Have a good day, darling.’ He steps forward and pulls her close, smelling freshly showered and delicious.

‘What are you wearing to the wedding?’ Daisy has reappeared in the kitchen doorway.

‘Me?’ Ryan springs away from Hannah. ‘Erm, a suit, Daisy. A new one that’s being altered for me.’

‘I meant Hannah, Daddy.’ Daisy gives them a fake smile.

‘Oh, just a simple dress,’ says Hannah quickly.

‘Aren’t you wearing a veil?’

Hannah pauses. ‘No, but Lou, one of my best friends from—’

‘Why not?’

Because I don’t like them! ‘Well, veils are lovely but my friend Lou from college is an amazing jeweller and she’s made me this beautiful silver tiara with—’

‘Mum’s wedding dress was pretty, wasn’t it, Dad?’ Daisy beams at her father.

‘Er, yes. It was very nice …’ Ryan turns away and swills out the washing-up bowl noisily.

‘Mum’s dress,’ Daisy continues, eyes fixed determinedly on Hannah, ‘was white and low at the front like this.’ She draws an invisible V-shape to indicate a plunging neckline.

‘Well, that sounds gorgeous.’ Hannah smiles tightly.

‘And it was long with millions of sparkly beads sewn on, and the veil was so massive two people had to walk behind and carry it through the church, didn’t they, Dad? So it didn’t drag on the floor and get dirty. Didn’t they, Dad?’

‘Er, yes,’ Ryan croaks, now scraping the remains of the kids’ breakfasts into the bin.

‘Wow,’ Hannah says hollowly. Why don’t we get out the album, she thinks darkly, then we can all gather round and ooh and ahh over Petra’s incredible dress before I go to work, and I can show you how crappy and plain I’m going to look in my dumpy little shift that I must have chosen in a fit of madness …

‘Mummy looked beautiful,’ Daisy breathes.

‘I’m sure she did.’

Sorry, Ryan mouths from the sink. Taking a deep breath, Hannah pauses for a moment, focusing on the area behind Daisy, where the family-sized super-deluxe fridge stands proudly, with its ice maker gadget which once spurted frozen crystals in her face, causing Daisy and Josh to keel over with helpless laughter. It had never done that before, Daisy had informed her when she and her brother had finally managed to compose themselves. Well, of course it hadn’t. Petra had chosen it – she’d picked virtually every appliance and piece of furniture – and at times like that, Hannah couldn’t help feeling that the whole house was against her. ‘D’you want to see a picture of Mummy’s dress?’ Daisy enquires.

‘Daisy!’ Ryan barks. ‘Could you hurry up and get your shoes on?’

‘But, Dad …’

‘Sometime, maybe,’ Hannah says briskly, ‘but I’d better get off to work now. I’m running late as it is.’

SEVEN

As Lou pulls on her uniform – a brown nylon tabard bearing the soft play centre’s ‘Let’s Bounce’ logo across the chest – it occurs to her that the person who designed it might possibly be a pervert. Lou turns this thought over in her mind almost daily, and as she’s been working at Let’s Bounce for nearly a year, that makes it – well, at 8.30 am she’s incapable of working out the exact figure off the top of her head. But it’s something in the region of 230 times, which she fears is verging on obsessional. It can’t be normal to allow dark thoughts about play centre uniforms to occupy such a large part of her brain.

Yet that vile piece of clothing really ticks all the boxes, Lou thinks, teasing her curly auburn hair with a long-toothed comb and sweeping on powder and lip gloss at the dressing table mirror. No one, apart from people who go in for medieval jousting contests, wear tabards. Even worse, Dave, her boss, insists that said garment is worn on arrival at work and has even ticked off Lou’s friend Steph for not modelling hers on the bus on the way in. ‘You’re all walking advertisements,’ he’s fond of reminding the staff during his ‘motivational talks’.

In their bed behind her, Spike emits a long mmmmmm sound, and Lou turns to see a faint smile flicker across his lips. His eyes are closed, his dark lashes dusting his lightly-tanned skin like tiny brushes, his strong, defined jaw bearing its customary blur of dark stubble. Looks as if he’s having a pleasurable dream, lucky sod. Lou’s friends often tease her about living with a man with a super-charged libido, and she knows she should feel flattered that he’s so up for it, especially as they’ve been together for sixteen years. In fact, if anything, Spike’s sexual appetite has intensified as he’s grown older. Maybe it’s the tabard, Lou thinks wryly. ‘You up, babe?’ Spike has awoken from his reverie.

‘Yep. Running a bit late actually.’ Lou pads over to the bed and dispenses a speedy kiss on his slightly clammy forehead. ‘Gotta go,’ she adds, grabbing her bag from the floor, pulling on her tabard-concealing black trenchcoat and hurrying out of the flat, down one flight of dusty wooden stairs and into the hazy April morning.

It feels good to be outside. The flat seems even dingier when Spike isn’t working, which happens to be most of the time. It’s been six months since he last had a job, and the more time Spike spends in bed, or comatose on the sofa, the staler their surroundings become. Some mornings, like today, Lou is almost grateful to be escaping to Let’s Bounce. Although she loves Spike, and he’s still handsome and ridiculously youthful-looking at forty-eight, Lou can’t help worrying that his lethargy might engulf her completely until it’s too late to fight her way out.

Is sitting on your arse all day actually contagious? she wonders as she walks briskly to work. Does it become progressively worse, until the sufferer is unable to separate himself from the sofa apart from occasionally staggering to the loo? Spike can’t even be bothered to drop used teabags into the kitchen bin. He just lobs them into the sink, and every time she removes them – unwilling to start an argument over something as petty as teabags – Lou is seized by an urge to pelt them in his face.

She marches on, now feeling more annoyed with herself than Spike for allowing yesterday to slip away in a fug of TV and housework instead of making the most of her one day off. She always imagines Sadie and Barney taking their babies to some beautiful spot in the Cambridgeshire countryside for a picnic on Sundays. And Hannah and Ryan probably take his kids on a family walk in some particularly photogenic part of London – Primrose Hill or Hampstead Heath – like characters in a Richard Curtis movie. Lou sees expensive white wine being lifted from a coolbox and Ryan’s kids chatting nicely with Hannah, laughing at her jokes and feeling lucky that their dad has found himself such a cool girlfriend. And here’s Lou in York – not that she’s blaming York for the situation she’s found herself in – wearing a synthetic tabard on her way to extract stray nappies heavily laden with pee from the ballpool.