A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [2]
Fifi shrugged. ‘She’d have been here by now if she was coming.’
That wasn’t true either. Carol was often kept late at work, and she’d be disappointed when she got here and found Fifi had gone. And if she were to find out she’d been stood up for a complete stranger, Fifi doubted she’d ever speak to her again. But there was something so compelling about Dan that she was quite prepared to take that risk.
‘If you’re sure,’ he said. ‘I’ve only got to take a look at the room and grab it if it’s okay. If you like, I could take you for a drink after?’
Fifi didn’t want to look too keen, so she shrugged nonchalantly, but she had her coat on, and whisked Dan and his small duffel bag, which appeared to hold his entire worldly goods, swiftly out of the door before Carol could get there and prevent her.
‘I’ll wait for you over here,’ Fifi said, sheltering from the rain in a haberdashery shop doorway. The guest house Dan was looking for was across the busy road, above a scruffy-looking newsagent’s. The paint on the front door was peeling off, and the sign ‘Avondale’ looked as if the lettering had been done by a drunk. Judging by the dingy nets at the windows, it was not going to be a home from home.
‘You can’t wait here, it’s too cold and wet,’ Dan said, and looked around and spotted a pub further down the road. ‘Go in there.’
‘I can’t go into a pub on my own,’ Fifi said in horror. ‘I’ll be fine here.’
He faltered for a moment, as if thinking she might disappear while he was gone. ‘I won’t be more than five minutes,’ he said, and darted across the road.
Fifi got only the briefest glimpse of a gaunt woman in a flowery overall opening the door to Dan, then the door closed behind him and she turned to look at the window display.
The theme was ‘Spring’, with white-painted branches festooned with balls of knitting wool in pastel colours. There were samples of crochet work, knitted lambs and rabbits, and various embroidery kits. As always when Fifi saw such displays, she felt a little tremor of nervousness. Her mother was always saying that knitting and sewing, along with cooking, were skills needed to be a wife and mother, and Fifi was terrible at all three.
All her friends were desperate to get married, and every new man they went out with had them mooning over engagement rings and bridal magazines. Fifi didn’t share her friends’ desperation, but whether this was because she really liked being single, or because her mother was always pointing out her failings, she didn’t know.
A hand on her shoulder made her jump.
It was Dan, and when he saw how startled she was, he laughed. ‘Sorry. Were you off on planet knitting wool?’ he asked.
‘Hardly,’ she giggled. ‘I’m hopeless at knitting. You were quick! Did you get the room? What was it like?’
‘A damp, cold cell, with mushrooms growing on the wallpaper,’ he grinned, ‘but I bit off the woman’s arm to have it, just so I could get back to take you for a drink.’
‘Is the room really that bad?’ Fifi asked as they walked down to the pub.
‘Worse,’ he laughed. ‘The landlady is called Mrs Chambers. I wanted to ask if it was a Death Chamber, but she looked and sounded like Olive Oyl, Popeye’s girlfriend, and that threw me.’ He impersonated the woman’s voice, ‘No female visitors at any time. No callers or radios after ten. Clean sheets once a fortnight, all breakages must be replaced.’
Fifi giggled. ‘It sounds frightful!’
‘Not as bad as some places I’ve stayed in,’ he said with a shrug and that delicious impish grin which made Fifi’s toes curl up. ‘I stayed in a place in Birmingham once where they operated a shift system. As I got up, another bloke who worked nights came in and got in my bed.’
‘I don’t believe that.’ Fifi laughed. ‘You’re making it up!’
‘It’s true,’ he insisted. ‘We became really good mates in the end – he said I was the best bed-warmer he’d ever known.’
Fifi shuddered. ‘I couldn’t sleep in someone else’s sheets,’ she said.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever had to,’ he said, looking sideways at her appraisingly. ‘You look as if you’ve been brought up in the lap of luxury.’