Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [57]
‘And you’d have the nerve to admit to all that on Radio Four? No Schubert? No duet from The Pearl Fishers?’
‘Nope. I’ve nothing to prove to anyone. Like I said. We’re not all so worried about what everyone else thinks of us, Nat.’
She grimaced at him and wondered briefly about smacking his smug face with a three-pound IKEA frying-pan.
‘Bet I know what your best song would be, if you weren’t doing the whole Schubert thing, that is…’
‘And…’
‘Katrina and the Waves. “Walking on Sunshine”.’
Damn him. ‘Maybe,’ she admitted grudgingly.
Tom nudged her. ‘Come on. It’s your favourite, I know. You used to call it your happy song.’
‘You know too much.’ She still did. Occasionally, alone at home, she put it on, turned it up loud and danced like a crazed thing.
‘And I’m still here. Flattering, don’t you think?’
It probably was. Natalie changed the subject. ‘Back to IKEA. Although a desert island sounds infinitely more appealing. What are you here to show me about you?’
‘What great taste I have?’ They’d entered the warehouse bit, and were searching for the aisle and shelf where Serena’s booty ought to be stored. Natalie pushed the trolley and Tom walked a few paces ahead.
‘If you had great taste, we’d be at Heal’s. Next?’
He stopped, triumphant, and began to lift flat-packed office chairs on to the trolley. ‘How manly am I?’ The trolley had no brakes and the wheels moved it forward so that he couldn’t set the pack straight on the metal base. He tried kicking it into place, but the box was longer than his leg, and he couldn’t reach. He dropped it awkwardly and tried to wedge the trolley against the shelves.
Natalie stood back, grinning broadly. ‘Yeah. Dead hunky.’
‘Piss off and give me a hand, will you?’
Like most men, Tom’s usually effervescent sense of humour and ability to laugh loudest at himself was most under threat in places like IKEA. ‘Stop laughing.’
‘Sorry.’ Natalie made a mock-serious face, and braced herself against the trolley while Tom put two more chairs on it.
‘Where’s the console?’
Tom consulted his scrap of paper. ‘Should be… just… Oh, fuck.’
‘What?’
‘Out of bloody stock.’ He kicked the trolley. ‘I bloody hate this shithole.’
‘I get it!’ Natalie proclaimed. ‘You’ve brought me here to show me how you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs. Like in that Rudyard Kipling poem. Then you’ll be a man, my son, or something, isn’t it? Good job, jobbed.’
For the second that Tom raised his face to look at her, there was no laughter in his eyes. But as he advanced towards her, hands raised as if to strangle her, the corners of his mouth turned upwards, and by the time his fingers were round her neck, pushing her back against the shelves, the smile had reached his eyes. ‘And what do you want to show me about you? How much fun you can make everything every day? Hey?’ His smile was very close to her mouth.
Natalie pulled away his hands, and darted out quickly from under his arms. ‘Not my game, mate. Not my game.’ But she was smiling in the same way.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
The couple who had had a disagreement about towels were now having an amazingly similar chat about bathroom cabinets.
‘You know what happens to seals and penguins and stuff if they put them in pools too small for them in zoos? Disturbed, repetitive behaviour? Clearly happens to humans too…’
Natalie laughed, and they pushed their hard-won chairs towards the pay desk and the natural light they could see on the other side, beyond the plastic hot dogs and the bottomless Pepsis.
Natalie
A dinner party. Party? Not so much. God, this was dull! Even Rose was acting all peculiar tonight. As though she had aged about ten years, and developed a sudden interest in reading the Guardian. Which Natalie happened to know she hadn’t. The Daily Mail would be a step up for Rose, who was infinitely more interested in who was sleeping with whom than in who was at war. She didn’t think she’d had, or heard, a proper laugh all evening. She glanced at her watch, and tried to disguise her dismay. Eleven o’clock. She couldn’t possibly