Heaven Can Wait Page 11

  ‘Egg and cheese?’ she said, approaching Nigel and extracting a doorstop of a sandwich from the bottom of the pile.

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Hiya,’ she said, glancing at me. ‘You new?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Lucy.’

  When I stood up and held out my hand, I felt like a giant. Sally was even tinier than I’d first thought. She couldn’t have been much more than four foot eleven.

  ‘What can I do you for?’ she grinned.

  I bought a sausage and tomato baguette and sat back down. Sally glanced at Geoff but he was munching on a wilted ham and lettuce sandwich he’d brought in from home.

  ‘See you tomorrow then,’ she said, hoisting her basket into the air as she strode back out of the office. ‘Nice to meet you, Lucy. Bye boys.’

  The rest of the afternoon dragged by. When Nigel pushed his chair back from his station and stretched his arms in the air, I glanced at my watch in surprise.

  Shit, it was 5.30 p.m.

  Archie had reappeared at the end of lunch but I hadn’t had time to speak to him. I had to grab him quickly before he escaped.

  I got to his desk just in time. He’d put on his jacket, strapped his courier bag diagonally across his body, and was reaching over to turn off his monitor.

  ‘Archie,’ I said. ‘What are you doing this weekend?’

  ‘Going to a LAN party,’ he mumbled as he inched towards the door.

  I had no idea what a LAN party was, but anything with the word ‘party’ at the end of it couldn’t be bad, could it?

  ‘Can I come?’ I said, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks.

  Archie looked up at me with surprise and ran his fingers through his lank hair. ‘You want to come to the LAN party?’

  ‘Yes. I’d love to.’

  ‘You do realise it’s likely to be a forty-eight-hour thing,’ he said seriously. ‘You’ll need some serious stamina.’

  Wow, more of a rave than a party then. Oh. My. God. What if Archie was on drugs? Maybe that’s why he’d missed work. A drug-taking geek. Who’d have thought it?

  ‘I can do forty-eight hours, no problem,’ I lied. ‘Where’s the party?’

  ‘Can I ring you tomorrow morning with the details?’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I need to be somewhere, like, now.’

  I had to bite my lip to stop myself from grinning as I scribbled down the house phone number on a post-it note and handed it to him. If Archie could ask a woman for her phone number, there might be hope for him yet. He glanced at the piece of paper and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  ‘See you then, Archie,’ I called merrily as he shot out of the office door.

  ‘Archibald,’ he mumbled and disappeared.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was in an unusually good mood when I strolled back into the House of Wannabe Ghosts. In just one day I’d managed to:

  1) Not get sacked from my job

  2) Win an invite to an amazing-sounding party

  That meant a whole forty-eight hours to work my magic on Archie and find out what his ideal woman was like. Then all I had to do was convince him to let me help him find her. Brilliant, I thought as I strolled into the kitchen and took a Diet Coke out of the fridge, it’s all going so well.

  ‘Lucy,’ Claire said, appearing out of nowhere and blocking the doorway.

  ‘Yes,’ I squeaked, freezing in my tracks.

  ‘Why did you tell me to fuck off when you got home last night?’

  Oh shit. I’d completely forgotten I’d done that. It was her fault for calling me ‘Bride’ as I’d stumbled through the door in tears.

  ‘Because I was, er, angry with you for something that happened to me,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Which was?’ she said, scooping up her woolly extensions and wrapping a thick elastic band around them.

  Uh oh. Was she tying her hair back ready for a fight?

  ‘I met Keith Krank,’ I said, taking a step back and knocking into the kitchen table. A cereal bowl tumbled to the floor and shattered with a crash.

  ‘Really?’ Claire pushed her crocheted jumper back from her hands, rolled it up to her elbows, and took a step towards me. ‘Where?’

  ‘How about we go for a drink and talk about it?’ I stuttered as shards of crockery crunched under my feet. ‘Somewhere local.’

  If she really was going to beat me up, I wanted witnesses and easy access to an ambulance to ferry my battered body off to casualty afterwards.

  Claire looked me up and down through narrowed eyes and I swallowed hard.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, just as I was considering lobbing the Diet Coke at her head and making a run for it. ‘But you’re paying.’

  It was bustling in the Queen’s Head, a run-down, old man’s pub round the corner from the House of Wannabe Ghosts. All the tables were taken so we propped ourselves up at the bar. I ordered the drinks.

  ‘So,’ Claire said, grabbing a pint of cider and blackcurrant from the hands of our geriatric barmaid, ‘what happened with Keith then?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I … um …’

  How could I explain what had happened, without her assuming I’d tried to pull Keith? However I phrased it in my head, the consequence was always the same – Claire would go mental and beat my head in. Hang on. I didn’t have to tell her it was me Keith had made a move on, did I?

  ‘I was having a drink in the White Horse,’ I said, gripping my glass of white wine, ‘and Keith walked in. He was really, really pissed.’

  ‘Good old Keith.’ Claire grinned. ‘That’s his favourite pub. Who was he with?’

  ‘He was on his own, but not for long.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He approached a girl who was sitting on her own at the bar and tried to convince her to go into the toilets with him.’

  Claire reached for her cider and eyed me warily. ‘Did she?’

  ‘No. Keith called her a slag and a bitch and God knows what else. It was awful. The girl was really upset.’

  I waited for Claire to react. According to her, Keith was a lovely, sensitive animal-saving guy, so finding out what he was really like was probably going to come as a bit of a shock.

  ‘That’s it?’ she said, twiddling with her nose ring.

  I stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘What do you mean, that’s it? The guy was a total twat. He embarrassed himself in front of the whole pub and ruined the girl’s evening.’

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  Claire rubbed a hand over her face and looked away. Suddenly she didn’t look quite so scary any more. In fact, she looked impossibly young and vulnerable. ‘He used to do stuff like that to me all the time but, unlike the girl you told me about, I would go into the loos with him. That didn’t stop him slagging me off afterwards though.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  She shook her head and drained the last of her pint. ‘I wish I was. After we’d done it he’d always go back to the band’s table and tell me to piss off and sit at the bar. Then he’d tell them what we’d got up to and they’d all laugh and make comments about me.’

  I was horrified. Claire was a pain in the arse, but no one deserved to be treated so cruelly.

  ‘What kinds of comments?’ I asked.

  ‘Stuff about how fat I was, or how ugly, or how I was such a desperate groupie I’d do anything.’

  ‘Oh, Claire, that’s horrible. Why the hell did you keep sleeping with him?’

  She slammed her empty pint glass on the bar and gestured to the barmaid. ‘When Keith was sober, he was OK,’ she said, lowering her voice as her empty pint was refilled, ‘nice, even. I guess I thought if I spent enough time with him the shit drunken stuff would stop. But it didn’t.’

  ‘You should have just left him, Claire. You could have found someone loads better.’

  ‘Look at me,’ she said, holding her hands wide. ‘Who’d want this?’

  There was nothing wrong with her. Benea
th the trowelled-on make-up she was a very pretty girl. How she looked wasn’t a problem, it was the enormous great chip on her shoulder.

  ‘Lots of people would want you,’ I said. ‘If you didn’t give yourself such a hard time and act like a bitch all the time.’

  ‘It’s a bit late now,’ she said, nibbling on her bottom lip. ‘I’m dead.’

  She had a point. Or did she? Could the dead still find love? I made a mental note to find out when we got back to the house. Quite why I wanted to help her I wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe because I could still remember what it felt like to be a teenager and feeling like you didn’t fit in. I’d been a dorky-looking teenager, with braces on my teeth and terrible skin. I was so self-conscious about my metal mouth I didn’t kiss anyone until they were finally removed when I was seventeen. I’d also met my fair share of creeps.

  ‘So what are you going to do, Claire?’ I asked, draining my drink and setting the glass back on the bar.

  She grinned. ‘Complete my task and get my revenge. I’m going to haunt Keith and the band for ever. Let’s see how they like having a groupie they can’t get rid of.’

  ‘Is that a good idea?’

  ‘It’s a great idea,’ she said, a wry smile on her face. ‘Those guys are going to pay for what they did to me.’

  ‘Claire,’ I said, my stomach flipping over. ‘Why have I got a bad feeling about this?’ She just grinned.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Saturday 4th May

  Day Eight

  Bubbles tickled my nose as I leaned forward and Dan ran his soapy fingers up and down my back. The bathroom was dark apart from the gentle glow of flickering candles, and the sweet smell of Molton Brown seamoss bubble bath filled the air.

  ‘Would Madam like some chocolate?’ Dan whispered, slipping a piece of Dairy Milk between my lips. ‘And some Barry White on the stereo?’

  I nodded, though personally I think Bazza White is a bit too cheesy for a seduction scenario.

  ‘Your wish is my command,’ Dan said, reaching for the remote control.

  I leaned back, relaxing against his chest, his arms around me his lips … his lips … what the hell was that annoying noise? Was the CD stuck? It didn’t sound like the walrus of love, it sounded like, like …

  A phone.

  Shit!

  Saturday. LAN party. Archie. Phone. Wake up, Lucy!

  There was a terrible tearing sound as I sat bolt upright in bed and clutched at my face. A page from the manual was stuck to my left cheek. Hmm. I must have dribbled in my sleep. Classy.

  I winced as I peeled it off and rubbed my stinging skin. I’d only managed to read a couple of sections before dozing off but I hadn’t found anything that answered the question about whether or not Claire would be able to find love in heaven. Maybe Brian would know? But that could wait. The phone was still ringing.

  I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, hurried out of my room and stumbled down the stairs.

  ‘Hello?’ I gasped into the receiver.

  ‘Is that Lucy Brown?’ said the polite, posh voice on the other end.

  ‘It certainly is,’ I said, picking bits of paper off my cheek and flicking them onto the floor. ‘Is that Archibald Humphreys-Smythe?’

  Archie laughed. He had a much deeper laugh than you’d expect for a man of his size.

  ‘Are you still keen to go to the LAN party?’ he asked.

  ‘I most certainly am.’

  ‘Excellent. Where do you live? I’ll be round to collect you in half an hour.’

  I stared at the phone. ‘What?’

  ‘Forty-five minutes suit you better?’

  What kind of party started at 11 o’clock on a Saturday morning?

  ‘Why so early?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, we need to get set up. It is going to be a marathon session.’

  How big was this party going to be that we needed to spend most of the day setting it up? Despite my reservations I was starting to expect a fantastic night out.

  ‘I live at 108, Buckley Road,’ I said. ‘See you in forty-five minutes then?’

  ‘Righto.’

  The phone went dead. I crouched in the cupboard for a couple of seconds, feeling excited and nervous. This was my big chance to get to know Archie and I mustn’t blow it. But first things first – what to wear?

  Exactly forty-five minutes later, the doorbell rang. My heart pounded and I took one last look at my reflection in the mirror. Hair washed and dried? Check. All slivers of manual permanently removed from cheek? Check. Sparkly silver halter-top and very short black skirt? Check. Ridiculously high heels? Check. OK, I was ready to go. I took a deep breath, tottered across the hall and down the stairs and wrenched open the front door.

  Archie, dressed in beige slacks and a black T-shirt proclaiming ‘I love Elves’, gawped at me. His eyes flickered from the top of my head to the toes peeping through the ends of my shoes and back again.

  ‘Ummmmm,’ he said, his mouth gaping like a gold-fish. ‘Ummmmmmm.’

  I put my hands on my hips and grinned at him. ‘The correct response, I think you’ll find, is wow!’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, shuffling from one foot to the other and twisting his fingers. ‘It’s just …’

  Had I got the wrong end of the stick? Was it more of a dinner party than a rave? Or maybe it was a ball, that would make sense, he was posh after all.

  ‘It’s just … will you be comfortable in that outfit?’

  Comfortable? High heels were a constant agony, but that was the price you paid. It was something men, Archie included, would never understand.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t you worry.’

  ‘OK, let’s go. My car’s over there.’

  He stalked off down the path and I staggered after him until he reached the cutest, shiniest white VW Beetle I’d ever seen, and stopped.

  ‘This is Herbie,’ Archie said, opening the passenger door. ‘After you.’

  I clambered into the small car as elegantly as I could. My initial doubts about my outfit were fading and I was starting to enjoy myself. Archie was a total geek (who goes to a party in a T-shirt that says ‘I love Elves’?), but he was a complete gent and we were about to set off on a little mini-adventure together.

  ‘Seatbelt?’ he said, as he slid into the driver’s seat.

  ‘All buckled up and ready to go, Bimbo Baggins.’

  ‘Huh?’ Archie looked puzzled.

  ‘You know, from Lord of the Rings?’

  ‘I think you mean Bilbo Baggins, Lucy.’

  ‘Right, yes, of course,’ I said, trying desperately not to laugh.

  Archie turned the key in the ignition, revved the engine, slipped the gear lever into first and pulled out into the road.

  ‘Ready to party?’ he asked. Beneath the extreme bushiness of his beard I spotted the shyest of smiles.

  ‘Hell, yeah. Let’s go. Have you got any music?’

  ‘In the glove compartment.’

  I reached forward, flipped it open and rummaged through the enormous pile of CDs inside. I’m not sure what I was expecting a geek like Archie to listen to, but it sure as hell wasn’t rap and hip-hop. Old school at that. Not entirely my cup of tea though. I was more of a rock and indie kind of girl. I flicked through the CDs: Beastie Boys, Doctor Dre, Run DMC, Public Enemy, NWA.

  ‘Are these yours?’ I asked.

  ‘Who else’s would they be?’

  I raised an eyebrow, popped the Beastie Boys CD in and rolled down the window. ‘Fight for Your Right To Party’ (quite appropriate, I thought) blared out of the speakers above the back seats and hit me in the back of the head with the force of the bass. I looked round. There was something on the backseat.

  ‘Archie, why did you bring a laptop?’

  ‘What?’ he said, glancing at me and turning the stereo down.

  ‘Your laptop. It’s on the backseat. How come?’

  ‘Because I need it of course. Where’s yours?’

  ‘I
didn’t bring one.’ I looked down at my empty lap and frowned. ‘I was going to bring a bottle of wine but I forgot.’

  The brakes squealed and I lurched forward as the car stopped. CDs jumped off my lap and spilled onto the floor. Oh shit, I’d obviously made a major faux pas. Posh people always take booze to parties.

  ‘Want to go back?’ Archie said, as the cars behind us started to honk their horns. ‘There’s still time to go and get your laptop.’

  What? Oh my God. Maybe at really posh parties you have to take a laptop or something equally expensive instead of a bottle of wine as a present. You know, like visiting dignitaries bring the Queen tiaras and jewels and stuff.

  ‘But I haven’t got a laptop,’ I said desperately.

  Archie put the car back into gear and pulled away. ‘No worries, Nigel will have one you can use.’

  ‘Nigel’s going to the party?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Of course,’ Archie said, ‘and Geoff. It wouldn’t be much of a party if there weren’t enough laptops to go round.’

  What the hell was he on about? Were we going to some kind of laptop orgy? What if LAN stood for Loving a Nerd? Uh oh. What if all the laptops had webcams connected to the Internet and the boys were expecting me to dance or strip or—

  ‘Not far now,’ Archie said, interrupting my silent freak-out. ‘Nearly there.’

  We pulled into a quiet suburban road and parked. Two old ladies ambled down the street; one of them was dragging a shopping bag on wheels, the other was pushing herself along with a Zimmer frame. It wasn’t exactly party central.

  ‘Are we here?’ I asked.

  Archie turned off the engine and got out of the car. ‘Number twenty-seven,’ he said, pointing at a terraced house with a red door.

  I stood back to let him go down the pathway first. The butterflies in my stomach freaked out as he rang the doorbell.

  What the hell had I agreed to?

  Chapter Eighteen