Heaven Can Wait Page 14

  Around me, Nigel, Geoff and Joe were stretching and standing up. It was 5.30 p.m. Time to go home and get ready. I had a soulmate to find!

  Chapter Twenty-two

  What would Archie wear? What would he talk about? Could he even hold a conversation with a stranger for three minutes? I twisted my key in the lock and burst into the House of Wannabe Ghosts, my head buzzing with questions. A gorgeous aromatic smell drifted into the hallway from the kitchen and I inhaled deeply; garlic, onions, spices and … oh, God, I was supposed to be having dinner with Brian and I’d totally forgotten. Shit!

  I hurried into the kitchen to find him standing at the cooker. He’d twisted a tea towel into a Karate Kid-style headband. It made his unruly frizz stand to attention like a bearskin helmet.

  ‘Hi, Brian,’ I said as he added pieces of chicken to the sizzling pan. I jumped away as they spat and popped in the hot oil, but Brian didn’t flinch.

  ‘Brian.’ I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Not really,’ he mumbled.

  I paused. ‘Is this about your task?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  A pang of guilt shot through me. God, I was such a shit friend. I was so involved in my own task I’d practically abandoned my housemates. I’d promised to help Brian but I hadn’t done a thing. And now I was going to have to blow him out about dinner too. I looked at my watch. I only had just over an hour to get ready and get back into central London for the speed-dating event.

  ‘Brian,’ I said softly. ‘I’m really, really sorry but I can’t have dinner with you after all. I’m so close to completing my own task and if I go out tonight I might find Archie his soulmate. I know I promised I’d help you and I will. I promise.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Lucy,’ Brian mumbled. ‘You go and do what you have to do. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘But I am worried.’

  He shrugged and reached into the cupboard for a tin of tomatoes, leaving me feeling torn. I would help him, I would. But I had to find Archie a love match first.

  By the time I got changed, travelled across London and fought my way through the crowds of people who’d descended on Soho en masse, it was 7.50 p.m.

  I paused outside the bar to catch my breath and crouched down to check my reflection in the wing mirror of a parked car. My hair was behaving itself for once, but my eyeliner had already gathered into fat, gloopy balls near my tear ducts. I picked them out and stared at my reflection. The Lucy Brown that Archie, Nigel, Brian and Claire recognised stared back at me. That was me, the real Lucy, but who did Dan, Jess and Anna see? What did Weirdo Mute Woman look like? Did she have blue eyes instead of brown? A smaller nose? Blonde hair?

  A group of Polish students knocked into me as they pushed past and I jumped. What was I doing? I didn’t have time to fanny around, wondering what I looked like. It was 7.55 p.m. Time to speed-date!

  It was dark inside the bar, apart from a few low-hanging lamps beaming soft light over circular tables, arranged in rows to one side. A cheesy jazz soundtrack floated out from hidden speakers and groups of people huddled together near the bar. I peered at them and swallowed uncomfortably, my throat suddenly dry. What if Archie wasn’t coming? What if he’d changed his mind?

  My heart gave a little leap as I spotted his small, dark head towards the back of the room. He’d tied back his hair, which was a huge improvement, but his choice of outfit was, quite frankly, horrific. Beige chinos, trainers, a white shirt, a tweed jacket and a … a … cravat.

  But he was talking to someone! Archie was talking to a real, live woman and he couldn’t have been in the bar for more than a few minutes. It had to be a good sign.

  I hurried towards them, my fingers crossed behind my back.

  ‘Hi, Lucy,’ he said as I drew close. ‘I’ve got someone here I’d like you to meet.’

  My God, talk about a fast worker. He hadn’t even sat down at the tables yet.

  ‘Lucy,’ Archie said as the woman slowly turned to look at me, ‘this is my grandmother.’

  A short, stocky woman gazed up at me. She had a hard, lined face, thin, unsmiling lips (smothered in blood-red lipstick), and a generous nose. Her blonde hair was swept back off her face and fixed in a chignon so tight it looked as though it was cutting off the blood supply to her forehead. So much for the warm, friendly granny type I’d imagined. She looked like Cruella de Vil at a Sloane convention.

  ‘Lucy Brown,’ I said, holding out a hand and taking in her tweed skirt, sensible shoes, frilly white blouse and string of pearls.

  ‘So you’re the desperado?’ she said, looking me up and down.

  ‘Sorry?’ I said.

  ‘Archibald told me you were desperate for a boyfriend.’ She squeezed my hand so tightly I winced.

  Archie, the idiot, was looking everywhere but at the awkward scene playing out in front of him. Why the hell had he brought his gran along?

  ‘I’m not desperate,’ I said between gritted teeth. ‘I just thought speed-dating might be fun. Are you here to watch?’

  Mrs Humphreys-Smythe threw back her head and laughed uproariously. It sounded like the battle cry of a seagull attacking a bin bag.

  ‘Oh no, darling,’ she purred, slapping my arm slightly too hard. ‘I’m here to join in.’

  I glanced at Archie with alarm. He stared at his shoes.

  ‘Grandmother thought tonight might be a laugh,’ he mumbled.

  ‘But you have to book,’ I said desperately. ‘There won’t be space for anyone else.’

  ‘All arranged,’ said Mrs Humphreys-Smythe, smiling smugly. ‘We were fortuitous. Someone dropped out at the last minute and the organiser said he’d be delighted for me to take the spare place.’

  I doubted that very much. It was supposed to be a speed-date for people in their twenties to forties, but I had the distinct impression that Archie’s grandmother wouldn’t take no for an answer, whatever the organiser might have said.

  ‘But aren’t the men here a little, er, immature for you?’ I ventured nervously.

  ‘I’m widowed, darling,’ Mrs Humphreys-Smythe squawked, ‘not dead.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I said, my ears ringing. ‘It’s just that—’

  My comeback was interrupted by the loud and very insistent clanging of a bell. Everyone instantly stopped talking and turned to see where the noise was coming from. The event organiser was standing on a stool, waving wildly with one hand and shaking the life out of a small brass handbell with the other.

  ‘OK, everyone,’ he bellowed. ‘If you’d all like to form an orderly queue, I’ll give you your name badges, a score sheet and a pencil—’

  ‘I’ve already got a big pencil,’ shouted some wag at the bar.

  ‘Then I’d like you all to take your place at the tables,’ the organiser continued, ignoring the tittering. ‘If all the ladies could sit with their backs facing the bar and the men opposite them? When three minutes are up, I’ll ring the bell again. The men should then move one place to their right. Ladies, stay seated please.’

  We queued up like schoolchildren to receive our badges and then took our seats. I tried to slip away from Archie’s gran, but she shoved the woman who was going for the table next to me out of the way and parked her generous behind on the chair.

  I smiled tightly at her and stared desperately around the room. Where the hell was Archie? He’d better not have backed out. Oh. He was sitting at a chair on the far side of the room, staring at the ceiling and fiddling with his ugly cravat. So much for my plan to whisper helpful hints to him between dates. He was going to have to go it alone.

  ‘Lucy, darling,’ Mrs Humphreys-Smythe said in an overloud whisper as my date settled himself into the seat opposite me and looked at me with an expectant grin on his face, ‘I don’t know what your plan is, but if your intention is to take Archibald away from me, you’ve got a fight on your hands.’

  She smiled tightly and turned away. I stared at my date, open-mouthed.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ he s
aid.

  *

  For the next hour and a half I was an air hostess, a primary school teacher, a deep-sea diver, a trombone player, a stripper (that one went down particularly well), a street sweeper and a cardiologist, as a succession of men sat opposite me, chatted for three minutes, and then left. I couldn’t tell you what they looked like or a single thing any of them said. I was too busy peering through the gloom at Archie, wondering if he’d hit the jackpot yet. Beside me, Mrs Humphreys-Smythe tittered and flirted her way through the evening, scaring date after date with her terrifying laugh and her overfriendly habit of grabbing their hand and not letting go until the bell went. By the time a rather nervous Archie shuffled his way to my table I was fuming.

  ‘Archie,’ I hissed as he sat down, his chair practically in the middle of the room in his effort not to get too close, ‘why on earth did you bring your gran here?’

  ‘I had no choice,’ he stuttered, twisting his score sheet in his hands. ‘She said there was no way I was going to leave her at home on her own and, if I was going out, she was going out too.’

  ‘But she’s a grown woman!’

  He looked from his gran to me and back.

  ‘I didn’t want to let you down, Lucy,’ he said miserably. ‘I thought it was better to turn up with my grandmother than not come at all and leave you on your own.’

  That made me feel crappy. Poor old Archie, he was just trying to do the right thing.

  ‘But don’t you want to meet someone?’ I asked. ‘This was for you as much as it was for me.’

  He scratched his head, releasing strands of hair from his ponytail. They clung to his cheeks like wet seaweed. ‘I’d love to have a girlfriend, but it’s not easy. I don’t get many opportunities to meet girls.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I said, glancing at his grandmother and frowning. ‘Anyway, how’s it going? Have you met anyone nice?’

  ‘All the girls are lovely,’ he said amiably. ‘We’ve had some nice chats.’

  ‘Can I see your card?’ I asked, reaching across the table. ‘I want to see who you ticked.’

  ‘It’s private,’ he said, snatching it away before my fingers could make contact.

  ‘Yes, but I need to find out—’

  The rest of my sentence was lost in the clang of the organiser’s bell. Our three minutes were up.

  ‘See you in a bit, Lucy,’ Archie said, jumping out of his chair. ‘Only one date left.’

  I glanced across at his grandmother, who was watching us through narrowed eyes. When she caught my eye she smiled, her thin lips almost disappearing into the grimace.

  ‘Isn’t this fun?’ she said.

  As it turned out, I didn’t get chance to say more than five words to Archie for the rest of the evening.

  ‘Grandmother’s tired,’ he said as I tried to collar him for a quick chat after the event had finished. ‘She wants to go home.’

  Mrs Humphreys-Smythe was jabbering away to the organiser beside the bar, waving her hands around and touching him on the arm. She looked anything but tired and the organiser seemed to be scanning the crowd for the fastest escape route.

  ‘Did you have fun, Archie?’ I asked. ‘Was it a good night?’

  He smiled up at me. ‘Well, I did enjoy one of my dates.’

  ‘Which one was that, the one with your gran?’

  ‘Oh, very droll,’ he laughed.

  ‘I’ll see you at work tomorrow then?’ I said, opening my arms for a hug. ‘They put all the marks on the cards up on the Internet so you can see if you matched with someone you’d like to date again.’

  Archie was just about to reply when his gran steered between us and angled him away.

  ‘Goodbye, Miss Brown,’ she said as she pushed Archie towards the door. ‘I’d like to say it was nice to meet you, but that would be a lie.’

  ‘I … I,’ I stuttered, too shocked to think of a witty comeback.

  I’ll show you, I thought, as she disappeared into the night and I pulled on my coat and picked up my bag. You’ll be smiling on the other side of your horrible, old face when I check Archie’s matches tomorrow and find him the love of his life.

  So there.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Wednesday 8th May

  Day Twelve

  By 8.55 a.m. on Wednesday morning I was at my desk, my fingers a flurry over the keys. Please, I thought as I typed in the speed-dating URL, please let someone like Archie.

  An instant message flashed up on the screen. Could you come to my desk please? NOW.

  It was Graham. What did he want? He’d told me I had until Friday to get the website done.

  Coming, I typed back, one eye on the speed-dating site that was loading infuriatingly slowly in the background.

  I could make a lewd comment, Graham typed back immediately. But someone might report me to the Equal Opportunities Commission.

  Ew!

  ‘Graham,’ I said, jumping out of my seat and rounding the corner to his little cubbyhole. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  My boss stopped clipping his fingernails into the bin beside the desk and glanced up. ‘Ah, yes. Maureen rang me last night to say there was a bit of a HR problem.’

  I felt sick. I’d managed to blag Graham with my fake CV but what if Maureen, the accounts-cum-personnel woman, had checked up on me? What if she’d got me figured out as the big, dead fraud I actually was?

  ‘A problem?’ I asked, desperately trying to sound casual.

  ‘Yes, no National Insurance number.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Graham, who had transferred his attention to his cuticles and was gnawing them off in strips and spitting them at the bin, removed a finger from his mouth. ‘You’ll need to give us one if you’re going to get paid at the end of this month.’

  Shit, I’d forgotten about that. Not that I’d be around on pay day (I’d be a ghost by Dan’s side with any luck), but I couldn’t very well give them my real National Insurance number, could I? Maybe I could just make up a random sequence of numbers and letters and pass that off? Or steal someone else’s? Another question for Brian.

  ‘I can’t remember it offhand,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to go home and check.’

  ‘Just get it to me by the end of the week.’ Graham waved me away. ‘Oh, Lucy …’

  I turned back.

  ‘… how’s the website going? I’m expecting great things you know.’

  ‘It’ll be brilliant,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Don’t you worry.’

  ‘Great. Oh and Lucy …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you know what else is happening on Friday?’

  ‘Um, no.’

  ‘It’s the annual work charity do.’

  That sounded like a laugh. Maybe I could convince Archie to invite someone from the speed-dating event along. If anyone wanted to date him, that was.

  ‘Is it a dinner?’ I asked, imagining Archie in a tux. Maybe with a bit of a beard trim he’d look quite smart.

  ‘No.’ Graham shook his head. ‘It’s fancy dress at work day. The winner gets a prize and the person in the worst fancy dress has to do a forfeit. You have to dress up as your favourite thing.’

  ‘So I should dress up as a karaoke machine?’ I joked.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I hurried back to my seat and had just put my fingers to the keyboard when Nigel plonked himself into the seat next to me.

  ‘Did I just hear Graham telling you about Fancy Friday?’ he grinned.

  There was a look in his eyes I couldn’t quite read.

  ‘Yes, he just mentioned it,’ I replied.

  ‘You’re in for a treat.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Just you wait and see.’

  I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to tell me more, but he just winked at me and turned back to his screen. Fine. He could keep his geeky wind-ups to himself. I had more important things to do, like finding out whether I’d found Archie his
soulmate or not.

  My heart was thumping as I entered Archie’s code into the speed-date-to-love website.

  Yes! There were two ticks. Ohmigod. I’d done it! Two women were interested in him. I’d found him someone.

  Hang on a sec.

  One of the ticks was for ‘friend’. That was me. OK, cool, no problem. That left one dating tick. Someone wanted to date Archie and her name was …

  Jean Humphreys-Smythe.

  No! It wasn’t possible. I refreshed the screen and scanned it again but …nothing. No one wanted to date Archie, apart from his sick, twisted gran.

  I spent most of the morning in the ladies’ loo, alternately banging my head against the wall or holding it in my hands in despair. When I finally sloped back to my desk Nigel glanced at me out of the corner of his eye but said nothing. I sank back into my seat, grateful for his silence. Call it hope or desperation, but I couldn’t stop myself logging back into the speed-dating website to re-check Archie’s matches, just in case someone had changed their mind about him. But no, still just me and Gran. I was too depressed to even think of checking my own stats.

  When lunchtime finally rolled around, an instant message flashed up on my screen.

  Hi, Lucy.

  It was Archie.

  Thanks for taking me speed-dating last night. It was … interesting. Did anyone … er …

  I waited for him to finish, but the cursor just flashed on the screen. Poor thing, he didn’t have the guts to ask the question I was dreading answering.

  I didn’t think much of the girls who were there, I typed back. You could do loads better.

  There was a pause.

  So no one loved me? he typed.

  Just me and your gran, I’m afraid.

  Well, that’s nice to know, anyway. Want to go for a drink at lunchtime? I’d like to talk some more about last night.

  He wanted to know where he went wrong. That was good. In fact, it was better than good. It was great. I could give him some tips, maybe talk to him about his clothes sense and his personal grooming. All was not lost – I might be able to find him his soulmate after all!

  I’d love to go for a drink, I typed back. How about we go somewhere other than the pub so we’re away from the rest of the boys.