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Not that this was just a physical attraction. Not at all. They had things to talk about. Well, they would, once Jules could talk properly without having four drinks first. And without just imagining what it would be like to wake up next to Alea.
Alea who smelled of incense and sweat and the metal of a microphone.
Jules’s heart beat harder.
“I’ll be in tomorrow,” Alea said, rapidly draining her glass. “You’ll be working?”
Jules nodded, looking at the tiny mustache of beer foam on Alea’s top lip.
“See you then, then.”
She took off, leaving Cass and Amelia bursting with giggles.
“Cat got your tongue?” Amelia asked.
“Nah, Alea’s got her tongue,” said Cass.
But Jules ignored them because she knew the truth.
She knew that her mum’s predictions weren’t always on the up and up. But she also knew that this one was, that it had to be, that it had been the last thing her mum had said to her and therefore it had to mean something.
And if her mum was right, if she was getting married before she was thirty, then time was getting awfully short. She was twenty nine and a half, and Alea was the only eligible woman in town. So the conclusion was inescapable. Less than six months from now, she and Alea would be getting married.
Chapter Two
Dan, the aptly named ‘Man With a Van’ that Billie had hired to move her things back from London, had turned out to have a surprising addiction to eighties pop ballads. Well, that was what she got for hiring someone based on a flyer on a noticeboard in a laundrette, she supposed. Given his long hair, tattoos and leather jacket she’d been expecting Metallica over Celine Dion, but there you go.
“This is a good one,” he said, as the chorus to Glory of Love kicked in for the second time. “Best known for featuring in the Karate Kid II soundtrack, of course, and Cetera’s first hit after leaving Chicago.”
Billie sighed and murmured something that might have been agreement.
She’d spent a lot of the journey pretending to be asleep, which given that she had so much on her mind, wasn’t exactly difficult to do. Dan had spent most of the journey humming along to songs she hadn’t heard for years and hadn’t liked when she had heard them.
Still, he wasn’t charging her much, and given the state of her finances, it was probably for the best. And it wasn’t like his van was full. He could easily have taken another load and doubled his money if he’d wanted to.
Pretending to be asleep had also had the advantage of closing her eyes, which meant that she hadn’t had to see the landmarks growing slowly more familiar over time.
“Now this, this is a classic,” said Dan, as All by Myself came on. He clicked the volume up a notch. “Eric Carmen, obviously, but what most people don’t know is that it’s based on a piano sonata.”
“Concerto,” Billie said before she could stop herself. “The Adagio Sostenuto from Rachmaninoff’s second.”
Dan side-eyed her. “Funny, you knowing that.”
She hadn’t known it. But she had recognized the chords almost immediately and her with her big mouth hadn’t been able to resist showing off. “We should, um, probably listen in silence?” she tried.
“Yeah, yeah,” Dan nodded wisely. “Appreciate the genius and all.”
She sighed. Coming home wasn’t meant to be like this. Not that she’d exactly had a plan for her great return, but if she had she was fairly sure it would have involved at least a limo. And probably some sort of security, a bodyguard or two. Possibly even dark glasses and fending off the press.
But it definitely wouldn’t have involved sitting in the passenger seat of a grubby van with split vinyl on the seats and listening to Bonnie Tyler. Or Eric Carmen for that matter.
“Almost there then,” Dan said because he was apparently incapable of going for more than thirty seconds without speaking.
“Mmm,” said Billie.
Not that she could help but notice. The flowers on the roundabout by the supermarket had changed, and there was a new housing development popping up in what had once been a cornfield that the sixth formers had used for… illicit activities. Billie hadn’t been invited to those, but she had a fair idea of what had gone on and hadn’t been interested.
Well, it would have been nice to have been asked. But at the time she’d been busy anyway. She’d always been busy. Busy every minute of every day so that this sudden, new emptiness was novel at first. It had turned depressing in the end, of course, but the novelty of having nothing to do had been distracting for a few weeks.
