Page 41 of Read My Lips

TWELVE

The app on Simon’s phone said the trains were definitely running.

After complex calculations involving journey times and whether or not it was possible to get a taxi to come twelve miles down the drive on a Sunday, a remorseful Richard deigned to offer to drop us at the station on the way to Castle Huntley-Templeton for dinner with the in-laws.

Then Temp stood in the middle of the hall, cradling an overly-cellophaned bouquet of roses and a bottle of Scotch, bellowing out a sporadic countdown to departure like she thought she was launching a rocket to the moon while he hared about shoving things into a monogrammed holdall.

“Have you seen my charger?”

“Bedroom, darling.”

“Sunglasses?”

“Here.”

“Phone.”

“Hand. Dicky, do let’s go.”

Sidestepping the swirling vortex of the two of them, Simon leaned against a marble column, methodically adjusting his cufflinks and I loitered about like a fourth wheel left on the pavement next to a Reliant Robin.

A Range Rover that had never seen a speck of mud in its life sat out front, spawned from an underground bat cave at the press of a button.

“Get in. Chop-chop.” Richard hustled us out onto the gravel, bip-bipping the car open. “I’ll do the door.”

Simon and Temp swapped a glance.

“It’s a bit stiff,” all three of them chorused, perfectly in time. Fuck my life. Simon and Temp giggled. What a comedy duo.

SLAM.

I jumped about a foot. The entire front of the house shook as Richard put the full force of his body weight into convincing the slab of oak on hinges to submit to him.

Click. SLAM. Cl–ick.

Surprisingly, brute force didn’t seem particularly effective.

SLAM!

Crrr-aaaaaaCK.

“Oh blast.” Temp sighed. “There goes the other one.”

Slow motion, the lonely gargoyle at the other end of the roof heeled over, clickity-clacking across the slates, building speed like a downhill skier. Hitting the rim, it pitched off the lip of the porch, sailing forwards in a stunted arc before gravity thwacked it down onto the stone steps.

The head fell off.

And its snarling nose hit the waterlogged gravel with a wet crunch.

The four of us winced.

“Well.” Simon tilted his head to one side. “At least now the house is symmetrical.”

Through the back passenger window of Richard’s Range Rover, all the trees bordering the narrow country lane blurred into a swirl of green. We hurtled past a white-painted sign for the station.

Simon double-cheek-kissed with the best of them outside a tiny yellow-brick ticket office. Mwah-mwah, let’s do lunch. An ivy-covered footbridge over to the other platform spanned the tracks. It should have had pinafored children waving hankies all along it. We had to have stepped back in time. Too much rural charm for reality.

Temp leaned out of the window and pelted me with air kisses even though I’d busied myself jabbing at the ticket machine, well out of range.