ILLUMINATION BOOK CHAPTERS (UPDATED LIST OF CHAPTERS HERE).. ROMANTIC COMEDY — QUIRKY ROMP — CO-STARS MOOCHER THE DOG

‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ — Chapter Thirteen

Obviously, it’s a cat-burglar!

“If you have any inspiration, do let me know,” she said, heading towards Clive’s front door. As she opened it, she saw her ex swirling his imaginary cape impatiently as he waited outside her house. He turned when he heard the door open and immediately frowned hugely at her.

Good grief! He’d turned up after all. For a man engaged to be married and not allowed round to his old, vice-ridden haunt, he was here a helluva lot. It was all she could do not to cast herself onto his manly chest and beg him to stay with her for the rest of their lives.

“Hello,” she said trying desperately for the casual touch and hoping he couldn’t read the burning love she still had for him in her eyes. “Been there long?” She also had to greet his darkling looks with light-hearted cheerfulness. It was none of his business what she was doing in Git-Next-Door’s house. Especially now he was engaged to be married to the Charity person.

Gracefully she vaulted the wall, caught her foot on the top slab and fell in to his arms. Well, rats! How annoying. How graceless. Typical that he should be ready to catch her. How annoying that he expected to.

How lovely that he did.

She could feel the tension in his body. Maybe he really couldn’t stand her any more and couldn’t bear to touch her. She should have disengaged herself and stood on her own two feet, but she just wanted his arms around her one last time before they were taken from her forever, leaving her cold.

He said, “Oh, long enough to help one of your lodgers move out. Not long enough to get bored.” He was always such a polite man no matter what he might be thinking.

She could feel his words reverberating through his chest. His heart seemed awfully loud against her ear, but steady and reassuring, almost hypnotic. She felt an inconvenient stirring of lust so she forced her attention back to what he was saying in the hope it would douse any little embers thinking of fanning themselves to flame. She also, finally, made herself get down off his chest and move away a bit so they weren’t touching.

“…you didn’t tell me he was moving out. Not that you have to tell me anything about your business. Of course not.”

Liz was glad he realised, finally. But, who was he talking about? Tony couldn’t be going so soon, surely. She tuned in again to what he was saying.

“…just thought you might have, what with him being your longest standing lodger. Sorry to see him go.”

Simon! He wasn’t moving out last time she’d seen him but then, he might have decided to flee before Stella threw another, more telling, body-part through the window. Hugh carried on. If Liz didn’t know him better she might have thought he was nervous the way he waffled on.

“Did Simon tell you why he was moving out?”

“I didn’t see him,” Hugh said. “The other chap told me. I just helped to get that enormous trunk of his into the pickup. Damned heavy it was too but, sensibly, he’s hired some muscle to give him a hand, although why they couldn’t have parked closer was a mystery. No, Simon’s collecting other stuff from his room, I believe, so you’ll still get to see him. Anyway, he wouldn’t just leave without telling you…”

She would hope not! Bad enough that he’d sprung a surprise like this on her anyway, although it was probably more the case that he’d forgotten to tell her. She found herself dangerously close to tears again. It seemed too much to lose such an old friend as Simon at the same time that she’d lost her very best friend and lover of all time. Everyone was deserting her.

Pull yourself together, Liz, she admonished herself. As long as she had Moocher she’d be fine. She straightened up, pulling her shoulders back, sticking her chin in the air. Unfortunately, of course, her boobs came out rather sharply when she did that and she hastily rounded her shoulders and made them lie down, but not before noticing Hugh flush a little. She wondered if it was lust or embarrassment. The latter, probably. He had Charity to go home to. Aargh. She had to get her mind off this track. Thinking of Hugh all the time had become like getting a horrible tune stuck in your head until it drove you mad. There must be a word for that. In future the word would be ‘Hugh’.

Luckily her front door swung open, screeching horribly. Hugh turned around. She stepped sideways so she’d have a view of whoever was coming out of her house. Hugh and Liz looked at the man. He stood in her doorway wearing all black clothing, with a cat mask completely obscuring his face. Obviously a burglar.

She was about to ask: “Excuse me, are you sure you’re in the right house?” when the door slammed shut with enough force to convince her that as far as he was concerned, yes, he was in the right house and didn’t want to see her just now. Hugh and Liz looked at each other and checked the number of the house. Yes, they were in the right place. She found her key, thrust it in the lock and hurled the door open.

She tried to keep her body in front of Hugh’s. She was yelling: “Get out of my way!”

He was yelling: “Stay back, Liz. Stay there!” Just like she was a dog. Down, girl, down.

She shot in through the lobby, into the hall and raced down to the breakfast room dragging Hugh behind her. He had an unbreakable grip on the back of her sweater.

Wrong way. They clearly heard the anguished shriek of the front door as it was pulled ruthlessly across the tiles. He must have nipped into the front room and waited for them to pass before making his getaway. They skidded in a sharp U-turn. Hugh was ahead of her this time. He streaked down the hall, turned right at the end, left through the lobby door, and shot out of the front door, pulling her with him. She had an unbreakable grip on the back of his expensive leather jacket.

“Mind my bulbs!” Liz shouted, letting go of his jacket as he raced across her garden. But he was gone. Boyohboy, the power of that man, the strength in those thighs. Mmm… she ran after him on her stubby little legs. She must have been doing twice the work that he was and was miles behind, but she could see where he was headed so she stopped in the middle of the road and stood there with her arms crossed. She adopted what she hoped was a determined and courageous expression to grace her femininely sculpted face. The wind playfully teased her hair into a halo around her noble features. A dog barked in the lonely distance.

Unless they reversed out, the baddies in their getaway vehicle were bound to come down this way and they wouldn’t just run her over would they? Would they?

Her handsome-and-huggable ex-husband had reached the getaway vehicle. It was a very un-James Bond-like pickup truck and it was beginning to move fast. Hugh hurled himself onto the bonnet. What on earth had he been watching on telly recently? She cringed at the thought of the damage to his jacket. Not to mention the damage to all her neighbours’ cars as the getaway driver couldn’t see much through the windscreen with Hugh sliding about all over it and the pick-up consequently careered along bouncing off every other car on either side of the road.

Fairly late on, she realised that the driver probably couldn’t see her either. She would have to abandon her Boadicea stance and get outta there. Quick.

She glanced around to see if anyone would see her utterly graceless and cowardly retreat, and leapt for it. The truck sped past her, Hugh slithering side-to-side on the bonnet. She could clearly hear him growling, or was it the engine, which never seemed to get out of second gear?

Unfortunately, Hugh’s trousers decided to make a sudden descent. Must have been the unexpected workout they were getting. They hadn’t deserted him altogether but were grouped about his knees. And he already had his hands full so could do nothing about it.

She was momentarily distracted when she noticed that one of the casualties of the wildly careering truck was Clive’s car where he’d parked it across the road. Funnily enough, if he’d been parked outside his own house he would have been okay. Well, she thought it was funny anyway, in a gosh-isn’t-life-strange kind of way.

Clive plainly wasn’t amused. A very loud firework went off virtually in her ear. She staggered back clutching that side of her head, when another one went off. It must have frightened the life out of the pick-up because it shuddered and slowed right down. Hugh did some sort of athletic leap and clamber and suddenly he was in the back of the truck fighting off the chap in the cat mask and trying to do something to the huge trunk she could see in there. All this whilst battling with recalcitrant trousers.

The truck convulsed again and the tail-gate fell open, Hugh fell out still hanging on to the trunk, which also fell out with a dull ‘phud’. With a roar of abused gears the pick-up shot off up the road and could be heard snarling and rattling into the distance. Why Hugh was so keen on getting the trunk she couldn’t begin to imagine. Mysterious were the ways of her ex-husband’s thought processes. Anyway, at least she could see that he was all right. She hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath in terror, until then. It expelled itself in such a rush of relief she nearly collapsed, but just managed to stay standing.

When the mist cleared from her vision she noticed Hugh’s boxers. They were not boxers like any she’d ever bought him. Not that she bought him many — he was the sort of chap who did his own shopping, but occasionally she might have bought him a pair with interlocking toucans on them or covered in what looked like black and white chequerboard but turned out to be packed with Border collies. Natch.

No — these were covered in golden teddy bears. On skateboards. Waving pink hankies to onlooking and adoring fluffy kittens. Good grief. Liz averted her eyes so as not to embarrass him.

She looked at Clive instead and saw that he had a gun in his hand. It must be one hell of a secret he was keeping and her impression of him underwent another instant transformation. He must be an underworld character of the first order. He not only had a gun but he had fired it, and all because someone had dented his car? Why hadn’t he used it when he thought someone was going to chop off his finger? Perhaps his car was more important to him. Liz leapt into a handy bush before he thought of her.

He stooped down and picked up a couple of things that she could only assume from having been to the pictures a few times in her life, were bullet cases. They tinkled together in his hand. He then ran back into his house with the gun and almost immediately appeared again on his path with both his hands unmistakably empty. Not only that, but one of them had suddenly sprouted an outsize beehive of a bandage. He really should be more careful about keeping up that particular pretence. He rushed past her, putting a finger (one that was attached to his hand) to his lips as he did so, and tearfully inspected the damage to his car. She climbed out of the bush.

Then she spotted Superpecs or rather, Hedge-piddler out in the road with his digital camera getting a lensful of Hugh’s teddies. Oh, dear…

She also thought she saw Tortoise-woman, basket swinging from her hand. But surely not…

“Liz, give me a hand here,” Hugh shouted. She ran down to see what it was he wanted a hand with, exactly. If it was the trunk then he could jolly well wait for Simon to give him a hand as it was his stuff Hugh seemed so keen on rescuing. She became aware that Malvern Road was abuzz with irate neighbours all looking suspiciously at her.

Her! Why her?

Before she could reach Hugh, however, she was rudely pushed out of the way by a blonde gazelle, recently known as Julie. Strangely, she was shouting: “Dad! Dad!”

That brought Liz to a very sudden halt. She stared disbelievingly at Hugh, her Hugh (or rather, Charity’s Hugh) and realised that their marriage had failed for many more reasons than she could ever have guessed at the time. He must have fathered her before they’d even celebrated their paper anniversary. Hugh gave her a strange look and frowned, but all the time he was busy trying to undo the belts around the trunk. Julie fell on the trunk, which wasn’t at all helpful, and sobbed distractedly and appealingly. Her nose wasn’t red. Her mascara didn’t run. How annoying.

Liz made herself move again and saw Hugh pick Julie up and move her off the trunk so he could get it open. He did it in such a masterful but heart-breakingly gentle way, Liz wondered what would happen if she threw herself alluringly on the trunk. He would probably just curse her for being silly and she would crawl away consumed with embarrassment. Life was just so unfair.

At some point he must have pulled his trousers up and she hadn’t noticed. Drat.

He got the trunk open despite the impediment of a lithe young body leaning over his arm, pressing up against his chest, breathing softly onto his cheek as Julie watched his every move with breathless wonder. Liz thought she was overdoing it a bit, but Hugh didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps he didn’t notice her as he was so intent on his task?

And there was Simon! In the trunk! Good grief! He looked like he was just waking up from a jolly nice nap, too. He sat up in the trunk, fished glasses from his shirt pocket, placed them on his face, yawned cavernously, riffled his already punk-looking hair, adjusted his tie and just sat there looking like Simon always looked.

“Dad! Dad.” Julie threw herself onto Simon who promptly fell backwards into the trunk again, whether from the weight or shock was hard to tell.

Simon was Julie’s Dad? Liz smiled broadly at Hugh, forgiving him. He scowled at her. He always could read her mind. Another reason they didn’t work together very well.

But then, maybe their marriage failed because it never occurred to her to buy him boxers with skateboarding teddies on them. She had just neglected that man.

Back in the breakfast room, Simon seemed to be taking it all very calmly. Perhaps he didn’t understand that he’d been kidnapped, thrown in a trunk, raced down Malvern Road (nearly ending Liz’s life in her brave attempt to save him), and rescued by Hugh in a death defying bonnet manoeuvre, not to mention finding a daughter who at present was sitting on the floor staring up into his face with an adoring smile on her own.

“It’s all right, Simon,” Liz said, in case he was suffering from shock. “You can smoke. Just this once.” He smiled gratefully and thrust a hand into his pocket. He produced an old stompie all of three centimetres long, and lighting it up with a magic pen that acted like a lighter, pulled in the evil cloud of smoke. It took years off him. Liz disappeared into the kitchen to make coffee. Of course, they didn’t have any, so she made squash instead.

Tony came in, carrying shopping bags and looking around him suspiciously. He said: “Someone seems to have trampled all over the front garden.”

“That’s right,” Liz said as she carefully measured out equal portions of the squash. She could see she was going to have to make it last. “We have. It happened when we were in pursuit of some people who’d kidnapped Simon.”

Tony looked at Simon. Then he looked at Julie. His mouth tightened. He put down the shopping and advanced on Hugh. “Hello, I’m Tony Armitage, lodger.” He held out his hand. “And you are…?”

Hugh took his hand as though it was a rotting rat. “Hugh,” he grunted, and dropped it immediately. Liz had never known him to be so very nearly rude.

Interesting that he hadn’t said he was her ex. Verrrry interesting… He scowled at her. She smiled back. Hehehe. She didn’t know why she found it amusing. She just did. Even amongst her heartbreak she found that amusing. She was a very sad person.

Tony and Hugh helped carry mismatched glasses of squash in. She didn’t own a tray. And the police arrived. Who had called the police? Liz looked around in dismay, but obviously it was her wholly law-abiding ex who would do such a thing, not understanding their delicate situation.

Hearing the dog flap door being banged impatiently Liz found the lock had been slid back down into place again. Moocher was butting his head against it and didn’t look pleased. He was missing out on the action. He was missing all the possible crumbs. He didn’t know they were right out of biscuits. It didn’t stop him from doing his, I’m-an-invisible-vacuum-cleaner bit though as soon as she released the lock and he leapt through and trotted into the breakfast room.

Liz was very pleased to note that these two PCs were not the same as the last two. What a relief. “Hello there,” she said. “Do sit down. Squash?”

“Are you Liz Houston?”

“I am indeed. Where would you like me to start?”

“Is this your dog?”

Liz looked down at Moocher who was looking up with great interest, his lovely plumy tail slowing swaying from side to side.

“Is he the magic dog of Malvern Road who can open fridge doors with his mental powers alone and then snack a fridge finger?”

Liz froze. The PCs doubled up with misplaced mirth. One of them actually dropped to his knees, his legs unable to hold him, his face purple, gasping for breath. Liz wouldn’t ring for an ambulance for him, that was for sure. That settled it — she wondered how many firelighters it would take to torch the police station.

She was obviously the laughing stock, her credibility less than zero.

Hugh looked at her with an endearingly enquiring expression on his so caressable face. She scowled at him. Oddly, he didn’t have his “Now, Liz…” look at the moment. In fact, he looked better, more alive and carefree than he had for the last several times she’d seen him. He was such a puzzle!

“We have a list in the station which is dependent on how many games of poker we win. We play poker far into the night for the privilege of being top of the list. Our marriages are going down the pan. Top of the list gets to come out in answer to any summons from Malvern Road. And today, it’s us.” PC One beamed at her. Fool. She would put slug death in his squash. She would put the slug in first and then the slug death and she would put his squash in a mug so he wouldn’t see it until too late.

She let Hugh sort it all out while she sulked and answered any questions that came her way with eloquent grunts.

It was all a waste of time, predictably enough. No one had thought to get a registration number, least of all her. She wondered if chariots had registration numbers or if Boadicea just recognised them all by sight. No one could even be sure of the make and model of the truck, although Hugh could bear witness to the characteristic damage caused to the bonnet by a body sliding around on it. No one could explain the gun-shots and she wasn’t going to. Fireworks were always going off round there so no one was sure anyway.

No one had a clue why anyone would want to kidnap Simon. And Simon, she noticed, didn’t mention Stella. Consequently, much was made of the possibility of mistaken identity playing a leading role in today’s incident. Maybe it was all a practical joke. There were a lot of students in Bristol and what could you expect from a house full of unwashed lodgers anyway?

Mind you, Simon was so taken aback, and enchanted it must be said, to find he had a daughter where he least expected it, that the kidnapping part of the day seemed to have been reduced to a mere blur in his consciousness.

So no one got anywhere, except that Simon and Julie were wrapped up in each other, Hugh was the hero of the hour, the two PCs had visited this place of legend and made much of Moocher and were happy with that. So was Moocher. Tony had disappeared again and Liz spent the entire time sulking. By which time the window was fixed (again) and she had reaffirmed her intention of incarcerating herself in her attic and never coming out of it.

Nobody had said how brave she was for standing in the middle of the road, risking her life to stop the truck. In fact old Hero-Hugh had spent quite a long time telling her how silly she was, which was a bit irritating because she really wanted to tell him that she knew for certain that if he hadn’t been doing his stuntman act, thereby preventing the driver from seeing her, then she would definitely have stopped that pick-up by doing her Boadicea act. Anyone who forgot his power tool on a job to forcibly relieve someone of a finger and then struck a bargain so that his bad memory was not found out, was not going to run someone down in cold blood. She was sure of this because she was sure it was the same lot of part-time thugs. The lock for the dog flap had been put in place again and there was no way your average burglar would even think of it, so it must be the same cowardly, allergic lot as before. Must be.

Chapter Twelve of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is here!

Chapter Fourteen of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ will be here next week!

All ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ chapters to read are here.

I own the copyright and have asserted my right to be identified as the author of this book in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is on Amazon as a Kindle book, and a paperback book. It’s also in Large Print. Susan’s newsletter sign-up

Susan’s Amazon Page / Susan’s Etsy Store / Susan’s newsletter sign-up

Read more from me: © Susan Alison 2021