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

‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ — Chapter Twenty-Three

She could be a radio star. Maybe not.

The speakers on her radio buzzed with more than their usual excitement as the message they carried percolated through to her. “The sad, the mad and the bad were to be found in Malvern Road today,” it said.

She would have to get onto that radio station and offer to write their headlines for them. She couldn’t do worse than they had, surely.

“Reports are coming in of the attempted abduction of a petite, frail old lady who kept her attackers, who consisted of five people and a rabid dog, at bay with an empty gun, before making good her escape. Allegedly, a drugs haul of considerable street value came to light when local people ransacked a nearby café known as the Cakehole. Our reporter was on the scene and we’ll go over to him for clarification. Bob?”

There was the sound of sirens, some excited barking from the rabid dog, and a confused gabble, no doubt from the crowd of Malvern Road inmates, all blended artistically together the way radio reporters do to start their reports with a local flavour. “And here’s the householder in whose house this incident has taken place, Liz Houston. Can you tell us what happened, Mrs Houston?”

“I wish she could,” she heard herself say from the speakers of her radio. Why did her voice always sound so hellishly squeaky when it was recorded?

Liz cringed. She knew what was coming. If only she’d had a bit of warning… But, no. She didn’t. Just a microphone stuck in her face as soon as she risked looking outside her front door to find out what on earth was going on.

She switched the radio off and hoped that everyone else in Bristol did the same. Fat chance. Luckily the complete dialogue and scene in which it took place didn’t all get broadcast she discovered later.

“Are you Liz Houston,” the tall chap with the crinkly eyes had asked her when she peered out onto Malvern Road from behind her front door.

“I’m not sure,” she had said. She was learning fast. “Do I want to be her at the moment?”

He had laughed, showing lots of lovely white teeth. Then, all of a sudden, without even a ‘goodbye’, he leapt over the wall into next door’s garden. Moocher had come hurtling through the door, barging her out of the way and barking as only a rabid dog can bark if he knows he’s appearing on local radio.

She fully understood the immediate panic exhibited by the reporter and the surrounding crowd. Moocher was foaming at the mouth. And at various other parts of his anatomy as well. But so would anyone who’d just had an entire bottle of shampoo lavished on them and then not had it rinsed off. He thought it was a great game — all these people screaming and running away. He was having a hard job deciding which lucky person he should chase. Liz could tell he was undecided by the way he started to run up and down, snapping at the air, barking frantically all the while. Obviously, the signs of a mad dog to them. Thankfully Melanie caught him before he’d terrorised too many of the onlookers, and dragged him back inside.

Liz had looked around expecting to see Betty shackled to a policeman, but there was no sign of any such thing. Perhaps she’d already been taken away, no doubt closely guarded by a contingent of husky officers of the law. She was a pretty slippery character.

Bob appeared again from the other side of Clive’s wall. “You seem to be rather wet,” he said. He was sharply observant for a media man.

“So would you be if you’d been trying to bathe a rabid dog,” she said, already fed up with this conversation. “So, has Betty been taken away?” she asked.

“Betty?” Bob said. “There was some confusion when a man came running out of the house with his trousers on fire. He was being chased by a young woman. The crowd was fairly stunned and before anyone could go to his aid he’d ripped his trousers off and thrown them in the wheelie bin. He then started patting himself, obviously looking for something. He didn’t find it and he opened the wheelie bin. The flames reached out and set light to his hair, but the girl quickly slapped that fire out. Somebody rushed up with a bucket of water and threw it in the bin and the fire went out immediately so the wheelie bin’s okay. The man then leant in to reach his trousers, but the bin was quite big and he tipped over and fell in. The water-guy and the girl hauled him out. They had a few words. The man gave him a cigarette and lit it. The man thanked him and wandered off. He got in that car over there, finished his cigarette, refused to speak to anyone who rapped on the windscreen and now he’s having a nap. The young woman went back indoors. Was she Betty?”

“No,” she said. “Betty is middle-aged.”

“I’m a bit confused,” Bob said. “After the man came out of the house with his trousers on fire there was a little old lady, all hunched up and hysterical, who told a tale of having been dragged into your house and set upon by all these people and a rabid dog, who seemed to think she was someone else. The people that is, she didn’t know what the dog thought.”

Liz took another look at Bob. He seemed pleasant enough, but he must have been some turf short of a lawn to think the dog thought she was anyone but who she actually was. The dog wasn’t stupid.

He continued. “She was in a helluva state and some man gave her a lift to somewhere or other. And then, shortly after that — this all happened very quickly — there was uproar because, apparently, she wasn’t a dear little old lady, at all. She was a notorious drug dealer and she’d got away right under our noses. So, all the police have gone off after her apart from those two over there who’ve stayed around in case she makes her way back here.”

Bob scratched his scalp, his brow screwed up so much in puzzlement he looked like his head had been ploughed. “The odd thing was that there was a bit of a row about who was to stay here. Between the policemen, I mean. Something about whose turn it was to visit Malvern Road this time. I didn’t understand what that was about either. Do you know?” He looked appealingly at Liz, but it wasn’t going to do him any good.

“No,” she said. “Haven’t a clue.”

“Oh, and there’s a couple more coppers down the road, where, I gather, she lives. Presumably when she’s not making business trips to South America. Is that who you mean when you say Betty?”

“Probably. But she’s not a drug dealer. Her nephew was the drug dealer and he hid his haul in the caff.”

“I’m still confused and I wonder if you would be kind enough to clarify things for me?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s possible. If you find out what’s going on before I do, then please let me know. It was nice meeting you.” But before she could get the door shut, Angela, who’d obviously stopped to reapply her makeup and fluff up her hair, was there extending a gracious hand to Bob and smiling that I’m-going-to-be-a-local-celebrity smile of hers at him. Liz heard her say, “I’m sure I can help you.”

Liz left them to it.

Ohmigod.

What a mess.

The PCs would have great fun with this.

Still, at least Moocher ended up smelling fresh and clean as a spring morning. But then, it had only taken an entire bottle of expensive shampoo, more than a few hours, a completely wrecked bathroom, several now-damaged adults and being threatened with a gun to achieve this end.

So, what would happen if the world at large discovered that Git-Next-Door was Julie’s father? Would life get back to normal? Was it her place to expose him as Julie’s father? What if something awful happened to him if she did? Could she live with that? No, she didn’t think she could. Damn! He’d just have to be made to do it himself and get all this stuff sorted out.

* * * * *

Liz was still wrestling with these problems as she dropped into the passenger seat of Hugh’s car. The leather seat was the sort that moulded itself to your body when you got anywhere near it. She couldn’t afford to be that relaxed, however, so she pressed the button that electronically shifted the back of the seat until she was sitting upright. Apart from anything else it would be easier to get out when they reached their destination. The car was so low-slung her behind felt very insecure, as though it would be scraping along the road when the floor of the car wore through, which had to be imminent.

She had finally got ready for her dinner with Hugh and they were on their way to a restaurant somewhere out in the country. There was lots of country around Bristol. Hugh was always trying out new restaurants recommended to him by some friend or other. This one was supposed to make fish a speciality, which would go down well with her.

“A euro for them?” he said.

Why can’t he offer a penny like everyone else? “Oh,” she said. “I was just wondering who else there is in Malvern Road that could be Julie’s father and why Betty thinks we should know. After all, there must be loads of people in the road that we don’t even know.”

“No one that fits the profile, though,” Hugh said absently as he took a fairly hairy bend.

She waited until they were safely around the bend, not that that wasn’t where they normally were, before asking the obvious question, “What makes you say that? How do you know?”

It wasn’t so dark that she couldn’t see him flushing. It was only slight, but she could see it. “Come on, Hugh, how do you know no one else fits?”

“Because I’ve run through all the men of the right age in Malvern Road and none of them fit,” he stated.

“All right then, how come you did that?”

“Because this whole question appears to be putting you in danger. Obviously, I’m going to do what I can to prevent that.”

The Before-Charity Liz would have wanted to say, ‘Why can’t you mind your own business? Did I ask you to meddle?’ and such-like things, but she wouldn’t have wanted to hurt his feelings, especially before dinner. But if he was going to do things like this why couldn’t he at least have done them in co-operation with her? Why leave her in the dark as though she were incapable of giving any useful input? Many feelings fought for expression, all of which, she knew, had something to do with why they no longer lived together, but she didn’t want to ruin their evening and it would have been a waste of time anyway.

However, the After Charity Liz realised that maybe he never said anything these days because he had taken on board that she didn’t appreciate the possessiveness this implied and anyway, if you’re engaged to someone else it might seem a bit odd.

So she said, “If you’ve run through them, no doubt, with the aid of some private detective or other…” His flush deepened. “Then it’s not possible that Julie’s father lives in Malvern Road. So how come Betty is so certain that he does? And why have you dismissed Clive Oliver who I would have thought was a prime candidate. Talk about suspicious type characters!”

“Betty thinks so because of those papers she found in her husband’s effects, but they’re obviously not accurate so we must find some way of letting her know this before she causes any more chaos. As for Clive Oliver, I thought you liked him?”

Ah ha! Hugh must have been thinking about when he met her coming out of next door — he had never mentioned it, but she knew he wouldn’t have forgotten it, even though it was none of his business at the time, what with him being engaged to that Charity woman. “I do like him, sort of, but he’s still awfully shifty. He’s always checking out of his nets and walks around as though his collar should be up and as though he’s trying really hard not to look over his shoulder and he’s awfully rich for someone who doesn’t work.”

Hugh smiled as though he’d realised he had nothing to fear from a quarter that he’d been worried about. “Anyway, he’s not Julie’s father,” he said.

He said it with such certainty she had to ask, “What makes you so sure?”

“Do you really not know?” His surprise was so unforced she began to feel uneasy. Apart from anything else, if Clive wasn’t Julie’s father, why had he let her think he was? “Um, no…”

“You know the name ‘Belvedere McGuigan’?”

“Yes, of course I do. He’s the thriller writer.”

Hugh’s silence was more than eloquent.

“You’re kidding me! That is Belvedere McGuigan. Oh. My. God!” If she mentally cringed any further her brain would end up looking like a shrivelled pea. Perhaps it was a shrivelled pea someone put in there as a replacement. Who had run off with her brain, then?

No wonder he was rich. No wonder he had all those books of that type. No wonder he was always looking out of his nets. It was well known that he was virtually a recluse. He never gave interviews. Of course, he wasn’t Julie’s father. The very idea. She groaned silently, imagining all those biscuits she’d eaten and all those crumbs she’d dropped and how horrible she’d been to him when she discovered he hadn’t been relieved of his finger. Aargh!

Belvedere McGuigan lived next door to her and she had done nothing but insult him and abuse him and eat all his biscuits. She went hot all over, a total body blush.

She felt so awful she could do nothing but sit there as stiffly as possible to stop herself leaping up and down because she didn’t know where to put herself. She wanted to rip open her skull, tear the shrivelled pea out with her bare hands and feed it to a passing duck. Besides, if she stayed still enough the world might not notice her.

“Don’t say anything though, will you? He obviously doesn’t want people to know.”

“Nah, I won’t say anything. Don’t worry.” Catch her saying anything! Ha! If she could keep quiet about it then with any luck old Belvedere would never need know that she knew that he knew what a complete idiot she was. Groan. And he probably only agreed to keep quiet about his finger because he really didn’t want to lose a finger — his fingers must be worth a bob or two when she thought of the books they’d written. And he probably only let her think he was Julie’s father because he was a thriller writer. Thriller writers probably were incapable of setting you straight about anything. They probably want you to work it out. Yeah.

So that meant that Julie’s father did not live in Malvern Road. Betty’s old man must be mistaken or his papers out of date or confusing the trail. Oh, good. They could tell Julie to go away then and they could live happily ever after. Doing nothing but earning a living. And being nice to their neighbours. Of course.

They made it to the restaurant in one piece despite her feeling as though disappearing into the upholstery was what she wanted most in the world. She even managed to walk into the place, on Hugh’s arm, as though she was used to walking around, physically connected to the man she loved, on an everyday basis. She was horrified — just touching him made her stomach tremble and her face hot, a reaction so foreign to her these days she had to work it out. And when she did she was almost shocked — and consequently, sympathetic to Sandra — of course — it was lust! Good grief. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

But nothing could spoil her pleasure in good food. After all, it was only another kind of lust. It was superb. The food. She had red snapper and seaweed in a racing-green sauce starter, followed by a monk fish puff pastry creation, topped off with steamed suet syrup pudding and custard and cream, oh, and just a teensy bit of ice-cream. She could barely move. It was just wonderful. She wanted to go to sleep, but she forced herself not to lean her forehead on the crisp white linen table-cloth and have a quick snooze. No, she engaged her companion in witty, fast-moving, entertaining chit chat: “Food,” she said, gesturing at the table. “Good.” her hands played a vital part in this conversation. They were positively Italian in their expressiveness. “Wonderful.”

“You’ve eaten too much,” he said.

How well he knows me she thought. She smiled lovingly at him and burped softly. “Um, yes, just a little. But, boy, was that yummy? Yes!”

Suddenly, the heavenly food having gone straight to her head, she leant forward and captured his hands in hers. He had nice hands. They were one of the things about him that she particularly liked. They looked like she imagined a surgeon’s hands should look. A surgeon who plays the piano as well. A grand piano. A grand piano playing surgeon who was a masseuse in his spare time. Lovely hands. She stared at them unblinkingly as she endeavoured to cover and entrap them. Her hands were a bit smaller. Oh, boy, she had eaten far, far too much!

She really shouldn’t be doing this now. One part of her knew that. Another part of her, the sucker for yummy food who ate too much and then got comatose until it had been absorbed into her system sufficiently to allow her to move a bit faster and her shrivelled pea brain to work again — that part of her was out of control.

Her voice belonged to that part as well. It came out of her mouth all thrilling and husky and said, “Hugh… Hugh, let’s get back together again. We go well together, you and I. And you must have thought that once or you wouldn’t have married me in the first place.”

His hands were rigid in her grip and his face registered such pain she wanted to run away. It had never occurred to her that Charity had hurt him that much. Slowly he peeled her fingers away from his until they were no longer touching at all. He took a deep breath and started, “Now, Liz…”

Bad start, really, but she kept her peace.

“Now, Liz. It’s very sweet of you, but I can’t accept your generous offer. I know you don’t really want to do that. I know you just feel sorry for me. And I’d rather you didn’t. In fact, it’s actually quite offensive, so don’t do it again. I know I was a fool over Charity. Somehow, and I’m not sure how, I found we were engaged and then, suddenly, disengaged. And I’m still not sure how it all happened. But it doesn’t alter the fact that I thought for a while we had a future together. I have to deal with this. And I refuse to drag anyone else into it.”

“But, Hugh…”

He held up one of those hands she’d so recently admired. That was enough to stop a stampede of warthogs, let alone semi-conscious ones. She shut up.

“I’m more grateful than I can say that we can still be friends. I’d be devastated to lose you as a friend. You mean a great deal to me. But I won’t have you sacrifice yourself for me because of my mistake. I know full well how you feel. I should have listened to you sooner and moved on with my life sooner. But I do thank you for trying to make me feel better.”

Liz opened her mouth, but he hadn’t finished. A strange little smile flitted across his face. “Next time I consider moving on I shall first of all look where I’m going. I might even ask you, as my friend, to check out the direction I’m about to move in, too.”

She could have cried. Instead she said, “I love you, Hugh. I love you very much.”

His smile nearly stopped her heart. “Thank you, Liz. And I love you very much, too.”

Oh, how she wanted to be his little swamp dove again, his little sunny sand worm, not just his pal, Liz. But she seemed to be stuck in a position of complete helplessness on this score.

“Anyway,” he said. “I’m glad we’ve got this sorted out. At least I can keep an eye on you now without you getting all defensive about it. Can’t I?”

If that was the best she could get then so be it. “You certainly can,” she replied gaily, her heart withering in a lonely corner of her breast.

“Thank heaven for that. I’m worried sick about you all the time. You’ve always got the police around or someone throwing things through your windows or dodgy lodgers or people with guns running amok in your house.”

And she’d make sure to carry on like that, too, if that’s what would keep him coming round. She smiled at him, but she had to swallow hard on the ache in her throat. It felt like she’d swallowed a Border terrier.

“Yep, you certainly can.” She had intended being a bit more original than that but realised in time that that was her limit without bawling her eyes out. He patted her hand in a friendly way and her heart collapsed in a cloud of dust and ceased to exist.

Chapter Twenty-Two of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is here!

Chapter Twenty-Four of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ will be here next week!

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

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‘White Lies and Stakeouts’ follows on from ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’, although, it too, can stand alone.

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