Just Say Yes

She stared at the phone in horror. ‘Um—Matt’s not here. He’s—’ Where on earth was he? ‘Um—he’s busy. Can I get him to call you?’

‘Sure—he knows the number. Oh, and tell him it’s about time.’ And with a chuckle, he cut off and left Georgia staring at the phone. With a shrug, she keyed in her own phone number, and waited…

‘What the hell?’

A familiar and ghastly electronic jingle erupted from his jacket, and as if it were red-hot, he drew into the side of the road and pulled the phone out of his pocket, staring at it suspiciously. ‘Hello?’

‘You’ve got my phone,’ her voice said.

He held the thing away from his face and looked at it, blinking. ‘I have?’ he said. It looked exactly like his own.

‘Yes—and I’ve got yours. They must have got muddled up in the train.’

In the shower of tea, more like. He smiled. ‘Ah—apparently. So what are we going to do about it?’

‘Well, I can’t do anything at the moment,’ she said a little crossly. ‘I’m already late home and my babysitter will be having kittens. Can you make do with mine until tomorrow?’

‘Or I could come to you,’ he suggested, wondering at the eagerness he felt surging in him at the thought. She hadn’t sounded exactly inviting. ‘I expect I’ll get all sorts of calls—it’ll irritate you to death,’ he added, piling on the ammunition.

‘Simon already rang,’ she told him. ‘He said to tell you it’s about time, and can you ring him?’

Simon? About time? About time for what? The only thing his friend ever got on to him about was his single status—and a woman had answered his phone. He groaned inwardly and tried again.

‘So—shall I come to you?’

‘Would you?’

‘Sure.’ He jotted down the address, noted with interest that it was only a few miles from him along the lanes, and pulling out into the traffic, he changed direction and cut across country towards Henfield. He hadn’t had anything else planned for the evening because he’d expected to be in London for longer—it might be rather fun to see where she lived, see if it matched up with the image he had of her.

The word ‘babysitter’ niggled at him, but he ignored it. She had a wedding ring on anyway, so he knew she was out of reach. That wasn’t the point.

He chuckled wryly. He wasn’t sure exactly what the point was, but he was almost sure he was wasting his energy thinking about her. If only he could remember more about the first time he’d met her, but he couldn’t. He might even have been mistaken, but he doubted it. He didn’t usually forget faces or names.

And anyway, he didn’t even know her name. Maybe when he did it would fill in the blanks…

‘Anna’s gone home,’ Joe told her, opening the door and scowling at her as she kissed his cheek. ‘Jenny’s here instead—she said she knew she was early but she’s going to help you get ready. Do you have to go out again?’ he tacked on accusingly.

She stared at her son in horror. ‘Go out? I’m not going out!’

‘Oh, yes you are. The Hospice Charity auction,’ her neighbour reminded her, appearing over Joe’s head in the crowded little hall.

Georgia sagged against the door and wailed. ‘I’m so tired,’ she whimpered. ‘I just want a nice cold glass of wine and a little bit of oblivion. Jenny, I can’t go!’

‘Oh, yes, you can. Go and run the bath, and I’ll bring you the glass of wine. You can drink it while you think about what to wear.’

Georgia dropped her folio in the corner of the hall, kicked off her shoes and headed for the stairs. ‘Where’s Lucy?’

‘In the sitting room, asleep. She was tired but she refused to go to bed till she’d seen you in your party dress.’

‘Oh, damn,’ she said very, very softly, and went upstairs, defeated. Absolutely the last thing she needed was this charity auction, but she’d volunteered her services, and she had to go to be auctioned.

Although why they couldn’t just auction her in her absence she couldn’t imagine. It was her services they were selling, not her body! Still, they wanted her to go along, so she would go.

She ran the bath, threw in a handful of rejuvenating bath salts, contemplated chucking in the rest of the bag and thought better of it. Since she’d remembered to fill up the water softener, she had enough trouble washing the soap off, without adding to the problem!

Jenny passed a glass of wine through the bathroom door, and she sank into the hot bubbly water, took a gulp of the wine and rested her head against the end. Bliss. If only she could stay there all night…!

Well, he was wrong about the house, anyway. He’d expected a chaotic, colourful little cottage, or a farmhouse down a quiet track. Instead, it was a modest, modern detached house set quietly in Church Lane, and the only thing about it that fitted with his image of her was the garden. It was gorgeous, a riot of unruly colour and texture, a real English cottage garden. That, definitely, was her.

He parked the car, walked up the path to the front door and rang the bell.

‘I’ll get it,’ a voice yelled over thundering footsteps, and the door was yanked open by a young lad of about eight or nine. He had brown hair, mischievous green eyes and the same mouth as his mother. ‘Yes?’ he said abruptly.

‘Um—is your mother in?’ Matt felt suddenly foolish. Not knowing her name made him feel awkward, a bit of a charlatan. He held the phone out. ‘We got our phones muddled in the train—I arranged to come and swap them.’

‘Oh. She’s in the bath. You’d better come in. I’ll tell her.’

And abandoning the door, he left Matt on the step and ran upstairs. Matt followed as far as the hall, then waited. A small girl appeared, her head topped with a brighter version of her mother’s curls, and eyed him curiously, her head tipped on one side as she dangled round the door frame, swinging backwards and forwards like a human gate.

‘Hello. I’m Matthew,’ he told her. ‘I’m here to see your mother.’

She took her thumb out of her mouth and smiled gappily. ‘I’m Luthy,’ she lisped. ‘Mummy’th going out—she’th going to wear a party dreth. I’m thtaying up to thee it.’

Matt worked his way through the lisp to decipher the underlying words, and wondered if he would be able to delay long enough to see Mummy in her party dress, too.

The boy thundered downstairs and skidded to a halt. ‘Mum says come and sit down, she’ll be out in a minute.’

‘Well,’ Matt said, ‘perhaps your father—’

‘He’s dead,’ they chorused, apparently unmoved.

‘Ah.’ Matt trailed obediently after them into a scene of utter chaos. The cushions had been taken off the furniture and stacked like a house of cards, to make a sort of den behind the big settee. The chairs had been shoved every which way, and the curtains had been dragged out from the windows to drape over the top, so that they hung at a crazy angle.

‘Oops,’ said the boy, and grabbing cushions, he began piling them haphazardly onto the furniture. Matt helped, discreetly turning cushions round so the zips were at the back and they went into the right place.

It reminded him of his childhood. How many times had he done that? And how many times had he been skinned for it? He hid a smile and straightened the curtains, just as the woman appeared in the doorway, her hair twisted up in a towel, her feet bare, an ancient towelling robe hastily dragged on and belted with symbolic firmness.

She looked impossibly young to be the mother of these two little scamps—young and vulnerable and freshly scrubbed. His heart beat a slow, steady rhythm, strong and powerful. Lord, she was lovely.

‘Hi again,’ she said.

‘Hi.’ His voice sounded rough and scratchy. He tried again. ‘Sorry to come at a bad time—’

‘That’s all right. I’d forgotten I was supposed to be going out.’

‘Somewhere nice?’ he asked, although it was none of his business, but she wrinkled her nose and shook her head.

‘Not really. It’s a charity auction for the hospice.’