Sweep Me Off My Feet: Swept Off Her Stilettos / Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After

Maybe it was because I usually did this job with Alice. It was kind of quiet in here without her. I missed the gossip and the shared thrill of finding some fabulous skirt or blouse we’d forgotten about, squished amongst the other clothes. But Alice’s absence tonight was just a symptom of another disturbing change in my life.

I once used to be the centre of a large gang of single gals, all footloose and fancy-free, but I was the odd one out now. They were all paired up, more interested in painting nurseries than painting the town red. It could make a girl feel, well…lonely. Left behind. And that was a state I was definitely not comfortable with. I’d seen what Left Behind did to a person.

I wasn’t jealous, though. Really I wasn’t.

I tested myself. I imagined owning a little redbrick house and coming home to the same face every evening, cooking the dinner, paying the bills… No. It didn’t appeal. It was too staid. Too ordinary. People stagnated like that, and there was only one of two ways it could end: either they both numbed themselves to the dreariness and put up with each other, or one morning one of them woke up to discover the other side of the bed permanently empty, a note of dubious apology on the mantel, and a piece of themselves missing, accidentally packed in haste by the departed one, along with the wrong toothbrush and a stray sock.

So, no. I wasn’t jealous. Not in the slightest.

That sounded really snobby, didn’t it? As if I was belittling what my friends had found. But it wasn’t like that. I just wanted…

I didn’t really know what I wanted. I couldn’t identify what the nagging little ache inside me was, but every time it made itself known it reminded me of going into my favourite coffee shop, ravenous and ready to devour something sweet, only to look in the display case stuffed full of pastries and cakes and realise that nothing would hit the spot. It was all very unsettling.

I looked down at my chest, impressively showcased in the sweetheart neckline of my dress. My curves had arrived early in my life, and it hadn’t taken long to cotton on to the fact that men were simple creatures: easily brought to a drooling standstill with the right kind of encouragement. An ample chest and a well-timed pout can get a girl just about anything she wants.

However, I was starting to think I was losing my touch, and the events of this evening had only served to deepen my fears on that front. Because the truth was…there was one man who seemed to be immune to me, even though I’d given him every bit of my best encouragement.

I sighed and stared at the silver boots. The box beside their description on my list remained empty. Tickless.

The stupid stray bit of hair was back again, tickling my cheek and generally mocking me. I shook it out of the way and somehow that small gesture brought me back to reality.

I was being daft. There was nothing wrong with me. Just this morning a man walking behind me had spilled hot coffee over himself as I’d bent down to open the shutter over the front door. That didn’t sound like I was losing my mojo, now, did it?

I grabbed my clipboard, marked the boots off my list and added a little comment about the heel height, and then I got that pesky hair and shoved it under one of my hairgrips, pinning it away and out of sight with the rest of my maudlin thoughts.

I was halfway through my inventory of hats and hair accessories when a tapping on the window magnified, becoming more insistent. At first I hardly registered it, thinking somewhere in the back of my head that it was just the rain, but eventually I realised that even London rain couldn’t be that persistent.

I ignored it anyway. Honestly! It was after seven. The ‘Closed’ sign on the door wasn’t just a hint, you know. But, knowing our internet, everything-at-a-click generation, even that wouldn’t be enough for some would-be customers.

I stood up, brushed my skirt down and prepared myself to make Clear off! and I have a life too! hand gestures. While I understood the obsessive nature of some of my customers—and, to be honest, I shared it a little—not having exactly the right pair of loafers for their Swing Dance class that evening could hardly be considered a 999 emergency.

I minimised my wiggle as I walked to the shop door, hands on hips. This was one time when encouragement would only make things worse.

Over the top of the large ‘Closed’ sign I could see a pair of eyes and a scruffy brown haircut, but it was hard to make out who it was, because he was shielding his eyes with his hand in an attempt to see further into the shop. Great. One of my love-lorn swains—as my friend Jennie calls them—might just have gone all stalkerish on me again.

But then he spotted me walking towards him and pulled his hand away from his eyes and stepped back. Even in the gloom of the false twilight I could make out his broad smile. I could even see the dimples half-hidden by his light stubble.

‘Adam!’ I yelled, and rushed to unbolt the door.

And Adam it was, standing there in the rain with his eyes aglow and a bulging white carrier bag hanging off one of his outstretched arms.

‘What are you doing here?’ I said as I flung myself at him and dragged him inside. ‘I thought you were in the depths of the jungle somewhere!’

‘I was,’ he said, disentangling himself from me, all the while guarding the plain white carrier bag carefully. ‘But now I’m back.’

The smile grew in devilish wattage, reaching its peak in his deep brown eyes. This was the smile that had half my single girlfriends begging me to set them up with him. The other half just fanned themselves down and muttered things like ‘molten chocolate’ and ‘come to Mama’ under their breaths.

Of course I never did get around to setting any of my friends up with Adam. Not that I’m not a good friend, but the situation had the potential to become far too complicated. More than one girl had accused me of being a tad territorial when it came to Adam, but really it was nothing more than good old-fashioned self-preservation—really it was.

I led Adam through to the small back office of Coreen’s Closet. Now he was inside, delicious wafts of warm spice accompanied him.

‘You’ve brought Chinese food!’

He nodded, and dumped the bag in the middle of the desk. ‘I phoned Alice when I couldn’t reach you at home and she told me you were here, stock-taking. I thought you’d probably be famished by now.’

Adam Conrad is one of my favourite people in the whole world. And not just because he has some weird kind of built-in radar which means he turns up with takeaway at the moment I need it the most. Even weirder—it’s always the right kind of takeaway too. He never brings Indian when I’m in the mood for a pizza, or kebabs when I’m craving Thai. I wonder how he does it? It’s a gift. Truly it is.

Adam’s eyes widened as I pulled a garish pink wicker basket down from a shelf.

‘Excess stock from the shop next door,’ I explained as I undid the leather buckles and opened the lid to reveal a perfectly pink picnic set. ‘Daisies or roses?’ I said, indicating the patterned plates. Adam wrinkled his nose. The smile hadn’t completely left his face ever since he’d spotted me marching towards him through the shop door, but now it creased into a grimace before popping back into place. Sometimes I swear his face must be made of elastic. It isn’t natural to smile that much.

‘Can’t I just eat out of the carton?’ he asked hopefully.

I shook my head, and he flopped down on the ancient chintz sofa on the other side of our staffroom-slash-office. He held a hand over his eyes in mock despair. ‘You choose. Whichever one you think will dilute my pure masculine appeal the least.’

I snorted. ‘I’m giving you daisies,’ I said, with a wicked glint in my eye.

He just raised his eyebrows a little and smiled even harder. That’s the thing with Adam—he’s impossible to annoy. No matter how OTT I get, he’s always his same laid-back, unruffled self. I used to find it annoying that I couldn’t light his fuse—and, believe me, I spent a few years trying very hard to do just that—but nowadays I’m just grateful for his happy-go-lucky nature. I suppose I’m what some people would call ‘high-maintenance’, and in my quieter moments I know that a friend who’ll put up with me twenty-four-seven is a gift from on high.

We dished out copious amounts of food with pink spoons and started to eat it with pink forks, filling each other in on news of the last month or two. We didn’t usually have such a long gap between seeing each other, but he’d been away on business. More like a boys’ adventure holiday paid for on the company credit card, I thought. I mean, who can claim climbing up trees and messing about with bits of rope and wood a legitimate business expense? Adam does it. And he even fills in his tax form with a straight face.

‘Are you all right?’

I looked up. My fork was lying on my plate, a king prawn still speared on it. I didn’t remember putting it down. ‘I’m fine.’

Adam frowned slightly. ‘It’s just…you’ve been unusually quiet. For you. I’ve been managing to speak in whole sentences without being interrupted. It’s very unnerving. And you keep sighing.’

‘Do I?’ Even to my own ears my voice sounded far-off and a little dazed. I decided to deflect him a little. I wasn’t ready to talk with Adam about what was bugging me.

‘Nan said something to me the other day…’ I picked up my pink fork and doused the prawn on the end in sauce. ‘She told me she thought my biological clock was ticking.’

Adam reacted just as I’d hoped he would. He erupted into fits of laughter.

I crossed my arms. ‘Well, it’s nonsense,’ I said, feigning irritation quite passably and hoping Adam would take my rather distracting bait. ‘Even if I had a clock—which I very much doubt—I can’t hear it, and surely I’m the one who counts in this scenario?’

Adam grabbed the paper bag of sweet-and-sour pork balls off the desk and delved inside. ‘That’ll be the ear muffs,’ he muttered, without looking up. I think he was counting the pork balls to see how many he could filch without me noticing.

I frowned and scanned the office. What on earth was he talking about? I should have been grateful, I supposed. At least it had got him off the subject of my sudden attack of glumness.

And then I spotted some—in a torn cardboard box under the desk, which was full of winter stock I hadn’t cleared away properly yet. I reached forward and hooked them with my finger. ‘What? These ear muffs?’ I asked, holding a fetching baby-blue pair aloft.

Adam looked up, his mouth halfway round a crisp golden ball of batter. He bit into it and chewed slowly, not in the least perturbed by the hurry-up-and-spit-it-out vibes I was sending him. He licked his lips. ‘Not exactly,’ he said, keeping eye contact with me, but dipping his hand into the paper bag again. ‘I was talking more about your metaphorical ear muffs—the ones you wear to stop you hearing anything you don’t want to.’

My fingers tightened around the plastic band joining the two balls of fur together.

Adam just gave me a lazy smile. ‘I believe there’s a matching pair of polka-dotted blinkers too. Silk-lined, of course…’

He had to break off to duck out of the way of a flying pair of ear muffs. I quickly leaned forward and swiped a pork ball out of the bag with my free hand before he could stop me.