Rumours and Red Roses Read online

  ‘You are,’ she said sharply. ‘If you want a family then you’ll have to get your skates on, lady.’

  She did not need reminding of that and the jury was out on whether she did want a family or not, although something Simon had said tonight, just in passing, had confirmed that he did.

  ‘He’s said something, hasn’t he?’ Her mum smiled broadly. Her skin was shiny with the cold cream she used on it last thing and she looked older without her make-up and with her hair scraped back. Older and tired. Looking at her, Becky felt a sudden fondness for her, for the hard life she had led, for the way she generally kept cheerful despite the setbacks. She had been hit hard by her husband’s sudden death and it was sad that nobody else had come along for her. ‘Out with it, Becky Andrews.’

  ‘Don’t be so nosy.’ Becky laughed at her.

  ‘Come on, you can tell me, I’ve heard it all in my time. Did I ever tell you about that time when I won Miss Blackpool and that smarmy guy from the television … that quiz show … what was it called? What was his name? Anyway, he said he could get me in television. Certain conditions attached, of course. I was so naïve I actually went to his dressing room. Can you believe that?’

  Becky smiled too. She had heard it all before, seen the photographs of her smiling mum in a swimsuit with the winning sash around her, and even though it was a lifetime away, her mum’s eyes still lit up at the memory.

  ‘He had nothing on under his dressing gown, the dirty devil. When I realized what was what I told him where to get off in no uncertain terms. You should have seen his face. I had just started going out with your dad at the time and it was all I could do to stop him going round to the stage door and thumping him one.’

  Becky could not imagine that. Her dad had been a gentle sort of man, quiet, although he never got much of a word in edgeways with her mum around. He was a bus driver but in his spare time he had a passion for fishing. He had taken Becky fishing a few times off the jetty of the North Pier at Blackpool when she was about nine years old, a sort of father/daughter bonding exercise, she supposed, but she had hated it. She had never understood the fishing thing, sitting there cold for hours on end, doing nothing, saying nothing either. And the water churning round the jetty seemed always to be a dirty grey-brown, creamy tipped like froth on beer. She had tasted the salt on her lips for days afterwards. He got the picture and never offered to take her again. By the following year, he was dead.

  Why had she done that? Thought about her dad? Even now, after all these years, she still got a stupid lump in her throat when she thought about him.

  Her mum lit up again, ignoring Becky’s protest. Her philosophy was that something had to kill you in the end and it might as well be something you enjoyed. And, after all, she was still here, wasn’t she, and her dad who never smoked in his life was dead of a heart attack, his ashes scattered off the jetty as he would have wanted. Fit as a fiddle all his life with nobody knowing that he had a heart problem that could have seen him off any time.

  And Becky was still here, wasn’t she, when Janet and the others were long gone, forever sixteen, puffed out in the instant it took the car to spin out of control and hit the tree. Well, not quite instantly … she had heard Paul breathing and moaning for quite a while until he quietened and it was a while longer, a lifetime longer, when the police and firemen arrived to set her free.

  ‘One of them is still alive,’ she heard somebody say, a man’s voice. ‘Hello, love. What’s your name?’

  ‘Becky,’ she had said, so low that he had to ask her again. ‘Becky,’ she said, although she could still only whisper.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Becky, love,’ the kind voice said. ‘We’ll have you out in no time.’

  And why on earth had she thought of that?

  Becky nearly told her mum what Simon had done tonight but it was late and they were both tired and her mum would just laugh. In any case, she was keeping quiet about just who Simon was so as not to get her mum too excited. In fact, she must try to keep them apart for the moment because she didn’t want her mum spoiling things for her by acting over eager. If her mum got wind of the fact that there was money in Simon’s family, if she realized that Becky stood to land very nicely on her feet if she married him, then she would not let it drop.

  FIVE

  BECKY WENT OVER the evening minute by minute as she lay in bed, her current book, a bestseller she was eagerly anticipating, still unopened on the bedside table. Single bed at her age – it was getting beyond a joke.

  It was some time before her mum settled in the room next door. She could hear her shifting about but at last the hall light went out and, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, from her bed Becky could see the familiar outline of the window that overlooked the street. The curtains were thin because her mum didn’t believe in spending money on bedroom curtains. The same window overlooking the same street for the last thirty-odd years and, unless she did something about it, she could count on a few more years yet looking at it.

  She could do worse than Simon Blundell. He was smitten with her, she didn’t need Marina to tell her that, and that was flattering if nothing else. They had, she conceded, hit it off straightaway. They were of a similar age and, despite the difference in backgrounds, they had a lot in common. They liked the same music, were neither of them outdoorsy and, perhaps more importantly, they had the same sense of humour, close to losing their composure at the restaurant this evening as they were forced to listen in to a loud conversation at the next table about the difficulties of coping with an incontinent dog. The couple were celebrating their wedding anniversary but the poor dog’s problems seemed to be their prime concern just now.

  ‘I suppose, after a while, the romance goes,’ Becky had murmured, joining him in a smile.

  ‘I hope not. Not for everybody anyway,’ he said, reaching across the table to touch her hand and smile at her. ‘Not for us, I hope.’

  The little unexpected gesture and the words had delighted her. There was promise in the words, the touch of his hand was warm and tender, as were his eyes, and she had had a sudden romantic vision of the two of them – years on – celebrating their anniversary. One thing was sure, with neither of them doggy people, dogs, incontinent or otherwise, would not be on the agenda.

  ‘I can’t take the credit. I got decorators in,’ he told her after she admired the large, sparsely furnished open-plan living area of his fancy apartment in a pleasant tree-filled square off the main street. ‘I haven’t much idea myself, nor did I have the time to fuss about. I just told them to keep it simple and to keep it within budget. My mother says it’s much too clinical. What do you think? Come on, be honest.’

  It was a man’s room. The furniture was bang up to date, large cream sofas, some solid pieces of furniture giving an instant pleasing impression but, looking at it again, she felt there was something missing. Simon had asked for her opinion and, right or wrong, she decided she would give it.

  ‘Well, I think your mother is right. It is a bit clinical,’ she agreed. ‘It’s hard to pin down but it just lacks something,’ she added, hesitating to say ‘a woman’s touch’ because that would suggest that she was anxious to get her hands on it.

  He laughed. ‘I knew you were going to say that. Go on. What would you do?’

  ‘I know designers like a blank canvas but I like a touch more colour,’ she said, slowly spinning round. ‘You need some strong colour somewhere. And you need more than one picture on the wall. You could have a group of pictures over there. And although I like blinds for an office, I prefer curtains at home.’

  ‘I paid out a fortune for those blinds.’

  ‘Sorry. You did ask me what I thought. There’s something particularly satisfying about drawing curtains on a winter’s night. Nice heavy curtains with a lining. And you could have some bright cushions and a throw. And where are your flowers? You haven’t any flowers, Simon. Even silk flowers would be better than nothing.’

  ‘I see.’ Simon looked round
the room as if with fresh eyes. ‘Flowers, eh? Curtains, cushions … I thought you said you liked it.’

  ‘Oh yes … I do.’ she said, uncomfortably perched on a fashionable designer-inspired chair in cream leather that was far too low slung and too deep so that if she sat back in it properly her feet would not touch the floor. What she really wanted to say, although she didn’t want to upset him, was that it didn’t look as if anybody lived here. It had the icy perfection and the cold feel of a show house.

  And where were his books?

  ‘In the bedroom,’ he said, when she asked. ‘It’s a big room and it doubles as my study. There’s a desk in there as well in case I need to work late.’

  The urge to kick off her shoes was huge but it seemed just too cosy a thing to do. She was wearing pretty new lacy underwear from Marks & Spencer under the new black dress, just so she wouldn’t be caught out à la Bridget Jones, but she thought it unlikely that he was going to suddenly pounce on her. Not like Terry. With him, they had not even made it as far as the bedroom that first time.

  There was no rush this time round and it made the anticipation all the greater. It was a long time since she had done the dreaming about him stuff and in a perverse way she did not want the anticipation to end on the off-chance it disappointed. Her mum’s words came thudding back, something about being worried if he didn’t try something soon. Her mum was right. The last thing she wanted was a lukewarm lover.

  But, despite her doubts, she liked this gentler approach and she felt she needed to get to know Simon better before allowing him to take her to bed. It would be her decision, she realized. It was heading that way, bound to be, for they were neither of them kids and she had caught him looking at her in that way several times tonight. She didn’t know anything about his history, his love life, but he did know about Terry, courtesy of Marina, although mercifully he had not asked too many questions.

  ‘Stay there,’ he said after he had provided them with coffee and mints. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

  This open-plan living was all very well, she thought, as she took a closer look round once he was gone, but it wouldn’t be her choice. Still, she had a long way to go before she could start dictating what she wanted but moving in here – if it happened – would be a dream come true. She could do things with this place if she got her hands on it. For a kick off, she’d get some lovely big vases and fill them with flowers and, whilst she liked the smooth beauty of the wooden floors, she would get some large rugs to add softness and colour.

  ‘Now …’ Simon interrupted her reverie, hurrying back, carrying some files. ‘I want to show you these, Rebecca. Come over here,’ he said, switching on lamps from a central switch to provide a soft glow in the other part of the room.

  The dining area was on a low raised platform and the table was lacquered black with high-backed dark grey leather chairs. He flung the files down on the table and pulled out a chair for her. Damn. If he wanted her to look at papers then she would have to own up to wearing glasses for reading. She was stupidly sensitive about the glasses, had managed the menu all right tonight, but she saw she would have no chance with the neat columns of writing and figures.

  He made no comment as she reached into her bag and put on her reading glasses, an inoffensive design from the cheap end of the frames range.

  ‘I want to be up front with you, Rebecca,’ he told her. ‘I want you to know something about the business I run. Did Marina tell you what I did?’

  ‘No. She said you were in business but she didn’t say what.’

  ‘Oh, that was remiss of her. I thought she’d have given you all the details by now,’ he said with a small smile. ‘Aren’t you curious?’

  ‘Yes but I knew you’d get round to telling me sooner or later,’ she said.

  ‘I’m a director of Bell’s Laundry,’ he said with a slight flourish as if she would be impressed by that.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The blue and white vans,’ he added. ‘You must have seen them around?’

  She nodded, familiar with them. If she was right, Bell’s Laundry was housed in a warehouse-type building on the edge of town, had been there for donkey’s years and she had indeed seen their distinctive blue and white vans travelling about. The revelation was, to be honest, a bit of a disappointment. Laundry! She had not thought to ask Marina, more concerned with the man himself than his occupation, but she might have hoped he did something a bit more glamorous. A sudden memory of passing one of the hotels in town and seeing a van driver loading sacks of dirty linen into the back of the van flew into her head. The van was in an alley round the side of the hotel, of course, for it wasn’t the sort of thing they would want the paying customers to see.

  Laundry!

  ‘It’s our family business,’ Simon said proudly. ‘I don’t know why my grandfather called it Bell’s instead of Blundell’s but that’s what he did. He must have thought it had a better ring to it.’

  She listened, fascinated not so much by what he was saying but the way he was saying it. She smiled to herself, wondering what Marina would make of this. It would take very little to persuade her into bed this evening and here he was talking about laundry. For one moment she was tempted to say to hell with it and make a move herself, make it plain, but she resisted.

  How he could be quite as enthusiastic about something as mundane as laundry passed her by but she did eventually grasp that it was a cracking business to be in, not one that was likely to go down the pan, not one of those here-today gone-tomorrow things. Hotels and guest houses, for instance, got through mountains of sheets and towels every week despite those coy little notices asking guests to think about the environment and very few of them did their own laundry. It might not be glamorous but clean sheets and fresh towels were an essential in life. Didn’t she agree?

  ‘I suppose so,’ Becky said, never having thought much about it. She and her mum dumped their sheets into the washer once a week and then argued about whose turn it was to iron them. They had to be ironed, her mum said, even though nearly everybody Becky knew just folded them and hand-smoothed them. Not the same at all, Shelley insisted, surprisingly pernickety about some things.

  ‘My grandfather started the business from nothing,’ Simon continued the tale. ‘It was a true-life rags-to-riches story and we’re very proud of him. We should be because we owe everything to him. We might be doing very nicely now, thank you, but we can trace back to very ordinary roots. He lived in a two-up two-down, one of those back-to-back terraces with a lavatory out the back. One fire to warm the whole house and it was freezing in winter upstairs. The story goes he used to sleep fully clothed.’ He caught her look and laughed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to get the violins going. But it was a hard life.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re from humble beginnings too, Simon Blundell?’ she asked teasingly, able to do this now that she knew him better, loving it that he was trying to put her at her ease.

  ‘Yes. We, my family, owe everything to him. I suppose he was what you would call an entrepreneur these days. It all started with a few washing machines in the days when people did not have one of their own.’

  ‘That’s hard to believe,’ she said.

  ‘I know. Whatever I do, however much I build up the business, and I’ve got a lot of ideas to carry it forward, Rebecca, I won’t be able to compare myself with him because I’ve had it easy. I’ve had the best education money can buy, a job waiting for me when I left university. It’s all been handed to me on a plate. I’ve been damned lucky whichever way you look at it.’

  ‘That’s not your fault,’ she assured him. ‘All you can do is make sure you don’t lose it for your grandfather’s sake. Then he would turn in his grave, wouldn’t he?’

  He looked at her, a long hard look, and then nodded. ‘My father heads the operation now but he’ll be retiring before long and I’ve got big plans. I’m going to take the business forward. When you inherit a business like I will one day then you have no
option but to do that. Each generation has to put its stamp on it. We’ve branched into making work-wear, that was my idea, clothes for the workplace, staff clothing for hotels, chefs, kitchen staff, front of house, and we do a complete laundering service for them as well as the usual stuff.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘Sorry. Once I get started on it, I can’t stop. I can see I’m boring you.’

  ‘No, no, you’re not,’ she said quickly. ‘Or at least …’ She smiled. ‘You are a bit.’

  ‘Sorry again. Tell me to shut up.’

  She smiled at the sincerity, the faint awkwardness he was trying hard to conceal. She suspected he had worked himself into a frenzy about all this. He was sweet. Marina was right. Simon was simply a very nice man. Dynamic enough for her and, even though to be in ‘laundry’ seemed a bit dull to her, he liked his work and was keen to make a continuing success of it and she admired that in a man. Also, and this was why she could suffer all this talk about laundry, she didn’t really care what the hell nonsense he talked because she found him physically overwhelmingly attractive, finding pleasure in simply looking at him, liking the earnest look but always looking for the smile that lit up his face and his eyes. She was, she realized with a start, beginning to love this man.

  ‘But, just to finish off, running a business is lonely work. It always helps if you’ve got somebody with you, a woman supporting you all the way,’ he went on. ‘My grandfather had his wife Isabel. Isabel …’ He hesitated and for a moment she thought he was about to say more about her but he did not, moving on. ‘And then there’s my mother Esther. She’s always been there for my father and she’s not just a sleeping partner. She attends all the board meetings. What she doesn’t know about the business isn’t worth knowing.’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t.’

  ‘God, I’m sorry … there I go again.’ Suddenly he looked little-boy awkward, running fingers through his hair, floppy, clean-smelling, light brown hair. ‘I’m getting carried away here. I’m making a lot of assumptions about you and your feelings and you’ve only known me five minutes. I can’t think why I’m telling you all this.’