She turned the sausages and took a tin of tomatoes from the cupboard. ‘By the way, a new guy at Acting Instrumental turns out to be someone I went to school with, Rich Garrit. I didn’t immediately recognise him. He’s changed his name to Joe Blackthorn for some reason.’ It made her stomach drop to remember the shock of the realisation.
Randall made a puffing noise, trying to get a word out. Georgine gave him time as she opened the tomato tin. Finally, he managed, ‘Criminal?’
‘Blimey. Hope not.’ At school, she reminded herself with an unpleasant thrill, he had hung with all the rough guys and it had been really weird the way he’d turned on her one day and then disappeared. Nobody had known where. Georgine had even put aside her hurt and anger to ask his sister, Chrissy, but Chrissy had just shrugged and turned away. Then, in a matter of weeks, Chrissy had gone too. Unnerving rumours of Garrit doing away with both children had swirled around the school until the teachers had heard and said that Rich and Chrissy had each transferred to schools out of the area.
Starved of oxygen, the flames of rumour went out, but Georgine had struggled to cope with the loss of a friend. It had been like a bereavement. For the first time in her life she’d become moody and difficult, which had led, eventually, to that truculent moment of stupidity that had changed everything for everybody she loved.
Her family became a distorted thing. Dad lost everything. Mum left. Blair developed an awkward relationship with money. It had all stemmed from Georgine and those moods, and it seemed as if she’d spent her life since then battling the fallout. It was probably why now she liked everything to be neat and controlled.
‘Careful with him.’ Randall groped for his hankie to wipe his mouth before he finished. ‘Ve’y careful, p’ease.’
Georgine’s heart warmed at the love in her father’s gaze. ‘I’m meeting him at The Three Fishes at eight. It’s nice and public.’
‘’Kay.’ Randall nodded. ‘Tex me later?’
‘I will. Now, I’m just putting the bacon under. I’ll give you three rashers.’ She moved on to tell him how the Christmas show was going. He loved to hear about her job and she loved to talk about it, so the subject lasted them through dinner and the washing up. Then Georgine checked Randall’s bank account for him, exhibiting her phone screen so he could nod in satisfaction that his benefit was coming in OK and his rent going out.
Then she said goodnight and drove home, grateful that her car, small and middle-aged as it was, remained reliable in the face of increasingly cold weather.
Despite her assurances to her dad, when the time came to meet Joe, she wasn’t sure she should have agreed to it. Blair was out or Georgine might have asked her to come along. And why had she suggested the pub? She didn’t have money to spare on non-essentials. She resolved that if Joe bought her a drink and she bought him one back, that would provide ample time to hear what he had to say. She could squeeze that much out of her budget now she had Blair’s contribution to the household.
The hood of her coat protected her hair from the worst of the swirling wind as she strode along the footpath that brought her out of the Bankside estate where Great Hill Road joined Main Road. A few strides from the village pub, her footsteps slowed. Last time she’d spoken to Rich Garrit she’d been struggling to hold back hurt tears and he and his scruffy mates had been hooting with laughter at her. OK, they’d been fourteen, but it had felt like a betrayal because Georgine had stuck up for Rich when others had poked fun at him and said unkind things. They hadn’t been ‘seeing each other’, but they’d done art, drama and music together and their friendship had seemed enough for them both. Once away from his braying mates he’d dropped his naughty-boy persona and shown his intelligence, discussing unexpected subjects like karma and whether good people really did return to more enjoyable lives, as a TV programme about Buddhism had said.
Though the intervening years had been enough for her to shuck off a schoolyard gripe, Rich Garrit had once proved himself to be unreliable.
His reappearance with a completely different name didn’t encourage her to trust him now.
She crossed the road towards The Three Fishes. Built of the local russet-coloured stone and presently festooned with a blinding cat’s cradle of Christmas lights, it was at the heart of Middledip both literally and figuratively. M.A.R. Motors, Booze & News and the Angel Community Café were all a short walk away down Main Road. Nearby stood the playing fields and the village hall. The latter was currently closed and rather than its own Christmas decorations sparkling from its windows, a car park full of building machinery and skips indicated that work had begun on replacing the roof.
The wind more or less blew Georgine in through the door of The Three Fishes, bringing her to the attention of the landlord behind the polished wooden bar. Known in Middledip as ‘Tubb from the pub’, opinion was divided as to whether or not his sometimes-uncertain temper hid a heart of gold, but you certainly didn’t get through the door to his pub – in either direction – without him noticing. ‘Evening,’ he said, his eyes flitting over his bar as if wondering what Georgine would buy.
When the France family had lived in The Gatehouse, a three-storey stone property near The Cross, they hadn’t frequented The Three Fishes much. Randall had been a member of Bettsbrough Golf Club and their mum, Barbara, of Port Manor Hotel’s country club, and one of those polished establishments had usually won the France family’s custom. Tubb never seemed to hold that against Georgine.
She was the only member of her family remaining in the village – not counting Blair, who was really just using Middledip as a safe harbour while she recovered from her most recent emotional storm. Randall’s assisted living flat was in Bettsbrough and Barbara flitted between a big house on a beach in Northumberland and a big house in the hills of central France.
Not put off by Tubb’s boot-face, Georgine shoved back her hood and offered him a friendly grin. ‘Phew, blowing a hooley out there.’ Unwinding her long aubergine scarf she swapped greetings with a few villagers she knew then, unzipping her coat, glanced about the busy bar for Joe.
Rich.
Whoever the hell he was.
Then she glimpsed him. He’d bagged a table by the fire and was lounging in a chair and watching the goings on of the pub through his specs with a half smile. His dark grey jeans and leather cowboy boots looked expensive, as did the thick black jacket lying over a nearby chair.
She weaved her way towards him, the boots making her think roadies must be ‘music biz’ enough to dress a bit alternatively. When he noticed her, he rose, giving her the smile that now she recognised perfectly clearly from the days it had flashed from the face of the boy who’d been the class joker. ‘Well, howdy, Mizz Jaw-Jean.’
The delivery of the well-worn joke was deadpan, but his eyes laughed. Despite having spent the afternoon brooding on why he hadn’t mentioned their old connection as soon as he recognised her, Georgine felt the corners of her mouth twitch. It was reassuring to be reminded of his clowning, the days when Rich would try to make her giggle in class. Once he’d pretended to take out his eyeballs to polish them. Next time he’d opened his eyelids he’d been cross-eyed, as if he’d replaced them in the wrong sockets. She’d had to look away to prevent herself from laughing out loud. Pretending had been OK then.
But now?
‘Hello …’ She hesitated.
‘Joe,’ he finished for her. ‘What can I get you?’
‘A glass of chardonnay, please.’
