Love Is Usually Where You Left It Read online

  Chapter Nine: Pretend Best Friend.

  Clive pulled his jacket tight together and squinted his eyes to prevent the sudden increase in the wind and rain intensity from rendering him blind. The last thing you need when walking through a busy shopping precinct is the inability to spot, and give a wide berth to, those annoying people wandering around with clip boards. You don’t want to be the latest vulnerable individual who agrees to “answer a few short market research questions” that end up costing you a good hour or so of your life. No, you needed to see exactly where you were walking, especially with the increase in the number of weirdo’s feeding pigeons and creating huge, potentially hazardous, feathered blockades all over the place.

  But what was with this weather anyway? Rain and strong wind? Clive had watched the official weather forecast barely half an hour earlier that had promised of “fine, dry skies until early evening”. (You know the legitimate forecast on TV, not just some random smart phone app that changes its mind every thirty seconds.)

  Well it was still morning and it was, in Clive’s admittedly non-professional opinion, pretty damn close to officially “pissing it down”. What other job is there in the world, other than weather person, in which you can get things so wrong on a daily basis and still have a job to keep going to? Then again, maybe that’s a bit harsh because I suppose predicting the weather is tantamount to being able to predict the future, and if you can predict the future then there’s probably better things to focus your talents on. So I suppose anyone with the potential to be a half decent weather person gives up that particular career path once they have won the lottery a couple of times.

  Clive continued to walk against the wind and rain and could now just about make out his destination, which was the front of the building which used to be Woolworths but is now the latest branch of the WeLendAnyMoney.Com to pop up in the town centre. It is also the building that is on the corner of the street that leads down to The Cruci-ball snooker hall. (Which was, until recently, called The Crucible snooker hall until a legal contest argued that the name was mis-leading and it could be mistaken for the famous theatre in Sheffield that hosts the Snooker World Championship – even though that one is nearly fifty miles away. It’s a crazy world.)

  As he got nearer, Clive could make out the distinct outline of his good buddy Robert Adshead - a.k.a. Knobhead. A nickname that had originally come from the rather sophisticated, playground thought process of Robert Adshead (if you take away the “ert” and “Ads”) = Rob Head = Knob Head.

  Ever since being assigned with his new moniker over twenty five years ago, and being baffling proud to receive such a label, Robert seemed to have made it his life’s work not to waste a single second in living up to such a name. Right now he was standing amongst the tens of people who were queuing to borrow “anything between £20 and £2000” at something like a couple of million per cent APR.

  Knobhead was tall; the kind of tall that made Greg Davies and Richard Osman seem like mere mortals. The kind of tall that made playing snooker with him foolish, because he could stretch so far over the table that he never needed to use the rest or the spider. Luckily, he was also partially colour blind and so having that reach advantage was usually negated by the fact that he would often hit the brown when thinking he was playing for a red.

  Good old Knobhead; always there when he says he will be, never lets you down, reliable, trustworthy, salt-of-the-earth bloke. Clive realised that, even if was losing Gayle right now, he would always have Knobhead.

  “Allreet there Knobhead.” said Clive as he got close enough, as always (but never knowing why) adopting a high pitch, stereotypical scouse accent to greet him.

  “Fordy!” replied Knobhead, “How goes it dude?”

  They embarked on some lengthy, elaborately choreographed handshake routine, the type of which probably seemed semi-cool about twenty years ago.

  “Come on then lar, let’s go and have some beer and play some snooker-ball.” said Clive after the handshake formalities were complete.

  “Dude, I can’t make it today, that bird from the chippy is coming for a drink with me!”

  “Which bird?”

  “You know, Adele from the chippy on Smithy boulevard..... and she’s a cert for a shag.”

  Clive scratched his head.

  “Which chippy? Oh, you mean For The Love of Cod? You don’t mean Estelle do you?”

  “Yeah, yeah Estelle,” said Knobhead “pretty close with Adele, wasn’t I?”

  “But Estelle’s pretty old, you know? She’s Tommy Dalton’s great auntie. I think she’s probably in her mid to late sixties!” said Clive, shuddering slightly.

  “Hey, beggars can’t be chooser’s dude. It’s been months since I’ve had my leg over.”

  Clive could appreciate that, and then some.

  He cast his mind back to his and Gayle’s red-hot, passion days and the cheeky sexiness of the Bad Touch song “…then we’ll do it doggy style, so we can both watch X-Files”. These days the heat was well and truly gone, and the last times he could remember having sex, instead of that Bloodhound Gang line, it was more like “… then we’ll do it quietly because one of us wants to watch Emmerdale”.

  So maybe Knobhead was right to get it whenever he could; and maybe wherever he was taking Estelle for a drink may offer some kind of OAP afternoon special?

  “But we’re going for a quick game first aren’t we? That’s why you’ve met me here?” asked Clive.

  “No, dude, no time. I’m just here hoping I can borrow sixty quid!”

  “What, so it’s just lucky I saw you here?” asked Clive feeling somewhat aggrieved “Why didn’t you call me to let me know you couldn’t make it?”

  “Sorry dude, no credit on phone!”

  Bloody idiot Knobhead; never where he says he’s going to be, always lets you down, unreliable, untrustworthy, waste of space.

  “Some other time dude.” Knobhead added as he placed a cigarette between his lips and began passionately frisking himself to (hopefully) locate a lighter.

  “When did you start smoking again?” asked Clive.

  “Oh last week, dude. Those e-cigs started getting right on my tits. I was getting a mini-electric shock every time I took a blast. Having a smoke felt like trying to snog R2D2..... anyways, I’ve decided – life’s too short. I could get run over by a bus tomorrow. There’s a saying, isn’t there? “Live life to the full - the way you wanna live”; that’s my new motto!”

  Clive nodded his head.

  “It’s a good saying isn’t it?” asked Knobhead. “It’s not like one of those stupid ones people throw about here, there and everywhere. “The pen is mightier than the sword” – that’s all ok until you end up in a sword fight. What use is a bloody pen to you then? Fuck all! Then there’s: too many cooks spoil the broth but many hands make light work – well which one is it? You can’t bloody well have it both ways can you? And what about …”

  Clive realised Knobhead may go on with this line of thinking for a while and so tuned him out. Anyway, the “could get run over by a bus tomorrow” argument for doing unhealthy and/or crazy things was one that Clive had heard many times, usually by smokers, and he didn’t really agree with anyway. Clive always felt that, if you take great care when crossing the road, the likelihood of you actually being run over by a bus was probably pretty slim. In fact, he thought that if you looked at the statistics regarding people who were unfortunate enough to actually be run over by buses you may find that the majority of them were people who were not taking great care crossing the road – probably because they were too busy concentrating on lighting a fag.

  “See you around then,” Clive said rather bitterly as Knobhead stopped his “stupid sayings” rant to concentrate on shuffling forward in the WeLendAnyMoney queue. “Best of luck with Estelle!”

  “Thanks dude..... laters.”

  Clive turned away and caught a face full of rain.

  Great, what a day this was turning into already: insulted for
the best part of an hour by an upstart estate agent and now let down by his best friend who would rather take his chances of sleeping with a woman old enough to remember the war (maybe even both wars) than stand by a pre-agreed day out.

  But was Knobhead really his best friend? A man in his late-thirties who couldn’t even speak a sentence without using the word: dude. What was that about? It wasn’t still the late 80’s or early 90’s and, as far as Clive was aware, Knobhead wasn’t a surfer, or a ninja turtle.

  No, the more Clive thought about it, Robert Adshead wasn’t his best friend; he was just a guy that he knew from school, who still acted like he was in school now – over twenty years later. He just met up with Clive now and again – when he didn’t have anything better to do. Or anyone better to drink with; because every day, for him, was about drinking. Even now he was queuing up to borrow money so he could buy more booze.

  It was sad really. Knobhead’s idea of an alcohol free day was when he couldn’t get his hands on any money and so had to steal a bottle of whisky instead of buying it. Clive realised that Knobhead wasn’t really a real friend. Throughout the whole of his life, there had only actually been one person who Clive could ever have classified as being his genuine, indisputable, authentic best friend. And that was Gayle. And he was letting her slip out of his life. He tried not to allow his mind to think about Gayle and, instead, diverted his mind to thinking about the one thing that he and Gayle had got perfectly right: their son, Jack. He could feel some moisture in his eyes that, despite the profuse about of rain in the air, he knew was coming from the sad feeling that his little boy had just left home. Very quickly though the overwhelming cause of his tears was the immense love and pride he had for Jack. Through his blurred eyes, Clive saw numerous important memories as they skipped out of his mind like tiny moments of sunshine.

  Jack’s beaming smile as a baby, those initial wobbly steps as he began to walk and his first word: “Jabba-Fool” (Which everyone put down to the fact that the poor boy probably had to sit through the Star Wars trilogy (original trilogy, of course) and re-runs of The A-Team more times than was healthy for any toddler. In fact, more times than was healthy for any human being of any age.)

  Clive smiled as the memories continued and reminded him of his efforts to teach Jack how to tie shoe laces, which didn’t go completely smoothly. But, hey, what’s the harm in wearing Velcro-fastening shoes until you’re a teenager? That’s what it was invented for, isn’t it? His thoughts returned to Jack as a baby and he pictured him being held in Gayle’s arms. He stared at Gayle in his memory as she beamed a look of love and joy at him as she held onto the most perfect little boy in the world. And that moment; that instance of his and Gayle’s love expanding into a perfect little family, the thought that they all belonged to one another, felt like one of the happiest anyone could ever wish for.

  Clive tried to clear thoughts of Gayle from his mind because, ever since they made “the pact”, any thoughts he had about her, even the really happy ones from the past, ended up morphing into possible visions of the future. Most clearly, the thought that Gayle would end up belonging to someone else, and it made him feel sick to the stomach. It wasn’t the idea of someone else kissing Gayle, and her kissing them back. Or even her touching someone else, and being touched back; not even her sleeping with someone else. Although all that was tough enough to think about, the thing that really tore him up was the idea that she would one day tell someone else that she loved them; and the idea that she would mean it. And that she would then love someone else more than she loved him; and perhaps love them more than she had ever loved him. It ripped his heart in two just to think about it and so he had just tried his best not to think about it, reasoning that was the best way not to feel hurt.

  As usual, Clive knew it was best to deny his mind the opportunity to think about those kinds of things again. It was the best way to avoid feeling the hurt.

  Instead, he squinted his eyes and walked back into the rain, wondering how the hell the rain always seemed to change direction and hurtle itself in exactly the opposite direction in which you are walking. The whole precinct was, of course, completely deserted. Who in their right mind would be out walking in weather like this? He began to head for the far side, towards Sainsbury’s, where he could pick up some bread and milk. Maybe he would buy Gayle a bunch of flowers as well; this may be close to the end of their relationship but she would always be the mother of his son and he would always love her. Damn, he should have bought her flowers more often, he thought as he approached the orange painted supermarket.

  (Isn’t it weird how the major supermarkets have each adopted a different colour as their own recognisable image? Tesco = Blue = Reliable. Asda = Green = Safe. Sainsbury’s = Orange = A bit different. Morrison’s = Yellow = ? Last to choose their colour?)

  Clive paused before entering because, through the driving rain, he had noticed a man not far from him walking around the precinct. That was weird. He hadn’t been there a couple of seconds ago; it was liked he had appeared out of nowhere. He was a tall and skinny man who was wearing a black sandwich board. (Why are people who wear sandwich boards always tall and skinny? Do sandwich boards only come in one size?) Clive hadn’t seen anyone wearing a sandwich board for absolutely ages and, although he realised these days it was probably an advertisement of some kind, he used to find some odd humour in reading about why “the end is nigh” in the signs you’d often see in the past. He couldn’t help but feel drawn to it, just in case it was one of those profits of doom telling us just how the world was going to end. Would it be a huge comet that’s path had aligned with the Earth and would be colliding with us imminently? Or would the end be caused by the wrath of God, who was sick of the amount of cheap blue, green, orange and yellow plastic bags, and now shopping trolleys, that he was seeing impaled on his trees and floating down his rivers?

  As Clive had got closer he realised that his initial sandwich board assumption had been correct and this was just a man carrying an advert around and wasn’t actually some morbid soul trying to suck any remaining happiness out of anyone who was lucky enough to have any left. But he couldn’t help his eyes being drawn in by the, rather rough, chalk-written words that had been etched onto the black surface; words that oddly hadn’t been washed off by the torrential rain. For this wasn’t news of a buy-one-get-one-free muffin at a local café, or information regarding the “very last day” of a major shoe sale; no, this was something that Clive couldn’t help but think may be of interest to him.

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  Chapter Ten: T.E.A.M.W.O.R.K.

  Gayle watched through the office window as the Aqua Kool van slowly drove out of the gate and past the security lodge. She still couldn’t believe what had just happened and couldn’t quite work out how she felt. She had a date, with Lee the water man, (if the date went well, she would probably need to ask him his surname) and it was in just two days time.

  It wasn’t enough time.

  What would she wear? What do people wear on first dates these days? Maybe she could go shopping on Saturday for a new outfit? But what new outfit? She wondered if, at this short notice, she would be able to book in to get her hair done? It had been ages since she’d had it coloured professionally and it could definitely do with a good cut. What would she eat on Sunday? She definitely didn’t want anything that might bloat her up before she went out at 8 o’clock so it was probably best that she had something light. But then again, Clive and Jack used to like to have a roast dinner on a Sunday. Maybe she could make one and just have a little bit? Maybe just some roast beef on a barmcake? Maybe one or two roast potatoes on the side? And maybe a Yorkshire Pudding? She did like Yorkshire Pudding. No, that would be too much. Besides, she realised, Jack wouldn’t be there this weekend.

  She stopped her mind making manic plans and
just focussed again on the fact that her only son had now left home. It made her feel sad. Also, she didn’t really need to be worrying about making Clive a roast dinner; very soon they would need to start sorting meals out for themselves; wherever they both ended up living. And how would Clive cope? He would probably end up having to live on nothing more than microwaveable ready meals. She began to feel some moisture forming in her eyes, but cleared her mind straight away. She had been over and over things like this in her mind more times than she would ever have wanted to, and cried enough tears over it to last a lifetime. No, this should be a happy moment; a moment that represented her first step into what could be a bright and exciting future.

  Her mind was now tidied of negative thoughts and she thought it best to get on with some work. She stood from her desk and began walking towards the In Tray that stood on the filing cabinet by the door. As she walked across the room she allowed herself a little smile as she again thought about her date with Lee the Water Man. In a flurry of excitement and anticipation her mind began to pirouette across the room while My Fair Lady’s - I Could Have Danced All Night echoed around her head, in quite a lavish number for this time on a Friday morning. By the time she got across to the paperwork that needed processing she felt quite dizzy and somewhat nauseous. How do these professional dancers do all that spinning around – and for real?

  She took a minute to let her head calm down whilst wondering if the lack of any real breakfast this morning had contributed to the feeling of sickness brought on by her impromptu imagination dancing. Maybe she could go down to the canteen and get some of the famous sausage and bacon on toast?

  What? When she had to prepare herself for a date that was less than fifty eight hours away? Not likely! Maybe she could have a banana? Or, more realistically, half a banana? Maybe a couple of grapes?

  She realised eating would have to be very closely monitored for the next couple of days and so, for now, did a deal with herself that she would settle for no food in exchange of a much needed cup of coffee. She was just about to ask if the two J’s wanted one when she noticed the full extent of the work that had not been done. Not only was there a mountain of paperwork precariously balancing on top of the tray, on top of the filing cabinet; but there was also probably between fifteen and twenty pieces that had fallen down the back of the cabinet. She looked over at Janine and Jennifer and watched, almost in horror, for a few seconds, as they continued to concentrate on their nails and phone respectively; completely oblivious to the work that needed doing.