Screaming Yellow. Rachel Green
you were too proud.” Dafydd looked down. “I love you, Manny. Always have, always will.”
“I know.” Meinwen reached forward and opened her arms, relieved Dafydd returned the hug. “That’s why we’ll always be best mates. One for all, remember?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “You haven’t said that since Billy left when we were kids. All for one and one for all.”
“Like Dumas’s heroes.” Meinwen smiled, her eyes glittering with tears.
“Nah, like on the telly.” Dafydd ran the knuckle of his index finger below her eye, caught the unshed tear and licked it off his finger. “Just you and me now.”
“One for all and two for one?”
“Yeah.” He pulled her in for another hug. “You’re my bestest buddy.”
Meinwen laughed and went inside for her bedding. “Two more boxes in the kitchen and we’re done. Then we can get off.”
“I thought you said we were just friends?” Dafydd grinned and ducked her mock punch, coming back out a minute later with both boxes and a mug perched on top of them. “Shall I take this back again? You only ever used it when I came ’round.”
Meinwen stared at it for a moment. “No. I was going to give it you back, but can I keep it instead?”
Dafydd nodded and grinned. “Sure,” he said. “It’ll be something for you to remember me by.”
While he finished packing the truck, Meinwen dropped her house keys inside the envelope and licked the flap to seal it. It wasn’t much to show for five years of living in a one-bed flat on Gwelfor Road but it had overlooked the estuary and for that she was grateful. She turned to the south-west, taking in every last detail of Cardigan Bay to store for the weeks and months of being landlocked in Laverstone.
“You ready?” Dafydd stood with the keys to the truck in his hand. “We’d best get a move on or the sun’ll come out and we’ll never get away from the crowds wanting a Mr. Whippy.”
Meinwen smiled, shoving the envelope through the letterbox before climbing into Dafydd’s ice-cream truck. She’d timed her moving date to his day off so he could drive her. “Yes. Let’s go before I change my mind.”
“Is that a possibility? I could drop my keys down this drain.”
She laughed. “No, I’m going and I won’t be back.”
“Not even for my Mr. Whippy?”
“Maybe for that.” She climbed into the passenger side. “I never could resist your strawberry syrup.”
“Now you’re talking.” Dafydd laughed and climbed in, turning the engine over to warm it up. Meinwen winced at the sudden peal of Greensleeves through the loudspeaker.
Dafydd lunged to switch it off. “Sorry.”
“Thank you.” Meinwen shook her head, grimacing. “Honestly, I don’t know why ice-cream trucks play that tune at all. It’s so sad.”
“Is it?” Dafydd pulled off and headed downhill. “It’s just an old English madrigal, isn’t it? All about true love and delightful company.”
“Unrequited love and a king pining away for want of a woman,” said Meinwen. “You might as well be playing Madonna’s Sex through your loudspeakers.”
Dafydd laughed. “I’d probably sell more ice cream, too.” He slipped in a CD of nineties chart hits and they drove through the rest of Aberdovey in companionable silence. Meinwen was wrapped in thoughts of the town she’d grown up in and how Dafydd would fare without his best friend. “There’s your old shop,” he said as they passed the vacant building. “They’ve not started renovating it yet.”
“Never,” said Meinwen, “am I calling a shop ‘Reincarnations’ again. It’s just asking for the lease to be canceled.”
“Well, it is coming back to life,” said Dafydd, trying to hide a smile, “just as a bookies. It could be worse.”
“In what way?” Meinwen turned her attention from the beachfront properties to the driver. “What could be worse than a bookies?”
“A butcher’s?” He allowed a grin to break through. “Or a Methodist church.”
Meinwen punched him on the arm. “Oh, very funny, I don’t think. Watch out for that bolt of lightning!”
“Where?”
“It must have been my imagination,” she said. “Because at least I have one. I didn’t go into a dead-end job like you.”
“Ice-cream trucking isn’t a dead-end job,” he said. “Well, except when you park up in dead ends.”
“It’s not a life’s ambition, though, is it? Didn’t you want to be a rock star?”
“I’m still working on it.”
“How far have you got?”
“Three Blind Mice on the recorder. I’m a bit stuck on getting the G-sharp, see.”
Meinwen laughed. “What about the winter? I’ve seen you with all sorts of jobs in the winter. Didn’t one of them grab you?”
“I quite like the burger truck,” said Dafydd. “Not that there’s much call for burgers in the middle of winter. You freeze your tits off just getting your money out, sometimes, let alone driving to Aberystwyth or Machynlleth, and then I’m digging trucks out of snowdrifts, see.” He glanced across at her. “What about you, then? How did you meet this fancy man of yours? What does he look like?”
“Robert, his name is.” Meinwen rolled the R across her tongue. “He’s charming and charismatic and sensible and mature and he has this tiny dimple in the corner of his mouth when he smiles.” She demonstrated with her finger on her face. “He’s lovely. I fell in love with him the moment I saw him.”
“Oh, aye?” Dafydd paused for a moment, concentrating on the road. “Mature, you said. Just how mature? Big brother sort of mature or my old man and a coffin mature?”
“Well, he’s a little bit older,” said Meinwen, on the defensive. “You have to be a bit older to achieve true wisdom and harmony with the world.”
“’Struth, he’s old enough to be your granddad, isn’t he?”
“No.” Meinwen looked out of the window at the mountains dotted with sheep. “He’s in his early fifties, which is no age, these days.”
“If he’s told you early fifties he’s pushing sixty.” Dafydd frowned. “How old does he think you are?”
“I might have been a bit conservative with my age.”
Dafydd snorted. “Go on.”
“I said I was twenty-five. All right? Are you happy now?”
“There’s no way you still look twenty-five, love. What did he say when you told him?”
“He didn’t say anything. Just how much he was looking forward to us being together.”
“Where was this? In the shop?”
“Sort of, yes.” Meinwen reached in her bag for the flask of tea then put it back again. “Look, can we stop in Machynlleth? I need to find a bathroom.”
“Aye, we can.” Dafydd glanced across again. “What did you mean ‘sort of’ in the shop?”
“I was in the shop.” Meinwen looked away. “And he was at home.”
“Eh?”
“I said he was at home. We were chatting on the internet, all right?”
“On a computer?” Dafydd frowned. “Have you not met him in