The Mini-Break. Maddie Please
won’t, absolutely not!’
I watched him walk back down the track to where he had left his mud-splattered Land Rover and then I went back into the house.
Jassy was already upstairs in her bedroom, gathering together all the discarded clothes and carnage that routinely surrounds her.
‘He was rather nice,’ I said.
Jassy wasn’t listening. ‘We’re off!’ she carolled happily as I stood watching her. She stuffed a handful of scarves into her case. ‘We’ll be back in London tonight. Proper central heating and takeaways and Wi-Fi and actual phone signal.’
‘You’ve perked up then,’ I said.
‘I have. Haven’t you? And let’s make a sacred pact never to come back here. Ever.’
I looked out of the window, watching as the sun rose over the valley. It was a beautiful day, and something inside me appreciated for the first time how lovely it could be.
‘I think it might be okay if the weather was halfway decent.’
‘You have to be bloody joking!’ Jassy said, widening her eyes at me. ‘I’m never going to set foot out of the Greater London area again unless there’s a frigging good reason and a five-star spa at the end of the journey.’
From being unable to walk further than from her bed to the sofa, Jassy now seemed to have miraculously recovered her mobility and was packed and fidgeting by the front door in no time.
‘Hurry up!’ she said. ‘Otherwise it’s going to rain, or there will be a landslip, or some criminals will escape from the prison or something.’
‘All right, calm down!’
We bundled everything into the back seat and boot of the car, left the front door key under the upturned bucket by the kitchen door where we had found it and were off down the road at a jaunty thirty miles an hour heading for a new tyre in the metropolis of delight that was Okehampton.
Equipped with a splendid new tyre and filled with joie de vivre, we were back in London in time to dump our bags (no sign of Benedict at mine) and meet up with the usual suspects for an early supper. After a few shrieking and excitable phone calls Jassy decided we would try the new tapas bar that had opened in our absence. It’s like that where we live: someone opens a great new fusion restaurant in a fanfare of publicity and fire-eaters on the pavement and five minutes later it closes and reopens as a French patisserie.
The Gang were all there and they welcomed us back as though we had been off finding the source of the Nile. I scanned the room but Benedict didn’t seem to be around which was disappointing.
‘Darlings, so pleased to have you safely home where you belong!’
It was Jassy’s sister-in-law Maudie who had done something strange to her hair so that the roots were still dark brown, but the ends were now frazzled pink.
‘Maudie!’
Jassy embraced her and we all sat down with the others with a great deal of fuss and noise while a waiter hovered in the background with menus liberally sprinkled with pictures of bulls and matadors. I wasn’t actually sure I approved of that if I’m honest. I mean bull fighting is so horrible.
‘Ralphie was on the phone last night, complaining about the heat in Antigua. I said don’t give me that, you bastard; try London in the pissing rain. He’s missing you and can’t understand why he hasn’t been able to get through when he’s called,’ Maudie said. At this point she spotted a latecomer and waved a languid hand. ‘Keira, come and sit here! I want to know how the wedding plans are going.’
‘I haven’t decided if I’m going to forgive him yet,’ Jassy said, pouting. ‘Those pictures of him in that nightclub were pretty annoying. And he’d better not give me all that “what goes on tour stays on tour” rubbish.’
‘I told him you were still in Devon but I don’t think he believed me. Anyway—’ she waved a hand ‘—first I want Keira to tell you about Mark and Buzz. You will not believe what you are about to hear.’
Keira, a friend for several years, was engaged to Fergus, a computer nerd who whilst monosyllabic and mildly weird probably had more money than the lot of us put together. I was going to be one of her bridesmaids and the wedding was much on her mind these days.
I sat letting the noise wash over me while she recounted a tale of road rage and forged parking permits that had resulted in several arrests and a cracked windscreen. At the same time I tried to decipher a menu that promised various selections of tiny dishes but didn’t seem to have got the pricing right. I mean four dishes for twenty-five quid or five for twenty quid. How does that work then?
As the evening wore on I began to feel strangely out of it. I watched Jassy across the table, laughing and happy. She seemed to have forgotten her aches and pains. Perhaps it was the alcohol?
I nudged my neighbour Tanny, an ex-flatmate and friend since school days in Gloucestershire who now organised extravagant parties for American companies.
‘Have you seen Benedict at all?’
‘Well I haven’t for a few days, but the last time I saw him he was complaining about his workload for the tax evaders in Dubai or something.’ Tanny’s face screwed up into disapproval. ‘I think you are being an absolute saint, putting up with that.’
‘Putting up with what?’
‘Putting up with him moaning all the time. I thought you said you were fed up with him?’
‘Oh I didn’t mean that. I was just cross and tired. Has anyone else mentioned seeing him?’
‘Ask Toby – he lives in your building. Toby, have you seen Benedict recently?’ Tanny yelled across the table to where Toby Sedgemoor, a limp-looking but very successful financial whizz was draped across his latest girlfriend.
‘Benedict? Toby? Where is he?’
Toby blinked a bit. ‘Well his bike was chained up on the landing last night. I’ve told him he’s not supposed to leave it there and he says he’s going to sort it but he never does.’
‘But have you seen him?’ I said.
Toby’s eyes slid away from mine. ‘Isn’t he here? Oh I don’t know. You know. I mean – oh bugger, look anyone want another drink?’
I bit my lip and took a deep breath. Toby might be a bright spark when it came to financial matters and fund management – he wasn’t called Sedge the Hedge for nothing – but he was notoriously unreliable when it came to everyday life. Eventually, several bowls of tapas later and topped up with the best part of a carafe of red wine, I got a taxi back to my flat.
*
I felt quite excited as I got home. I was genuinely looking forward to seeing Benedict again. Maybe being away from each other had done the trick and it would help rekindle the spark we seemed to have lost. But the very first thing I noticed when I reached my door was Benedict’s blasted bike chained to a radiator. Yes I do understand it is far too valuable to be left outside overnight, though why he had to spend seven grand on a bike just to pedal less than two miles I’ll never know. It shouldn’t have been there at all. It should have been in the basement garage in the bike rack. The sight of it and its stupid anorexic tyres immediately ruined my good mood. I could so clearly visualise him in his equally irritating bike helmet and his monumentally unattractive bike gear as he steamed through Hyde Park, roundly cursing every pedestrian who got in his way.
With new and uncharacteristic reserve, I closed the front door quietly behind me and went to put my keys in the brass bowl, only to find it wasn’t there and a particularly vile ceramic dish had replaced it.
I went through