CHAPTER 11
That was a hard job, but once again my soldier was there, solid as a rock.

Jane had revealed deeper emotions than I had suspected, but I knew I was right. No separation would have meant me staying in hell. John had, sort of, cared for Jane, and if I could recover more than just ‘being civilised’ it would be wonderful. Would smoky Mark be as positive? I doubted it, but time would be the only way to find out.

Anyway, more pressing matters. I started the long round of phone calls for my ‘Mission Emma Possible’ as I was mentally calling it. Matchmaking for friends, not often a good idea, but we did at least have the admission from both targets that they were rather interested. There was a quiz night at the Anchor and Hope near Mum’s on the Saturday, and we set aside the spare bedroom for Harriet.

You know, the spare bedroom, not the guest bedroom. The guest bedroom was my room, the one I used before I ended up downstairs having happy nights with Pete,

Harriet was bloody early. .Utter panic was the only way to describe her nerves, and that was one reason we had settled on the quiz. She was so ferociously competitive that once we began, she would dive so deep into the contest that she would forget there was a man watching what he could see of her legs. Hopefully.

Ollie was going to meet us there, along with Dave (“Mmmmm! Beer!”) and Sharon. It turned out to be a typical affair, with preprinted sheets for our answers and a taped music round half way through the evening. That was the one I was dreading, as my involvement with popular music was non-existent.

We found a table, and then had to choose a team name. It was Pete who came up with it–the Raspberries. I should explain that in English rhyming slang there is the phrase “raspberry ripple”, and it was another mark of how far my man had come since the days of shuddering nightmare that he could make a joke of it. Then again, we had three raspberries in our team.

“Shit, Laura, he’s not fucking coming ,is he?” muttered Harriet, just as the man in question entered the pub.

“Will you take a deep breath and just be yourself?”

“But I’m shitting myself!”

“Put it this way, which of us is sitting here with plastic chicken fillets in their bra?”

Harriet blushed. “Er, both of us, actually, I thought I’d boost my chances a little”

I had to snort at that. “H, not only is he a leg man, but once you get him talking he’ll be lost in your eyes. Lose the plastic while you still can”

We gave the new arrival a quick wave, and scooted off to the ladies with my handbag, found an empty cubicle, and quickly popped out Harriet’s boosters.

“Oh, that’s better! I didn’t have a bigger bra, so I’ve been a bit squashed in there”

I looked at her breasts, covered only by her bra, and had a sudden wave of pure jealousy, swiftly followed by tears. I wasn’t real, I never would be, and as itchy and puffy as my nipples got, could I ever grow something as natural in their beauty as hers? She realised very quickly what the problem was, and of course she held me till I could get my control back.

“We’ve both been through the mill, girl, but I wouldn’t swap mine for yours for anything. You have more balls, more courage than I could ever have. I never did anything but wait for him to fuck off or die; you are taking your life back. Don’t ever see yourself as fake, or second rate. Now, come on ,clean up, and let’s go and shaft these plebs.

Ollie was standing, coat still on, when we returned. Pete whispered that he had assumed Harriet was doing a runner. How we make assumptions; they make perfect sense at the time, and prove to be so wrong.

Of course, we shuffled seats so that Ollie and Harriet were pushed together. Dave appeared, having left Sharon to get the drinks, and made sure we had ours. The seats were taken, the quiz called to order, our team name giggled at, and we were off.

The first round was on Books and Writers. Oh dear, it felt like cheating, but poor Sharon and Ollie were right out of it. Then Sport, for which I felt useless till they asked one about cycling, in two parts: to which opponent, and at which climb, did Armstrong give ‘The Look’?

“Ullrich, Alpe d’Huez”

Pete nodded. “Yeah, she’s dead right.”

I had to explain later, but it was a great moment in cycling.

The next round was geography, in which Pete, Ollie and Sharon did well, then TV, which seemed primarily to be about soap operas, so I was the spare wheel in that one.
Harriet, however, with help from Sharon, was cruising it. She caught my stare.

“What? What else do you think I have to do in the evenings?”

Ollie stuttered a bit. ”I tend to be at a loose end as well, and even cooking’s boring for one”

I kicked her, then again, and finally she muttered something about not being a cook, and Ollie said how much he enjoyed it, and finally, finally she suggested he show her. That became a visit to his place in three days’ time.

Pete squeezed my leg under the table. Job hopefully done.

And then it was music, and it was all pop, and then both Harriet and I jerked up and started to giggle as one of the tracks we had to guess came on, with the lines “Your boyfriend’s good looking, he’s got it all there…”

In unison, we whispered to Dave the chosen scribe, “Richard Thompson, has he got a friend for me?”

What with Sharon’s odd knowledge of shouty men who can’t sing, and Ollie’s deep insight into the music of dwarf Australians (“II like her voice, it’s got nothing to do with her bum”) we did surprisingly well.

Science next, and over to my tame engineer in the wheelchair, and a final flourish with a General Knowledge round, which turned out to be quite hard. Harriet kept leaning over Ollie a lot to check what Dave had written, and for some reason she seemed to need to steady herself, at one point with her hand on his thigh. For his part he kept whispering to her, which apparently needed his hand on her shoulder to turn up the volume, or something.

I had another poignant moment on realising that John would not only have missed every one of the little tells, but would have had no interest. I reached down to squeeze Pete’s hand.

“What’s that for, love?”

“Because I can”

The marks were counted, and we had, indeed, won, and as it was a bottle of wine we decided that it could best be consumed together with its friends back at Mother’s. By this time, Ollie and Harriet were walking hand in hand. Dave was pushing Pete as Sharon and I walked behind, and she began the old refrain.

“You were born to this, Lor, weren’t you? I understand John now, I just wish I could have known you when we were both girls. Just think of the stirring we could have done! The way you have prodded those two along, you are clearly as devious as me”

She stumbled to correct herself. “I know we weren’t young girls together, Lor, but you know what I meant”

I smiled, and linked arms, and we swung into that step-lock that women in heels do when they are cuddling up for a proper gossip. “I do know what you mean, Sharon, so let’s not waste any time fretting over it. I am back, I am here, I am in love with and loved by a wonderful man, I have friends who stuck with me even though I was so lost, what more could I ask for?”

“World peace and a cure for all diseases?”

She can never stay serious for long.

Mum was still up, largely due to the fact that I had phoned ahead and asked her to get some chilled white out ready for the house invasion. Once in I took everyone out to the garden for a bit of trivia. Jupiter was high, and I had a pair of binoculars that let one see four of the moons, the same ones that nearly got Galileo burnt. I handed them around my friends, one by one, saving Ollie till last. As he took them and tried to restore the focus I had deliberately altered, the rest of us slipped away into the house.

Harriet and her friend were a few minutes behind us, and she was smiling rather dreamily. I found Ollie a tissue to wipe his mouth.

Time ticked on, and Mum went off upstairs, followed by Sharon and Dave, who had the guest bedroom. I offered to call a taxi for Ollie.

“Or, you could stay if you want, but you’d have to share with someone. My mother’s spoken for, I‘m afraid”

Ollie was laughing now, his arm around Harriet. She frowned at him.

“Oh fuck it, I suppose I will have to take one for the team. I sleep on the left, and no snoring or farting?”

I reminded myself to take her plastic tits out of my handbag in the morning. No, she wasn’t as loud as Mum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7THIhZEP4QM