Lost and Found by Tom Winter

Author:Tom Winter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2014-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

39

HIS NAME IS Ricky, and he obviously didn’t know that a friend would be joining him and Helen on their non-date date.

After the initial confusion has passed, Carol is sure she can see excitement building in his eyes; that maybe this is Helen’s roundabout way of suggesting a threesome. Not that Ricky seems the type to be invited on threesomes, which is presumably why he’s looking so excited.

Carol wonders if she should make a reference to Bob, but she suspects Ricky would just take it as confirmation that they’re suburban swingers up for a good time. She can imagine him having some kind of haemorrhage, the enormity of it all too much to handle.

Curiously, Helen makes no attempt to speak; evidently thinks that the best way to get to know Ricky is simply to observe him in conversation with Carol, and sometimes to ignore both of them completely.

Faced with Helen’s silence and Ricky’s confusion, Carol finds herself asking the kind of questions that make the occasion seem more like an interview than a social event.

‘So, what line of work are you in?’

‘Medical sales. I basically visit hospitals and sell them things.’

‘And do they actually find that useful or do they think you’re a bit of a double-glazing salesman?’

‘No,’ he says, clearly hurt. ‘It’s all important stuff. And they get a good price.’ He glances at Helen, perhaps in the hope of drawing her into the conversation. ‘So if ever you need a catheter or a colostomy bag, I’m your man.’

On a scale of one to ten, this doesn’t strike Carol as inspired sweet-talk.

‘Have you been single for long?’ she says. Her tone implies she already knows the answer, that it’s painfully apparent – not just to her, but to everyone else in the café too, even passing motorists.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘a while.’

An awkward silence falls across the table and Ricky begins to look glum. Helen, meanwhile, demurely sips her non-dairy chai latte, seemingly unaware that the whole date is disintegrating in mid-air.

Left with nothing else, Carol ploughs on: ‘So, do you live round here?’

‘No, I’m in Milton Keynes.’

Milton Keynes.

Carol wants to ask why he would drive two hours just for a non-alcoholic drink with a woman like Helen – had he not seen her pictures in advance? Instead she just smiles politely. ‘I don’t know Milton Keynes very well.’

‘It’s nice.’

And there we have it. Any man who can like Milton Keynes would naturally find Helen attractive. As much as Carol loves her as a friend, she knows that Helen is the romantic equivalent of a bland commuter town; the kind of place that isn’t perfect but people put up with it because the houses are within their budget.

This naturally raises the question of what kind of place Carol herself is. There was a time when she would have said she was a factory that had been zoned for demolition. Since Bob’s illness, she feels more like an impact crater, the final resting place of a meteor that’s wiped out all life within a thousand-mile radius.

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