THE HUSBAND HUNTERS (26 page)

That was true too. One spot on the side of my chin was bad enough – no amount of Clearasil would have been able to cope with an outbreak of mountainous boils. Nick did have a point, although I didn’t like the fact that he had noticed my lack of a heaving bosom. Just because his pubescent girlfriend had perfectly-proportioned, pert boobs, didn’t mean he could criticize me. I crossed my arms across my chest and glared at Nick.

‘You could have stuffed a few bread rolls down there, instead of a Wonderbra,’ he added, helpfully. ‘Those posh country balls usually had a buffet, too.’ I picked up my stapler and threatened to brain him with it.

‘Well, I couldn’t see you looking good in a pair of nineteenth-century breeches,’ I retorted huffily, ‘unless you stuffed a few budgies down the front of them.’

‘I didn’t know you had been checking out the size of my manhood,’ he said, grabbing a piece of paper and covering up the front of his trousers. ‘My mum has a couple of budgies at home. Perhaps I’d better bring them in if I’m going to impress you.’

I couldn’t help laughing at the thought of Nick stuffing his mum’s poor budgies into his trousers, but I quickly turned it into a cough. I didn’t want Nick to think I thought his jokes were remotely funny. Actually the budgie thing was quite a good idea. I could call the RSCPA and have Nick done for animal cruelty and taken away. That would cheer me up no end.

***

Kazza had agreed to meet me for lunch on Friday to tell me all about her blind date. I was beside myself with excitement all morning. At last it was 12 noon and I raced across the road to Saleros, where Kaz had already bagged our favourite table.

We ordered our cappuccinos and sat down. ‘Well, how did it go?’ I asked anxiously. Kaz didn’t say anything for a few seconds, as she sat stirring her coffee.

‘He was nice,’ she finally admitted. ‘And you will never guess what his surname is. He’s Adam Darcy.’ I nearly choked on my cappuccino. Kaz had gone out with a real life, modern day, Mr Darcy.

‘
It is fate,’ I screamed at Kaz, thumping her on the back in my wild excitement. ‘I can’t believe that you are going out with an actual Mr Darcy.’ I could feel myself turning physically green with envy. ‘Oh, you’re such a lucky, lucky, lucky thing!’

‘
Calm down, Bee,’ said Kaz, laughing at me. ‘Yes, he’s very nice, and he is called Darcy, but he’s not like the Mr Darcy, with his own mansion. He’s just ordinary Adam, the builder.’

‘Kaz, he’s hot looking, and he’s called Mr Darcy. What more do you want?’ I asked, flabbergasted. What on earth was wrong with Kaz? If it had happened to me, I would have thought it was all my birthdays, Christmases and lottery wins all rolled into one.

‘I do like him and we got on really well,’ said Kaz. ‘He is funny too – he had me in stitches most of the night – but he doesn’t even own his own company – he works for someone else, and he lives with his mum on a council estate in Manchester.’ She paused. ‘I can’t go back to that, Bee, I really can’t,’ she pleaded.

‘
I don’t know what to do,’ I said to Tash, later that night at the stables. ‘Adam sounds perfect for her, yet she isn’t prepared to give him a chance.’

‘He really likes her; he told my mum,’ said Tash. ‘He’s going to ask her out for a meal at the weekend, so we have to make her say yes. You never know, there might be more to Adam than meets the eye,’ she added mysteriously. ‘Kaz shouldn’t judge people on their first appearances.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked her. ‘Do you know something that you aren’t telling me?’

‘Absolutely not,’ she said, her face completely straight. ‘Do you think I would keep anything from you?’

‘Err, yes,’ I said, sarcastically, reminding her of the dozens of Facebook emails she had been exchanging with Mr Beale for three years, without mentioning it to any of us.

‘That’s different,’ she argued. ‘I didn’t think it was important enough to make a big deal of.’

‘Yes, well,’ I said, impatiently, wanting to get back to the subject of Adam.

‘All I’m saying is that Kaz should open her mind and give him a chance, that's all,’ said Tash. ‘I don’t know anything about Adam, other than the fact that he is doing my mum’s conservatory – but he may end up surprising her, that’s all. Life has a funny way of giving you a surprise, when you least expect it.’

‘That’s certainly true,’ I said. ‘Look at Soph with Paul. That certainly was a big surprise – a great big kick in the teeth, in fact.’

‘You’ll get your Mr Darcy one day, Bee,’ reassured Tash, giving me a quick hug.’

‘Yes,’ I grumbled. ‘He’ll eventually come and rescue me from the nursing home in my yellowed wedding dress and pull the cobwebs off me, just in time for me to croak it.’

Tash laughed.
‘Have a little bit more faith in us all, Bee. We’ll make sure you find a decent husband, don’t you worry,’ she promised. ‘What about this Nick guy? Kaz said he’s pretty good-looking, and he did cook you that lovely dinner.’

‘Nick is not my type at all,’ I said, pulling a face. ‘Okay, he’s good in the kitchen, but that's about all.’

‘Kaz seemed to think he fancied you,’ said Tash, giving me a sly wink.

‘God – no,’ I said. ‘He’s already got a girlfriend and we don’t fancy each other at all. I like my men to at least be here in the 21st century – if I can’t have them from the eighteenth century – not stuck in the 1980s.’

‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much,’ she said, retreating into the feed room to mix some horse feeds. I threw a brush at Tash’s back. Honestly, me and Nick as a couple – it was about as likely as the Pope and Jordan getting together.

**************************************

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I had always wanted to visit a fortune-teller. As a little girl I had been fascinated by the gypsy-looking women with heavily-kohled eyes on beach front promenades, peering out of the windows of their wooden huts.

My grandma used to take us to the beach front at Blackpool at weekends, and I’d be desperate to go inside and touch their crystal balls and peek behind their mysterious, red velvet curtains. I’d always thought that visiting fortune-tellers – who were all called Gypsy Rose Lee or something equally magical – was something that you did when you were grown up.

It had been discussed in length at one of our first meetings, and we all thought that having our fortunes read would be a good idea. I made a mental note not to tell Mum that I was going. She’d had a friend once who’d gone to see a fortune-teller when she was about 16, and the fortune-teller had looked into her crystal ball and told her that she couldn’t see anything for her, and the ball was all black. Mum’s friend had been scared witless for about the next 50 years that she was going to drop dead any second. It had been a hang-up of mum’s ever since, and I’d always had to promise her that I would never go. So I did feel a bit traitorous when we were all discussing it, and I hoped mum would never find out.

Kaz was a bit skeptical. ‘I went to have my fortune told once,’ she said. ‘She said I’d be married by the time I was twenty-five and have three children by the time I was thirty. She never mentioned anything about being so desperate that I’d have to form a club and get all my friends to find me a husband, because I’d been so crap at it myself.’

‘C’mon it will be fun,’ said Rach, absent-mindedly stroking her stomach. She had started to look a bit thick around the waist, but there was no definite bump yet, and she just looked a bit fatter. It would be weird seeing Rach with a bump. She said she couldn’t wait. ‘Then I will actually look pregnant and not just fat,’ she explained.

‘How are we going to find a fortune-teller?’ I asked. ‘The only ones I’ve seen were on Blackpool promenade, but there must be a few closer to home.’

‘My mum’s friend went to a good one in Manchester,’ said Tash. ‘She told her that she was going to meet someone tall dark and handsome. Her friend thought she was talking a load of rubbish as she was forty-five and still unmarried, but then the next day she was at some traffic lights and her car went into the back of the car in front. The guy, whose car she bashed, got out and he was as the fortune-teller predicted – tall dark and handsome. She is now married to him.’

We all gaped in admiration.

‘I could do with a bit of good fortune, like that,’ I said.

Tash said she would speak to her mum and get the fortune-teller’s number and ring up and make an appointment for us all.

The next day Tash rang me excitedly. ‘The fortune-teller can fit us in at the weekend,’ she said. My stomach lurched with excitement and fear mixed together. I hoped that she would be able to see something in her crystal ball for me, and that it wouldn’t be just black. I desperately wanted her to see me in a long, white dress, standing at the altar with someone who looked suspiciously like Mr Darcy; but knowing my luck she would probably tell me that she couldn’t see anyone else in her crystal ball and that I should get used to my own company. I sighed as I put down the phone.

‘Having a bad day?’ came a voice from over my shoulder. It was Nick. He would never feel the need to look in a crystal ball – I doubt that he even looked in a mirror, judging by what he was wearing today. He had on a grey sweatshirt that looked like it was off the set of Fame or Flashdance, as it didn’t quite reach the top of his jeans.

‘Is that a cropped top you’re wearing?’ I asked incredulously. ‘Are you trying to make some misguided fashion statement? Did you know that cropped tops went out about two decades ago, and actually were only trendy if you were dancing in some American dance studio with a headband and leg warmers on.’

‘I know,’ said Nick. ‘I’m not trying to set a new trend; it’s my favourite sweatshirt which has shrunk in the wash. My mum usually does my washing, but she’s away on holiday and I put the wash on too hot.’

‘Your mum does your washing?’ I scoffed. ‘I can’t believe that you can’t even switch on a washing machine by yourself. I bet she irons your underpants too, doesn’t she?’

‘She would – but I don’t wear any!’ said Nick, laughing. I was speechless. Nick was going commando only a few feet away from me, and I’d never known. How gross was that.

‘I feel violated,’ I said, pushing my swivel chair as far away from him as I could. I couldn’t stop looking in fascination at his crotch, though. Quickly, I looked away, as Nick clocked me. He spent the rest of the afternoon swaggering around the office as if he was some model that we’d just booked. After a few hours, I couldn’t bear it.

‘Look – will you stop doing that?’ I snapped. ‘It’s making me feel quite sick.’

Nick laughed as he turned around and gave me an exaggerated thrust of his crotch. ‘Did I hear you are going to see a fortune-teller?’ he said, coming up and sitting on the edge of my desk.

I pushed him off. I didn’t want his commando backside all over my papers. ‘Yes, I am. I want to get a bit of direction in my life,’ I said. ‘I’m fed up of not knowing what's around the corner for me. If she can tell me what’s in the future, then I can spend years looking forward to it, knowing something great is going to happen.

He picked up the round glass paperweight off his desk and whipped off his sweatshirt, wrapping it around his head like a turban. He started rubbing at the paperweight and peering in it, making mystical ‘oohing’ noises. I had to start laughing. Nick did look ridiculous.

‘I see something in here,’ he said, looking at me from under his sweatshirt turban. ‘Oh yes, there’s definitely something here. I can see really good fortune – it’s a tall, dark, handsome stranger who is about to sweep you off your feet.’ Despite myself, I felt a frisson of excitement. ‘Hang on a minute, no – it’s just a squashed fly on the bottom,’ he added, grinning at me.

‘I can see an idiot who thinks he’s so funny, when he’s just a berk in a ridiculously-cropped sweatshirt, who’s about have a horrible ‘paperweight through the side of the head’ accident,’ I snapped, grabbing the paperweight and slamming it down on my desk. ‘You’ll be sorry when I get told that I’m going to win the lottery and live a fantastic life, and you will turn into some saddo who tries to get younger and younger women to make him still feel young, and everyone laughs at him wearing a g-string on the beach.’

Nick laughed. ‘That sounds like quite a good life to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll be up for that.’

I woke up on Saturday morning feeling ridiculously excited. We were going to see the fortune-teller that afternoon. Kaz picked me up at 2 pm and we set off for the fortune-teller’s house.

‘What’s her name?’ I asked excitedly.

‘It’s Jane. Jane Watts,’ replied Tash.

I couldn’t help feeling mildly disappointed. I’d expected something a bit more magical than that – something like Rose Lee or Madam Esmeralda. Jane Watts sounded like she was going to serve you a nice cup of tea, at the local cafe. Still, she had been recommended by Tash’s mum, so she should be good.

A few minutes later we turned into a well-manicured cul-de-sac. All the semi-detached bungalows looked identical. It looked like something out of Stepford Wives. I half expected all the men to come out their front doors at the same time, get into identical-looking cars and drive off at the same time. We pulled up outside number 41 and got out. I must admit, I didn’t feel the shiver of excitement that I’d expected. Perhaps I should have insisted that we all go to Blackpool pier after all.