LITMIR.BIZ

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Mimi paused from marking what looked like a jazz routine and turned to face us. ‘Oh, I did that, dear,’ she said, nodding at the door, ‘while you were making some of those phone calls. I thought it’d be a good idea to stop just anybody wandering in.’

      I stared at her. I wanted to reply, but I literally had no words in my mouth. Had she always been scatty and disorganised like this, or was this something new?

      ‘Hello, Daddy,’ Lucy said, her brows low over her eyes, but there was no jubilant rushing into the arms of her father. She turned to me and said politely, ‘I need to get my bag from the kitchen.’

      ‘I’ll get it for you, if you like,’ I told her and set off to do just that. When I entered the corridor I found I had a little shadow. Lucy had followed me. We went to fetch her bag together in silence, but it wasn’t an awkward silence, and Lucy didn’t seem to be one of those chatty little things like Honey was. She seemed quite happy tagging silently along after me, reminding me more of my cat than my niece. Roberta would follow me round the house and sit in whichever room I was in, just for the company, not because she needed me, or anything as demeaning as that, and Lucy had this same sense of self-sufficiency about her.

      When we came out the kitchen we bumped into Miss Mimi and Tom in the corridor.

      ‘And you’re sure you checked the fuses?’ he was saying.

      ‘I had a look last night,’ I said. ‘They’re pretty old, but they seemed okay to me.’

      Tom turned sharply to look at me. ‘You did?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said, half a smile on my face. ‘I’m not seventeen any more, you know, Mr Tom Boyd. My worldly knowledge now extends beyond nail varnish, boy bands and reading Smash Hits! inside out every week.’

      His laugh was more grunt than chuckle. ‘You never were one of those girls,’ he said as he flipped the cover of the fuse box open, without even the need for a chair to stand on. ‘I’ve got a torch in my car,’ he announced, and before I could offer the use of my phone for such purposes, he strode off back into the hall and off in the direction of the car park.

      No, I hadn’t been ‘one of those girls’ when I’d known Tom before. The kind of girl he’d been interested in. The kind who could always do her hair perfectly or put mascara on without blinding herself with the brush. I’d just been slightly geeky, rather shy, dance-mad Pippa. Firmly in the ‘friend zone’.

      I let out a long and loud sigh.

      No matter. That had been a long time ago. Things had changed. I had changed.

      For one thing, I was no longer in any danger of facial disfigurement every time I put make-up on; that had to be something worth celebrating. And if Tom Boyd had been out of my league when I’d been seventeen, he was even more so now I was more than double that age. And double the size. I wasn’t making that mistake again. I’d punched above my weight with Ed and look where that had got me.

      Tom returned, hardly casting a glance at me as he focused on shining the bright beam of his torch on to the fuse box. He changed the angle of the light, made a few humming and ha-ing noises.

      ‘What’s the verdict, Thomas?’ Miss Mimi asked, and I had the urge to laugh. I felt as if we were in one of those melodramatic medical soaps of yesteryear, all clustered round a difficult patient. If Tom had turned and asked for a scalpel, I had no doubt I’d have reached into my bag and placed an emery board into his outstretched hand.

      He grunted. He seemed to do that rather a lot. Something the old, carefree Tom would never have done. Burst into a peal of uproarious laughter? Yes. Grin that grin of his that had made my heart beat faster and my toes tingle? Certainly. But make a noise that made him sound like his dour Scottish father? Not a chance.

      He switched the torch off. ‘Let’s talk in the hall, where we can see what we’re doing.’

      We all trooped out into the hall again, which was getting dingier by the second. Grey clouds had gathered overhead and the first speckles of dank January rain were clinging to the tall windows.

      Tom shrugged. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ he asked Miss Mimi.

      ‘Oh, the good news,’ she replied. ‘I do so like good news.’

      ‘The fuses look okay to me.’

      Miss Mimi’s smile was radiant. I waited for her to ask the obvious question, but she didn’t say anything. After a few seconds, in which Tom was equally loquacious, I decided to put us all out of our misery. ‘And the bad?’

      Tom shot me a wry glance. ‘The fuses look okay to me.’

      ‘Very funny,’ I said, frowning. Hmm. There must be just a tad of the old Tom left in there after all. Kind of darker and more twisted, but still in there. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

      ‘That something more complicated than a blown fuse is causing your electrical problems,’ he said, directing his answer to Miss Mimi.

      ‘How do you know?’ I asked, folding my arms across my chest. ‘You a trained electrician or something?’

      ‘Actually, I am.’

      Oh.

      Well, that shut me up.

      What had happened to all his big dreams, all his plans for his future?

      ‘I thought you said you wanted to be a stand-up comedian,’ I replied hoarsely.

      There was a shift in his eyes at my words, but which emotion was blending into which, I couldn’t tell, and just as I thought the name of one of them might be on the tip of my tongue, everything shut down, leaving his expression as blank and dull as this empty grey hall we were standing in.

      ‘We all planned stupid things when we were younger,’ he said, and then he paused as if he was remembering something. The moment stretched and his frown deepened. ‘I thought you were going to be the next Ruthie Henshall or Darcey Bussell?’ He raised his eyebrows, more in challenge than in curiosity.

      I looked down at the floor and couldn’t help focusing on the lardy middle I was desperately trying to hide with my roomy dark top. It was blatantly obvious I hadn’t followed that path.

      ‘Like you said,’ I said, lifting my head a little, but not quite looking in his direction, ‘we all had stupid dreams back then.’ And, since that seemed to have killed the conversation dead, I decided to change topics. ‘You followed in your dad’s footsteps? Joined his building firm?’

      Tom nodded. ‘He’d always wanted me to have a trade to fall back on.’

      ‘Do you still work with him?’

      ‘I went out on my own by the time I was twenty-five, started my own firm with a business partner.’ He allowed himself a dark smile, the only kind he seemed capable of these days. ‘Wanted to show the old man I could do better than him.’

      Now that sounded like the Tom I’d used to know. Cocky. Self-assured. Never one to be told what to do.

      ‘Anyway,’ he said abruptly, turning back to Miss Mimi. ‘The first thing I’d suggest is contacting your electricity company and checking if they’re aware of any issues with the building or a disruption in service in the area. If that comes back clear, then I’ll come in and give the place a thorough once-over, see what’s up.’

      ‘Oh, thank you!’ Miss Mimi reached up on tiptoe and kissed his slightly stubbly cheek. For a split-second, he looked just as he might have done when he’d been sixteen and on the receiving end of such affection and he managed to both smile and cringe at once, but by the time Mimi pulled away, his expression was back in its slightly gruff neutral setting.

      ‘Do you think you’ll be able to come back this weekend?’ I asked, aware that Miss Mimi was probably losing money she couldn’t afford by cancelling all these classes. One day was bad enough. The last thing she needed was for the situation to extend

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