Just Date and See, page 1
JUST DATE AND SEE
PORTIA MACINTOSH
For my family – who I love to spend Christmas with
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Acknowledgments
More from Portia MacIntosh
Also by Portia MacIntosh
About the Author
About Boldwood Books
1
The house I grew up in is full of ghosts.
Well, not ghost-ghosts. I’ve seen plenty of scary things in my thirty-two years on this planet, but none of them supernatural, I don’t think. You know what I’m talking about, right? The lingering things that trigger memories; things that, to the untrained eye, don’t seem like things at all.
In the kitchen pantry, on the inside edge of the doorframe, there are the markings Mum used to make to document mine and my sister’s heights as we were growing up. To a stranger, these markings must seem pretty straightforward, but when I look at them, I remember how competitive Jess, my younger sister, and I used to be. Bizarrely, we always strove to be the shorter sibling so, when the time came for Mum to check our heights, we would always try to find ways to make ourselves appear smaller. It doesn’t make much sense to me now, although, funnily enough, Jess does still love to shrink away from things.
Take today, for example. Emptying Mum’s house – a large detached in the heart of picture-perfect suburbia – is a huge job. You would think my only sibling would be here to help but she’s MIA. I could give Jess the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she’s not here because it’s a difficult thing to do, taking all of Mum’s things out of the house that she lived in before either of us were born, loading them into the van that’s going to take them away. Perhaps that’s why she isn’t here. Of course, it’s equally likely Jess hasn’t turned up because she’s had a better offer. Either way, she should be here. It’s not fair to leave this all for me to do.
I’m currently emptying the fridge and the freezer out into black bags. Bloody hell, there’s a jar of Branston pickle in the back of the fridge that looks like it’s been there since I sat my A Levels. I’d imagine she got it for Dad, back when he was still around. It’s been a long time since he lived in this house, and even he is managing to find a way to linger.
With everything bagged up, apart from the single white chocolate Magnum I found, I drag the bags out into the back garden and place them in the wheelie bin. I unwrap my ice-cream and take an enthusiastic bite. It’s December, and chilly outside today – it’s cold inside too, given that there’s no heating on and all the doors are open. Either way, it’s a bit cold for ice-cream, but I’m starting to feel hungry from all the hard work, plus I can’t quite bring myself to throw chocolate in the bin.
There are a few things I’m keeping – not just chocolate. I’m taking some sentimental things from my old room home with me, as well as an impressive collection of boardgames amassed over the years, and an old Nintendo Wii that would otherwise end up on a scrapheap somewhere. It’s amazing how it hasn’t worn as well as the edition of Monopoly that Mum and Dad had before I was even born, but I’ll see if I can get it working one day when I’m bored, perhaps.
‘Hello, Billie,’ I hear an unfortunately familiar voice call out.
Now, there’s something I’m glad to be leaving behind.
I’m so close to the back door. I could probably ignore him, save myself from one last encounter with everyone’s least favourite neighbour, if I just pick up the pace.
‘Oi, Billie,’ he says, his voice much louder this time.
I may as well get it over with. After today, I’m never going to see him again.
‘Hello, Mr Baxter,’ I say, trying to mask a sigh.
Elliot Baxter has been a pain in the arse for pretty much as long as I can remember. He’s our seventy-something neighbour from up the street, except, because the road curves around, it means that his back garden backs on to ours. I thought sharing a garden with him was stressful. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be next door to him.
Elliot just loves to complain, it’s his all-time favourite thing. Whether it’s because his neighbours’ dog does its business too close to the boundary fence or the kid with the ‘especially noisy bike chain’ who rides past his house, Elliot always has a problem and when Elliot has a problem, the whole street knows about it.
‘What’s up?’ I ask him, hoping he makes this quick. I’m really not in the mood.
‘Finally sold the house,’ he says. I can’t tell if he’s making a statement or asking a question, but I know it’s probably the former. There’s no way he doesn’t know. He makes it his business to know other people’s business and, let me tell you, it’s a full-time job that he works hard at.
‘Yep,’ I reply. The less I say, the less he has to work with.
‘New people moving in?’ he asks.
‘I would imagine so,’ I say – although, you know, that is typically the idea when someone buys a house.
‘The, er, the new people,’ he starts.
I raise my eyebrows expectantly, bracing myself for whatever Elliot is about to say next. He always has the same look on his face, he looks as though he’s just been slapped but he doesn’t understand why.
‘What are the new people like?’ he eventually asks.
‘Oh, I don’t know them,’ I reply.
‘But what are—’
‘I’m really sorry, I need to go help the removal men,’ I insist. ‘All the best, Mr Baxter.’
Honestly, if that’s the last time I ever have to speak to him, then it’s not all bad news today.
I don’t give Elliot a chance to reply. I hurry indoors and up the stairs where I find one of the removal men in my old room.
It’s strange, seeing it being emptied, my memories slowly being stripped away, resetting the room for the next person who will occupy it. With every item that is removed, it’s like I hardly recognise it. It isn’t only my things that are being removed, it’s me.
‘You all right, love?’ he asks as he stacks boxes.
Inside those cardboard boxes are all the memories from my childhood, attached to various items. The good memories, the bad – speaking of which, the removal man has just revealed an ugly one, by rolling up the rug that used to be next to my bed.
I stare down at the ding in the wooden floor. Another ghost. It catches the removal man’s eye.
‘Oh, God, I remember that happening like it was yesterday,’ I tell him. ‘There’s only a year or so between me and my sister. Anything I got before her – or anything I had that she didn’t want until she saw me with it – made her so jealous.’
On this occasion in particular, it was my rainbow-coloured Beanie Baby rabbit that she decided she had to have, after previously mocking me for having such a childish toy. I don’t remember how old I was – but we were still quite young.
‘It all happened so quickly. I was lying on my bed when she came in and decided she was taking a toy from me,’ I explain, grabbing a small box, heading downstairs with the removal man. He does genuinely seem interested in what happened, unless he’s just being polite. ‘She tried to grab it from me – something she often did when she wanted something, and sometimes I let her – but there was no way I was going to give it up that day, so I kept tight hold of it. I don’t remember how long we struggled with it, probably not that long, although it felt like an epic battle at the time. Eventually, when she couldn’t hold on any longer, she let go, sending me back with a force that knocked the lamp off my bedside table. My sister scarpered as soon as she realised something might be broken. I averted my eyes, too terrified to look, terrified that the bedside lamp I’ve had for as long as I could remember – one that was my mum’s when she was a young girl – was broken and I could have cried with relief when, unbelievably, I finally looked down and it was absolutely fine. The floor, however, was not.’
‘That’s siblings for you,’ the man says through a smile. ‘You’d never think she was the type, talking to her now.’
‘My sister, what, is she here?’ I ask, surprised.
‘Yeah, she’s down at the van with Tommy,’ he replies. ‘Although they’re flirting up a storm. That’s why muggins here is doing all the work.’
‘Well, that does sound like her,’ I say with a laugh.
My smile quickly falls as we reach the front door.
‘That rug has been hiding that mark on the floor for maybe twenty years,’ I muse. ‘The day I dragged it across the floor, supposedly as a temporary fix, while I figured out what I was going to do about it, marked the start of this fear that Mum would find out. Eventually I would forget it was there, being reminded of it less often, no longer feeling that guilty burn in my feet when I would get in and out of bed each night. I hadn’t thought about it in years and years, until you uncovered it today, and it’s just hit me.
‘Mum is never going to know. She’s never going to discover it. It weighed so heavy on my mind, for so long. Mum loved her wooden floors, that’s why I was so scared of her discovering what had happened, and why I had to make out like I wanted the responsibility of cleaning my own room from a young age – which was not fun at all – but she’ll never know, she’ll never walk on her prized wooden flooring again.’
The removal man places the rug down in the garden and gives me a gentle pat on the shoulder, very much at arm’s length, but I’ve got a lot of time for men who are never quite sure if it’s okay to touch women – even if they mean well – so it’s appreciated.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ he tells me, his genuine sympathy apparent in his tone. ‘I can’t even imagine what you must be going through, losing your mum, it must be so difficult. I’d be a mess if my mum died.’
‘Died?’ I repeat back to him. ‘My mum isn’t dead.’
‘I’m so sorry, I just assumed, with you being so upset…’
Oh, no, now he looks like he feels even worse. I need to iron this out, as quickly as possible.
‘I’m not upset because she’s dead, I’m upset because she’s moving in with me.’
The man quickly withdraws his hand of support, his face shifting from confusion to something somewhere between feeling embarrassed and judging me with his eyes.
I don’t suppose that came out exactly as I intended it to, although I’d be lying if I said I was happy about the situation.
The main reason I’m so upset to be emptying my mum’s house is because it’s the house I grew up in, the one I lived until I left for uni, built on a plot that she and my dad picked out when it was nothing more than a patch of dirt. My mum has sold our childhood home to buy somewhere smaller now that it’s just her, which makes sense… it’s just so difficult to see the place go.
As if that’s not bad enough, originally, when plans were being made, I told her that she could stay with me for a night, before collecting her keys to the new place the next day. Unfortunately, due to a whole mess of circumstances with the chain on her buyer’s side, and the newbuild Mum is buying not being ready due to delays, her one-night stay in December has turned into her moving in for the foreseeable, until the new year, at least.
For someone so used to living on her own, who has gone to great efforts to arrange herself a nice, quiet Christmas period alone in her finally finished house project, the thought of having to live with my mum again isn’t something I’m jazzed about.
‘That’s her over there,’ I tell him, pointing my mum out, over by the removal van.
‘That’s your mum?’ he replies in disbelief. ‘I thought that was your sister!’
I sigh. I hear that all the time these days.
‘Billie, my darling, how’s it going?’ she asks as we approach the van.
I might be feeling like crap about this entire situation, but Mum is positively glowing. She looks cold, with her coat belted up tightly, and her pink cheeks – oddly it suits her, though, it’s like the kind of healthy look I try to achieve with blusher, only to end up looking like a clown. I doubt the weather is suiting me so well. I’ve only been back outside for a few minutes and I can feel my nose trying to run, so I sniff hard. So attractive!
‘Yeah, all good,’ I reply. ‘I emptied the fridge and the freezer of the last bits – Elliot had one last stab at being the world’s nosiest neighbour, but otherwise I think the place is pretty much emptied, apart from a couple of boxes.’
‘I’ll go get them,’ the man I’ve been chatting to says. I think he’d do anything to get away from me now.
‘No worries, pal,’ the other man – I’m assuming this is Tommy – replies.
He briefly takes his eyes off my mum and turns to me. As we make eye contact, there’s a shared look of recognition between us. We know each other. He’s…
‘Tom Paulson?’ I say, my voice shooting up at the end, because I can’t be certain.
‘Yeah,’ he replies, his smile growing as he realises where he knows me from. ‘Billie May, right? I remember you.’
My mum looks at me expectantly, her curiosity clearly getting the better of her as she waits for an introduction.
‘Mum, do you remember Tom from my class at primary school?’ I ask her.
I went to secondary school with him too, but I was too old and too cool to have my mum taking me to school then, obviously. Still, I remember him. He somehow looks so different, but also not really that different at all. He looks like I remember his dad looking – he was a policeman, who dropped by the school when we were in Year 2 or 3 to give us a talk on stranger danger. I don’t waste time wondering whether or not I look as much like my mum, I know that I don’t.
‘Your mum?’ Tom says in disbelief as his jaw heads for the floor. ‘This is never your mum. I can’t believe it.’
‘Believe it,’ I practically beg.
This happens all the time now and, while I’m happy for my mum, I still don’t find it easy.
‘I would have noticed a MILF like you at the school gates,’ Tom tells her with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
My mum, visibly delighted to be referred to as a MILF, laughs and bats her hand.
‘Oh, yeah, I remember you being such a charismatic nine-year-old,’ I reply sarcastically. ‘Didn’t you pee your pants during sports day?’
Tom frowns. He turns back to my mum.
‘So, is Mr May still on the scene?’ he asks curiously. Gross.
‘Sadly not,’ my mum replies, with a tone and a look that implies she is anything but sad about it.
My dad left my mum (and me and Jess in the process) years ago, when I was barely a teenager. He ‘fell in love’ and styled out leaving us as this bold, romantic thing, as though that’s going to mean anything to a couple of kids staring down the barrel of occasional evenings and every other weekend (which we only did for as long as we absolutely had to). He thought he was heroic, following his heart, leaving his marriage for true love. Of course, in a not-so-shocking turn of events, it turns out the woman who he was seeing behind his wife’s back wasn’t his true love.
Anyway, things may not have turned out so well for my dad, but my mum never let herself become a casualty of divorce. Divorce, it turns out, looks great on her. Or divorce settlements do, at least. My mum didn’t just wash that man out of her hair, and she didn’t waste any time scratching his face out of photos of the two of them, my mum had a series of cosmetic surgeries that made her look so different it effectively scrubbed the old her from the photos instead. I’ll never know the full extent of the work she had done – she didn’t even tell me and Jess, on the day when she had the bulk of the heavy lifting done, until she was back home again – but she’s in great shape, her skin looks like there’s an Instagram filter over it, I cringe to even admit it, but her boob age is way younger than mine now. The new Kate May looks incredible, she’s happy, she really is living her best life. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for her, it’s just massively uncomfortable for me when things like this happen.
