Don't You Forget About Me Page 34

I am torn between gratitude at care for me, in Lucas’s intervention, and a sense that I’m polluting the pub’s reputation, and Lucas had felt nothing for me but a mixture of disdain and pity.

My friends and family, whose vantage point means they’ve not caught what went on in the doorway, but have definitely caught what went on with Robin’s speech, have decided to make a tactful exit to spare my blushes.

‘We’d have shouted at him and pushed him off that chair,’ Clem says. ‘But Jo says you didn’t want us to make a fuss?’

I nod, miserably.

Esther and Mark are trying to work out how to arrange their faces. I could scream, cry, pummel Robin into a bloody pulp.

Tonight had been about me trying to do something bold and constructive for a change, and thanks to Robin humiliating me in my workplace, it’s all but obliterated.

When everyone has left, and I’m mopping up, I see the topic for the next episode of Share Your Shame has been posted up on the pub noticeboard.

Your Worst Date.

Lucas comes back in from putting the bins out in a sudden downpour, running his hands through the water in his black hair, pulling a sodden t-shirt away from his body and letting it limply snap back. Robin has turned off my pilot light for the time being but I can still appreciate the loveliness dispassionately. Lucas catches me staring and jerks his head towards the poster. ‘He’s barred, so don’t worry about that,’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘And thanks for getting him out this evening. I’m still mortified. And furious. But mostly mortified.’

‘No thanks needed, I ban tossers who harass my staff as a matter of course.’

I’m going to say ‘thanks’ again but it’s witless, so I say nothing.

‘That is who he is, isn’t it?’ Lucas says, hesitantly, keys in his hand, Keith at his heels. ‘I mean, tell me if this is a Taylor / Burton type thing and he’ll be your boyfriend again by next week, as then the admissions policy needs to be more flexible.’

‘Oh God, no!’ I say. ‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘OK.’ He rattles the keys.

I see Lucas trying to fit me together with this man, who he got the measure of in ten seconds flat. No doubt the ‘fitting us together’ mental process damages his opinion of me. I wilt. It damages my opinion of me.

23

A constant low level static crackle of sexual interest and harassment, like next door’s humming maggot tanks, is something I am so used to in the hospitality trade, I mostly tune it out.

Until The Wicker, I’d never seen it happen to a man before. It didn’t take long for Lucas McCarthy to arouse the interest of the female clientele. Possibly some males too, though they’re less conspicuous.

Phone numbers on beer mats get slid across the bar. Outright offers are made at closing time by the sozzled. Whispering, giggling groups heavily laden with floral Jo Malone scents come in, and choose particular tables that offer a good view. Kitty and I get asked ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Is he single?’ on the regular. ‘Is the dark-haired guy working tonight?’ is a question which, if answered in the negative, causes faces to fall.

If Lucas notices any of this, he doesn’t let on, the attention bouncing off his self-contained, serious demeanour. When directly asked out, he shrugs and smiles, bats it away as a patently non-serious query. Don’t get enough time off. Same again?

Today he’s got the open fire at the far end of the main bar going again, after tearing the old boxy fascia from its charming period features in a soot-caked, bare-forearmed bout of manly practical labour that I didn’t notice whatsoever, obviously.

The same can’t be said for a couple of thirty-somethings who I could swear were taking covert photos. Imagery of Lucas is now whizzing around on WhatsApp groups, captioned with tongue-lolling emojis, and he is entirely oblivious. I felt protective, which I’m sure is empathy, as someone who’s had her fair share of arse pinches from slimy old fellas.

When the mid-week shift enters its last hour, Lucas reappears after a shower upstairs, hair still slightly damp, puts a bottle of beer into the opener, flips the lid, drinks.

He says, nodding his head at the Share Your Shame poster:

‘Heard from laughing boy since Saturday?’ He pauses. ‘Tell me if I’m overstepping.’

I’m immediately embarrassed and mutter Oh no, thank God. It reveals Lucas has been thinking about me, however, and I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. My friends had been in touch with a deluge of ‘FUCK HIM’-style texts and calls the next day, including a rather heartfelt ‘And I thought I had issues with Phil’ from Jo, and Esther, in typical Esther way had called to say, ‘You don’t half pick them, Gog.’ But then, more gently, ‘Let me know if you want to talk about it. No one treats my sister like that.’ I appreciate this, even if it is an objectively untrue statement.

Deafening silence from Robin, which I hope rather than believe to be a permanent state of affairs.

‘I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I got a bad feeling about him,’ Lucas says.

‘Hah, yep. You’ve saved time there.’

Lucas pauses, waiting for me to go on. I realise this is a gesture of friendship, and possibly an attempt to get to know me.

‘Thank you again for being so quick about kicking him out,’ I say. ‘He’s malicious. He does these vicious things, supposedly light-heartedly. He plays everything for laughs even when the effect on you is far from funny. Comedians, I guess.’

Lucas visibly relaxes and says: ‘Yes. My assessment exactly. I’ve said to Dev, it was a power play disguised as a declaration of love. He discussed your personal life, in the middle of your workplace. It was an act of aggression.’

I nod vigorously, even as my gut crimps a little at the thought of lovely Dev hearing about this shitshow too. Dev’s been back from Ireland since Monday and is currently out back tinkering with the kitchen equipment, so it’s just Lucas and me behind the bar for the moment.

‘Yep,’ I agree. ‘This isn’t about getting me back. It’s about winning.’

Your personal life – my stomach flexes. Robin regaled them about Lou, my walking in on them. Lucas must think my life is a bin fire on a patch of wasteland.

Much as I hate that he bore witness to Robin’s speech, I’m also struck by real gratitude for a responsible adult spending the time to form an opinion, and not coming to the popular conclusion that it’s my fault.

‘I don’t want to alarm you but he didn’t strike me as someone who will give up, any time soon either,’ Lucas says. ‘If he’s got anything personal he thinks he can use against you … well. Get in first and threaten him with a writ, or a baseball batting.’

I suspect Lucas means naked pictures, and I feel heat rising in my face. Lucas breaks eye contact, on the pretext of fussing over Keith, and as I watch him continue to avoid my gaze, I’m certain he means revenge porn. Thank God, Robin and I were a notch too old and I’m a notch too prudish for that.

And I had always known that Robin was careless – if anyone was going to accidentally send a photo of my lace-clad buttocks to the group LADS WALK PENNINE WAY: SEPTEMBER on WhatsApp, it’d have been him.

‘No, nothing of a sensitive or unclothed nature whatsoever. Thank God. I am not a fan of what I believe are called “belfies”.’

Lucas grimaces. ‘I don’t even know the word so I won’t ask more.’

I hesitate. ‘Is that true about the fine for filming? When you got his agent to delete the video?’

‘Oh, no. Private property but open to the public, so he was within his rights. But I thought you’d prefer there not to be a record.’

‘Hah! But you seemed so certain?’

‘That’s how you get anyone to believe anything.’

I say thanks to Lucas, a sincere thank you, tinged with slight awe. And a lingering question about whether I’ve been similarly made to believe anything.

‘Enough! I can’t do my job in these conditions!’ Devlin says, over the strains of Ed Sheeran. The last punter has left, Dev’s abandoned the kitchen and the clean-up is underway. He disappears for a fiddle with the music system and Guns ’n’ Roses ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ peals out at deafening volume.

Dev and I get on, we have good colleague chemistry. Both of us understand you don’t whine or sulk. If there’s a crap task, get on the other side of it; complaining about it only makes it loom larger.

‘Fridge my fancy fruit!’ Dev calls to me, as I’m putting the garnishes away, and bowls a Sicilian blood orange at me.

I catch it and put it on the side of the bar. ‘That was easy. Over arm next time.’

I am conscious of Lucas watching me. First he was looking at his phone, now me. My skin prickles.

Dev lobs another orange and I lunge and catch it.

‘Oh you’re good. Let me guess, always centre in netball?’

I laugh. Another volley. Another catch.

‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ Lucas says, with a sigh, unsticking himself from the wall and vanishing upstairs.

I wipe the tables down while Devlin rinses the drip trays and crashes empties into the bottle bin.

Source: www_Novel22_Net

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