The tall, dark, beautifully thuggish pumpkin-rescuer with the diamond ear-stud stood on the doorstep. He looked quite apologetic. ‘Sorry, I’m not Lance – but I’m pretty good at knowing when to sod off. Shall I go now?’
Fighting a very out-of-character urge to drag him bodily over the doorstep, Mitzi managed to smile through her confusion. ‘No, no – please stay, of course. Come in … That is – um – you are here for the party, aren’t you?’
He nodded. ‘Coincidence, isn’t it? If I’d realised that you were to be my hostess when I grabbed your pumpkins – er – well, no …’
Mitzi trilled with laughter. She really wished she could stop doing it. Closing her mouth didn’t seem to help much. She took a deep breath. ‘Did – um Lu invite you?’
‘Doll, actually.’
Doll?
How did Doll know him? She hadn’t mentioned it, had she? Mitzi’s eyebrows rocketed into her hairline. And there she was thinking Doll and Brett were love’s young dream and all that. Dark horses indeed.
He looked worried. ‘Didn’t she tell you? Hell – you must think I’m the worst kind of gatecrasher.’
‘Not at all – I’m sure she told me but my memory’s hopeless. Please do come in, it’s freezing out there.’
‘Thanks. Wow,’ he stepped inside and looked round the navy-blue and gold hall with appreciation. ‘Fantastic colour scheme. And—’
Anything else he may have been going to say was drowned by the conga-ers whooping and screaming down the stairs and vanishing back into the living room. A split
second later, Lav and Lob, who had become detached, splintered off on their own towards the kitchen.
The pumpkin rescuer grinned. ‘This looks like my sort of party.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Joel. Joel Earnshaw.’
Joel. Nice name. Strong but unusual. It suited him. Names were so important, Mitzi thought, still slightly woozy. She’d always felt she’d never have fallen quite so much in love with Lance if he’d been a Cyril.
‘Oh, right, yes – um, I’m Mitzi Blessing.’ She shook his hand and immediately wished she hadn’t. The electricity jolted her to the soles of her feet. Sure she was blushing, she yanked her hand away. ‘Doll’s mother.’
If he said something naff like ‘never in this world!’ or ‘surely you mean sister?’ she’d hate him for ever and ever and ever.
‘That figures.’ He grinned a bit more. ‘And Mitzi? That’s another fantastic Hollywood name. Great style. Doll told me about Dolores and Tallulah. Is it a family tradition?’ Mitzi sucked in her breath and nodded, hoping that the manic laughter and inane grinning had stopped. Doll seemed to have told him an awful lot. Oh, dear. How long had this been going on? ‘Well, yes. My childhood was made hell by it so I thought I’d inflict the same suffering on my kids.’
She laughed, reasonably normally, to show she was joking and this time Joel joined in so it wasn’t too embarrassing.
Mitzi attempted to stop the laughing again. ‘No, honestly. I’m not that cruel. They were just unusual names at a time when everyone was calling their daughters Kate or Sarah or Louise. And we thought they were pretty and original. And—’ deciding that Joel was probably bored witless by the ramblings, she ushered him towards the living-room door’ —anyway, make yourself at home – oh, er on second thoughts …’
The living room looked like a Bacchanalian Revel. Brett and Doll, it appeared, were revelling more than most. Juicy
Lucy, stuck on replay, was pulsating loudly to aid the gyrations.
‘Hi, Joel!’ Doll waved a bare arm from the depths of the sofa. ‘Glad you could make it. You’ve seen Brett before, of course.’
Joel nodded politely at the half-clad Brett. ‘Not quite so much of him, but yes, we’ve met. Er – hi.’
Brett raised a laconic hand in greeting. Mitzi sighed in admiration. How cool these youngsters were about relationships. Steering Joel away from the sofa, and making introductions on the way, she indicated the food and drink. ‘Just help yourself. There’s plenty of everything, and more in the kitchen.’
The conga-ers, clearly exhausted, were knocking back some of Clyde’s more dubious mixture straight from the bottle. Everyone else seemed to be laughing. Joel, having helped himself to a glass of turnip and elderflower and a plate piled with Pumpkin Passion and All Hallows Mallows, had somehow squeezed himself on to the sofa with Doll and Brett.
Before Mitzi had time to worry about a
ménage à trois
breaking out in the living room, one of the teenage trick or treaters grabbed her round the waist and whisked her towards the dancing bit by the fireplace.
‘C’mon, babe,’ he grinned fetchingly from beneath his baseball cap. ‘Betcha know how to salsa, doncha?’
Upstairs, Lulu put the finishing touches to her make-up. The conga-ers had disrupted the preparations somewhat, but now she was almost ready. As always, her bad temper had evaporated. Being moody took so much effort. She could never be bothered to stay grumpy for long.
So what if Shay had taken Carmel to the cinema? They’d have to come home at some point, wouldn’t they? And because Lob and Lav lived in the eighteenth century they certainly wouldn’t let him entertain ladies in his bedroom, which meant he’d be arriving home alone – and she’d be
waiting. Oh, not in a stalkery sort of way. Just in a friendly, neighbourly, why-not-come-and-join-the-party sort of way – and if, just if, it happened to be before midnight then all her cooking and conniving wouldn’t have been in vain.
She swirled round in front of the mirror. Because there were mounds of clothes and junk everywhere, the view was somewhat limited, but what she could see was okay. The halter-necked top was a bit skimpy, but nicely balanced the long black-tiered skirt. And the black and silver beads and braids set her hair off a treat. Maybe she’d used a little too much kohl. Nah. No one could have too much kohl.
Right, she thought, closing the door on the devastation of her bedroom, all she had to do now was shimmy downstairs, slap on the smiley party face, trust in Granny Westward’s witchery – and it might turn out to be quite a good evening.
Jesus!
Something musical of her mother’s was rocking the house to its foundations. Ah, yes – Led Zeppelin. Mitzi really did have some peculiar tastes for an oldish person, Lu thought, wincing at the decibel level. And as she’d embraced these thundering bands for about forty years it was amazing that she wasn’t as deaf as a post.
The living room, flickering dark, boomed and thudded. Shadowy figures were just about visible. Lots of them. Skirting the more obvious danger zones, Lu helped herself to a glass of wine and a slice of something glutinously black and treacly.
Blimey! Was that her mother dancing with a lad in a baseball cap? And Doll looking almost casual in black trousers and a white shirt that surely wasn’t done up at all? And what was she doing on the sofa with Brett and – hell!
Joel Earnshaw?
Downing the wine in one, and spooning the treacly goo into her mouth, Lulu circulated the party periphery. The music was pretty cool really, she thought, as her body
seemed to liquefy and move with the back-beat. And the decorations were dead clever, all those candles flickering, all those little skeletons and witches and bats and spiders swirling in a gentle circle and … ooops!
‘I’m so sorry,’ she tried to disentangle herself from a group of Mitzi’s Baby Boomers. A man with a trilby hat grappled with her for far longer than she felt necessary. The silky halter top slipped to an all-time low. ‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’
Really, Clyde’s wine must be an extra strong vintage. Usually it took more than one glass of it to make you see treble. She felt quite unsteady, and rather light-headed and all sort of warm and giggly. Not bad at all.
‘Are you okay?’ Doll, buttoning up her shirt wrongly, had staggered from the sofa and was weaving her way towards Lulu. ‘Your eyes look funny. Have you eaten some of that p-p-p-pumpkin stuff?’
‘Not sure. Was it black and sticky?’
‘Don’t know!’ Doll shrieked with laughter, then clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry – I haven’t felt like this since – well, probably never actually … I need some water …’
Deciding that she was possibly slightly steadier on her feet than her sister, Lu grabbed Doll’s hand and led her towards the kitchen.
Richard and Judy smiled happily up from their push-me-pull-you configuration on the stand-by food table and purred in blissful harmony. They’d probably eaten the Pumpkin Passion too.
With the door closed, the roar of the party dulled to an acceptable drone.
‘So?’ Lu poured Doll a haphazard glass of water and steadied herself against the draining board. ‘What’s going on out there? With you and Brett and Mr Sexy Dentist?’
The words all seemed to slur into one another.
‘Nothing,’ Doll emptied her glass and refilled it. Watering down Granny Westward’s snackettes was clearly
a good idea. She began to lose her bewildered look. ‘I asked Joel to come along because he doesn’t know anyone in Hazy Hassocks or Winterbrook and he’s a nice guy. That’s all. Why? Oh, come on! You don’t think that we’re – you know – do you?’
Using both hands on the draining board to stop the kitchen slipping away, and speaking with studied deliberation, Lulu shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what to think. You’ve changed so much recently. Did I pronounce recently properly? Oh, good … Er – no, you know, you and Brett …’
Doll blinked. ‘Yeah, well it surprised me too. And no, I don’t think it was anything to do with the Wishes Come True Pie before you start down that road – oh—’
The kitchen door flew open and Lobelia, now with flashing devil’s horns adorning her plastic witches’ hat and the cycle helmet, skipped in, beamed at them, picked up a plate of sandwiches and skipped out again.
Neither of them found it weird enough to comment on.
Doll filled her water glass again. She spilled a lot of it and giggled. ‘Look, all it took to sort us out was for Brett to start being a bit – well – unpredictable. That night he turned up here, behaving completely out of character, really impressed me. And well – ever since we’ve been making an effort … you know, courting one another.’
‘Courting?
Courting?’
Lu shrieked with laughter. ‘What, holding hands in the moonlight and old-fashioned stuff? How boring is that!’
‘Not boring at all, actually.’ Doll smiled wistfully. ‘It’s been lovely. Trouble was, we’d been taking one another for granted for soooo long. After that night, we just started to make more effort and it was like, all sparkly and tingly again … just like being teenagers … We can’t keep our hands off each other.’
‘I’d noticed.’ Lu fought the laughter. ‘But what made him act like that in the first place? Wasn’t it what you wished for that night?’
‘Well, yes, sort of – but it had nothing to do with the Wishes Come True Pie.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh, come on! You’d have to be mad to believe that. Oh, I know Mum thinks that’s she’s – well – magicking things with herbs and stuff, and I’m certainly not going to disabuse her of the idea. She needs something to make her happy. But me and Brett were far more basic than that. We must have come to the same conclusion at the same time. We knew we had to be more spontaneous, and then we just had to work out where we’d let things slide and what we wanted for the future.’
Lulu still wasn’t convinced that Granny Westward’s recipe hadn’t played some major part in the Doll and Brett miracle. Probably best not to mention it, though. ‘And you don’t want Joel Earnshaw?’
‘No. Well, he’s bloody gorgeous of course, but no, I’m staying with Brett for ever and ever. Why do you want him? Jeeze – you do, don’t you?’
Lu shook her head, the braids and beads rattling violently. ‘No. I mean I think he’s gorgeous as well. Vinnie Jones to a T and sexy as hell – but I’ve only got eyes for Shay … Who, before you ask, only has eyes for Carmel The Angel.’
‘Bugger, then,’ Doll said kindly, clearly trying not to laugh again.
‘Ah – here you both are,’ Mitzi opened the door allowing Led Zeppelin to boom in alongside her. ‘I wondered where you’d got to. Everything okay?’
They both nodded and wobbled slightly.
Mitzi looked very bright eyed and a bit dishevelled. Stroking Richard and Judy, she then pushed them gently aside and picked up the bowl of apples. ‘Need these for the apple bobbing – whoops – I think I’m a bit tiddly … Did you see me dancing the salsa with that Carl Fourboys from the Bath Road Estate? He said I was cool.’
‘Mum!’ Lu shrieked. ‘He’s only fourteen! He only knows “cool” or “wicked”.’
‘Does he? He said I was wicked, too. Now where are the spare dishes? And I’m sure I had loads more apples …’
Knowing how many she’d hacked apart making the Midnight Apple spell – not to mention the love candles – Lu blushed. ‘Er – I haven’t seen any others. Anyway, do you think apple bobbing is a good idea? The state they’re in out there they’ll probably drown themselves.’
‘It’s traditional,’ Mitzi stood on tiptoe to rummage rather giddily in the crockery cupboard for the dishes. ‘Oh, look! There are a couple of apples in here. They’ll do.’
‘No they won’t,’ Lu lunged at them. ‘Er – no – that is … I think they’re a bit – um – off.’
Doll and Mitzi were frowning at her.
‘I mean – well … You don’t want them …’
‘Course I do.’ Mitzi grabbed the apples before Lu could stop her. ‘All contributions more than welcome.’ She looked at Doll. ‘And while you’re here – you’re not playing fast and loose with Brett’s feelings, are you?’
‘What?’ Doll frowned. ‘Of course not. I love him. He loves me. We’re happier now than we’ve been for ages – why? Oh, God! You’re as bad as Lu! You think I fancy Joel, don’t you?’
‘Well, he said you’d invited him. I thought it was all a bit, well, risky, having him and Brett in the same room at the same time and—’
‘We work together,’ Doll grinned. ‘He’s our new dentist. I invited him along because he’s new to the area and was going to spend tonight on his own. That’s all. Why? You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Mind?’ Mitzi beamed a zillion-watt beam at them both. ‘Oh, no. Not at all. He’s – um – really rather charming. That is, for a dentist … Fancy that … A dentist … Um – now I must try and sort out the apple bobbing as it’s nearly midnight. And you two don’t want to spend all night chattering in here. You don’t want to miss it – it’ll be fun – and for heaven’s sake Lu, leave these apples alone! Let go!’