Chapter 6: New start

I was not surprised to get the invitation to Sally and Geoff’s wedding. Sally and I conversed by email all the time, so I knew roughly when it was coming up. I had even visited the couple three or four times in the past couple of months and found that Geoff and I got on like a house on fire. I knew, I was absolutely certain though, if I passed out on their settee I would wake up in the morning with one of his works of art on my bum. That was never gonna happen! Sally had tucked a note in with the invite saying she was having the girls as two of her three bridesmaids. She had a small family herself, an older brother with a two-year-old, who was to be a page boy. Naturally, Josh and his mother were also invited to the wedding rehearsal the day before and the wedding, the letter continued, saying perhaps I could help out by bringing Josh up with me?

Of course I could but first it would mean talking to Mandy.

With our relationship once more strained, we were at the point where either I collected the kids by staying in the car and honking the horn, or she dropped them off at my place, again without getting out of the car.

I had a small house at Paulsgrove on the mainland, fifteen minutes’ drive away, having busted a gut to scrape together enough for the deposit. It was an auction bid, the Victorian mid-terrace house having been wrecked by evicted students, all the windows and doors broken, washbasins, bath and toilets smashed, flooded out because all the taps had been left full on during the process of eviction. With the help of Blue Watch I turned it back from four flats into a 3-bed house again with a basement gym. The Watch didn’t have to help, they could’ve lived a hellish existence with a total grouch for a boss if they wanted too, their choice entirely!

During my rehabilitation, once I was able to drive and train to get my fitness and mobility back, I got involved in local intervention fire education, training junior fire fighters. That kept me too busy to mope at first and then, surprisingly, I ended up really enjoying it. So I continued doing this during every spare moment I got, even when I returned to full active duty. I became an ambassador for the scheme and promoted it all round the country, including my old haunts in Lincolnshire and Humberside.

That was why I returned to the area so often, calling in on Sally and also the Murrays, apparently Darren missed me and called me his best friend. Mind you, I later found out that anyone who gave Darren their undivided attention for a while was his best friend! I got on quite well with Annabel and Gordon and looked forward to the spring when both the Murrays and the Arnolds were expecting their happy events.

So I left it a fortnight before calling Amanda, it being about four weeks to the wedding in mid-December.

“Hello!?” Mandy answered her mobile brightly. We had exchanged mobile numbers months before. I suppose it was useful in case we needed to contact each other quickly if we had an emergency with the kids. I say exchanged, I gave my new number to Josh and presumably he passed it on.

“Hi, Amanda,” I said, “It’s Jim-”

“I know, I have your number in my contacts.”

“Oh, right,” I said.

I don’t know why I have the bloody thing anyway, I only ever use it to speak to Josh since he got one for his birthday. Everyone else I keep in contact with by email.

“I wanted to speak to you about Sally and Geoff’s wedding next month-”

“You’re cutting it very fine, Jimbo, I’d almost given up on you.”

Oh! Back to Jimbo, now is it? And as for giving up on me, we’d both done that long ago.

“Well, I’m happy to fit in with whatever plans you have, perhaps take Josh off your hands, etcetera.”

“Perhaps you could come over one evening, have dinner with us? Now that we’ve got our dining room back.” She laughed as she said it. I wasn’t really in the mood to laugh with her.

“Well, I’m on nights at the moment, so I just have a breakfast early afternoon and we have our main meal at the station about two in the morning.”

I really didn’t want to eat with them and have Mark sneering across the table at me, where he was living with and making love to my wife, even if she was just that in name only.

“Perhaps you could pop in on your way home from school?” I suggested, knowing she didn’t work in the city, but further along the coast to the east.

“Mmm, OK, can’t tomorrow night, but the night after alright? About 5.30-ish?”

“Yes, that’s perfect.”

“Good for me, too. See you then, then, take care, Jimbo.”

“You too, Mand, bye.”

I never really got on with making cakes, the odd sponge pudding, which I could disguise with lashings of custard, but I do make a mean double chocolate chip muffin, which the kids (including Blue Watch!) always love, so I made up a batch of them.

Mandy ran from the car in the rain when she arrived. I had been keeping an eye out for her and met her halfway with the umbrella, that got me a nice smile for my pains. I took her coat and bag and hung them on the post at the foot of the stairs and led her through to the tiny kitchen, where I had already put the kettle on to boil. I finished off making the pot of tea while Mandy had a look around, going into the sitting room. She hadn’t been inside since I got the place. I caught up with her, peering at the back yard the auctioneers described as a “good-sized garden laid to lawn”. It was no bigger than a postage stamp.

“Nice little place you’ve got here,” she commented with another of her easy smiles.

It wasn’t a nice place. It was a basic ex-council house in the middle of a crowded sink estate. My fences on two sides were brand-new, erected by Blue Watch under my supervision as a training exercise, the other two were falling down. I had already decided I was going to bite the bullet and replace the other fences in the spring even though they were not my fences, for peace of mind. No garage, just a designated parking spot. In one of the six parking bays opposite the house was a burnt-out car, no doubt a stolen car probably taken by a near-neighbour who wanted to get home after a night out somewhere and torched it to destroy any evidence. The fire service would not have been called to put it out as that would have defeated the object, so it would be left to burn down to the concrete. We were still waiting for the council to tow it away, knowing on average it takes them six weeks to do it, then there’d be another wrecker left there within a fortnight.

Still, this house was all I could afford.

“Ooo, are these your famous muffins?” she said, having pulled one apart and popped a morsel in her mouth.

“Yeah.”

“Great, I’m starving, been on my feet all day doing auditions for the various productions going on and missed my lunch.”

“I’ve made a whole batch, you can help yourself to another if you like, and take the rest back with you.”

I picked at one with little enthusiasm. It always upset me seeing her, remembering that I had loved her since I was about 9, and she was now somebody else’s, in fact she hadn’t been mine for a long while.

“Thanks.”

Another smile and she grabbed a second muffin. I poured the tea.

“Arrangements for the wedding?” I asked, as I handed her the cup and saucer, the arrangements for the wedding being her reason for being there and reminding me of what a disaster my life had been. The tea set of five cups and six saucers came from the change in my fortunes and for the economy to pick up again, or Christmas, perhaps.

“Yes, arrangements,” she said, accepting the tea with one hand and delicately brushing a few dark brown crumbs off her lips with the other. “I can’t come to the wedding rehearsal as we have a performance of the nativity play for the years six and seven children Friday night, so I’ll either come up during the night, if not too tired or follow up in the morning. So...” she paused, “If you drive up with the children and my mother-”

“What!?” I said, “I’m not driving up with-”

“Honey,” she interjected, “She can’t drive all that way, you know she hates long journeys and she’s not long after her operation, but she can share one hotel room with the girls and you can room with Josh. It’ll be good for the family, it’s time you and Mum buried the hatchet.”

“Fireman’s axe,” I said, trying to force a grin so it sounded more like a joke than what I was really thinking, “I’d like to bury it in her head!”

“You don’t mean that Jimbo-”

“I do, I really do, she’s poisonous, your Mum.”

“Well, I think you should put in some effort to be nice to her. She has been very complimentary about you recently.”

“Oh, she harping on at Mark then, with me out of the picture?”

“No, of course not. Anyway, Mark has been out of the picture for ages now.”

“Why’s that? I thought you were getting on like a house on fire.”

“No, he was boring, so we stopped going out.”

“Oh” I raised my eyebrows, “A free agent now, then?”

“No, I’ve been seeing John for a couple of months now.”

“Great, so long as you’re not lonely.” I chewed out my words.

“No,” she admitted, “Never lonely. You?”

“Nobody special. Too busy for anything long-term,” I said, “Got a lot on at the moment.”

“Of course.”

We sat quietly sipping tea until it was all gone, or cold.

“I suppose we ought to get our situation ... sorted out, you know, finalised.” she looked up from her cup and I looked up from mine. I noticed she didn’t say the “D” word, so I wasn’t going to either.

“You know how I feel about it,” I said, “You get the ball rolling whenever you want, and I’ll sign anything that is reasonable.”

“That’s alright, I’m not in any hurry.”

“Me neither.”

“So, about Mum?”

“Yes, yes, no problem. She’s not as big a pain in the bum that she used to be, I have to say.”

I packed the muffins into a bag for her and saw her off with a wave.

Madge wasn’t going to be too much of a problem. She had mellowed over the past couple of months. She’d had to have a knee operation in October and, as it was a couple of weeks before half-term I had to take her to the hospital and pick her up about six hours later and, other than half-term week when Mandy took her, I had to take Madge to physiotherapy once a week, which we fitted around my shifts. No great hardship for me as I was on first names with everyone down there, so I was kept amused during the wait. But twenty minutes each way with Madge was different to three and a half straight hours through the evening rush hour. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

Mandy’s new boyfriend, John, was another matter, as well as the divorce now rearing its ugly head. Well, she had raised the subject, then quickly dismissed it as of no consequence. If that was the case then why raise it in the first place? Of course I knew it was going to happen someday and there was absolutely no reason for us to stay married. I hadn’t worn my wedding ring for over five years, although I noticed that Mandy wore both her wedding and engagement rings today. Perhaps she only wore them to school to ward off the predators?