The Retail Therapist Read online

  CHAPTER 12

  I had known Ritchie for quite some time and, like me, I guess he was a magnet for attracting the wrong kind of people. Or maybe it was our own fault, always falling for the wrong guy. As far as Johnny “the Hulk” was concerned, he had struck gold. The man was caring, affectionate, and the two together laughed as if there were comedians in the house. I knew I would have to find my own place soon, but that wasn’t a worry. By that time business had picked up and I could afford to move out.

  When I say it had picked up, I suppose that’s not quite true. We had work, but we also had quiet times; however, as I’d agreed to employ Ritchie, I felt I had the obligation of paying him a full salary even during the idle times.

  That evening I went for dinner with the new couple and they even organised a blind date for me. Gosh, if it was anything like the previous one it would be a disaster. First they tried to pair me up with a writer. I was curious enough – I mean, if you write you’re supposed to have something to say, and that would have been a good start, I thought. In fact he’d had plenty to say – about his ex-girlfriend: how they’d met, what they’d done during the five years they’d spent together, how she was unappreciative, and how she had cheated on him. After an hour or so spent trying to concentrate on my food, I started to sympathise with the ex! Blimey, I was already thinking about someone else – anyone, after just one dinner! I hadn’t seen him again.

  The second was an IT guy, a manager from a multinational in Berkshire. He was gorgeous and I’d been hoping that he had fantastic deep eyes. Unfortunately, I hadn’t managed to see them once, as he was too busy texting someone in the office; he excused himself several times and after a few more minutes had to take an urgent phone call. (Don’t you just hate it when someone doesn’t even consider your feelings enough to turn off their phone during a first date?) So he left the table and went outside. I sipped wine for a while and then placed my food order. I’d had a busy day and was as hungry as a horse, without the nosebag, of course.

  When he came back he said, “Sorry about that; it was an emergency. Good, you’ve ordered …” The waiter approached us again and suddenly the phone rang again. Another emergency.

  So I promptly ordered dessert.

  When he came back and the phone rang again, I gave him my most understanding smile, muttered something about “Emergencies happen…” and then as soon as he went into the garden to take his call, I slipped out of the front door. For all I know, he might still be there answering emergency calls.

  So when Ritchie proposed a double date, I was twitchy. No, I was panicking.

  “Sure, no problem,” I said. “I know all the effort you‘re putting into finding me a date.”

  “Are you complaining? I’ve found you some wonderful suitors. If only you weren’t so picky …” he sighed.

  Never fall for that; I could have picked a fight straight away, but where was the fun in that? Better to wait and see who the new Prince Charming was and then have my revenge.

  We drove to the restaurant; the Hulk was already at the bar and if I hadn’t been careful I could easily have called him that, instead of Johnny. I’d picked up that bad habit from my grandfather, who used to have a nickname for everybody, so in the family we used to refer to relatives and friends using their nicknames – until eventually one of us made a huge gaffe. There had been a family friend at one time who closely resembled Captain Pugwash (and yes, I do mean the one from that old children’s series). I’d almost slipped up and called him that on numerous occasions but, thankfully, had stopped myself just in time.

  My date was nowhere to be seen, so we decided to have a beer until Mr Last-Minute decided to show up.

  “So you’re in the army?” I asked Johnny. Poor Ritchie was lost in adoration and could only babble, and so I had to hold the conversation.

  “Indeed – I’m in the Household Cavalry, but we don’t use horses any more, before you ask.”

  “I was going to actually; so what do you use nowadays? No shining armour anymore?”

  “Ha, ha, ha – no we ditched that as well, a long time ago, at least as far as day to day wear is concerned. If you happen to have a date with one of my colleagues, you can expect them to arrive in a tank.”

  I looked at Ritchie, who was surprisingly quiet, and asked, “So who’s my date? And most of all, where is he?”

  “I was just trying to text him … hang on … here. Stuck in traffic; he’ll join us in five or ten minutes. Sorry about that.”

  I was just hoping he was worth the wait. “What about finding a table, in the meantime?” proposed Johnny “Bruce Banner”, a suggestion we were all too happy to take.

  “I love this Indian,” Ritchie opened up. “I‘ve been here a few times and I think it’s one of the few that still haven’t adapted to the British taste.”

  “I know what you mean,” added Johnny. “I spent some time abroad when I was younger; went to Italy and so on. Totally different flavours.”

  I got distracted by a tall, handsome guy with long, dark hair by the entrance, busy looking at himself in the mirror. He was wearing a nice grey cardigan, unfortunately paired with rust-coloured jeans that didn’t quite cover his ankles, no socks and a pair of designer shoes in electric blue. The shoes themselves were stunning, but the whole ensemble was just plain awful.

  “Hey, have a peek at the Snow White ‘King’ down there. I could swear he just said ‘Mirror, Mirror on the wall…’,” I said.

  Ritchie and Johnny looked at each other and started laughing, “That, my dear, is your date.”

  Prince Charming spotted Ritchie and waved. I was doomed.

  “Well, well, here is our dear Hugo. How are you, mate?”

  “I’m grand; thank you for asking.”

  They introduced me to the guy and he was damn attractive. Ritchie is good at picking handsome guys but sometimes he tended to overlook personalities, at least he does when he’s trying to organise me a date – which was every other week. No point in telling him I’m perfectly capable of finding my own. He’s like a worried mother sometimes, concerned I will never marry or find the right man.

  The good Hugo was apparently also working for a large IT company, near Bracknell. How he came to know Ritchie was a mystery I wasn’t willing to solve, not that night; I was just hoping Hugo wasn’t gay. Well, that had happened once, on one of the blind dates Ritchie had arranged.

  The man was gulping tequila as if we were in a cowboy movie and then, when we were ready to order, he switched to whisky.

  He ordered a Braes of Bladnoch and the poor waiter looked at him as if he’d come from Orion.

  “I’m afraid, sir, we don’t have that brand,” said the poor chap.

  “What about a Fetterthouch Glenghover?”

  Zip!

  Hugo started questioning our taste in restaurant matters; I could read the disappointment on his face.

  “Surely you will have a Ballanlochar? The twenty-four years old, of course, because the others are rubbish.”

  Of course, who would dare order anything else?

  “No sir,” said the poor guy apologetically. Suddenly he was deeply interested in his shoes.

  “What kind of booze do you have?” asked Johnny, cutting to the chase. “It might be easier.”

  “We have the Jura, the Singleton, the Laphroaig …”

  “I’ll go for a Laphroaig,” said Hugo. “Of course the smokiness is not like that of the Pittighmore, but …”

  “Deal!” cut short Johnny, visibly irritated.

  “I’ll have a full bottle, please,” added Hugo as an afterthought.

  I looked at my two companions, trying to understand if I was on some sort of candid camera, but no, the situation baffled them as well. Hell, who drinks a bottle of whisky with Indian food?

  His ability at gulping down whisky was astonishing; fortunately, the waiter came back for our orders.

  “Are you ready to order?”

  Hugo, wanting to play the role of the alpha male
, ordered a “Chicken Tikka Naga”. I had a look at the menu and that came with three huge, fat chillies next to the name. That meant the stuff was really hot. They were serious with their stuff. Three chillies on the menu classified it like a biological weapon. They would use the same ingredients to make the fuel for a nuclear plant. The guys had to have a special licence from the MoD to serve such food and they brought it to the table in the same containers as used to carry radioactive material.

  “… and could you add some extra chilli, please?”

  “Sir, I would like to warn you that it is already a very hot dish,” said the waiter, but Hugo didn’t want to hear any of that. The poor chap looked at us, as if we could instil some sense into our friend; after all, we were regulars. I shrugged, Ritchie blabbed something about personal taste, while Johnny said something like, “A curry is never hot enough.”

  The waiter got the message and gave a devilish smile to all of us. “Very well, sir.”

  We ordered our food and went back to our conversation, which meant Hugo explaining to us the importance of his work and how he had solved an IT crisis just the night before.

  Something that I’d spotted, however, was just how well Ritchie and Johnny were getting along. They’d had only a few dates but were already – what is it that some say? – “in sync”. They were so in tune with each other, and that made me incredibly happy. It was about time that Ritchie had some luck in the love department. He laughed so much that evening that I was almost glowing with pleasure on his behalf.

  The Indian restaurant was exemplary, at least from my meagre experience. As a whole the evening went well but, as I said, I was not that enamoured with Hugo. I appreciated that Ritchie and Johnny had made an effort and probably filtered out a lot of other men, but – at least once he started talking – I hadn’t been that attracted to Hugo either. I couldn’t write off the whole evening, though, as we did enjoy ourselves, but I doubted very much that there was going to be a second, mutually agreeable date following that blind one. One last thing, which I had found to be a complete turn-off (far worse than talking about an ex), was that he had been far too familiar with me. To call someone “sweetheart” or “darling”, when you’ve only just met on a first date, was just that little bit too much.

  Eventually the food arrived and Hugo attacked his curry. We waited to hear him screaming “hell” but that didn’t happen, to our disappointment. We noticed, though, that after every mouthful he gulped down some additional whisky, but somehow we were still disappointed. Perhaps the guy was the real deal and could handle a three-blooming-chilli dish without any trouble.

  Then he started sweating.

  But it wasn’t like when it is a bit warmer and you need to take your jumper off; the guy was sweating as if he were in a sauna. Drops of perspiration were falling profusely from his forehead down his cheeks; he even had some on his nose, ready to drip onto his now empty plate of food.

  “I’m sweating … I can hardly breathe…” he said, and then drank another glass of whisky, finishing the bottle.

  Of course you’re sweating you moron, I thought; you’ve just eaten a chili grenade that could be used to fend off a horde of terrorists.

  “Maybe you need some fresh air,” suggested Ritchie.

  “Good idea …” but then, as soon as he got up from his chair, he fell flat on his face, unable to move. It would have been funny if we hadn’t been worried that all the chili, coupled with the whisky, could actually have killed him.

  But he was alive – and drunk as a skunk. He started blabbering something like, “Thiissssshhh neverrrrr ’appened to me,” so, under the concerned look of the other guests, we decided to call him a taxi and end his misery.

  “I wouldn’t want to be his arse, tomorrow morning,” commented Johnny.

  “Bloody blimey, for a moment I thought he was dead,” laughed Ritchie.

  “Where did you find that chap, at the local Alcoholics Anonymous?” I asked him.

  Ritchie was in no mood to explain after having paired me with one of the worst dates of my life. “It’s a long story” were the only words he uttered, out of embarrassment.

  “Well, you’re going to spit it out eventually,” I said. “Who fancies a beer at the pub around the corner? Ritchie has a big apology to make and he’s buying.”

  The taxi arrived and we had to pour Hugo into it. He collapsed in a huddle on the floor behind the driver’s seat; Ritchie, fortunately had Hugo’s address.

  “Can you take this chap to 25 Wellington Avenue, in Wokingham?”

  “Sure, mate, no problem!” answered the cab driver, then he looked at the state of poor Hugo and added, “That’ll be twenty quid. And extra if I have to take him into the house.”

  “Let’s settle for twenty quid,” said Ritchie, with a smirk on his face.

  Hugo muttered something, as if he were trying to apologise for the whole situation.

  This was going to be a story we would talk about for some time. Once the taxi had driven off we walked for a while, still exhausted from carrying Hugo, but also in fits of giggles.

  “Was it the tequila or the whisky that did the damage?” asked Johnny.

  “Dunno, man. By the way, your taste in restaurants is rubbish. They didn’t even have the bloody Fetterthouch Glenghover. Or was the Fetterthouch Ballanlochar? Gee, I sound pissed just by trying to say those names,” Ritchie laughed.

  “Indeed that is the case; maybe a tad bit too spicy,” I added. It was just the two of us against Johnny now.

  “Did you see the steam coming out of his ears after the first bite of the Naga?” said Johnny.

  We were like schoolgirls who’d seen something naughty that they shouldn’t have, seeing what a fool Hugo had made of himself. I, for one, had a picture in my head of the taxi driver dragging Hugo up his path, and either rummaging through his pockets for a key to open his front door and throwing him inside, or just depositing him on his doorstep. I felt sure that Hugo, by that time, would have passed out, leaving him to wake where he lay exposed to the elements.

  We all laughed and left and carried on walking, glad Hugo was no longer with us.

  CHAPTER 13

  As expected, the Bray Saints lost their third match of the season. The mood was as grim as ever; Dex was in mourning and the team was as depressed as a stockbroker during a recession. At least it wasn’t raining. I hated to see his team losing that badly and I needed cheering up, so I approached Nala once they had changed. “Fancy a trip into town for some shopping?”

  “Hmm … I don’t know.”

  “Don’t worry, this trip is just to satisfy my need for new things – to cheer me up. You can just tag along.”

  “Hmm … sure – why not? Where are we going?”

  “I was thinking Windsor; there’s a new place a friend of a friend gave me the address of, and I want to check it out. Ever been to Windsor?”

  “Just once, with the school; we visited the castle.”

  “Met our beloved queen?”

  “No, nothing like that. We looked at the changing of the guard and then went inside. Lots of paintings, art and stuff.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Sort of; looked like a fairy-tale palace – I mean living in a castle and stuff.”

  “Well, this time we go and visit another kind of castle; or to put it better, we’re going to do a bit of treasure hunting.”

  “Do what?” she asked.

  “A treasure hunt. We’re looking for the perfect outfit.”

  “For your pleasure or one of your clients?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I added, laughing. It was always like that; I never knew for whom I was buying until I saw what I was dealing with. I had to follow the inspiration of the moment and decide on the spot. Not a great strategy, but the only one I knew.

  We drove to Windsor and parked not too far from the centre. During the trip I actually learned that Nala could say more than “I don’t know,” and I found she had a vast range of interests
. Football aside, she was a skilled artist. She briefly showed me some of her drawings while we were stuck in traffic and it came as a surprise. She carried a Moleskine block notes and whenever she was in the mood she started drawing. I saw a very nice portrait of Robbie Williams

  “Hey, that’s my brother, I recognize him,” I said whilst she was flicking through the paints. “He looks a bit sad, but after the match today, it seems somehow appropriate.”

  She showed me a portrait of Adam Levine, the lead singer of Maroon 5, and other drawing that reminded me of Japanese cartoons, although they had something more meaningful in them.

  “Wait a second, go back a bit,” I said at a certain point.

  “You mean this one? It’s a portrait of your friend, Ritchie and the other one. I saw them at the first match.”

  “Amazing. You are good, you know?” Saying good was not enough. She seemed to have captured the thoughts of my to friends in that drawing. Not only had she depicted them perfectly, she had also drawn their emotion, their feelings. I could recognize Ritchie in that drawing, with his fears, his mannerisms, the joy of that very moment. That was the difference between being able to draw and being an artist. In a simple page of a block notes, Nala was able to demonstrate that happiness indeed existed, and that it was possible to capture it, albeit in a drawing.

  “Have you been to this place before?” Nala asked, with a tone in her voice that actually suggested, “Come on, tell me you’re lost!”

  “Well … the address is correct, but it’s a tatty gift shop; I don’t understand,” I said. I took her hand and entered. There was nothing that stood out other than the Iron Maiden shirts, and a chubby guy by the till.