Cleo woke early with a restless feeling shadowing her. It promised to be a fine day with the temperatures already pleasantly warm. When she had left the office on Friday, she had planned to 'get back in touch with Mother Earth' by working in the garden weeding and cutting the grass with the new hover mower. It had even crossed her mind that she'd take the time to visit a nursery with the view to spoiling herself with plants and flowers for the garden. But now, that original enthusiasm which had prompted her to come, had been dimmed by her dealings with Jason. The temptation to call him was tangible, except, where had she put his card? The fact that it wasn't anywhere visible had her searching, looking in the same places twice or more. There were only so many places to lose a card in an empty house but that didn’t reassure her. When she finally located it in her toilet bag, the relief was overwhelming.
As she sat with her second cup of tea getting cold, his card flicking in her fingers, she didn't know what she was assessing. From the time she had awoken, she had known subconsciously that she would ring him, which was why she had been searching frantically for his card. What she would say wasn't important because he would fill in the words for her. He was good at words and canny with it. She glanced at her wristwatch and realised that that was why she hadn't rung him yet. It wasn't even seven o'clock on a bank holiday Monday. She was probably the only person in all of England to be on her second cup of tea this early on a holiday weekend.
At seven o'clock, Jason lay with his hands behind his head looking up at the coloured lights sparkling on his ceiling. A cut crystal vase on his window sill was acting as a prism, casting fluctuating flickers of coloured light overhead, dancing as the leaves outside his window intervened with the sun's rays. He was a kid again. Prisms had been wondrous for him then. A freak occurrence in a shop window a couple of months ago had encouraged him to buy the vase for that quality alone. He had paid dearly for it but then he hadn't only bought glass, but escape. As a kid, it had been the nearest to magic he had ever come.
This morning the hypnotic movements were not enough to distract him from Cleo. God. Was he going to be able to wait for her to call or was he going to have to drive over there and act nonchalant as he asked her out to lunch? Perhaps, he ought to take the professional slant of proposing to give her an estimate for the work she had mentioned wanting done. Not that he would be touting for it. That would make a mockery of his policy of never mixing business with pleasure. There, he had neatly done himself out of a job without a backward glance. No, he would simply give her some suggestions and an idea of what she could expect to pay. He would not, however, suggest one of his competitors. That would be turning the knife in the wound.
He surprised himself by throwing back the covers and jumping from the bed. He'd known all along that he would take his chance and drive over there. Some would say he was a sucker for punishment but they would be wrong because this would be a first.
Absentmindedly wrapping himself in an indigo-blue, kimono-type dressing gown, he went downstairs to breakfast, taking the empty wineglass with him. Once the coffee maker was on, he took particular pleasure in choosing from any number of different boxes of cereal. He had never had the choice when he was a kid. They had been given those two wheat oblongs every morning for as long as he could remember and never three. As hungry as he might have been, he had sometimes had trouble finishing them because once the milk had soaked in, it turned them into wet cement with just as much taste.
The percolated coffee smelt good and he'd chosen brightly coloured loops to fill his bowl. They had to be a marketing success because they cheered him before he'd taken a bite. He was almost finished when his mobile phone rang from the kitchen counter. The unexpectedness of it had him choking on the last of the cheerful loops. It had to be Cleo. He nearly tripped over himself in his haste to answer it but felt his excitement ebb as he saw the caller's name – Bob.
"Hi ya!" spoken with more enthusiasm than he felt. "What's up Bob, besides you? You're early."
"Fancy a game? Dennis, Frank, Joe, Simon and me are off to Grovelands."
Jason knew that he was talking about a game of soccer. They often played on a Sunday morning before the park got busy. Being a bank holiday Monday was the same as a Sunday. He was sorely tempted. He looked at the time. Just gone eight o'clock. Cleo was probably still in bed.
"Sounds good. Meet over there in a quarter of an hour?"
"Done!" Bob replied, pleased with the prospect of having enough players to make the game interesting. Sometimes they would pick up a couple of other players once they got started. There were always those stragglers lurking near the field, hopeful of finding a game on the move.
Jason changed into his sports gear and left with a last swallow of his coffee.
Cleo glared at her watch which seemed to be losing time. She'd wait until nine and then she'd call him, although this hanging about was allowing time for doubts to set in. She vacillated. She'd ring now, and then the ball would be in his court. It would be up to him to find the lame excuse that would put her back into her place. Good grief, she had only met him a day and a half ago. Chemistry was a dangerous thing when one was ignorant. No. Not this early, after all. Nine or nothing.
As she waited for the hands of her watch to show nine o'clock, she had entered Jason's telephone number into her mobile phone. It was a manual operation which kept her mind occupied because she was already beginning to feel nervous. By doing it, she was ensuring that she wouldn't back down at the last minute as it only needed a push on one button to ring him.
At nine, she waited a couple minutes more so that it wouldn't look like she'd been aiming for nine. Then... contacts... Jason Dooley. She pushed the button and waited; each additional ringing tone pumping up the blood coursing through her veins, her head. It rang and rang and yet no answer. She was more disappointed than she would have liked to admit. Then humiliation began to gnaw at her. He must know it was she and had had second thoughts. This must be his way of rejecting her as she had rejected him last night. She nevertheless checked the written number against the registered one. They matched. She knew it was silly to imagine reasons why he wasn't answering when it might be something as simple as him being in the shower. She'd wait now to see if he got back to her, almost wishing that her call hadn't left a trace, especially with the early hour.
No, after all, she wouldn't sit around waiting. She had wanted to buy plants and that was what she would do. Her GPS would be happy to take her to the nearest plant place. She emptied the cold tea into the sink, placing the cup on the draining board. She would be glad once the house was furnished because it sounded very hollow and lonely.
The GPS had done a grand job of finding a whole road lined with garden centres and nurseries. Each was as good as the next, so, she turned into the first convenient car park which hadn’t yet filled. The summer weather was bound to bring out gardeners at every level, which made her glad she had arrived early. By the time she had pushed a heavy-duty trolley all around the centre filling it with the usual plants and anonymous ones she had never seen before, more than an hour had passed. She hadn’t thought about him more than superficially in all that time. She had wanted to kick herself, though, when she realised that she had left her portable in the car, on the passenger seat. It didn’t make her rush to pay. She would soon see if he’d called and a few minutes wouldn’t make much difference. He would understand that she hadn’t been sitting with it in her hand. There was still plenty of time to get home, deposit the plants before the question of lunch entered into the fray.
Once they had started kicking the ball around, it was easy to forget all else. To everyone’s surprise the good weather had drawn out more than the usual soccer fans. It hadn’t taken them long to include enough strays into the game that they had begun to play seriously. And of course, when from a distance it looks like a real game is going on, they had begun to draw spectators too. A little encouragement from the sidelines and they were all in heaven in a fast-paced game. It could have gone on for hours but some of the men were conscientious enough to think of the women that would be waiting for them at home. No point in aggravating the Mrs…
By the time Jason got home it was gone eleven o’clock. He’d inadvertently left his phone on the kitchen counter so the first thing he did when he walked in was to pick it up to check for messages and calls.
There had only been the one from a number he didn’t recognise. A ‘missed’ call had registered at just after nine in the morning. He wondered if it were Cleo, hoping that it was. He pressed on recall and held while it rang and rang. He hoped that this wasn't going to be one of those times when they would keep missing calls, not sure of the reason. He'd try again in half an hour.
-oOo-
Cleo wanted to cry. The holiday traffic had backed up causing a jam with cars entering and leaving the different garden centres. In an effort to get out of the wilting heat, because now the sunny day was hot, she'd turned left down a secondary road the minute she could. The GPS is a wondrous invention when it works. Now she was seeing two different, contradictory paths to take and neither of them looked like they were going in the right direction. As soon as she could, she pulled over and re-initiated the programme.
'Recalculating' came the synthesized voice before adding, 'continue for six miles'.
Six miles along country roads with nothing but greenery. This did not feel right. There were no road signs to tell her which way she was heading, not that it would help because this was all new terrain to her. Panic had her looking at the petrol gauge. That was when she had wanted to cry. It wasn't quite empty, but six miles this way and ten that, without a place to fill up in sight, on a bank holiday Monday – anyone would have wanted to cry.
Her mobile, still on the passenger seat had rung but she hadn't been able to answer just at that moment. A rather large van was coming at her from the opposite direction and they had had to slow to pass each other in the country lane. After carefully manoeuvring past it, the phone had stopped ringing while she had begun looking for somewhere to pull over. A shallow lay-by suddenly gave her the opportunity which she seized with relief. She could hear the long grass swishing along the side of the car but wouldn't have cared if it had been branches, she was that thankful to be able to come to a standstill.
She grabbed up the phone. One missed call – Jason. He suddenly took on the persona of a hero. She knew he would come to her rescue. She knew!