After the One, Cass Lester [top romance novels .txt] 📗

looked as if they’d been ridden straight off the set of a classic movie. Charley could instantly imagine herself on one, pedalling gaily through the city streets, with the wind in her hair…

‘I rescue them from skips and tips and do them up,’ the owner told her, bringing her down to earth.

Nevertheless, she fell hopelessly in love with an ice-blue bike with a cream leather seat and a wicker basket strapped to the front handlebars.

‘D’you want to take it for a spin along the dockside and try it out?’

‘Seriously? Aren’t you scared I’ll nick it?’

He looked her straight in the eye, as if he were appraising her. ‘No, I trust you. And anyhow, I’m sending Security,’ he joked, as he called the dog over. ‘You won’t outrun Carlo!’

So, a few minutes later, Charley was bowling along the dockside on the bike with the huge lurcher gambolling along easily by her side, with an expression of pure joy on its face. The feeling of fun and freedom was intoxicating.

‘I’ll take it,’ she announced, slightly out of breath, when they arrived back at the shop.

‘Great! Any problems, just bring it back.’

She paid, and then gave the lurcher a final ear scratch before cycling off. Pedalling homewards she reflected that it had been a good morning’s work. It wasn’t just that she’d done what she’d set out to do and had bought herself a bike, it was the added bonus of having bought it from someone who seemed to be a thoroughly decent, charming guy she instinctively felt was trustworthy. Optimism flooded through her. Maybe the morning would prove to be a turning point. That happy thought sustained her all the calf-tearing way up the hill home.

Chapter Five

It seemed that Charley might have spoken too soon, because the following day did not start well for her. Halfway through her shower the hot water suddenly cut out, deluging her with freezing cold water.

‘Bloody hell!’ she gasped. Towelling herself dry she figured that either the boiler or the shower were about to die, and hoped to God it was the shower, because the boiler would be far more expensive to replace. Wrapping the towel around her she tried the shower again, and this time it dutifully ran hot, so perhaps it was an intermittent fault. Frankly, she was none the wiser but she wished she’d adding Basic Plumbing to the list of evening courses she’d taken.

Then, less than an hour later, having shoved a load on to wash, an alarming squeaking sound suddenly erupted from the washing machine as it went into spin cycle. She groaned, then glanced round at the fridge and the cooker, both of which were equally elderly.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ she warned them, then she grabbed her laptop, checked her bank balance online, did some rapid sums and promptly felt sick. As it was, she was going to have to live on Pot Noodles, not even pasta and sauce, if she was going to make the mortgage repayment this month. And that was without factoring in the additional expense of home repairs. She could take another chunk out of her redundancy, but she absolutely refused to do that, since that little pot of money was her safety net, her only safety net.

Pondering her dire financial position, it occurred to Charley that if she couldn’t get a better job than working in the pub, or at least a better paid one, there was nothing to stop her taking an additional one. She was drawing up a list of things she could do alongside her bar job – cleaner, courier, part-time sales assistant – when the doorbell rang.

Tara stood on the step, clutching a bunch of bright orange tulips and a pack of Danish pastries. ‘I’ve just dropped Monnie at mini-gym. Got time for coffee?’

‘Are those cinnamon swirls?’ asked Charley, narrowing her eyes in mock interrogation.

‘Yup!’

‘In that case, I am putting the kettle on…’

The women took their coffee through to the small back garden and sat on the wooden bench, balancing their mugs on the slats between them. The garden was unrecognisable from the mattress-and-junk strewn yard it had been when Charley and Josh had first bought the place. Together they’d cleared out the piles of rubbish, painted the fence sage green, sown a small patch of grass and planted up a dozen or so big earthenware pots. Glancing round, Charley noticed the lawn needed mowing and the pots could do with a bit of a weed, but she decided to worry about that later, because just right now chilling in the late spring sunshine with Tara was utter bliss. She kicked off her shoes and focused on the simple pleasures of feeling the warmth of the sun-baked patio slabs under her feet and the icing from the pastry melting on her tongue. She wasn’t going to ruin the moment by thinking about money. Well, that wasn’t until Tara popped her blissful bubble.

‘Any news on the job front?’

Charley’s mind raced to find a positive spin. ‘Yes,’ she lied, ‘I’ve had a bit of a rethink, and I’m drawing up a list of things to apply for… so it’s going pretty well.’

It was a good attempt at deflection, but futile – trying to deflect Tara was like trying to distract a charging rhino with a string of party bunting.

‘Get your laptop, let’s have a look,’ she ordered, and Charley’s shoulders slumped.

After briefly scanning Charley’s list, Tara promptly rejected everything. ‘These are all zero-hour contracts. There’s no job security and they’ll treat you like dirt.’

‘There’s nothing else!’

‘Oh, there must be!’

Tara’s scathing contradiction caused a sudden burst of temper to flare up inside Charley. Clearly Tara had no idea how intensely infuriating it was to be told that achieving something was a thousand times easier than it actually was in practice.

‘I’ve applied for dozens, literally dozens of jobs and so far nobody’s offered me so much as an interview, and half the time they don’t even bother to get back to me at all!’

‘How