Never Say Love Read online

  Chapter 15

  Lucy crept down the stairs at her parents’ home early on that first Saturday morning since she’d moved home, listening to the conversation from the kitchen, her mum and dad were talking about her.

  “Something’s wrong,” she heard her mum say, “has she still got a job? What about the girls she was living with?” Sitting on the stairs, Lucy listened as her parents chatted. She heard her mum boil the kettle, imagining her dad sitting at the kitchen table, watching his wife making the early morning drinks and preparing breakfast.

  Listening to her dad, tears started to prick her eyes. “I’ve no idea, but she sounded dreadful when she called me yesterday. She won’t say what’s happened, other than she’s been an idiot. Poor love.”

  Staying on the stairs, Lucy listened some more to the conversation. She had moved out of the family home as she didn’t really get on with her mum. Nothing major, just two women in the same house, the law of nature dictating that there would be ructions with two females in the same nest. She loved her mum and believed that her mum loved her too, they just couldn’t live together. In her heart, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stay here too long.

  The conversation between her parents came to a stop, her indication to stand and make her way into the kitchen. As she stood there in the doorway looking at her parents at the kitchen table, she felt yesterday’s tears threaten again. Her dad, looking up at her, at his beautiful daughter, his only daughter, just started the waterworks off again.

  “Dad, I’ve been so stupid.” She sobbed.

  Both of her parents stood, her mum walking to her and opening her arms, “Oh Lucy, what’s gone on? Tell us love, please.”

  She pulled back from her mother. “I can’t. I’ve just been stupid.” She choked through the tears. “I need to find another job and somewhere else to stay.”

  “You can stay here as long as you need to.” Her dad stood and joined the now family hug. “But I’d really like to know what’s happened.”

  Lucy looked at her dad, “No, I can’t say, but I’ve just been an idiot, that’s all.”

  Chapter 16

  Benito woke with a stinking headache and an incredibly sick feeling in his stomach. Walking slowly to his kitchen, he prepared himself a cafetière of coffee and dry toast made from the bread that Lucy had insisted he now kept in, although he had no idea if he’d be able to eat it.

  After showering, in an effort to make himself feel just a little more human, he checked his phone—two missed calls from his father.

  Wrapping a towel around his waist, he called his father whilst waiting for the painkillers to work. If he didn’t call him back, he’d only get pestered until he had spoken with him.

  “Dad, sorry I missed your calls.”

  “What the hell is going on Benito? What has happened to this girl that’s apparently gorgeous, beautiful, kind and caring? What have you done?” Franco snapped down the phone.

  “Dad, my head hurts. Don’t shout!” Benito held his head in one hand and the phone to his ear with the other.

  “Fucking hell Benito, I send you to the UK to drive the business forward, and all I hear is that you wrecked some girl’s life. What’s got into you? Who is she, this beautiful girl I have been hearing about?” Franco bellowed at his son.

  Benito shook his head. Moving towards the fridge, he looked for cola that was flat, reverting to his old hangover cures—anything to make him feel human again. Shaking his head as Franco bawled him out, “Can I call you back when my headache is gone?”

  “No, you fucking can’t. You tell me now son or I’ll come over and sort you out myself. What the hell is going on?”

  Benito sighed, nobody crossed Franco, not even him. “It just went wrong, that’s all. She was lovely, beautiful. She is beautiful. Dad, she reminded me of mum in so many ways, not looks, but in every other way. She was too good for me, that’s for sure. I just didn’t want it to end like this. It shouldn’t have happened like that and now, now I think I’ve ruined her.”

  There was silence from his father’s end, Benito just listening to his father’s breathing, his head in his hand waiting for the onslaught, for the lecture that would surely come. There was a deep sigh from Franco and then, the talk.

  “Benito son, how many times have I told you? You find a good woman, you need to woo her, make her feel like she’s the centre of your world. She has to feel special.”

  Franco continued his pep talk, all of it Benito had heard before, all of it, he knew was right. The pep talking ending with “We look after our own in this family…”

  Chapter 17

  Lucy sat at the kitchen table pushing a piece of toast around her plate and sipping a cup of weak coffee that her mum had made, it had far too much milk, her parents watching her.

  “I’ll be out of your way as soon as I can,” Lucy looked up to her mum. She knew she couldn’t stay here long, two or three days at the most before her and her mum would start arguing again, both independent women—it didn’t make for good living arrangements.

  “No, love,” her dad jumped in, “you stay as long as you need. Come Monday, you can contact the agencies and try to get yourself another job. Do you want me to ask at the office? There was a vacancy for a dispatcher. I don’t know if they filled it?”

  “Would you ask for me?” she looked at her dad, “please. I could do that I’m sure.”

  Nodding his head, he looked at his daughter, “Lucy, you could do it with your eyes closed. I’ll ask. I’m on the early shift Monday.”

  Lucy really didn’t want to work for the courier company that her dad was a salesman for, especially as a dispatcher for the same day couriers, but it would be better than nothing. At the very least, it would allow her to find a room in a student rent again.

  She continued to push her breakfast around, nibbling at the corner from time to time as her parents left the kitchen.

  Feeling stupid and used, she gave up with the toast and started to clear away as her mum appeared with the telephone. “Your brother wants to speak to you.”

  Glaring at her mum she took the phone from her. “You haven’t told him, have you?”

  Covering the mouthpiece her mother hissed in low tones, “Told him what exactly Lucy? I can’t tell him anything because you haven’t told us what’s gone wrong. All I know is that you’ve been stupid, that’s what you’ve said. Now, take the bloody phone and speak with Michael.”

  Thrusting the phone towards Lucy, her mother stood by and watched as her daughter spoke.

  “Hey, Mikey, haven’t spoken to you in ages,” she tried to sound brighter as she spoke with her brother.

  “I know baby sister. Mum said you’ve moved back in, sucker!” he laughed.

  “Not for long,” looking at her mum who was still watching, she chose her words carefully before wandering out of the kitchen “I’ll be gone as soon as I find another place.”

  “Can’t you talk Luce?” He asked.

  “Give me a minute…” she headed towards her room. “Right, I’m in my room now.” Sitting on her bed, she poured her heart out to her brother, despite the age difference and the fact that Michael was married with a family of his own, the brother and sister remained so very close, often sharing their secrets with each other. Lucy knew before her parents that Michael and his wife, Lisa, were expecting their first child.

  “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” she cried down the phone, “a quick shag, that’s all I was.” The only piece of information she left out was that she was innocent before Benito. She left it out deliberately because she knew that if Michael, or her dad, knew this, they would go looking for Benito and probably wouldn’t win. In fact, she knew who would come off worse.

  “Oh sis! Do you want to come here, stay with me and Lisa for a few days? I know she’s desperate for a night out,” he referred to his wife.

  “Could I? Anything’s better than staying here. Dad’s great, but I’ve not been back for long and mum’s already breathing d
own my neck all the time.”

  “Sure, get your things together, and I’ll come and get you. Give me a couple of hours.”

  Ending the call, Lucy took the phone back to the cradle in the hallway of her parents’ home, knowing that there would be hell if it rang and couldn’t be found, a lesson she’d learned long ago before she moved out. “Was Michael okay?” her mother asked.

  “He’s fine. I’m going to stay with him and Lisa for a couple of days. Lisa wants a night out.”

  “Do you good Lucy,” her dad called from the kitchen, “get yourself out, you go and you have a good time, you understand me? You’re too young to be settling down just yet anyway.”

  Shrugging her shoulders and not really wanting to speak to her parents about what had happened, she took herself back upstairs, showered and packed a few things in a holdall. Perching on the side of her bed, she waited for her brother.

  Each time Lucy heard a car outside, she stood, looking out of her bedroom window, checking if her brother had arrived.

  Mikey pulled up outside as Lucy watched from her window. Parking his standard company Ford at the kerbside, he walked to the front door. Dressed in a scruffy pair of jeans and a t-shirt, Lucy heard the doorbell ring.

  Grabbing her bag, desperate to leave her parents home yet reluctant to leave her dad, she ran downstairs and straight into her brother’s extended arms, weeping as she did.

  “Lucy, come on sis, no more tears.” He pushed her back slightly, looking into those beautiful blue eyes of hers.

  Michael and Lucy were totally different in colouring, him being dark haired, his skin tone darker just like his father, whereas Lucy was blonde and fair like her mum.

  After a chat with his parents, a coffee and a biscuit, Lucy and Michael set off for his house, a short drive from her parents. Lucy couldn’t wait to see Lisa, who was just a few years older than herself. The sister-in-laws got on so very well, although they hadn’t been out together for a while, something that Lucy missed, but with the arrival of Lisa’s children, in common with other young mum’s, Lisa found it difficult to get out of the house without a child attached to her leg!

  “Lucy!” Lisa smiled as she opened the front door to their home, “such a long time. Come on in. Charlie’s staying with my mum this weekend and Lilly’s having her morning nap,” referring to her son, the older of the two children, and her baby daughter.

  “Oh, when is he coming back? I was looking forward to building things with Charlie. Still, I can play peek-a-boo with my favourite baby niece!” Lucy laughed.

  “Come on sis, I’ll show you to your room.” Mikey started up the stairs as Lucy followed.

  “Try not to wake Lilly,” Lisa said quietly, “I want an hour with Lucy on my own.”

  Following her brother up the stairs, Lucy started to feel a little more relaxed than she had felt at her parents. She followed her brother to one of the smaller rooms of their home.

  Mikey was just like their dad, a successful salesman, but rather than selling courier and carrier services as their dad did, he sold printed packaging. Both of them, father and son, having the gift that was often perceived to make a good salesman, they could both sell snow to Eskimos if they were ever required to. His success was evident from the home they had for a relatively young man of just 28. He and Lisa had a lovely home, not huge, but in a great location within excellent school catchment areas. Lisa worked from home as a transcript typist, chose her own projects and worked her own hours.

  After leaving Lucy in her room, he ventured back to his wife finding her in the living room with a mug of coffee and a magazine. “She’s a mess Lisa.” He said quietly, shaking his head, a worried look in his face.

  “What’s going on?” Lisa placed the magazine by her side and looked up at her husband.

  He shrugged, “All she said is that some guy took a fancy to her, mega-loaded by all accounts. She stayed with him in a penthouse, one of those posh new ones. She has eaten at that Reid’s Hotel, you know the one in Covent Garden? She’s given up her job and taken up one that he offered her with a huge salary. He persuaded her to leave the hovel she was staying in,” he looked at his wife, “Now that I am pleased about. He made out that they had something going, you know a relationship, and then she caught him telling someone on the phone that she was a quick shag!”

  Lisa gasped, “Oh, no wonder the poor girl is a mess. So she’s got nothing now, no job, no home?”

  “Yep, walked out on the job, probably not a bad thing, but also walked out on the new job, the one that this guy gave her. I’d love to know what’s really gone on, but knowing Lucy, we’ll never know.”

  Lisa watched as her husband relayed the reasons, as much as he knew anyway, for Lucy being homeless. “We’ll go out tonight. You’ll be okay looking after Lilly? Charlie’s at my mum’s until we collect him tomorrow.” She suggested.

  “Sure,” Mikey smiled, “Take her out, give her a good time. I’ll get some cash for you both.”

  Standing, Lisa walked towards Mikey, her hand brushing his shoulder. “I’ll go up to her, ask her if she wants to go out. I’ll call the girls and see if they want to come with us.”

  Creeping quietly upstairs, Lisa tip-toed past her sleeping baby’s room and knocked quietly on Lucy’s door.

  “Come in,” Lucy whispered, smiling as Lisa wandered in.

  “Shall we go out tonight, uptown? I can ask Clare and Kim to join us. What do you think? Michael said he’d give us some cash.” Lisa winked and smiled and the prospect of an evening out funded by her husband.

  Lucy sat on her bed, thinking. “Okay, yes, I’d like that. I haven’t seen Clare and Kim since, well I suppose just after you were married.”

  Sitting next to her young sister-in-law, Lisa placed her hand on Lucy’s back. “They always talk about you, how you got drunk at our wedding. Gosh Lucy, you were only, what, 17 at the time? I remember Michael trying to get you to sober up before your mum found out. What a night that was!”

  Forcing a smile, Lucy recalled the event. “Hey, it wasn’t my fault, it was yours, giving me cider. I remember it well, until a point. I remember you saying, you can’t get drunk on cider. You said it was only apple-flavoured pop!”

  They laughed quietly as they reminisced about the nights they’d had out, when Lucy was much younger. How Lisa had helped her to dress up to look much older than she was. Lisa was more than just a sister-in-law; she was more like a big sister.

  Chapter 18

  Napping the afternoon away, the day soon passed into early evening. Lisa had arranged for a cab to take them into London and made plans for them to meet Clare and Kim at a little wine bar before they headed off for a club or two.

  “Have a good night,” Michael kissed his wife on the cheek and gave his sister a hug before they set off in the cab that was waiting for them. “Be good and don’t get into any trouble. I need my sister back in one piece and her broken heart mended!”

  He was rewarded with a glare from Lucy. “My heart is not broken!” she snapped, tears threatening again. Taking a few deep breaths, she gathered her thoughts before climbing into the waiting black cab.

  “Good girl, you go and have a good time.” Mikey waved as they pulled away.

  After a short ride, Lucy and Lisa pulled up outside a little wine bar that apparently Lisa used to go to regularly with her friends, before the children arrived. The first to arrive, Lisa ordered a bottle of house white before they found a table near the window and waited for their friends to join them.

  “So what really went on?” Lisa asked.

  Lucy shrugged, “Can we not talk about it, not now. Please.”

  Lisa sighed, “Fine, but you know I’ll always listen, when you’re ready.”

  Lucy half laughed, “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to share what happened, not fully anyway.”

  Looking worried at Lucy’s statement, Lisa’s face hardened, “Nothing bad Lucy? Please tell me it was nothing bad.”

  Lucy shook her head, a
half smile crossing her lips, “No, nothing like that. I couldn’t have wished for a more caring man.”

  Taking a deep sigh, maybe of relief, Lisa relaxed slightly. While waiting, they talked about Michael, his job and the children, and how Lucy’s mother still tried to interfere with Michael’s life, in just the same way as she did with Lucy’s. They also talked about the reason that Lucy felt she couldn’t be at home for long and how Lisa’s parents were golden, happy to look after the children, if needed at a moment’s notice, how Charlie was, most likely, being spoiled to death right now and how both sets of parents doted on both of their grandchildren completely. Their conversation interrupted by the arrival of Clare and Kim, the two bubbly friends that Lucy hadn’t seen for ages.

  Clare and Kim were the same age as Lisa; the three had been friends since school, all of them happily married, and all bridesmaids and matrons of honour for each other; Lisa being the first of the three to marry and the only one with children.

  “Lucy,” they sang in chorus as they made their way over to the table. The four girls, hugged and air kissed, chatted and drank as they occupied the window seat of the wine bar.

  Two bottles of wine down, and they decided to move on. Lucy apparently not used to so much drinking as the other three, swayed out onto the pavement, steadied by Lisa and Kim. “Henry’s, I think.” Clare giggled as they headed off in the direction of the new trendy nightclub.

  “Look at the queue!” Lucy shouted. Her voice slurred as Lisa attempted to stop her from swaying too much.

  “Ssh, Lucy, keep quiet; if they know you’re drunk, they won’t let us in. Just keep quiet.”

  “Okay Lisa. I’ll keep vely, vely quiet,” Lucy slurred, “vely, vely, quiet.” She giggled, holding her forefinger to her lips.

  Looking at Clare and Kim, Lisa rolled her eyes, “This one’s on orange juice as soon as we get in, okay!”