Insurance! Of course he would have insurance. Stress was doing odd things to her intellect. Lainie could have twirled with relief. She hadn’t fancied the prospect of eating baked beans and Marmite toast for dinner for the next six months.
Richard drew in a sharp breath through his nose and also glanced at the waiting photographer. The pap was looking a bit chagrined at such continued and unusual reticence from a man who had been known to blow his top over spilled tea.
“You do have insurance, don’t you?” she asked quickly, trying to divert him. Her fingers pressed a warning into his arm.
He seemed to take in her presence for the first time, and he scowled at her. “Of course I have insurance,” he snapped, pointedly picking her hand off and returning it to her. “That’s hardly the point, is it?”
From the perspective of her wallet, it was very much the point. But she appreciated that his pride was more outraged than his finances. It was actually a relief that he had returned to grumping and glaring at her. It made it considerably more difficult to feel warming, sympathetic, dangerous things toward him. Richard was a less disturbing element when she could keep him tucked firmly in her mental box of grievances. Just pulling him out now and then to touch up the doodled fangs and devil’s horns.
Mary returned with the police constable, and Richard continued to disappoint most of the crowd by not raising his voice or stamping his feet, either metaphorically or literally. He did mutter something about a clod-footed fool, but it was under his breath and not within PC Porter’s hearing, so Lainie chalked that up to a win for public relations. She rubbed her finger over the car door to see how deep the gouges went, and he reacted like a fussy hen that didn’t want people touching her eggs.
At some point in their association, her eyes were just going to roll right out of her head and bounce along the floor like a cartoon.
Fortunately for his health, as she would have made creative use of the prizewinning pumpkin if he’d been rude, he was quite polite and gracious with her niece Emily, although clearly uncomfortable with—well, humans, really. His reserve with strangers was not limited to the youth. Emily seemed unimpressed by his efforts, but then Richard was over thirty. He also bathed regularly and covered his entire backside with his trousers, so he couldn’t really be any less cool to a thirteen-year-old.
While Richard filled in his police report and Emily resumed her distant ogling of Johnny, Lainie and Sarah helped with packing up the tea tent and the baking stall. There were only a handful of items left unsold on the table. Unsurprisingly, the stuffed celery sticks had proved less popular than the chocolate brownies and toffee apples. There was a time and place to push the five-plus a day mantra and it was not at a charity carb fest.
Sarah was almost wriggling with her need to offer further commentary on the Richard situation, but was restricted by the presence of the WI. Lainie made a mental note to screen her calls for a day or two.
Once Johnny had left to catch his train back to London, Emily became impatient to return to her natural habitat. She tugged at her mother’s sleeve with one hand, texted a friend with the other and whined. Teenage multitasking at its best.
Sarah allowed herself to be dragged away, still glancing mischievously from Lainie to where Richard stood, putting out stroppy vibes and making PC Porter visibly uncomfortable. Lainie emphatically waved her relatives off and went to thank Mary and the other women for their hard work. They promised to put through a transfer to the Shining Lights account as soon as the cash tally had been finalised.
They left just after one o’clock, with enough time to get to the theatre by four, barring a flat tyre, car accident or roadworks. Richard was a simmering, brooding presence behind the wheel, tapping the indicator impatiently whenever they were stalled in the flow of traffic. Lainie wished she was driving, so she would feel comfortable turning on the radio to break the silence. It always seemed rude to do it in someone else’s car, like a tacit acknowledgment you weren’t being entertained or would rather not speak to them.
True in both instances here. She was bored, and she also didn’t want another squabble. They appeared to be incapable of having a conversation without it deteriorating into a spat. There was something about their personalities that rubbed and ground into sparks.
Perhaps best to avoid verbs like rubbing and grinding. They conjured certain images.
She watched the progress of the tic in his left eye. It was probably a good thing she couldn’t read his mind. Her fragile ego might not be able to take the strain. “I’m sorry about what happened to your car,” she ventured at last. Because she was sorry. And she had manners.
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “It’s fine,” he said, as if it hurt to open his jaw more than a centimetre.
“No, it’s horrible, actually.”
“I said it’s fine.”