Read The Yorkshire Pudding Club for Free Online Page B

by…

Chapter 4
    Cleef was around Elizabeth’s legs as soon as she had got in the house after Janey had dropped her off, a black silky shape mewing for attention, his tail a velvet curl of a question mark that asked: Where have you been? Where’s my loving?
    ‘You’ll break my neck one day, you will!’ she tutted at him, but with an affectionate smile, then she heard the snoring upstairs and her heart sank. Why did she ever let him have a key? Although to be fair to herself, she didn’t really, she just lent it to him one day and he never gave it back. Then things started to appear, as if by osmosis, from his house to hers: CDs, smelly trainers, dirty washing.
    She picked up Cleef and they did their obligatory head-rubbing thing, then she plonked him in the big furry circle that was his bed and went upstairs. However careful she was not to wake the snoring form when she pivoted herself gently into her own bed, it didn’t work and it awoke, leaned over and immediately started fumbling with her.
    ‘Gerroff, Dean,’ she said.
    ‘Oh come on, we haven’t had it for ages,’ he said.
    She did not want it then either. She did not want to feel anything inside her, so she took the short cut through all the pleadings and whining and relieved his frustrations a different way. Then he went back to sleep and Elizabeth stayed awake and stared ahead of her in the dark.
     
    ‘BUGGER!’ said Janey, finally landing the elusive ‘don’t forget’ that had been flitting around in her head. She had to tell Elizabeth who she was sure she had seen in the Co-op, who she had seen in the Co-op because there was no mistaking John Silkstone, even after seven years. She would have said hello, had she not been stuck at the only checkout with a good short queue and a till operator who did not click her ‘help’ light on every five seconds. She noted there was a little more grey in his still mad, dark hair and he looked even bigger than she remembered him to be, unless she had shrunk in her thirties. He stood head and shoulders above most people, like a big friendly giant holding a loaf–no, it was John Silkstone all right, there wasn’t anyone else it could have been. Janey made a positive mental note to ring her friend in the morning and tell her, although it was possible she would forget again. Just lately, her memory was getting terrible.
     
    Nocturnal sleep? What’s that then, because I can’t remember, thought Elizabeth with some frustration. It must have been three o’clock when she eventually got off and then wished she hadn’t. She had one ofthose muddled dreams that seemed to open up all sorts of cupboards in her head and dredge everything out: Auntie Elsie was in it and Sam barking at her; Julia, Laurence and his one furry snake of an eyebrow chasing her up Rhymer Street whilst she tried to run away from him in big tartan slippers; Bev holding a really ugly baby; Helen crying because Janey was having an affair with Simon; Lisa laughing at her with him . She was glad to wake up–or at least she was until ten minutes later when she felt exhausted again.
    I’m turning into a chuffing owl! she thought. A day off sick tempted her but spending it in bed with Dean set her feet in her slippers and off downstairs to put the kettle on pronto. She left him snoring in bed; he would get up at some point and make a messy breakfast no doubt. At least he would not be home when she got back from work, for the ‘Victoria’ called him like a Siren at five. That was one lady he would never disappoint with a surprise appearance.
     
    The rumours about the Just the Job takeover had the whole building on edge, and tension hung in the air like a bad-egg smell. Julia ‘I don’t do good-mornings’ was sitting at her desk when Elizabeth walked in. The sight of the pouty vole-like face was enough to set the hairs on the back of her neck bristling so hard she could barely get her coat off over them. Her desk was invisible under a pile of new