Hard Tail(63)

***

I hoped Matt wasn't anything like as distracted as I was at work that morning, or we'd be sending out bikes with the wrong number of wheels and no brakes. I misheard requests, gave people the wrong change, and more than once had total strangers give me funny looks and ask if there was anyone home. It was a blessed relief to shut up shop at one o'clock.

"Lunch?" I asked, poking my head around the door of the back room.

Matt had already packed up for the day and was looking at his phone with a puzzled frown. "Yeah …  I think that wine last night must've been stronger than I thought-there's a load of text messages here marked "read" I don't even remember seeing."

My stomach flipped. "Ah." I cleared my throat as Matt looked at me guilelessly. "I may have accidentally looked at some of your messages. Sorry." I tried to smile, but judging from Matt's expression, it wasn't an Oscar-winning attempt. "Don't suppose you'd believe I mistook your phone for mine?"

"Did you?"

"Er, no." I sighed. "I'm sorry. I swear I won't do it again. I was just worried Pr-Steve might turn up at Jay's, and the phone was just sitting there, and a text came through, and before I knew it, I was checking the messages. I'm really sorry. It was-well, I shouldn't have done it."

"Okay," Matt mumbled. I felt like a total arse. He looked up. "It's not that I mind you seeing them, really …  It's just, Steve used to do that sometimes. You know, the jealous thing-sometimes he got it into his head I was seeing another bloke."

God, I was an idiot. "I'm an idiot. Matt, I swear to you on … on Jay's leg, that I won't ever do it again. I'm really sorry."

Matt gave a weak smile. "You know, you could apologise for England. It's okay," he said earnestly. "I know you only did it because of Steve." He shoved both hands in his pockets. "Guess I did the right thing leaving him."

"God, yes!" It burst out of me with possibly inappropriate force.

"Thanks," Matt said. "For, you know, supporting me and all." He wrapped his arms around himself, as if he'd like a hug. I wished, more than anything, I could give him one.

So to speak. "Don't be daft," I said briskly. "Of course I'm supporting you. What kind of a b-of a friend would I be if I didn't?" I crossed my fingers behind my back that Matt wouldn't have noticed the slip. Not your boyfriend yet, Knight, and he might never be. "So, er, where do you fancy going for lunch? Pub again?"

"Are you busy this afternoon?"

I shrugged. "Not really. Why, did you have something in mind?"

"Well …  I just sort of thought, you haven't been to the beach since you've been down here, have you? So I thought maybe, if you want, we could grab some stuff from Asda and head off down to the coast for a picnic?"

"Sounds great." I felt ridiculously happy at this firm evidence he wasn't mad at me for reading his text messages. "Do you want to drive, or take the bikes?"

"Depends how hungry you are-it's a fair way, getting on for ten miles, and we've got to shop first."

"Maybe we'll go the lazy route for once, then," I said as my stomach rumbled in horror.

We grabbed a few things from the supermarket-all right, Matt grabbed a few things while I pushed the trolley-and set off down the A326 in Matt's Ford Focus, because the BMW just didn't seem like a seaside sort of car. We bypassed Marchwood and Hythe, then skirted the edge of the oil refinery at Fawley, a cyberpunk forest of chimneys belching out (hopefully clean) smoke and steam into the air next to Southampton Water. One or two showed flickering flames on top, like candles from a giant's birthday cake.




 

 

"Russell works there," Matt commented, nodding in that general direction. "He's a chemical engineer."

"Oh?" I said intelligently. "How do you know those two-is it from, um, gay bars? Or just from the shop?"

"Bit of both, really-saw them in the pubs and recognised them when they came in to buy stuff, so we sort of got talking. It's great, what they have together," he added a bit wistfully.

I nodded, gazing out of the window as Matt turned off the main road, leaving the chimneys of progress behind us and heading once more into the countryside. Open fields soon gave way to housing developments and local shops; then we were out of the town and back into the country again. The lane narrowed and became enclosed by trees, their dappled shade producing a sort of strobe effect with the June sunshine. With the view obscured, it was my nose more than my eyes that told me when we passed a pig farm.

"Nearly there now," Matt said, and all of a sudden, we rounded a curve in the road, and I could see the sun glinting off the sea ahead of us. We parked in a car park right on the sea front, overlooking a narrow shingle beach.