Strictly My Husband: It's funny, it's romantic and it's got dancing - what's not to love! (13 page)

‘There you go, Jerry,’ he said. ‘They should all be working now.’

‘One word,’ said Tom to Jerry. ‘Why?’

‘Why the hell not?’ said Jerry.

Tom and Laura stared back at him.

‘Come on,’ he cried. ‘How much fun was it dancing at your house last week?’

Laura winced at the memory of Tom and Carly gliding around together.

‘It was great,’ agreed Tom, ‘but not many people learn a few steps of the salsa and immediately build their own dance floor in their basement. And where is the damn Xbox Jerry?’

‘Gone, mate.’

‘What?’

‘Gone.’

‘But I was beating you,’ replied Tom, looking genuinely angry.

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Jerry. ‘We can have parties, we can dance,
you
can dance. You never dance any more. You always used to dance.’

‘You used to call me a pink poofter for dancing when I was a kid,’ replied Tom.

‘You so had no sense of humour when you were young,’ replied Jerry.

‘Yes I did.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘You were a bully.’

‘No I wasn’t.’

‘Oh, don’t start,’ sighed Laura. She didn’t know what to say about Jerry’s creation. She wanted to say it was brilliant. Pre-Carly turning up she would have said it was amazing and she would have shoved her husband straight on to the middle of the floor and danced with him just for the hell of it. She might even have risked showing off their tango, given that Jerry and Will were never going to be the harshest of critics. But she couldn’t do it now – despite what the ladies at the focus group had said the other day. Dancing with her husband when there was a professional in the room somehow sucked all the fun out of it.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been in your house this long without being offered a drink,’ she announced.

‘Coming right up,’ said Jerry, dashing across the dance floor and positioning himself behind his bar. ‘How about we start with a little Kir Royale?’ he suggested, reaching into a fridge behind him and pulling out a bottle of Prosecco.

Carly went bounding up and sat on a tall stool. ‘This is seriously cool, Jerry,’ she cried. ‘Gordon didn’t have a bar, or a dance floor.’

‘And who is Gordon?’ asked Jerry, pouring their drinks.

‘My ex,’ said Carly. ‘The bastard who dumped me last week.’

‘Well, cry no more, my friend, you may not have a Gordon, but you now have friends with dance floors and cocktails.’ He handed out the tall glasses. ‘To friends with dance floors and cocktails,’ he said, raising his glass high with an enormous grin.

‘Hell yeah,’ cried Carly, ‘the best kind of friends.’

We are not friends, thought Laura. We will never be friends. She downed half her drink. These are my friends. This is my life, not yours.

‘Where’s Hannah?’ she asked once the warmth of the drink had
calmed her.

‘She’s running late. Had to do something at the office. She’ll be here any minute.’

‘And what does she think of your latest addition to the home?’ asked Laura.

Jerry paused before he answered.

He shrugged. ‘She’s not seen it yet.’

‘I thought you said you were going to ask her first,’ said Will as he arrived at the bar having put the stepladder away. ‘I’ll have that pint now, if it’s still on offer, Jerry.’ He nodded at the fully functioning beer pump.

‘I was going to ask her,’ said Jerry, turning to grab a glass off a shelf behind him, ‘but I thought she’d prefer the surprise.’

‘She’s going to love it, right?’ said Carly. ‘Who wouldn’t love coming home to a husband who’d installed an enormous glitter ball in the basement?’

Laura, Tom and Will raised their eyebrows at each other.

‘You’ll have another go at the cha-cha-cha with me now, won’t you, Will?’ asked Carly.

Will spluttered his first gulp of his pint back out.

‘Now there is all this room and a proper dance floor? You can’t look at that and not want to dance,’ she went on, casting her arm around the vast wooden floor.

‘Yeah,’ said Jerry encouragingly. ‘How can you say no to that?’ He pointed at the dance floor. ‘And that,’ he continued, pointing at Carly whilst giving Will a wink.

Will took a long draw on his drink. ‘Like I said last week,’ he announced, putting his pint down firmly, ‘Tom’s the dancer, not me.’

Laura felt herself deflate at Will’s response. Why couldn’t Will behave like any other normal single man and let Carly do whatever she wanted him to do on that dance floor? If he did the dancing foreplay thing with her then she wouldn’t have to watch her husband do it.

‘What on earth . . .?’ came a voice from behind them. They all swivelled to see Hannah at the bottom of the stairs, pointing at the enormous glitter ball and looking accusingly at Jerry. Laura couldn’t help but notice that Jerry took another gulp of his drink without replying.

‘Why?’ Hannah asked, looking directly at Jerry. ‘How much?’ she added.

‘It’s all right, love,’ said Jerry, coming out from behind the bar and walking over to her. ‘We’re installing one in a hotel ballroom in Somerset. I got it at cost. What do you reckon? Isn’t it great? You gonna boogie with me later?’ He grabbed both her hands and attempted a shimmy but she stood stock-still and stared right at him. No one dared speak.

‘I . . . I . . .’ she began, glancing over at the bar where the rest of them were poised waiting for her verdict. She looked back at Jerry and let her breath tumble out of her mouth and her shoulders drop. She looked weary. ‘I’ll go and check on dinner,’ she finally replied, pulling her hands away from Jerry’s. She turned and disappeared back up the stairs.

There was silence apart from the sound of Gene Kelly splashing through some puddles and singing about the rain. Jerry turned round to face them, his signature big grin plastered on his face.

‘We’ll give her a drink and she’ll be giving it some Travolta before you know it,’ he said, strutting back across the floor to his bartender post. ‘She’s working too hard,’ he continued, shaking his head. ‘I keep telling her she doesn’t need to spend every bloody hour of the day in that office. What’s the point in running your own business if you can’t play hooky every so often?’

‘I think her putting all those hours in means
you
can play hooky,’ said Laura

‘Laura Mackintyre!’ exclaimed Jerry. ‘Who gave you too much Prosecco and let you speak your mind so early in the evening? It’s not even eight o’clock.’

‘Well,’ replied Laura, blushing slightly, ‘she does seem to work really hard and you do seem to er . . . er . . .’

‘Swan about a lot,’ finished Tom.

‘Fuck off,’ said Jerry at Tom. ‘That
swanning
about, as you call it, secured us a contract for two spanking new developments today. If I hadn’t
swanned
around the muddy fields of Hertfordshire on Saturday, shooting with the great and good of the leisure industry, then we wouldn’t have got it. I work very hard at my swanning around, I’ll have you know, and it is very lucrative swanning around at that. Anyway, you’re one to talk, you swan around all day
telling young girls to writhe around semi-naked and dance in front of you.’

Will coughed and put his empty pint glass down on the bar. ‘I think I’ll go and put my stuff away,’ he said. He turned and strode off up the basement stairs, his tools jangling around his waist on his belt.

‘It’s not like that, and you know it,’ said Tom, turning on Jerry. ‘Is it, Carly?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Carly firmly. ‘No, it isn’t. Tom is a complete professional.’

‘Oh, stop getting your knickers in a twist,’ said Jerry, leaning forward to top up everyone’s glasses with Prosecco. ‘I was only joking. I know you’re not like that but I do remember you telling me about your old boss getting the entire Halloween cast to run around the lake in their underwear because he said they had to get used to performing in the cold. Tremendous.’

‘Really?’ cried Carly. ‘No way!’

‘I have to say there is nothing like running around in your undies in five degrees to bond a company,’ said Tom. ‘That was the year I was Count Dracustein. The most evil man in the whole of Wonderland. I based my character on the old Entertainments Manager actually as he was a proper devil to work for.’

‘Count Dracustein?’ said Carly. ‘I would have liked to have seen that.’

‘It was a brilliant show that year, even though I do say so myself,’ he replied. ‘But it was back in the days when we used to do them on a special stage outside after dark. It was so much better than in a theatre. The atmosphere was incredible.’

‘Why don’t they do them outside any more?’ asked Carly.

Tom shrugged. ‘Budgets. Some finance twerp looked at the cost of building the stage and putting in all the special lighting and decided it was a waste of money and we could achieve the same thing in the Celebration Theatre. But he was so wrong. No one can be bothered to walk all the way out to Back of Beyond World. And now of course the boss says not enough people watch it so he’s not giving us any more money to spend.’

‘Oh,’ said Carly, looking crestfallen.

‘I keep telling him that if we moved it back to the main plaza at the exit to the park then the entire day’s attendance will see it,’ continued Tom. ‘But no, it’s not worth the money apparently. Instead we’ll end up with some shitty
show in a falling-down theatre that hardly anyone bothers to go and see.’

‘They’re not shitty,’ said Laura, suddenly feeling very sorry for her husband. ‘Last year’s
Pumpkin Plotters
was hilarious.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tom with a sigh. ‘Sorry, Carly,’ he said. ‘Not what you need to hear.’

‘But . . . but you made it sound so amazing when you described the show to us all,’ she said.

‘It could be. But the lighting in the theatre is past it and the stage is really too small for those big dance numbers so we will have to tone them down and limit the scale of the costumes.’

‘It can’t cost that much to build a stage, can it?’ asked Jerry.

‘Probably not, but the number-crunchers don’t see it as money well spent so it ain’t going to happen.’

‘But everyone is so excited about the show,’ said Carly. ‘We can make it work, can’t we?’ She looked pleadingly into Tom’s eyes. ‘If we all pull together and work really hard? It’s such a brilliant idea; we can’t let it be rubbish. We just need to be positive. Make it happen. Come on, Tom, you can make it happen, can’t you?’

‘No I can’t,’ snapped Tom. ‘I’ve tried before, believe me, and failed. You don’t understand. It’s too hard without the necessary resources.’

Carly shrank back on to her stool looking visibly stung. Laura could feel the tension flow out of her body and the guilt flood in. Oh, the relief that Tom had got frustrated with Carly’s youthful naivety and that they wouldn’t be having the tremendous time building a fabulous show together. And the guilt that she felt good about that.

‘We’ll build it,’ said Jerry.

‘What?’ said Tom.

‘What?’ said Laura.

‘What?’ said Carly.

‘We can build it,’ he told Tom. ‘We can build a stage, piece of piss. My boys could knock one of those up in a couple of days.’

‘You’re not listening,’ said Tom. ‘There’s no budget for it.’

‘Aah, don’t worry about that,’ said Jerry, reaching round for another bottle of Prosecco. ‘We’ll sponsor it or something. Tell you what, we’ll build it if
Phillip will let us put a billboard at the gates with our name on saying we’re building the lodges’ development. All sorts of people come through those gates from all over. Wouldn’t do us any harm to get our name out there.’

‘Are you serious?’ asked Tom.

‘Why not? Probably find we can write it off as a marketing cost or something. I’m sure Hannah can work out how to put it on the books.’

‘Oh my God,’ Carly cried, jumping off her stool. ‘That’s just brilliant, isn’t it, Tom? You can do your show how you want to.’

Tom was staring at Jerry, speechless.

‘But what do we do about lighting?’ he asked when he’d finally found a use for his mouth. ‘It’s very generous Jerry, but a stage without lighting is useless. And Phillip will never stump up for lighting now. I’m so sorry, Carly.’

Laura grabbed the bottle off Jerry and poured herself another glass of Prosecco. What’s he apologising to her for? It’s his show.

‘Can’t you get someone to move the lights out from the theatre?’ continued Carly, looking desperately between Tom and Jerry.

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Jerry, walking over to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Will,’ he shouted. There was no answer. ‘Will,’ he shouted even louder. Next minute there was a thumping down the stairs and Will, quickly followed by Hannah, reappeared.

‘You’re not at work now, you know,’ said Hannah crossly. ‘You can’t go ordering people around like you do there.’

‘I just wanted to ask Will a question, that’s all,’ said Jerry. ‘Are the sparkies on schedule at the log cabins’ build at Wonderland?’

‘Is this a trick question?’ asked Will, casting a worried look over at his brother.

‘Why are you asking him that?’ demanded Hannah.

‘Just answer the question, please,’ Jerry asked politely.

‘We’re ahead actually,’ he replied. ‘We’re having to slow down because we’re catching up with the builders. We will have run out of lodges to put electrics in any minute. I was going send a couple to another site on Monday before they’re sitting doing nothing.’

‘And there is your answer,’ said Jerry with an elaborate bow directed at Tom and Carly. ‘Will here will be able to solve all your electrical woes.’

‘Oh my God, you are brilliant,’ cried Carly, throwing herself at Will. ‘This is going to be brilliant, isn’t it, Tom? Just brilliant. I can’t believe it. It’s going to be the best Halloween show ever.’

‘What is she talking about?’ asked Hannah, looking confused and cross.

‘Jerry’s going to build us a mega Halloween stage so we can do Tom’s dream show,’ she said breathlessly, having released Will from her grasp. ‘And we thought that the lights would be a problem but not any more now Will is in on it. Oh I could kiss you.’ She stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek before he could do anything about it. Looking slightly dazed he reached up to wipe the lipstick off.