Strictly My Husband: It's funny, it's romantic and it's got dancing - what's not to love! (19 page)

‘Oh, we will need the results straight away,’ replied Archie. ‘My boss said Phillip was very clear about that. Like immediately. Head Office are coming up or something so it’s really important.’

‘Right. So it’s really important we get this right then, isn’t it?’

‘Of course.’ Archie looked at his watch. ‘But you can sort all that out, right? That’s what a research agency does, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but I need you to be absolutely clear on what you want or else we could do the research and it would be a total waste of money,’ she said, feeling exasperated. She watched as Archie’s eyes widened in fear. ‘If you tell
me the wrong thing or if what we agree here doesn’t give Head Office the information they want then all there will be to show for it is a bill from us. Not sure anyone would be impressed with that, are you?’

Archie looked at his watch again, then nervously up at Laura. He wasn’t smiling now.

He swallowed. ‘What do
you
think we should do?’ he almost whispered.

‘I think we should pretend this meeting never happened,’ she replied, closing her notebook emphatically. ‘I’ll email your boss with a draft set of questions first thing in the morning with a suggestion of how it should be administered.’

‘Good idea.’ Archie nodded eagerly.

‘Now would you be kind enough to take me to where the show is being staged so I can assess where the researchers might stand.’

‘OK,’ he muttered, his attention drawn to his watch again.

‘Don’t worry, you don’t have to wait with me,’ she said, putting her notebook in her bag and getting up. ‘Just let me on to the park and then you can go and meet your girlfriend.’

‘What!’ he said, jerking his head up. ‘How do you know I’m meeting my girlfriend?’

‘Your aftershave is, er . . . very present, and you keep checking your watch. And guys like you always have a girlfriend. I bet she’s just like you too,’ she said.

Archie blushed. ‘People do say that we are like peas in a pod,’ he admitted. ‘We do everything together.’

‘Does she work here?’ asked Laura, already knowing the answer.

‘Oh yes,’ said Archie. ‘We get to work together and at Wonderland, the best place on earth. It’s brilliant.’

She smiled at him. She envied him. She wished her life were that simple and that she were that happy.

Five minutes later Archie had let her through a side door and then scurried off to meet his girlfriend. He’d told her she was called Delilah, was utterly bonkers (obviously), almost as bonkers as him (obviously), and they were meeting in
the Enchanted Forest area of the park to take photographs of each other sitting on the giant toadstools which they were then going to turn into their joint Christmas card.

‘We’re dressing up as elves,’ he’d reassured her when she gave him a concerned look.

‘Oh, right,’ said Laura. ‘I get it now. That’s just so hysterical.’

‘I know. We’re going to have such a laugh. It was Delilah’s idea. She is proper mental.’

Laura nodded. ‘She must be.’

‘Well, she’d have to be to put up with me!’ Archie laughed.

They’d had an awkward handshake that somehow moved into a polite peck-on-the-cheek moment. She watched him stride off in the direction of the Enchanted Forest. Oh to be young again and thrilled to be taking pictures of each other dressed up as midgets.

It was already getting dark as she made her way along the pathway towards the main guest entrance to the park. She felt overwhelmed with nostalgia as she passed the Haunted House, which was, as far as she was concerned, the most romantic place on earth. It had been the end of the summer season and the last day of her contract before she returned to university. Her shoulder had been well and truly soaked by Tom as he’d grieved for his lost relationship with Natalie. They’d taken to going to the pub for a quick drink after work where Tom would sit nursing a pint going over and over the break-up, trying to make sense of it whilst Laura patiently listened, stretching out her vodka lime and soda for as long as possible. She didn’t mind hearing about Natalie night after night. Anything to spend time with him. Anything to see her thigh sit alongside his; anything to have the chance to gaze at his perfect face, which gave her goose bumps if he ever deigned to flash a smile. She didn’t feel used, she felt like the luckiest girl alive. She was sitting having a drink with Tom Mackintyre. She was the chosen one he was pouring his heart out to – who cared if his heart was full of someone else.

After a couple of weeks of melancholy moan-fests in the snug of the Green Man, Laura chanced her arm at lightening the mood. The grief appeared to be drying up slightly; the anguish was coming out at a drip rather
than a gush, leaving the odd opportunity in conversation to talk about something else.

‘By the way,’ she’d said casually one night, when they’d sat in silence for a few moments, ‘have you heard about Rob?’

‘Who’s Rob?’ he asked.

‘You know Rob – he runs the Pirates of the Cajun Chicken restaurant over in Stormy Seas Land.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Tom looked totally uninterested.

‘Well, his boss told him he wasn’t getting enough customers and he should think about having a Jack Sparrow lookalike outside to attract people in.’

‘Right,’ said Tom, barely nodding.

‘Well, Rob is such a doughnut, all he heard was “sparrow”, so he went to Wardrobe to ask if he could borrow a bird costume. They only had a giant yellow budgie so Rob put it on to give it a try and managed to push over a child by mistake. The dad went ballistic apparently and punched the budgie to the ground. So Rob’s boss walks by and instead of Jack Sparrow outside the restaurant there’s a budgie flat on its back, acting dead.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Tom, his eyes wide, an inkling of a smile at the corner of his mouth. ‘What I would have paid to see that!’

‘I took a picture,’ said Laura, quickly getting her phone out of her pocket. She leant into him so he could see the tiny screen and the photo of three men in park uniform crowding around an enormous yellow bird outside a pirate-themed restaurant.

‘That’s hilarious,’ he said, grinning for the first time in ages. ‘You could make a whole show with a giant yellow bird appearing in really odd places. Can you imagine?’

‘Oh yeah,’ agreed Laura. ‘It would be like a real life
Where’s Wally
.’

Tom paused for a moment, looking at Laura. She self-consciously ran her tongue over her teeth in case she had lipstick on them.

‘You are brilliant,’ said Tom, his face suddenly lighting up. ‘Do you know what we could do?’

‘What?’ asked Laura.

‘Not sure it would work though,’ he said, his smile disappearing.

‘What, what, tell me,’ begged Laura.

‘Well, we could do Where’s Wonderbear. Rather than your normal meet-and-greet type stuff, which is so boring now, we could set up a game of Where’s Wonderbear for kids when they arrive. Give them a clue sheet or something and they have to write down every time they see Wonderbear. We could be totally random and pick really weird places so they think it’s really funny.’

‘Like posing with the statues in the gardens or pretending to be a dinosaur in the T-Rex Terror ride?’

‘Or acting dead in the Haunted House, then suddenly coming alive like some weird bear zombie,’ he added, looming over her with scary eyes.

‘Cool,’ shrieked Laura.

‘Then we could do a meet and greet at the end of the day and all the kids could come and tell me where they’d seen me and I’d shake my head like this.’

Tom shook his head in an
I’m-amazed
fashion. Laura could only imagine how good Tom would be at acting like a bear in denial.

‘Let’s tell Bill tomorrow,’ he said, grasping Laura’s hands. Laura stared down at his hands over hers and then looked up.

‘Yes, let’s. I can show him the photo of the dead bird to give him an idea of what we mean.’

‘This is going to be hilarious,’ he said, wrapping his arms around her but then pulling back all too soon. ‘Can you come in early and bring your phone?’

‘I guess so,’ she replied when really she meant, of course, I will do anything you ask me to.

‘Let’s go round the park early with me as Wonderbear and take lots of
Where’s Wally
-style pictures to show Bill what we mean.’

‘Brilliant,’ replied Laura. ‘That’s a great idea.’

Tom grinned. ‘Shall we go mad and have another drink and sit and think of the funniest places we can put Wonderbear in?’

‘Absolutely,’ agreed Laura. ‘Let’s not lose momentum now. We need to carry on with this until we’ve nailed it. It could be a long night.’

Yes, they had a lot to thank Wonderbear for, thought Laura as she approached Tom, who was standing in front of the temporary stage at the exit to the park. It was five-thirty and the park was deserted having shut at four now that the nights were drawing in. Suddenly the park music went off and all that could be heard was the low rumble of generators powering spotlights that flooded the stage with light. Laura didn’t really need to see the area in order to put together her research proposal but she’d promised Tom she’d call in and say hello and tell him how the meeting had gone. Not that there was anything to tell him other than Archie really should use deodorant.

‘Where’s Wonderbear?’ roared Tom as she walked up behind him. Wonderbear didn’t appear on the empty stage. Tom turned to say something to Amy, who was standing next to him. He didn’t look happy.

‘I will ask one more time,’ Tom shouted at the top of his angry voice towards the stage. ‘
Where’s Wonderbear
?’

‘Maybe he’s playing dead in the Haunted House – or he could be peeping out of the photo booth at the top of the last drop on the Log Flume?’ offered Laura from right behind him.

Tom swung round. He smiled in instant recognition. ‘Playing dead in the Haunted House was the most fun I ever had as Wonderbear.’

He remembers, thought Laura. He remembers their first kiss in the Lurid Library whilst screaming teenagers whizzed past them with only a zombie in a coffin to shield them.

‘You were Wonderbear,’ said Amy in amazement.

Tom nodded. ‘Oh yes. In fact Laura and I made Wonderbear who he is today. Without the massive success of Where’s Wonderbear, then I’m afraid Wonderbear would no doubt have been relegated to the rejected theme-park mascot graveyard in the sky.’

‘We invented Where’s Wonderbear,’ said Laura when Amy looked confused. ‘Kids loved it.’

‘We got into places that Wonderbear never should have been,’ continued Tom, winking at Laura.

Laura felt herself blush. Where’s Wonderbear proved to be an overnight success with kids clamouring to visit the park in search of their new hero. Laura and Tom were given free rein with the game, putting them in
many a tight, intimate spot together as they tried to trick their followers. Squashed together behind a zombie in the Haunted House, Tom had said he needed air. He took his bear head off and with lips inches apart it seemed rude not to kiss, then snog for what had seemed a wonderful eternity, until Tom had finally pulled away and said, ‘I hope Wonderbear's not watching?’ They’d both glanced at the floor to see the blank eyes of the bear gazing back up at them. Screaming in delight they’d run out of the building into the sunlight hoping that no one would see a headless bear chasing a petit brunette out of the Haunted House.

‘Do you remember the time behind the giant gnomes in the Secret Garden?’ asked Tom.

Laura felt herself go bright red.

‘Disgusting,’ announced Amy before turning around. ‘Where the hell is Wonderbear?’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘If you don’t come out on this stage right now I will personally chop off your furry balls.’

‘We’re trying to rehearse the Twisted Tango – you know, like Carly and I showed you the other night?’ Tom told Laura.

‘I remember,’ said Laura through a forced smile, her nostalgia bubble deflating fast.

As if on cue Carly dressed as Malice Alice tottered on stage.

‘Speak of the devil,’ said Amy, looking right at Laura and raising her eyebrows.

She knows, thought Laura. Though what Amy knew she wasn’t sure.

Carly crouched at the edge of the stage, making it impossible to avoid looking up her skirt.

‘Crotch,’ Amy said, nodding at the offending exposure.

‘Oh, sorry,’ replied Carly, not looking the slightest bit embarrassed. She jumped down to join the three of them on the floor. ‘Hello, Laura,’ she said.

Laura nodded back.

Carly turned to Tom. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’

‘Bad news,’ said Tom. ‘Get it over with.’

‘Well, the bad news is Wonderbear man has a cold and hasn’t been seen all day, which apparently – I’m reliably informed, in theme-park
Entertainment Department speak – means he’s gone to audition for the pantomime in town.’

‘Happens every year,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘The sniff of another job at the end of the season and they’re off. No bloody loyalty. So what’s the good news?’

‘Apparently he’s crap so he won’t get the part and will return to work tomorrow,’ she replied.

‘Unbelievable,’ cried Tom. ‘And we are expected to welcome him back.’

‘Um . . . perhaps Amy could stand in just for tonight?’ said Carly slowly.

‘No can do,’ said Amy instantly. ‘Tom needs me out here, don’t you, Tom?’

For a moment Tom’s face had brightened but it fell at Amy’s response.

‘Of course,’ he was forced to agree. He put his head in his hands. ‘This is a shambles,’ he muttered. ‘I really needed to see Wonderbear in the number tonight so we could plot where he’s going to be. It’s like a little homage to Where’s Wonderbear, you see,’ he said to Laura. ‘He’s going to appear at odd times, in odd places – really get the kids going. You know, just how we used to do it.’

Laura could feel it coming. She wasn’t quite sure which direction it would come from but she could feel it dropping on her like a big fat trap.

‘Laura, could stand in,’ cried Carly, as if she’d just discovered the cure for cancer.

If Tom had asked or even Amy then it might have been palatable. Acceptable even. But Carly asking her to don the ugliest, heaviest costume you have ever seen, on the same stage where Carly would be prancing about as sexy Malice, was just too much.