The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart (29 page)

I’ve only got myself to blame. If only I’d been more organised and printed my designs off this morning rather than faffing about on Facebook. I’ve got to leave Joseph and my list with my personal life at the door. From now on I’ve got to put work Abi first.

Chapter Twenty

One week and six days until the abseil. I can’t even get excited that I’m ticking two items off my list this weekend, as the more I tick off the closer I am to having to dangle from that thread . . .

‘And you have no idea where they went?’ says Ben, whistling air through his teeth.

‘None. Thank God for IT and their back-ups. I’m just glad I was working later than Linz on Friday
night, because if she’d deleted them before the back-up then I would have had to start from scratch and I would have been in even more trouble with Rick and the clients for delaying the designs.’

The train that had been rocketing through the West Sussex countryside begins to slow, signalling the approach into our station.

‘You’re sure that it’s Linz that did it?’ he asks.

‘Absolutely. I spent
the rest of the week watching her, and she kept looking at me and giving me these small, telling smiles. And she’s all over Rick like a rash. It’s disgusting.’

‘Have you told him about your suspicions?’ asks Sian.

I look up, surprised for a second that she’d joined the conversation. I hadn’t realised she’d been listening. Ever since we’d met Ben and Pete at the train station, she’s only had
eyes and ears for Pete. I’d almost forgotten that they were with us.

‘No, I felt pathetic enough saying I’d lost the files, I didn’t want to risk accusing the golden child.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ asks Ben.

‘I don’t know. I’m being extra careful and saving everything to my personal Dropbox account as well as on the office folder. There’s not really a lot I can do. It’s not like I can
prove who did it.’

‘Can’t your IT department tell who deleted the files? You would think in this day and age that would be possible,’ says Pete.

I hadn’t even thought to ask them. I was just so grateful that they were able to find the files.

‘I don’t know. I guess I can ring them on Monday.’

It’s a long shot, but if I could prove that it was Linz that did it, I could go to Rick and show him
what she’s really like.

The train grinds to a halt and we hurry off it.

‘Where did this rain come from?’ I say, wishing I’d bought my cagoule instead of my silly lightweight military jacket – it’s barely warming, let alone waterproof.

Yesterday, when I’d sweated my way through the Race for Life, it had been unseasonably hot for April, but today, when we actually want to feel like we’re on the
Med, it pisses down. Typical bloody English weather.

Pete starts singing ‘Why Does it Always Rain on Me?’ and Sian giggles.

‘Right, shall we wait for the rain to ease off a bit,’ says Ben. ‘It looks like it’s just a shower, and the vineyard is supposed to be a half-hour walk from here.’

‘What about getting a taxi?’ asks Sian.

‘That would get us there dry,’ I say. ‘But I think you have to walk
around a lot of the vineyard to get to the bit where they do the tasting anyway. There’s a pub over there. Why don’t we get a quick drink and wait for the rain to pass?’

The pub is all cute and villagey and looks inviting. It’s one of those crooked white-washed buildings with a thatched roof.

‘Sounds good to me. I don’t think I’ve dried out from last week yet,’ says Pete.

He links arms with
Sian and they make a run for it out of the station and across the road to the pub.

‘Seems like they’re getting on well,’ says Ben, raising his eyebrow at me.

‘Yes, well, you missed the warm-up act last Sunday.’

He nods slowly. ‘I’m sorry about that. I had no idea that Tammy was going to show up and I really needed to talk to her, so I couldn’t not go.’

‘It’s fine,’ I say, waving my hand around
like I wasn’t in the slightest bit bothered. ‘Right, let’s go.’

We do a fast walk out of the station and a slight jog across the road.

I push open the heavy door and barely get over the threshold, when Sian calls over to ask me what I’m drinking.

I take in the surroundings – it’s exactly as I imagined it would be from the outside. There’s the log fire at one end and low, dark wooden beams decorated
with horse brasses and tankards.

‘I’ll have a G&T.’ This doesn’t look like the type of pub you drink wine in and my real-ale days are well and truly behind me.

I go into scout mode, looking for somewhere to sit. It’s not very busy – just a few people tucked around the tables by the fire. I soon come across a snug at the back of the pub. There’s a large round table, and a wooden bench that runs
around it lined with cushions.

‘This is perfect,’ says Sian, squeezing round and Pete shimmies in next to her. I go round the other way to sit next to her and Ben sits next to me.

‘Well, cheers,’ says Pete, and we all chink glasses.

‘This is really cute,’ says Sian, looking around.

‘I know, isn’t it?’ I say.

‘I’ve been here before,’ says Pete, ‘When I was walking the South Downs. There’s
actually a few more pubs in the village that are really quaint too. It’s a village that’s big with the walkers.’

I sip my drink and realise that it’s going down rather nicely.

‘It’s a shame we’re not going on a village pub crawl, instead of the wine tasting,’ I say.

I can just see myself sipping G&Ts at the other pubs. Maybe having some Scampi Fries in one of them and a fat home-cooked pie
in another. If I’m honest I don’t really feel like swilling wine around my mouth and spitting it out, trying to pretend I can taste the hint of pine or blackberries that are supposedly there.

‘We’ve got to get your list done somehow,’ says Ben.

Ah, yes, the list. It all comes down to the list. He’s right. It might not impress Joseph to see pictures of me in the pub where he’d probably expect
me to be, but walking through vineyards and sipping wine with barrels behind me might. Only in my head I think I’d imagined some French vineyard in the boiling hot sunshine. I hardly think walking in the countryside being pelted by the rain, my hair all frizzy and the vines obscured by the drizzle, is going to conjure the same image.

‘I was thinking of you this week,’ says Ben.

We’ve lost Sian
and Pete to the board game Mastermind.

‘You were?’

‘Yes, I got an email about a colour run in Brighton, and I thought you and Sian might want to enter. I know you’ve ticked the run off your list, but they’re pretty cool. I thought after yesterday’s race you might have caught the running bug.’

As my Rudolph the Reindeer-coloured nose will testify, the only thing I caught yesterday was the sun.
I honestly thought at times on the course that I was going to have a heart attack. By the end I was little more than speed marching and even that was tough. I don’t want to put myself through that again, especially if it wasn’t even for the sake of the list.

‘What’s a colour run?’ I ask out of politeness.

‘Oh, it’s like this running event where everyone wears white and then at various points
of the course people throw coloured powder at you.’

‘Right,’ I say, thinking that it sounds like one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard of. Not only do you have the torture of running, but you get stuff thrown at you to boot.

‘It was fun when I did it. You end up all coloured and they have really good music pumping round. The atmosphere is electric and you barely realise you’ve run anywhere.
Thought it might be the kind of thing you’d like now.’

‘Um.’ I’m still not convinced.

‘I’ll forward you the email, just in case,’ he says, shrugging.

I feel a hint of sadness that he’s suggested that I do it with Sian and not him. It really does sound like when this list is over we won’t be seeing each other again.

‘Anyone want another drink?’ asks Pete, standing up.

‘Wouldn’t say no,’ says
Ben. ‘Is it still raining?’

Pete leans round the edge of the snug. ‘Seems to be.’

‘OK, then, I’ll have another pint.’

‘And I’ll have another G&T,’ I say, looking down at my almost empty glass.

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ says Sian, getting up to join Pete.

‘I don’t think this beer is doing my palate any good for the wine tasting,’ says Ben.

‘Like you’d be such an expert anyway.’

‘I’ll have
you know I’m a wine taster extraordinaire.’

‘Oh, really,’ I say, laughing.

I know I haven’t been in that many drinking situations with Ben, but I’ve never seen or heard him talk about wine. I’ve only seen him drink beer.

‘Oh, yes, when I was at university I was quite the expert.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Yep, we lived near a Netto, and I think I tried every wine they sold for under four pounds. I’m pretty
good at telling what’s drinkable and what’s essentially vinegar.

‘Sounds sophisticated,’ I say.

I don’t want to tell him that I’m not much better. I still pick my wines based on what’s on special offer.

‘To be honest, I may drink a lot of wine, and despite Joseph trying to educate me, I don’t have much of a clue what I’m talking about. I usually play it safe with a Pinot Grigio for a white
and a Shiraz for red.’

At least I can pronounce them, unlike
Chi
anti . . .

‘Well, that’s probably more than I know. I got told off by a girlfriend once for pouring her wine into a mug and ever since then I’ve given it a wide berth.’

‘You never heard of glasses?’ I say, laughing.

‘Of course, but I lived with four other blokes at uni. There was no way we’d own actual wine glasses. She wasn’t
impressed and refused to drink it. But really, what difference is there between a mug and a glass?’

‘She sounds like she was high maintenance.’ I nod in consolation.

‘Yeah, the mug probably did me a favour.’

‘Well, I have to say I’ve never drunk wine from a mug before.’

‘Then you’ve never lived. I did offer her the bottle so she could swig it straight from that, but she wasn’t having any of
that either.’

‘Another thing I’ve never done.’

‘And you went to university? Things must have been different at yours than they were at mine. I drank alcohol from anything that hadn’t been piled up on the kitchen side for more than a week. I once drank shots from an egg cup and beer from a saucepan.’

‘Yuck, that’s gross. It definitely wasn’t like that in our shared house. We had a dishwasher.’

‘What? That’s cheating. Were you like the poshest students ever?’

‘No, probably just cleaner than you were. I remember going round to some of the houses of the guys that we knew. They were disgusting. I used to pray that I never had to use the loo. They were worse than the ones from when I went camping as a kid.’

Ben lets out a belly laugh.

‘Yeah, I remember my mum coming to visit once a month
and bringing her Marigolds. I’m sure she even had one of those funny SARS face masks too.’

I get a mental picture of his mum dressing up in a floral pinny and slipping on industrial rubber gloves before going in to tackle the unknown.

‘Now that’s best-mum-in-the-world material right there.’

‘Absolutely. None of us understood what bleach was. I think she probably stopped us from getting dysentery
or some other godawful disease.’

‘Does your mum still come and do your cleaning for you?’

I haven’t been to Ben’s flat. I know he lives above the shop, but I can’t imagine it being anything like Joseph’s grown-up bachelor pad. Even though it’s a long time since Ben was a student, I still imagine him living like one. I can visualise the dishes piled up in the sink and the floor covered in oily
bike parts. I’m sure his mum nips round every few weeks to give it a blast.

‘She actually passed away a few years ago, so no.’

‘Oh, God. Ben, I’m so sorry,’ I say. Instantly the smile falls off my face and I sober up a notch. ‘I didn’t mean to put my foot in it.’

‘You didn’t and you weren’t to know. Besides, it’s fine, I can talk about it without being a total crumbling mess. Well, most of
the time anyway.’

‘What happened?’ I ask, unsure if he’ll want to talk about it.

I’m suddenly glad that we’re in the snug and away from the hustle and the bustle of the rest of the pub as this has suddenly turned into an intimate conversation.

‘She had a brain tumour. It was all quite sudden, although I think the symptoms had been there for a while but we hadn’t put them all together. She went
through a round of treatment and they thought they’d got it, but then it came back more aggressively and there was nothing they could do.’

‘That’s awful.’ I instinctively reach over and rub his arm.

‘It was awful, there’s no denying it, but at the same time, she knew she was going. A few weeks before she died, we went up to her favourite holiday cottage in the Lake District for two weeks – we’d
been there when we were kids. We played board games, read books to her, spent time on the water. It was some of the best family time we’d ever had.

‘That’s how I remember her. Sitting on the deck of a boat in the pissing rain, all wrapped up in waterproofs, giggling away. She’d never looked so happy.’

I share Ben’s smile, but my heart aches for him. It’s one of those awful fears that you have
as you get older. You know your parents are getting closer to death, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

I can’t imagine a world without my parents. They drive me crazy, and we’re not that close, but I like to think they’d be at the end of a phone line if I needed them.

‘I’m lucky that I’ve still got my dad. It hit him really hard when she died. They’d been teenage sweethearts and they
were that couple that was really in love, you know?’

I can’t imagine the pain you must get from losing your soulmate like that.

‘I see a lot of him, though, as he helps out in the shop once a week.’

‘That’s really nice. Does he live locally?’

The more I talk to Ben the more I realise how little I know about him. We’ve spent all this time together and I never knew about his mum or that his
dad worked at the shop. It makes me realise how self-obsessed I’ve been – talking about myself and my petty love-life problems.