Romantic Association - Loves Me, Loves Me Not

Before she could say any more we heard the front door open and worried voices on the stairs as Raymond and my father ascended.

‘She’s here,’ my mother said even before they had opened the door of the living room.

‘Thank God,’ Raymond said.

My father just stared. I could see his distress and it would have broken my heart if there had been anything left to break.

‘We’ll go now,’ my mother said. ‘You two need to talk.’

I watched them go. Raymond just stood and stared. He’s going to tell me now, I thought—tell me that he still loves Laura.

So his next words took me by surprise. ‘Why did you run away?’

Did he really need me to tell him?

‘Because you went with Laura,’ I said. ‘I saw the way you danced with her. I realised that you still love her. You lost her once and now she’s come back.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ he asked.

I nodded mutely.

‘Well, you were wrong!’ I don’t think I had ever seen him look so angry. ‘Completely and utterly wrong.’

‘But you left the floor together—you went up to the snack bar.’

‘And what did you imagine we were doing? Did you think we had fallen into each other’s arms?’ His face was white.

‘I…it crossed my mind.’

‘For God’s sake, Jeannie. I had to talk to her. I knew from the moment she pulled me on to the dance floor that she hoped we might get together again and I had to tell her as soon as possible that it wasn’t going to happen.’

‘Why not?’ I whispered. ‘Don’t you love her any more?’

Raymond sank down on the sofa beside me and pushed a lock of hair back wearily.

‘Of course I don’t. Don’t you know that by now? Don’t you know how much I love you? How grateful I am for every day we’ve had together?’

I turned to look into his face and saw the truth. I couldn’t help it, I began to sob.

Raymond put his arm around me and drew me close.

‘Don’t cry, my Jeannie,’ he said and those were probably the most romantic words I’ve ever heard.

Neither of us spoke after that. We lay in each other’s arms on the sofa. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked, the bars on the electric fire glowed comfortingly and we fell asleep.

In my dreams I heard the music playing but there was no one in the ballroom except Raymond and me. He walked towards me across the dance floor and held out his hand. Then he pulled me into his arms and we began to dance.

Jane Gordon-Cumming began writing when she was about seven and used to make up stories about the teachers at school to entertain her friends. Making people laugh has been her main object in life ever since. She has had many short stories in magazines and on the radio, as well as in the OxPens anthologies of stories set in Oxford. Her first novel, A Proper Family Christmas, was published in 2005, and she is working on A Proper Family Holiday, set in a Gothic dower house in Gloucestershire. Jane is Deputy Treasurer of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and Secretary of the Oxford Writers’ Group. She lives in Oxford and is married to Edwin Osborn. When not writing, she enjoys trips on Worcester, their diesel-electric narrowboat, works as a volunteer in archaeology and sings in two choirs. You can read more about her on her website www.janegordoncumming.co.uk

It all started when I was sacked from the naughty food company—for being silly. You wouldn’t think it was possible, would you? It was the most amazingly silly job anyone could have, making marzipan penises and sugar boobs for party novelties and adult stocking-fillers all over the world. They’re particularly big in Japan, I gather—the market, that is, not the penises and boobs. The only reason anyone would have for taking a job like that would be for a laugh. And so that you could tell people what you did when they asked at parties. It made a real change from the usual run of primary school teachers and computer operators, I can tell you.

So how did I manage to get myself sacked from Edible Erotica? It’s a long story, involving a visiting dignitary from a chain of sex shops in Kiev and a packet of Durex. For such a silly company, they took themselves far too seriously. I should have stayed at the building society.

‘The trouble with you, Gina,’ said my friend Leonora, ‘is that you’re just not serious-minded enough. That’s why you can’t hold down a proper job, or why you never seem to have a boyfriend.’

Leonora is very serious. She’s a social worker for a start—or was till she decided to stay at home to look after Jacyntha and Tyrone. She has really serious hair, dark and floppy, held back by a Sloany hairband, and wears knee-length skirts and brown tights and Edinburgh Woollen Mill cardigans.

‘You were just the same at school. Yes, I know it was funny when you put a fig leaf over that nude statue in the art room, and the red dye in the showers when we were doing Macbeth. But…well…one grows out of that sort of thing, doesn’t one?’

It wasn’t exactly a question.

‘You’re pushing thirty now. Middle age isn’t so far away. And that’s when a young girl with a wacky sense of humour starts to become an eccentric old maid! You don’t want to end up alone, do you?’

‘No, I suppose not.’ On the other hand, did I want to end up like Leonora?

‘Well, if you’re ever going to find someone suitable to settle down with, you’ll simply have to get men to take you more seriously.’

Men were a bit of a sore point. As Leonora pointed out, I’d never had anything approaching a long-term partner. My relationships, assuming they survived the first few dates, tended to degenerate, as she would put it, into friendship. I have a lot of really good friends who are men. They like the way I make them laugh and that they can talk to me as an impartial member of the female sex without feeling there’s any danger of things getting heavy between us.

‘And do you have someone in mind?’

‘I have, as a matter of fact. He’s called Patrick.’ There was an unexpected gleam in Leonora’s brown eyes which, in anyone else, might have been taken for lust. ‘He’s absolutely gorgeous, Gina! As soon as I saw him, I thought how perfect he’d be for you. I met him at Mike’s Christmas party.’

‘Oh. A lawyer, then.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with having a serious job.’ She frowned at my expression. ‘Mike says he’s very highly thought of by the firm. He’s well-spoken and intelligent, and really good-looking…’

‘And still unattached? He must be gay or have some weird personal habits.’

‘Of course he’s not gay!’ Leonora flushed at the idea of anything so unconventional. ‘As a matter of fact, he’s just come out of a relationship with a woman. Oh, well—’ she sighed, relieving me of my empty mug with a resigned air ‘—I had thought of inviting you both to dinner with some of Mike’s other colleagues but I suppose it wouldn’t work. You’re not serious-minded enough to attract someone like Patrick.’

‘Huh!’ Why should I be deprived of this paragon of manhood, just because I had a naturally light-hearted attitude to life? ‘I could be serious if I wanted.’

‘I don’t think so, Gina.’ Leonora considered me sadly. ‘You’re just not that sort of girl.’

I tried looking like that sort of girl. It meant screwing one’s mouth up into a line and sitting up straight in the chair with one’s feet neatly together.

‘Well, if you’re going to make silly faces…’

‘No, honestly! It just needs a bit of practice. Why don’t you ask Patrick round in, say, a month’s time? I’m sure I could become serious in a month.’