Turning Up the Heat. Ashley Lister
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Donny passionately entering one young woman doggie-style whilst another naked woman filmed him.
Donny had laughed the incident off without apology.
‘It’s just Donny being a dick,’ Trudy said again. ‘It’s definitely not worth troubling the police.’
‘What does Bill think you should do?’ Charlotte asked.
Trudy glanced towards the university campus. Dawn was now upon them. The night had been bleached from the sky and the heavens looked so clear she suspected it would be a glorious day.
She had been on the university campus when she first saw Bill. He had been a visiting lecturer and his words had left her convinced that she wanted to make a career dealing with foods and flavours.
‘I haven’t mentioned Donny’s text to Bill yet.’
Charlotte rolled her eyes. ‘I thought you and Bill didn’t have secrets?’
‘It’s not a secret. It’s just not something I’ve told him yet.’
‘Do you want me to have a word with Donny?’
‘You’re still in touch with him?’
It was Charlotte’s turn to glance at the university campus while she swallowed the remnants of her isotonic drink. She looked as though she was scanning the windows to try and find the location of their old classroom.
‘If you want me to have a word with him,’ she said eventually, ‘I’ll tell him to stop being such a dick.’
‘Do you think that will do any good?’
Charlotte shrugged. ‘I don’t think Donny has ever been swayed by a reasoned argument. But that’s not the point. If you want me to –’
‘No.’ Trudy shook her head. ‘I’ll deal with Donny. He sent the text message to me so I should be the one who deals with him.’ She paused to grin at her friend and added, ‘Besides, you’ve got enough going on in your life with this new and secret love.’
‘He’s hardly new. And it’s not a secret.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I’m not telling you. Not yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s none of your damned business.’
Her cheeks had been flushed with the efforts of exercise before. Now they were crimson with embarrassment. She was looking in every direction except at Trudy, as though on the verge of being shamed by the revelation.
Trudy remembered seeing her friend suffer the same embarrassment when she had been found to be involved in an ill-advised threesome with Donny and one of Donny’s regular fuck buddies, Gemma Hadfield. Not wanting to make her friend endure the humiliation of an unnecessary revelation, Trudy shook her head and placed a reassuring hand on Charlotte’s arm.
‘You’re right. It’s none of my damned business.’
Charlotte seemed to shrink with relief.
‘I’ll tell you about him soon,’ she promised.
Trudy shook her head. ‘If you want to keep your new love a secret I won’t press again. I promise.’
Charlotte sniffed. ‘He’s not exactly a new love,’ she muttered. Then she shook her head and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thanks for being understanding about this. And, if you want me to contact Donny and tell him to stop the stupid threats …’
A worrying thought crossed Trudy’s mind.
Had Charlotte said that her current lover was ‘not exactly a new love’? She was clearly embarrassed to admit who he was and Trudy wondered if her friend had restarted her relationship with Donny. The idea left her cold and worried. The prospect of Charlotte and Donny getting back together again was unsettling. Donny had hurt Charlotte badly once before. Trudy didn’t want to see her friend suffer that misery a second time.
‘Will I see you at HQ this morning?’ Charlotte asked. It was the name they had decided on for their shared offices at the Sweet Temptation bakery. Daryl always called it ‘the fun factory’ but, for Charlotte and Trudy, it was invariably HQ.
‘I might be a little late,’ Trudy replied. ‘I’ve got to go to the market to track down a couple of spices and take care of some other business. I might also need to do a little research and development.’
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. ‘Some other business? Are you keeping secrets now?’
Trudy blushed and nodded. ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted.
‘Does the research and development involve this damn flavour you’re trying to identify?’
‘You can read me like a book, can’t you?’
They hugged with a promise to catch lunch together. Then Charlotte was heading back to her home at Eldorado and Trudy jogged back towards Bill’s house, through the city centre, and taking a detour via the old market.
She made her way to Finlay West’s premises at the rear of the old market. It was an ancient spice shop. The sign above the door said the company had been in business since 1870. Bill often joked that Finlay had been there on the day the shop first opened. Whenever he made the joke in Finlay’s earshot, Finlay said that Bill had been his first customer.
Inside the air was perfumed with the memory of a thousand exotic spices. The wall behind the counter was a collection of drawers and jars, each labelled in West’s fussily neat handwriting. Trudy knew that the stockroom was even more copiously stocked and she doubted there were many spices in existence that Finlay West couldn’t locate in seconds. She was certain that, when it came to identifying and understanding spices, there was nothing that Finlay West didn’t know.
‘Trudy McLaughlin,’ West sighed cheerfully. ‘You’re here early, aren’t you? Would you care for a drink?’
He was elderly and grey. His smile shone through the silver wisps of his beard as he beamed at her and called her by her name. His eyes, hidden behind wire-framed spectacles, sparkled with bright enthusiasm.
‘Are you making the drink?’ she asked. ‘Or will you be bullying Imogen into making this one?’
It wasn’t really bullying, she conceded. When Imogen was working with him West had an abrupt way of shouting, ‘Shop girl – make yourself useful for once and put the kettle on.’ Trudy supposed it was part of the banter the pair shared throughout the working day. But she still didn’t like the idea that Imogen might resent being treated as some sort of lackey, expected to provide beverages for the benefit of West’s customers. She supposed, if she was being honest with herself, she didn’t like the idea of Imogen having any further reason to resent her.
‘Imogen doesn’t start for another hour,’ West said, checking his watch. He shrugged and added, ‘If you’d said yes to the offer of a coffee, I was going to send you over the road to buy two cappuccinos from that new shop.’
Trudy shook her head and laughed softly. ‘I’ll buy the coffee,’ she said, ‘if you’ll do me a favour with this.’
She took the muffin from the pink bag on her hip and placed it on the counter in front of him.
West regarded it with suspicion. He made no move to approach the muffin. He thrust his hands into his pants pockets and frowned down at the counter. It was like watching a police detective studying the scene of a crime.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘It’s a muffin.’
He glanced up from the muffin and considered her with a disapproving frown. ‘You’ve been hanging around