Читать книгу The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife - Daisy Waugh - Страница 34

Darrell stayed late this afternoon—late enough for me to offer him beer instead of the usual tea and biscuits. Fantastic, as Fin would say, while texting his location manager in Bucharest.

So I offered Darrell some beer, and he said yes! Fantastic. I think he fancies me. Maybe. A bit. Not nearly as much as I fancy him, obviously. But a little bit. Perhaps. Or he might do. I don’t know.

Anyway it was just him and me, that’s the thing. His partner (Ralph, I think30? He’s OK but he has a nobbly head, like a bad potato; also, I suspect, beneath the friendliness, a simmering rage against toffs: both of which traits, for obvious reasons, I find a little off-putting. ) His partner ‘Ralph’ had already left. Ditto the carpet layers. Ditto Mark the painter. Ripley and Dora were in the playroom entertaining themselves—and Fin is away. (Actually he’s with his location manager in Bucharest, so no need for texting tonight. No need for worry either. Not on this occasion. She’s young, but she’s no beauty. Also, unusually stupid. I took the children to visit one of Fin’s film sets a couple of years ago and we were introduced. ‘H-E-L-L-O, M-U-M-M-Y!’ she said to me, V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y. And that was it. Amazing.)

Where was I? Darrell and me. Darrell et moi…We talked about our travels in Florida. Darrell went to Orlando the year before last, but didn’t manage to make it to Miami. He said he thought Orlando was mind-boggling. I said I thought so too, though truth be told I’m not convinced I’ve ever been there. I went to Jacksonville once, I think. In any case it didn’t matter at all…Florida has a lovely climate and a hell of a lot of alligators. We agreed on that. What else did we talk about?

I don’t know. The kitchen, obviously. But I didn’t want to focus on that. It would have put too much of an emphasis on—lots of things I didn’t particularly want to emphasise at that particular moment. Anyway, I drank slightly more than half a bottle of wine in the time it took him to finish his two cans of lager—which, I think, is a slight improvement on the last time. I certainly wasn’t reeling by the time he left, but I had taken up smoking again. Darrell smokes roll-ups. He offered to roll one for me. I know perfectly well how to roll my own, of course, but I decided not to mention it. I let him do the rolling and then I said oooh, because they did come out very neat. Oh dear. Oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

I can’t help it. He’s got such a fucking sexy laugh.