The Never Have I Ever Club Read online

He shrugged. ‘That’s the price we pay for seizing the day. No one ever said it’d be safe.’

  ‘I wanted it to be fun though.’ She blew her nose again. ‘And the worst thing is, it’s my bloody club. My idea. I’m like that emperor who fiddled with himself while Rome burned.’

  ‘It is fun,’ Will said. ‘Everyone who was here tonight will be back next meeting, you’ll see. Just think of the anecdotes we’ve given them to tell. The Cockburns’ll dine out on their blue bums for months.’ He paused. ‘Not literally, that’d be hideous.’

  ‘I bet we don’t get a single person next time. The whole club’s on a one-way path to closureville. And Arty will go to prison, Winnie and Eliot’ll break up, and Albert Jeffries’ gammy leg will turn septic and have to be amputated.’ She sniffed. ‘And on top of all that, you hate me.’

  He smiled. ‘Well now you’re just fishing for reassurance, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. Can I have some please?’

  ‘I don’t hate you, Bloom. I actually quite like you. Occasionally, when you’re being particularly funny and doing your baby owl face, I’m even fond of you.’ He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. ‘Happy?’

  ‘You never want to hang out with me any more.’

  ‘I told you, it’s complicated.’ He looked down at her. ‘It’ll all be okay in the end,’ he said softly. ‘Things generally are.’

  ‘Always the optimist.’

  ‘You’re right, I am. I firmly believe that Albert Jeffries’ leg will be right as rain in a few weeks, that Arty Johnson is unlikely to be incarcerated for petty crimes committed over fifty years ago, and that Eliot likes Winnie far too much to let a dead Pomeranian come between them.’ He gave her a squeeze. ‘And so do you, Bloom.’

  She flashed him a watery smile. ‘You’ve got a knack for this, haven’t you? Cheering me up.’

  ‘Hey, I’m a doctor. It’s what I do, fix people.’ He stood up. ‘Right, up you get. I’m taking you for a drink.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t allowed to fraternise with me. What about Ash?’

  ‘Never mind Ash when you’re upset. I can smooth things over with him when I get home.’ He held out an arm to her. ‘Come on. I’ll text Eliot to say we’re on our way.’

  21

  The following Saturday, Robyn knocked at the door of Felicity’s cottage.

  ‘Hiya,’ she said when her aunty answered. ‘Here as summoned, one Robyn P Bloom. Let’s have a look at the monstrosities you’ve lined up for me to wear then.’

  ‘I promise there’s not a monstrosity among them,’ Felicity said, shooing her inside. ‘I’m not one of those brides who tries to make sure she isn’t outshone by dressing her bridesmaids in net curtains and lime-green Crimplene.’

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful I don’t have to strip naked and paint myself blue.’ Robyn narrowed one eye. ‘Actually, that reminds me. Fliss, I don’t suppose you’d like to—’

  ‘—take my clothes off and let that lot draw me in my birthday suit? No.’ Felicity ushered Robyn into the living room and gestured for her to sit down. ‘I’ve heard you’ve been asking everyone in the village to model for the life drawing. I’ll try not to take it personally that I was your last resort.’

  ‘Oh, come on. I felt sure you’d be up for it, the Free Love Queen. Why won’t you?’

  ‘Because, young Robyn, it wouldn’t be my first time being painted in the altogether and I happen to still have the original. I don’t fancy comparing my bosoms now with how they looked sixty years ago, thank you very much,’ Felicity said. ‘Anyway, drawing was my contribution to the list so I would quite like to take part.’

  ‘Who painted you?’

  ‘Your grandad.’ She laughed as Robyn’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh, don’t look so shocked, you know he was a portrait painter. He was a young art student in those days, and I was picking up extra money while I trained as a secretary. How do you think he met your gran?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Me indeed, and he made me a present of the painting as thanks for the introduction to my pretty big sister. You see, it was all very civilised.’ She handed Robyn a folder. ‘These are the patterns I’ve picked out. I’ll be making the frock myself. Have a look through while I get us a pot on.’

  While Felicity hobbled about the adjoining kitchen, humming to herself, Robyn flicked through the dress patterns.

  It was true, none of them was a monstrosity. None of them was really all that her either, being in Felicity’s favourite long, flowing style – they’d suit someone tall and willowy, not someone like Robyn: five-foot-five and curvy in most of the right places but quite a few of the wrong ones as well. Still, she put aside her favourite as requested.

  ‘Well?’ Felicity said when she came back in with two cups of tea.

  Robyn gave her drink a sniff to check it hadn’t been laced with ‘something to keep out the chill’ before taking a sip.

  ‘I like this one,’ she said, handing the pattern over. ‘The rainbow colours are a bit loud, I suppose, but they’re kind of joyful too.’

  ‘Oh yes, you’ll look beautiful in that, my duck. I had a hunch you’d pick that design. It’s almost a bit Eurovision, isn’t it?’

  ‘Heh. I didn’t think of that, but that probably is what drew me to it.’

  ‘And don’t worry, I know just how to cut it to accentuate that hourglass figure. With a full skirt and cinched waist, you’ll have all the boys after you.’

  Robyn laughed. ‘Hourglass figure? I’m thinking that’s a euphemism for “big bum”, is it?’

  ‘It’s a euphemism for nothing, young lady. You’d have been everyone’s darling in the early sixties with your measurements. Very Marilyn.’

  Robyn took another look at the dress pattern. ‘Are you sure about making this yourself, Fliss? It looks like hard work.’

  She shrugged. ‘Well, it’ll keep me out of trouble.’

  ‘How many dresses do you have to make?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘How many bridesmaids will there be?’

  ‘Oh, there’s just you. Norman and I agreed a small family affair would be best. Just you, your parents and Aunty Connie on my side, and Norman’s daughter Taryn and her wife on his. We can see our friends afterwards at the reception.’

  ‘That’s a bit scary. I didn’t realise I’d be performing bridesmaid duties on my own.’

  ‘It won’t be scary, I promise. There’ll just be a little service at St Mark’s then drinks at the Maypole, all very traditional.’

  Robyn smiled. ‘Fliss, I’m disappointed in you. I thought you’d only ever agree to get hitched in a blood-red robe on top of Stonehenge.’

  ‘I’m doing it to make Norman happy really. He does a lot of things for my sake – it’s the least I can do to be an old-fashioned girl for him just this once.’

  Robyn went to sit on the arm of her aunt’s chair.

  ‘He’s worried about you, you know,’ she said softly, taking one of Felicity’s translucent tissue-paper hands in hers.

  Felicity smiled. ‘Of course he is. If he wasn’t fretting about something then he wouldn’t be my Norman.’

  ‘Won’t you let me take some of the wedding workload on?’

  ‘Robyn, I told you, I’m not dead yet. If Felicity Heath can’t still manage to throw the mother of all parties in this village, you might as well put her in a box right now.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to suggest you couldn’t do it. I’d love to be more involved though. Go on, let me have a job.’

  Felicity sighed. ‘Well, if it’ll stop you and Norman nagging, then I suppose I don’t mind you organising the buffet. Nothing fancy, mind. Ham sandwiches and a bowl of crisps should be good enough for the sort of oiks we know.’

  ‘All right, great. And if there’s anything else, you’ll let me know, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Robyn.’

  Robyn glanced down at Felicity’s free hand and noticed she was rolling the polished gemstone between her fingers again.
>
  ‘Clear quartz,’ she murmured. ‘Still feeling under the weather?’

  ‘Just tired really. My bad leg’s been playing me up something chronic.’ She sighed. ‘That’s getting old for you. Still, as long as I’ve got my marbles, I’ll be thankful.’

  ‘Have you definitely got them all?’ Robyn asked, smiling.

  ‘The major ones, I hope.’ Felicity tucked the stone away and pushed herself to her feet. ‘Come up to the attic, Robyn. I’ve got something to show you.’

  ‘What is it?’ Robyn asked, following her to the stairs.

  ‘You’ll see. I’ve just had the young lad from next door over helping me haul it all out of the loft.’

  When Robyn reached the attic, she blinked in surprise. The room was full of machinery: motherboards, monitors, keyboards, old computers. It looked like the control room on Tracy Island.

  ‘Whoa. FAB, Scott,’ she whispered. ‘Fliss, what is all this?’

  ‘There, now you’re surprised, aren’t you?’ Fliss said with an exultant grin. ‘I never told you about my secret collection.’

  Robyn went to run her hand over a large silver cabinet covered in switches and LEDs. It looked so much like a prop from a sci-fi B-movie, she was half tempted to start doing R2D2-esque biddly-bup sound effects for it. But she knew it was a legitimate piece of kit, because in the top left corner were the letters IBM.

  ‘That’s an IBM 704, or part of one,’ Felicity said. ‘If I had the whole machine, it would probably fill this room. I picked this up when your gran and I were working down in London in the early sixties.’

  ‘Where did you work to have access to this kind of equipment? I thought you were a legal secretary.’

  ‘In those days I was just a plain old typist,’ Felicity said, joining Robyn as she examined the old machine. ‘I was fast though. Seventy-five words per minute – even your gran couldn’t catch me, although she was pretty speedy. So, when the two of us saw a recruitment poster asking for lady typists with sixty-five words per minute plus, we jumped at the chance. The money was better than where we were, and cash wasn’t so easy to come by in those days that we could afford to turn our noses up at the pay increase.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘Dollis Hill, the old Post Office Research Station. We turned up on our first day expecting typewriters and instead they trained us to program these beasts.’

  ‘No!’ Robyn breathed. ‘You and Gran were computer programmers?’

  ‘I suppose we were, although we had no such grand-sounding title,’ Felicity said. ‘Programming was seen as unskilled labour then – women’s work. Of course it was no such thing – it took a lot of savvy. But in 1962, when you were a teenage girl not long out of secretarial college, you tended to keep radical opinions like women having brains to yourself.’

  Robyn shook her head. ‘My tree-hugging hippy aunt a trailblazer for women in tech. I’d never have believed it.’

  Felicity smiled. ‘Robyn, at my advanced age, it means a lot that I still, on occasion, have the capacity to surprise you.’

  ‘How long did you work there?’

  ‘Six years. Enid left when she got engaged to your grandad, but I enjoyed the work – much more stimulating than taking dictation – and I got rather attached to the computer I worked with. Susie, I called her.’

  ‘Is this Susie?’ Robyn asked, nodding to the IBM machine.

  ‘No, this one was dead on arrival. It was slated for scrap, until me and a boyfriend rescued it.’

  ‘Why?’

  Felicity shrugged. ‘I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps I had an inkling it was important to preserve these things for future generations. Anyway, I got a little hooked on collecting random bits and bobs after that. Nothing went in the bin. I rescued it all and kept it in labelled boxes in my parents’ loft – this loft. It’s been here ever since.’

  Robyn wandered around the room, examining the pieces Felicity had collected. She recognised some of the machines from her own childhood. There was a BBC Micro, like the one they used to have at Kettlewick Primary. An early Apple Mac, one of those all-in-one machines with a black-and-white monitor. A Sinclair ZX81. It was a treasure trove of retro computing.

  ‘There’s stuff here from the seventies and eighties too,’ she said. ‘Where on earth did you get it all, Aunty?’

  ‘I had a lover when I worked at the research centre, the one who helped me rescue the IBM machine.’ Felicity’s eyes glazed with nostalgia. ‘Teddy. He was different to most of the men who worked there – to most of the men anywhere, in those days. A tinkerer, always taking things to bits and putting them back together. After he left the place, he made a good career as a hardware engineer. We stayed friends and he knew I loved to collect this stuff so whenever he got his hands on something, he saved it for me.’ She sighed. ‘He’s gone now, but I often think about him. He was very handsome. Very sweet.’

  ‘How come you never showed me this stuff before? It’s fascinating, like a timeline of computing through history.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it? Actually, I think that’s what we ought to call it, or something along those lines.’

  Robyn frowned. ‘Sorry, call what?’

  ‘The new exhibition. I’m donating it all to the museum. Better to be where people can appreciate it than sitting in an old lady’s loft.’

  ‘What? Fliss, no. This stuff must be worth some money. I couldn’t let you just give it away.’

  ‘Well, my love, I’m afraid that’s not up to you. I’ve decided that’s what I want to do with it. It might impress the youngsters, and give the castle a boost.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now, Robyn, you know it’s no use arguing with your stubborn old Aunty Fliss when she’s made her mind up,’ she said, setting her lips. ‘Whatever else I’ve got goes to you when I die, apart from some items I’ve set aside for Norman and the other members of the family. But I want to leave my collection to the village.’

  ‘Put it in your will then. I don’t like taking it while you’re… I mean, you never know when you might want cash. If you have to pay for long-term care or something.’

  ‘It’s unlikely I’ll need that now. You might as well take it as wait for me to pop off. And it’ll help us keep in the council’s good books, won’t it? Hopefully convince them they don’t want to close the old place down just yet.’

  ‘How do you mean, it’s unlikely you’ll need it now?’

  She sighed. ‘Robyn, there’s something I need to tell you.’

  Robyn looked down at her aunt’s fingers. ‘Why do you keep playing with the quartz, Fliss?’

  ‘Now there’s my clever niece.’ Fliss took her hand and guided her to an old sofa shoved into one corner. ‘Here, sit down by me.’

  ‘It’s something bad, isn’t it?’ Robyn whispered.

  ‘No, sweetheart. Just something… inevitable.’

  ‘What? Tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know how much longer we’ll have together, my Robyn,’ Felicity said, looking down at the quartz as she moved it between gnarled fingers. ‘One more Eurovision at least. Hopefully two, maybe even three if I’m very lucky. But… it’s time to get ready to say goodbye.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Robyn felt her throat grow tight, her heart pounding against her ribs as she gripped the arm of the chair. ‘Aunty, what is it?’

  ‘Cancer. The thyroid.’ She patted her neck to indicate the afflicted spot. ‘I might have years or only months, but whichever it is, I’ve told Will I won’t have any of his machines and potions. I want to enjoy the last of my time with the people I love, not spend it a walking corpse under God knows what cocktail of drugs.’

  ‘Will… Will knew?’ Robyn shook her head. ‘Of course he did. He’s your doctor, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Will knows, and Norman, but no one else. I want to break it to family and close friends before I start making it public around the village.’

  Robyn looked up, her eyes filled with burning tears. ‘Fliss, I can’t lose you. Please
don’t do this.’

  Felicity smiled. ‘Please don’t die? I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m not doing it on purpose.’ She patted Robyn’s hand. ‘Now, you mustn’t be sad about it. I’m not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Death is a part of life too, Robyn. In my case, it rounds off a happy life well lived – one that was probably rather longer than it deserved to be given the way I chose to live it. Just you remember your Aunty Fliss as she was, and that out of everyone she ever knew, she loved you best.’

  ‘Aunty, please,’ Robyn said, her voice trembling. ‘Won’t you even consider the treatment? If Will recommended it, it must be the best thing. They can fix you.’

  ‘Robyn, you make me sound like the Six Million Dollar Man,’ Felicity said with a laugh. ‘No, my mind’s made up. Janet’s put me on a course of pills that will help me without any of the horrible side effects of surgery and radiotherapy. Who knows? You might have me with you for years yet.’

  ‘Janet’s been treating you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Fucking sugar pills,’ Robyn muttered. ‘Now I know why Will was so angry.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Fliss, please!’ Robyn gestured around the room. ‘Look at all this stuff you’ve collected. I mean, you were a software programmer! A scientific pioneer. How can you turn away from science now when it could save your life?’

  ‘Robyn, I was a glorified typist with a penchant for diodes and circuit boards.’

  ‘Bullshit you were. You’re a hero.’ Robyn tried to push back the tears threatening to choke her. ‘You were always my hero,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I hate to cause you pain, but I don’t want to spend the little time that remains to me hooked up to machines, more dead than alive. When you reach my age, the treatment is often worse than the disease.’ She turned Robyn’s face to hers. ‘I love you very much, my duck,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’m afraid it’s time for you to let me go.’

  No longer bothering to hold back her sobs, Robyn sank into a hug and let her tears soak into the silver of Felicity’s hair.

  22