‘Me?’ Lottie asked, her eyes wide with worry.
‘Yes, you. You’re going to be the new chairman. We need a picture of you and one of Elsie, giving her a really lovely tribute. That’ll get everyone going.’
‘No way,’ Lottie said, re-fastening her long blonde hair into a ponytail, even though it was already perfect.
Sid shook his head in disapproval. ‘Come on, Lots. I don’t know why you think you’re some ugly troll that should live under a bridge somewhere.’
‘Fat, ugly troll to be precise,’ she said, tidying the papers on the floor.
‘You’re impossible, you really are. You’re not bad looking at all, you’re …’
Lottie started at the compliment and looked up to see Sid had turned a violent shade of red.
‘I’ll make some more tea,’ he said and, grabbing up the mugs, hurried from the room.
Lottie heard the kettle boiling in the kitchen and considered what Sid had said. Not the compliment, that was just too odd to think about, but the idea of free marketing was a good one.
The pictures on the dresser caught her eye again as if Elsie was watching her. If she was going to try and do this, she wasn’t going to fail at the first step. Lottie went to the hall and pulled her laptop from her bag, came back to the sofa and sat with it on her knees. When Sid returned, his face fell. ‘What? We need to get started on my presentation straight away.’
‘But can’t we have lunch first?’
Sid walked through the town heading for his favourite record shop. LPs, it seemed, were making a comeback. There’d been a time when his nerdy hobbies had been laughed at, but now it was cool. The collection he’d inherited from his parents – a weird mix of Motown and prog rock – must be worth a fortune now. Not that he’d ever sell.
A smile spread across his face as he thought of Lottie. He’d asked her to come into town as it was the weekend and they weren’t working, but she’d refused saying she was busy practising her presentation for the board. At last there had been a breakthrough. If only he’d been able to break through to her heart, but he knew deep down he’d missed his chance.
After two previous attempts in their early twenties – one at a New Year’s Eve party when he’d tried to kiss her and ended up kissing the top of her ear, and another when they’d had a few too many watching a movie and after an odd surge of adrenalin, Sid had decided he’d declare his feelings, then bottled it – he’d realised he was well and truly in the friendship zone.
Neither episode had ended well. He’d been left red-faced and embarrassed, making jokes and laughing it off and Lottie had gone into hiding for days. Then when they’d finally seen each other again both pretended nothing had happened and the awkwardness had eventually faded, leaving them back where they’d started.
If he was honest with himself, which up until lately he’d avoided as much as possible, he’d always thought that somehow, at some point, he and Lottie would end up together. One day something would happen to force them both into realising they loved each other. Because he did love Lottie. For him it had always been more than friendship but she just never seemed interested in anything else.
Sid blamed his love of movies for all his years of being single. He’d always hoped that one day UFOs might land in Greenley or the Zombie-Apocalypse would descend and after he’d beat off a horde of flesh-eating zombies with nothing but a severed leg, Lottie would fall into his arms, kiss him and cry, ‘Oh, Sid, you saved me!’ If that had happened everything would have been alright, but strangely it hadn’t, and he’d missed his chance.
Sid shoved his hands in his pockets. No, the window of opportunity had closed and now he was destined to be Lottie’s friend for the rest of their lives. He lifted his head; had someone just called his name?
‘Sid?’
Looking over his shoulder, he saw a woman of startling gorgeousness running towards him. Her long brown hair bounced behind her and her smile was warm and friendly. He vaguely recognised her but couldn’t place her. Surely he wouldn’t have forgotten a girl who looked like that?
‘It is Sid Evans, isn’t it?’ she asked, a broad smile on her face.
He knew he was staring and made an effort to close his mouth. ‘Yeah, it is. Umm, hi.’
‘It’s Selena. Selena Fleming. We went to uni together. Do you remember? We were in the same halls in first year and then I was constantly at your house because you guys had a garden?’
Sid reached back into the depths of his mind. He could remember a sullen goth emo girl with large boobs and chubby cheeks called Selena. He’d seen her a lot as she was dating one of his friends, but this couldn’t be her. Could it? She looked like a personal trainer or something. ‘Did you date Hayden Lukas?’
‘Yeah! I’m surprised you recognised me. I’ve changed a bit since then.’ She flicked her hair back behind her shoulder.
You’re telling me, thought Sid. The Selena who stood in front of him now was tall and slim. Or at least she appeared taller. She wasn’t hunched over with long hair falling into her face, being angsty and deep.
‘I used to dye my hair black and wear that awful heavy eyeliner.’ Her eyes dipped down, embarrassed. ‘It does nothing for me.’
‘I remember you now,’ Sid said with a grin. ‘You were one of the grammar school girls from here, weren’t you? You and – oh, what’s her name …’ He shook his head, he’d forgotten her as well. ‘You both ended up at Greenwich.’
‘Shelly Spicer.’
‘Yeah. She was horrid. She always thought she was better than everyone else.’
Selena smiled and leaned to one side, jutting out her hip. ‘She was a bit mean. Do you remember you played me The Cure that night at Hayden’s birthday? I’d never heard them before but I thought that song was brilliant.’
‘Do you still like them?’ he asked, hopefully.
‘Only that one song, but ever since you played me Pink Floyd I’ve been a huge fan of theirs.’
Sid beamed. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
It was better than nothing. Sid rocked on his heels searching for something to say. He was normally very good at conversation and if she’d been a little old lady with an opera-singing parrot he would have been fine, but Selena had the biggest brown eyes he’d ever seen and they were staring at him so intently he’d almost forgotten his own name. ‘So what are you doing back here?’
She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘I’ve moved down here for good. I was living with a boyfriend up north but we split up and so I’ve come home.’
‘Oh. Sorry to hear that.’ He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets unsure what else he could do with them.
A faint redness had come into the apples of Selena’s cheeks during their awkward silence. ‘So what are you doing now?’
‘I’m the reporter on the local paper.’
‘Oh my God! Really?’
‘Yeah. It’s not as exciting as it sounds though, Greenley’s not really a hotbed of crime and passion.’ Sid felt his cheeks burning. Why did he say passion? ‘Umm, what about you?’
‘I work at the beauty salon over there.’ She pointed to a shop with a large pink sign over the door that read Indulgence Spa and Boutique. ‘I sort of flunked