Seize The Day

Chapter Twelve

All afternoon as she constructed a wall size canvas for an idea she’d been nursing for a while, she flicked between anger at Miles and anger at herself for being too weak to dismiss the idea of meeting him. She convinced herself that she worried about him returning, that he’d instantly realise that Bill wasn’t her partner, that she’d lied...then he’d realise why, that for ten years she’d rued those days back in her teens, that what he thought of her mattered. But there was also a large part of her who wanted to turn up, wanted to see what he had to say. He mentioned begging, and somehow the thought of him doing just that was an exciting prospect.

Bill got home early, He’d never felt so euphoric. It had been an average Monday as he’d sat at his desk trailing through his emails and messages, but the phone had rung and it all changed there and then.  Pausing on the doorstep he recalled the phone call for at least the fiftieth time in the last three hours.

               “Mr Swift? Dan Parnell GB racing, I’ve been trying to get hold of you all weekend!”

The initial shock at the former Olympic cyclist calling him and been superseded only by his message, one of the GB amateur racing team had pulled out of a huge road race being held in Australia in a couple of weeks time. Bill’s recent results and the performances that Parnell had witnessed had meant that they wanted him to replace the missing team member. It meant he’d have to spend most of the next ten days with his new team, riding as part of a team in a race like this was new to him, so he had to learn as much as he could.

Bursting with excitement he opened the front door and smiled, roast chicken, his second favourite meal in the world.  He could barely contain his excitement any longer. He was dying to tell Sophie, she’d taken a risk, followed her dream...she’d know what this meant to him. Flying into the kitchen he stopped in surprise to see Vin there alone.

                “Where’s Sophie?”

Vincenza tossed a message across the table at him, and he read it slowly.

                “Gone out, short notice thing, left you both dinner...don’t wait up! Sxxx”

Two things went through his mind as he looked from the letter to Vincenza’s sad face, firstly that they took her for granted, just because she was usually there waiting for them, didn’t mean she was always there, and secondly, that she’d evaded him again. This time he wanted to share good news, but there was still this unwritten ‘thing’ between them and it needed dealing with, before he went away.

He looked at Vin, “she never goes out, does she?” Vin shook her head, Bill could tell she was upset, but didn’t know if he could cope with why. “What’s up mate? You look like you lost a fiver and found a pound.”

                “Worse Bill, far worse.”

Taking a deep breath he sat opposite her, bottling all his excitement and energy for later, he WOULD celebrate just maybe not today.

The Round House was a new bar, in what Bill termed the ‘yuppie’ part of town, Sophie loved that he used such ridiculously old terms, it was part of the endearing qualities that was Bill. It was an old converted theatre, and as the name suggested, was a round airy building with a circular bar at the centre, an eclectic mix of furniture formed an apparently random amount of various sized of tables around it, which she just knew had been the plan of a very  expensive interior design. It had been featured in all the major Sunday papers over the last few weeks, and had quickly become THE place to be.

Sophie was less than impressed, the walls she noticed as she swerved through tables to the bar, were painted black...BLACK! And the artwork that hung against it was meant to give the illusion of windows looking out over various very different landscapes. All just over the top, too much and too many ideas crammed into one building. It gave her a headache, but that only added to the headache she already had, the headache that was waving from across the room.