Hating Valentine's Day Read online

  Hating

  Valentine’s

  Day

  Allison Rushby

  Hating Valentine’s Day

  HATING VALENTINE’S DAY

  A Red Dress Ink novel

  ISBN 1-55254-412-5

  © 2005 by Allison Rushby.

  All rights reserved. The reproduction, transmission or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission. For permission please contact Red Dress Ink, Editorial Office, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ® and TM are trademarks. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and/or other countries.

  www.RedDressInk.com

  ALLISON RUSHBY

  Having failed at becoming a ballerina with pierced ears (her childhood dream), Allison Rushby instead began a writing career as a journalism student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Within a few months she had slunk sideways into studying Russian. By the end of her degree she had learned two very important things: that she didn’t want to be a journalist, and that here are hundreds of types of vodka and they’re all pretty good.

  A number of years spent freelancing for numerous wedding magazines almost made her crazy. After much whining about how hard it would be, she began her first novel. That is, her husband (then boyfriend) told her to shut up, sit down and get typing (there may, or may not, have been threats of severing digits with rusty scalpels if she didn’t but it’s okay, he’s a doctor).

  These days Allison divides her days between motherhood and writing full-time, mostly with her cat, Violet, on her lap. Oh, and she keeps up her education by sampling new kinds of vodka on a regular basis.

  Hate Valentine’s Day with a passion? Feel free to have a vent about it at www.allisonrushby.com.

  Also by Allison Rushby and

  available from Red Dress Ink:

  It’s Not You It’s Me

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich for their help in bringing the book to its full potential; Sam Bell for seeing what was underneath the rubble; the literate guinea pigs who read the manuscript in various stages; Ivy for putting up with the long sits on the couch, the laptop radiation and for only kicking me in the ribs when she was truly uncomfortable or we needed more cookies; Violet for keeping my toes warm while we were all on the couch; and David for the walks, when the long sits on the couch got just that bit too long.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Friday 5 February-Nine Days to go…

  Saturday 6 February-eight more sleeps…

  Monday 8 February-Six Days and Counting…

  Tuesday 9 February-five short days left…

  Wednesday 10 February-here it comes…

  Thursday 11 February-it’s right around the corner…

  Friday 12 February-too close for comfort…

  Saturday 13 February-oh, god, it’s tomorrow…

  Coming Next Month

  Friday 5 February-Nine Days to go…

  I draw a bright red fake zit on the end of the bride’s nose and, satisfied, sit back to admire my handiwork. Sally, who happens to be walking by at the time, stops behind me and places a hand on my shoulder. ‘Liv, sweetheart, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times. You’re supposed to be taking them off, not putting them on.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ I sigh and, without turning around, pick up the computer’s pen once more and run it over the palette lying on the desk. I keep right on drawing on the picture that’s up on the screen—the bride in her hotel room surrounded by a bevy of bridesmaids. This time I add a pair of horns over the bride’s tiara and fangs over her newly whitened teeth. Still behind me, Sally leans over and takes the pen out of my hand. Within seconds, little red dots appear on the bride’s eyes. I look up and laugh.

  Sally goes over to lean up against the steel counter that runs the length of one of the studio walls.

  ‘Couldn’t help myself. She was a particularly silly cow, remember?’

  I don’t remember.

  ‘I give it three years, max,’ Sally says, coming back over to take one last look. I glance up to see three fingers, then, ‘Coffee?’ she says brightly, taking off for the kitchen, her lavender sandals making little clip-clop noises on the polished floorboards and her glossy, perfectly highlighted blonde hair waving behind her.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ I say, watching as she makes her way around the tiny galley-style kitchen, filling the pot with coffee and putting a few biscuits on a plate. I try one last time to place the couple before I give up. ‘I don’t know why you make these bets with yourself. Thirty years, three years, three months…you never find out if you’re right or not.’

  Sally stops what she’s doing and looks at me. ‘And why shouldn’t I make those bets? I do it with my own relationships. May as well gamble on everyone else while I’m at it.’ She inspects the lip of the mug she’s got in her hand, then rubs it with one finger. Remnants of her favourite lipgloss, most likely. ‘I probably am right, you know. I’ve always been spot-on with all my husbands. Three and a half years with Simon, two with Tom, seven months with Luke…’

  I try not to laugh out loud at that. All My Husbands—it sounds like a good name for a daytime soap. And with Sally’s exes there’d never be a lack of characters to bribe/maim/kill off/lapse into a coma only to return in the fifteenth season with amnesia.

  I get up and have a stretch before going over to retrieve my coffee from the bench. The two of us carry our mugs over to the sitting area and I take the yellow armchair while Sally stretches out, putting her feet up on the red couch. She offers me the plate of biscuits, one already sticking out of her mouth, and groans as she munches away. ‘See what you’ve got me doing? I can’t have a fag, so I’ll eat half a packet of biscuits instead.’

  I take a biscuit. ‘You can have a fag.’

  ‘Only if I beg. And only outside.’

  ‘Hey, it’s your rule! I’m only supposed to be enforcing it, remember?’ A few weeks ago Sally had decided she was giving up the tar sticks of death (her words) for good. She’d decided the best way to go about it was to give me, one of the only non-smokers she knew, any packet she bought. Then, if she wanted a cigarette, she’d have to give me good reason why. I’d handed out approximately ten so far, mostly after she’d fielded phone calls from her third ex-husband regarding their divorce settlement. Ten seemed an awfully small number seeing as before this she’d been a pack-a-day smoker. I was starting to wonder where she was keeping her stash.

  ‘I don’t feel like begging. Not on a Friday afternoon. Change of topic. You geared up for next week? Been taking your guarana?’

  I groan through the biscuit that’s in my mouth now. I don’t need reminding that it’s Valentine’s Day next Sunday. And not just because of my failed love-life. In the wedding photography business, Valentine’s Day means big business. Especially since for the last two years the day has fallen on a Friday and a Saturday. This year it’s on a Sunday. The weekend again. Weekends, of course, are always the busiest days
of the week for wedding photographers. But when the fourteenth of February falls on a weekend? Let’s just say Sally Bliss Photography has been booked out a year and a half in advance.

  Sally laughs at me. ‘Look at your face! I can never believe the change in you around Valentine’s Day—you’re such a grumpy-arse. Stop frowning or you’ll line for good. Take it from me, there are just some miracles L’Oréal can’t perform when you get to my age, however much you’re “worth it”.’

  I stop frowning.

  ‘That’s better.’ Sally puts down her coffee. ‘Anyway, Valentine’s Day—just smile, think of the money and remember our unofficial motto…’

  We both put cheesy grins on and lift our hands to our faces as if holding invisible cameras. Click, click. ‘Those who can’t, photograph,’ we sing-song in unison. And we’re definitely two girls who can’t, I think as I lower my hands again. Sally can’t stay married, I can’t…well, I can’t be bothered.

  There’s silence as we both return to our caffeine intake greedily. I think we’re both feeling a lack of energy. As Sally mentioned, it’s Friday afternoon and I’ve got that drained feeling that people all over the city are sharing.

  ‘Oh,’ Sally says, making me look up from my mug. ‘Don’t forget about Monday. Mrs Batty-Smith’s funeral.’ And with that we both look over at Mrs Batty-Smith’s desk in the corner and stare. ‘We’ll have to order a wreath,’ she adds, before pausing to bite her bottom lip. ‘Are there any grey flowers?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’ll order something later.’ She glances at her watch. ‘Bugger. I’ve got to get going.’ She takes one last sip of her coffee and pushes herself up off the couch.

  ‘Engagement shoot?’

  Sally nods, running her hands down her black capri pants to smooth out the creases. ‘I won’t be back this afternoon, so if you could be a darling and close up…’ She winks at me. ‘I’ve got a big date tonight.’

  ‘Have you just? I thought you were taking a break from men? Waiting till a decent one came along?’

  ‘Well, I was…’

  ‘For a week?’

  ‘I gave up smoking! I need some kind of a hobby to keep me busy.’ She grabs her diary off the coffee table and has a quick flip through. ‘Fabulous. The park at the end of the world again. Just what I need.’ She sighs as she stuffs it in her bag and heads for the door.

  I give her a sympathetic look as I get up and take my coffee over to the computer. The park at the end of the world is the bane of our lives. Sally includes an engagement shoot session in all the higher-priced wedding photography packages, and the couple get to choose the location. Bliss’s studio is a few minutes out of the city, but somehow just about every couple manages to choose the park at the end of the world as the location for their engagement shoot.

  ‘Have fun,’ I say as the door slams behind my employer. She gives me a wave through the glass and mouths Ta ta.

  I sit back down at my desk and undo the zit, horns, fangs and little red eye-dots on the computer screen. Just as I’m about to make a start on the bride’s flabby underarm (by personal request), I catch a glimpse of yellow and look up to see Sally speed off in her Ferrari. Smoking.

  So that’s where she’s been keeping them, I think. And, speaking of broken promises, I can’t believe she’s going on a date tonight! Just two weeks ago, when divorce number three finally came through and Sally was crying poor, she told me in her most sincere voice that she was taking a leaf out of my book and was going to try being single for once. Finally she was swinging around to my way of thinking—men were just too much trouble. Much easier to take up the ice-cream education style of dating that I’d adopted (sitting in front of the TV with a new 500ml flavour to sustain you for the evening—a litre if it had been a particularly hard day). Either way, Sally’s single girl life hadn’t lasted long. Less than a week, if you figured in when the guy had actually asked her out.

  I turn my attention back to the flabby arm, which really isn’t flabby at all, and edge out the tiniest sliver from underneath. Not too much, not too little. Just enough. Well, maybe a tiny bit more, I think, sitting back in my chair to take a look. I would if it was me.

  As hard as I’m trying to concentrate as I move the pen back and forth over the palette, I can’t help but keep catching sight of Mrs Batty-Smith’s desk out of the corner of my eye. The desk Sally and I had both been staring at before. Still de-flabbing, I think about Monday and how strange it will be to go to her funeral. Strange because I know so little about her.

  What I do know about Mrs Batty-Smith has been pieced together over time, gathered from the other wedding photographers around the city. Everyone knows one thing for sure—Mrs Batty-Smith was the wedding photographer to book in the sixties, when she was about my age. She wasn’t Mrs Batty-Smith then, however. Back then she was Miss Smith and she was the best, commanding the highest fees anywhere in the country, photographing all the top weddings. Celebrities, politicians, you name it—she photographed the day.

  It’s the more personal information that everyone’s hazy on. I’ve been told that her husband left her at the height of her career, that this caused her to fall apart a touch and it was all downhill from there. Ten years or so after that she stopped photographing altogether. She never remarried, I know that much for sure, and she spent the rest of her days doing the books for all the wedding photographers around town.

  My eyes drift away from the computer screen and I sit and stare at her desk. She was a funny old thing, Mrs Batty-Smith, crotchety as all get out, though she’d talk for ever about her eighteen cats. If you tried to get onto any other topic she’d just clam up. So, that’s what we talked about on the Wednesdays she spent at the studio—her cats. I can recite all their names in the order she got them: Betsy, Shu-shu, Mitsy, Sunshine, Pokey, Hortense…The list goes on. Oh, and Mrs Batty-Smith always, always wore grey. I never saw her in any other colour. Grey stockings, grey cardi, grey dress, grey hair—leading to Sally’s comment about the grey flowers.

  She was, I have to say, a tad clichéd. Still, as awful and as grey and as clichéd as she sounds, there was something about Mrs Batty-Smith—something I’d connected with. I’d never been able to put my finger on it, but there was something there, beneath the grey clothes and surly ways…

  Work. Work. Think about work.

  With a one-more-time, here-we-go-again huff, I turn my attention back to my bride. I finish off the non-flabby arm, blend a few lines underneath her eyes and delete the mother-of-the-bride’s packet of cigarettes which I spot her waving around in the background, as if she’s participating in a product placement exercise. I give myself a pat on the back for that one. Fag withholding from the boss is probably in my job description, but fag deletion from photographs—now that’s service.

  The minutes creep by. I take a phone call from a prospective client and set up a meeting in two weeks’ time. I phone another client to tell her that her wedding album’s ready to be picked up. A few more minutes creep slowly by.

  With nothing better to do, I start on the next photo that needs work. As I do, I start to remember the couple—he was French; she was a pain in the arse. In this picture, the groom is watching the bridesmaids fix the bride’s bustle. I blend more lines, erase more flab, draw a little word bubble out of the groom’s mouth that says, ‘Oui, my darling, you are right. Your derrière does look big in that.’

  Hey, how did that get in there?

  I give myself a mental slap on the wrist, remove the bubble and keep going. I manage to finish the corrections off on this picture without procrastinating again, but when I load up the next file I know it’s just not going to happen. I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish with a new rock today, and am torturing myself needlessly—what I’m doing isn’t anything that can’t wait until next week.

  I check the clock again. Four-thirty. I may as well knock off early, seeing as I have to swing past Rachel’s. I give her a quick call to check if she’s home already (even
though, with her great-find cruisy new job as an English-as-a-second-language teacher at an international college, I’m pretty sure she skived off home at about two minutes past three). She picks up, just like I knew she would, and tells me to come on over.

  Off the phone, I start gathering my things together and shutting up shop. When I’m done, I pull an album out of the holding cupboard. Rachel and Ryan’s album from their wedding three weeks ago. Sally photographed it. I put the box on the coffee table and sit down on the couch to have one last flip through.

  As everyone’s do—well, I think they do. Either that, or I’m particularly vain—my eyes scan the first photo and move straight on to myself. And there I am. In a bridesmaid’s outfit once again. Well, that’s not quite true. In this photo I’m in a white brushed-cotton dressing gown, full make-up on and hair upswept. A ‘getting ready at the hotel’ photo. I lean in and take a closer look. Spectacular cheekbones I’ve got there, if I do say so myself. If only they were like that in real life…

  I turn a few more pages before I stop again at one of the ‘we’re all set to leave for the church’ photos. There’s Rachel, looking absolutely stunningly gorgeous in her ivory gown. And me, in between the other three bridesmaids, looking…well, kind of sickly, is the phrase that comes to mind. In a lilac satin dress. A lilac number that is quite like something that I have in four other colours in my wardrobe—burgundy, navy, hot pink and pale blue.