The Invitation

  The Invitation

  A Prequel to

  The Goddess Workshop

  Margaret K Johnson

  Also by Margaret K Johnson

  The Goddess Workshop

  The Dare Club

  For Hannah, With Love

  A Nightingale in Winter

  The Invitation

  Margaret K Johnson

  Janet

  Janet was looking out at the street, holding a spouting whale wall tile in one hand and a grasping crab wall tile in the other. The traffic had been temporarily stopped while council workmen scaled ladders to untie the banner advertising the Shelthorpe-on-Sea Summer Festival. Why was the banner being taken down so early? The Festival wasn’t even over yet.

  Craning her neck to see, Janet soon found her answer. The banner had been defaced. Some agile vandal had added the word Fuck in big, bold letters right next to Fun For All the Family. Oh dear! That would never have happened a few years ago. Gwen, her neighbour – and a force to be reckoned with on the Festival planning committee – would be hopping mad.

  As Janet watched, the final knots were untied and the banner fell down onto the street, leaving only the words Fun and Fuck exposed to view from its crumpled folds. Janet put the shiny surface of the grasping crab tile over her mouth in an attempt to stifle her snort of amusement, but it was too late. The snort escaped, immediately activating her boss’s inbuilt radar system.

  ‘Janet?’ Carol De Ville sashayed over, the fishtail of her long skirt swinging with disapproval. ‘Is there some kind of problem? I was hoping you would have that display finished before I have to go out to see my client.’

  It was like being back at school, in the lower sixth. Janet, your homework is late again. This is quite unsatisfactory.

  ‘No, Mrs De Ville,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine. ‘I’ll be finished here soon.’

  ‘Good.’

  Janet was well aware that by ‘good’, Carol de Ville meant, ‘I should think so!’ Or ‘It had better be!’ She might have been able to share the Fun Fuck joke with another type of boss, but with Carol it was a definite no-no. The woman considered a sense of humour to be a sign of terminal weakness, and the relationship Janet had with her couldn’t be further away from the matey camaraderie she’d hoped for when she’d applied for the job.

  Janet knuckled back down to her display, and Carol De Ville click-clacked and sashayed away again. By the time Janet got the chance to look out of the window again, the banner – together with its offending words – had been rolled safely up and stowed away in the Council van. But the words had left their impression on her.

  Fun Fuck.

  Janet never used the ‘F’ word, yet somehow that phrase wouldn’t leave her mind. It stayed there long after she’d finished with the tiles and moved on to shower curtains, and it was still there five minutes later when old Mrs Joyce tottered past the window with her squeaky bag on wheels and her even squeakier poodle Binky.

  Lifting her hand briefly to acknowledge the old woman, Janet thought about the word fuck. It was what animals did. Even stupid-looking Binky, if he got the chance. It was what you saw on nature programmes, dressed up in the word ‘mate’ or ‘rut’. It certainly wasn’t what she did with her husband Ray. She wasn’t exactly sure what phrase would accurately describe that, but it wasn’t anything so raunchily exciting as the word fuck, let alone fun fuck.

  Conveniently for Janet, because she didn’t much enjoy dwelling on the disappointing subject of her sex life with her husband, a distraction was provided just then by the arrival in the High Street of the biggest, loudest motorbike she’d ever seen. Ridden by a longhaired rider dressed completely in black leather, the beast of a bike came to a revving halt across the road, right opposite the shop. As Janet watched, her hand still half lifted from waving at Mrs Joyce, Binky made a terrified run for it, towing the panicked old lady and her bumping bag on wheels quickly out of Janet’s view.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘What is it now, Janet?’

  But Janet didn’t stop to answer Carol De Ville’s bad-tempered enquiry. Instead, she rushed straight outside, almost demolishing her entire display of tiles as she went.

  ‘Mrs Joyce?’ she called. ‘Are you all right?’

  But the old lady couldn’t answer. Forced to abandon her bag on wheels, she was clinging onto Binky’s lead for dear life, and looked certain to wrap herself around a lamppost at any minute.

  ‘Wait!’ Janet shouted. ‘I’m coming!’ And running after poodle and owner, Janet finally managed to wrest the lead handle from Mrs Joyce and haul the dog to a trembling halt.

  ‘Oh, thank you, dear,’ Mrs Joyce said with obvious relief. ‘Thank you.’

  Janet smiled, taking the opportunity to glance across the road at the biker. He seemed to be oblivious to the stir he’d caused, and had now switched off the bike’s engine. As Janet watched, he dismounted and hauled the powerful machine onto its stand. He was strong then, even though he wasn’t very big. Actually, come to think of it, he was quite petite.

  ‘Janet,’ said Carol De Ville from the shop door. ‘When you’ve finished playing Good Samaritan…’

  ‘You go, love,’ Mrs Joyce said, taking the lead from her. ‘Don’t want to get you into trouble. Thanks again. You’re a good girl, you are.’

  A good girl. Yes, that was what she was. And always had been.

  As she made her way back into the shop, Janet remembered another time when a biker had impressed her. She’d been sixteen at the time, and just coming out of the youth club with her friends. A group of bikers were outside the pub opposite, and as Janet and her friends walked past, one of them – alluringly older than Janet and drop-dead gorgeous in his leathers, his blond hair ruffled by the wind – looked straight at Janet. His smile was an open invitation: Come over here, get to know me, ride with me on my bike and let me rob you of your unwanted virginity… But Janet being Janet; good, shy Janet; had been unable even to meet his gaze, let alone return that smile.

  Sometimes, lying in the darkness with Ray snoring beside her, she wondered whether the whole course of her life might have been different if she’d only smiled back. The thrill of the speed, the wind in her hair, her arms around a warm leather-clad body in front; risky sex in risky al fresco locations… All these might have been hers, instead of the predictable normality of being a housewife and mother, living in a suburban semi.

  Through the shop window, Janet watched as the present day biker took his crash helmet off. To her amazement, she saw it wasn’t a man at all, but a woman. Janet stared at her, awestruck. God, what beautiful, beautiful hair. Conker brown and very long, it gleamed in the sunlight as she shook it out, straight out of a herbal shampoo advert. Since Janet’s own hair was, she knew, straight out of a conditioner advert – something along the lines of: Helps even the driest most damaged hair, she couldn’t help but be impressed.

  The biker, whoever she was, was slim, and the skin-tight leather of her trousers lovingly encased her long legs. Legs that didn’t look the least bit like black sausages the way Janet knew hers would, if she was ever so unwise as to wear skin-tight leather trousers. Who the heck was this glorious person? Even in the Festival season they didn’t get that many exotic people visiting Shelthorpe-on-Sea, and this woman was as exotic as a migrant bird blown off course.

  She was unzipping her jacket now, pulling something that looked like a poster from somewhere within her clothing. It looked as if she was going to attach it to a lamppost. But just then Janet saw Ian Mitchell, the Community Policeman approaching. He stopped to say something, and it was all too easy to imagine what it was. I’m afraid we don’t encourage fly posting in Shelthorpe-on-Sea, Miss. It contravenes the bla bla act of nineteen whatever. Tedious man. H
owever, to Janet’s great surprise, after only a brief conversation, the normally stern Ian smiled and laughed, and the next thing Janet knew, he was going on his way, leaving the woman to stick the poster onto the lamppost.

  ‘I suppose you had better finish that display off later, Janet.’ Carol said behind Janet, making her jump. ‘I have to go to my appointment now. Remember, bookings and simple sales only, all right? I shall be back after luncheon to deal with anything more complicated.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs de Ville,’ Janet said meekly, while out in the street, the bike burst into noisy life.

  ‘Well, really!’ Carol De Ville complained. ‘I don’t know what this town is coming to!’ But her words were eaten up by the sound of the bike as it roared away.

  When she was alone, Janet was tempted to pop out to see what the poster was about, but the minute Carol De Ville disappeared from view, the telephone rang.

  ‘Carol de Ville Interiors,’ Janet said, answering it in the telephone voice required by her boss. ‘How may I help you? No, I’m terribly sorry, Mr Adams, Ms de Ville will be out until after luncheon, I’m afraid. Of course. I’ll ask her to phone you as soon as she gets back. Goodbye.’

  Luncheon. Luncheon. Who on earth else used such a stupid, pretentious word? And who, for that matter, gave such prominence to a display of tacky tiles? Carol De Ville had no real sense of style. She was a phoney who constantly saw the trees instead of the wood. If Laura Ashley floral suddenly came back into fashion, nobody would be more delighted than Carol De Ville.

  Janet had only worked in the shop for six months, but it had taken her less than six hours to realise that all her ideas and her enthusiasm for interior design were not required by Carol De Ville. The woman just wanted an underling – a skivvy to order about and to cover for her when she went out. It was a huge disappointment, but then since so much about Janet’s life was a disappointment, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised.

  The shop door opened, and Janet looked up, arranging a welcoming smile on her face. But it was only her neighbour, Gwen. Oh God, now she was in for thirty minutes of moaning about ‘the young people of today.’ Though of course Gwen had every right to be annoyed. It was terrible that the banner had been defaced.

  ‘Hello, Gwen. How awful about the banner,’ she said, and immediately Gwen was in full flow, a frown line forcing its way across her botoxed forehead.

  ‘Awful? Awful? Awful doesn’t begin to describe it. It’s an outrage!’

  Etcetera.

  Janet phased out Gwen’s voice while nodding at what she hoped were appropriate moments. Gwen always looked so good, with her expensive clothes and perfect hair and make-up. So grown-up and efficient. It was a look Janet aspired to herself, but never seemed to be able to achieve. Somehow Janet never felt either grown-up or efficient, despite the fact that she was thirty-eight years old with a successful husband, a daughter of twenty-two, an expensive car and a home in a desirable location.

  ‘I’m going to push for a thorough investigation,’ Gwen was saying. ‘A very thorough investigation. I am not going to let the police fob me off about this. The young people of today have got to be made to understand…’

  Had Gwen ever ridden on the back of a motorbike? Janet doubted it. How would she ever swing her skirt-suited leg over to climb on? Then Janet remembered that her own skirt was practically identical to Gwen’s. Except for some dust marks acquired from her endeavours in the window, and something that looked like… toothpaste. Toothpaste? Had she really been wearing a skirt caked in toothpaste all morning?

  ‘Anyway, that wasn’t why I dropped in.’

  Janet blinked. ‘It wasn’t?’

  ‘No. I brought this in to show you.’ Gwen fished in her expensive bag and brought out a brochure. ‘The new adult education brochure!’ she said, brandishing it triumphantly. ‘Thought I’d bring it straight over so we can choose what course we want to do this year. I had to queue up to get it.’

  Janet felt her heart sink even lower, but Gwen had already got her sleeves metaphorically rolled up as she spread the brochure open on the shop counter. ‘What about pottery again?’ she suggested, then looked at Janet, shaking her head. ‘No, you weren’t very good at pottery, were you?’

  ‘Not really, no.’ It was something of an understatement. The sausages she had rolled for her coil pots had looked like dog excrement, and her only attempt to use the potter’s wheel had resulted in her fingers squelching and sliming into the clay until her ‘pot’ launched itself clean across the room, landing with a splat at the tutor’s feet. Gwen’s pots, had of course, been a triumph. She had even given one of them to Janet as a Christmas present.

  ‘Well, how about a cookery course then?’ Gwen suggested next.

  ‘Have you forgotten my soufflé?’ Janet asked, remembering her seriously concave effort gloomily.

  ‘Indian cookery then. Chinese. Your Ray likes foreign food, doesn’t he?’

  ‘From a takeaway, yes.’

  Gwen sighed, at what she obviously thought as Janet’s non-cooperation. ‘All right then, an exercise class. Yoga perhaps.’

  Janet had a sudden premonition of herself stuck in an unnatural yoga position, one leg locked behind her neck, the tutor standing by her side and telling her not to panic.

  ‘Come on, Janet,’ Gwen urged. ‘You know we always have fun.’

  If that’s fun, Janet thought, then fuck fun!

  ‘Actually, Gwen,’ she said bravely, ‘I’m not sure I want to do a class this year.’

  Gwen looked at her, aghast. ‘What?’

  ‘I might not do a class this year,’ Janet repeated, valiantly attempting to keep her tone of voice decisive, and doing her best to ignore her conscience.

  ‘But we always do a class together!’ Gwen protested.

  ‘Yes!’ she wanted to cry. ‘Yes, we do! And that is exactly why I don’t want to do one this year!’

  ‘I know,’ she said instead. ‘Sorry. But what with this job, and having to sort out Mum’s house…’ Janet’s voice trailed off in the face of her neighbour’s obvious pique. She watched as Gwen closed the brochure with a snap and thrust her arms into the sleeves of her raincoat.

  ‘Seems I wasted my time in that queue then, doesn’t it?’ she said huffily, preparing to stomp off.

  Janet’s hatred of people being displeased with her was well ingrained. Time and time again in her life, it had made her do things she didn’t want to do. She much preferred to keep the peace than to rock the boat, and besides, she hated to disappoint anyone.

  ‘Look,’ she said to Gwen. ‘Leave the brochure with me. I’ll have a look at it over lunch and get back to you, all right?’

  Gwen pouted at her. ‘All right,’ she said sniffily, putting the brochure back onto the counter. ‘But don’t be too long about it. You know how quickly these courses fill up.’

  After Gwen had gone, Janet sat wearily down on the stool behind the counter, the adult education brochure seeming to leer up at her with reproach. I’ve done my very best for you; it seemed to say in Gwen’s voice. Or was it Carol De Ville’s? Or Ray’s? Or her daughter’s? And this is how you repay me.

  By the time she was free to go to lunch, Janet had almost forgotten about the motorcyclist and her poster. But as she left the shop at one-thirty, dutifully clutching the adult education brochure to look at while she ate her sandwiches, she noticed the poster on the lamppost, and it drew her like a magnet.

  A Woman’s Garden of Earthly Delight, she read. Oh, it must be a gardening course. Well, that might be useful. And with that glorious woman teaching it, it would have to be fun. Maybe Gwen would agree to do that instead of something from the boring Adult Education brochure?

  There was a waste bin near the lamppost, and after Janet had carefully written down the telephone number from the poster, she dumped Gwen’s adult education brochure in there, along with the cigarettes stubs and old banana skins. Then she walked, feeling guilty and hopeful at the same time, towards the park to eat her lunch.
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  Estelle

  ‘That’s it, RT,’ Estelle Morgan whispered to her lover throatily between snatched gasps of air. ‘Give it to me. Give it to me now!’

  In her more cynical moments, of which there were plenty, Estelle often thought that if her business failed, she could always have an alternative career as a porn star. OK, so it might require her to have a boob job, but there were worse things than that.

  ‘Go on, RT, fill me up!’

  They were in the basement store cupboard of their Golf Club. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but unfortunately there hadn’t been enough room to do anything else than shag standing up, and Estelle wasn’t sure she could stand on one leg for very much longer. Also, she had her back against the cupboard where they stored golf clubs, and the thrust-induced rattling coming from inside was starting to give her a headache.

  Reaching down, Estelle gave RT a well-practised squeeze. Thankfully, this was enough to send him over the edge, and as he muffled his bellow of pleasure against her unfastened blouse, Estelle quickly added her own ecstatic sounds to his, hoping very much that he wasn’t drooling on her. That was the trouble with these golf club assignations. Whether they were in the store cupboard or out on the course in some bushes, they usually resulted in a dry cleaning bill. In fact, Estelle frequently wondered exactly why she bothered, but somehow, every week since the affair had started three months ago, she’d been back again for more.

  It was a power thing, probably. RT was a successful man. He had the best handicap at the club, but Estelle could effortlessly reduce him to helpless pulp of desire. She liked that. She also liked the snatched moments; the thrilling thought that they might be caught at it at any moment.

  RT was recovering now. It was dark in the cupboard because they hadn’t risked putting the light on, but even so, Estelle could sense her lover clawing his black hair back into its widow’s peak. ‘Nothing like a bit of rumpy-pumpy to boost your golfing average,’ he said, one gold tooth glinting in a stray scrap of light coming in from a ventilation grill.