My Grumpy Boss English

Heidi

It’s Tuesday the twenty-sixth of July, the first week of the English school summer holidays, and I’m in the kitchen making bread when my phone vibrates in the back pocket of my jeans, announcing the arrival of a message.

Assuming it’s another unwanted text, my heart sinks as I take the phone out with floury fingers. I do a comical double-take when I see it’s a Facebook message from Lawrence Oates.

I feel a wave of relief, then a flutter of pleasure deep inside. My heart racing, I go over to the sink and wash my hands, then pick up the phone and bring up the message. It’s short but sweet.

Your Royal Highness! Don’t suppose you’d be around for a Zoom call at 8 p.m.?

I laugh at his greeting. My full name is Heidi Rose Huxley, and the first time we met, he commented that my initials were HRH.

Still smiling, I sit on the kitchen chair, bring up his Facebook profile, and study his picture.

His real name is Lawrence, but everyone calls him Titus. He got the nickname from the Antarctic explorer of the same name who sacrificed himself for his teammates in 1912 by going out into a blizzard. That Lawrence Oates was nicknamed Titus after the English priest who invented a conspiracy to kill the English king, Charles II, in 1678.

How do I know all this? Because when I was sixteen, tipsy on one glass of sparkling wine at my brother Oliver’s twenty-first birthday party, I asked his gorgeous mate for a kiss. Instead of getting exasperated with the irritating young teen who was trying to pretend she was sassy and sophisticated, he proceeded to kiss the living daylights out of me. Shy and innocent, I’d never even had a boy kiss me on the cheek before, so to be French kissed by a gorgeous older guy completely blew me away.

After the kiss, I found out everything I could about him, convinced I’d found my Prince Charming and that we were destined for a happily ever after.

We weren’t, of course, and unsurprisingly after the party he didn’t contact me and declare his undying love. We did see each other relatively frequently over the years, either at Oliver’s business club or at my parents’ house. Every time our gazes met with a mischievous smile as we both clearly recalled that kiss, although we never spoke of it openly.

We’ve been friends on Facebook for some time, although we’ve never communicated on there. Two years ago, I moved to England, and I haven’t spoken to him since. He was the first guy to burst my girlish, romantic bubble, but he wasn’t the last. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think, from that definition, I’m pretty bonkers, as the English like to say.

His profile picture is an old one, taken when he was at university, of him with his arms around Oliver and their friend Mack. It’s a bit blurry and doesn’t do him justice. I remember him as tall, dark, and handsome, and being impressed because he’d been approached to play rugby for the Auckland Blues. The only other thing I remember about him is that his mother is Scandinavian, and he has Viking tattoos down each arm.

As I scroll down through his Facebook feed, I can see why I’ve never read any posts from him—he hardly ever goes on there. Oliver has mentioned him in passing when I’ve spoken to him on Zoom over the past two years, but I don’t know anything about what he’s been up to, apart from that he works with computers.

Why on earth does he want to talk to me?

Then it comes to me—it must be about Oliver’s wedding. Oliver is marrying his girlfriend, Elizabeth, next month, and I’m flying to New Zealand for it. Maybe Titus is organizing something he wants me to be a part of. Yes, that would make sense. Much more sense than him deciding he wants to chat up the tipsy teenager he snogged eight years ago.

Blowing out a relieved breath, I reply to his message.

Hey Titus! Sure! 8 p.m. your time or my time?

He responds almost immediately:UK time.He includes an invitation to the Zoom call, then says:Great, speak to you tonight.Wow. Captain Concise.

Putting the phone aside, I return to making the easy-bake bread, adding a can of beer to the flour with the baking powder. I mix it all up and tip it into the loaf pan.

Then I scoop it back into the bowl, add the salt and sugar I’d forgotten, and put it back into the loaf pan again. I top it with grated cheese and salt and pepper, and slide it into the oven.

Then I remember I haven’t added any olive oil, take it back out, drizzle the oil over the top, return it to the oven, and set the timer.

Even though it’s clearly not a romantic call, he has me all flustered.

I huff an irritated sigh at myself and check the time on my phone. It’s nearly ten a.m. now, and I’m due to have another Zoom call with my sisters. I go into the living room and collect my laptop, then take it out of my tiny cottage into my even tinier garden, and set it up on the plastic table under the umbrella.

I’ve learned that summer in England can be extremely variable, especially where I live, in the county of Devon in the southwest, where the hills of Dartmoor generate mild, wet weather. Last year, it rained the whole of July and a good part of August. This year, June proved to be one of the wettest on record, but the weather has miraculously cleared up for the start of the school holidays, and today the sky is the color of bluebells.

I click on our Zoom link and discover that two of my three sisters—Chrissie and Evie—are already there, waiting for me. There’s a moment of delay, and then their pictures spring up on the screen.

“Hey!” They smile and wave as they see me, and I grin and wave back.

“Hey you lot!”

“Ooh, it looks like a lovely day there,” Chrissie says.