You Got It Wrong - New Story!

Chapter One 

A/N A new story, another slow burner I'm thinking. This is just a taster. Hope you enjoy, more to come! 

                “Have you got any dry shampoo? My hair is desperate.”

Nina Willoughby looked up from her sketch pad, to see her housemate and best friend Lilah stood at her bedroom door looking a million dollars, then glanced at herself. Her friend was the epitome of beauty and looked particularly breathtaking at that very moment. With a smile of exasperation she offered, “A - your hair looks perfect, as always, and B - WTF is dry shampoo?” She had no idea what it was, let alone have any in her bedroom.

Lilah groaned and rolled her eyes, “you are such a heathen Willoughby, do you know that?”

Nina laughed, “you do enough glamour for us both.” And that was true; they were like chalk and cheese. Lilah all colour, vibrancy and exotic, Nina was a tomboy, polar opposites but best friends. Since their first day in school age five back in the centre of London they’d been devoted best buddies. Lilah was an only child, whereas Nina was years younger than her brother James, so they’d been sisters, friends...everything for years.

Lilah was an ex-model, her six foot frame, amazing bone structure and glossy healthy hair made her a wonder, without her funny, devoted and caring personality. Nina on the other hand was short, dark and chunky, she would never command a crowd as her friend did, but where Lilah loved attention, loved glamour and all that that brought, Nina was happy carrying the bags, being behind the scenes. And that worked for them both.

Lilah laughed, “the irony is that no matter what I do I never look as lovely as you do!”

Shaking her head in bewilderment, Nina looked at her friend, “Now I KNOW you’re after something Miss Ellis! Where you going anyway?”

Her friend smiled, “on a date! Would you believe that?”

Nina grinned, “brilliant, who is he?”

Lilah’s heart had been broken the previous year by the man she thought she’d marry, they’d been together for three years, and whilst Nina had never REALLY liked him, Lilah had been besotted, but finding him in bed with another friend of theirs had more than devastated her. It had taken her months to rediscover her joie de vivre, and over the last twelve months her fragile heart had started to heal. This was the first man she’d dated to Nina’s knowledge since.

                “I met him at that trade fair the other week, he’s called a couple of times, flattering me, you know?”

Nina smiled, “you deserve some happiness, they’re not all bastards, ok?” She dropped her pencil and jumped up to hug her friend. “If I knew what dry shampoo was, then now is the exact time that I’d pass it to you. OK?” Nina meant that, she’d do anything for Lilah, because her best friend had done so much for her over the years, as unlike family, she got to choose who she spent her time with.

Lilah chuckled, “what about you? What are you planning on a sunny Saturday afternoon?”

                “Painting class at the Oakdale Home, then finish those designs that I started for the Wootton wedding.”

Shaking her head Lilah sighed, “you work too hard!”

                “How can that be true when it’s SO much fun?”

Half an hour later Lilah called out a goodbye and Nina heard the door close, peace. It was a while since she’d had the house to herself. Sliding her design sketches into the pad open in front of her, she stood to leave the bedroom; it was the mirror on the back of her bedroom door that stopped her in her tracks. She looked at her reflection, her unruly black hair, short and spiky on a good day, but today wild and out of control, the freckles that adorned her nose, a snub nose. She sighed, she’d never be what Lilah described, and she would never own dry shampoo...like that even made sense.

Opening her wardrobe door, she found her leather biker boots and pulled them on, with her short denim shorts and layered vest they were anything but elegant, but she loved them. She loved being different, she loved not conforming, and she loved that being that way drove people away from her.

The walk to the residential home that she volunteered in several times a week was less than twenty minutes, and when the sun was shining, there was nothing nicer. She waved to Cliff, the pensioner who rented the ground floor apartment next door.

                “Need anything while I’m out?”

He was recovering from a hip replacement, and whilst he was getting on well, he wasn’t back to full strength, though as he kept reminding her, “not bad for eighty one.”

                “No thanks Nina...your Lilah got me milk this morning.”

Nina stopped in her stride and gasped, “Lilah? WOW. She really is turning over a new leaf.”

He laughed, “saw a young man collect her just now, that must be a good thing.”

                “It is!” Then with a wave she carried on her way.

She had been giving art lessons in the home for eighteen months, volunteering to help older people who were lonely, bored and tired. Initially it had been a form of guilt that made her help others, a need to pay something back to society, but now it was compulsion, she loved the people there, and whilst art was the reason they all came together, more often than not they just gossiped, the women so stereotypically about soap operas and family, the men usually sport or the latest technological gadget that they’d purchased. But for Nina, the times there reminded of Sunday afternoons she’d spent with her maternal grandmother in the very house she now lived in with her friend. They were her greatest childhood memories, and she came close to the same feeling of contentment with the residents of Oakdale.

Nina looked out of the window and smiled, was there anywhere more beautiful than here, on the coast, watching the puffy clouds blow across the horizon?

                “Are there you are Nina. There are only three in the group today, is that enough to run it or do you want to leave it this week?”

Nina turned and smiled at Donald, the warden for the residential home, “one is fine.”

He nodded then left her to it.

The three women wanted to work on watercolour skies as their topic, and the framed picture of blues and greys out of the window that dominated the room was a perfect example to work on, so they set the easels in front of the glass and began the instruction. Cheryl, the youngest of the three at seventy nine, was so extravagant with her painting skills, that the four of them had dissolved into giggles before the halfway point.

After a particularly raucous session, Nina was grinning as she put away all the equipment remembering some of the scandalous comments that the women had made, when the door to the room opened and a man backed in.

                “Mansell?”

The man spun around looking distraught and shocked at seeing her there.

                “Are you ok? Come and sit down.”

She guided him to the seat and sat beside him, and he looked up at her gratefully, “sorry, I just needed some space.”

Nina instantly worried about Mansell. He was one of the quieter men in the home, he told her in the past that he’d been quiet since he’d had a stroke four years earlier, though externally there was very little sign of that now, she could only imagine that internally it was a lot harder for him. He’d joined a few of her lessons over the last few months, but nothing regularly, and never very frequently.

                “You ok? You seem a bit...worried.”

He laughed, slumping back in the seat. “That, young lady, is a gross understatement.”

She leaned close, “what’s wrong?”

                “I don’t want to bother you...”

Nina reached in her bag and pulled out a silver hipflask, “no bother, I’m here for the night!” After taking a slug of the whisky it contained, she passed it to her right, and after a few seconds delay, he took it and threw his head back, his lips around the opening of the bottle.

                “That feels good. A serious whisky.”

She nodded, “only a single malt, but a good one. I don’t mess when it comes to whisky.”

                “I can see that.”

Nina sat there quietly watching the sun set through the window in front of her as they occasionally passed the flask between them. It was more than ten minutes later when he finally spoke.

                “It was my brother’s birthday today.”

                “Ah.” She handed him the flask, “how old would he have been?”

He took a drink then looked at her, “he was two years older than me, would have been ninety today.”

                “You are eighty eight? Oh my God, Mansell I wouldn’t give you a day more than seventy eight!”

He laughed at that, “been a long hard life, I’m sure you flatter me. Seventy years he’s been gone. Seventy years of living that he was denied.”

                “How did he die?” She had turned sideways in her seat, genuinely interested and concerned in equal measures.

                “D-day. He was one of those slain as they rushed out of the sea; the Gerries all sat in their impenetrable bunkers mowing down young men as though they were tin cans lined up on a wall. I feel close to him here, you can almost see France...I know it’s not Normandy...but it helps. You know?”

She nodded, “shit. I watched a show about it a few weeks back. It looked terrifying, but also amazing, what an achievement. Something SO special, something to be proud of.”

                “Ha, yeah. For those that made it...like me.” He looked up at her, “he was married, an eight week old baby...I had nothing at home, I left the boat before him, why did I live and he die?”

She squeezed his hand, what an awful thing, to question your own life when a sibling died so young. “Because...sometimes things just happen that we have no control over. And I always have to believe that things happen for a reason. Maybe you came back because you were destined to have a family, the same future that he had?”

He guffawed at that, “to be stuck here? Really? Great job I did with my family if this is what they put on me, dumping me here without a care.”

Again Nina sighed, “at least you had the chance to have a family. Some didn’t, and whether you live or die by your decisions regarding the children, you had them. Your brother would have given everything to have seen his family grow up. Don’t resent that Mansell. Don’t be bitter and angry, be happy, pleased, be grateful that you could see your own family grow, as well as his. I’m sure if your brother had a wish it would be that you would celebrate what you have, not mourn what you don’t. He wouldn’t appreciate your pity.”

Mansell sat with his head hung for a few long moments then sighed, turning his head towards her.

“Where did you get all your wisdom from? It was like listening to Gordon speak then; my brother always was the wisest man I knew.”

She gave a pity filled laugh, “you aren’t the only one who has regrets Mansell and it’s always easy to see things from the outside when it’s not you at the heart of it all."

That made him laugh heartily. “Thanks Nina, you’ve made things...realistic for the first time in ages.”

As he stood to move away she wondered what that meant. “I didn’t mean...”

Mansell was taller than her and she could only imagine how imposing he was back in the height of his youth, “Nina, it hasn’t affected me, I’m not about to crumple up in a ball, and I’m not thinking that you are belittling everything about my life. No, you’ve just given me a huge reality check. It’s fine... I need to stop feeling sorry for myself.”

Later that night as she worked hard on her designs, Nina couldn’t help think about Mansell and his sadness. She thought of James, her brother at thirty nine ten years older than her, and wondered if she’d ever feel that level of worry, concern or affection for him. But she knew the answer, she despised him, so there was little chance of that. In the past that would have saddened her, but now, she was confident in her choices, she’d stand by what she’d done in the past and had no intention of regretting anything.

There was no sign of Lilah the next morning; her date had either gone very well or dreadfully, either way she wasn’t showing her face. She had a deadline approaching for her latest commission, but Mansell’s sadness was playing on her mind when she should be thinking of ideas for the perfect romantic design that encompassed the love of Jocelyn Cairns and Martin Wootton, two of London’s gentry into solid platinum wedding bands. Over the last few years she’d moved from a student of jewellery-making to what Ultimate Wedding Magazine had titled ‘the newest and biggest name in bespoke wedding rings.’

Despite this, despite the pressure to come up with designs, her thoughts were with an elderly man who had seemed lower than she’d ever seen him the previous day. So she packed up and headed back to the Oakdale Home.

By ten am she was knocking the door to Mansell’s “suite”, the home was purely residential, each resident had an individual bedroom, small lounge/kitchen and bathroom, but it was supervised, and there were communal areas for the residents to meet, and activities held throughout the day and evening which were of course obligatory. She’d volunteered at the home for the past eighteen months, and her commitment there had grown from occasional art classes to several hours a week for under many guises, she couldn’t imagine not committing to being there.

Mansell didn’t answer, so she knocked again, eventually he opened the door still looking sad.

                “I’ve been worried about you.”

                “You have?”

She smiled, “yes. You ok?”

He shrugged, “I want to see his grave...my brother, it’s the seventieth anniversary of D-Day in two weeks. But my wonderful family, not ONE of them can be bothered to take me, all TOO busy.”

She sighed, “not one of them.”

Again he shrugged, “nah. All too busy.”

Nina’s heart broke for him, “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure if you explain how important it is they’ll change their mind.”

With a sad shake of his head, he retreated back into his room.

As she walked into the house she’d inherited from her maternal grandmother, Lilah called out from the kitchen, “Neee-Naaa?” She called out in a way that only Lilah ever did. “Is that you?”

Nina grinned, “who else has a key to this place?”

Lilah looked up from the kitchen table and the Sunday papers with a beaming smile on her face, “your brother called earlier...can you call him back?” She grimaced as she delivered the foreboding news. “Sorry.”

Nina shared the grimace, “that’s a no. But you look amazing, and happy. Do I take it that you had a great date?”

Lilah paused for a moment, noting the subject change, but was too excited to contain her news, “he’s AMAZING, we had a great time, he took me to that new wine bar, then we walked along the front...smooched under the pier...then he walked me home like a real gent!”

                “He sounds perfect.”

Lilah nodded, standing to get Nina a cup of coffee, “James didn’t say what he wanted, and I didn’t ask.”

Nina took a deep breath, “his ounce of flesh no doubt.”

                “Don’t call him.”

Nina grinned, “he’ll just keep pestering me. Must be after money, it’s rarely anything else.”

Lilah paused, biting her tongue for a moment, “don’t do it Nina, he does nothing for you.”

Three hours later Nina had completed her designs and skipped upstairs from her basement workshop with a smile on her face, “go take these to the Wootton’s girlfriend. I’m all done.  Shall we go for Sunday lunch? On me?”

Lilah looked up from her current task of painting her nails, “you said you hadn’t a clue what to do earlier.”

Nina grinned, “inspiration.”

She tossed the four versions of rings on to the table and Lilah perused them. “How the hell do you pull it out of the bag EVERY time?” Her eyes were wide when she looked up at her friend, “these are perfect.”

Nina grinned, “if I stick to designing and making I can do this...but I need you and Amelia to front things, to be the face of the business, you know that.”

She’d become interested in jewellery making when she was young, but her rebellious teenage life had seen her travel for years, driving around Europe in her multicoloured Beetle. It wasn’t until she settled back in Britain four years earlier that she’d looked into pursuing what had always been a dream to her. It coincided with her inheriting the house they now lived in after her grandmother passed away, and so she could enrol on a course to learn exactly how to craft amazing jewellery.

Within the first year of her course, her tutor had singled her out as exceptional. By the second year she’d focussed on making rings, and only using precious metals as she found them more challenging, and the finished article had more lustre, more glamour.  

When she completed her first self designed ring, she’d sold it almost immediately for far more than she anticipated, ironically to Lilah’s cousin Amelia. It was one of those moments of fortune that had shaped Nina’s life, because, if Maya hadn’t been a fledgling Hollywood starlet, looking for the perfect wedding ring for her new husband, an American A list actor, then things could and would have been very different. But after the lavish OK magazine cover wedding, Maya came looking for her and invested heavily in Nina, with her financial backing and contacts, with Lilah’s people skills and charm, between them, they had developed a very lucrative business.

Nina emerged from her room fifteen minutes later dressed in a handkerchief top, brown with turquoise pattern, her favourite denim shorts and her biker boots.

As she was teasing her short dark hair into some semblance of control, Lilah appeared from the room opposite in a floor length maxi dress, immaculate make up and a side plait in her long thick hair. She could make work overalls look attractive, and beside her Nina had felt dwarfed for so many years, but her success, the fact that she was the driving force for their business, that she was successful, meant she felt taller than her five two frame, and more elegant than her larger than desirable figure allowed. She’d spent years trying to be what everyone wanted her to be, years of wearing glamorous clothes, heels...but she’d lost her confidence years back, and it had taken several years of travelling alone to get her groove back. Now she didn’t care what people felt she should wear, she dressed how she wanted to, she wasn’t about to conform for anyone.

                “Come on Lilah, it’ll be dinner time before we get lunch the way things are going.”

Arms linked they headed off into the late afternoon sunshine for some lunch.