Curve Balls: The Ball Games Book Six Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Slang Guide

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Coming Next

  Also by Andie M. Long

  About Andie

  CURVE BALLS

  Ball Games Book Six

  by

  Andie M. Long

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Copyright (c) 2017 by Andrea Long

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Andie M. Long, photo from Adobe Stock.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my review team. Thank you to each and every one of you for taking the time to read my books and leave a review. It means more than you know.

  Love, Andie xxx

  Slang Guide

  British/Yorkshire Slang Guide

  Arse - idiot.

  Bin - When ending a relationship, eg Ha ha you’ve been binned.

  Banging - in this book ‘head is banging’ - bad headache.

  Bog roll - toilet paper.

  Bollocks - Oh shit/crap/rubbish

  Buggered - tired, also can mean broken, eg god that tv’s buggered.

  Carrier bag - a plastic bag to put shopping in.

  Cat nap - a small sleep

  Cream-crackered - (Knackered) - very tired usually physically

  Faffing - messing about

  Fuckhead- idiot

  Gotcha - got you/caught you out

  Knackered - tired

  Mate - friend

  Out like a light - when you go to sleep super fast.

  Quid - one pound in UK money

  Rat-arsed - very drunk.

  Shitting me - kidding me

  Smack - hit

  Snozzle - nose

  Sofa - couch

  Three sheets to the wind - drunk.

  Tits up - gone wrong

  Trousers - pants. (In the UK pants are knickers/panties)

  Shag - have sex.

  Twat - a word for vagina, used to say a person is a despicable person.

  Wee - urinate

  Chapter One

  Dora

  Friday 3 February 2017

  Mould. That’s what Tim talks to me about now. Not telling me I have a firm bottom, before patting me on it. Mould. Take this morning. Tim walked into the lounge and asked me in all seriousness, “How can you not notice that the bedroom windows need cleaning? Can you not see they are covered in mould?” I replied in my nicest voice. “I’ll wash them later Tim. It was on my list of housework for today.” He shook his head, the unspoken words of ‘you big fat liar’, hanging in the air and he went off to work. Later, I’ll quickly rub them over with a packet of antibacs like the OCD women do on the cleaning programmes. I’ll pretend to be one of them, ‘Ooh, I’m only happy if the whole house smells of bleach’.

  I get up from the sofa and walk into the kitchen where I make a coffee then open my baking cupboard and take out a bar of chocolate from behind the flour. My congratulations to myself for not yelling at Tim that the reason I haven’t seen the mould on the windows is because I. Have. A. Fucking. Life. Also, there’s the fact I spend my time looking at my Kindle, not the window ledges, but I’d better not tell him that or he’ll give me even more chores to do while I’m at home.

  Anyway, I digress. I need to spend as much time sitting on my backside as possible because it’s all about to change…

  Firstly, I’m going to be a grandma. Me - a granny! I’ve wanted to be one for ages. I get to squeeze a lovely little baby and then hand it back. But when I’d imagined it, I thought it would be Cam who was the mother. My sensible child. Instead, it’s Lindsay having the baby, girlfriend of my son, Tyler. I love Lindsay to bits but she has no patience. Also, girls tend to reach out to their own mothers so I may not get a look in. So, I’m worrying. Worrying because Lindsay and Tyler have only just started living together, haven’t been a couple for that long and Tyler, is, well, Tyler. My gorgeous boy, newly released into the world of independence and now he’s going to be a parent himself.

  Secondly, I’ve not had a period of my own this month, well for a few weeks now actually. This takes me back to our Christmas holiday and the fact that I haven’t yet had my coil replaced as I should have done. I’m booked into the doctors later this morning to find out what’s happening. So you see, I may as well eat all the chocolate in the cupboard if I’m going to get fat anyway. My baby would be due just after my grandchild’s birth. That’s just weird, isn’t it? I know it happens but, hey, let’s face it, I don’t look my age so I’ll be explaining to people all the time that no I haven’t had twins, one of them is my grandchild and then I’ll have to accept all their compliments and questions about what moisturiser I use, because they don’t believe I’m forty-seven. By this time the kids will be wailing and I’ll have to placate them with chocolate. Before you know it, I’ll have made them obese. Lindsay will scream that I’m not allowed to look after my grandchild anymore and the health visitor will be at my door telling me I’m an unfit mother.

  God, I feel faint. I must stop stressing myself like this. It’s no good for the baby. Fuck, I’ll be fifty before my new baby is three years old. I wonder if Cam would like to adopt it? She’s too busy with her job to actually have one. Then I could babysit my own child that’s been adopted by my daughter.

  I think I’d better stop watching Jeremy Kyle.

  I wander upstairs and begin packing. It’s the minibreak to Liverpool with my sister this weekend. The one where she’s been foretold she’s going to meet the literary love of her life in the Waterstones below the apartment. I would normally throw two bottles of wine in my luggage for a girly weekend with Miranda, but I can’t drink, can I? I slam the case lid shut which isn’t as dramatic as it sounds as it’s lightweight material and basically just floats down. Twat.

  At thirteen minutes to eleven, I set off for the doctors. It takes about ten minutes to drive there. Once in the surgery, I book in via the computerised system and it tells me there are three appointments before mine and a waiting time of approximately nine minutes. The system is a total lying bastard. Thirty-nine minutes later and I’m still sitting there growing my embryo. I’ll probably give birth before I’m seen.

  “Miss Dora Evans.” The screen flashes my name and a recorded voice announces my appointment. “Dr Jones, Room Seven.”

  I’ve been coming to this surgery for years. I remember being so excited when I was pregnant with Cam, and then Tyler. Now I feel like I’m being sentenced to death. I’m too old for a baby. Oh well, like it or not, a new life is in my stomach and I’ve been blessed and need to get on with it.

  “Hi, Dora,” says Dr Jones, a middle-aged woman who’s been at the surgery all the time we’ve been registered. It’s like seeing an old, but distant friend. “What can I do for you today?”

  “Well, I’
m late getting my coil replaced and I think I might be pregnant.”

  “Oh. Okay, Have you done a test?”

  “No. I daren’t. I felt I needed to be among professionals when it was done as if I see a positive result I may need a psychiatric admission.”

  “Come on, Dora,” she laughs. “It’s not that bad. Is it?”

  “No.” I sigh. “But I’m mad with myself for not keeping my contraception up to date.”

  “Right, well let’s get a test done. Can you go and wee into this cup for me and bring it back in?”

  I sigh but go to the toilet just down the corridor and return with my specimen.

  Dr Jones performs the test.

  “Okay, so the good news, Dora, is that you are not pregnant. I can perform some bloods to check your levels, but these tests are very accurate these days, so you can be reassured that it’s highly unlikely.”

  “Oh,” I say. “But I haven’t come on and I’ve always been so regular. I just assumed-”

  “Have you been under any stress lately? That can delay things occasionally.”

  “Well, I found out at Christmas that I was going to be a grandma.”

  “Oh, congratulations. Cam?”

  “Tyler. Well, Tyler’s girlfriend.”

  “Tyler’s going to be a dad? I can see why you’re stressed.” Dr Jones chuckles.

  “Quite.”

  “Well, let’s get you booked in for those bloods. It doesn’t hurt to check. We’ll run your hormone levels while we’re at it. You’re forty-seven, Dora. It’s probably just one of those things and you’ll find your period will start any day now, but we have to explore the possibility that it could be the start of the menopause.”

  “The what?” My ears refuse to listen.

  “The men-”

  “Sorry, I think I need my ears syringing, they must be full of wax.”

  “Dora. It comes to us all. I’ve just got through my own.”

  I sit back in my chair. “So I might be starting the menopause?”

  Dr Jones nods. “You might.”

  I take a deep breath. “Could you book me in to see that psychiatrist?”

  Chapter Two

  Tyler

  “If Lindsay asks, I was looking at baby stuff in Mothercare all afternoon,” I tell Dylan, my future brother-in-law. My first pint of bitter goes down all too nicely.

  “And I was working at the Bank. I didn’t take the day off without telling Cam so I could have a rest,” replies Dylan.

  We’ve snuck out to a pub in Wentworth. Absolutely no chance were we staying in our own neighbourhood. Dylan’s becoming a good mate. I’d bumped into him yesterday lunchtime when I’d nipped out of Smiths for a Greggs sausage roll. The man looked half dead, so I’d asked him if he was okay. He said yeah, so I’d started to walk off and then he’d asked me if I fancied a beer today. Hence our secret mission. Us blokes aren’t known for talking but we both had women problems and I was currently finding out what our Cam was up to.

  “It doesn’t seem right, me talking about your sister to you. You know, me saying I’m fed up.”

  “Mate, I’m the very person you should be talking to. I know first-hand what it’s like living with her. I survived eighteen years of it. So, what’s she up to now?”

  “It’s this bloody play centre.” Dylan takes a large swig of beer. “I’m fully aware it’s her business and if it goes ‘tits up’ as she keeps telling me, she’d lose all her savings, but she’s never home. It’s ridiculous. I work full-time and I have to come home and cook. She comes in late, eats, and is so tired she goes to bed and is out like a light until our alarm goes off and she repeats it all again. We barely speak, barely see each other. Since the engagement party, she’s made no inroads into sorting out our wedding. I think we should forget the whole thing. She’s obviously not interested.”

  “Have you tried to tell her?”

  We look at each other and burst out laughing.

  “As if we tell women anything. We like our bollocks, right?” I state. Then I tilt my head at him, “Seriously though. It is time for the talk.”

  “Oh God, no. Anything but the talk.”

  The talk. The thing that makes a man quake in his boots. When he needs to say something important to a woman and he needs to be listened to. The one that goes something like this.

  Man: Darling (always start with an endearment to sweeten them up).

  Woman: Yes?

  Man: It’s just a small thing but could you possibly fold my socks rather than leave them in a pile as sometimes one falls behind the sofa and I end up with a lot of odd socks.

  Woman: Fine.

  Man: Fuck, that was easier than I thought. (Goes to sit down.) Thirty minutes later: Hit by balls of socks to the head with a ‘will that do, fuckhead?’

  “Rather you than me, mate.”

  “I know. I’ve tried to think of another way around it, but there isn’t one. She’s got to slow down. Not only for my selfish reasons. She’s knackered. I’m scared she’s going to make herself ill, and her business won’t run itself, will it? She’s got Gemma, who’s amazing. She needs to use her more.”

  “Beth’s there now as well, and my mum goes there occasionally too. There’s lots of help there.”

  Dylan nods. “Exactly. She has reliable staff, but she won’t leave them to get on with it. Anyway, I’m fed up of being treated like shit. If she’s like this now, what will she be like in a few years? And will she want kids, or do they not fit in with her business plan? I need to know because not having kids is a deal-breaker for me.”

  “Huh, I didn’t get a chance to think about making deals. My life’s moving that fast I make the Flash look like a sloth.”

  “Christ. I wondered about that. You’re moving pretty fast for a bloke who still lived at home eleven months ago.”

  “Dylan, I’m really stoked about having a kid. I am. I love Lindsay, but-”

  “It’s too fast?”

  I shake my head in agreement. “It’s way too fast. Me and Lindsay only got together at the end of March, when I was in my new place. By October my YouTube channel exploded and I was getting all those offers coming in – things I’m supposed to look at and deal with, when I’ve spent the last twenty-five years letting my mother do everything for me. December, I ask Linds to move in, and by this time she knows she’s pregnant, but hasn’t told me. She’s saving it for Christmas. So I celebrate my birthday and then it’s ‘oh, you’re going to be a dad.’ I feel like I’m spinning, mate.” I finish my pint.

  “You’re sure you’re happy with all this? Not being swept along?” He asks me, his brow furrowed.

  I thump on my chest for effect. “Inside, I feel happy. That’s what I’m going on. But I need, like, the superpower of freezing time so I can take a breath and have a think about what’s happened and what’s coming. Like, I’d like to get a house and get out of the rental. My lease is up next month, but I haven’t had chance to look into it because I don’t have a spare minute.”

  “What’s happening with the book?”

  “I don’t know. I need to get back to them, but I’ve had no time with working at Smiths, keeping the channels updated and then dealing with Lindsay, who’s constantly moaning she feels sick. She’s only having a baby; you’d think she was dying.”

  “Well they do exaggerate, don’t they?”

  “It gets me how they constantly moan about how busy they are and never see we’re just as busy.”

  “Tell me about it. If I’d told Cam I’d had the day off, she’d have given me a list of jobs that needed doing in the house. So, I’ve not told her. I’ll just say I nipped out for a couple of quick pints after work.” He drinks up. “In fact, I’ll bet you anything she doesn’t even notice. She’ll waffle on about the play centre – I mean, it’s only a few kids running about. I have vast sums of money to manage every day. What if I’m so tired I give someone a million quid that’s not theirs? Does she ask about my day? No. She just moans that I’ve put my
mug on the chair arm. Anyway, at some point, I need to talk to her, but not today. Today is about beer.”

  We chink pint glasses together and change the topic to football.

  Chapter Three

  Dora

  This year I started Four Weeks to Peace, Love and Happiness, the new self-help book by Tatiana Patrick, which Cam bought me for my birthday last month. It’s about not seeing fear, but seeing love instead. Not feeling resentments, but imagining it all with love. There are little exercises to do every day. I have to ensure that every time I feel resentment towards someone, I think love instead. I have to say it in my head: ‘Think love’. I feel all zen. I’m not worrying about this menopause thing. It demonstrates my age; I’m maturing like a fine wine. Seeing it with love. Yeah right, who am I kidding? I’m a fucking fermented grape. All wrinkled up. I pick up the book and throw it towards the kitchen door. It’s going in the bin. Fuck off, Tatiana, twenty-odd-year-old clueless bint. You have no idea, none, about what it feels like to be moving towards old age. I’m a has been. Tim won’t want me anymore. He’s going to start lusting after young, fertile women like his biology desires. I’ll just go and sit at the sodding bingo and have done with it.

  Case in point: when we were younger, I wore a pinafore that Tim absolutely loved. He was all pervy towards me about it. I don’t know what it was about the piece, but he liked it on me. Last week I bought one similar from Primark. You know how clothes-fads circle back around? Well, I suppose you don’t if you’re fucking twenty. Anyway, I wore it and do you know what he said? It looked a bit daft.

  In other words, I looked daft.

  In other words, the pinafore no longer did it.

  In other words, I no longer did it for him wearing the pinafore.

  Case in point: I’m now old and fugly. You’ve heard that before, right? Fugly. Fucking ugly.

  I go up to my wardrobe and pull out a thin scarf. When I was younger, my Nan used to wear these around her head. It’s rare you see them these days, but that’s how it was. I tie it around my head and under my chin. It covers up my highlighted, long blonde hair, and all I can see are the wrinkles on my face. My old, maybe menopausal face. Checking out my mini suitcase in the corner I perk up. At least now I know I’m not pregnant I can have wine! Feeling enthused, I jog down the stairs and grab a couple of bottles from the kitchen and jog back upstairs to add them to the case. I can hear my mother’s voice in my head as I do it, “No running with glass in your hand.” That reminds me, I’d better ring her in a minute. Remind her it’s mine and Miranda’s weekend away. I pick up the case to take it downstairs ready for the morning. It feels a bit heavy. I decide I’ll buy some wine there rather than drag it in the case with me. Hmm, might as well open one of these bottles now then.