Read Online The Would-Begetter by Maggie Makepeace - Free Book Online

about your stuff in my bag. I looked everywhere for you to give them back, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe someone had given you a lift home, or even a bed for…’
    ‘No,’ Hector said shortly, stepping over the threshold and leaning his full weight against the door to close it again. ‘I’ve been looking for you too. If only you’d stayed at the party a little longer, then I wouldn’t have had all this trouble.’ He looked down at his feet. Water was dripping from the black fur and forming dark patches on Wendy’s hall carpet. ‘Hell! I’m wet to the bloody bone.’
    ‘You’ll catch your death like that,’ Wendy said. ‘I’m really sorry. I just didn’t know what to do for the best. Look, you mustn’t stay all cold and wet. How about having a hot bath here, now? I could pop the gorilla suit into the tumble dryer – I mean, you really can’t go out again like that, can you?’
    ‘Oh I don’t know…’ Hector began, then a shiver went right through him, making his teeth chatter, and he grudgingly agreed. ‘Oh, all right then. God, what a farce.’
    Hector had found it hard to believe that Wendy had left the party without giving him his things from her bag. Surely no one could be that dim? How the hell did she think he was going to get home without them? He had wasted a lot of time rushing round all the party rooms, the cloakroom, the bogs, the entrance hall, every-bloody-where looking for the stupid woman. Then, when he concluded that she really must have gone home, he couldn’t find anyone who knew where she lived! Oh he knew roughly where it was, but roughly wasn’t good enough on a night like this and in such a ridiculous get-up. So he went to look for a phone book, but there wasn’t one. He tried Directory Enquiries and they gave him her number but refused to divulge her address. Then he saw it was a payphone, but he didn’t have any money, and by the time he’d realised this, he’d forgotten the number, because he hadn’t anything to write it down on. By this time, he was incandescent with frustration, jumping up and down and beating his head with his fists.
    ‘Something wrong?’ Barry enquired, on his way to the cloakroom.
    ‘You don’t happen to know Wendy’s phone number by any extraordinary chance, do you?’ Hector was clutching at straws.
    “Course I do. Why?’
    ‘She’s only taken my bloody keys… You DO know it? Thank Christ for that! I don’t suppose you’ve got change for the phone as well?’
    ‘Sorry. Spent it all on booze. You could always reverse the charge, or, better still, I could pop round there for you, if you like. Have to be on foot though; I left the car at home so’s I could drink.’
    ‘You mean you
know her address?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Well why the blazes didn’t you say so in the first place?’
    ‘Well you never asked m…’ but Hector interrupted him and made him say it twice, and slowly so that he could get it properly memorised.
    ‘D’you want me to go then?’ Barry asked. He seemed eager to do so for some reason.
    Hector stared at him. ‘What, like that?’
    Barry looked down at his sandwich-boards and then out at the gale. ‘Well, on second thoughts, perhaps not.’
    ‘No,’ Hector said. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. This is my disaster. I’ll sort it out myself.’
    He walked briskly through the wind and rain, and was grateful the weather was so bad that there were few people around to jeer at his costume. A few cars hooted, and one youth wound down a window and wolf-whistled, but he strode on regardless. He felt very irritated with Wendy, but he made himself concentrate on the task in hand. He would get his keys etc. and then leave, walking fast (which would keep him warm – rather like wearing a wet suit actually) back to his car and finally, God willing, get
home
.
    When Wendy opened her front door to him, Hector was taken aback. She was clearly ready for bed, and equally obviously