The New Mrs D (22 page)

Chapter Thirty

Priscilla Hart says she keeps slim on the cucumber diet. I have a lot of that too and haven’t lost a pound. I’m clearly inserting it wrong.

‘S
al, why, oh, why are you weighing yourself?’

Beth and I were at the breakfast bar watching Sal step on and off the kitchen scales, removing articles of clothing each time to see if it made a difference.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she replied, looking annoyed that the removal of her favourite scarf still hadn’t shifted another pound on the scale. ‘I just want to feel attractive.’

‘But you are attractive,’ I told her, stroking her back. ‘It doesn’t matter what the scales say, it’s just a number.’

‘I’m overweight, Mum,’ she complained. ‘And I want to look my best for all the gigs I’ll be playing this year with the band. Kimberley at fat class says I should aim for two stone’s loss at least.’

‘Yes, and the company she works for will rely on you trying to reach that unattainable, unnatural you for the next God-knows-how-many years − with a gap for gaining in between − that assures them a nice, even profit to the end of your days,’ said Beth.

‘Throw those cursed scales away,’ I said. ‘A healthy attitude is the most important thing. Be grateful for the body you have now. Don’t spend years hating it, it’s such a waste of precious time.’

I thought of Greta and sighed. I missed her wisdom and inspiration.

‘Mum, you are so different since you came back from Greece,’ Sal said, ‘isn’t she, Beth?’

Beth nodded. ‘And you’re looking good – revived. I hope I look half as good as you do now when I’m your age.’

‘Oh, you’ll both surpass anything I’ve got when that time comes,’ I smiled proudly. ‘I’ve raised two beautiful, confident and independent young career women. My work here is done. Now, how would you both feel if I told you we’re thinking of going back there to live?’

David looked surprised. ‘We are?’

‘Don’t worry, David,’ Sal said, laughingly thrusting the polythene bag she had been holding at me. ‘She’s not done here yet. I need my trousers taking up.’

As Sal and David went laughing into the living room, Beth sidled up to me.

‘Mum,’ she said. ‘I meant it when I said you look better than I’ve seen you in ages. I don’t know what it is, but something is different. And it’s brilliant. Give me some of it!’

It was true, I felt better in my own skin than I had in ages. It wasn’t about my weight – I had no clue what that was any more. It wasn’t about the size of my jeans, I just felt different. Although, I was eating fresher, healthier foods than before. If Greta had taught me anything, it was to love the skin I was in and be grateful for every day. Yet, despite the new me, David still hadn’t been able to make love to me. There was just one trick left up my sleeve. Somehow, I had to have David again, at last. I owed it to myself to feel desired again. Besides, I couldn’t stand another month without sex. Just that morning I had put on a low cut top and raced to the door to sign for a parcel, telling myself enough was enough – if the man even remotely flirted with me it was going to be his lucky day. One thing was for sure; I wasn’t the sad, under-confident person David had married any more. However, when the toothless old codger had gone, I cursed myself for even thinking of being unfaithful. What was happening to me? Every little thing made me think about sex these days. I was going nuts! Ooh, nuts . . .

Later that evening when the girls had gone home, I turned to David, who was snoozing on the sofa as I watched TV.

‘David,’ I said, nudging him gently. ‘I really fancy a brandy tonight. Would you nip out for some cola?’

He sighed loudly before lifting his head. ‘For Pete’s sake, what time is it?’ he asked.

‘Ten past eight.’

‘Oh, Christ Bernice, I was just settling in for the evening. Do I have to?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He sucked his teeth and sighed. ‘Anything for a quiet life,’ he said. ‘I guess I could get a few beers myself. Pass me my wallet.’

There was little time to lose. The drive to the shop would take David all of ten minutes. That morning while he was at work I had spent two hours inflating a small paddling pool in the garage before filling it with twenty five large cartons of custard that I’d ordered from a local wholesaler. I knew he never put his car away until last thing at night and I’d hidden the remote to be sure. All I had to do now was leave the remote on the windowsill with a note, get on my bikini, down a large, neat brandy from a bottle I had stashed in there, dive in and wait.

The custard was gloopy, squelchy and freezing cold.

‘This better be worth it,’ I said to my second large glass of brandy, before downing it in one. He was taking a very long time to come back, but that was okay. I was funny, sassy and flirty again. If nothing else, at least we’d have a good giggle.

It was a good twenty minutes before I heard David’s car pull up, just as a text alert on my mobile phone went off. No point in trying to read it now, my hands were immersed in custard.

The engine died and I heard the car door open, before footsteps and the sound of the back door banging shut. I held my breath, imagining David reading my note as I waited for him to join me:

Open the garage NOW! I have a surprise for you.

There was a second car coming up the drive. A second engine died and a second car door opened. Oh shit!

I dived out of the paddling pool and stood in front of it, custard-covered and freezing as the electronic garage door clicked and slowly rolled open.

‘Bernice, is that you?’

It was Mr Taylor from next door, looking shocked. Just like Mrs Taylor, who was still sitting in the passenger seat of their car, staring at me, covering her mouth with her hand. Their teenage son, Mikey, broke the terrible silence.

‘Bahahahahahaha!’

Behind Mr Taylor’s car stood David, holding the remote control to the garage out.

‘I . . . er . . . was just lending Tony my trolley jack,’ he said.

‘And I was just . . . er . . . making a trifle.’

With that, I took to my heels, racing past Tony without daring to look in the car at his wife and son, and dived inside the back door where I promptly lost my footing – what with all the slippery custard on my feet – and slid onto my arse with a slap.

Pushing the door shut with my feet, I took myself quickly upstairs and started the shower, knowing hot water wasn’t going to be necessary. The heat from my face would do it. As I crept up to the bedroom window to watch the neighbours’ car reverse away down the drive, I spied my mobile phone on the dressing room table.
Wait a minute. Didn’t that just go off in the garage?

I picked it up and examined it. Yep, it was definitely my phone. Before I had chance to think about it any further, David came into the room.

‘What on earth were you doing?’ he said with a grin, clearly knowing full well what I’d been doing. By now though, I had other things on my mind.

‘Where is your phone?’

He put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled it out. ‘Here, why? You didn’t send me any warning messages.’

Pulling on my robe from the back of the bedroom door, I walked past him and headed downstairs again.

‘What’s wrong?’ he said, following me.

Wordlessly, I stepped over the custardy mess on the floor by the back door and headed back out to the garage with David at my heels all the way.

‘What is it?’ he said, sounding more and more anxious now. ‘You look angry, Binnie. What’s wrong?’

I walked over to the paddling pool, my eyes searching the shelves on the back wall. There was a phone there somewhere, I knew it.

‘Binnie, what is wrong?’

‘I heard something when I was in here earlier,’ I told him.

‘What were you doing in here anyway?’ he asked, looking down at the pool full of custard.

‘I think you can guess,’ I said, turning my attention to the cupboard on the far wall that was filled with gardening chemicals. I opened it.

‘Binnie,’ David said, racing across to stand in front of it. ‘Come on, let’s get messy together.’ He tried to kiss me but I pushed him away, feeling a growing revulsion in my stomach.

‘Let me open that cupboard please,’ I said.

‘What for? There isn’t anything in there but garden stuff.’

I pushed him aside and opened the cupboard door. There on the shelf was a small, cheap-looking mobile phone. And it was lit up with a message. I picked it up.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Will you look at this? It’s a little phone and there’s a message on it, too.’

David gulped and looked redder than I’d been in front of Tony Taylor a short while before. ‘I wonder who that belongs to then?’

‘Perhaps Sal or Beth left it here?’ he said weakly.

I held it up and saw the first part of the message, highlighted in neon blue at the bottom of the screen underneath the day’s date:

80210: Hi there David, JACINTA is soooo wet for you right now.

I didn’t have to look at David’s face to know he was in a cold panic, turning another series of great excuses over in his brain. Only this time he and I both knew I wasn’t going to wait to hear them. Without a word, I took off out of the garage towards the back door.

‘Binnie!’ he shouted. ‘Wait! I can explain.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you, David?’ I shouted over my shoulder. ‘My name is Bernice!’

I opened the back door and headed indoors, without turning back.

Chapter Thirty-One

Girls, when life hands you melons . . . wahey!

‘W
ell,’ said Chris, turning to me from the driver’s seat of his car. ‘What happened?’

I turned to look at him, my heart heavy but my head full of hope, optimism and countless possibilities. Whatever happened now, I wasn’t going to let myself be embarrassed to tell him the truth. Just like I wasn’t going to be ashamed to tell everyone my ex-husband was addicted to porn – a virtual adulterer. I had set the boundaries about what constituted trust in our relationship and he had crossed them.

‘I told him it was time for him to get off,’ I said, ending my brief explanation for why I was no longer Mrs David Dando . . . ‘But I did it with
meraki
.’

I waited for the look of surprise, the ‘Aren’t you the frigid one?’ ‘Is that it?’ ‘Is that all he did?’ But the only thing Chris said was, ‘Eh?’

‘
Meraki
,’ I repeated. ‘With all of my soul and all of my love. Because I do love him, honestly. And I don’t owe anybody an explanation for the mistakes I make in my life except myself and my daughters. What they know is that their mother wasn’t afraid to change direction in her life when the old way was sucking away all her happiness. I can pat myself on the back, proud not to have just told them that but to have showed them too.’

‘And what about David?’

‘It’s not all his fault. I married in haste. All my life I’ve been getting into, and then trying to hold on to, impossible relationships. I thought I needed that one person to make me feel special because I felt unworthy of people who might actually value me. I was a product of my past, wrapped up in the dizzy, happy buzz of knowing that someone wanted to marry me. I based my own sense of self-worth on his being prepared to marry me. I’d been moulding myself to fit David and him to me, trying to force what I thought were the two final pieces in the jigsaw of my life together, to complete me. But they were the wrong pieces. David isn’t all bad, but he’s bad for me. I want to be myself again. When I’m with David, I’m so preoccupied with trying to change things I can’t ever fix that I always forget to stop and dip my toes in the Aegean.’

‘I think I get everything except that last bit.’

‘You know, really stopping to watch, feel and be in my life. I mean, it’s passing us all by, Chris. With him, I wasn’t living authentically,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t really experiencing every moment. And I need to do that, with every part of my being. I need to be me, Bernice Annabel Anderson. Not Mrs David Dando. I know that now. I don’t need to be somebody’s wife to consider myself somebody. I had to stop and make a promise to me to put my own happiness first. I have spent a lifetime believing I need that one person to save me. But it was me that needed to save me, all along.’

‘And you’re sure leaving someone you love is the right thing to do?’

I was surprised, and a little cheered to see him say nothing of the rights and wrongs of my leaving David because of his porn use. I hadn’t expected this from the first man I explained it to.

‘Chris, I had no job and no idea what I wanted to do with my life,’ I went on. ‘Yet the last time I left here I thought the world was full of possibilities again and I felt really good about myself. That all disappeared the minute we hit the tarmac at East Midlands Airport. I know now that this is where I want to be. Do you know, I spent seven years convincing myself I wanted everything David did? I don’t want to do that anymore. Who knows what time I have left? All I know for sure is that from this day onwards I want to make my own choices, not someone else’s.’

‘Wow,’ said Chris, scratching his head. ‘That is profound. Where has all this come from?’

‘It’s come from me having a desire to get out and enjoy my own life, my own way for the first time in forty one years,’ I said.

‘Who gave you permission to do all that?’ he joked.

I stared out the car window to the sea, blinking back tears. ‘My dad,’ I replied.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I never met the man, but he sounds a decent bloke.’

‘He was,’ I agreed.

‘Good for you. I think – although I confess I do feel terrible for David. He’s pretty cut up, poor guy.’

‘Well, it’s understandable you feel that way, he is your best friend,’ I said.

‘I hope you’re right,’ he replied. ‘Because I feel like I am helping him lose his wife forever by giving you a place to stay.’

‘No, you’re not. This is all my doing and he’s grateful I have a friend to go to.’

‘He said that?’

‘Yes, he did, in the end.’

‘Although,’ I went on, ‘if I’m honest, it was you packing up your life and heading out here that inspired me to try it too.’

‘Yes, but I was running away,’ he said seriously.

‘It turned out okay in the end though, didn’t it?’ I said. ‘You seem happy now.’

His clear blue eyes fell and I knew he was looking at my mouth; maybe allowing himself to consider what might have been with us for a moment. A meeting at a different time, in a different place, before David and I had ever laid eyes on each other. But that time had been missed and was gone forever which was, in some ways, a great shame. I remembered the last time I’d been here and that last night of the party, just before I’d jumped on stage to meet David. Thanking Chris for his honesty in telling me he loved me and whispering in his ear the reason why I’d needed to know right at that moment, just before going back to my husband, whether he’d been having an affair with Ginger.

‘I just wanted to know there are still some good men in the world.’

Chris was a good man and an attractive one, but he was David’s best friend; I was still in love with David and had been, albeit briefly, his wife.

‘Yes,’ Chris replied finally. ‘I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. Plus there is always the possibility of brighter things to come.’

‘Certainly a lot of sunnier days,’ I grinned.

‘Yes, Greece has lots of those.’

‘And I’ve got a lot of Blondie songs to sing with Adonis.’

‘Nudeoke?’

‘You know it. There’s nothing like belting out, ‘
Your hair is beautiful
’ to a man in the buff.’

He coughed, which I knew was to disguise a guilty chortle.

‘And you have your kayaking,’ I reminded him.

‘Ah, yes,’ he smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll even let you come with me again, if you promise to do as you’re told this time. But what about your house in England?’

‘I’m just going to let it every summer, and the girls are over the moon to have somewhere for holidays. It’s only a couple of hours on the plane. I’ll still see my mother and be around when she needs me. I’m not deserting my family. I’m daring to take a detour of personal discovery – just because I can.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing.’

‘Oh, yes. For once I think I am. I’m going to have to find work and look for something a bit bigger than your place though, no offence.’

He laughed and put the key in the ignition.

‘Chris,’ I continued. ‘Can you drop me off at the stables instead of back at the apartment? I have a little business proposition to discuss with Michaela.’

He paused. ‘You do?’

‘Yes, I do,’ I answered. ‘I’ve been going over some plans for the new Meraki Equine Therapy Centre for Women.’

‘I didn’t know there was one of those here?’

‘There isn’t . . . yet,’ I grinned.

‘Don’t you need some kind of qualification for therapy?’ he asked.

‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘The kind you can get online – unless you’re a horse. They just seem to have the knack. On the other hand, maybe I’ll be the singer I always secretly wanted to be. Don’t stop me, Chris, I’m on a roll. Somehow, some way, I’m going to make this, or something like this, happen. I’ve told the girls and, okay, they’re worried about me right now, but I told them I’ve never felt freer. They’re happy if I’m happy. And do you know what? I know I’m going to be; I just need to take one day at a time.’

‘That’s a lot of big decisions in such a short time,’ Chris replied, looking thoughtful. ‘But you seemed so sorted when you left here. You were changed. Why did you go back?’

‘I think it was because he’d made such a fuss in front of everyone, I felt I just had to give him another chance. The people-pleaser in me kicked back in again,’ I replied truthfully. ‘But I realised quite early on that I’m not that person any more. I think in my heart I always knew I would end up back here, I just had to take that one, last trip home to be absolutely sure.’

Chris started the engine.

No more looking back. Only onwards from now on. New beginnings.

I sighed. ‘You know, I think I’m going to be enjoying my own company for a while. Sure, everyone craves love in their life but the first place it has to come from is within. If I can’t love me, no-one can. If I can’t be myself, I’m failing to do whatever it is I came to earth to do. Because there is only ever going to be one me.’

‘Well, that is philosophical,’ said Chris. ‘Who wrote it?’

‘That,’ I told him with a satisfied smile, ‘is a page from the journal of my life.’

‘Oh, sure, I’ve read a few bits of that book,’ he laughed. ‘It’s a page turner, for sure.’

‘Chris,’ I said, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Could you wait here a minute?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Why? Did you forget something?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I just need to go dip my toes in the Aegean.’

He reached over to pat my hand and smiled. ‘Sure, you go ahead,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait for you.’