Vintage Babes (14 page)

‘Sounds the ideal husband,’ I said.

‘Mum used to think so. She still likes him, y’know. And he likes her. They had an amicable divorce.’ The girl leant forward, speaking confidentially. ‘Paul and I think they might get back together again, but don’t say anything to Dad.’

‘I won’t,’ I promised.

‘He’s stressy about the divorce. Feels guilty. Oh, hi, Dad,’ she said, as Steve and Tina came into the room.

Tina was in the middle of telling him how much she approved of his choice of photograph, but he raised a hand in greeting.

‘Hi.’

‘I know Duncan would’ve been delighted,’ Tina continued, slinging Debbie and me a quick glance before concentrating again on Steve. ‘And he would’ve been delighted that you wanted to print his obituary. For him to be acknowledged in such a way – I’m really grateful.’

‘Your husband was a leading member of the Dursleigh community,’ he told her.

‘You think so? Duncan would’ve been so proud and –’ Clasping Steve’s arm, she gazed up at him. ‘You are so kind.’

‘It was Carol who wrote the obituary,’ he said.

Tina spared me another quick glance. ‘Thanks. I must go. Lovely to meet you,’ she told Steve. ‘Bye.’ She crossed to the door which lead out to the stairs. ‘Oh,’ she said, suddenly remembering, ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Carol.’

‘You will. With my friend, Jenny, just before nine,’ I replied. I had been wondering if she would mention it. ‘I assume Max is agreeable?’

‘He is. Bye-bye, Steve,’ she sang, and gave him a wave before she disappeared.

Debbie grinned. ‘You’ve got yourself an admirer there, Dad. And she is rather glam. For someone that old.’

‘She’s a good-looking woman,’ he said. ‘Her husband died recently and the housekeeper’s left, and she was telling me how difficult she finds it, just coping with simple things. Like working the washing machine and the cooker, and removing a spider from the bath – seems she gave up on that. She’s also been having trouble with radiators not heating up, so I explained how to bleed them.’

Debbie wrinkled her nose. ‘Sounds a bit of an airhead.’

‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘but you can’t help feeling sorry for her.’

‘Talking of feeling sorry for people, I was wondering if you could give me a sub from next week’s pocket money, please?’ his daughter asked, and rose. With her cargo pants softly scuffing the wooden floor, she ambled over to him. ‘Pretty please. There’s a new teenage magazine just come out and every girl in my class has it, except me. This week’s issue has a give-away make-up bag which is wicked.’

‘How much?’

‘Two pounds fifty.’

‘Two pounds fifty for a kids’ magazine?’ he protested.

‘I mean, like, hello!’ Debbie said. ‘Two pounds fifty is nothing.’

I grinned. ‘When your father was a boy, you could feed a family of four for a week on two pounds. And magazines cost six pence. That’s six old pennies.’

She pulled a face. ‘So he’s always telling us. Once he made such a fuss over the cost of an ice-cream. We’d gone down to Brighton and he told the girl in the kiosk it was daylight robbery. Like as if she fixed the price.’ She sighed. ‘Dad can be so
gay.
’

I looked at Steve. ‘Gay?’ I queried.

‘Teenage speak for embarrassing.’

‘They have the magazine in the newsagents around the corner,’ Debbie said. ‘I checked. But they’re selling fast and if I’m the only person who doesn’t have one –’

‘I give up.’ Putting a hand into his trouser pocket, Steve brought out coins. ‘Here’s three quid. Keep the change. And it’s not a sub, it’s a gift.’

Standing on tiptoe, Debbie kissed his cheek. ‘You’re the top of the pops. Be back in a minute.’

‘Isn’t parenthood fun?’ I said, as the girl rushed out.

He groaned. ‘She’s becoming expensive. Last week it was nail polish she wanted, but not just one bottle, five, because each nail on her hand had to be a different colour. Kids!’ he complained, then smiled. ‘Forgive the ramblings of a grumpy middle-aged man. There are times when I remind myself of my father and he’s the prototype for Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.’

I began to clear my desk. It was time to go home. ‘Debbie was telling me about your amicable divorce.’

Steve frowned. ‘Kid’s a blabber-mouth.’

‘But it was amicable?’

He hesitated, as if unsure about talking about his personal life – or talking about it to me. Which was fair enough. We were not confidants. Nowhere near. In fact, we barely knew each other and, for much of the time, the situation between us could be described as unarmed combat.

‘It was as amicable as any divorce can be, which –’ he sighed ‘– isn’t to say there haven’t been times of anguish and utter despair.’

‘Par for the course.’

‘But, from the start, Annette and I agreed not to criticise, never to dump blame on the other, so there’s been no hostility for the kids to pick up on. And we’re not hostile. We’ve never had any major rows or unpleasantness. This sounds so bloody hackneyed, but we simply grew apart.’

‘Because your wife ‘saw the light’?’

Steve nodded. ‘When she started chanting ‘om’ as we waited in traffic and talking about ‘embracing the universe’ and ‘rebirthing’, I realised we no longer had much in common and it was time to call it a day.’

‘There was no other woman?’

‘No.’

‘And you feel guilty?’

‘About my marriage breaking down? About me deciding I wanted out? Yes. I accept I’m no madder, sadder or badder than anyone else, but – well, in divorce the kids always have a bumpy ride.’ He frowned. ‘I shan’t get married again.’

I looked at him. To me, it seemed entirely possible that some eager spinster with a ticking biological clock could zoom in and persuade him to give matrimony a second shot. Or perhaps, as his daughter hoped, he and his wife might rekindle their love.

‘Me, neither,’ I said.

‘I don’t even fancy having another relationship, not a serious one.’

‘Nor me.’

CHAPTER
SIX

‘
Looking good. Again, a
full body stretch and don’t forget the arms and the legs. Fingers and toes. Stretch every last muscle, real slow. Man, yeah! Get with that funky beat.’ Max clicked his fingers to the reggae pumping out from his boom blaster. ‘Jenny, keep the tum tucked in. Navel against spine. Carol, breathe deeply and relax. Tina, you’re hot today.’

Lying flat on my back on an exercise mat on the floor of Tina Kincaid’s large conservatory, I took a deep breath. This wasn’t the touch-the-toes routine that I had vaguely imagined, it was much more. We had begun with a warm-up, followed by what Max termed cardio-vascular work, which had meant us taking turns on an exercise bike, skipping and performing ‘squat jumps’ and ‘jumping jacks’. Although I’d considered I was fit, the skipping had had me puffing and panting, but the last time I’d skipped rope was in a school playground. I had felt a real clodhopper attempting the jumps and Jenny hadn’t been any better. What made it worse was that we were both wearing common-or-garden T-shirts and shorts which revealed our pasty white legs and would’ve brought cries of horror from the style police, whereas Tina – who performed perfectly – was in dedicated fitness gear of a sleek aquamarine halter-neck and cropped leggings. And full, expertly applied, make-up.

Now we had reached the cool down which signalled the end of the session.

Throughout it all, the young man had kept up a ceaseless stream of chat. He’d talked about raising energy levels and how exercise equals empowerment. Of the advice he could give us on everything from addictions to back pain to lack of confidence. There’d been American-style fluff of the ‘get in touch with your inner self’ variety and psychobabble quotes, such as ‘a person’s greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated’ and ‘if you can watch the world go by or boogie, I hope you boogie’.

‘Sit up slowly, that’s it, and widen those legs. Stretch the inner thighs. You feel the pull?’ Max enquired, his smile zipping between the three of us.

The personal trainer was not as I had imagined, either. Tina had called him handsome which, with dark thickly-lashed eyes, a square jaw and even white teeth he certainly was, but I hadn’t been prepared for his flamboyance. He stood around six foot four, was broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, with skin the colour of pale coffee and a head of thick dreadlocks. Long blonded dreadlocks. Three silver studs were embedded in one ear and he wore a black Lycra bodysuit which covered him from neck to ankle, yet appeared to reveal everything. I understood why he shocked the neighbours. You don’t come across exotic Adonises like him moseying along the road too often.

‘Right, babes, stand up slowly. Last stretch is the back stretch, with legs apart.’ Max set his hands on his hips. ‘Like this.’

As he leant back and bounced to the beat, I whispered to Jenny. ‘Get a load of the lunchbox.’

She flushed beetroot. I don’t know why, the guy couldn’t hear what I’d said, though my grin and look may have indicated what I was talking about. If so, he wasn’t fazed. And I would guarantee other women have done a lot more than whisper a comment.

‘Thank you very much,’ Jenny said politely, when the work-out ended a few minutes later.

Catching my breath, I wiped the sweat from my brow with a towel I’d brought. ‘It was good.’

Sweat was pouring off me and Jenny; running down our cheeks, dripping inelegantly from the end of our noses – yet Tina’s face was dry. Hadn’t I read somewhere that Botox stopped perspiration? That you could even have injections in your armpits to block up the sweat glands?

‘So you’ll both be here again on Thursday?’ Tina asked.

‘I will,’ I said, and Jenny nodded.

Walking over to the boom blaster, Max switched it off. Silence. Blessed silence. Then the telephone rang.

Tina’s face lit up. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and sped away. The conservatory was off the living room where the telephone was located, so we heard her squeal of delight when she answered. ‘Joe!’

She was given to squeals and, I had noticed, used a breathy little girl voice whenever men were around. She’d spoken that way to Peter and Joe Fernandez at the wake, with Steve yesterday, and again this morning with Max. She seemed to regard the trainer as a deity on high; smilingly grateful if he praised her and nodding sombre acknowledgement of his Slick Willy quotes.

I had also noticed that Tina’s eyes were blue, not brown. The office lights must have cast a curious tint the other day.

‘We need to talk terms,’ Max declared. ‘It’ll be one hundred pounds for an initial assessment, but the session fee is as you’ve fixed with Tina, which you must realise is dirt cheap.’

‘A hundred pounds?’ I protested. There had been no mention of this earlier and I felt certain Tina knew nothing about it.

‘Cash, Thursday. Don’t choke on your pretzel. It’s a quarter my usual fee and not much to change your life. Exercise makes you better today than you were yesterday. It strengthens the body, relaxes the mind and toughens the spirit.’ He paused, as if expecting me to marvel at his wisdom. ‘From your shortage of breath, I’d say you’re a smoker. A twenty fags a day smoker. Correct?’

I towelled off more sweat. He was too accurate. ‘Near enough.’

‘If you want to stop and, babe, you know you should, I can help. Likewise with you,’ he said, turning to Jenny. ‘If you lost some weight you’d feel better and look better. Get rid of the chubby cheeks and emphasise those bewitching eyes, and you’ll be a stunner.’