Vintage Babes (32 page)

‘How about saying you’re getting back with your wife?’

‘No. The kids’d love us to get together again, but it isn’t going to happen. And I couldn’t risk them getting wind of the wrong idea. It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘Pretend you have the hots for Melanie?’ I suggested.

He gave me a
get real
look. ‘Now that is a joke. The girl’s years younger than me and she doesn’t appeal.’

‘Max is years younger than me and he doesn’t appeal, either, yet so many folk seem convinced we’re having an affair. It’s weird! It’s a pain! I’m sick and tired of it!’ I complained, my frustration bubbling over.

‘And you’re not? Not having an affair?’

‘No!’

‘Oh, I thought in view of the talk that maybe, just maybe –’

‘Everyone thinks ‘maybe’, but there isn’t a ‘maybe’. Never has been and never will be. I may’ve given a mixed message at first, but I was joking. I had dinner with the lad once and today we appeared on television, together with Tina  and Jenny, but –’

‘Right,’ Steve said. ‘We’ll act like we’re a pair.’

I blinked. ‘What?’

‘It’ll end the Max gossip for you and keep Tina at bay for me. We’ll go out to dinner a couple of times, be seen together, pretend to be love birds.’

‘This is a wind-up, right?’ I said suspiciously.

‘No. But it’s a purely business arrangement.’

‘With no hanky-panky?’ I said, then wondered if I was asking or telling.

A smile tugged at his lips. ‘Wash your mouth out with soap. What do you take me for, a gigolo?’

‘But I’ve never shown the slightest interest in you. I’ve never spoken to Tina, or to anyone, about fancying you – in fact, just the opposite.’

‘You’ve told folk what a thorn in the flesh I am?’

‘Not just a thorn, a rottweiler.’

Steve frowned. ‘Maybe I was on the fierce side when I first took over here, but I was determined to do things right.’

‘You’re a bit more amicable now,’ I said.

‘Only a bit?’

‘A lot.’ I returned to the main thread. ‘But if we suddenly appear as a couple, no one’s going to believe it.’

‘They will if we say it’s instant love. Bolt from the blue stuff. It happens. I saw you on television this morning, noticed your cute backside and, wham, slavering devotion. It is cute, by the way. And as for you –’ He paused, thinking.

‘I noticed that you have a cute backside, too?’ I suggested.

‘Do I?’

‘Stand up and turn round.’ Steve stood up and turned round. He was wearing dark grey slacks which fitted neatly around his buttocks. ‘Real cute,’ I told him.

I wasn’t lying. Funny I’d never noticed his bum before, but then I’d never regarded him as a man I could fancy. I’d been too busy resenting him as a usurper, I suppose.

‘So what do you think? Shall we give being a pair a try?’

I considered the idea. Did I want to spend even more time with him and have my name linked with his? It would be an improvement on having my name linked with Max’s and yet… but we could talk shop, were more of an age and had things in common.

‘Okay, but only on the understanding that either of us can opt out at any time.’

‘Sure. We’ll start after the weekend, when I’ve had time to warn my kids.’

‘And after I’ve explained things to Lynn and to my dad.’

‘Done,’ he said.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

‘
He’s here! My daddy’s
here!’ Beth’s delighted cry sounded and she came running into the kitchen, where Lynn had just finished washing the lunch dishes and I was drying them. ‘I saw his car stop outside. He’s here!’

‘He’s early,’ Lynn said, frowning, ‘and I need to change. Will you let him in?’

‘Of course.’

As she vanished upstairs I went to open the front door, with Beth dancing a jig for joy beside me.

‘Daddy!’ she yelled, when she saw him and hurled herself into his arms.

As she kissed him and told him how very much she loved him and that she had missed him ‘lots and lots and lots’, Justin hugged her tight.

‘Some welcome,’ he said to me, and he blinked.

I nodded. Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but I was close to tears, too.

‘This is for you,’ Beth said, handing him a card which was plastered with silver stars and had ‘DADDY’ in wavering green felt-tip capitals on the front and ‘LOVE FROM BETH’ in wavering red felt-tip capitals inside. ‘I made it and stuck on all the stars and did the kisses, but Gran helped with the writing.’

‘Only a little bit,’ I said.

‘It’s lovely. I shall keep it for ever,’ Justin declared.

‘Until you die?’ Beth asked.

‘Until I die.’

‘And then you’ll be very old, as old as Gran.’

‘Maybe even older.’ Justin looked at me and grinned. ‘Though not many people are.’

‘You mean, like a hundred?’ the little girl said.

His grin widened. ‘In that region.’

‘Up yours,’ I said,
sotto voce.
‘Lynn’s getting ready, she won’t be long. It’s good to see you,’ I told him, being demonstrably friendly and kissing his cheek to show I bore no grudge.

We’ve always got along and I hoped he knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t automatically take sides and denounce him. I hoped he knew I was aware that my daughter had faults.

‘I went round to my mum and dad’s last night. They were saying they’d like to see this monster.’ Justin tickled Beth, making her giggle. ‘See if she’s still as horrible.’

‘I’m not horrible,’ she said indignantly.

‘No, you’re not, you’re gorgeous. Utterly butterly gorgeous,’ he said, and tickled her again. He looked out at the sunshine. ‘And it’s a gorgeous day for visiting the farm park. Perhaps we’ll see the pigs racing and –’

‘And I can stroke the baby lambs and the little tiny baby rabbits,’ Beth said. ‘Like last time. And I can go on the trampoline and the climbing frame and –’

‘Hello.’ Lynn was walking primly down the stairs. ‘Shall we be off?’

Justin nodded. ‘Suits me.’

‘Bye.’ I kissed Beth and Lynn, then kissed Justin’s cheek again. ‘I hope you can sort things out,’ I said quietly to him.

When they’d gone I finished drying the dishes and put them away. If I left them on the drainer, Lynn would be sure to comment. I also wiped down the work surfaces. If my daughter stays here long enough, she’ll scare me into domestic perfection.

Going upstairs, I changed into a black cotton top with three quarter sleeves, and white jeans. I didn’t want to look overly smart, as if I was trying to impress, but I wanted to show I could still cut it. I studied myself in the mirror. Why is it you can look so different in different mirrors and look different in the same mirror at different times? And which reflection is the true you? Sometimes I see a sophisticated, fine-featured brunette of uncommon beauty, but at others I see a gargoyle. Today, the day I was meeting Tom, I veered towards the gargoyle. Dammit.

As I waited for my visitor to arrive I thought of how I had told Lynn that I had never asked him where he felt our relationship had gone wrong. Why hadn’t I asked? I’m usually curious, normally up-front. All I could imagine was that I had been so busy extracting myself with dignity, I hadn’t got around to it. Or perhaps, deep down, I’d been scared of what he might say. But now I needed a full, nothing-held-back explanation.

Two-thirty came and went, then three o’clock, but there was no sign of Tom. Would he ring and belatedly cancel, or simply not turn up? When we were married, the demands of his career had often intruded on our private life and he had not been too clever at keeping me informed. I could remember waiting at home for ages, dressed in my best and ready to go, then being forced to ring friends at the last minute to apologise profusely because we wouldn’t be able to join them for dinner. Or supposedly meeting Tom at some event, only to discover I was there on my own. At the time it had seemed par for the journalistic course and I had accepted it, but now I began to feel annoyed. Family matters more.

I lit a cigarette and stood, gazing out of the kitchen window and thinking. Thinking of how our marriage had ended…

The receipt had been for an asparagus kettle. It fell out of a ‘Thirty Miles Around London’ road map which I had borrowed from Tom’s shelf in the study. That afternoon I was driving up to Waltham Abbey to interview a businessman who had made millions marketing flatpack cardboard coffins for pets and I needed to check the route.

What on earth was an asparagus kettle? Something to cook asparagus in, obviously, but was the kettle flat and long or did the spears stand upright? Was there a basket, a lid, a whistling spout? Did twenty five pounds buy the de luxe version or was it dirt cheap? I had no idea. Kitchenware didn’t grab me. Cooking, neither, though as an eager to please newly-wed I had aspired to the role of domestic goddess. I had made pies with shortcrust pastry and cut-out leaves on top, produced a strangely textured strawberry jam, even baked my own bread. The culinary kick hadn’t lasted for long. And now that we lived in Kensington with a Marks & Spencer selling pre-prepared meals just a five-minute walk away, who needed to cook?

At that point I had had no idea, either, that my husband was having an affair. If the receipt had been for French perfume or expensive lingerie, my suspicions might have been aroused. Though only might. After being happily married for so long, I had trusted him to be faithful. It hadn’t occurred to me that Tom would stray. Not seriously occurred. Though he had warned that if Cher should ever crook a manicured finger, he’d be off like a shot to be her sex slave. There’s no accounting for tastes.

I had decided he must have bought a leaving present for some secretary at his paper – we worked on different papers – and dismissed the receipt from my mind when, one night in bed, Tom called me Kath instead of Carol. When I’d laughed, raised my head from his groin and asked who the hell Kath was, he swore I’d misheard. He was so determined, I believed him.

Then the receptionist at his paper rang and left a message on the answerphone. The message was innocuous, about a cancelled meeting, but her tone was not. It was husky and intimate. Her ‘It’s Kathryn here –’ pause ‘– Mr Webb’ was vocal seduction. Pure ‘come up and see me sometime.’ Had she spoken like that on purpose, thinking the muggins wife might hear? Later, I believed so.

I had seen the girl sat at her desk in the lobby of Tom’s building and once when I’d been waiting for him, we’d chatted. She had told me how she had studied journalism at college and that her aim was to work on the fashion pages – ‘as soon as a vacancy occurs’. Fashion figured. Kathryn was a curvy blonde who wore the latest styles, did a busy line in lip gloss and had false eyelashes with blue mascara. A slick chick. I’d been surprised when she had mentioned that she was taking a course in Cordon Bleu cuisine.

‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,’ she had declared, tritely, but with the arch of a plucked brow.

After hearing the message, I thought of that brow and the number of meetings and dinners Tom had recently had to attend, going out in the evening all dressed up and smelling of aftershave, and not returning until late. After midnight late. When I was in bed, fast asleep. Which meant we hadn’t been making love as often. The signs seemed scarily obvious.