Women of a Dangerous Age (11 page)

‘It's all very well for you, you cynic,' objected Ali with a smile. ‘You've tried it and made the decision to move on. I'd like the option before it's too late.' She wondered what Lou's husband was like. What sort of man would fall for a woman who had such an idiosyncratic sense of style and who seemed so sure of her own mind? Someone who must have an equally robust self-confidence not to feel overpowered by a partner with a personality as strong as Lou's.

‘I understand that, I really do,' said Lou, flicking the lime green crumbs of her second macaroon from her skirt. ‘God! This stuff's like nuclear dandruff…. And if you really feel like that, then there's an answer staring you in the face.'

‘What?'

‘Don, of course. Reply to his email and meet up. You obviously still haven't got over him. You went all moony when you were talking about him.'

‘I didn't!' Ali protested, at the same time experiencing a tiny fillip at the mention of his name. Too much time had passed to have any expectations again. She was curious to know what had happened to him but it was absurd to expect
any more than that. That particular door had closed or, at the very least, someone else would have walked through it.

‘Don't look so bloody miserable,' Lou commiserated. ‘What's the worst that could happen?'

‘A) He's become an Australian and B) he'll almost certainly be married.' As Ali spoke, she realised how much she wanted to see him again if for no other reason than to tie up loose ends and find out what kind of life he'd made for himself without her.

A movement in the lobby caught Ali's eye and she looked up in time to see a middle-aged man emerge from the lift with a much younger woman. She was looking up at him, adoring, hanging onto his arm and his every last word. Not more than thirty-five, a tumble of dark curly hair, leggy, giggly and gamine. The two of them were totally caught up with one another, oblivious to the world around them. Ali felt a brief pang of envy, looked away, then looked again. She couldn't see his face as he turned to look down at his companion, but wasn't that slight strut familiar? It couldn't be! She caught her breath as the couple turned towards the desk and for a split second she saw his complete profile. The nose, the slicked grey hair, the physique she knew so intimately.

She watched as he ran his hand down over the woman's hip to cup her enviably rounded arse, while the receptionist handed him what must be a bill. No guesses needed for what. Squeezing herself back behind the pillar so there was no chance of him seeing her, should they come into the lounge, she couldn't take her eyes off the pair of them. He was helping the woman on with her coat, kissing her,
holding her hand. Astonishment drove the breath from Ali's lungs.

‘What's the matter?' Lou looked alarmed. ‘Have you seen someone you know?'

‘It's …' Ali closed her eyes. ‘It's Ian,' she managed to whisper. ‘I can't believe he'd do this. He knows I sometimes bring clients here.'

Lou turned, following Ali's gaze. She didn't say anything for a long moment, but she stiffened. At last she said slowly, ‘Not the man in the grey suit? That's your Ian?'

Ali nodded, a lump sticking in her throat. She was only a whisker away from crying.

‘But I know him.' Lou's voice was little more than a murmur.

‘I mean the one who's leaving with his arm round the young woman in that pelmet of a skirt.' Ali could hardly get the words out but wanted to clarify Lou's mistake.

‘Yes, him.' Lou turned again and together they watched the couple leave the hotel, the man shaking out a large stripy umbrella, the woman snuggled in close to him. ‘I know him very well indeed.'

Ali was struggling to control her tears, but managed a choked ‘How?'

Lou wheeled round, her face white with repressed emotion. ‘That's Hooker. That's my husband.'

‘How could you have ended up on the same holiday together?' Fiona was sitting sideways in Jenny's chair, her shoes abandoned on the floor, her arms wrapped round her legs with her chin resting on her knees as she listened to Lou's account. This was the first time they'd seen each other since Lou had passed up on Fiona and Charlie's offer of Christmas in Devon. Despite frequent phone updates, there was still plenty for Fiona to catch up on. Her eyes had widened in disbelief as she heard what had happened in the Regis. ‘The chances of that happening must be one in a million.'

‘Not really.' Lou was kneeling on the floor beside her, laying a fire in the tiled fireplace. She put a match to the paper and watched the kindling take light. ‘I wondered about that for ages, then realised we must both have booked through the same travel agent, Taylormade. They were recommended to Hooker a couple of years ago when we booked that disastrous week in southern Spain.' She groaned at the memory. ‘No sun, no sex and a gorgeous villa that would have been great if the kids had come as planned but
they found other better things to do. Why was I so surprised?' She had lost count of the number of times she had tried to arrange a jolly family holiday that had come to nothing once the children had their own lives. Even a long weekend had been impossible to organise. ‘I never asked how he heard about them but I can only guess that the recommendation came from Ali.'

‘So once you'd both realised your exes were one and the same – then what? God, I wish I'd been a fly on the wall.' Fiona grinned, letting go of her legs and stretching them out.

Lou felt Fiona could have tailored her obvious enjoyment of events with a dash more sympathy. ‘If you mean, did we leap to our feet and confront him? Or did we slug it out? No, we didn't.' Then, it hadn't occurred to her: now, she was tickled by the vision – her, irate; Ali, upset; Hooker, caught red-handed. ‘I think we were both too shocked to react. I dashed off to the Ladies for a moment on my own and, by the time I got back, Ali had paid the bill and was ready to go. She was almost in tears, said how sorry she was and dashed off. It was all over in minutes, by which time Hooker and his teenage companion …' she said the words with all the disdain she could muster, ‘… had disappeared into the afternoon.' She paused, aware that Fiona was watching her, hanging on for whatever she was going to say next. ‘What I can't work out is why he told Ali that he was about to leave his wife, when I had already left
him
three months before. Doesn't make sense.'

‘I suppose he looked as if he was the one calling the shots. Can you imagine Hooker letting himself appear out
of control? God! If I were you, I'd have been livid.' At last the empathy Lou had been hoping for.

‘Weirdly, I wasn't,' she replied. ‘Not right then, anyway. It wasn't till I got home that it hit me. The bastard's been having an affair with Ali for the last three years. Three years! I'm sure she's not the first, but although I had the odd inkling over the years, I always chose not to investigate. Didn't care enough, I guess. Didn't want to rock the boat while the children were still at home. Or it was just easier not to.'

‘But how ironic that, only minutes earlier, you'd been commiserating with her for being dumped by the lover she believed was going to change her life. And it was Hooker all along!' Fiona rubbed her hands together.

Lou had told Fiona everything now, except for one detail. She hadn't been able to confess that, only days earlier, she had succumbed to Hooker's charms herself. She knew her friend would be far from understanding, having a much more robust grip on life and affairs of the heart, thanks to the number of marital bust-ups that passed across her desk every week. Lou was still puzzling over what on earth Hooker had been playing at, the night he stayed with her. She'd never thought of him as having a particularly romantic or nostalgic bent, but perhaps he had been as touched as she had been by those shared family memories. That, the drink and the comfort of what you know. In the light of what she now knew, however, his suggestion that they might still have a future together seemed so perverse.

‘What's this Ali like?' Fiona asked, picking up Lou's knitting and holding it up for a moment before trying to stuff
it into the bag. She didn't share her friend's addiction to the home-made or second-hand that Lou had embraced so enthusiastically once she had left the magazine business. Like Nic, she preferred fashion that came straight from the designer. ‘Younger version of you, I suppose.'

‘You've got such a jaundiced view of life sometimes.' Lou shook her head in mock despair, grabbing her knitting before the stitches slipped off the needles. ‘Actually, no. At least I don't think so. She's a tallish gym-bunny type with dark hair, cheekbones and a Minnie-Driver jawline, and with the appetite of a bird.'

‘No similarities there, then.' Fiona passed her the packet of dark chocolate ginger biscuits. Lou stretched out for one as she settled herself on the floor, with her back against the sofa, feet to the fire, knitting bag beside her, then hesitated as she remembered the control she used to be able to exert over her eating habits when she was in the fashion biz. How much more relaxed she was now. She wrestled one out of the wrapping.

‘Thanks! And there's something a bit controlled about her, as if she doesn't want to let anyone in. Yet, for the last couple of days of the holiday, we got on really well. She told me about the boyfriend she was going to move in with and I mentioned that I'd left my husband, but I don't think we ever named them. Back here, we've chatted a couple of times and then she told me all the rest when we met. Until Hooker, she's been a commitment-phobe after some guy broke her heart when she was in her early twenties. Since then, she's had one married lover after another – no ties, lots of fun.'

Fiona looked disparaging. ‘So she's a home wrecker. I see tons of them in my business.'

‘I don't think so,' Lou corrected her, as she untangled the four coloured balls of wool she was using in the next few rows of the Fair Isle vest she was making. She began the next row, concentrating on following the pattern, counting the stitches before she changed colour. ‘She told me that she's never put any pressure on any of her lovers to leave their husbands. That wasn't part of the deal.'

‘Yeah, right.'

‘I believe her. Honestly, Fi, you'd like her. I did. In fact, I still do.' She paused, and unpicked a few stitches before adding in a new colour.

‘It's not her fault that she was having an affair with your husband, I guess. How was she to know?' said grudgingly, but as if she might be convinced.

‘Exactly. That's the conclusion I've come to. It's not as if she was my best friend and knowingly deceived me. That would be unforgivable. I suppose I could take a moral stance over a woman who chooses to be a mistress, betraying the married sisterhood or threatening the status quo, but that's not what I feel. Not in her case, anyway.'

‘Don't you think you should? Women like her are responsible for endless broken homes across the country.' The divorce lawyer in Fiona had emerged and was drumming her fingers, businesslike, on the arm of her chair.

‘And you have to pick up the pieces, I know, but she's not like that. Circumstances dictated the way she's led her life. Like the rest of us.' She ignored Fiona's indignant splutter. ‘I understand that. She wasn't looking for a man
to marry, just to have fun with. And don't forget I'd left Hooker before I knew any of this for a fact. We were over a long time ago. If I feel angry with anyone, it's with him, not her. How can I have spent over a quarter of a century with a man and understand him less now than I did when we first got together?'

She wasn't expecting an answer and only just heard the one she got. ‘You're not the first to feel that, you know.'

‘I thought I understood him and our relationship,' Lou went on. ‘But I'm not so sure that I do any longer.' She still wasn't going to own up to her drunken slip-up. She jabbed the poker into the fire, making the flames dance. ‘And … here's another reason not to tell her to get stuffed. Ali's a wonderful goldsmith whose designs would add that extra touch of class to the shop. And do you know what? The idea of teaming up with Hooker's ex-mistress without him knowing gives me a certain satisfaction.'

‘You must be out of your mind,' spluttered Fiona, almost choking on her biscuit. ‘No one else would even consider it.'

‘I know. But how often at this age do we make new friends? What's more, I've an instinct that her jewellery would work with my clothes. I'll show you her website. And imagine … when Hooker finds out!' A glow of satisfaction spread through her. She had no idea when that time would come, but come it would. She would make sure of it.

‘That is definitely not a reason to involve her in your business.' Fiona looked stern.

‘I'm not giving her a financial stake in the business. Nothing like that. She'll just supply the jewellery and I'll
take a commission from sales. If it doesn't work, we can always go our separate ways, but I've a feeling that it will. And if it does, then I'll have a colleague too. What matters is that the Ritz takes off.' As she spoke, Lou was increasingly persuaded of the rightness of her plan. ‘And if you're still worried, why don't you meet her?'

‘Have you gone completely mad?' Fiona was looking at her as if she'd landed from outer space.

‘Not at all. I swore that from the day I moved here, I would lead my life the way I wanted. I feel oddly responsible for what Hooker's done to her.' She ignored another grunt of disbelief from the sofa. ‘Hooker's made her see she wants something else out of life and now it may be too late for her to get it. I'm going to call her.'

 

Ali was hammering a strip of white gold round the mandrel, Radio 3 in the background. She had almost got the ring to the size and shape she wanted when her phone rang. She ignored the call, caught up in the rhythm of her work. If important, they'd phone back. The commission of two rings and matching earrings couldn't have come at a better moment for her. Rick's repayment of his debt had become a little less urgent as a result. The couple were in a hurry, determined to be married before the imminent birth of their child, so she was working against the clock. The simple design of a tapered band and a baguette-cut aquamarine in a rub-over setting would sit easily with the plain wedding ring they'd chosen and
promised not to be too time-consuming to make. The couple had picked a matching setting for the earrings. The stones came from her Hatton Garden supplier: pretty pale blue gems from Brazil.

She barely looked up until she had perfected the setting for the stone. Satisfied with what she'd achieved, she put the two pieces away, ready to be soldered together in the morning. She began tidying up, turning off her laptop, straightening up her tools and switching off the radio. Picking up her mobile, the voicemail alert reminded her of the earlier call. With her notebook and diary at the ready, she waited for the message. Expecting to hear a customer, she was brought up sharp by Lou's voice.

‘Ali? Hi. It's Lou. I haven't called because I needed time to think. I'm sure you did too. Obviously, we should talk about what's happened, about Hooker – er, Ian – but it doesn't have to change things. I'd still like you to go ahead with a range of jewellery for the shop. Maybe you won't want to now, but I hope you will. Call me.'

A click and she'd gone. Ali sat back in her chair, unsure how to react, then bent forward to put on her trainers. A week ago, she had left the Regis, furious, humiliated and ashamed. Lou's face, tight with emotion, was still etched on her memory. However much she might have suspected her husband of having an affair, being presented with the evidence must have been devastating. Ali screwed up her face as she remembered how much she had told Lou about her affair with Ian. None of that could be taken back.

She remembered their last meeting. After leaving the hotel, she had walked the streets for almost an hour, not
noticing the time passing or the direction she was taking. Eventually, as the rain grew heavier, she found herself outside the National Gallery and had walked in for shelter. Over the years, she had often come here to visit some of her favourite paintings. Losing herself in them always brought some calm into her day. Walking through the echoing, mostly empty rooms, she finally sat down in the room containing Veronese's
Four Allegories of Love
.

Since then, she hadn't been able to stop thinking of what had just happened at the Regis. Lou might not have realised the full extent of what Ian got up to behind her back, but she must have had an idea. Why else would she have left him? But what Ali didn't understand was why Ian had lied to her about leaving Lou. How much more straightforward he could have been by telling the truth. She had no choice but to accept that, whatever his reasons, her relationship with him was over as, regrettably, was any friendship with his wife. With plenty else to think about, she had resolved to forget the Sherwood family altogether. She had thrown herself back into her business, restoring a familiar framework within which she could think about her father's confession, and about Don.

But now this message. She locked the door of the studio and turned into the darkening street. If Lou was generous enough to forgive and forget, then perhaps she should respond. She shivered and upped her pace, swinging her arms as unobtrusively as she could, dodging the other pedestrians, wishing she hadn't taken the resolution to walk as far as the fourth bus stop every night. A potential business involvement with her ex-lover's wife was madness and
yet … and yet, why not? They liked each other. She wanted the new challenge. She needed the money. And the idea of a new like-minded colleague appealed to her. Standing at the bus stop at last, she wondered what Lou was thinking. There was only one way to find out.