Women of a Dangerous Age (3 page)

As if on cue, the roar of the jet engines intensified and the plane shook as it trundled towards take-off. Her white-knuckle grip on the arms of her seat tightened. Only another few minutes and she'd be able to relax – unless they crashed, of course. Everyone knew that take-off and landing were the most vulnerable moments of any flight. The shaking stopped, her ears filled as if she was underwater, then popped. Pushed back in her seat by the pressure, as the plane climbed to cruising height, she relaxed her hands.

‘You've gone very pale.' Ali's voice came from a distance. ‘Are you OK?'

Lou opened one eye, then the other. Everything was as it should be. The other passengers were strapped into their seats, adjusting the in-flight entertainment, chatting, reading magazines. The prevailing atmosphere was one of calm. How unnecessary to get so worked up – but necessity had nothing to do with it, her behaviour was instinctive. ‘I am now.' She smiled as she let go the armrest. ‘Still want to know about the shop?'

By the time the stewardesses were working the aisle, bringing drinks and dinner, Lou had finished explaining the plans for her business and had moved on to Nic, her daughter. ‘She thinks I'm crazy, that I've no brain for business. She just doesn't get the market for “dead people's clothes” as she insists on calling them.'

‘Then you'll just have to prove her wrong,' Ali said, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. ‘What does she do?'

‘She's a family lawyer. Took after her godmother Fiona who's always encouraged her. Look, it's not that we don't get on really, she just has strong views.' She paused with a short laugh, as always amazed to think how her almost edible, curly-haired toddler had grown up into such a touchy, opinionated young woman. Her father's daughter, she guessed. Or else her mothering skills had let them both down. ‘My two boys, Jamie and Tom, are quite different,' she said, feeling she had to justify herself. ‘They're much easier and more understanding.' She broke off as the trays were put in front of them, then changed the subject. ‘What's waiting at home for you?'

‘January's usually a bit of a hangover from Christmas in my business, so I've got a few small jobs plus a ring to finish for a guy who was too late with his ordering. There's always someone.' Ali looked resigned. ‘But, at the same time, I'll be thinking ahead and starting to dream up designs for a new collection. Business is much harder than usual thanks to the rocketing metal prices. But before I do anything, I'll have to go up north to visit my father and make up for missing Christmas with him.' She made it sound more of a chore than a pleasure. ‘Not that we've spent it together for years.'

‘Both my parents are dead,' Lou said wistfully, remembering the family trips they'd made to Scotland for Hogmanay when the kids were small. Log fires, long walks, icy cheeks and warm hands, skating on the frozen pond:
annual pleasures that were all but ruined when her mother took to the bottle. Then, Lou would have to keep the children out of her way as her mother slipped from maudlin nostalgia into something more aggressive. When she was drunk, which she was more and more often after her husband's death, everyone was a disappointment to her and she became angry and vocal about it.

‘Dad and I aren't very close. We've tried but it's been difficult.' Ali stopped as she peeled the foil lids off the containers in front of her, then replaced them and pushed the tray the full two inches away from her. ‘God, the food never gets any better, does it?'

Realising Ali was not going to elaborate on her relationship with her father, Lou changed the subject. ‘But aren't you moving in with your boyfriend? What's that?' Lou watched Ali pop a white pill.

‘Imodium.' She grimaced and crossed her fingers. ‘Let's hope it works. My boyfriend? Well, I'm going home to a new life, I guess.' A dreamy expression crossed her face. ‘He's a fantastic man, a little bit older than me, who I've been seeing for the last three years. He's married but he's going to leave her. I've promised not to say anything to anyone until he's extricated himself, but by the time I'm back he should be there. Or near enough. Then we'll be together. I can't wait.'

Lou marvelled at Ali's apparent lack of concern. ‘But aren't you worried about his wife? Or his family? Won't they make things difficult?' She couldn't imagine herself being in that position without having some concern about the hurt she must be inflicting.

‘Why should I be?' Ali looked puzzled. ‘That's their business, isn't it? But from what he's said, things have been pretty ropey between them for ages. Let's face it, he wouldn't have kept our affair going if they weren't. We've seen each other almost every week, gone out for meals, to the cinema. I've even been away with him when he's travelled on business. He couldn't have done any of that if either of them cared more about the other, could he?'

‘But don't you talk about it?' Lou tried to sound interested rather than astonished, not wanting to point out the obvious: that plenty of men were happy to have their cake and eat it. Ali was too smart not to know that, but perhaps she was just salving her conscience.

‘Never,' Ali said firmly. ‘That's a rule I made and I've stuck with. Wife, children, pets and his domestic crises have always been right off the agenda. We have a great time together without them getting in the way. I never imagined he'd leave her, never wanted him to, so my being ignorant of all that stuff has meant that things have run happily alongside his marriage without nudging it off the rails.'

Lou almost choked on a mouthful of the rubber passing for chicken curry. ‘Then how do you know he's the one for you? You can't know much about him at all.'

‘I know enough. Really, I do. I know what I'm doing, and I know why I'm doing it.'

But Lou hadn't been probing into Ali's motives. She was just intrigued at why anyone would see this as an ideal basis for a long-term partnership.

Ali went on. ‘I know it's not a conventional view of a
satisfactory or fulfilling relationship but until now I've always thought I was getting the best of both worlds: my freedom plus plenty of no-strings passion and entertainment.'

‘Why change things? That sounds pretty damn perfect to me.' And the polar opposite to Lou's own marriage where, for the last few years, she'd sometimes felt as if she was being very slowly buried alive.

Ali looked uncertain of what to say for a moment. ‘When he proposed it, I wasn't sure I wanted to. At the same time though, I knew that we couldn't keep things the same way forever. I'm not getting any younger …. Once I thought I'd get married, have children, but it never happened. Perhaps this is my chance. Perhaps it's time for me to make a commitment to someone else.'

She leaned back so the stewardess could take both their trays.

‘Then you're lucky to have found him.' Lou remembered when she and Hooker had taken that same step together. So different, given that they had been more than twenty years younger than Ali was now, but how full of optimism they had been. And how disappointed now, so many years later.

While Ali disturbed her other neighbour so she could get out of her seat, Lou began to prepare herself for sleep. She didn't bother to check which films were playing. As soon as the cabin lights were dimmed, she slipped herself a sleeping pill donated by a doctor friend for the occasion, wrapped herself in her blanket, reclined her seat, put on her canary yellow eye mask and rested her head against the side of the plane. Sleep was the only thing that would make
the flight go faster. She would catch up more with Ali in London. Ten minutes later, her mouth had fallen open enough to signify she was asleep but not quite enough to warrant total embarrassment.

The unearthly flickering light of the tiny TV screens set in the seat backs illuminated the blanket-wrapped huddles of passengers. Walking back down the darkened aisle, Ali thought how she could justify what she'd said about Ian and his marriage so that Lou would understand. Although she'd only known her a short time, theirs was already becoming a friendship she wanted to continue. She didn't want to derail it by not explaining herself properly. Besides that, she was intrigued by the fact that Lou obviously didn't want to talk about her own marriage and how it had ended. No, there was plenty more to find out about each other.

But by the time she returned to her seat, Lou was out for the count.

Ali's other neighbour was lying back, absorbed in a film, but let her pass with a polite nod before returning his attention to the screen. Denied conversation, she took out her travel pillow, blew it up and fitted it round her neck. She popped a second Imodium (probably a mistake) in response to a sudden cramping in her lower stomach, then closed her eyes and turned her mind to home, focusing
on what she hadn't told Lou, what she hadn't told anyone: that setting up home with Ian was significant in more ways than one. It meant that her life as a serial mistress was almost over.

She hadn't considered her relationship with Ian in any way different from those she'd had with the string of married lovers who came before him, until six weeks earlier when he suggested they rethink their relationship. None of her previous lovers had come close to suggesting such a thing. Perhaps they had all believed she was one hundred per cent against one hundred per cent commitment. And they would have been right. Until now, she had been. She suspected Lou would say that it suited them to believe that. Lou's cynical take on life amused her, made her look at things in a new light.

Ian's suggestion that they live together was so unexpected that, when it came, she had been unable to reply immediately. They'd finished dinner quickly, Ian looking uncomfortable, obviously wishing he had put it another way, another time – or not at all. If she agreed, she didn't need Einstein to point out that her life and their relationship would change forever. What niggled her was how much that mattered to her. She couldn't abandon her way of life without some thought. Being his mistress had meant the relationship ran on her terms while she allowed him to believe that it ran on his. That's how she had preferred all her relationships with men to be since Don had left her over twenty years earlier. With him, she had enjoyed being half of the whole they made together. After they lost touch, she had remained single, unwilling to take the
risk of committing herself to anyone else, scared of rejection.

Agreeing to Ian's proposal would mean a shift in their dynamic. But why not take that risk? The more she had thought about it, the more that shift appealed. Every evening they would come home to each other. Weekends would be spent together doing those things that couples do together: cooking, talking, going out with friends, sharing interests, and getting to know one another in a new way, discovering the truth. Now it had been offered, permanent companionship, something that had been so absent in her life for so long, something she had never thought would be hers again, was suddenly something she craved. She even dared allow herself to imagine that she and Ian might have a child together. She'd read about women giving birth in their mid-forties. It wasn't a total impossibility. She wondered what he'd say. After all, she was at an age where she could upend her life if she wanted to – as long as she held on to her independence.

Her memory of the morning following his proposal was quite clear. She had woken up beside him, her mind made up.

‘Morning.' She'd kissed his left eye, then his right.

He'd groaned as he rolled to face her, squinting as he opened one and then the other eye. ‘God! That brandy was a mistake.'

‘But you're usually OK.' Their noses were almost touching and she could just smell his morning-after breath. She couldn't help noticing the few broken veins in his cheeks, the incipient wrinkles around his mouth, his greyish
overnight stubble: all reminders that time was marching on. He slid his arm around her waist.

‘Yeah, but last night was different.' He pulled back a little and looked at her. ‘I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked you the way I did. Stupid of me. I don't want to spoil what we've got either. I'm happy to leave things be, if that's what you want. In fact, perhaps that would be better for both of us.'

‘Stop right there,' she said, not wanting him to retract anything, not now her own thoughts were changing so fast. ‘I lay awake for half the night, thinking about what you said.'

‘Did you? Poor baby. Forget it. We're fine just as we are. Really.' He kissed her, slow and lingering, the definite prelude for more. He slid his leg between hers.

She began to respond, then wriggled out of the embrace.

‘Come on. Don't let a bloke down now. We haven't got much time.' He'd reached for her again. But she had something important to say.

‘I know, I know, but …' She sat up, plumping the pillow behind her and adding a couple of the scatter cushions that had been relegated to the floor. ‘We've got to talk.'

‘About what?' He scratched his head so his hair stood on end. He leaned across her and flicked the
Today
programme over to Radio 3 as the presenter announced Debussy's
La Plus que Lente.
The notes of the piano swelled and fell in the quiet of the room as he waited for Ali to speak.

‘About last night. About what you said.'

He screwed up his right eye and with his right thumb
on his cheekbone rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. ‘Yes?'

She heard how apprehensive he was, so hurried to put him out of his misery. ‘I think it's a wonderful idea.' She watched his eyes open wide in surprise. ‘I was shocked last night. But I've thought and thought about what it would mean and now I know that's what I want too.'

‘You do?' He sat up too, his voice coloured with disbelief.

‘I definitely do.'

He enveloped her in a bear hug, pulling her over so they lay face to face, but she hadn't finished. ‘I love you and want to be with you. But … what about your wife? What will you do?'

‘Forget about her,' he'd whispered. ‘You didn't want to know about her before, so let's keep it that way for now. I don't want her to spoil anything.'

Remembering his words again now reminded her of how little she really knew about him. Lou was so right to have picked up on that. Aware of movement beside her, Ali opened her eyes, hoping to find her friend awake and in a mood to talk. But despite her change of position, Lou's head was slumped against the headrest, her distinctive eye mask still in place.

Disappointed, Ali shifted in her seat, slipping off her shoes, and returned to her thoughts. She had curled herself around their secret until she'd got used to it, squeezing every drop of private pleasure from it. She was dying to see the expression on her friends' faces when they heard she was going to settle down. Most of her women friends had
become so wrapped up in their marriages and children, they didn't look outwards any more. That was one of the things she liked about Lou, her interest in the world around her. But Ali's friends saw her as a professional mistress – serially monogamous with other women's husbands. And not all (if any) of them approved or thought it as amusing as they might once have done, especially not after they'd got married themselves. Then their views on marriage underwent a sudden transformation. Ali had become a threat to all they held dear. To hell with them. How gloriously gobsmacked they would be at the change in her fortunes now Ian had come along.

Opening her eyes again, she was confronted by the on-screen flight information. The cartoon plane had barely moved since she last looked. She fiddled with the control pad, trying to switch off the image. What did she care about the temperature outside the plane right now? She wasn't intending to experience it for herself. She looked at Lou who had pulled her blanket right over her head, now dead to the world. Ali felt her stomach contract again. Cursing quietly, she excused herself from the row once again. ‘I'm so sorry but I'm not too well.' To say she had Delhi belly seemed a somewhat insensitive euphemism to use to a native Indian. ‘Rather than disturbing you through the night, I wonder if we could swap seats?' Lou would be horrified, but needs must.

‘If you think that would be better for you. Of course,' he said, disentangling his headphones and gathering his possessions – a paperback, his airline toiletry bag and a bottle of water – and stood to let her past.

‘I think it might.' Propelled by a certain degree of urgency, she transferred her belongings to the outside seat, then abandoned him to make his own arrangements.

When Ali returned, he was asleep in front of the thriller. She sat down, resigned to a long sleepless night ahead. She tuned in to an anodyne family comedy that required neither concentration nor intelligence but even so she could only think of Ian.

He had noticed how uncomfortable she was with the way he talked about his wife, and had hugged her tighter.

‘I don't want her spoiling what we have. When I come here to your flat, I can forget everything else. I feel a different person. Do you understand that?'

‘I suppose so,' she murmured, enjoying their closeness enough to drive away her concerns. ‘But we can't exist in this weird little bubble forever.'

‘We can try.' He began to kiss her again.

Once again, she pulled away, this time to his tsk of annoyance. ‘Where will we live?' she asked.

‘Where?' He let her go. ‘What's wrong with here? I love this place.'

‘So do I. But if we're going to have a new life together then I'd like to live somewhere that's ours. Yours and mine. A new start.' She snuggled up to him. He just hadn't thought this through. She had moved into her flat when she had accepted she was probably going to be single forever so this was
her
domain,
her
home. The place held too many memories that had nothing to do with him, and, if she was honest, were hardly appropriate to the life they were planning. No, if they were starting a life together, they
needed a place of their own. She could tell from his silence that she had surprised him. One all, then.

Despite his apparent lack of enthusiasm, she'd made up her mind that was definitely what was going to happen. She'd already put out a few feelers before she came away but as soon as she got home she'd be combing the property pages and pestering the agents. He'd come round when he realised how a move made sense. Then she'd have to broach the idea of a baby. Too much too soon? But time was against them. If they didn't talk about these things now, it might be too late. And Ian loved her. He would understand.

Moments later, she had to leave her seat again. At the back of the plane, the cabin crew were in the galley, whiling away the hours until their more active duties resumed. The blonde I'm-Clare-fly-me one noticed Ali's coming and going, and asked if she could help. So it was that, provided with a beaker of water, Ali found herself lying full length on an empty row of seats, reasonably comfortable at last. By the time the stewardesses began the breakfast round, she was fast asleep.

 

Lou was woken by the sound of the trolley and distant voices. Keeping the blanket over her head, she swallowed and ran her tongue around her mouth. The metallic taste was the side effect of her sleeping pill but her head was clear. Only a few hours and she'd be home, taking down the Christmas decorations. They'd looked so pretty all ready for her pre-Christmas Christmas dinner that she'd had with
the kids before she left for India and Jamie and Rose his fiancée left for Tenerife to visit her family in their holiday villa.

Hooker had not been invited. Sitting the whole family round the table and pretending nothing had changed would have been inappropriate, not to say uncomfortable. As would a full-blown turkey extravaganza. Instead, she'd decided on the old family favourite – roast beef with all the trimmings. This was the first time they'd all be together at her new home, and she wanted everything to be right. This was the first time they'd celebrated Christmas without Hooker. She'd transformed her workroom with coloured fairy lights twinkling round the window. The chipped and scratched surface of her sewing table was hidden under a red tablecloth sprinkled with silver star confetti. No crackers this year. Instead, the table was elegant with Jenny's white china, the only decoration being the gauzy red ribbons that Lou had tied in bows around the bases of the glass candlesticks.

The meal was a triumph, even her Yorkshire puddings, and after they'd eaten, they moved into the living room for present opening. The fire blazed, glasses were charged, chocolates and mince pies passed around. The kids had clubbed together to buy Lou a Total Pampering Package that aimed to rejuvenate and re-energise. Oh, the optimism of youth! She had given Jamie and Tom cheques, socks and a shirt each – anything else ran the risk of rejection. For Rose, there was a book about Reiki healing. Then she took the last package and passed it to Nic.

‘Honestly, Mum! You could have done better than brown paper.'

Aware of the effort that usually went into Nic's extravagant wrappings, she just said as brightly as she could, ‘I'm saving the planet and anyway, it's what's inside that counts.'

As Nic tore away the paper, a loose deep green silk devoré velvet jacket slid into her hands. She shook it out and held it up to look at it, then against herself.

A pause as she examined it, then, ‘Is it one of yours?'

Lou caught the faintest hint of criticism in the question.

‘I'm afraid so,' admitted Lou, who still smarted from the time when Nic, as a young teenager, had begged her to stop making their clothes. She wanted to go shopping with her mates, and wear what they wore. And who could blame her? Uniformity was what mattered then – for the boys too. Ever since, Lou had restricted her dressmaking to herself and to friends. But she hadn't been able to resist this gorgeous fabric, which she had been so sure Nic would love.