by Shari Low
‘Nooooo, don’t fill up, you’ll wreck your eyeshadow!’ Isla barked.
Aggs blinked away the droplets that had formed on her bottom lids. ‘Girls, I can’t believe what you’ve done. It’s… it’s…’
‘Bloody gorgeous?’ Skye offered.
‘Bloody gorgeous!’ Aggs blurted, their laughter even managing to drown out the final song on the Shania album. ‘I love you two, I really do. And I’m so grateful that you’re mine, you know that?’
The girls moved in for group hug. Isla kissed her on the cheek. ‘We love you too, Mum.’
Aggs savoured the bliss of the moment. ‘I just hope you’re still saying that when you see my dress. Val made me buy it, I’m just warning you now. In fact, sit on the bed and close your eyes…’
Amused, they both did as they were told. Aggs pulled her new Spanx out of the drawer and wrestled her way into them.
‘I’ve no idea what you’re doing, but it sounds like you’re either trying to change a duvet cover or you’re jogging on the spot,’ Skye said, sounding worried.
If only she knew. Changing a duvet cover would be easier.
Spanx on, Aggs took the dress from the wardrobe and slipped it over her newly sucked in shape. Off the shoulder, the top of the dress was covered in silver sequins down to the waist, where it became a black, figure hugging pencil skirt that finished just below her knees. Last week, when Aggs had tried it on during a shopping expedition with Val, she’d felt like a forties movie star.
‘My God, Aggs, that clings in all the right places. If you don’t get that, I’m shoplifting it and giving it to you for Christmas,’ Val had joked, as they stood in the changing rooms of House of Fraser.
Aggs had been slightly nervous. She didn’t do dresses. She didn’t do legs. And she definitely didn’t do expensive clothes. But she’d thrown caution to the wind that day. ‘Okay, but only because I don’t want you to have a criminal record,’ she’d told Val, then rushed to the checkout before she changed her mind.
Now, she was glad that she had.
She stood in front of the girls and sucked in her stomach, just in case the Spanx were under pressure. ‘Okay, you can look.’
Isla opened her eyes first. ‘Oh my God, I’m the daughter of a disco ball!’
Aggs felt her confidence flop.
‘And I fricking love glitter balls!’ Isla added quickly. ‘Mum, you are a goddess!’
‘Really?’ Aggs asked, needing a bit more reassurance. ‘It’s not too much, Skye?’
Skye got up and hugged her. ‘Mum, it can never be too much. You’re stunning.’
‘Thanks, lovelies.’
‘And if a plane needs to do an emergency landing on Hyndland Road, we can use you to guide them in.’
Aggs’ cheeks were beginning to hurt with laughing, but she didn’t care.
Okay, time for dinner. The truth was she’d have been just as chuffed with a takeaway on the couch as long as the girls were with her, but something different would be great too.
Isla finally flipped Shania off and they headed downstairs.
At the front of the three of them, Aggs listened for voices but couldn’t hear anything. ‘The Menopausal Jogging Club must have left. I’ll just nip in and make sure Nasim and Sandra have locked up.’
She half expected a protest from one of the girls but none came. Now there was a birthday treat.
At the bottom of the stairs, she took a couple of steps in her gravity defying heels, then swung open the internal door to the café and…
‘SURPRISE!!!!!!’
Aggs gasped. In front of her was a room full of beaming faces, streamers were flying, poppers were popping, hooters were hooting and there were balloons and tinsel everywhere.
Gobsmacked, Aggs turned back to see Isla and Skye clapping and cheering and everything suddenly made sense. The plans for dinner. The hair. The make-up. The very loud Shania. The strange booking by the jogging club – who were all, incidentally, over to her left, dressed in their finery and holding champagne flutes in the air.
Val and Yvie were right in front of her, Val in floods of happy tears, her first reaction to any emotion, happy or sad. Marge, Myra and the others from The Wednesday Club were there again too, for the second time today. But now they’d been joined by all her regulars and the friends she’d made as Isla and Skye grew up and she shared school runs and sleepovers. Face after familiar face. And as Isla pressed play on the café sound system and the opening bars of Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ flooded the room, Aggs began to work her way round every person there, hugging them, kissing them, thanking them for coming, as they all congratulated her and wished her a happy birthday. It took half an hour just to get back to the girls.
‘I can’t believe you did this,’ she told them, completely overwhelmed with gratitude and joy. ‘It’s everything.’
Skye was the first to kiss her, Isla next. ‘You deserve it, Mum. We know what you’ve done for everyone. Now it’s your turn.’
Her turn. Her time.
As she hugged the girls again, the thought took her mind back to a conversation earlier in the day. It was her turn. Tonight, she’d been planning to tell the girls about Will and drop the bombshell about her trip tomorrow.
She glanced searchingly around the room. Just like today at lunch time, before he’d finally wandered in, every other member of The Wednesday Club was there except him.
She tried to broach it casually. ‘Girls, did you invite all of The Wednesday Club tonight too? I think there might be a couple missing.’
Isla was the first to answer. ‘Mum, you’re so bad at this!’
‘At what?’
‘At trying to pretend you don’t have something going with Will,’ Isla drolled. ‘Honestly, did you learn nothing about skilled subterfuge from our teenage years? Skye lied about shagging her study partner for years and I don’t even want to break the news about Juan from the tapas restaurant up the road.’
Aggs was flabbergasted. Skye’s study partner and Juan were a shock, but the major headline she gleaned from that was the comment about Will.
‘How long have you known?’ she asked them, not sure if she was more relieved or embarrassed. They knew – and they seemed happy about it. This was great.
‘For weeks. Why do you think we disappear every time he’s around? We spent over an hour camped out in the kitchen this afternoon so you could snog him after lunch. There’s only so many games of “I Spy” that we can play in a small room.’
That set Aggs off. Tears of merriment and sides that – like her cheeks – were beginning to ache. Although, that might be the Spanx.
‘He was invited, Mum, don’t worry.’
At that, Val and Yvie joined the circle, passing out hugs and more flutes of champagne.
Aggs took the chance to peek around at the door. Will was invited. Everyone else was here already. So where was he?
22
Mitchell
After dropping Aggs back off at the café, Mitchell drove straight home. It wasn’t often that anything in his life surprised him, but this afternoon had definitely thrown in a couple of curveballs. Celeste’s actions hadn’t been a complete shock, but spending the last couple of hours with Aggs, finally putting their ghosts to rest, that had been unexpectedly wonderful.
Christ, what a fuck-up he’d made there. It would be easy to blame Celeste, but that was a cop out. He was the one who’d screwed around on his wife, and he wasn’t going to try to shirk his culpability. That was all on him. The fact that Celeste had also betrayed her best friend was on her. Back in the beginning, he’d asked her once how she could have done that. ‘Because I love you more than anyone else and you love me more than anyone else. This is our one life. I couldn’t live it without you.’
He hadn’t challenged her, because the truth was, that had been how he’d felt too. Or at least, how he’d thought he felt.
Would he do it again? For the hurt he’d caused Aggs and the girls, definitely not. But he wasn’t going
to whitewash the past either. He and Celeste had had some incredible years. They’d lived big, they’d partied, they’d had fabulous holidays and they’d built a beautiful home together. And that mattered to him. He was self-aware enough to know that he couldn’t trade that for years with a wife who had had many bigger priorities than making sure that he achieved the career and lifestyle he’d always aspired to. He was also self-aware enough to know that he couldn’t have done that without Celeste. The truth was, they were a formidable team who were greater than the sum of their parts.
He opened the door and listened for signs of life. There were none. She was still out then. He hadn’t seen her car outside, but that wasn’t unusual – she often put it in the garage at the back of the house if she wasn’t going to be using it the next day.
He tossed his keys into the Wedgewood bowl that sat in the middle of the mirrored console table in the entrance hall. An aesthetic perfectionist, it drove her nuts when he did that, but hey… he wasn’t exactly skipping through daisies today either. Childish, but right now, it felt like a small victory.
In the kitchen, he popped another antacid and made himself a coffee. The acid reflux wasn’t a new thing. He’d suffered from it on and off for years and it always flared up in times of high stress. Too much coffee. Too much tension. Surely when your marriage was actually becoming detrimental to your health, it was time to call it a day? At this rate, he’d have an ulcer before he was fifty.
Mitchell pulled out a chair and took a seat at the marble kitchen table, a pile of Skye’s books still lying open at the other end.
The question was, whether she was having an affair or not, did he want to stay with Celeste? Did he want to try to make it work and find their way back to a time when she didn’t avoid him and he wasn’t convinced that she was screwing someone else? He wasn’t sure that he did. But, uncharacteristically, for someone who was usually so decisive and confident in his thoughts and actions, he wasn’t sure that he didn’t either.
What were the options? Divorce? God, the fallout from that would be massive. The disruption to their lives, the stress and there was no doubt that she’d take him for everything she could. The money wasn’t what was bothering him right now though.
Was he really going to call it quits with Celeste without trying to sort things out? Would he look back, probably from the bar in some singles club filled with fifty-somethings who’d had midlife crisis divorces, and regret giving up so easily?
Of course, trying to get their marriage back on track was based on the optimistic possibility that she wasn’t actually lying through her teeth to him every time she left the house. If she really was shagging notorious bachelor Derek Evans, they were done. No question. No going back.
There was a noise in the hall, the sound of the door opening, then heels on the tile floor. She’d be passing the bowl on the console table and gritting her teeth by now.
He wondered if she’d bypass the kitchen and go straight upstairs, but the heels got louder until she appeared in the doorway. He searched her reaction for some flicker of guilt or – worse – a sign that she’d seen him in the hotel today, but there was nothing obvious.
‘Oh. Hi, darling. What are you doing sitting in here on your own?’ Surprised, yes – suspicious, no. She was acting like there was nothing strange at all about the fact that she’d wandered in at… His eyes went to the kitchen clock… half past six on a Saturday evening, after going for what was supposed to be an introductory lunch with a new client. Had she even remembered that they were supposed to be over at the café for Aggs’ surprise party at 7 o’clock? It took Celeste at least an hour to get ready to go anywhere, so that wasn’t happening. He knew she’d deliberately come home late so that they didn’t have to spend as much time at the party. In a way, he understood, because it wasn’t her crowd. As long as they managed to pitch up at some point, they’d fulfil their promise to the girls to be there.
‘Just waiting for you. How did the meeting go?’ Easy does it. Nonchalance and non-confrontation.
‘Really well. I definitely think we’ll get the business.’
He stuck with casual interest. ‘I don’t doubt it for a second. Was it with anyone I’d know?’
She picked up mail from the worktop nearest the door and started to flick through it. That set off alarm bells. Classic subconscious diversionary tactic.
‘It was actually with the chairman of a sports company. They own a soccer academy near Marbella and want to stage a launch to promote it in the UK. You know football isn’t my thing, but this is a great chance to dip my toe in a new sector.’
She put the mail down and took her shoes off one by one, then slipped her jacket off and draped it on the back of the chair.
‘Only thing is, darling, they want me to go over to Marbella next week to see their facilities and exactly what services they offer.’
The pulse in the side of Mitchell’s jaw throbbed as he clenched his teeth together to stop himself reacting. Do not show your hand. Do not give her reason to think you’re doubting her. Bide your time… but don’t quite let her off the hook with this.
An idea came into his head and he forced a smile. ‘You know, I don’t have a lot on at work next week, so I could take a few days off and come with you. We used to have some great times over there.’
It was a lie. He had a case starting next week and there was no way he could take time off, but she didn’t know that because it had been months since she’d shown any interest in his work. He’d only said it to get a reaction and there it was – a furrow, a line on her forehead between her eyebrows that even her Botox couldn’t stop.
To her credit, she recovered quickly, came around to his side of the table, kissed him on the head on the way to the wine fridge, where she took out a bottle of rosé and poured a healthy measure into a glass the size of a small fishbowl.
‘Darling, I’d love that, but I’m only going for a couple of days and there’s a packed agenda – I won’t have any time off at all. Let’s wait and take a trip when we can devote some quality time to each other. I’ll get my diary later and we can lock down dates. Right, I’m going up for a shower and a lie down. I’m exhausted.’
The perfect brush off, but he wasn’t having it. ‘Have you forgotten that we’ve got Aggs’ party tonight? We’re already late, so we’d better get a move on.’
Going to the party without Celeste would raise questions, especially with the girls, and he didn’t want that kind of attention until he knew exactly where he stood and what he wanted to do with his future.
She screwed up the muscles in her face that hadn’t been expensively frozen. She was definitely beginning to have a look of someone who was teetering on the edge of having too much work, but, of course, he wasn’t going to tell her that. She’d never forgive him and, frankly, it was up to her. ‘Urgh, do we really have to go?’
Irritation bristled. Here she went again. She didn’t want to do something so she was trying to get out of it, even though he’d said it was important to him to be there. Christ, how had he managed to go from being married to the most selfless woman on earth, to the most selfish? And why was this bothering him more than ever?
‘Yes. I don’t want the girls wondering where you are.’
She rounded on him, eyes blazing. Once upon a time he’d found her meteoric temper sexy, but no longer. ‘Why am I never the priority? Why does it matter more what they think than me?’
Mitchell couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘You’re never the priority? Are you kidding me? Do you have some kind of selective amnesia, Celeste?’ His voice lowered, his words became clipped. Years of arguing in court had taught him that when you raised your voice it showed a lack of control, so he became more measured, more succinct when he was angry. ‘I left my family for you. Wasn’t that enough?’
‘And you’ve never let me forget it,’ she spat back.
There it was. The old argument she trotted out every time things got rough between them.
&
nbsp; Again, Mitchell had two choices: rise to it or concede for now and keep everything as normal as possible until he chose the moment to change the situation on his terms. The logical side of his brain took over. His terms. And that meant defusing things now until he was ready.
It took a massive effort to soften his tone to something more conciliatory and loving. ‘You know that’s not true, Celeste. I chose you then and I still choose you now.’
Until a couple of months ago, that was absolutely true, but now it was a completely different state of play. She was lying. He was almost sure of it, but he needed proof. Not only would conclusive evidence convince him that he was right and it was over, but he also needed bargaining power if they were going to divorce.
His words extinguished the fire that was blazing in her eyes and he watched as her body language surrendered. ‘Okay, let’s just get it over with.’
Was she referring to the party or their marriage?
Mitchell thought back again to a couple of hours ago, to the way he felt when he was with Aggs, and wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to that question to be.
Had he made the wrong decision when he left Aggs ten years ago?
And was it too late to make it right?
23
Agnetha and Celeste – 1997
Celeste watched the plane take off, just to be sure that it went and that Agnetha didn’t come rushing back through. One seat. Why did it only have one seat left? She’d have gone with her in a heartbeat, although, it would wreck her plans to prepare for the call-back for the Next campaign, so it probably wasn’t the end of the world.
Poor Alex. Celeste loved Agnetha’s parents. They were the only people who had ever stepped up to care for her. Agnetha didn’t know how lucky she was. Loving parents. Loving grandparents. Great life. Celeste had none of that. Her family had been a complete shitshow and even thinking about them now gave her a toxic taste in her mouth.
