It’s Now or Never

by Carole Matthews

  I recently read a report in the newspaper which said that men are at their most romantic at the age of fifty-three. That’s the time of life when they start writing poetry, sprinkling rose petals in the bath and booking romantic candlelit dinners for two in expensive restaurants without weeks of prompting. The conclusion was that by then they’ve had all the arguments with their spouse, made all their mistakes – a vacuum cleaner for one birthday springs immediately to my own mind – and have finally worked out what it is that their woman wants from life. On that reckoning, I have another thirteen years to wait before I’m whisked away to Paris on a whim.

  ‘Does it have to be this weekend?’ Greg says into my musing.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘But I’d like it to be.’

  ‘Will it stop you crying?’

  I risk a watery smile. ‘It might do.’

  ‘Then we’ll go. I’ll ring Ray.’ He goes to stand up, clearly thinking that this discussion is over.

  ‘Where shall we go then?’

  He turns back to me, puzzled. ‘Cromer.’

  ‘But we always go to Cromer.’ I’m sure that I don’t need to remind my husband that it has been the destination for our annual holidays since we’ve been together.

  I tell a lie – once when Greg had been given an unexpected bonus at work I persuaded him to go to Spain with the kids. The Costa del Sol. He hated every moment of it. He hated the sun. He hated being lathered in suntan cream every time he moved. He hated the food – though an awful lot of it involved chips. He hated the fact that everyone was foreign, except for all the English there. He hated the airport, he hated flying and vowed never to do it again.

  It was such a traumatic experience for all of us that we have never ventured overseas since – either by plane, boat or train. I don’t even know if my passport is still valid. Can you understand now why dropping everything and jetting off to Peru seems such a daunting prospect to me? My husband has dumbed me down over all these years. It’s the equivalent of a normal person going to the moon.

  ‘Why don’t we try somewhere else for a change?’

  Greg looks horrified. ‘But we like Cromer.’

  ‘We might like somewhere else too,’ I suggest.

  My husband is not an unintelligent man, but this is seemingly way beyond his comprehension.

  Then I look at Greg and get a rush of love for him. He’s still a handsome chap. He’s tall, in excellent shape for a man coming up to forty. He wears his dark hair cropped forward now to disguise that it’s thinning. My husband frowns permanently as if he’s carrying the world on his shoulders and I know that he’s worked hard and worried for us all of our married life. The tracks of our troubled years are etched into his forehead now. I feel guilty for all the times I’ve looked at him critically lately. I should give a little. If I can get him away to myself, who knows? A little passion might spark again. What does it matter whether it’s the Costa del Sol or Cairo or Cromer? We’ll go together and we’ll have a great time. We’ll be spontaneous and free and have fun.

  ‘Cromer will be lovely,’ I say.

  I’ll make damn sure that it is.

  Chapter 15

  Lauren drives up from London to have dinner with me. It’s Wednesday and I don’t often see her on a Wednesday. That’s another one of my home alone nights as Greg goes down to the fishing club then. He’s been a member since he was fifteen and I could count on one hand the number of times he’s missed it. Greg Ashton is nothing if not a creature of habit.

  I can’t see the attraction of it myself. All they do is stand around with a pint of beer talking about fishing. But then I can’t actually see the fascination with fishing either, though I’ve tolerated it throughout my married life.

  Sometimes, when we were first married, before we had the children, I used to go along with Greg and sit by the bank with my book, perhaps a bottle of Blue Nun or some awful cheap wine that was all we could run to. But I didn’t like the hours of waiting for anything to happen and then when Greg did catch a fish, I couldn’t bear to see it dangling from the hook, flapping for breath on the bank. All I wanted him to do was throw the poor thing back in as soon as humanly possible. It always seemed to hurt the fish so much, though my husband assured me that it didn’t. Of course, when the children came along, it was impossible to go – wriggling toddlers and deep water are not a marriage made in heaven. And I became a permanent fishing widow.

  Now, after all these years, I’ve got used to the routine, accepted it. The fact that Greg is out so much does give me time on my own with Lauren though. We might be on the phone to each other all day or texting like mad things, but you still never manage to say all that you want to, do you? Greg can’t understand it. He has no idea what we find to talk about.

  I wish that my sister lived nearer to me. She likes life in London whereas I can’t stand it. Plus I’d never tear her away from being near Jude now. Her place is less than an hour away on the M1, but I still feel it’s too far. We do have a sofa-bed in Ellen’s room that Lauren uses regularly, but it’s not quite the same, is it?

  It was always my dream when we were growing up that we’d have houses next door to each other, that we’d get married on the same day – preferably to identical twin brothers – though I wanted to wear a big meringue dress, floor-length veil and tiara and Lauren said she’d wear jeans and a T-shirt. That was our stand for our individuality. I thought we’d have our children at the same time and then we’d all go on holiday together as one big boisterous family and, generally, live happily ever after.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere fancy in The Hub,’ Lauren says when she arrives. That’s the place in town where all the hip and trendy restaurants are. ‘I’m sick to death of pizza.’

  ‘I’m game.’ So we head to the Brasserie Blanc and order à la carte, not just from the set menu. The restaurant’s busy and they put us at a small table by the window, which I like because I can watch people walk by and pick dripped wax off the glittering candelabras as I do so.

  ‘No Jude tonight?’ I ask. Usually Lauren hates to tear herself away from London during the week as there’s always the chance that her lover might find five precious minutes for her.

  ‘Told him I couldn’t see him,’ my sister says. ‘It doesn’t do to make myself available all of the time.’

  That’ll be a change. She’s hung on his every word for the last five years and it makes me sad to think that we never did find our twin brothers to love us. Instead, I found Greg and went my own way and Lauren, after a relentless series of disastrous love affairs, is still not in a settled relation ship. She’d disagree, but I don’t think that pacing the floor virtually every night on your own is being in a settled relationship – even if you’ve done it for more years than you care to count.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continues with a dismissive wave of her hand, ‘I don’t want to talk about Jude.’

  I have to say that my twin is in a bit of an odd mood. Quiet, but bolshie with it. Perhaps she was more unsettled by Chelsea’s fabulous party than she’s admitted to and has thought more about how her life is going. I know that I’ve been brooding a bit ever since.

  As if reading my mind, she says, ‘Have you spoken to Chelsea?’

  ‘No, but I sent her a thank-you card today.’

  ‘Did you? I should do that too. I’m so crap.’

  ‘Now that she’s back for a while, I could have called her and asked her to join us.’ When Chelsea is in England, her home is just fifteen minutes away from here. I had every intention of phoning her this week.

  ‘We should have,’ Lauren says. ‘But then that would have made us feel really crappy.’

  ‘You’re feeling crappy?’

  She nods. ‘You too?’

  I nod as well.

  ‘We can bitch to each other,’ Lauren states, ‘but we always have to pretend that everything is all right when Chelsea’s here.’

  ‘We don’t,’ I say, defending our older sister. ‘We just feel that we have to.’

>   ‘Have you done anything towards changing your life yet?’ my sister wants to know.

  I get the brochure for the Inca Trail charity trek out of my handbag and push it across the table.

  Lauren’s eyebrows raise. ‘You’re doing this?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I say. ‘But I’m too chicken. The kids at work are planning it.’

  ‘You should go,’ she encourages me.

  ‘Do you fancy doing it with me?’

  ‘Not likely,’ Lauren says. ‘My idea of adventure is lying on a sunlounger deciding which cocktail to have next.’

  ‘It’s a lot of money.’ I worry at a fingernail. ‘Over two grand. And that’s without any spending money. Everyone has to raise that for the charity to get a place.’

  ‘You could tap Chelsea for a few quid.’

  I know that our sister would be very generous, but I’d feel funny asking her for money even though it’s for a cause that she’d adore.

  ‘I’ll ask Jude to stump up some money from our company too. I can twist him round my little finger.’

  Oh, Lauren, I don’t think so. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in this situation. But I keep my mouth shut and say nothing.

  ‘You’re already halfway there,’ Lauren decides.

  My fingernail gets another battering. ‘It’s so out of my comfort zone.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Annie – listen to you. You sound like Greg. Where’s your sense of adventure?’

  ‘I’m not sure I ever had one.’

  ‘Well, it’s about time that you did.’

  ‘We’re going away for the weekend,’ I tell her. ‘Just me and Greg.’

  ‘Wow. Hang out the flags,’ Lauren says sarkily. ‘Wonders will never cease. You’re actually going to get him away from that bloody canal bank for a couple of days.’

  ‘He’s not that bad.’ But I know that he is.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Cromer.’

  Lauren pauses, fork to mouth. ‘Not again!’

  ‘We like Cromer.’

  ‘I like eggs, but I wouldn’t want them for every damn meal. You always go to Cromer.’

  ‘Greg’s comfortable with it.’

  ‘I could give you a list as long as my arm of great little weekend getaways all over the country. Name me a place – any place, go on – and I could tell you of a bijou hotel there.’ My sister, due to her dodgy relationship, is indeed the doyenne of the dirty weekend destination.

  ‘We’ll stick to Cromer, I think.’ It’s a miracle that I’ve got Greg to agree to going away at all without three months’ notice. I don’t want to push my luck.

  ‘I was going to come up at the weekend. I’m sick of being on my own,’ Lauren complains.

  I nearly invite her to come with us, but realise that it wouldn’t be quite the point for me to drag my sister along. Plus if Greg thought that Lauren was free, he’d try to wriggle out of coming himself.

  ‘Come on Friday,’ I say. ‘We’re only going overnight. We won’t leave until Saturday morning.’

  ‘We’ve got a bit of a bash for work on Friday night. A rallying the troops kind of thing. Jude will want me to be there, partnering him.’ That dreamy look has come back into her eye at the mention of her lover.

  Do I go all dreamy when I talk about Greg? I suspect not. Though I’m sure I used to, once upon a time. Perhaps that’s the difference between being a husband and a lover.

  ‘We’ll catch up next week,’ I say. ‘I can tell you all about my mucky weekend.’

  ‘If you do insist on going to Cromer, then take plenty of sexy lingerie,’ she says. ‘That’s my advice, sis.’

  A smile plays at my lips. I think I might well give that one a try.

  Chapter 16

  Greg attached the float to his line. The water was slow today, so he chose something light. He cast out and let the plumb bob settle on the bottom of the canal to check the depth of the water. Then he adjusted the line until the float popped out of the water and settled serenely on top.

  ‘Woo, hoo!’ Ray shouted out. ‘Watch this and weep, matey.’ He then landed another perch – his second in a matter of minutes. Nice fish. A couple of pounds, possibly three.

  Perch were one of Greg’s favourite fish. No other fish pulled quite like it – they jagged, swerved and, if it was a particularly good one, made the odd deep dive. On the bank, they were a good catch too. There was nothing that made the heart soar like lifting one in your net with its golden flanks, striped with black like a tiger, and the bright crimson fins. Old Stripey. On a winter’s day it was a real tonic.

  His friend’s customary three rods were fanned out around him. Greg himself didn’t like to catch fish after fish, after fish. He liked a challenge. Liked to work at it. He preferred to sit with just his tipping rod and move the bait on the bottom. It usually meant that you waited longer, caught fewer fish, but when you did there was a chance that they’d be better specimens.

  ‘Picture, matey. Picture. I’m saying cheese,’ Ray instructed, holding his little perch aloft in the time-honoured pose of fishermen, keeping the fish high on the chest so that it appeared bigger. It was a ritual that Greg had long got used to.

  He put his rod to one side, lifted his friend’s mobile phone from the top of his tackle box and, obligingly, snapped a photograph. Since technology had allowed them, recording every single fish that Ray hooked had become unavoidable. His friend even had his own website gallery to display the photos.

  ‘What d’ya reckon?’ Ray grinned at the lens. ‘What d’ya reckon?’

  ‘Nice fish.’

  Greg could only remember taking a picture of one catch in recent years. He’d been sitting on the bank late one evening with the hot summer sun sinking over the horizon and the fish coming to the surface for a last lazy bite, when he’d hooked a monster Mirror Carp with nothing more than a piece of stale bread and a four-pound line.

  It was unusual to see carp above ten pounds in the canal, but this beast weighed in at twenty pounds. He’d played it for two and a half hours, terrified that it would manage to snap the woefully inadequate line before he had a chance to reel it in. Just when he thought he’d won, the fish would power off again on a long, surging run. Greg had tired before the fish and had called Ray down to the canal to come and help him land it. That had been a fish to photograph. The flanks were chestnut brown, fading to a creamy white belly and it was thickset, strong and muscular like the prize-fighter it was. Carp were the fish who rewarded the anglers who worked hardest at their fishing, and the variation in their size and colour and scale patterns were as endless as in a fingerprint. Who could fail to marvel at that?

  ‘I’m not going to be around this weekend,’ Greg said as he put the camera phone down and picked up his rod again.

  ‘Not around?’

  ‘Taking Annie to Norfolk.’

  ‘Cromer?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘A bit out of the blue,’ Ray said. The perch went proudly into the keep net with his growing haul. ‘There’s a match on tomorrow.’

  Greg hadn’t forgotten about that. It was one he’d been particularly keen to fish.

  ‘What’s brought this on?’ his friend wanted to know.

  ‘Annie’s acting a bit funny,’ Greg admitted. ‘Thought it would do her good.’

  ‘Hormones,’ Ray said sagely, checking his arrangement of rods. ‘This is the thing, matey. Men – we’re wired like circuit boards. Every morning, same thing. No surprises. Click on. Click off. Women – they’re like a jar of jelly beans. Shaken up every damn day. You never know what colour you’re going to get. Or whether you’re going to like it.’

  Greg nodded thoughtfully. Annie had never been like this before. She seemed so discontented, so out of sorts. Could hormones really do that much damage overnight? His wife had never been overly troubled by those things, but then he had to admit that they never talked about such matters. If she had any problems in that department, she would have gone straight to her twin, Lauren, no
t him. Their marriage had always worked like that. Sometimes he wished that Annie would share more with him and less with Lauren, but he’d long accepted that her closeness to her sister was unlikely to alter.

  But now this sudden change? It was like a perch suddenly behaving like a pike. What was he to do? Clearly, something was worrying his wife. It worried him too – even though he didn’t know what it was. And he had to concede that, at the moment, it seemed like Ray had a point.

  Chapter 17

  Lauren surveyed the buffet nervously. They’d had caterers in who’d put out a lovely selection of finger food on the boardroom table. There were tiny blinis with smoked salmon and cream cheese, slivers of pink roast beef with fresh horseradish, puff-pastry horns filled with a light asparagus mousse. It all looked wonderful and she couldn’t face a single mouthful.

  Despite the tough economic climate, the sales team had pulled in a lot of revenue this year – down, in no small part, to her own efforts. Jude had decided that he’d put on a reception in the boardroom to say thanks to all the staff at Happening Today. She closed her eyes, thinking of the last time she’d been in this room. Her emotions were mixed, to say the least.

  ‘Bringing back memories?’

  It was Zak.

  She turned, arms folded. ‘Of what?’

  ‘We did this at the same time last year, didn’t we?’ There was a twinkle in his eye.

  So he must have seen something when she was in here with Jude the other night. ‘You’re a monster.’

  He picked up a samosa from a selection of Indian titbits and she slapped his wrist. Zak popped it in his mouth. ‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’

  He then helped himself to a mini poppadom and dipped it in some mango chutney. Then he lowered his voice as he said, ‘You do know that Georgia’s coming tonight?’

  Lauren’s stomach dropped to the floor. ‘No!’

  Zak pursed his lips. ‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.’

  Why? Why was Jude’s wife coming here? There was no need for her to do that. If it was a big party, important customers with their partners, then fair play, it made sense that she should accompany him. It might have seemed strange if she didn’t. But this was just for staff. An intimate little gathering. Georgia had no business being here.