by Sue Welfare
Therefore, on an otherwise spotless kitchen floor, were a pair of his trainers, one upright, one on its side, untouched, caged within a neat circle of grime. On the landing were a jacket and a single sock, hoovered round but left for dead where they had fallen or more likely where Joe had dropped them. And here in the sitting room three guitars stood sentinel like small guardsmen by the bookcase that was crammed with shared CDs, shared books, and things chosen with the both of them in mind. Kate shuddered. Maybe tomorrow she’d be able to begin clearing his things away, put everything in the spare room, but today it seemed impossible. What she needed was one of those snake handling sticks, long enough so that no part of him touched her.
‘Actually now you come to mention it, I’m famished. Do you want me to order?’ Bill was saying.
‘If you want to. What are you doing at home on a Friday evening anyway?’ Friday? Kate shivered. Was that all it was? Was it only a week since her supper party? It felt like a year ago.
‘Work, I’ve just filed a load of negs, got my accounts up to date. I’ve been a really good boy – got it all done tonight so’s I could give myself the whole of the weekend off as a reward. And –’ he stopped.
‘And?’
‘And are the boys home with you?’
Kate wasn’t convinced that was what Bill planned to say but decided not to chase him to ground. ‘No, they’re still in Norfolk with my mum.’
‘Right, well in that case I won’t need to order up a lorryload. How did it go with Joe?’
For a man it was a nicely sneaked in question. ‘I don’t think I’ve got enough words to describe it. I’ve been with Joe so long. I’ve lost –’ Kate stopped herself from following through with the rest of the sentence. She had lost a whole life and two of the people she loved most in the world in one foul swoop. People who she had truly believed cared for her and had her best interests at heart. A friend and lover all gone, just like that. That pain, that great raw gaping hole, would be a very long time healing.
‘He left,’ she said, ‘what else is there to say?’
‘Any idea where he went?’
‘Don’t hold back will you, Bill? I had no idea you were so nosy.’
He made a peculiar little noise that might or might not have been an apology but Kate carried on. ‘At the moment, to be honest, I really don’t care where he is. I’ve got his mobile number if I need to get hold of him.’ She glanced round the sitting room. ‘Always assuming he’s remembered to take it with him.’
‘And you?’
Kate stretched, trying to gauge how her mind and body responded. ‘I’m completely knackered, mixed up. Angry. Shaky, shell-shocked, ragged around the edges. How specific do you need this to be, Bill? I’ve cleaned the house from top to bottom, worked myself to a standstill. Oh, and I had a man round to change the locks.’
‘Jesus. Bit drastic, isn’t it?’
‘It seemed like the right thing to do. It’s a gesture; Joe’s got a key, Chrissie’s got a key –’ The words ground to a halt.
‘So Chinese food then?’
‘Uhuh –’
‘Is that uhuh yes or uhuh no?’
‘Uhuh yes.’ Kate snapped. ‘It was me who suggested it, remember?’
‘Don’t be so picky. Fancy anything in particular?’
Kate groaned indecisively. ‘Something with noodles. Chicken? Prawns? Cashew nuts? Duck, beansprouts – I don’t know.’
‘Leave it with me.’
Three quarters of an hour later Bill turned up on the doorstep carrying two brown paper bags, two cans of Diet Coke and a bottle of wine.
‘I’ve put plates in the oven and got the soy sauce out of the cupboard,’ she said, taking the bags from him.
‘Whoever said the art of entertaining was dead?’
‘Certainly not me,’ Kate said, ‘I’m totally ravenous.’
Later, as the night pulled in, they sat in the kitchen, dipping cold greasy prawn crackers into the last of the sweet and sour sauce while Kate told him all about Guy and Maggie and Liz and Andrew and Julie and Joe showing up and well, everything really.
‘So did you sort the email thing out?’ he asked, shuffling a sliver of cracker into his waiting mouth.
It took Kate a minute or two to cotton on. ‘Vulnerable Venus, you mean?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Sort of, although I have to confess I’ve been emailing one of them.’
Bill snorted. ‘Oh bloody hell, Kate. I thought you were going to cancel the membership. Why, for God’s sake? Don’t tell me. It’s got to be long tall Larry with the gift-wrapped willy, right?’
‘Oh, you guessed,’ Kate teased and then more seriously, ‘No, it’s another guy. He’s married actually, which might strike you – and me – as ironic under the circumstances but it’s helped me to sort out how I feel about Joe. This man is so nice, so easy to talk to, a good man, but he’s really lonely inside his marriage. It made me understand that it was important to let Joe go.’
‘What, because Joe’s such a good man and so easy to talk to? It’s hardly the same, Kate. Joe wasn’t lonely in his marriage. He was just –’ Bill looked across at her and Kate guessed that her expression stopped whatever he had planned to say next.
‘I don’t know, Bill, it all made perfect sense yesterday. Staying with Joe when he thinks that hopping into bed with Chrissie can solve the things that are wrong between us isn’t right either. We should have both seen that there was another way to sort this out. But no matter how hard he tries and let’s face it – knowing Joe, it isn’t likely to be much of a sustained effort – and how much I want it, I’ll never be able to trust him again. Even so, there is still a piece of me that believes we’re both equally to blame.’
Bill lifted an eyebrow. ‘Shit. That’s incredibly magnanimous of you.’
Kate sucked the sauce off another prawn cracker, letting it pop and crackle and melt on her tongue. ‘I said a piece of me, not all of me. At the moment I’m so hurt and so bloody angry and scared, I want to hit Joe as hard I can and keep on hitting him. But there is also another bit that knows that the boys and I will be fine. We’ll survive. And so will Joe.’
Bill topped up their glasses. ‘As long as he can find someone else to take care of him and pay the bills and sort his clothes? Oh, and make sure he turns up for work on time?’
‘You heard about that?’
‘Bad news spreads fast as flu ’round these parts,’ he said in a broad country brogue. Not that Kate was fooled for an instant.
‘Chrissie rang you, huh?’
‘Yep, just to let me know that what Joe really needs is someone else to take care of him and pay the bills, sort his clothes out – oh, and make sure he turns up for work on time.’
‘If that’s what it takes, that’s what he’ll find.’
‘I think he may have already found it.’
Kate felt her jaw drop open as comprehension dawned. ‘Chrissie? Not Chrissie. Please tell me that you don’t mean it. You can’t mean it. He hasn’t gone round there, has he?’
Bill shrugged. ‘She rang to try and persuade me to persuade you to give it another go, patch it up and after that just to let rip, I think. Apparently Joe told her that it was her fault that he was in this mess in the first place.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Kate angrily. ‘She’s got to be mad. She heard me moaning all these years about Joe and she’s fallen for it? I don’t believe it. She deserves everything she gets.’
‘She said she felt sorry for him.’
‘Oh please,’ snapped Kate. ‘He does that so well.’
‘Are you angry?’
‘Angry? Of course I’m angry but only with her. Daft cow. I thought she had more sense.’
‘Apparently he told her that he loves her.’
Kate sighed. ‘Really? Well, in that case it makes it all right then, doesn’t it?’ Kate looked up at Bill and lifted her wine glass ‘Here’s a toast then, to true love and happy ever after.’ And the
n Kate started to laugh and laughed until tears ran down her face, until her stomach hurt, until she couldn’t breathe, until Bill handed her a box of tissues and made coffee while she cried her heart out.
‘It’ll just be until I can get myself sorted out,’ Joe was saying, for what must have been the fiftieth time. He and Chrissie were eating great wedges of pizza, ham and pineapple deep pan, which Joe had insisted on having delivered from the trendy place up by the traffic lights.
Chrissie sighed. ‘I keep telling you, Joe. You can stay here until the end of next week and then,’ she used her thumb to indicate vamoose, ‘out.’
He looked confused.
‘What?’ she snapped. ‘Which bit of “out” don’t you understand?’
‘Well, all of it really,’ he said pitifully. ‘I thought that you and me were friends. I’m not going to be able to find somewhere just like that, certainly not in a week, and what about all my stuff? I need somewhere to put my stuff. To store it until I can find a place.’
Chrissie was angry and so frustrated that she said nothing, so Joe ploughed on. ‘How about Simon’s room, you said yourself he’s barely here now that his girlfriend’s got her own place. I could use that, couldn’t I?’ Despite the words, there was barely a question in Joe’s voice.
She stared at him. ‘He’s my son, Joe, this is his home. I can’t go giving his room away. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, Robbie left a message on the machine to say he’ll be home tonight.’
‘Right,’ Joe said and then looking puzzled, continued, ‘meaning what exactly?’
‘Meaning that you’ll have to sleep down here on the couch tonight. The spare duvet’s in the airing cupboard.’
‘Oh come off it, Chrissie. They’ll have to know sooner or later.’
‘Who’ll have to know what, Joe?’
‘That you and me are together. An item. I thought maybe I’d take Si and Robbie up the pub, talk to them man to man.’
‘I thought we’d already agreed that we aren’t an item, Joe, and that this had no future. Or is it me telling myself this stuff?’
‘No, you definitely said those things – but things change.’
‘So you keep saying.’
‘We could make a go of it. I know we could. We’re alike, you and me.’
Chrissie shook her head. ‘I seriously hope that we’re not, Joe, for both our sakes.’
In Denham, Guy and Maggie were sitting outside on the terrace, curled up side by side on the swing watching the stars twinkling in the magenta and Persian blue late evening sky. The last of the light was losing its grip on the approaching dark. Although it was quite warm, Guy had wrapped Maggie in a rug and she was drinking hot chocolate laced with creme de menthe. Danny and Jake had a telescope set up in one corner of the garden and were busy chasing down the moon. They had hot chocolate, too, but without the added ingredients.
‘I love you,’ Guy murmured in an undertone, catching hold of her hand and pressing it to his lips.
Maggie grinned and, leaning forward very gently, kissed the end of his nose. ‘I know.’
‘Marry me.’
Maggie stared into his eyes just as Jake yelled, ‘Granny Maggie, Guy, look! Look! A shooting star. Over there, over there.’
They both looked up and sure enough there in the sky, as bright as a firework, was a brief but beautiful flare of scuttering sparks.
‘They’re meteors,’ Jake said knowledgeably. ‘Most of them burn up as they enter the earth’s atmosphere. The bits that don’t and come down are meteorites. We did it in science.’
‘Well done,’ said Maggie, proudly.
‘Well,’ said Guy. ‘Don’t you think that maybe that was a sign? An omen?’
Maggie shook her head and laughed. ‘Nice try. What happens if I say yes? You know all the things I’m frightened of, Guy. They haven’t changed.’
He stroked her face. ‘I love you and want to be with you whether we’re married or not. It would nice just to be able to tell everyone, make it official. Get lots of presents.’
Maggie smiled. ‘Now Liz knows, trust me, it is official. No going back to being Guy the lodger. Oh, and I wouldn’t mention the lots of presents thing in front of her or Peter, even in jest, it’ll just prove her gold-digger theory.’
He laughed. ‘I’m going to keep asking you, you know.’
Maggie touched his cheek. ‘I’m glad, but you know that I’m going to keep turning you down, don’t you?’
He nodded as she continued, ‘It wouldn’t make any difference or make me love you any more or less you know. I’m giving this relationship all that I can. You wouldn’t get any more of me just because of a piece of paper.’
He kissed her. ‘Stop panicking, I’m not going to force you. I’ll catch you off guard one day.’
‘There’s another, over there, over there,’ Jake shrieked in delight and they all looked up to see the white-hot lights flare and die against the ever darkening sky. Maggie felt Guy’s hand tighten on hers and smiled, relishing the warm and very real sense of connection and contentment. They might not be married or ever get married, but this – and moments like it – were worth more than any promise.
As soon as Bill had left, Kate packed the dishwasher and then logged on to find a message from Sam57.
‘You keep doing this to me. It’s like getting email from my conscience! I’ve been thinking about the things you wrote. I have to have to say, Venus, that my first instinct was to tell you to stuff it – it’s none of your business. But, on reflection, you’re right. I’ve been kidding myself that it’s all right to do this, that no one was getting hurt this way because there is a slight sense of unreality about it. I suppose if I’m truthful I was hoping to find someone on-line who would be The One – you know, the one to give me the courage or the support to call it a day. The one who will love me forever and make it all right? Not the best idea in the world, eh? But it seemed like the best option I’d got.
And then you came along. So – plan b) although this might sound like bullshit, my plan is to talk to my wife. Soon. You’re right, we can’t go on like this. I’m not sure what the outcome is likely to be. I love her, I really do – I know it sounds crazy bearing in mind I’m on the net looking for women. What I’m saying is that I love her enough to want to sort it out – one way or the other.
I wonder if we could still meet up? No hidden agenda, no strings. I’d really like to talk to you about this before I make the move. You sound like a decent person and probably I’m not so decent, but I do need something, courage, a helping hand, a listening ear. I don’t know what it is exactly, but anyway, as I said, I work in London all week. We could meet up somewhere public for lunch, go for a coffee. Please, Venus. I promise that I’ll sort it out but I’d really like to see you first.’
Kate began to type and was surprised to find the first word was, ‘Okay.’
Just as she got to the end, her mobile rang, once, twice. Kate glanced down at the name. It was Andrew. Smiling, she picked up. ‘I thought I told you never to call me again?’
He laughed. ‘Long time never. It’s not too late, is it?’
‘For what?’
‘I just wondered how things were going.’ She looked at the computer screen. ‘Fine. I’m just arranging a blind date with an axe-wielding psychopath.’
‘Sam57?’
‘Yeh, he’s promised me he’s going to talk to his wife.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘Maybe I’m just gullible.’
‘Do I need to tell you to be careful?’
‘No.’
‘Where are you going to meet him?’
Although it was getting late, Julie Hicks was still on the phone to her mother. She had already rung her sister who was two years younger than Kate and Julie but who remembered Kate very well.
The girls were in bed asleep. Malcolm was still upstairs in his office working. Julie glanced resentfully towards the stairs. It was such a shame Keith had had to go home, she mis
sed the company and the attention and the way he insisted on fixing her a drink once the children were tucked up in bed at night.
Most of all, though, she missed the way Keith had watched her cleavage as though it was some sort of profound pagan mystery and the way that once Malcolm had gone off to work in the morning, he had very quietly tiptoed across the landing and slipped into bed beside her.
In the her house in Norwich Liz checked on the girls, and then checked that Maria, the au pair, who should be off any minute for her language class, had cleaned the kitchen, and then finally checked her phone messages. She would have liked to have checked on Peter too, but the door to his office was firmly closed and he always got terribly annoyed if she disturbed him while he was working.
Liz did feel that tonight the things she wanted to discuss with him were important, perhaps not an emergency, not life or death as such, but it was still very important. Normally they had dinner together but tonight he said he’d have his on a tray in the study as he had to get some work out of the way before Tokyo closed or was it opened? It might have been New York actually.
Liz couldn’t settle. She flicked through the TV stations and then through the cable channels looking for something to take her mind off her mother and Guy. What sort of name was that for a man?
She had always assumed that when Maggie died she and Kate would have half the house each and half of the estate, but what would happen if Maggie really did get married? What if Guy was a philanthropist and decided to adopt half a dozen Rumanian orphans? What if he already had family; Liz instantly imagined four small handsome Guy lookalikes, standing shoulder to shoulder in descending height in a neat row in the hall at Church Hill. They were all dressed in designer casuals and wearing black armbands. Where would she and Kate stand then?
Worse still, what if Guy really was a philanderer, what if he had spun Maggie some yarn, and took her for every penny she had and more besides, what if he made her borrow money she hadn’t got to pay for operations on children that didn’t exist?
Liz stood up, face screwed tight with anxiety, full to the brim with righteous indignation. This had to stop and it had to stop right now.
