by Lucy Diamond
‘Nice to meet you,’ Callum said, his voice surprisingly high pitched. He was probably mistaken for a woman all the time on the phone, Catherine thought distractedly.
‘Hi,’ she said, fully aware of her old jeans, the red smock top she’d had on all day, the fact that she hadn’t bothered putting on make-up because this was only meant to be a casual dinner with Penny and Darren. She turned to Penny and asked in a strangled voice, ‘Need any help in the kitchen?’
Callum was five years younger than her and at least an inch shorter. He operated a fork-lift truck in a warehouse, he told Catherine when she asked him about himself.
‘Ahh,’ she responded politely. ‘Um … What sort of things do you lift?’
‘Crates, mainly,’ he replied, forking a huge dollop of mash into his mouth as if demonstrating the skill involved.
Crates, mainly. God almighty. Where did they find this one? Catherine scowled at Penny, who, to be fair, was starting to look extremely apologetic.
‘I thought he’d be all right,’ she whispered guiltily in the kitchen, when the two of them cleared the dishes and plates from the main course (a slab of gammon, with mash and peas; Penny was never going to be a contender for MasterChef). ‘Darren’s always saying what a laugh he is down the pub.’
‘Well, I’m not laughing now,’ Catherine replied. Sitting on her own lonely sofa like a Saturday night loser was starting to look a lot more appealing than being stuck here with Pigboy.
‘Sorry, love,’ Penny said, getting a stack of bowls out of the cupboard. ‘I just thought you could do with some fun, that’s all. I’m not matchmaking or anything.’
‘Course you’re not, Pen.’
Penny had pushed the boat out and defrosted a Sara Lee gateau for pudding, although when she served it, there turned out to be slivers of ice still lurking in the sponge which made it unpleasantly cold and crunchy.
‘So,’ Catherine said gamely, wincing as an icy shard made her fillings tingle, ‘how are the wedding preparations going?’
‘I’m thinking Amsterdam for the stag weekend,’ Darren said, winking at Callum.
‘Sick,’ Callum replied enthusiastically. ‘I went there for my brother’s stag do, saw this wicked stripshow. Those Dutch birds will do anything.’
‘We’ve booked a nice pub for the reception,’ Penny said quickly, noticing Catherine’s face. ‘Invitations go out next week.’ She jumped up to grab a magazine from the sideboard and flicked through to a Post-it-marked page before shoving it in front of Catherine. ‘What do you think for the bridesmaids, by the way? Pink or lavender flower garlands?’
‘Oh! Tanya’s agreed to be a bridesmaid?’ Catherine asked in surprise. Penny’s daughter had flatly refused earlier that month, saying that she’d already been her mum’s bridesmaid twice and she wasn’t going near a stupid dress again, thanks very much. After much begging and pleading, she had ‘compromised’ by saying she would only be a bridesmaid if she could wear black, knowing full well that Penny would never agree to this. (Tanya was going through an all-black phase which involved lots of eyeliner, death metal and bad poetry. She no longer did colours.)
‘No. I’ve given up on Tanya, she said she’d rather die than wear a ruffle. The dogs are going to be my bridesmaids.’
‘The dogs?’
‘Yeah, I’m getting little flowery things made for them to wear around their necks. They’re going to look so adorable.’
‘Lovely,’ said Catherine, wondering if her friend was joking.
She wasn’t. ‘I know! As long as they don’t pee in the register office, that is. Can you imagine? More cake, by the way?’
At the end of the evening, Callum insisted on walking Catherine home, even though you could see her front door from Penny’s. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, putting on her coat (her knackered old gardening coat with one pocket hanging off because she hadn’t thought she needed to dress up for a quiet night in at Penny’s). From now on, she’d never knock at her friend’s house again without a) full make-up b) clean clothes and c) peering through the lace curtains to suss out any so-called eligible bachelors who’d been invited along too.
‘As a gentleman, I insist,’ he slurred.
A gentleman? When he’d been wittering on about the glories of unrepressed ‘Dutch birds’ and lapdance clubs half the evening?
‘As someone who is perfectly capable of crossing the road unescorted, I insist,’ she retorted.
He took a few seconds to process the long words in the sentence. Then he beamed. ‘I like a clever bird,’ he told her. ‘Come on, gorgeous. Let’s get you home. Hey, we could even have a nightcap, what do you say?’
Was he insane? Catherine looked beseechingly at Penny for assistance.
‘Callum, love, she’s fine,’ Penny told him. She’d been at the Dubonnet and her eyes were starting to cross. ‘See you both soon, yeah?’
‘Thanks, Penny,’ Catherine said, hugging her. Despite the matchmaking, it had been nice to spend the evening away from her own telly. She’d only have ended up watching something crap like Ice Road Truckers left to her own devices.
‘Thanks, babe,’ Callum said, putting his fat arms around Penny and squeezing. He was shorter than her and his head rested cosily on her shoulder. He was looking straight down Penny’s top, Catherine noticed with revulsion.
‘Run,’ Penny mouthed over his head, and Catherine slipped out of the door, with a last wave to Dazza, and trotted hurriedly across the street.
Not fast enough, though. ‘Wait!’ came a yell, seconds later. ‘I thought I was going to …’
Catherine broke into a run. She opened her door as fast as she could and practically fell into the hallway, double-locking it and putting the chain on for good measure. Then she peeped through the spyhole and watched as Callum veered in zigzags down the road. ‘Show me the way to go hoooome,’ she heard him singing a moment later, and wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
She slid down the radiator until she was sitting on the carpet, head on her knees, arms wrapped around her legs. If she’d wanted to, she could have invited him in for a ‘nightcap’ – and the rest. They could have been having sex right now on her hall carpet if she’d given him the slightest encouragement.
The thought made her feel like throwing up her boiled gammon and chocolate gateau. It had been so long since she’d so much as looked at another man; she’d always been loyal through and through. Just the idea of letting someone other than Mike undress her, touch her, kiss her … Would she ever be ready to do that? Was she destined to spend the rest of her days alone?
‘Get a cat,’ her mum had advised sympathetically the last time they’d spoken on the phone. ‘They won’t muck you around like a bloke, and they’re a damn sight cleaner.’
If the alternative was men like Callum, then Catherine was starting to think her mum had a point.
On Sunday, Catherine drove out to the care home for her lunchtime shift, helping in the kitchens and with the never-ending laundry. This was one of the many voluntary turns that she’d ended up being roped into: she was a sucker for a good cause. Mike hadn’t been very keen on the idea of her getting a job (‘Your job is being my wife,’ he’d always told her), so she’d gradually accumulated ways to fill her empty days: listening to infants read at the local primary school, shopping for elderly neighbours, working a couple of mornings in a charity shop, walking dogs at the nearby animal rescue shelter, litter-picking with the Woodland Trust group … ‘Oh, Catherine will do it,’ people tended to say, and she always found it difficult to say no.
She was fond of her ladies at Clemency House, though, as well as the scant few male residents, of course. The stories you heard there! The lives that had been lived! Violet Wickes, for instance, had been a dancer in her day – showgirl rather than prima ballerina – and had hoofed it around the world. She could still give you a few steps on a good day. Then there was Alice, who might look sweet and doddery now, but who had been a firebrand political activist in her youth – cam
ping at Greenham Common for months on end and leading marches on Downing Street. ‘I’ve been arrested that many times for breaching the peace, they joked about building me my own cell,’ she told Catherine cheerfully. And of course there was Nora, who had the naughtiest stories about her exploits back when she was a gorgeous young thing. She was a total scream.
All these amazing women. Catherine hoped she’d have something interesting to say for herself if she lived long enough to end up in a place like this.
She was still thinking about it later in the afternoon as she drove on to the animal shelter and took two of the dogs out for a tramp in the woods. Violet, Alice and Nora might all be old and shaky now, with clumpy orthopaedic shoes and occasional forgetfulness about what year it was, but whenever they talked about the past, their eyes lit up and you could see a flash of how they must have been in their prime: young and vibrant and making their mark on the world.
What was her mark?, she wondered, hardly noticing the dogs frenziedly pulling on their leads as a squirrel leapt up a tree in front of them. What would she look back on in years to come and recount with pride?
There had to be something, she thought to herself. There must be something noble and brave and exciting she could do. Mustn’t there?
The heavens opened while she was out and she ended up running back to the shelter with the dogs, all of them dripping wet and muddy. The dogs didn’t mind a bit – a quick shake and a rub down with the blanket and they were fine. Catherine, meanwhile, squelched back to the car, feeling cold and sodden. She’d jump straight in the shower when she was home, she decided, already envisaging the hot chocolate and toast she’d make for herself afterwards.
Such plans went out of her head, however, when she turned into their road and saw Mike’s Peugeot sitting there in the driveway. Her knuckles whitened on the wheel as she parked beside it. What was he doing here? He’d kept his distance since Christmas and the awful turkey-flinging incident; he certainly wouldn’t have dropped round for a pleasant chat and a slice of cake. Something bad must have happened. Something major. Oh God, please not the children.
Yanking on the handbrake, she hurtled from the car like an Exocet missile, fumbling with her keys at the front door. ‘Mike? Is that you? Is everything all right?’ she called.
He emerged down the stairs, looking irritated. ‘Where on earth have you been?’ he cried. Then he stopped midway down and stared at her. ‘Jesus, Cath, what have you done to yourself?’
‘Wh-what?’ she gulped, forgetting for a moment just how bedraggled she must look. ‘I’ve been out. What’s going on?’
‘God, look at the state of you. You’re dripping all over the carpet, for heaven’s sake.’
How did he do that – make her feel small within a few seconds? She meekly took her coat off and hung it up, feeling as worthless as ever. Rebecca never looked anything less than perfect, no doubt. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, trying to wrest back control of the conversation. ‘You haven’t answered me. Is something wrong? What’s happened?’
‘I’ve been phoning you all day,’ he said impatiently. ‘When you didn’t bother replying, I let myself in. I needed to get the mortgage documentation so we can get the ball rolling here.’
Get the ball rolling? She stared at him dumbfounded. ‘What do you m-m-mean?’
He couldn’t look her in the eye, she noticed. ‘What do you think I mean? Look, Cath, you’ve got to move on. We’re splitting up. And – not to put too fine a point on it – this is my house.’
‘But …’
‘I bought it, I’ve made all the mortgage payments. And now I want to buy a place with Rebecca, so …’ He shrugged. ‘I’m going to put this house on the market.’
‘But what about me?’ she croaked. Her heart was pounding. ‘This is my home.’
He looked away. ‘That’s your problem, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to keep two houses going. I’ll send a few estate agents round in the week, okay?’
‘Wait, Mike! We need to talk about this,’ she said, but he was already pushing past her and walking to his car. Without another glance, he started the engine, reversed out into the road and drove away.
Shit. She had been dreading this: moving out of her home, having to start again somewhere else. She still didn’t have a job or any kind of income, no savings fund or plan B. Wild, desperate thoughts hurtled through her head. Should she crawl back to her mum’s in Reading? Ask to lodge with Penny? Prostrate herself to the council, beg for some temporary accommodation? Would she end up sleeping on the streets?
No. Of course she wouldn’t. Mike was a good man, he wouldn’t throw her out with nowhere to go. Would he?
The front door was still wide open and she closed it with a shaking hand, imagining a different woman standing here soon, closing the same door. Another family would move in, attracted by the generous-sized rooms, the lovely garden, the proximity to a great primary school and local amenities. Meanwhile, what was to become of her?
It was then she noticed the document case abandoned in the hall; Mike had forgotten to take it with him. She picked it up, wondering what he’d put inside. All their mortgage statements, no doubt, and other house-related paperwork, so that he could ‘start the ball rolling’. A cannonball, smashing straight through her life.
Her fingers hesitated on the metal catches. Would it be snooping for her to read through them?
No, she decided. They had both lived here for ten years. He might have paid for everything, but this was still her home.
The catches made loud clicking sounds as she opened the case and lifted the lid. Inside were a number of clear plastic document wallets, neatly labelled MORTGAGE, HOUSE and SP. She frowned. SP? What was SP?
She lifted it out from under the other wallets, but in her haste she dropped it and papers fanned everywhere on the hall carpet. Crouching down to pick them up, she froze as she saw a number of bank statements from Barclays Bank. Weird. A buzzing sense of déjà vu started up inside her as she stared at the papers. Since when did Mike have a separate account? She’d thought everything went through their joint Co-op account. What was going on?
Then she picked up one of the statements for a closer look and her mouth fell open in shock. Breathing hard, she read the figures again, wondering if her brain was deceiving her.
But no. It was all there in black and white. Almost one hundred thousand pounds in a separate account for Mike, with every payment listed as a transfer from CENTAUR.
Catherine’s mouth was dry. She didn’t understand. It didn’t make sense. Who or what was Centaur, and why had they been paying her husband so much money?
Chapter Seventeen
Il foglio di calcolo – The spreadsheet
‘You don’t mind, do you? It’ll only be for a few weeks.’
Anna did mind. She minded a lot that Pete had taken it upon himself to use her flat as storage space for umpteen boxes of his crap while he negotiated some new living arrangements. ‘No,’ she said through gritted teeth as he dumped a box of lurid-covered fantasy novels on her bed.
‘Great. Put the kettle on, will you, babe? I’m dying of thirst here.’
Can you not try dying a bit quicker? she felt like snapping, but curbed her tongue at the last second. Clambering over a wobbling tower of boxes and crates – why was a boomerang sticking out of one? Since when had Pete ever been near the southern hemisphere? – she swore under her breath as she entered the kitchen. She’d been trying out different varieties of ginger cake that evening for her next column and had left two dark, sticky beauties cooling fragrantly on a rack, only Pete had now shoved a box marked ‘Kitchen Stuff’ on the worktop, and in doing so had somehow showered dust and God knows what all over the top of them.
This was a terrible mistake. Letting him store his wretched football programmes and sci-fi videos in her flat was the start of the slippery slope. She’d managed to put off co-habiting for the time being at least, but for how long? She really ha
d to put her foot down, make a clean break, get rid of Pete and all his stuff. Otherwise, before she knew it, years would go by and she’d wake up an old woman, still here with him. She’d hate herself for it.
‘I’ve got to,’ she muttered.
‘Got to what, love? Give us a flash of your boobs?’ There he was, popping up in the kitchen with that annoying cheeky-chappy smirk. ‘Cor, now you’re talking. And you baked me a cake and all. Two cakes! How’s that cup of tea coming on, then?’
She took a deep breath. Now was as good a time as any. However terrified she was of becoming a lonely, dried-up old spinster, the alternative – this – seemed worse by the minute.
‘Pete,’ she said, trying to keep her voice neutral and calm. She put down the bottle of milk and folded her arms. ‘Listen … I’ve been thinking.’
‘Whoa!’ He pretended to fall over in shock. Very funny. ‘Well done and everything, babe, but I was just coming to say, I’ve got to move my car. I double-parked and your neighbour’s just come out and had a go at me.’ He pointed both index fingers at her like a cheesy gameshow host. ‘So hold that thought, babe. Don’t let it go to waste. I’ll be right back.’
Said the man with so few brain cells you could give each one a name, Anna thought as the door slammed. She accidentally-on-purpose sloshed too much milk in his tea, just to annoy him, then gazed at the picture of Rimini she’d stuck on her fridge and sighed, wishing she could be there right now. Far away, feeling the warm sunshine on her bare skin, wearing sunglasses and flip-flops and exchanging life stories with her father. Instead she felt nothing but advancing claustrophobia as Pete’s possessions invaded her space.
Meeting her father in Italy would happen, she was determined. The other people in her Italian class had looked at her as if she was some kind of nutter the other night, when she’d admitted her plan to them in the pub. They probably all thought she was barking, haring off on some mad hunt for him, with only a single photograph in her armoury. She wouldn’t give up, though. No way. She’d regret it for the rest of her life if she let this lead go unexplored.
