by Carmen Reid
‘Snap out of it?’ She felt angry now.
‘Well yes. You’re just mooching about here feeling sorry for yourself. You could easily get any other job you wanted, but you haven’t tried. You could easily find another nanny, but you haven’t tried. Jesus, you haven’t even bothered to buy anything that fits you, you just skulk about here in my old clothes. You look awful.’ Don regretted that as soon as he had said it. But there it was, he couldn’t take it back and anyway, maybe he’d been far too nice to her for too long. Maybe it was time to get tough.
‘Don, I haven’t bought anything because I’m not earning any money,’ she shouted.
‘I’m well aware of that,’ he shouted back. ‘What the hell do you think we are going to pay the mortgage with next month? I’m at my overdraft limit and your account must be in meltdown. Just what are you thinking? If you want to spend the next few years at home being a housewife, then we’ll have to sell the house and move to a small flat. But that’s not why I married you.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ She was furious now.
‘I never wanted to be married to someone who stayed home and cooked and did the cleaning and talked about the kids all evening. It’s so fucking dull. I thought you were the absolute opposite of that and I feel like I’ve been tricked.’
‘You’ve been tricked?! How the fuck do you think I feel?’ Her tears were spilling out now, she was so angry and so hurt. ‘I never knew what this would be like. I didn’t ask for a baby who would only breastfeed, who would howl the house down whenever I left him. I didn’t ask to feel this bad and this tired and this pissed off with everything.’
Words suddenly couldn’t express her rage and frustration, so she flipped over her dinner plate, spilling food all over the table and ran upstairs.
Lying sobbing on the bed, she heard the front door slam. Good. Don had gone out, she hoped he didn’t come back.
Once she had cried herself out, she went and washed her face in the bathroom.
That evening, she started to think about what it would be like to leave Don. Where would she and Markie go? How would she pay for it? Jesus. She could sell the car. She’d have to get a job first. She went into Markie’s room and checked on him. He was lying on his back with his hands thrown up and out beside his head. He looked blissfully peaceful.
Far too hyped up to sleep, she went down to the kitchen, opened a bottle of wine and took out her cigarettes.
Two fags down, she felt steadier. She picked up the phone and dialled Tania’s number. Unbelievable that she hadn’t spoken to her for months now. She’d been so rude to her the last time, and never found the time or inclination to make up.
The answering machine picked up and Bella clicked off her phone. She couldn’t leave Tania a message, she’d have to speak to her in person.
Who the hell else could she call? She lit another cigarette and thought for a moment, staring at the telephone keypad,
Aha. Speed dial seven.
After a few rings, that oh-so-missed voice answered.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello Chris, it’s Bella.’
‘Bella! Hello. Bloody hell. I thought you’d died or something.’ He sounded so pleased to hear her, it made her stomach flip.
‘You never wrote, you never called,’ she teased.
‘No, I didn’t. Sorry, that was really, really crap of me. Bad boy.’
‘How are things?’ she asked.
‘Terrible,’ he answered. ‘Danson’s went ape when they heard you were off the job. Threatened to bring you in on a personal contract, then Susan threatened them with breach of contract . . . blah blah. I’ve been working like a dog, because Hector, well he’s just a conceited, scheming bastard. I take back all the nice things I’ve ever said about him. And we miss you. It’s like a leg lopped off, the phone constantly rings with people asking for you and we’ve all been told to say you’re not working for us or anyone else, you’re simply not available.’
Bella was amazed to hear all this.
‘But that’s not true, is it?’ Chris asked. ‘What are you doing? Have you taken the plunge and set up on your own?’
‘Err . . . well, to be honest no. I’m having a bit of a maternity . . . em . . . sabbatical.’
‘Really?’ He sounded surprised.
‘Well, the next move is important for me, I don’t want to rush into anything. ‘It was funny to hear that sort of career-y, work thing creep right back into her voice.
‘No, you’re absolutely right,’ he said, then added: ‘Susan is desperate for you to come back. She’s too proud to come to you, but she would bite your hand off if you offered, probably any terms you liked.’
‘Partner?’
‘I’m sure. I’d probably get sacked to make room for you.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘How’s your son anyway?’
So Bella told him, trying not to go on for too long.
‘He sounds lovely,’ said Chris. ‘Are you enjoying being at home?’
‘Mostly. But it’s very tiring and I worry a lot that everyone thinks I’ve dropped off the face of the planet. You know that whole corporate culture of taking your mobile into the delivery room and rushing back to work before your stitches have healed.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Chris. ‘No-one’s forgotten you, Bella. If anything, your mysterious disappearance has got even more people clamouring for your services.’
‘Do you ever have any qualms about the job we do, Chris?’ she asked, surprising herself.
‘Oh-oh conscience time. No not really, we usually do quickly what would have happened much more slowly and bloodily over the long term.’
‘Hmmm,’ she answered, wondering if she believed that line any more, ‘I think it would do me good to see you.’
‘I’d love to – when and where? I’m free!’
‘No hot dates at the moment then?’ she teased.
‘No.’
They settled on Sunday, her house, 8 p.m.
‘It’ll be great to see Don again,’ Chris added, because he wanted to know if Don was going to be there, but he didn’t want to ask straight out.
‘No, you won’t see him, he’s off to Africa for about ten days, civil war refugees or something,’ He was leaving tomorrow morning. She wondered if they would have a chance to make up before then and if she wanted to.
‘So just you and me then,’ Chris said in a way that made her wonder . . .
‘Well, you, me and, hopefully, a sleeping baby,’ she laughed.
Chapter Forty
IN THE MORNING, she and Don were polite to each other, but there was no big making-up scene. Don had spent the night on the couch after an evening in the pub and woken with a grotty hangover.
He packed his bags as Bella made breakfast for herself and Markie. Don only wanted coffee. Her son was eating porridge with mashed banana and he mouthed at little pieces of bread while she sat down to fresh orange juice, cereal and two slices of toast.
The ring at the doorbell meant Don’s taxi was early. She could hear him cursing in the hallway. He went out to say he wasn’t ready yet.
Five minutes later he appeared in the kitchen, wearing the long, waxed overcoat she loved him in, with a bag slung over his shoulder.
‘OK, I’ll say goodbye then,’ he said rather stiffly.
He leaned over Markie sitting in his high chair and gave him a kiss: ‘Take care my little buddy,’ he said. The baby patted him on the cheek.
He came up to Bella and put his arms round her: ‘Look after him for me and take care of yourself. I’m sorry we rowed last night, but I can’t take back what I said. I think you need to get your head together,’ he said. ‘I want to help you, but you won’t tell me how I can help you.’
‘Right, I get the message,’ she replied.
‘I really don’t want to leave on a bad note,’ he said. ‘But it’s work. I have to go and I want to go. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK, Don, I’ll be fine, it’s ju
st ten days, isn’t it?’
‘We’ve not got a definite return date yet, but it shouldn’t be more than two weeks.’ He leaned down, kissed her quickly on the mouth, and said ‘Take care, I’ll call you,’ then he left.
‘Bye,’ she said and when she heard the front door slam she wished she’d been big enough to tell him to take care too. Take care wasn’t ‘I love you’, they were both still too angry for that, but it was at least ‘I really care about you’.
Two hours later, Markie had finally gone down for his morning nap when the phone rang. Bella rushed over and snatched the receiver up before the ringing woke him.
She was surprised to hear Don’s voice.
He’d taken the wrong laptop to the airport. He could still use the one he’d taken, but he asked her to access a file on the laptop at home and pull out the contact numbers he needed for the trip. She found his computer in the sitting room and once it was up and running she called him back.
He talked her through the passwords until she’d opened the right file, then he took down the numbers and said goodbye, telling her to take care again. This time she said it back.
She hung up and decided to e-mail the file over to him and maybe put a conciliatory little note at the bottom.
She prepared her message then plugged the computer into the phone socket and hit send. As it exited the basket, she was left looking at the list of stored mail and she saw ‘[email protected] re: trip.’
S. Sewell could only be Simone Sewell, the tabloid harpy from hell Don had been seeing on and off over several years until he’d met Bella. She was a news reporter on his rival paper and she’d taken up the L.A. correspondent job not long after Bella and Don’s engagement.
Bella clicked open the message, all it said was ‘Looking forward to it.’ But as she scrolled down, the story unfolded – all Simone’s recent messages to and from Don were enclosed on the file.
Simone was back. She’d been made chief reporter on her paper, so now she and Don were direct rivals. She was going on the same civil war story and would be meeting him at the airport. Their first encounter in two years. Simone had sent the tasteful message: ‘The child-bride has a baby now, so you must be gasping for a good grown-up shag,’ along with a few choice reminiscences of their earlier adventures on the road together.
Bella read through them, thinking that a rain-filled ditch in Cumbria during a police hunt for an abducted toddler wouldn’t have been her number one location for a sexual encounter, no matter how irresistible Don was.
She shut down the computer. Her hands were shaking and she could hear blood pounding in her ears. This would not be nearly so worrying if Don had at least mentioned Simone and if he hadn’t had to leave home in the middle of a decidedly rocky patch.
‘FUCK!!’ she shouted out loud, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’ She had no idea what to do. Should she phone Don and ask him what the hell was going on? Should she bundle Markie up and follow him on the first flight out there? No, that was ridiculous.
Unfortunately, her deepest insecurity now triggered, dinner with Chris was taking on a whole new meaning.
Rifling through the phone book, she booked a hair appointment at one of the most expensive salons in London, then began to make elaborate preparations for Sunday night.
Don opened his eyes and focused on an unfamiliar ceiling. His arm felt numb and he turned to see Simone’s bleach-blond 40-year-old head lying on it. He eased it out from under her neck, managing not to wake her up.
Jesus, Simone.
He hadn’t seen or heard from her for over two years, yet she had kissed him on the mouth and with her tongue when they’d met at Heathrow and he’d been jolted with a surprise shudder of lust, although the time in LA had not been kind to her.
Her skin was now a dark, dried-out tan, her nails had sprouted to inch-long, candy pink talons and she ended every sentence with a really irritating ‘yunno?’
She was still single, of course, still totally neurotic about her career and it was obvious, now she was back, that she had every intention of rekindling their affair.
Their liaison had begun four years ago when she’d joined her paper. It had been a torrid on-off, hot-cold, sex and newspaper centred relationship complete with stealing exclusives from each other and snatching opportunities to fuck on the job. It had been thrilling in parts, immensely stressful, and after just an hour on the plane with her, drinking lukewarm in-flight champagne, he remembered exactly why he’d finally ended it on meeting Bella.
Bella, Bella . . . his beautiful, young Bella, who thought she was so tough and City-slick. To Don she’d seemed fresh, untainted and positively dewy-eyed. All that enthusiasm – for work, for life, for him! Finally, someone who hadn’t been fucked up the arse by life one hundred times over like Simone and all the other women he seemed to hang around with back then.
He had listened to Simone cracking her hard-nosed, sarcastic gags on the plane, eaten up with bitterness and totally cynical, and he remembered how she’d laughed in his face whenever he’d tried to say anything really nice to her, whenever he’d tried to get in under that bulletproof shell. He could have become just like that, but thank God he’d met his girl – the gorgeous, sexy, razor-sharp girl asking him for a light. The one who had trusted him enough to let down her guard and fall in love.
Poor Bella. He sat up in bed now and rubbed his hand over three days of stubble. She’d had no idea what had hit her when the baby arrived and he’d left her to it, all the anxiety about money driving him to work harder, longer and away from home. He needed to take a holiday and give her a break.
This week had been hell, covering really grim shit from a place on the very outskirts of civilization. Now it had all turned nasty, and he and eight other journalists were holed up in the last two available hotel bedrooms waiting for a ride out.
He looked at his watch: 8.15 a.m. The plane was due in two hours. If he got good connecting flights, he would hopefully be back in London late, late Sunday, early Monday. He longed to be at home, to wrap Bella and his tiny son up in his arms and tell them it was going to be OK. He was going to make it OK.
Simone was stirring, he looked over and saw her eyes open. She yawned, stretched her arms out over her head and grinned at him.
‘There’s still time to change your mind, yunno?’ she said and under the covers, he felt her hand reach for his belt buckle. ‘They’re going to say we did it anyway.’ She nodded at the two photographers still comatose in sleeping bags on the floor.
‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ he said and moved her hand away.
‘Well, well, respect to the child-bride,’ Simone said. ‘She’s finally reined you in, yunno?’
‘Her name’s Bella,’ Don replied. ‘Let’s just stick to Bella.’
He threw back the cover and, already dressed in trousers and a T-shirt, he got out of bed and pulled on his boots.
‘I’m going to see if I can find some coffee in this place,’ he said.
The haircut was fantastic, easily worth the eye-watering bill. Bella’s mass of long, dark brown hair had been transformed into a sleek, layered, shoulder-length bob, shot through with ginger and caramel highlights. A heavy fringe had been cut into the front, which managed to make her look 19 again.
By Sunday night, her fridge was crammed with delicious food and very expensive wine, a new outfit was hanging out ready on the wardrobe door and the house was tidy and gleaming, filled with luscious fresh flowers and candles.
She had put Markie to bed early, so she would have a full half-hour to get ready. It still felt strange that he slept in his own little room now, but she’d decided to move him out three nights ago, so she could reclaim the bedroom.
Drying off after a quick shower, she covered herself in fragrant cream, then put on a little make-up. Back in the bedroom, she picked out her best underwear: suspenders, lace G-string, an underwired bra which she was going to spill out of.
She had no idea if she had the nerve to seduce Chris or not
, all she knew was that planning it like this had been the most fun she’d had in ages.
She rolled on nude lace-topped stockings, struggling to see over the cartoon cleavage she’d given herself, and hooked them into place. On top went a new slinky skirt, slit from ankle to mid-thigh, a fitted emerald green shirt, unbuttoned low, and the green strappy shoes.
She had just applied the lipstick, squirt of perfume and checked herself approvingly in the mirror when the doorbell rang. A shot of excitement hit her and she raced down the stairs.
She opened the front door and there he was, still eat-me-with-a-spoon handsome.
‘Hello!’ She leaned in close to kiss him on both cheeks. ‘Lovely to see you.’
‘Hi, you look stunning,’ he said with a grin, closing the door behind him.
So did he. She’d never seen him out of a suit before, but here he was in cords with an open-necked shirt which showed his smooth olive skin. His hair was longer than usual with a hint of curl and he had a soft navy jumper tied over his shoulders.
‘Come in.’ She led him into the sitting room.
Chris handed her a bunch of heavy pink roses and a bottle of champagne, so cold the glass was wet. It slid a little in her hand.
‘Thank you, you’re such a gentleman. Shall we?’ She waggled the bottle at him.
‘I think so.’ He raised his eyebrow, smiled and they held each other’s gaze for a long moment.
She watched him peel off the foil and put deft thumbs to the cork. He nudged it out slowly and it made an expensive pop.
‘Glasses?’ he asked.
‘Oh yeah.’ She went to get champagne flutes from the kitchen, then curled herself into the sofa, putting her green-sandalled feet up, and watching him carefully pour out their drink.
They clinked glasses and sipped, then he sat down on the other side of the L-shaped sofa, within touching distance of her feet.
‘I love your hair,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
