Roni untied the belt of her robe and let it drop to the floor – back in her leading-lady role – confident that her attire matched the glamour of her friends. Her attire, not her body. She knew she had lost a little weight because the swimsuit felt less compact around her midriff but she had a long way to go. What was helping her was not hiding her body any more. Exposing it made her feel more determined to work on it.
There was a gasp from the water and Roni looked instantly pleased. She hadn’t expected them to have witnessed her weight loss. Not so soon.
Her delight was short-lived.
“That’s my swimsuit!” Helena almost convulsed as the words spluttered out. “We’re wearing the same swimsuit, Roni!”
Roni’s face dropped instantly. Now it made sense, the gasp which she had naively taken as a compliment.
“I’ve sooo changed my mind about borrowing it now thanks, Hel.” Sophie shot Helena a catty grin. “Two-one.”
Roni looked down at her one-piece and back towards Helena who was clearly put out. It was identical – bar the size.
Helena chewed on the inside of her mouth where the skin had broken off, the backlash of her earlier ravenous greed where she had shoved the piping hot curry into her mouth without waiting for it to cool down.
“If I were you, Sophie, I’d start charging Helena here some rent.” Roni spoke in a clipped tone.
“What do you mean?” Sophie asked suspiciously, ready to protect her friend.
“Well, if she can afford a three-hundred-pound swimsuit, she can afford her own place.” Roni was truly put out.
The room turned to face Helena who froze under the gaze of so many.
“I am here, you know, guys – you’re talking about me as if I’m not.”
Jude looked uncomfortable.
“And actually,” Helena said after a short delay as she took in the sea of mixed expressions, “I got it from that charity shop just past the Coffee Bean and for a fraction of that price, Roni.”
Her retort satisfied the women.
Roni took the blue-and-beige tiled steps which descended into the pool, stopping halfway down so that the water was just past her knees. This was the exciting moment she had been waiting for. The Curry Club in her very own swimming pool. Beat that, ladies! She had already put to bed the Swimsuit Saga. Helena was younger and more attractive than her so she was bound to look better in it than she, but what Helena didn’t have was obscene wealth. Roni won hands down.
“Okay,” she called behind her.
A uniformed lady, mid-fifties, scurried over with a cocktail shaker which Roni took with great pleasure. She took it from the hands of her hired staff member without a word of thanks, shaking it vigorously, pulling off the smaller cap first and then the larger steel lid through which the liquid would ordinarily be sieved. She plunged in and grabbed a tiny piece of paper, handing back the steel jug to the waitress who was waiting patiently at the pool side. It was all very orderly.
“That will be all for now.” Roni released the hired staff so she could read the contents of the slip in private. “You too, Rafi!” she called behind her as she unwrapped the tight creases with her manicured hands.
Roni cradled the paper like a baby after Sophie splashed her, protecting it from the droplets of water which continued to rain down on her.
“Hurry up!” Sophie yelled impatiently. “My fingers are getting all wrinkly. My face will look twenty-one but my hands will end up like an ol’ doll’s.”
“Don’t splash me, Sophie, the ink will run.”
“Yes, Miss.”
Jude laughed out loud. Sophie was bold and funny and she didn’t care what she said nor to whom.
“Okay, here goes. Listen up,” Roni ordered Sophie who was whispering into Jude’s ear.
“Sieg Heil!” Sophie held up her right arm and Helena forced it down.
“Don’t even do that in jest, Sophie – that’s not a bit funny.”
“Children!” Kath chastised.
“Right,” Roni proclaimed. She bent her eyes to the slip of paper and then read aloud in sheer amazement: “‘I’m doing something illicit but I don’t know how to stop.’ Bloody hell! Illicit? Who’d have thought?”
As she glanced up, Roni saw the wide eyes of Jude and Sophie, and a gasp ecaped from Kath’s mouth echoing through the chalet, bouncing off the walls.
“Read it again, Roni,” Kath instructed.
“‘I’m doing something illicit but I don’t know how to stop,’” Roni read again, slowly and with emphasis on the ‘illicit’. She needn’t have gone looking for any further drama, it was right there in front of her
“What does ‘illicit’ mean?” Kath wondered loudly.
“Stop trying to cover up, Kath, you know that’s not allowed. You always do that!” Roni piped up.
“I’m not covering up, Roni,” Kath said earnestly. “I thought ‘illicit’ meant sexual or something of a sexual nature so I need to clarify the word’s meaning before I can give any input. I can’t talk about what I don’t understand, now can I?”
Jude sank her shoulders into the water. She needed an injection of heat into her body, shivering as she was at the prospect of how dangerous the situation could be – whatever it was. Her blonde hair was twisted into a messy bun, yet she still managed to look effortlessly sexy.
“It means criminal or corrupt, Kath,” Jude explained with only her head on display, the rest of her hidden below the surface. “Something that, naturally, shouldn’t be happening and of course by the admission it seems as though that person has the sense to know they shouldn’t be doing whatever it is they are doing.” Jude continued to sink down into the jaccuzzi-like heat. She dipped low, the water lapping against her chin. She was a little tipsy which was unlike her but she had been working so hard lately that she had decided earlier in the day to take a few drinks. It would do her the world of good. “The only comment I have to make which is hardly rocket science is that – whatever you’re doing, just stop it. I can say no more than that, I’m afraid. I would strongly advise you to quit it. Now.”
“Me?” Kath was aghast.
Jude tittered at her reaction. Jude saw the funny side of practically everything.
Roni was still half in, half out of the pool, holding the slip of paper for dear life and clutching her chest, looking genuinely afffronted for Kath.
“You as in plural, sorry, Kath,” said Jude. “I was speaking to the group, not to you directly.”
“Oh. Okay. But you were looking at me.”
“I have to look at someone!”
Jude pealed with laughter. She was so immersed in the liquid heat that she was dangerously close to swallowing some. She saw the reflection of a happy woman beaming back at her.
Roni finally entered the pool, holding the side for support and Kath edged closer to her holding out her hand to pull her further into the deep water where she was bobbing about merrily.
“What can the scandal be though? I mean, we’ve all got jobs. We haven’t the time for anything else!” Sophie nodded towards Roni. “Except you, Roni, but the rest of us are busy working hard and playing hard. I just don’t see how anyone’s got time to be a crook on the side? And criminal at what?”
“Excuse me. I do have a job. I’m a wife and a mother and the lady of a huge house which is a full-time job in itself, thank you, Sophie.”
“I meant a proper job, Roni, not being a domestic slave to two spoiled brats and an assuming husband!”
Roni’s jaw dropped, then she remembered what she was trying to achieve so she said nothing.
Sophie waited for her retaliation but it didn’t come.
“This is not about our Jason, in case any of you are wondering,” Kath butted in. She could see just where that argument was headed and she didn’t want her son being dragged into something which didn’t concern him. He had enough to contend with. “But having lived with someone who has taken from me and James, I need to tell you to be considerate to those around you and
to those you’re hurting . . . because the pain is unbearable.” She swallowed hard before continuing. “Try to stop and consider the consequences of your actions before you do what it is you’re doing.”
Kath hopped to the edge of the pool, leaving Roni chest-deep in water on her own. She gulped down her Cosmopolitan in one large medicinal gulp.
“I agree with Kath in that I don’t believe that any crime can be committed without someone being hurt somewhere down the line,” Sophie chipped in. “Keep that in your mind next time you’re tempted to do your illicit activities.”
“Were you talking to me just then?” Jude tried to keep a straight face.
“I have to look at someone, don’t I?” Sophie punched the water and it splayed towards Jude, splashing the tanned skin of her chest. “Having said that, if it’s drugs – unless you’re dealing of course – then come clean because I’ll buy them off you. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of recreational drug-taking, I don’t think.” Sophie was treading water in the deep end. “Look how much I have to exercise to stay thin when I could just snort myself thin!”
Helena chuckled away. She and Sophie had taken all sorts of illegal substances over the years and loved every minute of it – although in fairness she was not sure they could remember every minute of doing it but what she could recall was quite an experience.
“What if the person doesn’t know how to stop what they’re doing?” Helena offered. “What if the habit has become an addiction and the addiction has then become a habit?”
“That’s what the note said, wasn’t it? That the person didn’t know how to stop,” said Jude.
“I’m confused?” Roni panted as she fought against the water’s resistance, trying to move towards the shallow end of the pool. She was breathless from alcohol and from the heat from the water.
“Anyway, so what, Hel?” said Sophie. “Who cares what the label is? Bloody well stop it or get some therapy if you can’t stop it on your own – and obviously you can’t, whoever you are.”
“It’s not as simple as that. A habit is something people do by repetition, whereas addiction is something where the person has lost control and become a hostage to the addiction.” Helena spoke with technical confidence. “Addiction, in terms of behavioural change, is far more difficult to reverse than simply kicking a habit.”
“So whoever it is needs to determine which of the above it is then?” Sophie asked.
“Quite,” said Roni. “They’ve done the hard bit by understanding they have a problem. All they need to do now is decide whether they can stop what they’re doing alone or, as I said earlier, if they perhaps feel they’re past the point of no return and can’t break from whatever – then get professional help.”
Jude pushed herself out of the water and sat on the side, dangling her legs. Her face was flushed with the heat from the water and her thighs had turned a pretty shade of pink.
“Look,” she said, looking in turn at each and every woman, “whatever is or has been done, it seems that you’ve got away with it . . . so far, but that won’t last forever.” She was telling herself this as much as she was telling her friends. “Stop it now before you get caught. None of us are criminals here but we do all take wrong turns now and then or risks here and there and the odd white lie when we have to, but there’s a fine line between a little white lie and knowingly breaking the law.” Jude looked down at her colourful legs. “I think it’s time to come clean,” she told anyone who was listening, but moreso she told herself as she toyed with the secret she was keeping from Clive.
Sophie stopped treading water and swam to the side of the pool. She wondered if her friends were thinking of her as a prostitute-cum-call-girl. Did they suddenly wonder if she was paid for the sexual favours she dished out? Soliciting was highly illegal, she knew that. It had been mentioned before and her proclivity to treat men like they were cash machines didn’t sit particularly well with the group – some of them anyway.
Kath swam slow lengths as she mused about Jason. That question might well have been composed by him. Of course it hadn’t been. She had tried to put the women straight, but what if they hadn’t believed her, thought she was using them to set her son on the straight and narrow?
As Roni braved the water, she tried hard to erase the adulterous images which had occupied her mind for too long now. Adultery was illegal. It was alright for Sophie to put herself about, she wasn’t married. Roni was determined to use the underlying message of tonight’s Curry Club and turn it into something positive. She was a happily married woman and she would stay that way . . . she was sure of it.
Helena floated on her back gazing up at the night sky. The water lapped around her face covering her ears and she could hear nothing but the silently voiced contentment of her new life.
Jude stared into the garden as she waited for the toast to pop up. She saw the daffodils in full bloom and watched as the Virginia bluebells swayed clumsily into the neighbouring crocuses. She loved the garden – it was her place of safety – and so often she sat at the bottom of it beneath the Japanese Maple tree she had planted shortly after her father’s death, snuggling into the bench which she had dedicated to him.
Even though he was no longer with her, Jude knew that she would always be a daddy’s girl. He had never told her what to do, gave her no advice whatsoever. ‘You’ll know if something is right for you, cupcake, in the same way you’ll know when something is wrong for you. It’s a feeling that will guide you – and only you will know.’ She believed him. Because he was right.
Jude decided last night that she would need to tell Clive about her double life, short-lived as it was. She was sure he would understand. She was hardly announcing that she was a mass murderer. It was work. But Jude knew how traditional he was, supported fully by her mother and it seemed she was the odd one out.
“Mum.”
Jude looked around the kitchen, struck by how untidy it was, by her standards anyway.
“Mummy darling!” Tom scoffed.
“Yes, Tom?”
“The toast has popped up.” Tom smiled broadly at her.
He reminded her of herself when she was his age. Tall and flat-chested.
“So it has. Silly me.” Jude smiled fondly at her handsome boy.
She pulled the toast from the chrome toaster, buttering it with precision before cutting it into quartered triangles and delivering it to the table.
“Anna, come off the phone, darling. You’ll be with your friends in less than an hour, you can catch up with them then.”
Anna glanced up sulkily. She was a mass of teenage hormones. Jude simply ignored her daughter’s haughty expression and set about tidying the kitchen. She began with emptying the dishwasher.
Her daughter would grow out of her childish ways, Jude thought as she lifted a pile of plates from their racks. They gleamed with a stark cleanliness, oozing lemon scent. In many ways Jude envied her daughter and the juvenile life she lived. Yes, she had exams to study for, but Anna was a bright and gifted child and the school already had her primed for one of the Oxbridge Universities. Anna had the best years of her life ahead of her whereas Jude’s – until now – were firmly behind her.
“Mum, is Sophie coming out on Sunday?” Anna piped up.
“She said so, darling.”
“Yeah! I can’t wait. She lets me use her make-up and she braids my hair.”
Tom stared at his twin sister. His gaze carried a look of absolute disinterest in her small talk.
“Who are you bringing, Tom?” Anna asked.
“I’m not sure yet, Anna.” Tom looked at his mother. “I don’t know how much room there is with all Mum and Dad’s friends going. Anyway, I’ll be too busy sailing the thing while you’re sat on your derriere beautifying yourself.” He teased his sister who frequently acted years younger than her age despite her natural intelligence.
“Oh, Tom, won’t you just make somebody a wonderful husband one day!” Anna retorted with full-on sarcasm.
Jude stopped wiping the breadcrumbs which had fallen from the bottom of the toaster when she banged it against the shelf in haste.
Tom? A husband?
Jude rarely stopped to think of the children not being with them. She couldn’t bear to think of another woman being the central female figure in her son’s life, selfish as that was. She had been there for him every day during the past fifteen years, immersed in his life and very much at the core of it.
Jude understood in a flash why so many of her friends had returned to work after their children were born. Not only did they maintain their careers and their identities, they were left with a lifeline and a continuation of an existence that lived long after their kids had flown the nest. The justification for her return to work had just increased tenfold. If there had ever been a doubt in her mind it was truly erased now.
Anna was right, one day they would both be gone and she would be on her own, left with a filled past but a blank future. She needed a life in her own right – as herself. She would tell Clive over dinner tonight.
Roni’s head was thumping and she found it difficult to concentrate. The movement from the water made her stomach churn and she hoped desperately that she would make a full recovery before tomorrow’s cruise. Peter would be mad with her if she didn’t go, it was his day too and he got on like a house on fire with Clive and James. Nathan he had never cared for much, they had nothing in common, but he was no longer on the scene.
“Ready then?” Darren stood at the side of the pool, peering down at her. She wasn’t looking her best today.
“Mmh.”
“Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” he chided.
“I’m concentrating.”
“Good, that’s what I like to hear.”
“On not being sick, idiot!”
As Roni barked at him, once more he was reminded of the cold woman he had met on the first day, who reared her ugly head from time to time although with less frequency. He had noticed definite changes in her, but still, she regressed so quickly and easily into the hollow woman which he hoped she might have fled from.
Some Like it Hot Page 19
