THE HUSBAND HUNTERS

by LUCY LAING

  ‘This is really good, Nick,’ I said a touch begrudgingly, after I’d finished stuffing my face.

  ‘Good,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘I like to see a woman with an appetite. I hate it when women pick at a few salad leaves.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no danger of that with me,’ I said, lightly. ‘Where’s Claire tonight?’ I asked him.

  ‘She’s at some student thing at the university,’ he said, clearing away the plates.

  ‘Weren’t you tempted to go along with her?’ I couldn’t resist mocking him. ‘I can just see you bopping away on the dance floor with all the teenagers.’

  ‘No,’ he said, seriously for once. ‘I prefer cooking and a quiet night in mostly. I think I’m too old for that type of thing, unlike you,’ he added, flashing me a grin.

  ‘Now don’t start about the Fanny Wagon again,’ I warned him, shaking my finger at him and grinning. ‘Just because I got chatted up by an eighty-year- old man after being paraded around like a prostitute, don’t get jealous that exciting things don’t happen to you.’ Nick laughed and got up to carry the plates to the kitchen. ‘Stick with your young girls. At least they have teeth and hair,’ I called after him.

  Nick popped his head back around the kitchen door. ‘Only just...’ he added, wickedly.’

  ‘It sounds like you had a fun night,’ said Tash, digging for more information.

  ‘We did,’ I said, ‘but Nick and I are just friends - when we aren’t falling out. He’s not my type. He’s not dark and brooding enough.’

  ‘And he doesn’t jump into any lakes,’ added Rach, laughing.

  ‘Exactly,’ I added. ‘I need a man with a bit of mystery to get me interested.’

  ‘Yes, but it hasn’t worked for you so far,’ pointed out Tash. ‘Perhaps you need to change your priorities.’

  ‘Have you seen Mr Beale lately?’ I said, changing the subject. Tash suddenly looked coy.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ she said. ‘He and Hazel decided they couldn’t work things out. So she has moved out and is now living with her gym instructor. I’ve been going round to see him as he’s very upset.’ Tash looked around and could see our expressions. ‘He needs a shoulder to cry on and I’m helping him sort out arrangements for the children and things that’s all,’ she added quickly. You never knew with Tash. We all wanted to believe her, but she had the habit of surprising you when you least expected it.

  The minutes came through the next morning.

  PROGRESS REPORTS.

  * Main priority is to find a man for Kaz. As she pointed out, she has been in a complete love desert for weeks now, and no one has come close to finding her a man. (I suggested the guy in Kentucky Fried Chicken with five stars from months ago, but Kaz looked at me in complete disgust. That's the thing about Kaz, she wants a wealthy unattached man and there aren’t that many of them floating around.) Kaz told us we all had to come back with at least one eligible man each at next week’s meeting.

  * Voodoo Doll to be disposed of. (I had told the girls about the doll falling out of my handbag in front of Nick, and they were all horrified at the thought of me coming across like a mad old crone.) Tash said the doll needed to be destroyed so it couldn’t be seen by anyone else, and suggested that we burn it. Kaz was quite excited at the possibility of James’ Caroline suddenly spontaneously combusting, but we don’t want to be held responsible for Caroline dying some horrible ‘Joan of Arc’ type death.

  Bee to put it in the dustbin.

  *Baby’s names. As there is a possibility that Rach might be a mum in nine months’ time, we decided we ought to start thinking of some baby names. Tash told Rach firmly that she wasn’t to have any silly flowers or fruit as names, and nothing that would be more suited to an eighty-year-old.

  ‘So Petal Honey Blossom Trixabelle is completely out then?’ Rach had asked, trying to keep a straight face.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Tash had replied. ‘And so is Agnes, Mildred, Hilda, Sidney and any other such names that mums think are trendy at the moment, but in reality are going to cause the poor kid years of hellish teasing as soon as they start school.’

  Rach to only consider plain names, like Jane, Sarah, and Claire for a girl and Tom, John and James for a boy.

  *The Unattractive Friend Theory. According to Rach research says that if you stand next to an unattractive friend when you go out, men will automatically think you are prettier than you actually are. Everybody got wildly excited about this and frantically started to think of all the unattractive girls we knew that we could perhaps befriend in order to go out with. Kaz said that her hairdresser’s daughter was particularly ugly - and her nickname at school had been Miss Piggy. She sounded perfect.

  Kaz to speak to her hairdresser and see if her daughter fancies a night out.

  *Bee progressing well in her cookery lessons. (I thought this was quite kind of Kazza as I’d only had one cookery lesson with Tash so far. I’d wanted to try the Duck a la Orange again, as I didn’t want to be defeated by it. Tash said she knew that I had a competitive streak, but she didn’t want to be in my kitchen whilst I burnt us both to death. In the end we settled for spaghetti bolognese instead as Tash said we needed to start with a good basic.)

  *Nothing back from Jen yet. Bee to resend the email, in case it has got lost in the ether somewhere.

  I did that one straight away. It must have got lost - there would be no other explanation for Jen not replying. As I pressed send, the phone rang, making me jump. I had to hold the phone away from my ear, because Rach was shouting so loud.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she screamed.

  **************************************

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I couldn’t believe that Rach was actually pregnant – that one of the little George Clooneys had made it. It made me feel a bit emotional.

  ‘That’s fantastic news,’ I had told her, when she had stopped screaming long enough to draw breath.

  ‘Of course, I will have to be careful for a bit now,’ she said, calming down a notch. ‘I could always lose it, in the first few months.’

  ‘I’m sure everything will be fine,’ I reassured her. ‘I’ll come to your scan with you and hold your hand.’

  ‘Thanks, Bee,’ she said gratefully.

  Tash and I sat discussing it that night, down at the stables.

  ‘I am thrilled for her,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I don’t want anything to change. Rach has been my friend for like a million years, and it will be strange having to share her with a baby.’

  ‘Life has to change, Bee,’ Tash pointed out, ‘and this is how Rach wants to live her life. We have to support her in any decision she makes.’

  ‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘And I am happy for her, and I will love her baby when it’s born.’

  I could see that Tash had something else on her mind. She was fidgeting with my stable lock, banging it back and forth.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked her. She took a deep breath.

  ‘I don’t want to tell you this, Bee,’ she said, ‘but I saw Soph today.’

  ‘Oh right,’ I said, putting down my fork and stopping mucking out. ‘Did she say hello?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Tash. ‘She didn’t see me. I was in the village and I saw her walking towards the park – with Paul.’

  I took a sharp intake of breath. Then I forced myself to let it out again. I knew Soph and Paul were seeing each other. What did I expect them to be doing – spending every moment they possibly could, apart? Of course, they were going to be doing couple things together, like walking in the park – but it still hurt.

  ‘I’m fine with that,’ I said, a bit shakily to Tash.

  ‘I know you are,’ she said, coming in the stable and hugging me, ‘but it’s still a bit much to swallow – and I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else.

  ‘Did they look happy together?’ I asked, in a small voice.

  ‘Yes, they did,’ said Tash, truthfully, ‘but you will find someone else. Paul obviously wasn’t
the right man for you – even though we all thought he was.’

  I smiled at her. ‘When you get to our age, though, there doesn’t seem to be an abundance of fish left in the sea,’ I reminded her – and it was true. We were five fairly attractive girls – okay, Tash was more attractive than the rest of us – yet we were hardly fighting them off in droves.

  In my early twenties, there always seemed to be hoards of available men to choose from. Now the pond was definitely getting smaller. All the good ones seemed to have been snapped up over the last five years, and were already getting married and having babies. It was like previously having had the whole of the Atlantic Ocean to choose from, and now being left with a goldfish bowl-sized puddle, with a few random rejects swimming around. If you did manage to get a date, you wondered what on earth was wrong with them. Why were they still left in the puddle? Were they secret Psycho Norman Bates-type men, who had battered their mothers to death and still kept them in the wardrobe? Take Tash for example –men should be beating the door down to get to her. Yet she still hadn’t got a man.

  ‘Have you seen Rob Beale, recently?’ I asked Tash.

  ‘I’ve seen him quite a lot,’ she confessed, ‘but honestly, nothing has happened, Bee, I promise. I do have feelings for him, I can’t deny that – but it’s a lost cause. He’s still so cut up about Hazel. He sees me as a friend, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.’

  I was amazed. I had no idea that Tash had feelings for him at all.

  ‘It’s been over the past few weeks,’ she carried on. ‘When I ran off with him, all those years ago, I did fancy him and yes, the sex was good, but it was so much more than that. We really connected on a level I’ve never felt with anyone else before. He seemed like my soul-mate – we could talk about anything. I ended it all those years ago, because it suddenly started to frighten me. I felt like here was someone I could spend the rest of my life with, but I was eighteen, I wanted to live my life so much more to the full, before I met someone like that. I’d seen it on the films – where couples find their soul-mate and live happy ever after – but I’ve always had this burning, wild desire to live my life dangerously, and that was more important at the time. Now I’m not so sure I did the right thing,’ she added, sitting down on an upturned bucket. ‘Have I let someone in my life get away – someone that was so right for me?’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ I assured her. ‘We meet people, on the way through our lives, who are right for us, but it’s the wrong time. It’s only very occasionally that two people meet – and it’s the right time for both of them.’

  She looked at me. ‘You’re so wise,’ she said, mockingly, throwing a wet sponge at my head. I ducked to one side, and the sponge whizzed past and plopped against the wall.

  ‘Don’t give up hope - we will find you Mr Right somewhere – even if we have to prise him from Mrs Right, so you can have him,’ I added, teasingly.

  She paused. ‘I want to tell you something else,’ she said. ‘I logged on to an Internet chat room the other week.’

  Hell, now this sounded interesting. I pulled up another bucket, turned it upside down and sat down next to Tash.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘This sounds like something that needs to be reported at the next meeting. Did you meet anyone sexy?’

  ‘Well, I have starting chatting to this one bloke,’ admitted Tash. ‘He’s separated from his wife and we seemed to click straight away. We’ve talked for about three hours every night for the past few weeks – and now he wants to meet me, but I don’t know what to do.’

  I agreed with Tash. Meeting someone on an internet chat room could have its dangers. You could meet a Norman Bates and not realize his dead mother was still in the wardrobe.

  ‘What if I meet him and it bursts this image I have of him in my mind – a tall, dark, sexy stranger,’ said Tash.

  ‘And what if he hasn’t got a floppy fringe,’ I reminded her. She shuddered in horror.

  ‘I would have to turn round and walk away immediately,’ she said. ‘You know how I feel about a floppy fringe; but seriously – what happens if he’s a four-foot midget, balding with glasses? I know it’s shallow, but I could never speak to him again.’

  ‘It’s a risk you take, meeting someone on a chat room first, before meeting them in the flesh,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Tash agreed, ‘but if you never take any risks in life, it’s a bit dull.’

  ‘We’ll discuss it at the next meeting. Keep him dangling until then, and we will decide on a plan of action,’ I said, getting off the bucket and rubbing at my stiff legs. We walked over to our cars.

  ‘I’m getting too old to sit on a bucket,’ I grumbled. ‘When I was a teenager, it was no problem. Now, I seize up like an old woman.’

  ‘Like a true Has-been, Hag and Crone,’ said Tash, opening her car door and sliding into the driver’s seat.

  At the next meeting, Tash told the rest of the girls about her mystery online hunk.

  ‘He sounds great,’ said Kaz, enviously.

  ‘It’s a bit strange,’ admitted Tash. ‘I normally hop into bed with men and then talk later. It’s weird not having even seen someone and already feeling a connection with him.’

  ‘We all need to be doing something different in our love lives than we’ve been doing in the past,’ said Kaz. ‘So, maybe this is exactly what you need, Tash – to talk to them first, before dropping your knickers.’

  ‘Have you decided to meet him?’ asked Rach.

  ‘He wants to meet up next week at a local bar,’ said Tash. ‘I’m in two minds about it. I may put him off for a while. I want to enjoy the mystery of chatting to him a bit longer, before I’m disappointed when I see him. I know he’ll turn out to be about eighty.’

  ‘Not many eighty-year-olds know how to use the internet,’ I pointed out to her. ‘Well, sixty or seventy, then,’ conceded Tash. ‘Either way, he could be far too old.’

  ‘Or far too young,’ pointed out Kaz. ‘He could be a mature eighteen- year-old, who loves chatting intimately with an older woman.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be so bad,’ said Tash. ‘I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a Mrs Robinson. That might be fun.’

  ‘Tash, I’m sure he will be exactly what he says,’ I said, ‘a few years older than you and perfectly respectable. Nowadays, it’s acceptable to date someone you have met on the internet.’

  ‘Mind you, things can go wrong,’ warned Kaz. ‘My mum knows a woman who met someone on an online chat room, and they were going out for six months before the police came round and arrested him for a previous sexual assault. She was devastated. She was forty and divorced, and thought that she had met the love of her life. She’s never been the same since. My mum has to literally drag her out to the Bingo Hall once a month.’

  ‘I’m sure that won’t happen to Tash,’ I said, shooting a warning look at Kaz. Tash was starting to look a bit green.

  ‘It does make me feel a bit of a weirdo, though,’ admitted Tash. ‘I’ve never had to resort to using an internet chat room before. If you had told me five years ago, that it was the only way I was going to meet a decent man, I’d have been horrified. I’d have said it was more likely that I was going to shave all my hair off, wear a hessian sack for the rest of my life and never paint my toenails with Rouge-Noir again.’

  I had to agree, that sounded drastic. Tash would never be seen dead without Rouge Noir polish on her perfectly pedicured toes.

  ‘I used to only have to swing my hips and they would come running,’ she added mournfully.

  ‘Yes, but you are getting to know him first,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I suppose so – and he is going to get a nice surprise when he sees me,’ she said cheering up, flicking her black glossy fringe out of her eyes.

  ‘Anyway, what about finding a man for me?’ demanded Kaz, butting in. ‘You all promised that you would each come up with a suggestion.’

  I had brought the model agency portfolio in with me to br
owse through. There were a couple of possibilities for Kaz. Tony, thirty-one, blond and gorgeous and Keith, twenty-nine, a drop-dead stunning model whom we’d just signed the previous week. Kaz hummed and hawed.

  ‘I don’t go for blondes,’ she said, finally, snapping the book shut. ‘And if you’ve only just signed Keith, then he’s not exactly rolling in it yet, is he? I might wait until he’s a bit more successful – when his star is rising.’

  ‘You can’t be that choosy,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Or else you will still be single in ten years’ time.’

  ‘There’s a builder called Adam, who’s doing some work for my mum at the moment,’ interrupted Tash. ‘He’s gorgeous and definitely isn’t married, as I checked, and…’ we all waited expectantly ‘…he’s single, and he wants to meet you, Kaz,’ she added, triumphantly. ‘I’ve already told him all about you.’

  ‘I’m not sure about a blind date,’ said Kaz, ‘and I was looking for someone a bit more upmarket than a brickie.’

  ‘Kaz,’ I exploded with frustration. ‘He may not own half of Cheshire, but if he’s a decent man, then at least go on a blind date with him. You may even like him.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ conceded Kaz. ‘Anyway,’ she added suspiciously to Tash. ‘What have you told him about me – that I’m a sad old bag who can’t find a man by herself, and I need a friend to do it for me?’

  ‘Give me a little more credit than that,’ sniffed Tash. ‘I am the queen of tact. I said that you were feeling a little down at the moment because of work, and suggested that he take you out for a drink to cheer you up.

  ‘Men love feeling protective towards a helpless little woman. We know you aren’t helpless,’ she added quickly, seeing Kazza’s darkening face, ‘but give it a go.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ve got nothing to lose – but one drink, and that's it. Unless it’s a Saturday night and he wins the lottery whilst I’m out with him,’ Kaz added, wickedly.