Prime Time

by Jane Wenham-Jones

  Then I realised with a sick start – of course it wasn’t Daniel. This was Charlotte’s phone. This woman, whoever she was, was talking about …

  I heard Charlotte’s feet on the stairs and slammed the phone down.

  ‘Who was that?’ Charlotte crossed to the fridge.

  ‘Double glazing.’ I realised my hands were shaking.

  ‘Urgh. Get them all the bloody time. Hope you gave ’em short shrift.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  Charlotte, wine bottle in hand, turned to look. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m just – I don’t know–’ I tried to laugh. ‘Bit dopy. Think I need something to eat.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. Where’s Roger? He’s been ages. I bet he’s sneaked off to the pub on the way back. No wonder he was so keen to go!’

  She pulled open a drawer and got a handful of cutlery out. ‘Here, chuck these round the table. I’ll give him a ring.’

  I began to lay out knives and forks, heart still pounding. Charlotte pressed numbers out on the phone.

  ‘Oh, are you?’ I heard her say. Then she laughed. ‘Thought you’d buggered off to the boozer. OK!’ She put the phone back down on the work surface. ‘He’s outside – long queue, apparently. Not run off with the barmaid yet!’

  I forced a smile back but my stomach was churning. Not Roger; not big, smiling, affectionate, dependable Roger. I found myself staring at him as he came in.

  He was smiling in the perfectly ordinary way I’d seen him smile a hundred times before – plonking the wine on the table, unpacking the pizza boxes, sorting slices onto Joe’s and Stanley’s plates. I swallowed.

  ‘You OK?’ He looked directly at me.

  ‘She’s all sugar-depleted and doo-lally,’ said Charlotte, before I could answer. ‘You know what she’s like.’ A large slice of American Hot with extra peppers landed on my plate. ‘Get that down your neck and have another drink.’

  ‘Thanks. And thanks for going to get them.’ I held Roger’s eyes for a fraction longer than usual but he didn’t appear to notice, grinning easily at me as he always did.

  ‘No problem.’

  Charlotte sat down opposite me. ‘Yes, most impressive. Without even having to be asked too. There’s hope for you yet, my love.’ She grinned at Roger and raised her glass. ‘My hero!’

  Stanley was monosyllabic in the cab on the way home and once indoors went upstairs without speaking at all.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, when I went into his bedroom to say goodnight. He was sitting on the edge of bed in his Batman pyjamas, looking very young. He gazed at me miserably.

  ‘I hate school.’

  ‘No you don’t, darling – you’re just tired. You know what you’re like – you always hate things when you stay up too late.’

  Stanley shook his head. ‘It’s horrible. I wish I’d never gone there. I wish I was still at St Katherine’s.’

  I sat down beside him and patted his arm. ‘But you’re all grown up now. And incredibly clever. And I’m so proud of you.’ I gave him a kiss.

  Stanley wrinkled his nose. ‘But I don’t like it at Highcourt.’

  ‘You said you loved it the first week.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Yes, you did. And you like your teachers.’

  Stanley’s voice rose. ‘I don’t. Mr Jenkins hates me and I haven’t got any friends.’

  ‘You’ve got Connor.’

  ‘He’s not in my class, is he?’

  I recognised the stubborn negativity Stanley always displayed when overtired. I used to like to think he got it from Daniel, but if I was honest I saw shades of my mother and knew it was a behaviour pattern that had my genes stamped all over it. I took a deep breath.

  ‘Look, darling – it’s always difficult at first, at a new school. You’ll make friends soon. Come on, get into bed.’

  ‘I won’t. The only ones I like are all friends already. They all go on the bus together in the mornings.’

  ‘Do you want to go on the bus?’

  ‘No. I don’t know.’

  It was clear we weren’t going to get anywhere much tonight. I pulled back the duvet and prodded him. ‘Move.’

  He sighed and lay down. I made a fuss of tucking him up.

  ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ I turned the light off. ‘Go to sleep now.’

  ‘I’m fat.’ Stanley’s voice was small in the darkness.

  I stopped in the doorway. ‘You’re gorgeous. And not at all fat. Has somebody said something to you?’

  ‘No – but I am.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Well, I’m not skinny, am I? Not like Jonathan.’

  I pictured the boy from Sam’s primary school who was now at Highcourt with him too. ‘Jonathan looks like a famine victim – some children are just like that.’

  ‘And he eats much more than I do.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then.’

  ‘Do you think I have too many pizzas?’

  I turned the light back on. ‘Has Emily said something to you?’

  Stanley turned away from me and faced the wall.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Stanley, has she?’

  ‘I just feel worried about everything.’

  ‘Oh darling.’ I sat down on the edge of his bed and stroked his hair. ‘Everything will be OK, I promise,’ I said softly. ‘There’s nothing to be anxious about.’ I patted his shoulder, trying to be reassuring, hoping he couldn’t sense what I was really feeling. I was worried too …

  Chapter Six

  It felt very strange having a problem I couldn’t tell Charlotte about. Charlotte knew everything. She’d been through every step of Daniel’s treachery with me. It was to Charlotte I’d given a blow-by-blow of each new depth he’d sunk to, and to her I’d turned to during every stage of the inevitable, unremitting disintegration of my marriage. Up until now, there was nothing I wouldn’t have shared.

  And up until now, I’d always envied Charlotte’s marriage to Roger. Not because he was particularly good-looking or sexy but he was always the same.

  Charlotte might complain that he was unromantic and quite capable of sitting on his backside watching football for a nine-hour stretch while she ran herself ragged and how she had to prime the kids to remind him a) when her birthday and their anniversary was and b) that it would be a nice idea to buy flowers, but when it came down to the important things he was kind and dependable.

  And he clearly loved Charlotte and would listen to what she had to say about things and she could tell him anything. He wasn’t sarcastic or defensive, like Daniel. He didn’t try to make everything her fault. He drove her mad by leaving his teabags in a little wet puddle on the side instead of putting them in the compost pot and she was always complaining that he took more looking after than both kids put together. But still –

  ‘Pain in the arse at times,’ as she once succinctly put it, ‘but my best friend. Best male friend,’ she’d corrected herself, grinning at me. ‘Not much good to go shopping with, though.’

  Now it looked as though he might not be too hot at keeping his marriage vows either and the very thought made me feel sick to my boots.

  Obviously I would have to tell him about the call I’d taken and I wondered how best to go about it. I could drive to his offices in Canterbury – where he was a senior partner in a highly-respected firm of solicitors – and accost him on his way home, insisting that he tell me what the hell was going on and who the hell he thought he was, to be shagging a mad-sounding woman with adenoids, but I didn’t even know he was shagging her.

  She could have called the wrong number. Though somehow, much as I wanted to, I couldn’t believe that. After all, she had called to say Roger had just seen her shortly after Roger had been late home with the pizza. That was too much of a coincidence even for me.

  Or I could call Roger, except somehow, despite knowing him for decades, I had never needed to have his mobile number and if I called the ho
use Charlotte might answer. If I called him at work, I might put him in an awkward spot, especially if he had clients or colleagues with him. So I’d have to say, ‘Let’s meet for a drink – I have something important to say to you.’

  But then he would think I was mad too, and he might just say to Charlotte, ‘Hey, I had a weird call from Laura – do you think she’s all right?’ Or he might think I was menopausal (as I have been horribly suspecting myself – please God, no) and feel a frisson of fear the way men do when faced with a tidal wave of uncontrollable hormones and bring Charlotte along too. Then what would I say?

  I would have to pretend I was reminding him about her birthday – even though that is Becky’s job – and it would look pretty damn odd at the end of September when the birthday in question wasn’t till April.

  What I really needed was to bump into him face to face and tell him straight about the phone call and demand an explanation. Alternatively I could get him followed. Trouble was private detectives cost a fortune. I knew this from doing some basic research on the Internet the night Daniel first came home smelling of banana and passion fruit massage oil when he was supposed to be at a seminar entitled Tax Breaks for All – Can You Have Your Cake and Eat It? (obviously, at that point, he was hopeful), from which I discovered you were talking four figures to even get started on any sort of surveillance and that was plus expenses.

  None of which was very conclusive. So, after a largely fruitless day worrying about Roger interspersed with trying to espouse the virtues of a range of wrought-iron garden furniture about which I’d been told nothing except it was on sale in John Lewis and the ad copy had to be in by 5 p.m., I decided the only thing to do was keep turning up at Charlotte’s until I could get Roger on his own and tell him about the call and see how he reacted.

  In the meantime, I had the joys of my own philandering husband to contemplate, as somehow it was already one of those Fridays again and I had requested that Daniel pick up Stanley at home rather than straight from school, so I could make a few things clear.

  I had finally emailed the copy off at 4.32 p.m. to the surprise of my old boss, Mike, who knows me and deadlines of old, and was just telling him how delighted I’d be to write an entire brochure on the full range of artefacts and garden installations – he gives me all the exciting jobs – when the bell rang.

  ‘Got to go,’ I sang gaily into the phone. ‘The worm’s at the door.’

  Daniel stood in the hallway with that self-conscious, half-ingratiating, half-defensive expression he always wore whenever he saw me.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked, warily.

  ‘I am fine,’ I said. ‘Stanley is very upset.’

  Daniel sighed. ‘Why’s that?’

  I folded my arms. ‘Why do you think? He is 11 years old and maybe a little chunky but at a perfectly normal weight for his height. He does not need a problem with his body image; he does not need low self-esteem; he does not need to be fretting over calories and the GI index.’

  I took another breath. ‘He especially does not need some half-starved bimbo telling him how much hydrogenated fat there is in a sausage roll or what he can and cannot eat. In other words, tell your girlfriend ’ I put particular emphasis on the word ‘ to keep her comments to herself.’

  ‘She didn’t …’ began Daniel uneasily.

  ‘She did,’ I said firmly, inwardly congratulating myself on sounding calm, reasonable and very clearly in possession of the moral high ground, despite it being Day 21. ‘She made comments about what he wanted to eat. Again. And implied he had a weight problem. Don’t you think he’s got enough on his plate as it is? A new school, hitting puberty – coming from a broken home …’

  Daniel’s face hardened. ‘You never miss a chance do you? Is this your main ambition now, Laura – to make me feel guilty? To remind me that everything is my fault ?’

  I tried one of those sneers Pauline Fowler from EastEnders used to deliver with such devastating effect (that programme’s never been the same since they killed her off).

  ‘If the cap fits, wear it,’ I said nastily. ‘I was simply stating facts. Stanley has lived in a single-parent family ever since you decided you wanted to explore ’ I gave a delicate pause ‘ pastures new, and he needs lots of extra support. Not a lecture on what trans fats do to you.’

  ‘Emily was just trying to help,’ said Daniel. ‘And certain fats are bad for you.’ He looked accusingly at my hips. ‘You should be glad someone is thinking about his health.’

  ‘I think about his health,’ I said hotly. ‘It was his health I was thinking about through all the weeks you were lying to me and conniving to dump your son for that stupid woman.’

  I was aware that my voice had risen several octaves. Daniel visibly relaxed. ‘Here we go again!’ He gave a superior smile. ‘That time of the month again, is it?’

  I clenched both fists. ‘Look,’ I said, trying for an icy tone while longing to pick up the hall table and batter him with it. ‘The fact is that Stanley is now anxious, worrying about his weight and feeling unattractive. So would you please ask Emily –’ I deliberately made her name sound like an unpleasant viral disease ‘– to desist with her nutritional advice and personal comments and leave the care of Stanley’s body mass index to his mother.’

  ‘I’m his father,’ said Daniel, stonily. ‘I care about him too. And he can’t eat pizzas all day long.’

  ‘He doesn’t! But 11-year-old boys – as anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows – do not like living on sushi. And there was a time,’ I added triumphantly, ‘when I remember you turning your nose up at it too!’

  ‘Well, I’ve changed,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ve started looking after myself.’ He looked down at his stomach. ‘It’s the only body I’ve got.’

  ‘Yes, unfortunate that, isn’t it? Well, why don’t you to something useful with it, like playing football in the park with your son – if you can manage it – instead of making him miserable by telling him how many calories he can eat. That would make him happy and do him good.’

  I was pleased to find that not only had I calmed down again but – judging from the two rather unattractive red blotches on Daniel’s cheeks – I had regained the upper hand too.

  ‘What’s she cooking him tonight?’ I enquired breezily.

  ‘I’m taking him out to eat,’ Daniel said sullenly. ‘Emily will be at her tai chi class.’

  ‘Of course she will,’ I said silkily. ‘Well, that’s excellent. Make sure you let him have exactly what he wants and tell him how proud you are of him. That might undo a little of the damage you’ve both done. You may be basking in domestic bliss, Daniel, with a girl young enough to be your daughter, but just remember what he’s going through.’

  ‘I do,’ said Daniel crossly. ‘You know, Laura – you are turning into a really unpleasant person. I think you ought to get out more.’

  ‘It’s a bit difficult now I’m a single mother.’

  Daniel glared. ‘Well I’ve got him tonight, haven’t I? Go and hit the town, why don’t you? Probably because you haven’t got any friends left to go out with because you’re such a dried-up old shrew.’

  The rage came over me like a hot flush. For a moment I was close to lunging at him and had I had a long, cold drink in my hand it would undoubtedly have landed right between his eyes. But the bang of the front gate brought me up short. ‘Shut up,’ I hissed furiously as Stanley came along the path. Our son wriggled out of his rucksack and looked from one to the other of us.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he said glumly.

  ‘Of course, darling.’ I smiled as brightly as I could with my teeth locked together in fury, and kissed Stanley on the cheek. ‘You go and get changed – I’ve already put some things in a bag for you.’

  Daniel clapped him heartily on the shoulder. ‘All right, old chap?’

  Stanley nodded.

  I pulled a face at Daniel over the back of our son’s head. ‘You tosser,’ I muttered out of the side of my mouth a
s Stanley clumped upstairs.

  Daniel gave a patronising smile. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you should think about what you eat, yourself. Emily says a lot of hormone imbalance is caused by diet. She is a professional and knows about these things.’

  I took a deep breath and spoke in a low tone. ‘We are not talking about me, we are talking about Stanley – and his body image.’

  ‘Are we?’ Daniel was now looking thoroughly pleased with himself again. ‘Are you sure, Laura, you’re not really talking about yourself?’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Christ, I hate him,’ I said furiously, pacing up and down Charlotte’s kitchen. ‘I would like to wipe that self-satisfied smirk right off his face. He deliberately winds me up – deliberately. Do you think he really believes he is in the right and this is all my fault? And what is it with him and all this psychobabble? Talking about myself – bastard.

  ‘I could kill him,’ I concluded with venom, suddenly realising I had picked up a potato masher and was pounding it up and down in front of me.

  ‘Let’s have a drink now and go to the wine bar later,’ said Charlotte decisively. ‘I’ve had a crap day and it is, after all, nearly five thirty. Roger’s going to be late back – they’ve got a partners meeting –’ I looked at her sharply, but she seemed perfectly relaxed. ‘So why don’t you hang around and eat something with me and the kids and we’ll pop out for a late one once he’s back.’

  ‘How late will he be, then?’ I asked, making my voice sound casual.

  Charlotte shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. He said they’d be having a drink – maybe even get some food in – they’ve got a lot to get through, apparently.’

  Is this usual? I wanted to ask but I couldn’t. I would have to wait until I could get Roger on his own, as I’d planned. And if I hung around this evening I could probably do that later tonight.

  Charlotte was lighting a cigarette. ‘You’ve just got to keep very calm with Daniel. Don’t rise to his stupid comments and don’t start waving your arms and squawking – that’s never a good look.’ She opened the back door and blew smoke toward it – her idea of not smoking in the house, which was, apparently, the first phase in her giving it up altogether, something Becky had been nagging her about for as long as I could remember.