The Trouble with Single Women

by Yvonne Roberts

  Sandra instructed that they each introduce themselves to the person sitting to their left and their right. That done, she grinned enthusiastically. ‘Now we’ve broken the ice a bit, I’m sure we’re all feeling a lot better, aren’t we?’ Her perfectly flossed teeth glistened like spent hope in the gloom of the room.

  ‘Is that you, Fee?’ Percy sounded very self-assured on the telephone. Fee had called after slipping out of GG! meeting early.

  ‘Yes,’ Fee replied. ‘I’m just checking in to see if everything is OK? Where is everyone?’

  Percy was eager to supply the details. ‘Mum’s gone to give Dad a piece of her mind. Veronica’s making an adventure playground in your study for the twins . . . and she’s fine now she’s stopped crying.’

  Fee tried to keep the alarm out of her voice. ‘Crying? Why?’

  ‘Les phoned up and said that she should come home . . . so then Veronica cried . . . but now she says she feels much better. Do you cry at all, Fee?’ Percy suddenly sounded concerned.

  ‘Mum says we’re all getting on your nerves. And unless we’re good we’ll be homeless, because you’re used to being on your own . . . and you can’t be doing with children.’ Percy’s words escaped in a rush.

  ‘Look,’ Fee tried to sound as reassuring as possible. ‘I love having you stay with me . . . It’s fun. Don’t you think it’s fun?’ Fee was surprised that this glimpse of Percy’s insecurity had brought her close to tears.

  ‘How about if I bring home a big tub of ice-cream and we’ll melt a bar of chocolate to pour over it and then you and I will eat the lot. OK?’

  ‘You mean that we won’t have to give the boys any?’ Percy pushed a hard bargain.

  ‘No, just you and me,’ Fee agreed.

  ‘Sounds OK. So are you coming home soon?’ Percy asked.

  ‘I’ve got to meet a woman I know for a drink,’ Fee explained. Her watch said five past seven. She had considered standing Rita Mason up, as Will had suggested, but Fee was too well behaved, too programmed, to allow herself to do it. Besides, how would she like it, if it was done to her? Treat others as you would wish to be treated . . .

  So, Fee cursed Rita Mason who had once again forced her into a situation in which she didn’t wish to be.

  ‘Listen, Percy, I’ll try very hard to be back before you’re in bed, OK?’ she answered.

  ‘Promise?’ Percy pressed.

  ‘I promise,’ she replied.

  Fee waited for Rita Mason in the designated wine bar for forty-five minutes. She never appeared. At eight, Fee left.

  ‘It’s not your responsibility,’ Fee told herself as she waited for a vacant taxi. Forget her. But she couldn’t.

  ‘You’re late and you promised and you said ice-cream and now there’s no time for a story, you promised, you did—’ Percy bombarded Fee with accusations as soon as she opened the front door.

  The little girl, dressed in pyjamas and dressing-gown, had camped cross-legged in the hall for half an hour, waiting for Fee’s arrival.

  ‘She wouldn’t budge until you got back,’ Gill explained. ‘She’s like her father. Stubborn as a mule.’

  An hour later, Fee put a happy Percy to bed, both had stuffed on chocolate-chip ice-cream topped by a melted Mars bar.

  ‘Mummy would never let me melt a Mars bar,’ Percy confided, as Fee made a nest with pillows and the duvet, just like her father used to make for her.

  ‘She’s quite right,’ Fee said loyally. ‘She has all the hard work, I just get the fun bits.’

  ‘Do you know something?’ Percy asked, sleep beginning to weigh down her eyes. ‘That’s exactly what Mummy used to say to Dad about us . . . “It’s all right for you, you just get the fun bits with the kids—” ’ Percy opened one eye and gazed at Fee. ‘Do you think that’s why he left us? Because we weren’t fun enough?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Fee replied, but Percy had already fallen asleep.

  ‘I’m going to take you away from all this,’ Will Evans said, arriving unexpectedly half an hour later as Fee and Veronica tidied up the toys that littered Fee’s sitting room. Gill was lying on Fee’s bed, claiming that she was too emotionally exhausted to help.

  ‘Come,’ Will commanded.

  ‘Go,’ Veronica ordered.

  Ten minutes later, Will and Fee were drinking wine on Will’s balcony.

  ‘We haven’t had a chance for a chat for ages,’ Will said. ‘You must be sick of it all by now?’

  Fee shook her head. ‘I’m really glad they’ve stayed with me.’

  ‘Masochist,’ Will teased.

  ‘No, really . . . I’ve learned some lessons. For instance, Percy. She’s been far more affected than the boys by the split. They’re too young really. But she blames herself. She thinks it’s her and the twins’ fault that Simon has gone. Somehow these things—’

  ‘Things?’ Will interrupted gently.

  ‘You know . . . divorce, splitting up, leaving children confused about who’s done what to whom and why . . . you’d think we would have learned how to manage it all better by now—’

  ‘Well, that’s not your personal concern, is it?’ Will reminded Fee gently, refilling her glass.

  ‘That’s the other thing I’ve realized,’ Fee said. ‘It’s made me even more sure that I wouldn’t risk having a child. It wouldn’t be fair. If you’re going to demand the right to have a child, you also have a responsibility to bring it up in security . . . and love . . . and I don’t think I could trust myself, so—’

  Will yawned ostentatiously.

  ‘Sorry.’ Fee smiled. Will shifted his chair and suddenly appeared embarrassed.

  ‘Fee,’ he said, ‘I asked you to come up here to tell you something. Someone’s moving in with me . . . Someone you know . . . Remember when you brought me the petrol, when I was stranded a few weeks ago?’

  ‘When you were with the woman who was living with her boyfriend?’

  Will nodded. ‘Yes, well, what I didn’t tell you at the time was that she was also the one who attacked your car—’

  ‘The one who wanted a future with you?’

  Will appeared flustered. ‘She’s moving in but it’s nothing serious. At least, not on my part. She’s moving in and we’re seeing how we go. Day at a time, kind of thing.’

  ‘Real commitment on your part at last, Will.’

  ‘What I wanted to know was what you felt about it?’ Will blurted out.

  ‘Me?’ Fee asked perplexed. Why should it matter how she felt?

  Fee smiled. ‘I couldn’t be happier for you. In fact, I seem a damn sight happier at the prospect than you do, Will Evans.’

  At 7 a.m., a couple of days later, Fee was on her hands and knees. She was crawling in the semi-darkness of her bedroom, groping under the bed for a missing shoe, anxious not to wake Gill or Percy.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The words were hissed directly into Fee’s left ear. She jumped and Percy giggled.

  ‘I’m going to work,’ Fee whispered back. ‘Don’t wake your mum or the boys or Veronica.’ What she didn’t add was that her new family obligations were eating hard into her extended working day and she was worried about meeting the deadline on the HAH! project. God knows how women with full-time jobs and families coped.

  Percy followed Fee into the bathroom. She watched silently while Fee applied her make-up and brushed her hair.

  ‘You’ll kill yourself,’ she said knowingly. ‘For ages just before we came here, Daddy was leaving very early like you, and coming home late and Mummy said he’d kill himself, if she didn’t kill him first—’

  Fee stopped brushing her hair, and crouched down to Percy’s eye level. ‘Do you know something, Persephone Booth, you are absolutely right, I will kill myself,’ she said. Percy looked taken aback. It wasn’t often an adult told her she was right.

  Fee made a snap decision. ‘What about Macdonald’s for breakfast?’

  Percy gave a small skip of pleasure. ‘Shall I tell you something deathly secret?’
she asked Fee. Generosity on Fee’s part merited some reward.

  ‘Promise not to tell? Well, Mummy says you’re spoiling us rotten and it’s all right for you because you don’t have to pick up the pieces later—’

  ‘Is that what she said?’ Fee answered mildly.

  Percy continued in a conspiratorial tone, ‘I think part of Mummy’s problem is that she doesn’t have a clue how her own kids tick—’

  ‘Breakfast,’ Fee answered diplomatically.

  At 9.30 a.m., having delivered Percy to school, Fee belatedly reached F.P. & D. Diana Woods was waiting in Fee’s office. She glanced at her watch and said, sarcastically, ‘If you’re this late, it can only be love—’

  ‘It is,’ Fee answered flippantly, picking unnaturally yellow scrambled egg from the cuff of her suit sleeve. ‘But not the kind you mean—’

  It was late morning when the latest rumour was reported back to Fee. Diana Woods was spreading it around that Fee had ‘gone gay’.

  Sue Leith from accountants bumped into Fee in the loo. ‘Congratulations,’ she said warmly. ‘Your F.P. & D.’s first. At least, you’re the first to come out.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ANGIE BAXTER of Inter-Act was proud of the efforts that she, assisted by the computer of course, had made to find Fiona Travers a soulmate.

  She had abandoned the attempt to make Fiona Travers complete a questionnaire. The woman was far too indecisive. How was it possible to reach the age of almost forty and know so little about yourself, never mind what you sought from a loved one?

  Angie Baxter had married at eighteen. Her husband, Dave, was a fireman with a thriving business on the side, delivering fresh fish direct to the domestic door. The couple had decided they wanted no children, but they did own a lovely home, they had two cars, two cats, and an awful lot of desirable objects . . . such as piranha fish in a tank, a patio and a barbecue imported from Florida. Their next goal was garden furniture that cost £1,700.

  Dave was exactly what Angie had wanted and vice versa. Neither had expected too much; each had made allowances for the other’s irritations. Dave had darts and golf and wind-surfing. Angie had aerobics and a Chinese takeaway, a bottle of wine and a video with the girls every Thursday night.

  Eleven years down the line, so far, so good. Angie was absolutely convinced that she would find no better than her Dave. He was sure that she too was ‘top class’. On that basis, each endeavoured to please the other; they split domestic chores; went away for romantic weekends and regarded infidelity as beyond the pale. And, of course, Angie’s job helped no end because she saw on a daily basis what the alternative might be.

  In truth, in her professional capacity of matchmaker ‘par excellence’, Angie Baxter sometimes had to hide her disgust that others were so bloody unrealistic in what they expected from a relationship. I mean, a spouse could only ever be an ordinary human being, for God’s sake, not a bloody miracle worker.

  Now, she ranged through the files on her computer just to double-check. She kept returning to this man Munsen, Alan Munsen, age forty-seven, never married. There wasn’t anything scientific in Angle Baxter’s choice; she just had a hunch that Alan Munsen might be the type who could handle a difficult customer like Fiona Travers.

  She reread the report Alan Munsen had written on himself – an exercise Fee Travers had yet to complete.

  ‘I recently returned to Britain after fifteen years in Central America. I first travelled to the region to take a job as a hydraulics engineer. Later, I became an adviser to farming co-operatives on the best use of water. As a result, while colleagues have grown rich, I’ve made more friends than money, but I count myself a lucky man. I love the region,’ Alan Munsen had written.

  ‘I came home to the UK because a friend in Honduras, one of my oldest friends, died recently from a heart attack. He was forty-three and, like me, without partner or children. I’ve gradually come to acknowledge that the passions that have satisfactorily filled my life until now – sailing, books, painting, Spanish history – are no longer sufficient to distract me from the need to belong. I want to belong to someone or somewhere.’

  Angie Baxter stopped reading and sighed deeply. The man had a lovely way with words . . .

  At 10 a.m., two days later, Alan Munsen found himself in the lobby of a London hotel, drinking coffee with a stranger. It was proving easier than he had imagined. Not least because the woman opposite looked awfully like a lover he had known for a year or so before leaving Britain. Or perhaps it was just that the two women shared a similar air of wariness?

  Fee Travers took in the battered face opposite her. The man was around five foot eleven. He was lean, and had an open face, deeply lined, bushy eyebrows and a thatch of grey hair. He wore jeans and a faded denim shirt. Within a few minutes of meeting, his sense of humour had emerged. Fee knew fairly quickly that although Alan Munsen wasn’t the man of her dreams – as HAH!’s computerized skills had insisted – he was extremely likeable. It was only fair to tell him the truth.

  ‘I’m not quite what I seem,’ she began. Alan Munsen looked at her, baffled.

  ‘Is that so?’ he replied cautiously.

  ‘I’m not bona fide,’ Fee tried again. More bafflement.

  Alan Munsen ticked off the fingers on one hand. ‘Sex change? Call girl? Undercover detective? Married woman?’

  Fee laughed. ‘No, what I mean is that I’m not really looking for a partner. I’m carrying out research . . . for my company . . . I’m sorry . . . I should have said something straight away—’

  Alan Munsen shrugged his shoulders. Part of him felt relief, courtship in an unfamiliar society could be an exhausting business. Courting in any society can be an exhausting business.

  ‘How are you on friendship?’ he asked. ‘I mean would your husband mind if you acquired a friend, a male friend . . .?’

  Fee smiled. ‘I don’t have a husband . . . or a partner for that matter, but friendship sounds like a good idea—’

  ‘Suits me,’ he replied, offering his hand and smiling. ‘Let’s shake on it. To friendship.’

  Alan Munsen was by nature reserved, so, for him, this was the very best of beginnings.

  At lunchtime on that same day, Fee decided that she could no longer pretend indifference to Rita Mason’s continuing lack of contact.

  ‘You don’t owe her a thing,’ Gill had advised bluntly. ‘She annoyed you when she was around and she’s annoying you even more now that she’s disappeared. She’s just one of those women who spend their lives attention-seeking. Don’t indulge her. Write her off. She’s probably inveigling her way into somebody else’s life, even as we speak. Probably somebody with more money and less sense—’

  Gill’s words made little impact. Fee had to satisfy herself that Rita Mason was alive and well. If she didn’t, she knew, the woman would remain with her for life.

  Fee’s first call was to Rita Mason’s employer – the Tendon Hospital Trust.

  ‘Hello, could I have the radiography department, please?’ she asked, after waiting several minutes for the switchboard, serenaded by repeated renditions of ‘Moon River’.

  ‘Hello, is that radiography? I wondered if I might speak to Rita Mason?’

  ‘Rita who?’ a grumpy female voice asked.

  ‘Rita Mason. She’s one of your radiographers. I think she works shifts—’

  ‘No Rita here,’ the voice said, sounding slightly more amiable.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Fee asked again. ‘She’s called Rita Mason. She’s very . . . well, very . . . striking—’

  ‘Look, dear,’ the voice had resumed its gruffness. ‘I’ve worked here for eleven years and never, not once, have we had a Rita. Or, for that matter, a Mason. All right? Bye-ee.’

  Fee paused for a few seconds and then called Veronica at the flat.

  ‘You’re sure she said she was a radiographer?’ Fee asked her sister.

  ‘I’m sure. She had a name badge thingummy on as well . . . And when we left a woman in
the canteen said goodbye as if she knew her really well—’

  Fee replaced the receiver, perplexed and uneasy. A few minutes later, she began to hunt through her bag. Rita Mason had given her address to Fee so that Veronica could write a thank-you note. Where was it?

  Receipts, dry-cleaning chits, mouldy chewing-gum, old cinema tickets and general debris were excavated from the depths of her handbag before she finally found the address.

  She tried Directory Inquiries. No number was listed under R. Mason. Fee had a couple of hours between meetings, later in the afternoon, so would pay Rita a visit. First, Fee would see if she could recruit Claire’s help.

  These days, Fee and Claire seemed to avoid more topics than they discussed. To Fee, Claire appeared defensive; while, to Claire, Fee always sounded hyper-critical. Still, both women shared a common, if unspoken, belief that if the small rituals of friendship could be maintained, normal communication might eventually resume after Claire’s wedding.

  Fee gave Claire a ring at work. ‘Will you come with me this afternoon, please Claire? Rita’s got a flat in Stockwell – quite a large flat from the way she describes it . . . And a place in Sussex. But I thought I’d start with the flat first. I’m sure there’s a really simple explanation, but I just sort of feel obligated to make sure she’s all right . . . Will you come?’

  Claire was about to refuse. She was already overloaded. For the last week or so, she had rarely left the office before ten – much to Clem’s dislike. He didn’t argue that she should have more free time for him – but, even more annoyingly, that she should have more free time for herself.

  ‘Of course I’ll come. I can’t think of a better way to spend my afternoon than in pursuit of the world’s oldest teenager—’

  Claire drove, Fee gave instructions. Number 14, Ivesham Street, was a large Victorian house on a road of mixed fortunes. The garden next door was decorated with a discarded sign that read, ‘The Goodfellows Friendly Society’. The sign kept company with beer cans, sweet papers, weeds, four dustbins and a broken pushchair. Number 14’s garden was altogether better maintained and had six bells, neatly labelled, on the right of the glossy, navy-blue door.