by Shari Low
‘Bit late for modesty,’ she teased, as she clipped on her huge pearl earrings. She hated that pearls were back in this season. For her they were never out, but now the Saturday night streets were teeming with chunky girls in ridiculously skimpy tart dresses, dripping with strands of pearls they bought for three quid each out of an accessory shop wedged between a dry cleaners and a kebab shop on the high street. It devalued the look, but she still wasn’t prepared to let it go. Forties-style fashion was her trademark and she wasn’t ready to change it, even if the jewellery had been hijacked by a squad of hen-night slappers with streaky fake tan.
Adrian’s broom-length eyelashes swept up as he levelled his gaze at her and let out a playful groan. ‘Man, that was amazing. We should do this more often.’
Mona’s senses tingled. Why was it always the best-looking ones that were the most needy? You’d have thought that the very fact they could get any girl they wanted would make them cool and cavalier, but she’d found the opposite to be true; Adrian being a case in point. It was no secret that he’d slept with half of the female fashion scene in Glasgow, yet he’d been giving her those puppy-dog eyes for months. Photo shoot after photo shoot, she poured him into everything from country casual tweed to rock-star leather, teamed him up with everyone from pop stars, to gorgeous models, to a large basset hound called Bert, and still he’d watched her every move. She’d sensed it. Ignored it. Enjoyed it. But had done nothing about it until today, when he’d appeared for a meeting in a tight white T-shirt, jeans and boots. It was the boots that had sealed the deal. Sometimes a bit of a rough edge was just what a woman needed after a morning spent with the finance people picking over every detail of her department’s budget. Bloody parasites. This paper wouldn’t have a fashion section if it wasn’t for her. Didn’t they know she was already working miracles with the pittance they gave her?
‘So, listen…’ Adrian said, as he pulled his boxers back on and then stood up to retrieve his jeans from the top of her mini-fridge. ‘How about dinner tonight? Or maybe this weekend?’
A little piece of Mona died inside. This wasn’t how it worked. A lunchtime quickie was not the preamble to a long and lasting relationship. Sometimes she longed for the era when a guy spent all of the first date trying to get into your knickers and then disappeared when he succeeded because his inbred double standards now classed you as cheap. Ah, the good old days.
This little dalliance, enjoyable as it was, wasn’t something she was going to pursue. Adrian: male model. Twenty-three. Mona: fashion editor. Thirty-seven. Afternoon quickie: yes. Relationship: no.
There were many things she aspired to being, but a cougar wasn’t one of them.
Fully dressed now, she sat on the clear Perspex chair behind her high-gloss black desk and clasped her hands in front of her like a stern headmistress about to give out detention. Her fingers were itching to get to her keyboard and check the events of the last hour. If the rumour about Elan was true, it would move her fashion input and byline to the front pages. Playtime over. The ability to compartmentalize her life was one of her biggest strengths and today’s sex compartment had just slammed shut. Time to get back to work.
‘Adrian, this was great.’ Always start by pointing out the positives. ‘But I’m afraid…’ Her attention was caught by a flickering icon on her screen and she momentarily turned away from the sight of him buttoning up his Levi’s.
A couple of clicks later, her interest piqued by the latest email in her inbox, she returned her focus to him and took up where she’d left off. ‘Look, I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll have to hurry you. Something’s just come up and I have to sort it out.’
‘Problem? Can I help?’
It was a sweet offer but somehow she didn’t think that the fine art of diplomacy and tough problem-solving would be his strong point. However, if she ever had an issue that could be solved by an expert making a three-point turn at the end of a catwalk, he’d be the first person she’d call.
She sighed, her whole focus now back on the screen in front of her.
‘Nope…’ she said, more to herself than him. ‘Not unless you want to help me figure out a way to break it to my current husband that we’re going on holiday with my last one.’
Sarah Gold
Sarah ran her finger around the edge of the mixing bowl then rewarded herself for a morning of hard endeavour with a large dollop of sponge mix. The dog would be taken round the park twice today in the vain hope of burning the calories that had just settled on her hips.
Who was she kidding?
The dog would get the usual half-hour walk and then good intentions would be cast aside in favour of a quick coffee at Tickle Your Fancy in the village high street. Several members of the community council still turned a shade of outraged puce every time they passed the cafe with the titillating moniker. Sarah loved that Susie and Jo, the lovely owners, didn’t give a flying fig roll about the disapproval.
Turning the CD player up, she started to sing along without even realizing it. Tim McGraw was singing about what happened to a guy who found out he didn’t have long to live. Something about love deeper, give forgiveness to enemies and ride a bull called Fu Manchu. It was the kind of cheery stuff that got her through the day. Her affection for country music – whether the sad “I’ve just been dumped” or the upbeat “yeehah” stuff that made her shake her pants in the privacy of her kitchen - invoked much hilarity among her family and friends, but she remained defiant. If Dolly Parton was wrong, Sarah didn’t want to be right.
She popped two perfectly symmetrical, round baking tins in the oven, then checked the temperature again. Twenty-five minutes, two hundred degrees. She’d have to pop out later to get the cherries that were essential to the design, before starting on the intricate carving and icing that would be necessary for the finished product – a cake in the style of a 34DD bra, complete with voluptuous pert breasts and indelicately prominent nipples. It had been ordered by the friends of a recently divorced woman, about to turn fifty, who had just flown to Poland for a spectacularly successful breast uplift to mark the start of her new single life. It was always a relief when the cake mimicked the new boobs rather than the old – required less icing.
It only took a few minutes for the kitchen to be infused with the intoxicating aroma of baking. It was her favourite smell in the world – better than any expensive perfumes or lotions. She still found it difficult to believe that a hobby taken up to keep her mind off her divorce from Drew over fifteen years ago had turned into a successful business due to nothing more than word of mouth, good fortune and a knack with an icing bag. It had started off small. A birthday cake for the neighbour’s little boy in the shape of a football. A tennis court sponge for the caretaker at the park’s retirement party. A marzipan beach scene for friends destined for faraway shores. And tits. Lots of tits, for everything from hen nights to the current boob job-unveiling ceremony.
Her eyes flicked to the clock. Twenty minutes to go. She could nip for a quick shower. Phone her girlfriend Patsy for a gab. Or read the next few chapters of the Jackie Collins bonkbuster that was shouting out to her from the kitchen worktop. Jackie. Definitely. She’d just sat down when the slamming of the door derailed her appointment with a tall, dark, beautifully formed billionaire shipping heir called Bobby.
‘Hi, Mum, how’s it hanging?’
Sometimes her daughter asked her questions to which there was just no answer. She stuck to a fairly predictable, ‘I’m good, sweetheart. What are you doing home? Didn’t you have double maths this afternoon?’
Eliza dropped her bag – a Mulberry Mitzi she’d received from her father last Christmas - at the doorway and flounced across the kitchen, all long limbs, huge blue eyes and flowing, shaggy blonde hair that – to Sarah’s amusement – required an hour of work every morning to look tousled and au natural. Her Amazonian-slash-surfing-chick child flicked off the CD player with a disapproving, anti-country grunt, then zeroed in on the oven and peered in the
door. ‘Eeeew, gross. I can’t believe you make cakes like that. It’s, like, mortifying.’
Sarah nodded in agreement. ‘I know. I’ll be getting a job in a lap dancing bar next. So, maths? You didn’t answer my question.’
‘Skipped it. It was, like, so tedious and I need to go shopping. Chantelle is going to meet me and we’re going to head into town. Dad gave me his credit card at the weekend and said I could spend two hundred pounds. An early birthday treat.’
Sarah tried not to let her feelings show in her face. What were they? Disappointment? Irritation? Blind bloody fury? How many times had she asked Drew not to fork out cash like it didn’t matter? It was a losing battle. Eliza had him wrapped around her manicured little finger (courtesy of last month’s little ‘treat’ – a day at a city centre spa). Oh, to be sixteen-almost-seventeen with the world at your buffed and pedicured feet and unlimited funds from the Bank of Dad.
Psychologists would say that guilt was at the heart of Drew’s extravagance when it came to his youngest child.
Sarah would lay down her life for her daughter, but she wasn’t blind to her faults. Eliza was spoiled. She was high maintenance. And she had a very distant relationship with the value of money.
Being the youngest in the family, she was indulged. By Drew. By her older brother, John. And, yes, there was no denying that Sarah wasn’t always as strict as she should be with her little pre-divorce baby. The psychologists would probably have something to say about that, too. John was ten when Eliza came along – and looking back Sarah could see that having another baby was a last-ditch attempt to salvage a marriage that was on a slippery slope of complacency and growing incompatibility. The divorce papers had thumped on the mat on Eliza’s first birthday. Sarah had taken Eliza to a coffee shop, cried into a carrot cake, and then went shopping and spent a large chunk of her monthly maintenance payment in the most gorgeous little baby boutique in the mall. Six months later she’d gained forty pounds, but her daughter had a wardrobe to die for. By the time Eliza was toddling, Sarah realized that the indulgence had to stop, but it was a lesson that Drew had yet to learn.
‘Do you want to come with us, Mum? I could, you know, style you. Bring you into this decade.’
The cheeky grin and light banter in Eliza’s voice took the sting out of her words. It was an ongoing joke that Sarah’s standard uniform of calf-length denim skirts, mum-jeans and fleece tops would come back into fashion one day. But what was the point of being a slave to fashion when she was too busy being a slave to a teenage daughter, a grown-up son, a daughter-in-law, two grandchildren and a burgeoning industry in tit cakes? Pursing her lips, she gave her daughter the ‘don’t go there’ stare. Which was pretty similar to the ‘behave yourself’ stare and the ‘if you’ve borrowed my gold chain, you’d better get it back in my jewellery box before I notice’ stare.
‘Mu-u-u-m,’ Eliza chided. It was obvious what was coming next. The other subject that frequently arose. ‘You have to get back out there. How are you ever going to meet anyone sitting in your kitchen wearing a purple fleece?’
‘I could meet someone,’ Sarah insisted with mock petulance. ‘Delivery guys. The postman. The gardener. The old guy who collects for Help The Aged. He’s very sprightly for an eighty-two-year-old.’
For the second time since she arrived, Eliza adopted her ‘grossed out’ face.
‘That’s, like, so wrong.’ She thought for a moment. ‘What about Chantelle’s dad? He’s single again. The French au pair got homesick and left him.’
On her feet now, Sarah simultaneously checked the bosoms in the oven while rolling her eyes. ‘He drives a red Ferrari, has blonde highlights and he’s had liposuction twice this year. I could be leaping to rash conclusions, but I don’t think I could have a relationship with someone when the only thing we have in common is a shade of Nice’n Easy.’
Her daughter giggled.
‘Look, I’m fine the way I am. I’m happy. I keep telling you, the last thing I need is another man. I like having my own space.’
How many times had she trotted that old chestnut out? So many times that she just accepted it was true. Her chum, Patsy had heard it a million times. Her son could recite it backwards. She might even have told the old guy who collected for Help The Aged.
And she supposed it was true. She was contented with her life. The thought of getting out there and meeting someone new and starting all over again at the beginning of a relationship made her both terrified and weary. She liked routine. Peace. Calm. No drama. And anyway, one marriage and one devastating divorce was enough for one lifetime.
‘Your laptop is flashing.’ Eliza idly crunched into an apple as she tapped away the screen saver. ‘You’ve got an email. Oooh, it’s from Jorja, Dad’s PA.’
It was amazing how such innocuous words could cause Sarah’s stomach to launch into a full-scale spasm. On the surface of it, she and Drew had always kept things amicable and pleasant. What other option did she have? They had two children and two grandchildren together. He’d given her the house and supported John and Eliza over the years. They’d always celebrated family birthdays and Christmas together – apart from the years he was with Mona and they jetted off to exotic locations and spent their free time mingling at swanky parties. Urgh, that woman was vile. But of course, Sarah had always been too polite to say that. No drama. Peace. Calm.
‘She’s confirming the details for Dad’s birthday cruise,’ Eliza shrieked as she jumped up and down on the spot. ‘It’s happening! It’s definitely going ahead. That’s, like, so amazing!’
Oh. Dear. God. Sarah surreptitiously clung on to the kitchen worktop for support. Of course, Drew had mentioned the idea in passing, but she’d been in total denial. She was so sure that either Mona or Tess would scupper the idea that she’d chosen to block it out of her head. But no. As Eliza would say, it was, like, definitely on. This called for yet another Oh. Dear. God.
She couldn’t help but look downwards. She was a woman in a calf-length skirt and purple fleece and she was going on an up market, luxury, oh-so-chic cruise. Was it too late to claim agoraphobia? A contagious disease? Nits?
But of course, that would never happen because divorced or not, Drew always got his way.
As her 34DDs turned a slightly charred shade of sponge, Sarah had a horrible feeling that peace and calm would be the last things she would find at sea.
2.
Pack Up Your Troubles
Tess
Tess snapped the lock shut on the suitcase and watched as the other side bulged open. Bugger. The underwire on her too-tight bra dug into her side as she pressed down with all her might on the open side. No good. Not even close. There was nothing else for it. She lay down flat on the case, and let out a grunt of exertion as she pushed again. The gap reduced to about three inches and refused to budge any further. Where was Drew when she needed him?
There were many things that his commitment to his job made impossible. They never spent weekends at the cottage in the Lake District. They didn’t go shopping together. They didn’t go on long invigorating cycle rides. They’d never taken salsa lessons. Actually she had no desire whatsoever to learn salsa, given that she had two left feet, but that wasn’t the point. Why did she always have to do everything alone? Getting a suitcase shut was definitely a job for a two-man team, but – yet again – she was flying, or rather lying, solo. Argh. She had a good mind to ‘forget’ to put in any boxer shorts for him. Perhaps ten days of going commando might focus his mind on teamwork.
There was only one thing for it. Cameron picked up after two rings. ‘Yes, your majesty?’
Tess exploded with laughter. ‘If only that were true. Then I could balance ten corgis on this bloody suitcase to get it shut.’
Tess heard a glugging noise down the line. Must have caught him having a beer. Add that to the list of things she and Drew didn’t do – chill out with a beer and talk over their day. A wave of exasperation swept over her – she really needed to stop this nitpicking.
There was absolutely no point to it. Drew’s schedule was an occupational hazard. Anyway, he had promised that he would be home by eight o’clock tonight and they were going out for their own private birthday celebration. Dinner at the Rogano, her very favourite restaurant, followed by drinks and dancing at the Corinthian. They would finally get a chance to talk and get a refresher course on what it was like to be together. She might have to share him for the next ten days but tonight she would have him all to herself and she couldn’t wait. A shimmery black dress was hanging on the front of the wardrobe. Her hair was in rollers. All relevant bits had been exfoliated, shaved and moisturized. Her fingernails and toenails were a matching shade of vampish purple and, if you didn’t look too closely at the streaky bits around her neck and armpits, the home fake tanning session had been a roaring success. She just needed to get this bloody case shut and she was set to go.
‘One is not amused by this packing lark and one wonders if there’s any chance you fancy a couple of hours round here today. I’ll ply you with food and drink, and the only catch is that you have to sit on my suitcase.’
‘Tell me that’s a metaphor.’
‘Nope.’
His exasperated groan set off her giggles again.
‘You realize you’re tearing me away from two hours of watching men in large shoulder pads chase each other to steal a ball?’
‘I’ll make your favourite chilli and there’s a dozen Peroni in the fridge.’
‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’
It was only twenty-five minutes later when the doorbell rang and he wandered in, announcing his arrival with a cheery, ‘Husband Stunt Double Service to the rescue. Suitcase-shutting a speciality.’
Within the hour the clasps were shut and locked, and Tess and Cameron were sitting in their usual positions on either side of the island in the middle of the kitchen. He looked perfectly at home, his black jeans and T-shirt colour-even co-ordinating perfectly with the room.
