Cocktails for Three

by Madeleine Wickham

  But he didn’t look as though he had one. His fingers rubbed the papers on his desk anxiously; he avoided her eye. “I’m confident that if you reduced the asking price by the amount I suggested, we would have a sale within a very reasonable timescale,” he said. He sounded as though he was reading from a prompt card.

  “Yes, but we need more money than that!” cried Liz. “We’ve got a mortgage to pay off. And now we’ve got a business to run. And what’s a reasonable timescale anyway?” Too late, she realized her error. The estate agent’s head shot up, an unmistakable look of relief on his face at having been given a question he could answer.

  “Ah, well, these things always take a certain length of time,” he began. “We’ll be promoting the house afresh, highlighting the reduced price, targeting a different purchaser altogether.”

  As his voice droned on, happily outlining the benefits of local advertising and color photography, Liz’s gaze wandered. She felt suddenly drained, worried, and fearful. She had not, she realized, taken the sale of the house seriously enough. When the first buyers had pulled out, she had almost been pleased. She could hardly bear the idea of strangers in their home, using their bathroom, their kitchen, sunbathing in their garden. Even though she had been the driving force behind the move in the first place.

  Of course, Jonathan couldn’t understand that. One night, several months ago, she had broken down in a torrent of weeping at the thought of leaving the house for good, and he had stared at her in amazement.

  “But you were the one who wanted to do all this,” he had said, almost shouted. “It was your idea to buy the tutorial college in the first place.”

  “I know it was,” she wailed, tears streaming hotly out of her eyes. “But I still don’t want to leave this house.” He gazed at her for a few seconds in stupefaction. Then his expression changed.

  “All right, darling, then we won’t.” His voice suddenly firm, he lifted her chin and looked into her teary eyes, in a gesture straight out of a 1940s film. “We’ll stay here. We’ll stay where we’re happy. I’ll phone the solicitors tomorrow.”

  “Oh Jonathan, why are you so stupid!” Liz jerked her chin out of his grasp impatiently. She wiped her nose with her hand and pushed it exasperatedly through her hair. A second wave of tears, feeble and benign, squeezed their way onto her cheeks. “You never understand anything. Of course we’re not going to stay here.”

  She had given a huge, shuddering sigh, and got up to close the window. When she returned to bed, Jonathan was facing the other way, not out of resentment, she was sure, but out of complete bewilderment. And she had realized that she really wasn’t being fair on him. Jonathan was inherently cautious; naturally unambitious. It had taken a lot of her enthusiasm to persuade him into this enterprise. And here she was, weeping distressingly at him, worrying him unnecessarily.

  “Sorry,” she had said, taking his narrow hand, watching his shoulders relax. “I’m just tired.”

  Since then, she had gone to the other extreme; maintaining a blithe, positive approach that swept them all along, through the documentation, delivery vans, and detritus of the move; into the shabby little flat at that they were now to live in; out of safety and into precarious uncertainty. While Jonathan paced anxiously about the small, dusty rooms of their new home, searching for plug sockets, while Alice shuffled around blackly, in conspicuous, unspecified teenage gloom, she had been the one to smile, and throw open tea chests and sing Beatles songs, cheerfully mismatching tunes and lyrics. She had been the strong one; the face of reassurance. But now reassurance seemed to have slipped adroitly away from her, as though recognizing too great an adversary in the tidings of this fresh-faced, droning messenger.

  “A good interior makes all the difference,” he was saying as Liz’s senses snapped back into focus. “There’s a lot of competition out there; people with Jacuzzi bathrooms, conservatories…” He looked at her expectantly. “I don’t suppose you’d consider installing a power shower? It might help attract buyers.”

  “Instead of dropping the price?” said Liz in slight relief. “Well, I don’t see why not.”

  “As well as dropping the price, I meant,” said the estate agent, in a tone of almost amusement. It was that tone that suddenly touched her on the raw.

  “You want us to drop the price and install a new shower?” She heard her voice screech; felt her face adopt the expression of outrage that she usually reserved for her most thoughtless pupils.

  “Do you realize,” she added, slowly and clearly, as though to a class of sulky sixth formers, “that we are selling our house because we actually need the money? That we haven’t decided to go and live in a tiny poky flat at because we want to, but because we have to?” She could feel herself gathering momentum. “And you’re telling me that because you haven’t been able to sell our house, we’ve got to put in a new shower at a cost of goodness knows how much, and then we’ve got to drop the price by—what was it?—fifty thousand? Fifty thousand pounds! Do you have any idea what our mortgage is?”

  “Yes, well, it’s quite a common situation you’re in,” the young man said quickly. “The majority of our clients have found themselves to be in a negative equity situation.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t give a toss about your other clients! Why on earth should I care about them?” She wouldn’t, Liz decided as she listened to her own voice crescendo, let Jonathan know that she had yelled at the estate agent. He would only get cross and worry. Perhaps even phone up to apologize, for heaven’s sake. A spurt of indignation at her husband’s humility fueled Liz further. “We put our house on the market nearly a year ago,’” she shouted. “Do you realize that? If you’d sold it then, like you were supposed to, we wouldn’t be talking about new showers. We wouldn’t be lowering the price by such ludicrous amounts. We’d have paid off the mortgage, we’d be fine.”

  “Mrs. Chambers, the property market—”

  “Sod the property market!”

  “Hear, hear!” A rich, easy, expensive voice joined the ensemble.

  The estate agent started, forced a smile onto his face and swiveled in his chair. Liz, who had been about to continue, took a deep, gasping breath and looked round instead. Standing in the doorway of the office was a man in a tweed jacket, with dark brown eyes and crow’s-feet and an amused grin. As Liz watched, he took a couple of steps into the room and then leaned casually back against the doorframe. He looked at ease; urbane and confident, unlike the young estate agent, who had begun twitchily rearranging the papers on his desk. The man in the tweed jacket ignored him.

  “Do carry on,” he said to Liz, giving her a quizzical smile. “I didn’t want to stop you. You were saying something—about the property market?”

  The Wedding Girl

  A group of tourists had stopped to gawp at Milly as she stood in her wedding dress on the registry office steps. They clogged up the pavement opposite while Oxford shoppers, accustomed to the yearly influx, stepped round them into the road, not even bothering to complain. A few glanced up towards the steps of the registry office to see what all the fuss was about, and tacitly acknowledged that the young couple on the steps did make a very striking pair.

  One or two of the tourists had even brought out cameras, and Milly beamed joyously at them, reveling in their attention, trying to imagine the picture she and Allan made together. Her spiky, white- blond hair was growing hot in the afternoon sun; the hired veil was scratchy against her neck, the nylon lace of her dress felt uncomfortably damp wherever it touched her body. But still she felt light-hearted and full of euphoric energy. And whenever she glanced up at Allan—at her husband—a new, hot thrill of excitement coursed through her body, obliterating all other sensation.

  She had only arrived in Oxford three weeks ago. School had finished in July—and while all her friends had planned trips to Ibiza and Spain and Amsterdam, Milly had been packed off to a secretarial college in Oxford. “Much more useful than some silly holiday,” her mother had announced fir
mly. “And just think what an advantage you’ll have over the others when it comes to job hunting.” But Milly didn’t want an advantage over the others. She wanted a suntan and a boyfriend, and beyond that, she didn’t really care.

  So on the second day of the typing course, she’d slipped off after lunch. She’d found a cheap hairdresser and, with a surge of exhilaration, told him to chop her hair short and bleach it. Then, feeling light and happy, she’d wandered around the dry, sun-drenched streets of Oxford, dipping into cool cloisters and chapels, peering behind stone arches, wondering where she might sunbathe. It was pure coincidence that she’d eventually chosen a patch of lawn in Corpus Christi College; that Rupert’s rooms should have been directly opposite; that he and Allan should have decided to spend that afternoon doing nothing but lying on the grass, drinking Pimm’s.

  She’d watched, surreptitiously, as they sauntered onto the lawn, clinked glasses, and lit up cigarettes; gazed harder as one of them took off his shirt to reveal a tanned torso. She’d listened to the snatches of their conversation that wafted through the air towards her, and found herself longing to know these debonair, good-looking men. When, suddenly, the older one addressed her, she felt her heart leap with excitement.

  “Have you got a light?” His voice was dry, American, amused.

  “Yes,” she stuttered, feeling in her pocket. “Yes, I have.”

  “We’re terribly lazy, I’m afraid.” The younger man’s eyes met hers: shyer; more diffident. “I’ve got a lighter; just inside that window.” He pointed to a stone mullioned arch. “But it’s too hot to move.”

  “We’ll repay you with a glass of Pimm’s,” said the American. He’d held out his hand. “Allan.”

  “Rupert.”

  She’d lolled on the grass with them for the rest of the afternoon, soaking up the sun and alcohol; flirting and giggling; making them both laugh with her descriptions of her fellow secretaries. At the pit of her stomach was a feeling of anticipation which increased as the afternoon wore on: a sexual frisson heightened by the fact that there were two of them and they were both beautiful. Rupert was lithe and golden like a young lion; his hair a shining blond halo; his teeth gleaming white against his smooth brown face. Allan’s face was crinkled and his hair was greying at the temples, but his grey-green eyes made her heart jump when they met hers, and his voice caressed her ears like silk.

  When Rupert rolled over onto his back and said to the sky, “Shall we go for something to eat tonight?” she’d thought he must be asking her out. An immediate, unbelieving joy had coursed through her; simultaneously she’d recognized that she would have preferred it if it had been Allan.

  But then Allan rolled over too, and said “Sure thing.” And then he leaned over and casually kissed Rupert on the mouth.

  The strange thing was, after the initial, heart-stopping shock, Milly hadn’t really minded. In fact, this way was almost better: this way, she had the pair of them to herself. She’d gone to San Antonio’s with them that night and basked in the jealous glances of two fellow secretaries at another table. The next night they’d played jazz on an old wind-up gramophone and drunk mint juleps and taught her how to roll joints. Within a week, they’d become a regular threesome.

  And then Allan had asked her to marry him.

  Sleeping Arrangements

  It was too hot to work, thought Chloe, standing back and pushing tendrils of wispy fair hair off her forehead. Certainly too hot to be standing in this airless room, corseting an anxious, overweight girl into a wedding dress that was almost certainly two sizes too small. She glanced for the hundredth time at her watch, and felt a little leap of excitement. It was almost time. In only a few minutes the taxi would arrive and this torture would be over, and the holiday would officially begin. She felt faint with longing, with a desperate need for escape. It was only for a week—but a week would be enough. A week had to be enough, didn’t it?

  Away, she thought, closing her eyes briefly. Away from it all. She wanted it so much it almost scared her.

  “Right,” she said, opening her eyes and blinking. For a moment she could barely remember what she was doing; could feel nothing but heat and fatigue. “Well, I’ve got to go—so perhaps we could leave it there for today? If you do want to go ahead with this particular dress—”

  “She’ll get into it,” cut in Mrs. Bridges with quiet menace. “She’ll just have to make an effort. You can’t have it both ways, you know!” Suddenly she turned on Bethany. “You can’t have chocolate fudge cake every night and be a size twelve!”

  “Some people do,” said Bethany miserably. “Kirsten Davis eats what she likes and she’s size eight.”

  “Then she’s lucky,” retorted Mrs. Bridges. “Most of us aren’t so lucky. We have to choose. We have to exercise self-control. We have to make sacrifices in life. Isn’t that right, Chloe?”

  “‘Well,” said Chloe. “I suppose so. Anyway, as I explained earlier, I am actually going on holiday today. And the taxi’s just arrived to take us to Gatwick. So perhaps if we could arrange—”

  “‘You want to look like a princess! Every girl wants to make the effort to look their best on the day they get married. I’m sure you did, didn’t you?” Mrs. Bridges gimlet gaze landed on Chloe. “I’m sure you made yourself look as beautiful as possible for your wedding day, didn’t you?”

  “Well,” said Chloe. “Actually—”

  “Chloe?” Philip’s mop of dark curly hair appeared round the door. “Sorry to disturb—but we do have to get going. The taxi’s here….”

  “I know,” said Chloe, trying not to sound as tense as she felt. “I know it is. I’m just coming—”

  —when I can get rid of these bloody people who arrive half an hour late and won’t take a hint, her eyes silently said, and Philip gave an imperceptible nod.

  “What was your wedding dress like?” said Bethany wistfully as he disappeared. “I bet it was lovely.”

  “I’ve never been married,” said Chloe, reaching for her pin box. If she could just pry the girl out of the dress…

  “What?” Mrs. Bridges eyes darted to Bethany, then around the room strewn with snippets of wedding silk and gauze, as though suspecting a trick. “What do you mean, you’ve never been married? Who was that, then?”

  “Philip’s my long-term partner,” said Chloe, forcing herself to remain polite. “We’ve been together for thirteen years.” She smiled at Mrs. Bridges. “Longer than a lot of marriages.”

  And why the hell am I explaining myself to you? she thought furiously.

  Because three fittings for Bethany plus six bridesmaids’ dresses is worth over a thousand pounds, her brain swiftly replied. And I only have to be polite for ten more minutes. I can bear ten minutes. Then they’ll be gone—and we’ll be gone. For a whole week. No phone calls, no newspapers, no worries. No one will even know where we are.

  Gatwick Airport was as hot, crowded, and noisy as it had ever been. Queues of charter-flight passengers lolled disconsolately against their trolleys; children whined and babies wailed. Tinny voices almost triumphantly announced delay after delay.

  All of it washed over the head of Hugh Stratton, standing at the Regent Airways Club Class check-in desk. He felt in the inside pocket of his linen blazer, produced four passports and handed them to the girl behind the desk.

  “You’re traveling with…”

  “My wife. And children.” Hugh pointed to Amanda, who was standing a few yards away with the two little girls clutching one leg. Her mobile phone was clamped to her ear; as she felt his gaze she looked up, took a few steps towards the desk and said, “Amanda Stratton. And these are Octavia and Beatrice.”

  “Fine,” said the girl, and smiled. “Just have to check.”

  “Sorry about that, Penny,” said Amanda into the mobile. “Now before I go, let me just check the colors for that second bedroom…”

  “Here are your boarding passes,” smiled the girl at Hugh, handing him a sheaf of wallets. “The Club Class lounge
is on the upper level. Enjoy your flight.”

  “Thank you,” said Hugh. “I’m sure we will.” He smiled back at the girl, then turned away, pocketing the boarding passes, and walked towards Amanda. She was still talking into her mobile phone, apparently oblivious that she was standing bang in the path of passengers queuing for Economy check-in. Family after family was skirting around her—the men eyeing up her long, golden brown legs, the girls looking covetously at her Joseph shift dress, the grannies smiling down at Octavia and Beatrice in their matching pale blue denim smocks. His entire family looked like something out of a color supplement, Hugh found himself thinking dispassionately. No imperfections; nothing out of place.

  “Yup,” Amanda was saying as he approached. She thrust a manicured hand through her dark, glossy crop, then turned it over to examine her nails. “Well, as long as the linen arrives on time….”

  Just a sec, she mouthed at Hugh, who nodded and opened his copy of the Financial Times. If she was on the phone to the interior decorator, she might be a while.

  It had emerged only recently that several rooms in their Richmond house were to be redecorated while they were in Spain. Which ones precisely, Hugh still wasn’t sure. Nor was he sure quite why any of the house needed redoing so soon—after all, they’d had the whole place gutted and done up when they’d bought it, three years ago. Surely wallpaper didn’t deteriorate that quickly?

  But by the time Amanda had brought him on board the whole house-doing-up project, it had been obvious that the basic decision—to do up or not to do up?—had already been made, presumably at some level far higher than his. It had also become crystal clear that he was involved only in a consultatory capacity, in which he had no powers of veto. In fact, no executive powers at all.

  At work, Hugh Stratton was Head of Corporate Strategy of a large, dynamic company. He had a parking space in front of the building, a respectful personal assistant, and was looked up to by scores of young, ambitious executives. Hugh Stratton, it was generally acknowledged, had one of the finest grasps of commercial strategy in the business world today. When he spoke, other people listened.