She lasted five seconds after the door closed before breaking down. How could she have been so stupid as to think a nice hairdo and a few pounds off would make any difference? Hadn’t she learned anything from last time?
When she first suspected Mick had been having an affair, she had post mortemed herself to shreds. What was she? Too porky, too blonde, too unfit, too arty, too short, too straight-haired, too blue-eyed, too incredibly clumsy, too crap at cake baking? What was it that had caused Mick to turn his attentions to another woman? Then she had found out who he was having an affair with. A barmaid–Linda: hook nose, yellow teeth and proud owner of incredibly fat ankles.
‘This hasn’t happened because you’ve got a slightly bigger bum than you should have, girl,’ said a nice, kind part within her, eager to give some comfort. It hadn’t stopped her from wanting to know just why it had happened then, to pin his actions to a reason. Why was it so hard for blokes to understand that all an ex might need to go forward was a two-minute explanation? Why did they hold up an aggressive crucifix against the demon of ‘closure’? Even, ‘I ran off with Linda because I happen to have a thing about women who look like bulldogs,’ would have been better than the not-knowing why. But the cowardly swines saw no advantage in facing up to what they had done and so women started ripping into themselves trying to find the answer, as they would their house if a ring had been lost and leaving no stone unturned to find it. No wonder they started boiling rabbits and sewing prawns into curtains. Well, Stevie wasn’t going to go mad this time. She wasn’t going to hide Matthew’s clothes, follow him in his lunch-hour, starve herself or give him her full emotional repertoire in a misguided, desperate attempt to get him back. All that would do was drive him further away, as she knew to her cost with Mick.
Stevie crunched herself up into a small ball and sobbed quietly, so Danny wouldn’t hear, though she wanted to keen and howl at full belt like a wolf at the moon and let out all the pain. And what the buggery bollocks had made her say she had somewhere else to go? In three days’ time too? ‘So what are you going to do now?’ the sensible part of her brain shouted at the smartarse side. The smartarse side was not forthcoming with any answers.
She couldn’t stay at Catherine’s, although she knew the Flanagans would shift and jiggle to accommodate her and Danny. There would be no space to work, plus she wouldn’t be able to work anyway from the guilt of inconveniencing them. Her mother lived too far away for Danny’s school and anyway, Edna Honeywell only had a one-bedroomed flat, and a life in which there was even less room for them both. As for her father–well, he wasn’t even in the short-list of people to ring with this one.
Stevie sobbed some more, letting herself wallow in rare self-pity. Five months ago, she had had her own house, a nice full bank account and a fabtastic boyfriend who loved her just as she was. So how had she got to this place–grossly depleted savings and three days away from being homeless? She hated to admit this, but there was only one person who just might be able to stop everything slipping away from her. Stevie went out to the recycle bin in the garage where all her scrap paper was kept awaiting collection, scavenged around until she found what she was looking for, and then she rang the number on the retrieved business card.
‘Hellooo,’ said a voice full of nails and razor-blades.
‘Hello, Mr MacLean. It’s Stevie Honeywell. I think I’m ready to talk.’
Chapter 19
It was with a certain amount of cockiness that Adam MacLean swaggered up the short path and rang the doorbell of 15 Blossom Lane the next morning, at nine thirty, as arranged, and it was with a certain amount of humility that Stevie received him. He accepted her offer of a cup of coffee and followed her into the kitchen where a percolator was already chewing on some beautiful-smelling beans. The room looked completely different when it wasn’t covered in flour, he thought. She had obviously tightened up her act a bit since Matty Boy left. It was gleaming actually, and so was the front room that they went into when the coffee was ready, give or take a bit of mess that made a home comfortable–Spiderman slippers, jotters and pens, a big tub of Lego and a very strange head made out of a sock sitting in a jam jar with grass for hair. Adam sat down on a sofa that was meant to hold four people and took up nearly half of it. On the coffee-table there was one of those infernal books that daft women read, called The Carousel of Life by Beatrice Pollen. He picked it up, gave the back cover blurb a quick dismissive read and put it back down again in such a way that gave Stevie no doubt of his opinion of it.
‘So?’ he said, rather smugly. ‘You changed yerrr mind.’
‘It wasn’t an easy decision.’
‘I can bet.’
They even managed to make their coffee sipping look like a duel.
‘What was it then that finally made ye ring?’
‘He–Matthew–came around last night.’
‘Aye, you said he was coming roon, when I saw you in the supermarket. With the giant cucumber.’
Stevie bared her teeth a little but didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she continued icily, ‘He told me that he and her had got together at Pam and Will’s wedding.’
‘Oh?’
‘And I have to get out of this house by Wednesday and cancel my wedding.’
‘Oh.’ It was quite a sympathetic ‘oh’ for him, who seemed to deduce from the speed at which she started slurping coffee then, that she was possibly quite upset about having to do that.
‘So where will ye go?’ he said.
‘I don’t have a clue. I’ll have to start looking bigtime. And packing. God, I don’t know which to do first.’ Her voice went all funny and she coughed it away.
‘So do ye want tae know what I think noo?’ said Adam MacLean, who was wearing jeans and a cornflower-blue shirt that exactly matched his eyes.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘Ah think you and I should pretend to start winchin.’
Winchin? What the hell did that mean? She needed an interpreter to converse with the bloody man.
‘I’m sorry, you’ve lost me.’
‘Winchin. It means “go-ing out to-geth-er”.’
‘Who?’
‘You and me.’
‘You and me?’ Stevie laughed, waiting for the punchline, because that was a joke, wasn’t it? And not a very funny one either. She was being serious and he was messing about.
‘No, it’s not a joke,’ he said. ‘This is part of my master-plan.’
‘Your master-plan?’
‘Is there an echo in here?’ he grumbled. Stevie ignored him and he went on, ‘First of all, I didn’t fight the decision for Jo to leave me. I just let her go. I knew that would affect her far more than if I acted like she might expect me to.’
Stevie didn’t ask how Jo would expect him to act. That seemed pretty obvious. It had to involve something dangerous that hurt a lot.
‘And you want us to go out together?’
‘My God naw!’ he protested a bit too enthusiastically. ‘Just to pretend.’
‘You’re barking mad.’
‘Quite possibly, but have you any sane solutions?’
That shut Stevie up because she hadn’t.
‘Any chance of another coffee, please?’ he asked. ‘With a wee bit more mulk this time, if I could?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Stevie, and went half-dazed into the kitchen. Adam picked up another Midnight Moon book from the table under the window. Another by Beatrice Pollen–The Silent Stranger–she must be her favourite. Obviously, this Pollen woman was some sad old grand-maw of a writer with a loveless life who lived her dreams through characters with names like Maddox Flockton and Devon Earnshaw. Jeez, who thought o’ this crap?
Devon flirtatiously pushed back her luxurious auburn hair, exposing her long creamy neck. Maddox grabbed her, ignoring her protests as he rained kisses onto that neck until she surrendered to him and groaned aloud, ‘Maddox, Oh Maddox!’
Bollocks, oh bollocks, more like, he thought, closing the book and
putting it back where he had found it by the window. Then his eye caught sight of the sign on the house opposite, just before Stevie returned to put a giant cup down on the coffee-table for him. It had been a joke Christmas present and was one-step short of a horse trough.
‘What’s that hoos? Is it tae let?’ He pointed to the big cottage opposite.
‘Yes,’ said Stevie, roughly understanding what he was saying.
‘Why don’t you get that wan?’
‘You are joking!’ said Stevie with a laugh belonging to Mrs Rochester. ‘I couldn’t afford that in a month, sorry, year, sorry millennium of Sundays.’
‘Will Housing Benefit not cover it?’
‘Housing Benefit?’ said Stevie indignantly. ‘What on earth makes you think I would get Housing Benefit?’
‘I…er…just presumed, seeing as you’re at the gym every day, that you didnae work.’
‘Well, I do work actually, thank you!’ said Stevie.
‘What do you dae?’
‘None of your bloody business!’ Like she was going to tell him that after he had tossed her book down as if it was some worthless piece of crap and then have him do a snidey laugh thing.
‘Sorry I asked,’ said Adam, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. He took a sip of coffee and, contrary to her silent wish, didn’t burn his throat in agony. ‘So, how expensive is it?’
Stevie sighed and got out the newspaper to show him some brief details. ‘Too expensive for me, and my salary.’
‘Christ awmighty!’ said Adam as the figure shot out at him from the page. ‘Be cheaper tae move into a Hilton Penthoos.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Hmmm.’ He rubbed his smooth, freshly shaven chin in thought. ‘Although the Hilton doesn’t have such a good view as that hoos has.’
‘Pardon?’
‘And because you can’t afford it, that’s even more reason for it to be the perfect place.’ He was thinking out aloud. This was starting to look verrry interesting.
Stevie shook her head. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Mr MacLean.’
‘If you lived there…’
‘I couldn’t anyway, even if I had a million in the bank,’ butted in Stevie, shaking her head quite defiantly. ‘There is no way I could stand to see those two in this house every day and every night, and furthermore—’
‘Hold your wheesht, woman!’ Adam growled. ‘If you lived there, you would absolutely cause them mental hell. “How could she stand to live there opposite tae us? How could she afford it?” they’d ask. Then I turn up wi’ floooers…’
Floooers? ‘If you mean “floors”, at a rough guess I think it might have them already, Mr MacLean. And possibly ceilings. Maybe even a wall.’ What is the man on!
‘Och! Not flairs, floooers.’
Stevie’s face, with its mask of utter bewilderment now, told him she wasn’t getting any of this and he took a fierce intake of breath before further clarifying, none too patiently either: ‘Fl-ow-errrs. If I came with fl-ow-ers, we’d mash their hids…heads totally wi’ all the questions we’d raise. Think aboot it. Not only have we not reacted as rejected partners should naturally in accordance wi’ the laws of heartbreak, but then we start oor own relationship–pretend relationship,’ he emphasized for clarity. ‘I think the wee green-eyed monster would be oot daing…sorry, out doing his damage within a very short time. Basic psychology. No one wants to be that replaceable, that quickly.’
Okay, he had a point, Stevie thought, but at what cost to her own sanity?
‘Like I tried to say to you before–basic psychology,’ he said again, tapping his frontal lobe skull-casing. ‘I expect Matthew thought you’d totally freak–as, I know, did my Jo of me. But we didn’t, we haven’t given them what they wanted. Trust me, their brains are trying to process the strange wonderful creatures that we are and cannae. We are haunting them. They are expecting more from us. They’re waiting for us to flip and revert tae type, but they aren’t gonnae get it and that will unsettle them more than anything will. Tell me that Matty Boy isn’t expecting you to kick up a fuss.’
Stevie thought of all she had told Matt about the break-up with Mick, how crazed she had acted in grief. He had listened to her patiently then, with love and understanding. She couldn’t have known then that her confession would be stored and one day used as a weapon against her. Now he would use her past actions as an excuse to extricate himself from her as quickly as possible.
‘Yes, he’ll expect it,’ she answered quietly.
‘Aye, well, there are reasons why Jo will expect the same.’
‘Obviously,’ said Stevie.
He didn’t like the way she said the word, full of implication.
‘Guid. Then, they’ll no’ anticipate this turn of events in a million years.’
Stevie considered everything he had said. She hated to admit that he might be right, but she was going to have to, because she was desperate. Crackers as the whole scheme was, it was worth a try. Well, it would have been if she’d had the money to do it.
‘I’ll ring the landlord aboot the place opposite—’ MacLean started to say.
‘Excuse me,’ Stevie tried to interrupt. Didn’t he listen? Didn’t he hear the bit about not being able to afford it? Had the sound of all those bagpipes affected his eardrums?
‘If you’ll agree to consider moving in there, we’ll come to some arrangement about the money that disnae see you short,’ Adam interrupted back. ‘I might be able to batter the landlord down on price.’
Yes, she could imagine he would be very effective at battering. She had a sudden scene in her head of some old, defenceless landlord in a headlock saying, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll compromise–please just get off my windpipe!’
She nodded her head warily. This seemed to incense him.
‘Look, lady, I’m doing this primarily for me and Jo, not you and him, but unfortunately we’re all knotted up in this together. This isnae a charity thing, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘As if!’ Yeah, like that thought had crossed her mind.
‘Well then? It’s the only way, and trust me I’ve thought of every possible solution. So if you would be so kind as to give me your telephone number…’
Stevie scraped the bottoms of the barrels of her brain for any other alternatives, but came up with zilch. As he said, mad as it was, this was worth trying. Anything was worth trying. Even entering an unholy alliance with McBeelzebub here. She had to get Matthew back, so she swallowed her pride and it felt bitter and lumpy on the way down.
‘Okay, you’re on,’ she said, with a heavy sigh of resignation.
Once she and Matthew were reunited, they might even laugh at this one day, surrounded by grandchildren and sipping Horlicks by a fireside, with Mr and Mrs MacLean long resigned to the trashcan of history. She scribbled down her mobile number on one of the five million pads she had littered about the place, in case of sudden literary inspiration, then Adam left quickly–a man with a mission, locked on course.
He rang her an hour later, during which time her nerves had knitted themselves into a scarf of knots.
‘The landlaird willnae budge o’the price,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Theee land-lord will not budge on the price,’ pronounced Adam slowly.
‘Oh well, that’s that then.’
‘I’ll cover what you can’t afford. We’ll sort out the details later. I’ve signed the lease and I’ve got the key, which I’ll drop around to you this afternoon, so if you’ve anything heavy to carry across, I’ll do it for you then, because you start moving in today. Ring your man tomorrow and tell him the place is empty a day early. Now go pack!’
Then he put the phone down before Stevie could manage a single word of protest.
Chapter 20
Adam arrived with the key just as Stevie was disconnecting her computer. Together they walked across the road to inspect her new temporary home, whose formal address, according to the lease, wa
s Humbleby Cottage, the houses on that side of the road having only names, no numbers. Humbleby was something of a misnomer, because there was nothing the least bit humble about it from the outside aspect and even less from the inside, as they were to find when they unlocked the door and went in. Adam hadn’t (unfortunately) banged his skull on the beams and fatally injured himself. They were deceptively high and his head cleared them easily, although maybe it wouldn’t be wise for him to start pogo-ing to any punk records whilst he was there.
The cottage was chocolate-box pretty. The kitchen was roadside with a huge Yorkshire stone inglenook fireplace, an old working Aga and original wooden floors with thick patterned rugs over them. Thankfully, the modern world had been allowed in too and there was central heating and double-glazing with security windows throughout. There was the bonus of a good-sized, well-equipped separate study with hundreds of bookshelves, a lounge with an even grander fireplace, and a darling little sunroom around the back looking out onto a long private cottage garden, which apparently had been maintained by a gardener in the absence of a tenant. Upstairs was a huge spacious girly bathroom and two massive, pretty bedrooms with exposed beams.
For some reason, Adam had smiled slyly when he said, ‘Only two bedrooms, eh?’
She hadn’t even dared to ask what that might have meant.
A domestic service had been going in once every three weeks to dust it down, so the cottage was ready to move into without Stevie having to clean it or scrub out the cupboards. It was immaculate and fully furnished with some very nice stuff.
‘Whit do you think?’ said Adam.
‘It’s lovely,’ said Stevie. She would have to be very careful and try not to fall in love with it. Her relationship with the house would have to be a casual one. Although she was beginning to doubt her ability to fall in love with anything again. As soon as her heart touched something, it seemed to scare it away.
‘Right–got anything heavy I can move for you?’
The Birds and the Bees Page 11
