She came down in her robe to find the table lit by candlelight and a beautiful romantic supper waiting for her. He topped up her glass, chinked his own to it, and said, ‘Cheers.’
‘What’s all this for?’ she said with surprised delight.
‘Because I love you,’ he said, pulling out the chair for her, and tucking her under the table.
Then, after the main course, he served her raspberries soaked briefly in cognac resting in a cloud of cream whipped with the melted chocolate, with coffee to follow. Her eyes were full of heaven tasted. Matthew was a seductive cook. He just hoped he had been seductive enough. He led her to the sofa, snuggled, and caressed her.
‘Jo,’ he said, then taking her hands between his, ‘I want you to divorce MacLean as soon as possible. I don’t like the thought of you being married to him at all.’
She answered him by pressing her body hard against his and kissing him urgently. ‘He’s not in the way.’
He squeezed her to him. ‘Serve MacLean his divorce papers, please.’
‘There’s no point.’
He stopped kissing her neck and looked confused. ‘Why not?’
‘I’m not married to Adam.’
He pulled back from her. ‘What?’
‘I’m not married to him. Surely you knew?’
‘No,’ he said, with a great sweeping puzzled inflection at the end of the word.
‘MacLean is my maiden name, pure coincidence. Common enough, though, I suppose, if your ancestors are Scots. We just lived together.’ She snuggled into him once again. ‘So you see, he is out of my life totally; we have no bindings to each other.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She hadn’t mentioned it. He would have remembered that one. And hadn’t she always referred to MacLean as ‘her husband’? ‘But don’t you have any financial commitment to him? The house, for instance?’ he asked cautiously, in case she realized why he was asking.
‘Alas no!’ said Jo. ‘I didn’t have any money to put towards the house when we lived together. Adam took everything I had–he was very clever. Told me he was “looking after it for me” and that was the last I saw of it. That’s why it’s so great to go out at lunchtimes and spend, spend, spend, and be with someone who looks after me for all the right reasons, who doesn’t try and tell me what to do or take what I have.’ And with that she kissed him with a fervour that threatened to pop his lungs like twin balloons landing in a patch of nettles.
‘Oh…er…great!’ Matthew said, when he was eventully forced up for air, although his head was screaming, ‘Bugger bugger bugger…’ He had been counting on Jo’s share of the divorce money. He had already spent a chunk of it in his head on a conservatory and a return trip to Majorca.
She raised her head and walked her long-nailed fingers saucily up his chest. ‘Anyway, why did you really want me to divorce him?’
‘Er…’
‘Because you want to marry me yourself, maybe?’
He took her lovely face in his hands. Well, it hadn’t featured in his immediate plans but, seeing as she had come to mention it, yes, waking up to Jo MacLean for the rest of his life would be better than any Euromillions jackpot win. Well, almost. But he knew that he’d have to do better than a roast-beef dinner at the White Swan for her.
‘Jo, I would marry you tomorrow but I’m not asking you until I’m able to give you the wedding I know you’d want. Classic cars, morning suits, lobster for the wedding breakfast…’
Jo’s head started to run with the theme: ‘Mmm, seven bridesmaids and pageboys. Red roses filling the church…’
‘No expense spared for you, my love,’ he said. ‘So, alas, we’ll have to wait.’
‘Your investments are due to mature soon though, surely–so you said.’
‘Ah yes…’
Which was not entirely a lie. An insurance policy his mum had set up for him was due to mature on his thirty-fifth birthday at Christmas. It would yield about five thousand pounds, but he had slightly exaggerated the figures to impress her at the early courting stage. Well more than slightly. Added two zeros at the end actually.
‘We could honeymoon in the Med. Cruise maybe? Italy, Sardinia, we could go back to Spain again, Oh Matthew, it will be wonderful!’
‘Jo, there’s something…Ahhh!’
Her hand started to knead him there. He had to tell her the truth about himself tonight. There had been too many lies and deceptions and he wasn’t really that kind of person. Her fingers were delicious and then he heard the rasp of his zip. Suddenly she was out of his arms and kissing a molten trail down his shirt.
‘Stop, please, Jo…oh!’
Mañana–as the locals had said so often in Majorca.
Chapter 33
The children broke up for a lovely sunny May half-term at the end of that week and Stevie took time off from writing about other people’s love-lives to do nice things with her boy. They had a day at the seaside and the zoo, and she made a million egg and potted-beef sandwiches for a major picnic with Catherine and the kids in Higher Hoppleton Park. Then, on the Friday, Stevie and her son had a burger in town and mooched around trying to find a present to take to his friend Josh Parker’s fifth birthday party the next day. She didn’t really want to go, for more than one reason, but Catherine’s little boy Gareth had been invited too and her friend was forcing her along. She said it would occupy her mind and stop her moping at home, and Josh was, after all, one of Danny’s special friends. He was a lovely kid, and his mum, Jan, was very sweet. There was just one tiny problem, which stopped her socializing with the Parker family.
She settled on a badge-maker because Danny had one and it was a toy that he frequently played with, sadly not the case with the 80 per cent of his toys that lay untouched since his last birthday and Christmas. Mostly ones with irritating little bits in that became detached from the rest of the pack and ended up embedded in her foot or snarled up in the vacuum cleaner. She had ashamedly binned a few toys with missing pieces that rendered them unplayable with, and there was nothing worse than trying to reconcile stray pieces with their mother toy. She had felt quite wasteful about it until Catherine had admitted probably sneaking the equivalent of Toyland into the wheelie bin over the years. The badge-maker, however, remained cared for and the pieces were always dutifully returned to the box after a craft session. He had umpteen ‘superhero’ badges reflecting his various egos. His favourite alter ego was ‘Dannyman’. He had designed a badge which was blue based, like Superman’s, but instead of the S there was a D. Stevie had adapted a pair of pyjamas for him with the same design.
Her brain found a tenuous link to Danny’s pyjamas and Matthew. One day, Matt had stuck a paper M on his chest and he and Danny had chased each other around the house saving the world. She had laughed so much she had cried. Just like she was starting to do now, in the middle of flaming Woolworths.
It was useless. Matt was slipping further away from her, and Adam’s silly ‘plan’ wasn’t doing anything to stop it happening.
‘Remember, he hasn’t actually seen you together yet. Matt needs to see you and MacLean together…’ said the part of her brain that apparently was still holding out some hope.
Stevie fished her mobile out of her bag whilst she was standing outside Argos and rang Adam MacLean. He answered after five rings.
‘We need to hammer this home once and for all,’ she said, talking over his hello. ‘They need to see us together next time for definite. How do we do it?’
And Adam, who had been about to ring her with the next stage of his plan, outlined his suggestion.
‘You’re going to do what?’ said Catherine incredulously down the phone.
‘Follow them,’ said Stevie.
‘Why can’t he just keep leaving his car outside your house? They’d soon realize something was going on then, surely?’
‘Yeeesss, but we’ve tried that and so far it hasn’t worked very well. We have to force them, once and for all, into seeing us together. So he’s hiring a car on Sund
ay so we can follow them in secret and then surprise them by turning up where they do.’
‘Bit hit and miss, surely?’
‘Well, with the luck we’re having, probably, but they seem to go out quite a lot and they will definitely go out on Sunday.’ She knew that because Matthew hated Sunday evenings in the house. He had always dragged her out when they could get a babysitter. ‘Come on, let me treat you,’ he would say. Although most of the time she had ended up paying. She wondered how many times he had done the ‘empty wallet’ trick on Jo. Probably never.
Catherine grimaced a bit. ‘It just seems so much desperation and hard work. Are you sure it’s worth it, love?’
Stevie cut her off there and then, refusing to face the fact that every plan they made gave a spark of hope–then seemed doomed to fail.
‘Yes. I want him back, more than ever. I miss him so much, Cath,’ she said, and it was true. Each morning it was becoming harder not to look out of the window and see him get into the car. It pierced her to see them together, but she still wanted to snatch every sight of him that she could. That morning she had stood there, not caring if he caught her watching or not, tears streaming down her face, until commonsense pulled her backwards, just before his door opened and unravelled all her good work so far.
Jo had kissed him when they had got into the car, as if sensing they were being watched and was staking ownership of her man. Jo, who had been her friend, the woman who had gone shopping with her, eaten at her table, cuddled her son, exchanged secrets. It was almost a worse deception than Matthew’s.
There couldn’t be any such thing as karma, otherwise why were they so happy after causing so much destruction, when all Stevie had done was love and her heart was shattered?
Chapter 34
Stevie opened up her eyes to a Saturday morning full of a whole Junesworth of sunshine bursting through the curtains. It had all the promise of a gorgeous, warm photographer’s delight of a day. A gorgeous, warm but awful day. Her wedding day.
By the time she came out of the shower, Danny was up, grinding his fists into his eyes to knock out the sleep and then he smiled.
‘Morning, Mum,’ he said, and she picked him up and cuddled him. He smelt of sleep and beds and he rained kisses on her cheeks and lips. He was so beautiful, she wanted to squash him. His love for her was so sweet and uncomplicated. Why wasn’t adult love as pure and faithful as this?
‘How many hours to Josh’s party, Mum?’ he said, as she put him down.
Hell, she had almost forgotten all about it.
‘Three hours, I think,’ she said, although she would check the invitation pinned up on the noticeboard to make sure.
‘Cool,’ he said, and went off for a wee.
She left the kitchen blinds closed and set the table in the sun lounge instead. The last sight she wanted to see this morning was the couple across the road sticking their tongues down each other’s throats on a day that should have been hers and Matthew’s. Was he thinking about what today should have been too, or had it been wiped from his memory? He had probably forgotten and was having wild sex right at the very time that he should have been getting his last shower as a single man. Stevie presumed he and Jo were having sex all the time. She found that she was almost getting obsessed, thinking about the two of them in bed together and their sex being the stuff of films, with no fumbling for condoms, wet sticky patches or embarrassing squelchy noises. There would only be fluid, powerful, rolling-about stuff and simultaneous orgasms and sweat that smelt of musky perfume. She hauled her thoughts away from across the street and back to the important issue of how to break it to Danny that they had run out of Coco Pops.
Across the street, Jo and Matthew had just finished having sex and were now relaxing in the glowing aftermath. She was nestled in the circle of his arms and talking about weddings. Theirs.
‘I think I fancy a carriage drawn by white horses, and a chocolate wedding cake like Pam’s only a lot bigger–three more tiers.’
Matthew just wanted to lie there and stroke her, not talk about spending money. He had fallen asleep the previous night totting up how much exactly he owed, and it was a lot. At present rate of payback, the debt would be a millstone around his neck for fifteen years, not counting the extra to pay for the wedding that Jo was busy planning. Rough figures intimated that would cost at least twenty thousand, and that wasn’t counting the extravagant honeymoon. He felt slightly sick.
The clock said it was nine-fifteen on Saturday 3 June. If he had stopped at giving Jo MacLean his hankie in the car park that day instead of becoming involved, he would be getting married in a few hours. Contentedly so because nothing was actually wrong with Stevie: she was a good girl–generous, kind, warm, considerate, funny, sparky…and there would be less of a hole in his financial situation. He shuddered and pulled Jo into him. How could he be thinking like that? He didn’t like it one bit.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
‘I should have been getting married today,’ he said.
‘What–and you’re upset that you’re not, is that it?’ Jo pulled away from him.
‘Don’t be silly–hey, come back here!’
She let him drag her back but lay huffily in his arms.
‘It’s not very flattering being in bed with someone whilst he’s thinking about marrying another woman,’ she pouted.
‘I’m not,’ he protested. ‘Sorry, it was tactless and insensitive of me even to mention it. Come on, what can I do to make it up to you?’
‘Well, there is something,’ she said with that look in her eye. Then she lay back as his head disappeared under the duvet.
Josh Parker’s party was being held in the function room in the annexe part of Well Life. There was a bar there and Stevie was all too aware of how well utilized it would be by all the dads who had been dragged along. One in particular, worst luck.
Catherine had arranged to meet her outside and her welcoming smile slid further off her face the closer Stevie got.
‘Christ, you look like shit,’ said Catherine.
‘Thanks,’ said Stevie. ‘It’s not the best I’ve felt.’
Catherine was overcome with guilt. Maybe it would have been better for Stevie to sit in the cottage and mope or get drunk on gin until she hit oblivion. She could have taken Danny to the party for her and let Stevie pretend the day wasn’t happening. She was thinking about it the previous night then got sidetracked when the kids fell victim to some nameless bug that was circulating. Well, all of them except for Gareth, which was lucky, because he was excited about the party and she wouldn’t have wanted him to miss it.
Catherine linked her arm and they walked in together, and immediately Stevie voiced the, ‘Oh God,’ that Catherine was thinking. The function room was not only full of balloons, but party poppers were piled up in small mountains on every table. The disco music was blaring out by the dance floor and the bar was thick with dad-customers. Josh’s own father, Richard, waved over with a balloon in his hand, seemingly specially prepared. He looked like it was his birthday when his eyes first locked on Stevie.
Stevie hated balloons, she hated party poppers and she hated Josh’s noisy dad more than both of them put together. A legacy from her own mum and dad’s shouting days, she suspected, when she had cried herself to sleep, waiting for her fragile world to be split apart. It was almost a relief when it eventually happened. At least the screaming stopped.
Matthew had never come with her to any of the parties, so she had usually been on her own amongst a sea of couples, and what was it about some men that the title ‘thirty-something single mum’ was male-speak for ‘easy prey’? At the first party they had ever been to, Richard Parker had leapt on Stevie’s reaction to a popped balloon with a ‘hilarious’ tirade of many more. She had tried to laugh it off, but after two more hours of having her eardrums tormented, her nerves and her temper were in shreds. Ever since then, he had been there at every children’s party squeaking balloons near her, exploding party
poppers behind her, however deep she was in conversation with anyone else, however much she ignored him, until she wanted to scream at him to leave her alone. But how could she do anything but try to be a good sport? She didn’t want to show Danny up or embarrass herself with an over-reaction, and if Jan Parker found Stevie telling her husband to ‘sod off’, what would she think?
She would probably presume that Stevie was at fault, because wives never quite believed that their partners were the instigators of trouble with another female, did they? Then they would end up not talking and the bad feeling might filter down to the kids, all because some stupid idiot didn’t know when to stop. Yet he would remain blameless in it all, ready to torment another day. So Stevie suffered in painful silence and hoped he would get tired of the joke but he never did, and the more beers he had, the funnier he thought it all was. Today he looked as if he had had quite a lot to drink already.
‘Stand close to me,’ said Catherine. ‘I’ll tell him to piss off, even if you don’t. No wonder his mam called him Dick!’ and with that, she squashed Stevie on a corner table out of the way and went to get the first round in. Josh, Gareth and Danny were dancing–the lady entertainer was demonstrating ‘The Ketchup Song’–but Stevie’s smile at them was quickly knocked off by a big bang in her ear. She squealed and spun around.
‘Gonna get you later big time!’ said Richard Parker, staggering slightly behind her and waggling his finger. His rubbery lips moved over each other as if he was chewing a toffee but couldn’t quite locate it in his mouth.
The Birds and the Bees Page 20
