by Sophie King
Robert stiffened, shooting a ‘Don’t say anything’ look at Ed. How dare he refer to his father as ‘the old man’. ‘Thank you for your time.’
‘What do you mean, ‘Thank you for your time,’ snapped Ed on the way out. ‘That little upstart needed someone to teach him some respect.’
His solicitor’s mouth tightened again. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re in a strong enough position to teach him that.’
‘I don’t understand.’ A flash of alarm went through Ed. He’d have expected Robert to have slapped him on the back by now and tell him there was nothing to worry about.
‘Have you got any enemies, Ed?’
The question took him by surprise. ‘Enemies? There are more than a few old girlfriends who aren’t very happy with me but I wouldn’t call them enemies. Why?’
Robert was visibly twitching now. Odd. He was the kind of man who never moved a foot unless he thought about it first. And only then if it had an affidavit slapped on it. ‘Because I’ve got a funny feeling about that set up. I reckon they’re a front. Someone’s out to get you, Ed. I can’t be sure of that. But I’m not usually wrong.’
Later that night, Ed poured Nancy a large glass of wine from her own drinks cupboard – which should by rights have been his if he’d been the acquisitive type. After all, it had belonged to his father’s grandfather from the days when he’d been a rubber planter in Borneo. Nancy always said that it – along with everything else – would go to him one day because she never intended marrying again. But frankly, he wasn’t that bothered. She was young, he often told her. If she wanted to get married and blow his inheritance, that was fine by him, provided she was happy.
Now, as he watched his stepmother (amazing that she was only eight years older than he was!) curl up on the sofa with her bare feet peeping out from under her Zara jeans, he idly wondered if she had started dating again. There was a certain sheen about her, although that might simply be outrage at what he’d just told her.
‘These people can’t just try to take over the company like that!’ Her eyes flashed and, not for the first time, Ed could see why his father had been so intoxicated. ‘Your father would never have put himself in that position. It doesn’t make sense.’
It hadn’t to Ed either even when Robert had explained it later back in the office. ‘Why would Dad have signed something that handed over twenty per cent of the shares in return for nothing? And why wait until now for them to demand it.’
Nancy ran her finger round the rim of her glass and sucked it. ‘And have you thought about Robert’s question really carefully? The one about whether you have any enemies, Ed? Someone who might be behind this?’
‘Maybe. You get up a lot of people’s noses in this job.’
Nancy’s coffee-coloured chiffon top was beginning to ride up her chest as she lay back on the sofa, making him feel mildly uncomfortable.
‘Look, Nance, I’d better go. The Kid is meant to be revising for some module retakes which means he’ll be out until 3am and I’ll have to wait up.’
‘Sure.’
Nancy kissed him briefly on both cheeks and her smell rocked him; made him feel like going right out there and finding someone who would hold him; hug him. Make him feel it was all right.
‘You know Ed, you’re doing a great job with Jamie. I didn’t know if you would, to be honest. But when I called round the other day, he actually spoke in full sentences.’
Ed groaned. ‘He doesn’t to me. Or to anyone else. It’s ‘yes’ grunts and ‘no’ grunts except when he’s on the mobile when he talks all the time. And don’t even get me onto Facebook. Someone lent me a teen slang book to make sense of it all. Did you know that ‘Labatyd’ is short for ‘life’s a bitch and then you die’. They say it when they’re fed up. And he keeps saying the F word. I’ve tried to make a joke by telling him not to Foxtrot Oscar but he says I’m sad.’
Nancy laughed delightedly. ‘You’ll make a great dad one day, Ed.’
He felt an unexpected pang at the thought. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
‘Seriously.’ She moved forward and took both his hands in hers. ‘You’re a dream boyfriend, Ed. Kind, handsome, funny – and with a ticking biological clock. Most women would leap at you.’
Ed picked up his jacket. ‘Thanks.’
Nancy began to laugh. ‘You’ve gone all pink, Ed. You didn’t actually think I was making a pass at you, did you?’
‘Course not.’ He was at the door in seconds. ‘I’ll let you know what happens. Bye.’
Blimey. That was weird! Really weird! For a minute, he had thought Nancy was coming onto him but now he could see she was just being step-motherly. What would she think of him? Honestly, sometimes he would give anything to belong to a normal family.
‘Gone to Klub. C U later.’
What did they teach them at those crammers nowadays? Couldn’t The Kid even spell ‘club’ properly? And what was he doing out at 1.15am anyway when he had school the next day? Last night, it had been ‘a friend’s birthday party’ even though the boy had definitely had a birthday last month as well. The same friend who’d been ‘driving for ages’ even though he was only seventeen. How scary was that?
Ed paced up and down the hall, wondering what to do. He’d texted back as soon as he’d found Jamie’s message on his mobile when he’d got back but needless to say the little sod wasn’t replying. He’d probably claim his battery had ‘run out’.
‘Keep communication open,’ was what Karen had advised at the last meeting. Funny. He’d spent most of his turn asking the others for advice on bringing up a teenager. And although he was still cut up about Tatiana – of course he was! – he was almost grateful to the little so and so for taking his mind off it.
‘I feel the same,’ said Lizzie who came up with some good stuff sometimes, despite being blonde. ‘If I didn’t have the kids to distract me, I’d go to pieces over Tom going.’
Ah here he was now, judging from all the noise. Bloody hell, he’d brought back a couple of girls with him too!
‘Wosup, Big Bruv!’
The Kid came stumbling in through the door in the same t-shirt he’d been wearing all week, an Indian bead necklace and a pair of jeans that had long lost contact with his hips and were now travelling downwards. Despite this he looked incredibly young with a virtually flawless complexion that was lightly tanned from his recent holiday with his mother before she’d gone into the Priory.
But it was the people he was with who caught Ed’s attention. Two very beautiful, extremely pale girls, one on each arm, who could almost be twins with their identical orange and green streaked hair and black cat-like, heavily Kohl-ed eyes not to mention their chalky white foundation which looked as though it had been airbrushed on. Bloody hell!
Jamie grinned at him and the light from the wall lamp caught the bottom lip ring making it wink at him along with the large white Polo shaped earrings he’d acquired in the last week. ‘He-LLO, humour.’ He said it with an emphasis on the humour bit, suggesting Ed didn’t have any. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Big Bruv?’
‘He said you’d understand,’ chirruped the one on his left. ’Kept going on about how open-minded you are and all that!’
Jamie planted a kiss on the back of the first girl’s neck. ‘Sorry, babe. Did that hurt? It’s these braces they make me wear – they make great love bite marks!’
Ed found himself rooted to the spot, unable to say anything.
‘Come on, Big Bruv. Don’t act so shocked! It’s not as though they’re complete strangers, are they? Though I agree, it WAS a coincidence meeting them at the club. Don’t you think it’s nang?’
Nang? If he remembered correctly from the teen book, that meant cool. But this wasn’t nang. This wasn’t cool at all. How could Jamie? How could THEY?
One of the girls shook her hair – it had been black when he’d last seen it – and slid towards him. He tried to talk but nothing would come out.
‘Hi, Ed, zarling,’ p
urred Tatiana, holding out her cheek for him to kiss it. ‘Just as well we ver zare. Your leetle bruther was trying to get een on a fake id. Just as well ve know ze club owner.’ She kissed his cheek. ‘Now tell me. How have you bin doing?’
You wanted to know what happened. So here goes. After the dinner party, he was different. Chatty almost. But then, a week ago, he went back to being cool. I couldn’t do anything right. Why hadn’t I remembered to buy more light bulbs? How could I have forgotten?
Everything I do seems to irritate him.
So I go back to the old remedies. ‘How about a holiday?’ I said, looking up from the Saturday travel section.
‘I can’t take any time off work.’ His tone suggested I ought to know that anyway.
‘Just a three night break,’ I replied, handing him an article on St Mawes. We gave up going abroad years ago, as you know all too well.
‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘So long as it’s over a weekend.’
I am filled with a relief that lifts me up.
He’ll be all right when we get away. He always is.
Session Five: Don’t Make The Same Mistake Twice!
Most of us like security.
And that’s why, without realising it, we sometimes go back to old patterns because they feel ‘safe’ – especially at Christmas!
That can mean finding someone else who’s just like our old partner.
Or it can mean repeating your mistakes – like being too needy.
Just warning you!
22
LIZZIE
‘Are you sure it’s wise to make your husband jealous?’ Karen had asked during the last meeting when she’d talked about her plans to get Tom back.
At the time, Lizzie had been certain she was doing the right thing but since that 8pm/8am phone call, he had failed dismally to question her about her private life and restricted communication to terse emails.
‘Why do you want him back after what he did?’ Mum kept demanding.
Simple! If Sharon hadn’t made a move (and Tom had sworn it had been that way round), nothing would have happened in the first place.
Meanwhile, time was going by – almost Christmas! – and Sharon The Slut was getting bigger. The thought made her feel violently sick. Somehow, she had to get him back. Make them into a proper family again.
The worst of it was that Jack and Sophie were acting normally which was a sure sign that they were bleeding inside! They didn’t seem at all put out that their dad only appeared once a week and then took them bowling or off to Alton Towers (something he’d never done when he’d been at home full-time).
Desperate measures called for desperate means or was it the other way round? There was only one person she felt like asking for advice after Karen’s warning comment. Someone with plenty of experience.
‘Course I don’t mind you ringing me at work,’ Ed had said although he did sound a bit harassed. ‘If I was Tom, I might be feeling a bit panicky now about starting a second family. And with any luck, this Sharon woman might have loads of pregnant hormones flying around which could make her tricky to live with.’
Lizzie nodded, hoping no one else in her sixteenth floor office could hear what she was saying. Not that there were many people left, mind you. Most had been ‘let go’. At this rate, she’d be printing the bloody magazine herself. ‘The kids said she snapped at Tom the other day at Alton Towers.’
‘Great. So what you need to do is ask him round for a nice quiet family evening but without a pretend washing machine leak, this time. Show him what it’s like being part of a normal family. Make him miss what he left.’
So she left a message on Tom’s answerphone at work, asking if he’d like to come to supper later in the week ‘so the kids can see you properly’. This time, she told herself, she’d be organised. Get something in from the deluxe counter. Find proper napkins which were still probably lurking at the bottom of the linen bin with bits of mouldy food stuck on them from the last time they’d used them (Easter? Christmas?). What was it Ed had said again? Show him what it was like to be part of a normal family. If only she knew what that was.
Thanks, Tom had replied on her answerphone. Thursday would be great. He’d bring the children’s Christmas presents round at the same time.
Christmas presents? Wouldn’t he be there on the day to hand those over?
‘Don’t say anything now,’ Ed had warned when she’d rung again. (He really did sound harassed this time – perhaps she’d better stop bothering him.) ‘Wait till he gets there. Face to face is always better. Otherwise we just lie.’
Nice to know the male species was so reliable.
And now Thursday was here and she was still stuck at work despite her intentions to get away early and the phone kept bleeping with messages from Dad which she didn’t have time to open and Max, the editor-in-chief, had summoned her in for a ‘short meeting’ in his office to discuss her ideas for the next issue.
Shit. Sorry. Sugar!
Max was younger than her and was very keen to keep rising. He was also of dubious gender (the pictures editor had sworn he was male turned female and the subs were rooting for the other way round). He also used real handkerchiefs and not squashed up bits of loo roll. In other words, he was more grown up than she was.
‘Lizzie. Come in.’
He patted the chair next to him. That was another of his quirks. No one sat opposite the ed-in-chief because they were ‘all in this together’. Instead, you had to sit next to him and breathe out as often as possible in order to avoid breathing in the eau de whatever that he always wore.
‘Nice ideas. I particularly like the one about how to make your man fall in love with you all over again. Impossible of course. But you’ll find a case history – you always do. That’s why you’re so good at your job, Lizzie!’
On any other occasion, she’d have glowed with the praise. Max didn’t always show such enthusiasm about his staff’s work but since he started talking about his ‘new partner’, he was becoming dangerously pleasant. Everyone said so.
With any luck, it would mean he’d renew her contract which ran out in a couple of months. Lizzie knew she’d been dead lucky so far. After Jack had been born, she’d negotiated working hours which allowed her to work partly at home and partly in the office provided she delivered her copy on time. It didn’t go down too well with the childless brigade in the office but, thanks to the union, they couldn’t do anything about it especially as she’d agreed to oversee shoots when they’d made her editor.
Not that that was anything to be proud of. If anything, it meant her head was next on the block. That’s how it worked on magazines. Circulation down? Chop off the editor’s head. Re-invent the readership. Or the content. Or both.
Max fixed her with a perfectly formed smile thanks, no doubt, to some expensive orthodontist. How’s that piece going on ‘No Sex, I’m Pregnant’?’
‘Great!’ She beamed, hoping it would reassure him. That one had been a bit of a tough nut to crack but she’d finally come up with someone who was prepared to be photographed (not in bed, obviously as the whole point was that IT wasn’t going on) for a fee. Even better, it wasn’t one of the women from school or someone else whom she’d had to become best friends with overnight in order to persuade them. It was a woman from a national single-parent group. ‘I was always too tired for sex and it finished my marriage,’ she’d told Lizzie during the interview. ‘He just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want it.’
Was that why Tom had gone, Lizzie had wondered while writing up the piece. Because she’d all too often been too tired for sex?
‘You all right, Lizzie?’ asked Kelly, when she returned to her desk after her Max meeting. Kelly was one of the subs (fresh from college; acrylic nails; orange streaks in hair) who sat opposite and who had been given the agony aunt page as soon as she'd started, to give the magazine a ‘contemporary slant’ (again).
‘Yes. Why?’
The sub looked pointedly at Lizzie’
s hands. How weird! They seemed to be tearing up the photograph of Tom that she always kept on her desk. The one of him on their wedding day.
Kelly pushed her chair towards Lizzie’s and unwrapped something from a thin strip of silver foil. ‘Want to tell me about it?’
So somehow, Lizzie found herself breaking all the office rules and telling her everything. Tom, Sharon, the baby . . . And it was then that Kelly had come up with the brainwave. A far better one than Ed’s. ‘You say this Sharon is a bit of a flirt.’
‘She is! You ought to see her with the dads at school during parents evening. And the stuff she wears! Her chest gets more fresh air than her mouth.’
‘So,’ said Kelly slowly, chewing her gum thoughtfully, ‘how do you know the baby is Tom’s?’
Why hadn’t she thought of that herself?! All she had to do now was persuade Tom that Sharon had slept around (well she’d practically pole danced up the school gates in those ridiculously low-cut tops in midwinter) and get him to get her to take a test. The Slut would be so offended that with any luck they’d have an argument and maybe . . . well just maybe, coupled with the plan for next week, it would be all right again.
Shitsorrysugar. Lizzie groaned at the email that had just popped up from the chief sub.
‘Where is copy on ‘No Sex, I’m Pregnant’?’
Right. It was all fingers on the keyboard now until the end of the day (virtually night if you looked outside at the dark with all the other little glittering office lights). By the time she actually emerged from the building, it was gone 7pm.
Mum, thank heavens, was picking up the children – blast, she hadn’t texted Dad back – so now all she had to do was get them from Mum and Dad’s, persuade Jack to act out of character (e.g. behave); find something sexy to wear, heat up that M & S mend-our-marriage dish and persuade Tom to stay the night.
