by Sophie King
By the end of the day, that lovely Christmassy glow was beginning to wear off. It had been manic at the office with everyone wanting to sell their attic. If Karen had a pound for every seller who wanted to put in the line ‘Would make fantastic Christmas present’, she wouldn’t need to do this job.
‘Course you would,’ said Sandra who worked alongside her. ‘You love it. You know you do although you ought to be careful, love. You’re becoming addicted like my sister and eBay. That reminds me. Got rid of those puppies yet?’
‘All but one.’ Karen made a little face. ‘It was so sad seeing them go but they were all good homes. Two of my neighbours actually. You don’t know anyone who wants the last little one, do you?’
‘The one who has so far chewed his way through those shoes you bought last week and managed to eat his way through your kitchen cupboards?’ Sandra laughed. ‘No thanks.’
It was true that the last puppy – Sam, she’d called him - was a bit of a handful. She had to dash back that very lunch time to take him out even though Adam and Hayley, bless them, also popped in when they could.
Josh adored him. ‘Can we keep him, Gran-nan?’
She’d thought of that herself and if it wasn’t for his taste in cats, she might have given in. But recently he’d decided it was great fun to leap on one – especially Orlando – and try to straddle him. The cats understandably were terrified. Meanwhile, Sam was getting older and bigger. If she didn’t find a home for him soon, it would be difficult.
‘Have you put up a notice at the vet’s?’
She had but maybe she’d pop in to check it was still up. If she left early, she might just be able to do it on the way back before they closed.
‘Classifieds!’
Sandra was on her headphones again after their short coffee break. ‘Can I say who’s calling?’
They weren’t meant to get private calls at work which was why she’d told Hayley and Adam never to ring unless it was an emergency. So her heart started to pound and wouldn’t stop even when she heard Hugh’s voice which meant it was all right. Hayley hadn’t left Adam. Adam hadn’t found out about the baby. At least, not yet.
‘Karen, I’m sorry to call you at work but I needed to speak to you. Is that all right?’
Was he going to ask her out? OK, he was a bit stuffy but there was something about those rather distinguished features and the way he looked at her as though she was saying something really rather interesting. But he was in the group! So she couldn’t do what she usually did which was go out to dinner with him and then gently explain that she really was quite happy with life on her own, thank you very much because after all, she was still legally married even if they weren’t living together . . .
‘I wondered if you’d mind giving me Alison’s phone number.’
He’d rung her at work for someone else’s number? He didn’t want to ask her out? How stupid had she been?
‘I’m not sure.’ She hesitated. ‘We’re not really meant to give out numbers in the group.’
‘That’s a shame.’ Hugh gave what sounded like an exasperated sigh at the other end. ‘She’s looking for a lodger, I believe, and I think I might be able to help her.’
‘I see! Then I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.’
Funny, she thought, putting down the phone and ignoring Sandra’s ‘Who was that then?’ look. Hugh didn’t seem like the type to rent. Out of all the members, he seemed like a bit of a closed book. He still hadn’t mentioned what he did for a living or his family although he had once referred to a sister. Maybe she’d get a chance to find out more at the next meeting. There was definitely something about Hugh that was different. And maybe something about her too. Her meeting with Paul had somehow made her want to have someone. Someone who would prove to her husband that she had moved on too.
The light in the lounge was on, she noticed, walking down her road after work, even though she was sure she had turned it off that morning.
If someone had broken in, thought Karen, wondering if she was doing the right thing in opening the front door on her own, surely Sam would be making a fuss. But knowing him, he’d have licked any intruder to death or demanded that he played ball with him.
‘Mum?’
Adam!
He was sitting on the kitchen counter playing with the puppy who ran up to her excitedly, burying his nose in her legs. Adam looked a bit pale.
‘Are you ill?’
‘No. But I think Hayley might be. She’s not eating anything, Mum, and she keeps going to see the doctor but won’t tell me what’s wrong.’ He looked at her again just as he had when he was fourteen and they had left Paul. ‘Did you have that chat with her?’
Her shoulders began to sweat. ‘I tried to but she said she was just tired.’
Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie.
‘Maybe I’ve been going on too much about having another baby. Mind you, fat chance of that happening at the moment. She really snapped at me the other day and demanded if I had any idea what it was like to give birth.’
This was getting worse. ‘Why don’t you just leave it for a bit and wait until she’s calmer. Then have a quiet natter. I’ll have Josh if you want to go out to dinner sometime.’
‘Thanks.’
He was still frowning. ‘There’s something else too.’
There always was with Adam. So like Paul. Even now, as he was speaking, she could see the boy she fell in love with. The complicated boy who just had to touch her to make her do things she had never dreamed of.
‘Gran told me about Dad wanting to see you every now and then.’
Doris shouldn’t have said.
‘It’s hard, Mum.’ His eyes were boring into hers. ‘I know it is. Marriage isn’t easy. I know that now. But maybe it would be nice if you did see him again. Especially at this time of the year.’
Christmas! Christmas that made you do things you should and things you shouldn’t. All because of one day where you felt you had to be perfect.
‘I’m not going to play happy families . . .’
‘I know. But we can be civilised, can’t we? Isn’t that what you were telling your group the other night. I overheard you.’
It was true. ‘All right.’ She tipped Sam’s cereal into his bowl instead of measuring it out carefully as she usually did. ‘I’ll ring him.’
25
ED
‘So everyone,’ chirped Karen brightly at the NOT MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE session. ‘I know this time of the year can be particularly tricky when you’re on your own. But try to focus on the positive. In my experience, it’s better not to think about things you used to do as a family . . .’
Oh dear. Lizzie was looking a bit misty-eyed and they’d only just started.
‘Do new things.’ She looked around. ‘How’s this month been for everyone?’
For once, Ed told himself as he tried to relax back into Karen’s slightly worn sofa which was beginning to make him itch (dog fleas?), keep your mouth shut. Don’t tell them. They wouldn’t understand.
‘I had a date!’ Violet beamed and somehow managed to continue munching through the packet of cranberry raisins she always brought with her to sessions.
What?! Someone asked this woman out?
‘It was someone I met at the gym!’
Her beady little black eyes swept round the room, resting slightly on each one of them in turn as though challenging them to question her.
Alison – who reminded him of a cross between Nancy and Sandra Heseltine, whom he’d always fancied – clapped her hands together as though Purple Woman had won some sort of prize. ‘That’s wonderful, Violet!’
Bet Violet wasn’t her real name! The woman just had a fetish about purple, that was all. She was talking now but he just couldn’t concentrate. Kept finding himself drifting in and out of other people’s tidal waves because all he could really think about was what was happening to him. Even now, as he fidgeted on the sofa (they were at Karen’s again because everyone els
e seemed to think it was cosier than the Hall), that horrible vision of Tatiana drifting in through the front door on The Kid’s arm and her girlfriend (the very term made him want to throw up) on the other, made him feel cold and sick and hysterical at the same time. And then there was all that legal stuff . . .
‘And how did it go?’ Karen was asking.
‘Very well!’ Purple Woman was beaming. ‘He’s one of the trainers and says he’s going to take me in hand. It won’t be long, he says, until he gets me looking the way I used to.’
Lizzie, who’d just admitted that she’d tricked someone at work into coming round when she knew her husband was going to be there, to make him jealous, began to giggle and then unsuccessfully tried to hide with a cough.
‘Just be careful, won’t you?’ Karen glanced round the group as though looking for someone else to help her out. ‘Dating after a divorce is never easy. Some people jump straight from the frying pan and into the fire without thinking.’
Interesting? Was it his imagination or was our Karen casting a very specific look in Alison’s direction? Perhaps she was dating again. It wouldn’t surprise him. She was pretty amazing for her age.
‘And what about you, Ed?’
It was that bloke Hugh speaking. Somehow Ed had never liked him. There was something about him which wasn’t right, although he couldn’t put his finger on it. That slightly doctorish air which made him seem superior to the rest of them. And the way he was pretending to listen to Ed’s stilted reply but really glancing every now and then at Alison, giving her the look over.
‘Fine.’ His voice came out in a grunt without his permission so he tried to inject a bit of levity into the next sentence. ‘Absolutely fine, thanks. Never been better.’
OK. So that was overdoing it a bit. They were all looking at him now. ‘Honestly.’ He coughed. ‘I think it’s being here that’s done it. You know. The group. All this . . .’ He waved his hand expansively round the room. ‘All this camaraderie.’
Purple woman frowned. Every time he looked at her, the phrase ‘Violet creams’ kept coming into his head.
‘Friendship,’ he added hastily. ‘And it’s really nice being in a homely environment like this.’
Yeah right. With all that puppy smell everywhere and the frayed sofa.
‘What happened, Ed?’ asked Karen quietly.
This woman should be a professional interrogator.
So he told them. All about The Kid who was driving him nuts with not getting up, and eating all his food from the fridge when it wasn’t mealtimes because when it was, he was asleep or clubbing or doing anything apart from what he was meant to be doing.
Alison shrugged. ‘Typical teenager behaviour.’
‘What about my stepbrother picking up my ex-fiancée, then?’ He could feel all the anger and hurt now, rising up through his chest. ‘Is that typical?’ He glanced at the handout. ‘Is that what you call ‘repeating the same mistake’?’
Even Purple Woman looked sorry for him now. So he had to describe how The Kid had come in the other night with Tatiana and her gay friend and then got drunk at his place while he went to bed and tried to forget what was going on downstairs.
‘But how did they meet up? Lizzie was frowning. ‘It surely wasn’t coincidence?’
Ed gulped. ‘She said it was. Tatiana rang the next day to apologise. Said she was at a club with . . . with her friend and The Kid turned up. They got chatting – they’d met a couple of times before at family dos – and then he asked her back for a drink and she said she only agreed to see me and check I was all right but . . .’
Violet snorted. ‘That’s weird. Reckon you’re better off out of that one.’
Not nearly as weird as an obese violet woman and her gym instructor. ‘There’s something else.’ He braced himself. Might as well tell them everything. ‘I’m in trouble. Big trouble. Some other kid is trying to say he’s got a stake in my company.’
Hugh perked up. ‘How?’
Ed ran a hand through where his hair used to be (a habit he’d never been able to get out of). ‘I’m not sure exactly. It’s very complicated, according to my solicitor. But apparently my father left him some shares which had to be passed on after a certain number of years. And now that time has come.’
‘Interesting.’
The man was speaking with authority from the way he was stroking his chin; a mannerism Ed had always associated with middle-age itch. ‘Actually, this is an area I’m familiar with, in a manner of speaking.’
Purple Woman leaned forward. ‘Speak English, can’t you? Spit it out. What exactly do you do?’
‘I have my fingers in various pies.’ The man smiled smoothly. ‘But in my experience, when a man – or a woman – leaves a legacy like this, it usually points to one thing.’
He took off his glasses, polished them and returned them to his not inconsiderable nose. ‘Forgive me for saying this. But is there a possibility that this young man you mention, is actually a half brother?’
Why hadn’t he thought of that himself? It all made perfect sense. His father – randy old goat – had had enough affairs for a half-brother to pop up.
‘It’s possible,’ said Nancy slowly when she’d called in to the office after his phone call. They were sitting on the sofa in his room with the large frieze of The Thames behind him that his father had had specially commissioned for the wedding before Nancy’s. ‘But I do think he would have told me.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘I know it’s difficult to believe this, Ed, darling, but your father and I told each other everything. Including the fact that the love of his life was your mother. I understood that. Although I was, apparently, a close second.’
Ed’s heart lurched. There was only one subject he couldn’t talk about to anyone else – not even with Nancy.
‘This man I know . . . He has links with a private detective agency. Says he might be able to help.’
Nancy shrugged. ‘Why not? I used one once to check up on someone. It cost me a lot but it was worth it, just for peace of mind.’
‘Really?’ He looked at his stepmother with new interest. ‘Then you don’t think it’s mad?’
‘Go for it. If this young man is demanding what he says is his right, then you have the right to check his background. Now look, darling, I’ve really got to go. I’ve got an appointment.’
He had to hand it to her. Nancy didn’t need to work after she’d married his father but she insisted on keeping on her job as a fashion buyer for a prestigious department store. ‘I like to keep busy,’ she had said when he’d suggested she took it a bit easier after Dad had died. No doubt she had several admirers. What would happen if she married again? Bloody hell, Christmas would get so busy that they’d have to have two December 25ths.
‘What about you?’ She gave him a knowing look. ‘Any girls on the horizon?’
‘No way! I make it a rule not to start a new relationship at this time of the year. If you give them a nice present, they think you are serious. If it’s small, they put you down as mean. And even worse, they want you to meet the family at some festive do.’
Nancy roared with laughter as he walked her to the door past the pretty auburn receptionist who gave him a shy smile. Catching it, his stepmother squeezed his arm. ‘Just go slowly this time, whoever you pick.’
‘Thanks for the advice.’ He placed his cheek against hers briefly. ‘By the way, who was it that you asked that detective to check out?’
Nancy smiled sadly. ‘I think we both know that, don’t we darling? But don’t worry. He hadn’t been doing what I feared he had. Your dad really loved me, Ed. Almost as much as he loved you. He might not have shown it but he did. And that’s why we owe it to him to do the right thing about this share business.’ She touched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Don’t you think?’
Did Nancy mean what he thought she meant? About doing the right thing? About not getting too close because that wouldn’t be the right thing?
Why, wondered
Ed, as he walked back to his office, did he keep falling in love with the wrong women? Why couldn’t he find a nice uncomplicated girl and just settle down and have children which is, after all, what he really wanted to do.
Don’t look across at the reception desk. Don’t.
Too late.
Bugger.
She wasn’t there.
Diving into his office, he shut the door behind him. Right. That was it. Three calls; one which he’d promised Karen he would make. The second that he’d promised Nancy he’d make. And the third that he promised himself he’d make.
‘Hugh?’
Why did some people’s voice messages sound as though it was really them answering in person? ‘It’s Ed. Perhaps you could ring me back when you can. I’ve decided to take you up on your offer. Thanks.’
The second wasn’t so easy. ‘Tatiana? I know you’re there, listening to your answerphone. You were out of order coming round the other week with your girlfriend. Stay out of my life. Got it? And stay away from The Kid too.’
The third was to another mobile. This time, he used the office phone otherwise the little sod would recognise his number and not pick up. ‘Whatsup?’
‘What do you mean, what’s up?’ Ed tried to sound firm. ‘It’s after lunch and you’re meant to be at college. The cleaner will be there in a minute, God help her.’
‘She’s already here. I told her the Durex packets were yours.’ There was a snort of laughter. ‘She believed me too. ‘Sides, remember the twelve hours a night sleep rule for teenagers? I didn’t get to bed until 5am so I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do. Clocked?’
Clocked? That meant ‘understood’, didn’t it?
‘If you don’t get your arse off to college, I am going to come and kick you out of bed myself. And another thing, stay away from Tatiana.’
There was a snort of amusement. ‘You’re so boring, Ed! What happened to the big stepbrother I knew who understood how to have fun?’
Fun? ‘And another thing, where’s my razor?’
