“Don’t fuss so much, Sandra,” Granny Elsie says, patting me on the shoulder.
“At least until your birthday,” Mum adds. “It will be lovely to all be together for your birthday.”
I had forgotten about my impending twenty-ninth, on Sunday.
“She looks fine to me,” Gran says. “And besides, work will be good—keep her mind off of things.” Granny Elsie can be very astute sometimes. Although I have not mentioned a word of my disaster with Luke, she keeps giving me these curious, supportive little pats.
I can’t even spill the beans and share this with my lovely friends. Much as I love them, the only way to keep a secret, which it must be, is by not telling a soul.
Charlie is a gossip hound. He just can’t help himself. He has the best of intentions, but he always manages to let things slip out of his mouth, and before you know it, half of the population of London knows all about it, too.
Jess, dear girl, has a very expressive face and tells Aster everything. And let’s face it, if Aster finds out, he’ll probably write a song entitled “Achy Breaky Heart” or “Can’t Help Loving That Man of Mine,” or similar, featuring a woman who has been deceived by a married lover, and then dedicate it to me, so everyone knows who it’s about.
And Carmen has very strong feelings about cheating men—she wouldn’t mean to, but she wouldn’t be able to hide her feelings or her strong views from Rowan Smythe-Lawrence. Or from Luke.
You see, despite my misery, I have thought about this very carefully. I may be a shriveled-up prune inside, but I cannot bear the thought of causing pain to Rowan Smythe-Lawrence.
I have to face the fact that my friends may all, highly probably, meet her. I also have to face the issue that I will probably meet her myself.
It stands to reason that if Luke is one of Ned’s best friends, and he came to the engagement party, then the odds are extremely high that Luke and Rowan have also been invited to the wedding. Which means that I can’t breathe a word to Flora, either, on account of it upsetting her and casting a black cloud on her special day.
And as for me having to see Luke again, I will face that particular problem when I come to it…
But I’m feeling much stronger, I really am. After two days of being coddled and fussed over, I have moved on from hurt and disbelief and bewildered pain to anger. To cold fury. Aimed at Luke, but mainly at myself for doing something so stupid and out of character.
Never again.
“I could call Charlie for you again and tell him you’re taking just one more day, if you like,” Mum says hopefully. “I’m sure he can manage. You do look peaky. Doesn’t she look peaky, Mother?” she asks Granny Elsie.
“Nothing a bit of fresh air won’t sort out,” Gran says. “What do you think of this?” she asks me kindly, holding up a red Stetson with a large black feather tucked into one side. “Alf thinks red is the true me, on account of me bein’ exciting.” She winks at me and places the red concoction atop her blue rinse.
“It’s gorgeous,” I smile, because the sight is just so—so incongruous.
“That’s better,” Gran tells me, smiling back. “You have a good day at work—don’t go worryin’ about things you shouldn’t be worryin’ about,” she adds as she heads to the stairs, the red hat bobbing as she sways in what she considers true cowboy style. “I got to get ready for me line dance practice with Alf—we’re doing an exhibition next week and I want to be perfect.”
“What happened to Sid?” I ask.
“I don’t want to seem too keen,” Gran calls as she climbs the stairs. “I haven’t decided which one of ’em’s the most comfy fit yet. I’m keeping me options open, so I’m seein’ both of ’em.” Wise woman, my Gran.
“Honestly, your Gran will insist on making an exhibition of herself,” Mum says. “That episode with Sid has turned her head. She thinks she’s a sex siren.”
“Thanks for everything, Mum,” I tell her, kissing her cheek. She’s been great, she really has. And despite all her fussing, it was good to be home with her for a few days.
“At least—at least come back here tonight so that I won’t worry about you having a relapse,” she says, handing me a woolen hat. “And put this on. You lose most of your body heat through your head, you know. It’s a medically proven fact.”
Medically proven fact inevitably leads me back to Luke, and I take the yellow-and-orange wooly hat, in which I wouldn’t usually be seen dead, and pull it on my head. Bad hat sense must run in the family.
But right now I don’t care. I look terrible, anyway, and the hat will only distract people from looking at my washed-out face and old, comfy black sneakers. They make my feet look like bargepoles, but I couldn’t wear my good sneakers, on account of them being covered in sick. Ruined. I had to throw them away…
What a fool I was to take such a risk, I think, as I set off down the road, pulling the collar of my quilted, heavily padded coat around me as the cold chill of the February air joins forces with the freeze that has taken hold of my body. The coat adds about twenty pounds and twenty years to me, but I don’t care about that, either, because it’s the warmest thing I have at Mum’s house. I just need to feel warm again.
What an idiot I was to be taken in by a smooth, charming, lying, deceitful operator. I mean, I was such an easy conquest. I practically threw myself at him. How he must have laughed at the effortlessness with which he got me into bed, I think, as I push money into the ticket machine. All that acting endearing and nervous. What a farce.
And as for his bloody note, well, I ripped it to shreds and flushed it down the toilet, where it belongs. Yes, I’ve washed that man right outta my hair, as the song goes, and I think of another of Gran’s favorite old-time music hall songs…the one where the cheating, lying man can’t get away to marry his sweetheart, because his wife won’t let him.
Honestly, the cheek of Luke Benton. Wants to see me again—Indeed! Has a complicated life that he needs to talk to me about. That’s such a good line, I think, scowling at the poor, innocent London Underground employee as I feed my ticket through the turnstile and march toward the packed elevator.
I wonder, as I get carried along by the flow of people into an even more tightly packed tube, how he would have broached the subject of, you know, that little complication of being married.
“My wife doesn’t understand me,” is, I believe, the favored line. “We’re just staying together for the sake of the children,” is always a handy favorite, too.
Oh. My. God. It never even occurred to me until right this moment that he might have kids.
The train lurches, and my stomach lurches along with it, and I fall into nightmare mode, because this episode in my life has cured me of daydreams.
Picture this: Luke and I are sharing an illicit weekend of passion at my house. Illicit because he still hasn’t gotten around to telling me about his wedding certificate and offspring. His cover for his wife: He’s attending a medical conference in Geneva, while she is home looking after three golden-haired children. Golden-haired because this is my nightmare and they take after their angelic mother rather than their devilish father.
I have also given them names and ages, because it adds greatly to my misery and anger if I can humanize them. They are Holly, age two, Sam, age four, and Luke Junior, age six.
Rowan, while emptying the pockets of his suits so that she can take them to the dry cleaner, because she is the kind of woman who takes care of these details, finds a note I wrote to Luke.
My note says, “Darling Luke, I’m hot and willing for our weekend of passion. Don’t forget to pick up a giant box of condoms,” or something equally obvious, and because I want myself to feel even worse than I already do, it also contains my address.
And just after Luke and I have had wild, rampant sex on the rug in the living room, the doorbell rings. I pull on my bathrobe and open the door, because I’m expecting it to be our food delivery.
But instead of pepperoni pizza, it’s Rowan and thr
ee sweet little angel faces with despairing, accusing eyes.
From now on, I vow, as I walk up the tube station steps and into Notting Hill Gate, I am going to be the perfect safety zone.
No more risk…no more broken hearts.
“Darling, you look terrible,” is what Charlie says the moment he sets eyes on me when I push open the door and walk into the main reception area at Odd Jobs, and I’m touched by his sympathy for a few seconds until I realize that he’s referring to my apparel rather than my face.
“What on earth are you wearing? Is this some kind of fashion development I know nothing about?”
“I hope you’re not still contagious,” Shirley, our secretary, says rather dourly as she peers up into my face from her computer screen.
“Nice to see you all, too,” I say dryly. I know this is only her way, but am a bit hurt, all the same.
“Only I’ve just got over a cold and I don’t want to catch the flu. You know how long it takes me to recover from these things,” she adds. Shirley, who is forty-nine, suffers with her illnesses.
Shirley’s colds are always worse than everyone else’s. All of her medical problems are worse than everyone else’s, because although she is a remarkably organized person, Shirley can be a bit of a hypochondriac at times.
“Yes—we lived through each one with you,” Gloria, our receptionist, tells her. “You should eat properly, then you wouldn’t get ill so much.”
This is one of the dramas that make office life so interesting, I remind myself before I can groan. Shirley, who is always trying to lose twenty pounds, has tried all the diets under the sun, and eating more is not on her agenda.
“God, she’s right. I missed the pinched look on your face due to the astonishing headwear,” Charlie says. “Good ploy, by the way, for removing attention from the pinched face.”
“She just needs a few square meals inside her, that’s all,” Gloria, unsurprisingly, says again. Good, square meals are something she believes in with conviction.
Gloria is, we guess, at least sixty, based on the fact that she has two children in their forties, but she won’t commit herself to actually telling us what her real age is. She’s five feet nothing, and one hundred pounds, and her square meals are something she amazes us with on a daily basis.
I’ve never seen anyone so tiny eat so much. Or someone so remarkably well preserved. If I didn’t know better, I would give her fifty-five, max.
“I must introduce you to my mother,” I tell her, because Mum has been providing good, square meals along with the chicken soup. Plus, I’m glad to talk about the mundane, rather than get cross-examined about my time off. I’m still nervous that I will spill all if pushed…
“Don’t you worry, you tell your mum that I’ll make sure you continue the good work,” she tells me before picking up the telephone. “Good morning, Odd Jobs, this is Gloria speaking. How may I help you?” she bubbles down the telephone line.
“Are you sure you should even be here? We can manage without you for a couple more days if you need it,” Charlie says, peering at me with real concern, and I am almost undone. “You really don’t look so hot.”
“Thanks for the concern,” I say a bit croakily. “But really, I’m fine.”
“No, we can’t actually manage without her,” Colin, the voice of reason, says in his deadpan voice. “Glad to see you back, by the way,” he adds to me, and then back to Charlie, “not unless you want to sort out Mrs. Hamilton’s Brutus, the condom testers, the doggy breath sniffer and the Bingo caller.”
“Oh, good,” I say, thinking of condoms, which is not good and makes me think of Luke. I push him determinedly out of my mind. “I’m ready for a challenging challenge—bring them on.” I begin to unbutton my coat.
“I’ve got your friend Jess on the line,” Gloria tells me, and I head toward my office. “She says it’s urgent.”
“Oh, good,” I say again but don’t mean. Not because I don’t want to speak to Jess, but because I’m worried that in our first post-Luke conversation, I’ll slip up and tell her all about him.
“It’s me, it’s only me,” Jess says after I close my office door and pick up. “How are you feeling? Are you better? We were worried about you.”
“I’m good,” I tell her. “Just, you know, a touch of the stomach flu. No other reason for me being incommunicado, hahaha, just one of those fluke bugs you get from time to time,” I babble, and then stop. God, I even sound guilty.
“That’s what I thought,” she chirrups in that cheerful way of hers. And then she renders me speechless. “Anyway, the thing is. The thing is I’ve taken your advice and given away my trust fund to charity so that I can properly ascertain whether or not Aster loves me or my money. And I need a job so that I can, you know, pay the bills, and eat and everything. Have you got anything that might suit me?”
“Slow down a minute.” I can already feel the headache getting worse. “Just run that by me again. You’ve given away all of your trust fund?”
“No, I’m not that stupid,” she says, and I sigh with relief. And then she adds, “Only for this half year. I get the second half at the end of June, but Aster doesn’t know that.”
“But…” How will you survive? is the question that immediately springs to my lips as I try to remember exactly when I told her to give away vast amounts of cash and pauper herself, but before I can ask her, Jess launches into another speech.
“Don’t worry. I’ve paid all the current bills, and everything, and I’ve stocked the refrigerator and freezer, and I’ve kept three hundred pounds until I can start earning.”
And I’m panicking. Jess, you see, has never had a real job. When I say real job, I mean one that pays money. Not that she’s lazy, because since college and her fine arts degree she’s always been remarkably busy. She’s always either taking interesting courses or knitting or volunteering for all kinds of charitable things. But she’s not exactly qualified for anything.
“Why don’t you come in so that we can have a chat about what type of thing you might do,” I say carefully. Well, I asked for challenging.
“Excellent. Excellent. I’m free now. How about now?”
“How about this afternoon, after I have a chance to review what we have, and what might suit you?” I don’t want to dampen her enthusiasm, but really, this one needs some thought.
Looking on the bright side, though, this might just be the key to getting rid of Aster.
“I like the idea of the supermarket job,” Jess tells me after lunch, which surprises me, because I didn’t think that stacking shelves and working the checkout would be her kind of thing.
“How about the admin job at the museum?” I ask her, because I thought it would be perfect for her. The job is very junior, and involves filing and making tea and coffee, but would at least involve looking at fine paintings on a daily basis.
“No. No.” Jess shakes her spiky peroxide head. “The supermarket’s perfect. It’s in Portobello Road, which means no traveling, and also means interacting with interesting people.”
“I’ll set up the appointment,” I sigh. And then, “Have you told Aster yet?”
“I wanted to present him with a fait accompli,” Jess says, her face pinched and miserable. “Do you think he’ll come through for me?”
“I think—” I begin, not knowing what I think. Actually, I do. I think Aster will get fed up with the no-money situation. I think Aster will move on pretty quickly when he realizes that it means no more designer clothes and expensive equipment for his band, but I don’t want to hurt Jess’s feelings.
“You’re right, you’re right,” Jess interrupts. “He’ll not be very pleased about it, will he?” She shakes her head, and I try for positivity.
“Sometimes people surprise us,” I say, patting her hand, and then my phone rings.
“Rosie, it’s me,” Philip says, surprising me. “How are you?”
“All better, thanks, Philip,” I say, wondering why he’s calling me at work.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m calling you at work. Well, I have something a bit, um, delicate to discuss with you. Are you free sometime this week?”
“Absolutely.” My mind is racing. What on earth could Philip want to talk about that is delicate? “When were you thinking of?” I ask carefully, because I’m being delicate in view of the fact that Jess (a) knows who I am talking to, and (b) Philip said it was a delicate situation.
“Say hi to Philip for me,” Jess says.
“Jess says hi,” I tell him.
“Oh. She’s there with you?” He sounds a bit panicked. “Actually, I was hoping you’d come to me. I, um, don’t want to be seen at Odd Jobs, because Charlie will ask questions and—well, as I said, it’s a bit delicate.”
“How about later today?” It’s been busy today, but my curiosity has been whetted. Plus, busy is good. No time to think about anything. Or anyone. Also, helping others distracts me from my own woes.
“Perfect. Come for afternoon tea? And Rosie—please don’t, er, mention this to—you know, anyone.”
“No worries,” I tell him as I look at Jess.
And when I hang up the phone, it rings again straight away. “Sorry,” I say to Jess.
“That’s okay,” she says, getting to her feet. “You’re busy. I’ll go. Just let me know about the interview. Soon?”
“I’ll fax your resumé this afternoon,” I say. “And Jess?” She pauses at the door of my office, her face unhappy and pale. “Call me if you need me. Take care.”
“Thanks, see you Friday night at Knit One Purl Jam?”
“Absolutely,” I nod. I don’t feel much like knitting, but at least it will get me out of the house and back into routine, and won’t allow time for brooding. I pick up my phone.
“What gives? I just called your mother and she said you were back at work?” is Carmen’s way of greeting me as soon as I say hello. “You spend two days incommunicado, then slope back to work without a word.”
“Thank you, Carmen, I feel much better,” I say.
“Well, I was worried. I thought you were close to death’s door the way your mum was carrying on.”
Confessions of a Serial Dater Page 17
