‘Yeah, but I bet you and Ben stop off for a nice tea somewhere and turn it into a less boring task,’ said Dawn. They had all gleaned that Ben and Raychel did such sweet things together, like going for a drive, or to the cinema or visiting the ice-cream parlour out near Penistone, comfortable, coupley things. And when Ben dropped her off and picked her up from work sometimes, they always looked so in love. He tweaked her nose or held her hand and never failed to give her a kiss. Dawn wondered if they were passionate behind closed doors or had been married so young that all that side of the relationship had fizzled out. Must have been nice to have had something in the first place to fizzle out, she added dryly to herself.
‘Grace?’
Grace had barely thought about the extended Bank Holiday weekend to come. She just wanted to get it over and done with. There would be no family get-together to lighten her spirits. Just an extra day of Gordon’s scintillating company and the post bringing catalogues of Stannah stairlifts and hearing aids, no doubt. She wasn’t sure she could stand her life with him any longer. She finally felt near the end of the line and needed to do a lot of thinking.
‘A belated spring-clean beckons,’ she replied. Doing the beds and bottoming the upstairs rooms would both fill a lot of time and allow her brain to roam. She sighed and Christie caught a strong whiff of boredom.
‘Not doing anything exciting with your hubby then?’ said Raychel, who wanted Grace to be married to an older version of Ben because she deserved someone like that.
That amused Grace. ‘No, not this weekend,’ was all she said, although much more could have come tripping out so effortlessly in this comfortable corner with these women ready to listen.
‘Well, I shall be doing nothing at all,’ said Christie breezily. ‘The forecast is bright and sunny and so I intend to sit in the garden, read magazines, drink Pimms and let my big brother cook a huge Sunday lunch for me.’
‘That the dentist?’ asked Anna. ‘Good cook, is he?’
‘Superb,’ said Christie.
‘He sounds lovely,’ said Anna wistfully. ‘He must be gay.’
‘Nope,’ laughed Christie. ‘Straight and wonderful and frustratingly single.’
‘Shame he’s not my type then,’ said Anna. ‘I only go for wankers.’
‘Tell you what you need,’ said Christie. ‘A bored, married lover on the lookout for a mistress to spoil.’
At that Anna spun.
‘What, and do to some poor cow what Tony is doing to me! Why would I want a man that did that to his wife? I wouldn’t touch a tosser like that with someone else’s ten foot bargepole!’
‘Whoa,’ said Grace, holding up her hands in a peace-like gesture. ‘I don’t think Christie was being serious, Anna.’
‘It was a joke,’ put in Dawn, suddenly desperate to preserve the precious harmony. She didn’t want it spoiled. She had come to love these Friday evenings with all their shared banter.
‘Of course it was a joke,’ said Christie quickly too. ‘I’m sorry, Anna, it was a clumsy thing to say. I didn’t mean—’
‘No, no, it’s me that should be sorry,’ said Anna. ‘Christie, I apologize. I’m too sensitive for my own good at the moment. It’s our anniversary today, you see – well, the anniversary of our first date. We used to celebrate it like a proper wedding anniversary, you know, with cards and pressies, even though we aren’t married – obviously.’
God, I’m a mess
, she thought.
‘Oh, Anna . . .’ said Christie and gave her hand a comforting squeeze.
‘You weren’t to know,’ said Anna. ‘It’s not your fault. I need to take a bit of control of myself.’
‘Maybe if this married bloke was living with a right old dog who didn’t give him any sex,’ added Dawn, trying to help to make things right again between everyone. ‘. . . And she never washed her bottom and had brown teeth,’ she went on.
Anna laughed gratefully. She knew what Dawn was doing and felt ashamed that she had overreacted. Bloody Tony, he had a lot to answer for. He was sending her loopy. ‘Well, yes, it might be nice to rescue the poor man from that.’
Dawn hung behind when the others had gone. She was more than relieved when Al raised his eyes at last, saw her and smiled. She smiled back at him and sat at the bar waiting for him to take his break. She wondered, after his parting shot last weekend, if he would come over. She needn’t have worried.
‘Hello there,’ he said in his deep drawling, voice. ‘You find your guitar?’
‘Yes, thank goodness,’ said Dawn and went on to tell a lie. ‘Silly me, I put it in a safe place and forgot about it.’
‘And how was your week?’
‘Good,’ said Dawn. She felt suddenly guilty. There she was sympathizing with Anna about her adulterous fiancé and she was full of floaty feelings for this tall guitar-man in front of her. ‘And you?’
‘Good too. Played a lot of places and travelled around,’ he replied. ‘We won’t be practising on Sunday though, otherwise I would have said come along again. We all really enjoyed your company.’
‘Oh, shame,’ said Dawn. She shouldn’t have been, but she’d been hoping they would invite her to join them once more.
‘The guys are going sightseeing instead. They want to see something of Yorkshire.’
‘And you’re not going?’ asked Dawn.
‘Not with them,’ he replied. ‘I wondered if you’d like to show me your favourite places, Dawny. How are you fixed for escorting a cowboy round your county? As friends, of course.’
Her insides were a sudden battleground.
No, you can’t. That’s too intimate. Yes, yes, go, you bloody idiot. How can you turn that invitation down? Danger, Danger! It’s just as friends – his words.
The Nos were so greatly outnumbered, they were virtually in the Valley of Death.
‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ she found herself saying, even though inside her there were still thin protests that she shouldn’t be encouraging his attentions. She should be picking out honeymoons, she should be sending off invitations. But instead she made arrangements to pick up Al Holly at nine o’clock outside the Rising Sun on Sunday morning in order to spend the whole day with him.
When Grace got in from the pub, she picked up a vibe that something wasn’t quite as it should be. Her senses went on red alert because she felt exactly as she had last time, when Gordon forced her down to Blegthorpe. She made tea, Gordon read the
Chronicle
while she washed up and it all seemed, on the surface, a very typical Friday evening, but still she felt an odd undercurrent.
The music for
Coronation Street
ended, which was Gordon’s usual cue to go up and get changed for the Legion, but he didn’t. He was such a creature of habit that this prompted Grace to ask, ‘Aren’t you going out tonight?’
‘No, not tonight,’ he said quietly.
‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘Just because I’m not going out, it doesn’t mean I’m ill.’ He stabbed the remote and switched the television over to
Sky News
. Grace never failed to bristle when he swapped channels without doing her the courtesy of asking. She realized she had been bristling about it for over twenty years, yet not once had she ever countered him about it. That small action of switching channels set off a massive chain reaction in her brain.
She looked at Gordon, weirdly absorbed in the news stories, and she knew she had to leave him that weekend. Funny, she had been waiting for a massive event to give her the energy to walk out and, in the end, it was a mere button on the TV remote. It didn’t matter that she had nowhere to go or little time to plan, she could bear his presence no longer, sucking all the oxygen out of her life, pushing her where she didn’t want to go, making choices for her, smashing up her family with his prejudices and anger. She had been here before, near the end of the line and praying for the strength to go, but somehow this was different. She knew she would not change her mind this time; the line had been crossed – it was over. The sudden thought of the freedom to come gave her an injection of euphoria. How should she tell him? She wasn’t the type to sneak out like Anna’s Tony, leaving a note on the table. She would have to face him head-on. A prospect she wasn’t looking forward to at all.
Tuesday, she decided. She would go on Tuesday in the most decent, honest way she could. She would spend the weekend cleaning the house and filling up the food cupboards for him. She would pack a suitcase in readiness and tell him first thing Tuesday morning that their marriage was over. Then she would walk out and go to work and think about the next step from there; she couldn’t think any further than that without panicking. She watched
Sky News
but her mind was miles away, making a mental list of things to do.
When Anna got home, she found a rectangular brown paper parcel waiting for her, propped up against her step. It had obviously been hand-delivered because there were no stamps on it. She opened the door and got the scissors out of the drawer before she’d even got her jacket off. It had enough brown tape around it to withstand a nuclear blast. Even the Stanley knife she turned to for extra assistance was having trouble getting through the wrapping. Then there were about twelve layers of bubble wrap to contend with and finally a square polystyrene case. Puzzled, Anna prised it open to find the white back of a plate with a hanging ring on it. She turned it over to see that the front had a photograph of herself and Tony on it, arms around each other, he sporting that cocky God’s-Gift grin. It was the photo he used to have as the wallpaper on his mobile. And under the photograph on the plate there was a single word printed.
Together.
What the hell did that mean? Was this an anniversary present? She felt a sweet surge of excitement at the thought he might have remembered the date. But if he hadn’t, why was Tony sending her photographs on plates when they weren’t together? They were about as apart as Lynette Bottom’s legs. Or was he coming home? Dear God – was this his way of telling her that he was on his way home?
Gordon did not go out to his allotment on Saturday. He growled at Grace when she asked him why that was.
‘Anyone would think you were trying to get rid of me!’ And so she didn’t rouse his suspicions by asking again. She changed the sheets on her bed and tried to look like a woman interested in her house, not like one preparing to leave it.
She very quietly pulled down her small suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, threw some underwear, a couple of shirts and skirts and shoes into it and slid it quickly under her bed. Then she carried on busying herself with vacuuming the landing for a while before deciding she needed some air.
‘Think I’ll get a bit of shopping done,’ Grace said, popping her head around the lounge door. ‘Shan’t be long.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Gordon said.
Anna had danced around the house for twenty-four hours now. She had thought about that plate and the only possible conclusion she could come to was that Tony’s heart was on its way back to her. The anticipation that he could open the door at any moment made every single moment delicious. She lost count of how many times she reapplied her lipstick during the day and then imagined Tony kissing it all off.
She wished she didn’t have to go to Vladimir’s; Sod’s Law dictated that Tony was sure to come when she was out filming. But she couldn’t exactly let the crew down. She’d leave a note on the door to tell Tony, if he called, that she would be back at 10 p.m. and hope a burglar didn’t see it first.
Jane was waiting for her at Vladimir’s front door. Her lovely face was almost bisected by the length of the smile she wore. Anna was barely out of the car when Jane grabbed her in the tightest hug someone less than eight stone could perform.
‘Dear Anna, I found out yesterday – guess what, a new series of
Jane’s Dames
has been commissioned and I’m still going to be fronting it. And they’re talking about doing some variations on the theme after that.’
Jane looked taller. Anna checked down to see if she was floating on air.
‘You should have seen me, Anna, I was magnificent. I was young and fired up and irresistible. Elaine Massey had no chance against me.’
‘I’m thrilled to bits for you,’ replied Anna, who was wearing a big smile of her own too, half-thanks to Jane’s good news, half-thanks to her anniversary plate present.
But Vladimir Darq seemed rather annoyed by that smile. Not as annoyed as Maria who was saying ‘
la dracu’
a lot – obviously swearing – as she tried to apply Anna’s face make-up.
‘Maria says you are smiling too much,’ Vladimir said with a huff.
‘Right, I’ll look miserable then.’ Anna assumed an exaggerated pout.
‘No, not miserable. Like a statue. Neutral. It is good that you don’t seem nervous today, Anna, but what is going on in your head? I presume’ – and here he gave a haughty sniff – ‘that it is something to do with your adulterous man,
Tony.
’ He imbued the name with all the qualities of a bowel movement. ‘Ach, and I thought you retouched the colour on your hair because you want to look good for yourself!’
‘Well, actually I did dye my hair for myself,’ said Anna, giving a haughty little sniff of her own back. ‘I did it before Tony sent me a present that tells me he is getting fed up of his fancy woman.’
‘What present?’
‘A plate.’
‘A plate!
O farfurie
?’ He made a round gesture, plate-sized, to double-check that’s what she meant. He didn’t look as impressed as Anna by the prospect of a plate as a symbol of romance.
‘Not any plate. A special plate. With our photograph on it.’
Vladimir’s right eyebrow lifted so high Roger Moore would have been envious. It wasn’t a gesture lost on Anna.
‘You wouldn’t understand.’ Maybe gay blokes weren’t as romantic as straight ones after all, she reasoned.
‘Why? Why would I not understand? Maybe because I am not as human as you?’
His strange-coloured eyes twinkled at her as if offering proof of that.
‘I meant no such thing,’ she said. She knew it amused him that she, and half the fashion world, wondered if the stories about him being a vampire had more than a foothold in the truth. But on this occasion she was being honest. That wasn’t what she meant at all. ‘Look, I don’t know what passes for romance in the gay world—’