'He won't even notice.'
'He's not stupid, you know.'
'Yeah, but he's a little bit blind to the finer things in life.'
'Hello baby!' Annie greeted her man enthusiastically. He was in the sitting room on the sofa with his back to her. So she came in behind him, slid her arms over him and was planning to tumble right over the sofa to land beside him.
But he gripped her arms tightly and pulled them away from his chest as if he wanted her off.
'I know, Ed, I know. I'm so sorry about the violin thing. I've already been up and apologized to Owen.'
'Violin thing?' Ed repeated with some heat in his voice. '
Violin thing
? Annie, the junior string quartet was giving its first concert. We've been practising really hard,
two hundred
people turned up to watch. Owen was totally brilliant and you missed all of it! Even worse, I don't think you even begin to get it.'
Annie was surprised to see Ed so annoyed. She came round and sat carefully down on the sofa beside him.
'Owen is doing really well, thanks so much to you,' Annie told him, with complete sincerity and gratitude. 'I would have come. I really wanted to come. I just . . . didn't get cover in time.'
Ed still looked really angry, and she wasn't used to it. Yet. He sometimes got a bit grumpy, but this could usually be solved with sex or food. The two were close contenders in his life.
'So how's your day been then?' he asked her now. 'Any big news? Any big decisions? Anything I should know about?' He sounded unusually snappy.
'No.' She was a little bewildered, 'No, just an absolutely usual day. I just couldn't get anyone to cover my last appointment, so I had to stay on.'
'So absolutely nothing to tell me?' he asked again.
'No . . . don't think so . . .' she looked at him carefully. He was behaving strangely. Was he really not going to get over this concert thing at all? He couldn't possibly know about the bag. He couldn't.
'So why did I get a courtesy call from Nicole Wilson informing me that my house ownership partner was about to draw down £30,000 worth of equity on our property?' Ed asked her in as steady a voice as he could muster.
Annie's mouth opened and momentarily stayed open.
Courtesy call?
Courtesy call?!
Why had Nicole not told her anything about this? Nicole had gone through the incredibly long and detailed terms and conditions and so on . . . was it possible that Annie might have just tuned it out a tiny bit? But phoning Ed? There was no way Nicole had mentioned phoning Ed. Surely Annie would have heard that?
'Just one week ago – ' Ed turned to face her. He was threatening to really kick off now – 'you agreed that big purchases would be discussed. With me. Hello! Your partner. The new man in your life. Your other half. The person looking after your children four nights a week and most of the rest of the time as far as I can see. The person having in-depth, life-changing discussions with your teenage daughter because you never seem to be around for her. And when you are, all you want to talk about is nail polish.'
Well, that was it. Now he had gone too far. Annie could feel her breath rising up in her lungs, she seemed to be blowing air in and out too quickly. She flashed furious eyes at him. 'You know, Ed, I wish you wouldn't tell me how to run my life! Or how to run my family. It's just not any of your business!'
'Yes, it is!' he shouted straight back. 'And I want it to be. You live with me now, you can't have everything your own way, not all the time. Anyway, this is our house, you can't make a major money decision like that without at least letting me know! That's just insulting.'
'I don't want your help,' she heard herself shouting back, 'I don't want your advice and I don't want you to interfere!'
'Well, that's just great, Annie,' came Ed's response. 'Maybe you don't want me here at all? Maybe you'd just like to live on your own again, would you? See how you'd like that!'
'Fine!' She snatched up her handbag, but Ed immediately caught hold of it, pulled it closer so he could examine it then exclaimed, 'Oh my God! You promised! You said you would check with me before buying anything over two hundred pounds. I know perfectly well this cost much more than that.' He took a deep breath and stung her by adding, 'I really can't trust you.'
'Shut up!' Annie shouted, just as furious as him now, furious at feeling so humiliated and caught out.
'It's my money and it's my life. And these are
my kids
,' she added, deeply upset by his criticism.
In a blind stumble of tears, she snatched the bag away and stalked out of the front door, slamming it hard for effect.
Outside, it was surprisingly chilly and dark. But then she'd left without her jacket, which was her second mistake. Her first mistake was leaving the house at all. Now that she was outside, she would have plenty of time to reflect on the fact that it was always a mistake to storm out of your home in a huff. Because eventually you had to go back in with your tail between your legs.
This was her first big row with Ed. She and Roddy, her first husband, had had countless raging rows, walkouts and arguments and looking back, she'd thought it was something to do with being younger. She'd begun to believe that she and Ed weren't going to do big rows and heated disagreements. So she was surprised at this outburst. She hated shouting. It never got you anywhere anyway, just raised your blood pressure. Made you more likely to die of a heart attack before you were fifty.
Now that she was out here on the street, she thought she would walk to the nearest pub; there was quite a nice place on the high street, where she could calm down. Maybe she'd phone Connor and he could come and join her for a beer. Or mineral water. God, when was he going to stop with the AA thing?
She walked on briskly, intending to fish her mobile out of her pocket, not paying any attention at all to the tall man jogging towards her on her side of the pavement when all of a sudden he stuck out his hand, right in front of her face. Before Annie could even grasp what was happening, she felt a terrible pain smack hard into her forehead and she was falling helplessly backwards.
City banker Manzoor Khan:
Custom-made dark grey suit (Oswald Boteng)
Blue shirt with white collar and cuffs (Thomas Pink)
Blue tie (Gieves & Hawkes)
Custom-made black brogues (James Taylor & Son)
Black overcoat (Gieves & Hawkes)
Black briefcase (Mulberry)
Total est. cost: £4,600
'Over £1,000? My word!'
'Mrs Valentine? Is that you?'
Annie opened her eyes very slowly. It was dark but she could make out in the glimmer of the orange street light that a man was bending over her.
She felt the most terrible throbbing and aching in her head. All over her forehead, down into her eyes and nose.
'Are you OK?' the man was asking, although it was pretty obvious that she was not. 'I'm Manzoor Khan from number ten,' he added.
Ah, Annie was able to register the flashy City banker from next door. He must have been coming home late from work.
But what the hell had happened to her? It had taken her some time to work out from the angle of the street light that she was lying on the ground. She put a hand up to her aching head and felt it very gingerly. The skin was grazed, burning and weirdly spongy.
'Do you think you can get up?' Manzoor asked.
Annie lifted her head and, with Manzoor's arm under her shoulders, managed to wobble up to her feet, feeling sick to her stomach.
'Did you fall?' he asked her.
'No . . . someone was running towards me and I think he must have hit me in the . . .' Annie began and that was when she realized what had happened. She'd been hit
deliberately
! She'd been
mugged
! Oh. No! NO! Despite her raging head, she looked down, scanned right across the pavement, but there was absolutely no sign of it . . .
'Someone's taken my bag!' she wailed. 'Someone's stolen my new handbag!'
'Oh dear,' Manzoor sympathized, 'that's very bad luck, but it might turn up. Muggers often take out the contents and throw the bag away round the corner, I could go and have a look around if you like. But I need to get you home first.'
'Throw the bag away?' Annie repeated in a dazed horror. 'Throw it away! That bag cost over a thousand pounds even with a staff discount.'
She was still too shocked even to feel upset yet.
'Over a thousand pounds? My word!' Even Mr Six-Figure-Salary sounded a little taken aback at this information.
With Annie leaning heavily on his shoulder because she felt so sick and dizzy, they walked the thirty metres or so to her front door.
Once Manzoor had rung the bell, Annie could hear Ed walking down the corridor then calling out to the closed door: 'And I suppose you've forgotten your keys, have you? Forgotten to put them into your totally overpriced handbag!'
But when he had opened the door and spent several shocked seconds taking in Annie and her battered head, his expression changed instantly from stormy to seriously concerned.
'Oh my God! Annie!'
The verdict of the two paramedics who turned up with the ambulance was that Annie should have a very quiet night at home and go to see her GP in the morning.
They put a cooling compress on her ballooning forehead, shone a torch into her eyes, decided that she wasn't concussed and warned her that going to hospital would mean spending the night in the waiting room instead of in the comfort of her own bed.
One of the two police officers who called at the house to take Annie's statement told her cheerily, 'That is going to swell right up, you're going to look like something from
Dr Who
.'
'He took my bag,' Annie wailed, 'and I only bought it today. It's Yves Saint Laurent!'
The woman police officer did at least look a bit sympathetic.
'My mobile with all my numbers!' Annie's losses were beginning to stack up, 'my wallet, my credit cards, my house keys!'
'You'll have to change your locks and cancel your cards,' one of the officers advised. 'You never know, he might try some of the doors in the street.'
Throughout the comings and goings of the evening, Ed made tea, held her hand, plumped the pillows up under her head, and looked distraught because he blamed himself for the whole thing. When she was finally in bed, propped up on pillows and loaded with painkillers, he pulled up a chair and sat beside her, holding her hand.
'I hope you're not here for the big make-up talk,' she told him with a little smile, 'because I need to sleep.'
'I know,' he told her, squeezing her hand. 'You could have been really badly hurt. You have been badly hurt . . . but it could have been . . .'
'Shhhh!' she told him off, 'I'm going to be fine. Don't go "if"ing and "but"ing about it,' but with a sigh, she admitted, 'I am going to look a fright in the morning.'
'Yeah, like . . .'
'Something out of
Dr Who
,' Annie finished his sentence, 'thanks. But what exactly?'
'I don't know, you'll have to ask Owen tomorrow. He slept through the whole thing.'
'Good.'
Ed pushed his unbuttoned shirtsleeves up and ran his fingers through tangled ringlets that looked even wilder than usual. 'I'm sorry we were arguing,' he said, casting his eyes down to the floor.