Late Night Shopping: (42 page)

'Obviously – what with them being such close friends.'

'Annie, he's the one who told Irena all about you, all about the children. That wasn't me.'

Annie sank back against his arm, realizing that she could find a lot of comfort in that.

'And no,' Connor added, kissing her on the forehead, 'your marriage was great, but it wasn't perfect. No one's is. We have to make do with the best we've got. So get off your bum and go and phone Ed. Do whatever it is he needs you to do, or you're going to be a very sad and lonely lady all over again, and we can't have that – not when I can't look after you because I'm away
filming
,' he shot her a grin. 'Meanwhile, I'm going to go and investigate the contents of your fridge.'

'Good luck,' she called after him. 'There's a soya yoghurt, a quorn sausage and a diet quiche. They're all mine, I have a party dress to get into. Owen ate everything else.'

'It's a nightmare in here, you need Ed back!' Connor shouted from the kitchen.

'What about you?' she shouted back. 'If no one's perfect and we've got to make the best of what we have, why don't you get off your bum and go and see Hector?'

'I'm going to do that,' Connor said, speaking through a mouthful of diet quiche as he came back into the room, 'right now. He's not home till 11 p.m. God, this is disgusting!'

'Better get used to it, Hollywood boy!' And suddenly Lana was standing at the sitting room door in her pyjamas.

'Hey babes,' Annie greeted her, 'I thought you'd gone to bed.'

'I did, but I forgot to tell you . . . I spoke to Ed today and he said he's at a concert tonight, that he can't get out of . . . and he'll see you tomorrow.'

'But I'm spending the day with Dinah tomorrow,' Annie replied.

'Maybe he means at the party then.'

The fifty-something woman on the swing:

Long below-the-shoulder gunmetal grey hair (herself)
Extensive waxing (The Spa)
Sparkly pink nail varnish on all twenty nails (MAC)
Total est. cost: £95

'Even being naked is expensive.'

Dinah walked into the sauna with one thick white towel wrapped around her head and another round her body. She was brandishing a long, chilly glass of champagne and as soon as she spied Annie, she announced, 'I cannot believe how much that hurt! I am never, ever doing that again.'

Annie tried hard not to burst out laughing at Dinah's shocked face. 'Babes, it will be so worth it. Think of the surprise Bryan will get tonight. His baby's had a Brazilian.'

'I don't know how good it looks, though,' Dinah confided, 'I'm not exactly twenty any more. I've given birth, there are baggy bits, purplish bits . . .'

'Enough!' Annie screeched. 'Once the swelling goes down, you'll be fine.' Annie patted the space on the bench beside her, although there was no one else in the tiny Swedish pine cabin right now, 'So . . . ten years!'

'Yeah.'

'You should know that the next three years are really, really tough, according to all my clients. Best to be prepared. Apparently it's when you pass through the:
shall I
really stick with this man and all his many faults and flaws for
the rest of my life? Or shall I get out while I still have some looks
left and a slight hope of attracting someone else?
'

'Thanks, Annie.' Dinah nudged her. 'That's so cheering.'

'Do you know in which year a divorce is statistically most likely to happen?'

'No, but you're about to tell me, aren't you?' Dinah swigged her champagne.

'Year eleven.'

'No! You are lying!'

'I'm not. That is the truth, I promise you. And I bet it's because the wives didn't get good enough anniversary presents. Seriously! They're thinking:
I put up with you
for TEN YEARS and you give me a rubbish little AMBER
PENDANT which cost about thirty pounds.
I think if you want to guarantee another ten years of bliss, you have to fork out big on your tenth. Spend even more than the engagement ring.'

'You would say that because you're so materialistic,' Dinah said, with a quick smile at her sister.

'And you would say that because you're so . . . so . . . untainted!' Annie countered. 'It's not materialistic, it's about wanting to be properly appreciated.'

'Bryan appreciates me,' Dinah said, 'and I don't need some bit of rock dug out of the ground by some poor, exploited, Third World miner to prove that. He's having this party for me, isn't he?'

'Yes,' Annie agreed quickly, 'I think it's great! I think it's fantastic you've been married for so long. You always seem really happy.'

'We are happy,' Dinah said thoughtfully, 'we are definitely happy enough. We've fallen in and out of love so many times. That's the difference between people who stay married and people who split up: we just hang on in there, convinced it's going to get better. And it does. No one tells you that . . . that you can fall in love with someone all over again, and even be desperate to be with them all over again. It's the work of a lifetime to learn how to live very happily with someone else.'

'You're right,' Annie agreed and raised her glass. 'Here's to your very happy marriage.'

'What the hell are the vows going to be like, though?' Dinah worried. 'How can there be renewing of vows when I've not even seen them? What's he going to make me promise and how cheesy will it be?

'As long as there's nothing about being your ickle little sexy kittie for the next fifty years and not a word, not one whisper about till death do us part. That's like the marriage small print,' she added, 'we all skim over it without a thought. When you're in your wedding dress, you never, ever once think about standing at a graveside . . .'

'But weddings are like childbirth. You're so focused on the day, when really you should be preparing for the lifetime that's going to come afterwards,' Dinah cut in.

'You can't knock a little bit of healthy denial, though . . .'

'I do occasionally think about Bryan being dead,' Dinah confessed, 'but only in a fashion shoot kind of way: look at me in my veiled black pillbox . . .' Dinah added. Then, as lightly as she could, she reminded Annie, 'you were devastatingly gorgeous at Roddy's funeral. No one could take their eyes off you.'

'Yeah, well I spent a lot of time and a huge amount of money on that outfit. Because I had no idea what had just hit me,' Annie recalled: 'the emotional equivalent of a two ton lorry. I was still unconscious at the funeral.'

'Here's to all the devastatingly gorgeous widows out there,' Dinah raised her glass.

They chinked glasses and after taking a swig for bravery, Annie felt compelled to ask, since they were obviously having an emotional detox in the sauna today, 'Have you ever cheated on Bryan?'

Dinah swallowed down her mouthful of champagne and to Annie's utter astonishment replied, 'Yes.'

What was going on? Was everyone apart from her cheating? And there was Ed thinking that she was cheating when she wasn't.

'No!' Annie spluttered in reply. 'You cheated on Bryan? Why don't I know about this?'

'I didn't want you to know . . . I didn't want anyone to know. Not when it was happening and not afterwards because it was just so embarrassing.'

In the dim light of the sauna, Annie tried to read Dinah's expression. Was she guilty? Glad? Was she proud of herself now, or ashamed? She looked very, very thoughtful. But then Dinah tended to. She always had to think about everything, analyse it and figure it out.

'We were going through a rough patch. Billie was a toddler—'

'Oh my God!' Champagne just about flew out of Annie's nose at this. 'You managed to have an affair when Billie was a toddler, how did you do that?'

'I met a dad at toddler group and he used to come back to my flat, and when the children had a nap . . .'

'Oh. My. God.'

'It only went on for a week or two . . . three weeks. Then we were both overcome with guilt and he started going to a different group.' Dinah couldn't suppress a giggle at the recollection.

'Yeah, adultery can really impact your kids,' Annie couldn't resist saying. 'They can lose all their little toddler friends. Oh. My. God . . .' She was still scandalized, 'You were a little distant that winter when Billie was eighteen months and not sleeping and I thought you were just shattered and didn't want to hear any more of my sleep training advice.'

'No . . . no. Billie was getting plenty of sleep training. The blinds were all drawn at naptime. And the sex was . . . I'm sorry, I know people are always supposed to say the sex wasn't that great when they had an affair because they were so guilty and they were so used to one person and blah, blah . . . but the sex was . . .' she lowered her voice, 'absolutely thrilling.'

Annie tried to laugh, but it stuck in her throat as she thought of Roddy and Irena. Maybe that had been absolutely thrilling too.

'It wasn't about me and Will – that's what his name was, by the way. I didn't even like him much, he was a jerk, just a good-looking jerk.' Dinah went on. 'It was about me and Bryan. I'd been at home with a baby for a year and a half. I was bored and totally boring. Instead of taking him away on holiday, instead of doing something new and interesting with him or with myself, I channelled all this energy into fantasies about Will. The fantasies went on for weeks,
months
before we actually did anything,' she confided.

'And when you did?' Annie prompted.

In a confessional whisper, Dinah admitted: 'Because we were so guilty about the sex, we used to have foreplay for just about the full two hours the children were asleep . . . and then a tiny two minutes of sex at the end.'

'Sounds about right,' came Annie's comment.

'It was! I used to just kiss him for the first half an hour until my knickers were in meltdown,' Dinah whispered.

Something about Dinah with a towel on her head and a raw new Brazilian saying this was suddenly so funny that Annie began to laugh and then Dinah joined in and they both roared uncontrollably for several minutes.

'This must be why you're not allowed to drink in the sauna. It gets you high,' Annie managed to say finally. And then, without even meaning to, she found herself telling Dinah all about Irena, dehydrating herself with tears in the process. When the story was all out and Dinah had said as many consoling words as she could think of, she had to suggest to her big sister, 'You know, it is maybe just a little bit possible that you idealize slightly how it was when you were with Roddy. You had plenty of ups and downs too.' Annie had a suspicion about what was coming next.

'So are you going to tell me what's happening with Ed?' Dinah asked. 'He's not still at his sister's, is he?'

'Yes he is at his sister's. But he's said he'll see me tonight.'

'Tonight?' Dinah sounded surprised. 'Tonight's not going to be a great time to talk.'

'You know that, babes, and I know that . . . but Ed seems to be a complete and utter beginner as far as serious adult relationships are concerned.'

'Blame his Italian girlfriend,' Dinah said.

'What? Has he said anything about her?'

'No, I was just being . . . I dunno, flippant.'

Annie just gave a shrug. 'You know what, I think I'm finally ready to go on the swing!'