Lipstick and Lies (13 page)

‘I just want you to know,’ I
gingerly
lowered my
derrière
onto the passenger seat, ‘that I am never
,
ever socia
lising with that woman again.’

Jamie sighed as the engine turned over.
‘Hopefully you won’t have to.
Not for a
very long time anyway.’

The following morning the household was up early.
The Christmas holidays were over.
Work beckoned for
Jamie
, and the kids were back to school
.
My brood
piled into The Muck Truck,
with
Jonas complaining bitterly about
an impending
maths lesson.

‘Well at least
you don’t
have
p
hysics first thing,’ grumbled
Petra
.
‘What’s the point in studying a subject like that?
It won’t benefit my chosen career.
When I leave school I wa
nt to be a riding instructor!’

‘I quite like
p
hysics,’ Livvy blushed.

‘That’s because you’ve got a crush on Mr Brown,’ said
Petra
.

I put the car into reverse.
‘Oh yes?
And what’s Mr Brown like?’

‘Pukey,’
Toby laughed.

‘No he’s not!’ Livvy
protested, blushing
again.

The banter continued all the way to
Boxleigh Grammar
.

‘Have a good day all of you,’ I trilled
as they piled out, doors slamming after them
.
I turned to Eddie.
‘Looks like it’s just you and me
kiddo.
’
My son
gave a gummy smile.
‘And Nanny Edna,’ I added.

Edna had briefly returned
to her own
home only to reappear trailing a
full-size
suitcase of clothes.
Clearly
she was staying a few days.
My mother-in-law had now taken over the pull-out bed in the study.
She had also appropriated the workshop at the rear of the garage.
An awful lot of sawing seemed to be going on.

Sure enough, as I pulled up on the driveway, the whine of a planer could be heard.
Leaving Edna to it, I let myself into the house.
I put Eddie in his playpen and made a start on the laundry.
The phone rang.
It was Jamie.

‘Hi Cassie.
I’ll probably be very late this evening.
We have a potential new client.
The proposals promise to be very lucrative.
It calls for a bit of wining and dining.
So if you don’t mind, I’ll be passing on your finest beans on toast supper.
Instead I’ll have to try and force myself to eat a horrible filet steak.
With all the ghastly trimmings.’

I laughed.
‘My poor husband.
The things you suffer for your craft.
So, where are you and Ethan taking them?’

‘Ethan won’t be there.
In fact, as we speak, he should be half-way to
America
.
He’s
meeting with
the client’s sister company.
How about that eh!
Soon it could be Fareham & Mackerel International!’
I could sense Jamie rubbing his hands together.

‘That’s fantastic.
O
kay darling, I won’t wait up.’

‘Tell the kids I’m sorry not to see them this evenin
g and that I love them loads.’

‘Will do.
Don’t work too hard.’

‘We won’t.’

We?

‘
Don’t wait up
Cassie
.
M
ust go.’

‘Jamie?’

But he’d already clicked off.
I stood there for a few moments.
Held the whirring receiver with one hand.
Clutched the kitchen worktop with the other.
My brain digested the conversation.
He’d said
we.
Oh for goodness sake Cass, it was
we
as in Jamie and the client!
But might Selina be there too?
She was
,
after all
,
now working for the company.
Wrong again Cass!
Right now she was thirty-five thousand feet up in the air.
In an aeroplane.
Sitting by Ethan’s side.
I exhaled slowly, my heart banging about a bit.

For the remainder of the day
I couldn’t
shake a sense of foreboding.
When the children came home from school, their chatter went straight over my head.
I felt distracted.

A little before midnight I went to bed.
But s
leep evaded me.
I lay there,
troubled but without really knowing why
.
Eventually I snapped on the bedside lamp.
Stared at the telephone.
After a moment’s hesitation, I picked up the receiver.
Withholding my number, I dialled Ethan’s apartment.
The apartment he now shared with Selina.
I held my breath as the line connected
, and b
egan to ring.
Below my ribcage, my heart had started to beat in time
to the ring tone.
Immediately m
y conscience began clamouring.
What the devil are you playing at Cass?
Just because your first husband was a philandering Casanova, it doesn’t mean all men are the same.
This is
Jamie
for heaven’s sake.
Your wonderful husband!
He’s with a client.
In the City.
And Selina is in
America
.
Any second now the answering machine will pick up your call confirming that nobody is home and–

‘Hello?’ said a voice.
It was Jamie.

Shocked, I dropped the phone.
It smacked against the bedside cabinet before bouncing over the edge like a bungee jumper.
The receiver rotated mid-air, dangling from the stretched cord
.
I stared at it, horrified, before
carefully retrieving it
.

‘Hello?
Hello!’
Jamie sounded very irritated.

What the hell was
my husband
doing
there
?
Clearly Selina was not on a plane to
America
.
Don’t jump to conclusions Cass.
Perhaps Jamie was simply wrapping up an exhausting evening with a
coffee
.
But then, why not have a coffee at home?
Unless – I gasped – unless there was more than
a
coffee on offer?
I gulped.
I
nstead of Selina asking Jamie if he’d like one lump or two,
perhaps
completely different lumps were
being offered.
After all, there wasn’t much sex
to be had at home
was there?
One could even say Jamie was starved of it.
Sex-starved.
How peculiar
to see
the significance of that expression
only
now.
Stupid.
Had I interrupted feverish foreplay?
Had the pair of them been getting all hot and sweaty, tearing at each other’s cloth
es
, buttons pinging off as they panted–

‘IS THERE ANYBODY THERE OR NOT?’ roared my husband.

‘Who is it
darling?’ I heard Selina ask.

Darling!
Bloody
darling!
Bloody hell.
Bloody bitch.
Bloody man.
Enraged I
slammed
the phone back into its cradle with such force the handset split in half.
Bugger.
I snatched it up, shoved it together and, with a trembling hand, put it back in its cradle.

I flopped back on the pillows and stared at the ceiling.
Morag was right.
I’d taken my eye so comprehensively off the ball
,
my husband was now being baited by a woman I couldn’t begin to compete with.
Selina.
I whimpered, rolled over and stuffed the pillow in my mouth.

Okay Cass, think.
Think!
What to do, what to do?
Confront him?
Wait for him to put his key in the door and then hurl myself at him, fists flying?
Or – better still – woo him back!

I leapt out of bed.
Rushed off to the bathroom.
And spent twenty minutes applying full makeup
before d
ousing myself in perfume
.
Hot-footing
back to the bedroom
, I riffled
through my bedside drawer
s
until
I found what I wanted.
Stripping off my practical but unsexy pyjamas, I slithered into a satin negligee.
I was just fluffing up my hair when headlights lit up the drive.
Jamie was home.
I slid back under the duvet, arranging it so my plunging neckline was showcased.

Moments later the landing floorboards squeaked.
As Jamie crept into our bedroom
,
he looked genuinely surprised to see me bathed in the glow of lamplight
and wide awake
.

‘You still up?’ he came over and kissed me on the forehead.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ I said huskily.

‘That’s nice.’
He
shrugged
off his suit and dumped it on a chair.
‘I’m too tired to hang it up,’ he said apologetically.
‘Ah bed!’
Jamie groaned with pleasure.
‘I
lurve
my bed.
Turn out the light.’

Turn out the light?
Wasn’t that my line?

‘Darling,’ I tapped him on the nose coquettishly, ‘
I’ve been
waiting
for you!’
I leant over and wobbled my
chest
in front of him.

Jamie groaned again.
But not in an aroused way.
‘Oh Cassie,’ he passed a hand wearily over his forehead, ‘sorry to disappoint you.
But I’m absolutely shagged.’

I froze.
Shagged?
Since when did Jamie ever use a word like that?
Never!
So why use the expression now?
Well maybe – a small voice in my head piped up – it was because he’d just been shagged?

For once Eddie slept all the way through the night.
And wasn’t it just the Law of Sod that I, instead, should lay awake until the small hours torturing myself.
Why had Jamie answered Selina’s telephone?
Why had she called him
darling
?
And why had he used the expression
shagged
?
It seemed as if I’d barely nodded off when the bedside telephone exploded into life.
I shot upwards in shock as Jamie stretched out a hand.
Picking up the receiver
,
it promptly fell apart.

‘What on earth
–?
’ he stared at broken plastic and
a
small explosion of wiring.
‘What happened to the phone?’

I sank back against the mattress and kept quiet.

‘Hello?’ Jamie clamped the telephone remnants against one ear.
‘Can you hear me?’ Tiny red and black cables bounced against his nose.
‘Sid!
Good morning to you too
.
No,
no trouble at all
.
I
was getting up anyway.
Sure, no problem.
I’ll be with you in an hour or so.’

‘Who’s Sid?’

‘The guy I was with last night.’

Suspicion swept over me.
Had that really been someone called Sid?
Or had it been
her
?

‘Cassie, do you know anything about the state of this phone?’

‘No.’