Still Thinking of You (15 page)

And he hadn’t yet called off the wedding himself because…?

Because he was too kind-hearted. Yes, that was it! He didn’t want to hurt Tash. And, fair enough, Tash was a sufficiently nice girl. Jayne could admit this much now she was cocooned in the happiness that is champagne. Not a very special girl. Not good enough for Rich. But he was so kind that he didn’t like to hurt anyone.

Jayne had already forgotten how Rich had hurt her for many, many years by denying and ignoring her, by breaking dates and failing to call. The tears that had threatened to overwhelm her as she walked into the bar receded. How could he not want her? Every man she’d ever met wanted her, and she wasn’t even half decent to most of those. She was very sweet to Rich. Besides, she was clever and pretty, she supported his football team, played the same sports as him, read the same books, laughed at his lousy jokes.

Jayne was blind with passion, and so had never seen the disinterest in Rich’s face as he flipped her over in the sack, preferring to take her from behind rather than risk acknowledging any intensity of emotion – love or need – that her face may have inadvertently betrayed. Jayne was blind to his rejections. She had always excused the fact that he would never meet up with her until after the pubs kicked out. She had never noticed that he’d never once said anything that remotely hinted towards a commitment or a future. He’d never said anything that would indicate that they were in a
relationship
. She never acknowledged that they saw each other on average once every four months. The facts that he’d stopped sleeping with her once he met Tash and that he’d proposed to Tash, that he openly, frequently and happily declared his love for Tash – all seemed irrelevant to Jayne.

She wanted him so much. More than she’d ever wanted a puppy or a Raleigh bike. More than she’d ever wanted anything else in her life. And for longer than she’d ever wanted anything else.

Jayne always got what she wanted.

The university place she wanted. The exam results she wanted. The job she wanted. The figure she wanted. The pay rise she wanted. She even got the shoes she wanted that just matched so perfectly with her handbag bought for that very special occasion. Not getting what she wanted was not an option! Rich had made a terrible error of judgement, an error she could correct, which he
needed
her to correct. He needed her help. She was the girl for him, not Natasha. She would stop this wedding, she had to.

But how?

At that moment Jase walked into the bar. Like Jayne, he had immediately scoped the room to hunt out any potential totty. After all, he was on holiday and scoring was
de rigueur
. He was delighted to spot Jayne huddled in the corner with no company other than a bottle of champagne. He grinned to himself – that girl had a serious sense of style.

‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked. He was already holding a champagne flute.

Jayne looked startled, but immediately recovered her aplomb and then looked delighted. ‘Of course not, it would be lovely.’

‘Are you celebrating?’ asked Jase, nodding towards the champagne bottle.

‘I am now,’ smiled Jayne, patting the space on the bench next to her. As she leant over to fill Jason’s glass, she took care to let her breast brush against his arm. She was cold and her nipples were standing at attention. Jayne noticed Jase blush and was pleased. There was no way
he’d
ever brush off her kisses.

27. Another Night in Paradise

‘Wow, Mia, you look amazing,’ said Kate, looking up from her magazine.

Kate, Tash and Jayne were settled on the sofas in front of the open fire in the hotel foyer. The scene was cosy. Kate was reading a magazine and enjoying a G & T. Jayne was dozing, stretched out on one of the sofas. Her magazine lay discarded and open across her chest. An empty glass of what had been red wine sat on the table. After finishing the bottle of champagne with Jason she’d decided it was best to carry on drinking, rather than stop and risk the onset of a hangover. She was resting her head on Tash’s lap. Tash did not seem freaked by this, although Mia would have been horrified if Jayne, or any woman for that matter, had curled up with her so intimately. Tash was also reading a magazine, and she held it high and to one side so as not to disturb the sleepy Jayne. Despite their
über
-trendy gear, they put Mia in mind of Roman empresses, lolling on perfumed beds waiting for the return of their conquering heroes.

Kate and Mia sat a little distance from Tash and Jayne, excusing themselves by explaining that they wanted to chat and did not want to disturb Jayne. Kate was worried that Mia wasn’t happy about Jayne joining the party. She couldn’t quite understand why it would upset Mia as much as it clearly did, but she was sorry to have caused her best friend any disquiet. She did her utmost to make amends through flattery.

‘Yes, those jeans really suit you, and your skin looks radiant. It must be all the fresh air.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ said Mia. She had made an effort. She’d spent the afternoon in the hotel’s spa. She’d had a manicure and pedicure, and spent an hour in the Jacuzzi. In her room she’d tried on several outfits, only to discover just how hard it was to look fabulously sexy and keep warm at the same time. She didn’t quite know how Jayne and Tash pulled it off, but she’d rather rip out her own eyeballs than ask either of them for sartorial advice. After considerable effort and numerous combinations, Mia had settled on a pair of Earl jeans and a black, polo-neck cashmere jumper. The jeans flattered her bottom and thighs, and the jumper clung to her full, round breasts. Unusually for Mia, she’d taken the time to apply full make-up, including a red slash of lipstick on her plump lips. The overall effect was good. Only she knew that she was wearing Marks and Spencer minimizing knickers and a thermal vest. She wasn’t too worried about her underwear, as she didn’t really believe that they would make their debut tonight.

Her plan tonight was to keep in the running, not to get knocked out in the early heats, so to speak. And while she thought that the proposition of competing with Jayne for Scaley Jase’s affections was a little demeaning, she comforted herself with the fact that she wasn’t really competing for a man’s affections or even his attention, just a sperm donation. She told herself that this was scientific, practical, nothing to do with emotions. Still, she was grateful for Kate’s compliment. Although she was determined not to acknowledge the fact, she was as nervous as hell.

‘Goodness, I feel so drab in comparison to you three,’ added Kate.

Mia felt the marvellous effect of the compliment vanish, believing that it wasn’t so much rooted in a genuine respect for Mia’s own carefully chosen ensemble as in Kate’s deep-seated lack of confidence. Good manners now demanded that Mia reassure Kate. She ought to say that Kate’s new haircut was flattering. Which, indeed, it was. Or she could say that her shoes were fantastic – it was rare to see Kate in heels. Mia stayed silent. And grumpy.

Kate wondered if Mia had noticed her new haircut, perhaps it wasn’t radical enough. What a shame if it wasn’t noticeable. It had cost nearly
£
400 for the cut and colour, and Kate had had to wait several months on a list to get an appointment with the award-winning stylist who, rumour had it, also cut Madonna’s hair. She fingered the ends around the nape of her neck and sighed. In truth, she’d suspected that the cut was a little ordinary, but felt that for all the hype around the stylist
and
all that cash she’d paid, she had to be mistaken.

‘How are you getting on with the boarding?’ asked Kate.

‘I’m not,’ Mia whispered, turning away from Jayne and Tash. ‘I can’t get the hang of it.’

‘Well, you have only been trying for half a day.’

‘There might only ever be half a day,’ said Mia grimly. She shifted on the chair. She never thought she’d see the time when she bemoaned a lack of padding on her bum. ‘Scaley Jase is being depressingly impressive. He mastered his toe and heel edge; he can already traverse at some speed. I’m sure by the end of the week he’ll be speeding down black runs brilliantly,’ spat Mia without doing much to hide her envy or irritation.

‘Oh, come on, Mia. You knew he’d be marvellous. He’s a great sportsman and totally fearless, almost bordering on the insane. That’s what you love about him.’

‘I don’t love anything about him,’ hissed Mia, further infuriated by Kate’s choice of words. ‘Why would I love his insanity? I’m a very measured person, extremely considered.’

‘Exactly,’ said Kate, with a sigh. She didn’t bother to expand. Mia would understand her if she wanted to. She paused before tentatively adding, ‘I’m not sure if I’ll ski tomorrow.’

Suddenly, Tash piped up, ‘Do you fancy an alternative buzz?’

‘Quite,’ said Kate, who wasn’t actually sure what Tash had offered. Mia glared. She hoped that Tash hadn’t heard the entire conversation. It was private.

‘Boarding?’ asked Tash.

‘Not boarding,’ said Kate with a definite tone that no one questioned. Tash thought for a second. ‘There’s quad bike riding, snowmobiles and climbing. I could take a day off the slopes, too, and join you if you’d like some company.’

‘That’s very kind of you, but I was more thinking a walk, perhaps with a guide.’ In fact, Kate was thinking of a walk as far as the next crêperie, but didn’t want to say.

‘Well, just let me know if you fancy some company,’ said Tash, turning back to her magazine and fiddling with Jayne’s hair.

‘It looks like you guys cleared out the magazine rack,’ said Mia, as she idly picked up a couple of the mags that the women were reading, then dropped them again. She couldn’t help but wonder at their shiny insincerity. None of them related to her. Not the titles that were aimed at the bimbo, the chatterbox, the bride or even the thinking woman. She wasn’t interested in interior design or gardening and, while she did enjoy cooking, she didn’t need a magazine to tell her how to do it.

There had been a period in her life when she had subscribed to
FitLife
. It was at that time that she had employed a personal trainer. It had been a successful ruse and for a while Mia’s thighs were brought under control, for a monthly cost that was greater than her mortgage repayments. She tried to remember why she stopped seeing her trainer. She had the feeling that it was because she decided that she could do without him. The way, in the end, she always decided she could do without everyone. Mia was a fast learner and had soon learnt his routine. Five laps around the common. One hundred sit-ups. Eighty press-ups. Sixty lunges on each leg. Forty bench presses – against a felled tree, for God’s sake. Twenty squats, and then cool down. La, la, la. It soon became very predictable. As it happened, she couldn’t do without him, or rather, didn’t do it without him. She never ran around the common and couldn’t remember the last time she attempted a lunge. Instead she resorted to wearing flared skirts that camouflaged her growing thighs. She cancelled her subscription to
FitLife
.

Mia noticed that Jayne and Tash had each purchased a clutch of beauty and gossip magazines – how predictable– and Kate was looking at the posh parenting one called
Junior
.

‘Why do you waste your time and money on magazines that think highbrow is a new way to wear your hair and the deep articles are about how to guarantee multiple orgasms?’

‘Is there more to life?’ commented Tash dryly. She glared at Mia. The gloves had come off in the pizzeria this afternoon and Tash felt liberated. Mia was an intellectual snob. She was cold and disapproving. Tash couldn’t understand why Rich numbered her amongst his best friends and she knew she would never feel the same.

‘We’re just killing time waiting for the guys,’ said Kate apologetically and diplomatically. In truth, she loved a good magazine. They were a mix between a best friend, a mother, a counsellor and a personal shopper. Kate looked for another topic of conversation, and chose badly. ‘Jayne looks better every year, doesn’t she?’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ admitted Mia. Jayne’s chestnut hair tumbled across Tash’s thighs, catching the light thrown from the open fire and shimmering. Her skin was peachy smooth, and Mia wondered what it felt like. Velvet, she supposed. No doubt Scaley would be in a position to tell her exactly what it felt like, very soon. She sighed, depressed.

Jayne was, without doubt, dazzling. Mia liked to think that, as a feminist, she always looked beyond the superficial. She hated the way women were continually judged on their looks. And yet she found that she judged that way all the time.

‘It just goes to show what money can do. I bet she spends every Saturday in the beautician’s,’ whispered Mia, which was in fact what she did herself. Kate didn’t – her beautician came to the house. Neither girl confided this to the other.

Instead, Kate commented, ‘Natasha is beautiful, too, don’t you think?’

There was nothing more annoying than an ugly duckling turning into a swan except, mused Mia, a girl that was born swan, lived swan and died swan. Tash
was
lovely. And while Mia hadn’t personally known her at primary school, she was prepared to put a bet on the fact that Tash had always been lovely. She was the type of girl that played Mary in the school nativity play. (Mia had always been given the more vocal but considerably less glamorous part of a shepherd, Kate had always been a sheep and Jayne had been a tree. Jayne still smarted from the humiliation of having to wear nothing other than brown tights and a green roll-neck jumper on stage.) Tash was the girl who the teacher trusted to take the class goldfish home during the summer holidays. She was the girl that fuelled every boy’s early teen dreams in her secondary school. Mia knew this without even having to talk to Barbie Babe.

‘Hello, ladies, have you missed me?’ Jase bounced into the foyer. It appeared everyone had. Jayne stretched and sat up, apologizing for catnapping in public; Kate and Tash beamed at Jase, simply pleased to see him, as he always helped the group to gel. Mia grinned in delight at the arrival of her sperm bank.

‘I wonder where Ted is?’ said Kate. ‘It’s quarter to eight. He’s going to be late.’

‘He’ll be here in his own time,’ assured Jase.

Kate leant close in to her two old friends and said, ‘Can I ask you something?’ Her normally strong face was crumpled.

‘Ask away,’ Jase grinned.

‘Have you noticed anything different about Ted?’

Mia and Jase stared at Kate, then exchanged confused looks.

‘Different, how?’ asked Jase. ‘Has he had a haircut? New snow gear?’

‘No, no, don’t be silly,’ said Kate, not realizing that Jase was being perfectly serious. ‘I, he’s, I.’ Kate wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. ‘Do you think he’s behaving oddly? More distracted than normal? Less communicative?’

Kate felt that she was betraying her husband by mooting these ideas to their friends, but she didn’t mean any harm, quite the opposite. She just had to know if she had an overactive imagination or if anyone else had noticed that Ted wasn’t quite himself. He was not so jovial of late. Not so confident and loud. Obviously she would not mention to their friends that his sex drive, usually respectable, had nosedived off the scale over the past few months. Dried up altogether, actually. She hadn’t noticed at first. They’d been together for so long, and the children were such a drain on time and energy that loving had long since been confined to a once-every-couple-of-weeks activity. But then a month went by. Then several. She wouldn’t dream of telling Mia and Jason this. She couldn’t stand those horrible American-style confessionals. She had her pride.

Nor did she mention that he’d missed the parents’ evenings at both Fleur’s and Elliot’s schools, and he was normally so involved with the children. He said he’d clean forgotten, even though she’d reminded him on the relevant mornings. He was always forgetting things nowadays. The other day he went to the office having forgotten his watch, and he’d twice forgotten to shave. Thank God for casual dress and designer stubble because otherwise he’d stick out like a sore thumb. Could he be ill? His uncle on his father’s side had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. It was a tragedy to watch, but he’d been so much older, in his seventies. Ted was a young man. Although, he didn’t always act it.

‘Do you think he could be ill?’ she blurted.

Jason and Mia silently stared their response. Eventually Jason said, ‘He seems chipper to me.’ He nudged Mia, who was internally fuming that Kate really didn’t have enough to worry about. If the children were here, she’d have been imagining all manner of chills and coughs and colds. As she didn’t have them to fuss over, she was diverting her smothering attention towards Ted. Poor Ted.

‘Tops,’ said Mia, with a yawn.

Kate nodded, pleased to have received reassurance, however unenthusiastic. ‘I wonder where he is?’ she repeated.

‘Action Man and Checkers have gone to the pool hall,’ said Mia. ‘Maybe he’s joined them.’

‘We’ll all be late for dinner,’ fretted Kate. ‘What’s he thinking of, wasting his time in pool halls? I think I’ll go and find him.’

Mia and Jason rolled their eyes at one another as she bustled off. Jase was sitting close to Mia. He put his arm around her shoulder, and she reciprocated by patting his leg.

‘Big Ted and Ms Monopoly can be really irritating,’ she confided.

‘They’re your best friends,’ Jase reminded her.

‘I suppose, but I feel like I’m on holiday with my parents. The way Ms Monopoly checks up on him all the time. Where is he? Has he eaten a good breakfast? Is he going to be on time? And Big Ted’s turned into an old man. Have you noticed the way he has to zip up his coat, put on his hat and gloves and scarf before he’ll leave any building, even if he’s only going to be outside for 100 yards? He’s not Scott of the bloody Antarctic.’