Authors: Judy Astley
She didn’t touch him, just kept her body close to his and waited to see if those hands would stay crammed in the pockets. They didn’t for long. She felt them slide round her back and he pressed her close against him, breathing hard in her ear. The bed was just falling-distance away. She wanted to lie on it and roll with him on the soft duvet. She wanted to be
under
the duvet, giggling with him, excited, a bit scared, skin against skin.
‘Course I do! It’s just … here … your mum’s bedroom. There’s all her stuff around. That dress hanging on the wardrobe door, it’s like she’s inside it. I can smell her perfume and it’s like freakin’ me?’
Molly, relieved that this was something simple she could fix, opened the wardrobe door and hurled the dress inside, then came back close to him.
‘There. She’s gone, vanished, and besides, the real
her
is on the far side of the Atlantic. Thing is, this is the only available proper grown-up big bed in the house. The guest-room one’s covered in stuff for Oxfam, Mum’s got
her office in the littlest one with papers all over the sofa bed, Alex’s is disgusting and boy-gnarly and my bed’s just
child-size
.’
And it had her old soft polar bear on it, and an embroidered cushion that spelled out ‘Princess Molly’ and her cosy flowery PJs stuffed into a cloth poodle. These were things he didn’t need to know about. He might smile and say, ‘Ah, cute,’ but it would also turn her back into some kind of infant. Also, on the big pinboard on the wall there were silly photos of all her mates and she’d think they were all watching her and Giles, especially Aimee who, even in the happiest pic, looked as if she knew it all and everyone else knew nothing. In Molly’s case she was too close to right about that. She could just imagine Aimee, sneery and jeering, ‘You’re like
soooo
crap at that, Molly Duncan.’ Also on the board was her brother Alex, who also really thought she was at Carly’s and would mind that she hadn’t trusted him enough to let him in on the truth; and then there was her grandmother Shirley who would definitely tell her – very loudly and preferably in embarrassing company – that ‘you’re only young twice!’ and that free love wasn’t anything new, darling, just
enjoy
.
Giles still looked unsure. His eyes had gone big and worried.
‘OK, look it’s no problem.’ She stepped back from
him and looked at him, giving him one last chance. He smiled, hesitant and still, waiting to see what she wanted to do.
‘Let’s just go back downstairs and watch a DVD. It’s all right. I just feel a bit sad …’ She felt like a complete fool, actually, and close to tears. Like she’d made all the running and in the end had turned out not to be good enough for him. What did he want? A slapper like Aimee who’d done it with half of St Mart’s sixth form? Yes, he probably did. Didn’t they all? She made a move towards the door, but he caught her hand suddenly and pulled her back.
‘No – it’s fine. I’m over it,’ Giles said. ‘Come here, you.’
Home! Oh, how much more reliable were bricks and mortar than flesh and bones and the unfathomable so-called brains of stupid, stupid men! Now this,
this
really
was
like being reunited with a favourite lover, Bella thought as she trundled the Bric up the path. Never had she been so happy to see her mad turrets-and-gables Edwardian villa as she was tonight. The minicab squealed off down the road as Bella plonked her case on the step. Like a pope on airport tarmac, she kissed the front door’s flaking Farrow & Ball Hague Blue paintwork before she put the key in the lock and whispered fondly, ‘Oh house I love-love-love you!’
Thank goodness Molly and Alex weren’t around to
witness this ignominious swift return. She wished Molly a fun time at Carly’s, and hoped that Alex was putting up with James’s finicky kitchen tidiness in the Edinburgh flat without completely exploding when he was reminded to clean the sink for the fifth time that day. James had taken to providing rubber gloves (new pack each time) for all house guests, laying them out on the beds along with towels. ‘Dad’s getting more loony by the bloody minute,’ Molly had grumbled, the last time she and Alex had gone up to stay with him. You couldn’t argue with that.
Bella was a bit surprised to see Molly’s favourite black jacket hanging over the post at the bottom of the stairs, but assumed she’d simply forgotten to take it to Carly’s with her. The jacket was still quite new and could barely be prised off the girl. She wore it with everything, but then that was, she remembered, the way with teenagers: they wore something to death for a couple of weeks, then it was abandoned for ever, or at least till you put it in the jumble bag, at which point they suddenly had a hissy fit about how
dare
you think it was OK to chuck it out, merely because it had been lying forgotten on a dusty floor for two years.
But it wasn’t just the jacket. Bella switched on the kitchen light and had a confused moment when she wondered how it could be possible that she’d had a last-minute drink of vodka and orange – two things that she
considered should never be mixed – before leaving for the airport at seven a.m. only thirty-six hours previously. Of course she hadn’t. She wasn’t even that nervy a flyer – why would she
not
have had her usual English Breakfast tea? Maybe Jules, in to feed the cat, had had a crafty nip? After all, it was now only Sunday night. She wasn’t expecting Bella back till Tuesday morning. She’d just put it back in the fridge and forget … Music.
Music?
From upstairs. Oh-oh, just who
was
here? Jules was keen on Gilbert and Sullivan, not the Kings of Leon – Molly’s current favourite – which was the sound echoing round the stairwell …
So. It had to be Molly. Telling herself she was lucky not to come home and find three hundred Internet-summoned teenagers rampaging through the house, uprooting roses in the garden and throwing up on the sofas, she tiptoed as silently as she could up the stairs. Then, having had a gruesome second-thought premonition about what she really
didn’t
want to see, she retraced her near-silent steps and bounced back up the stairs noisily, shouting, ‘Molly, is that you up there?’
There was a scuffling sound. Bella waited a moment before warily pushing open the door to Molly’s room, but no one was there. Only the grubby white polar bear stared back at her. With a sigh that carried in it all the despair of the last couple of days, and with a dreadful foreboding about the inevitable, Bella went into her
own bedroom and almost tripped over the scattered tangle of clothes and shoes on the floor.
‘Mum! Hi! You’re, like, not supposed to be here?’ Molly’s voice was high and scared and falsely bright.
‘’Lo Mrs Duncan.’ Giles, in bed beside Molly, gave her his best lop-sided smile and waved a limp hand. Horribly, Bella couldn’t help wondering about the rest of him … the part that was sure not to have been that limp. Alongside her seventeen-year-old daughter. Oh, terrific.
Molly pulled the duvet up further towards her chin. A bit of a pointless gesture at this stage, Bella thought.
‘
I’m
not supposed to be here? Shouldn’t I be saying that to you? What happened to “I
have
to be at Carly’s”?’ Bella snapped back.
‘Um …’ Molly’s face went into a contorted-puzzled expression, as if she didn’t really understand the question. Admittedly it was quite a daft one. Why on earth would she be at Carly’s when she could be in a conveniently empty house, in bed with her completely delicious boyfriend? Lucky bloody her, Bella thought bitterly, her mind going back to what, if all had gone to plan, she herself could be doing right now. The Kings of Leon rocked on in the background, something about Sex on Fire.
Shut up
, Bella thought.
‘Oh … aaaagh! Get dressed, Molly. And you …’ She could hardly look at Giles. Those naked, skinny yet
broad shoulders. Bare, male skin. It was all too much to face right now. ‘Just … go home, Giles. Please.’
Bella left them to get sorted, went back to the kitchen, shakily poured the last of the vodka into a tumbler and added the orange. As she glugged down the oversweet repulsive drink she caught sight of the best-before date on the carton. It was way past its prime. ‘It’s not the bloody only one,’ she said, swigging down the rest of it.
‘And he stayed on in the
hotel
? The same hotel as
you
? With his
wife
?’ If Jules’s disbelieving eyes got any wider they’d surely drop right out of her face. It was also obvious to Bella that Jules was trying very, very hard not to laugh. Her eyes were glittering with squashed-down mirth and her mouth was doing that involuntary twitching thing. All her little laughter lines, half obscured beneath the frondy wisps of her ginger-and-scarlet fringe, were trembling, desperate to crinkle into outright hilarity. Aha – so that’s how the old saying worked; what the pundits
actually
meant was, ‘Some day you’ll look back on this and
everyone else
will laugh.’ Well of course they would.
‘I know, I know,’ Bella groaned. ‘If it wasn’t me it had happened to, I’d think it was pretty damn funny too. A classic. It’s like a
Family Fortunes
question, isn’t it?
“What’s the worst thing that could go wrong on a romantic weekend away with your lover?” The top answer would have to be: “A wife he’s sworn he doesn’t have turns up to reclaim him and he scurries off after her without a backward glance.” OK, not the snappiest trip-off-the-tongue phrasing, but that’s about the up and down of it.’
Bella yawned, still exhausted from sleep that had been full of strange primary-coloured dreams of scarlet aircraft and yellow cabs and a dozen naked, writhing teenagers having sex in the wrong beds. How come only one night in a far time zone could cause as much jet lag as being away for a whole month? Or was it a result of feeling just plain old misery and hopelessness? Jules had dropped in to feed the cat, letting herself in with the spare key and getting a shock to find the place occupied and smelling of coffee. She’d expected Bella to be away for another forty-eight hours. Now she was settling in comfortably, filling the kettle, helping herself to Bella’s heap of honeyed toast, wanting the full story and determined not to leave without it. That was what you got from people you’d been friends with since day one at secondary school. If they were still hanging in there, still part of your life when you were into middle age, they were sisters by default and weren’t going to let you get away with waffling through bitter truths. You couldn’t hide much from a woman who’d clocked
you stuffing your trainer bra with tissues when you were changing after hockey practice.
‘But to a room only a few along from the one he was supposed to be in with
you
?’ Jules took another mouthful of toast. ‘Insensitive or
what
? Why couldn’t they go somewhere else? It’s not as if New York is exactly short of hotels, is it? Or why didn’t she just drag him back home, wherever that is?’
‘Well, quite. My thoughts exactly at the time – turns out she’s only from somewhere out on Long Island, not the far side of the continent. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Unbloody-believable how far some people will go to make a point. I mean, it was hardly my fault – I really, honestly, thought the “wife” aspect of her had the word “ex” in front of it. You see, Rick and I were just about to go out for dinner …’
‘Wait, wait … start at the beginning, I need to know all! You’d arrived in New York late morning-ish on Saturday, right? He came and met you at the airport?’
‘He did.’ Bella didn’t want this to make her smile, not now, but she couldn’t help herself. Even though it had ended disastrously, she was going to hang on to the few memories that were worth stashing away for old-age reminiscence. It was like keeping a photo album – some shots would always give you a bit of a lift, whatever the story each side of the picture. ‘It was quite romantic
actually. That bit, anyway. He’d brought all these beautiful pink roses with him, a huge bouquet of gorgeously scented blowsy ones, not like the tightly furled-up sterile sorts you get in the roadside buckets by the Chiswick roundabout. It was like something out of a Richard Curtis movie, all bliss and feel-good. There were people around us going “aaah,
cute
” as if we were teenage lovers instead of a pair of mid-life idiots who’d been round this particular block more than once in the past. He was going to show me New York, he’d promised. I did even wonder if he was going to … er … um …’ She hesitated, because what she’d been going to say was something obviously only
she
of the two of them had considered. It had involved the words ‘marry’ and ‘me’ being said together in the same sentence. As a question. And by Rick. Well she’d got that bit wrong, one hundred per cent.
‘He was going to ask you to be wife number three, wasn’t he?’ Jules read her mind. ‘Or at least … I assume you thought he was because I remember you dropped some comment in your “Week Moment” column a few Sundays ago, about how diamonds weren’t your idea of a best friend. What was the theme? “I Really Don’t Get … Engagement Rings”. I love that “I Don’t Get” thing you write! Sometimes you’re
sooo
cross! Brill to have an outlet for all your gripes like that,
and
get paid. Sure beats teaching yoga to the Mortlake-mummy mafia. I
have to be so
nice
and so
beatific
all the time! I should have got them on to karate …’ Jules’s eyes gleamed suddenly. ‘… or fencing!’
‘Huh!’ Bella spluttered. ‘Well that’ll teach me, won’t it? That’s the trouble with a weekly column, especially in the Sunday press. You end up so desperate for material that your own life has to be trawled to its muddiest depths for every possible space-filler. And to be honest, at the time I was just dropping in a general opinion on gemstones, not hinting at all. I’ve done marriage. James was more than enough for me in the husband department, thanks.’
Jules smiled, looking as if she didn’t believe her. ‘No really,’ Bella protested. ‘Even if Rick
had
asked me, I’d have had to do something like laugh girlishly and somehow shake off the whole idea, kind of “Oh but, how sweet of you to think of it!” and fluff on about how we’re fine as we are, aren’t we, and how I’m not that keen on hats and cake.’