STOCKINGS AND CELLULITE Page 5

  I hung up feeling tremendously excited.

  Later that afternoon Stevie knocked on the door ready to collect the twins for the longest period in that house so far. I wouldn’t see the twins until Sunday teatime.

  ‘Cass?’ he asked in a wheedling tone which instantly irritated me. ‘Have you thought any more about us getting back together?’

  ‘I’m still thinking about it,’ I snapped. ‘Although frankly, after listening to your litany of legovers, I wouldn’t get your hopes up.’

  ‘You know you don’t mean that Cass. You’re still angry – understandably so – but you’ll calm down eventually.’

  I swung round furiously. ‘Oh will I?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s just that I’d like to get back to normal, preferably as soon as possible. I want to get on with my life.’

  My eyes rocketed open in disbelief. ‘Your life? And what about my life, or is this just about you?’

  ‘I meant our lives getting back to normal. Apart from anything else, Cynthia’s sofa is doing my back in.’

  I froze. So he wasn’t sleeping in her bed after all? Or was he? Was he telling the truth? Or was he lying? Would I ever recognise when he was being honest or whether I was being spun a pack of lies? The very thought of never knowing for sure sent my stomach churning. Could I resume living by his side knowing I would be in a constant state of turmoil? I had a mental vision of riffling through the pockets of his suit at the end of every working day. Feverishly scrolling through the text messages on his mobile. Possibly even ringing a few numbers I didn’t recognise just to see if the voice that answered might be female. And then what? Hang up? Or blindly wade in asking impudent questions with somebody who might innocently turn out to be a female tax consultant? If our relationship stood any chance of reviving and surviving, then trust was paramount. But I no longer trusted Stevie. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever trust him again. My head felt dizzy and I clutched hold of the doorframe to steady myself.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Stevie had a protective arm around my shoulder in a flash.

  ‘Fine thanks,’ I tetchily shook him off just as the twins appeared.

  ‘Cass I’d better go, Cynthia’s got a big roast in the oven for all of us.’

  ‘Oh yummy yummy. Well run along then,’ I spat.

  ‘Don’t be like that Cass. Please. Could you let me have some sort of answer fairly soon?’

  After he’d gone I moodily plucked an apple from the fruit bowl and bit into its lacklustre skin. Huh, just like mine. Yuck, it was badly bruised. Like my heart too. Suddenly I whipped round and flung the apple at the kitchen wall. It splattered against the paintwork leaving a trail of pulp and sticky juice in its wake.

  ‘Bastard!’ I shrieked at the disgusting mess and promptly burst into tears.

  Oh God, this was no good. Jed would be here in a couple of hours. I needed to calm down. Have a bath. Get ready.

  I blew my nose on a sheet of kitchen towel, cleared up the mess and went upstairs. While the bath was running I routed around in the medicine cupboard looking for something to sooth frazzled nerves. What was this? Suppositries. A periodic requirement but only good at soothing frazzled piles – the result of bearing two babies in one go. I sorted through the packets and selected some hayfever tablets. May cause drowsiness. Excellent. Three of them should calm me down. Along with a good stiff drink.

  Jed was greeted by a lethargic woman with dilated pupils.

  ‘Hi!’ he greeted.

  ‘Hi!’ I gushed back.

  ‘You look fabulous,’ he smiled appreciatively.

  ‘So do you,’ I blurted.

  It was true. Jed was even better looking than I remembered. Olive green eyes, dark hair and extremely white teeth. I wondered if they were bleached. Best not to ask at this stage. Maybe later, when he’d unbuttoned a bit. Perhaps he could even tell me who his dentist was.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked offering his elbow in a charming old-fashioned gesture.

  He led me to his Porsche Boxster and opened the passenger door. I sunk into the leather depths. Oh very nice. Yes, very nice indeed. I tucked my legs in and let him shut the door.

  We drove to a quaint pub and started the evening off sitting before a warm log fire, heads together chatting. I sipped a gin and tonic while Jed stuck to mineral water. A sense of relaxation stole over me which I suspected was nothing to do with the mix of pills and alcohol but everything to do with Jed.

  Eventually we went through to the pub’s dining area which was all knotty wood and low beams. Lots of atmosphere. Inevitably the conversation touched on our respective failed marriages and we exchanged sob stories. Surprisingly, when I told Jed how I’d found Stevie in flagrante, instead of becoming angry or upset I found myself seeing the funny side. I won’t pretend I creased up slapping my thighs with mirth, because I didn’t. But somehow a shrug of the shoulders and a rueful smile helped soften a distressing memory.

  Driving home, was it my imagination or had the atmosphere changed? All previous banter seemed to have been left behind in the pub. I sat tensely in the passenger seat. Jed drew up outside the house, the engine turning over throatily. There was a pause. A sense of waiting. What now? What was the form? Issue an invitation for coffee? Sit at the far end of the sofa? Work our way towards each other? Make mad passionate love whilst the dodgy springs protested? I was completely out of touch regarding rules of the dating game.

  ‘Can I ring you sometime next week?’ he asked.

  ‘Y-yes, of course,’ I stuttered. ‘Thank you for a wonderful evening.’

  ‘It was a pleasure.’

  And then Jed simply leant across the small divide between his seat and mine, cupped my face in his hands and planted a soft kiss on my lips.

  I spent the remainder of the weekend feeling strangely uplifted. Now why was that? It was almost as if an invisible pair of rose tinted glasses had been perched on the bridge of my nose transforming the world into a much nicer place to dwell. Was this experience merely a histamine hangover or had optimism genuinely entered my life? As I stood over the ironing board gazing out of the kitchen window, a beam of sunlight pierced the grey clouds and haloed them with silver linings. It made me feel as if I were suddenly seeing light after being in a very dark tunnel.

  I wasn’t naïve or foolish enough to believe I’d fallen in love after one date with a stranger. Of course not. But I did believe that one date with another man had altered my perception about Stevie.

  As the weekend rolled into the start of a new week, I rose half an hour earlier than usual to prepare for Operation Return to Work. I gulped nervously. This was top secret stuff. Nobody knew about it, not even Nell with whom I usually confided everything. The secrecy was partially due to cowardice – what if the whole thing was a disaster? That was why discretion was tantamount. Once the booking was complete and depending upon its level of success, then and only then would I convey to everybody my successful return to work. Or not as the case might be.

  ‘Hey Mum!’ Livvy stared at me in surprise. ‘You look-’

  ‘Yes?’ I asked eagerly standing before her in my new black-as-midnight suit.

  ‘Has somebody died?’ Toby cut across his sister.

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Why are you all dressed up?’ asked my son who, by sheer dint of being born with a willy, possessed the enviable male knack of getting straight to the point.

  ‘Are you seeing a solicitor?’ asked Livvy, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

  ‘N-no. Whatever makes you ask that?’ I stuttered.

  ‘Daddy wondered if you might be taking legal advice before you make a decision about a reconciliation,’ she explained.

  ‘Oh did he now?’ I flushed angrily. ‘And why is Daddy discussing grown up matters with you?’

  ‘Because I asked him.’

  ‘Well in future don’t!’

  ‘So where are you going?’ asked Toby.

  ‘To the doctor,’ I replied crisply.

  ‘With full m
ake up and dressed to impress. Are you having a smeary test?’

  ‘Thank you Toby,’ I spluttered, ‘that’s quite enough of that sort of talk.’

  Finally, after a last minute game of hide and seek looking for the car keys, we headed out the front door.

  ‘Ooh what’s the occasion?’ Nell appeared on her driveway within seconds of my locking the front door. Damn.

  ‘Dentist,’ I explained hurriedly.

  ‘You told me it was a doctor’s appointment,’ Toby accused.

  ‘Correct on both accounts,’ I smiled tightly. ‘Doctor first and then the dentist. Must dash,’ I fluttered a hasty wave at Nell’s astonished face before legging it to the sanctuary of the car.

  Forty minutes later I parked in the staff area at the rear of a Victorian terrace. I gazed up at the elegantly old fashioned building and read the words Morton Peck & Livingston etched in gold across the windows. With mounting excitement, I grabbed my handbag from the passenger seat and marched up to the front door, heels clicking confidently over the paving stones.

  Inside, a generous hallway doubled as a reception area. A peroxide blonde receptionist with heavy make up and an orange tan was clearly in the middle of juicy gossip with a fellow colleague.

  ‘I told her fair and square,’ the blonde sniffily informed her pal. ‘I said that if she didn’t tell her mother then I most certainly would. After all, I’ve known Mirium for years. Years!’ the blonde shrieked. ‘What on earth would Mirium think if she discovered I’d known all along what her own daughter was up to?’

  My ears wiggled appreciatively as I stood and patiently waited. My goodness, what on earth was Mirium’s daughter doing? Evidently it was more than raiding the biscuit tin after hours.

  ‘Yes?’ the blonde snapped, unprepared to divulge further details of Mirium’s daughter in front of a stranger.

  ‘Hello, I’m the temp.’

  ‘Sit down,’ the blonde waved a bejewelled hand at a row of hard chairs. ‘I’ll let Mr Morton know you’re here.’

  I sat on one of the uncomfortable chairs until the Senior Partner’s arrival. He was a short man somewhere around mid-forties with a pale non-descript face. On the bridge of his nose perched a pair of rectangular glasses through which he coldly observed me. It would be fair to say that a bag of frozen peas emanated more warmth than Mr Morton.

  ‘Mrs Cherry?’ he enquired giving my outstretched palm a brief shake. ‘Please come with me.’

  We went up a flight of stairs, across a landing covered in threadbare carpet and through a side door which led into Mr Morton’s office. There was a distinct air of dreariness, no doubt generated by years of regulation brown gloss and scuffed beige walls. A vast table smothered in rows of stacked files edged one wall. Opposite was a battered desk layered with bundles of ribboned documents, scribble pads and an ink blotter. A Dictaphone machine lay abandoned in the middle of this organised chaos.

  Mr Morton motioned me through an internal door to another room which was, by comparison, about the size of a cupboard. I tried to work out the mathematical formula for squeezing my frame into the space between typist’s stool and keyboard area and momentarily felt like Alice in Wonderland before she drank her shrinking potion.

  Mr Morton rattled off a logging on procedure and password before giving a guided tour of the secretarial desk and its burgeoning In Tray. My duties were pretty simple really – field calls, organise the diary and type at one hundred miles per hour.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ he said before reversing out of the cupboard.

  I slotted a cassette into the dictation machine and started typing. The desk was pushed up against an outside wall set with a small barred window. I beavered away, my back to Mr Morton’s office, face pointing toward the meagre light attempting to filter through the iron bars. Thank goodness this was only a temporary booking, the whole environment was too depressing for words.

  The lunch hour was pretty much non-existent. I managed to find the Ladies and a concealed tea and coffee machine along a dark corridor, but upon returning to my desk with a limp sandwich, Mr Morton instantly materialised by my side requesting an urgent document for a two o’clock Probate appointment.

  Time slipped by at a frightening rate. I was sure the hands of the clock didn’t gallop as quickly when pottering about at home. Suddenly it was time to dash off on the school run. I hurriedly logged off and delivered the remainder of typing to Mr Morton’s desk.

  ‘Well Good-bye,’ I trilled. ‘See you tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Where the devil do you think you’re going?’ Mr Morton barked.

  ‘Er, did the Agency not explain about my children?’

  ‘Haven’t you got a childminder?’ Mr Morton asked incredulously.

  There then followed a lot of huffing and puffing before he finally dismissed me, muttering about beggars not being choosers.

  Ruffled, I turned on my heel and stalked out. I thanked my lucky stars for opting to temp before jumping straight back into the unchartered waters of permanent employ.

  That evening just as I’d flopped down in front of the television, the telephone rang. It was Stevie.

  ‘Cass, enough is enough. I really do think it’s time to stop dangling me on a piece of string. Can I please have a straight answer from you? Preferably now and not after Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’

  I hastily killed the television’s volume. ‘Yes Stevie. Of course. No more prevaricating.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I care about you Stevie. Really I do.’ I heard his sigh of relief. ‘But-’

  ‘Oh Cass, no buts please. Let’s just get back together and get on with our lives.’

  ‘Stevie I do indeed want us to get on with our lives. But not together.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean not together? How else but not together?’

  ‘I mean living apart. Separate lives.’

  ‘Listen to me Cass, you’ve had a devastating experience and you’re still reeling. You’re hurt-’

  ‘Hurt?’ I gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Do you have any idea of the depth of my hurt?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  Stevie gave a sigh of exasperation and I could almost visualise him making a gesture with his hands, pushing my answer away – an answer he didn’t want to accept.

  ‘Stevie, hurt doesn’t just go away. You can’t stick a plaster on it.’

  ‘Of course not. But in time the pain would recede. Eventually it would go away.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think it would always be there, festering.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he scoffed. ‘Time is a great healer. Everybody says that. It’s a phrase that’s as old as the hills.’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, but after that incredible confession cataloguing precisely how many affairs you embarked upon, I simply can’t trust you any more.’

  ‘They weren’t affairs!’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘They were mere distractions and meant absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Well unfortunately they meant something to me,’ I countered. ‘And your distraction with Cynthia Castle sent me to hell and back again. Maybe I could forgive you in time – but I’m absolutely positive that I would never forget. It would always be there Stevie, rearing its ugly head, causing arguments and endless regurgitated hurt.’

  ‘Cass please, I’m begging you now,’ Stevie’s voice cracked slightly. ‘I know what I did was wrong. I’ve behaved abominably over the years.’

  ‘Damn right. And made out that I was some sort of irrational, overly-possessive basket case.’ My voice rose and my heart started to palpitate unpleasantly. ‘When I think back on all the times you didn’t come home, all the times I’d ring one of your mates or a colleague – even your secretary dammit – apologising profusely for interrupting their evening and asking if they’d seen you or knew of your whereabouts, making excuses that you’d probably told me but I’d been too preoccupied with the twins to take on board what you’d said – wining and dining a client,
attending a boring function – how humiliating was that for me? And how embarrassing for those people having to think up lies to cover your backside?’

  ‘Cass, listen to me. Hands up! I led you a merry dance. I admit that I made out you were imagining things. Yes, I am mostly the guilty party.’

  ‘What do you mean – mostly the guilty party?’

  ‘Well it takes two to break a marriage you know. You can’t put all the blame on me.’

  ‘Are you saying that I’m responsible for your affairs?’

  ‘Only in the sense that you were always preoccupied with the twins. There was never any time for me.’

  For a moment I felt wrong-footed. Had I neglected my husband then? Was it actually my fault he’d sought solace elsewhere? I cast my mind back to the early days of motherhood – the endless sleepless nights with two babies being fed on demand. I’d come to know exactly how a dairy cow felt as two little mouths clamped down on me. Eventually I’d resorted to bottle feeding. But barely had that got off the ground when the colic set in. And no sooner had the colic resolved then the teething had started. Perhaps, instead of shuffling exhausted from the nursery back to my bed, I should have cellotaped my eye-lids open and slipped into a French Maid’s outfit. Injected a bit of oo-la-la into my sex-starved marriage? And then I came back to the present.

  ‘Okay, maybe I was permanently exhausted in the early days and unable to give you my full attention. But that doesn’t excuse you for the more recent flings. It certainly doesn’t justify your affair with Cynthia. In fact Stevie, how dare you try and point the finger of blame at me.’ Tears stung my eyes. But they weren’t tears of sorrow or self-pity, they were tears of anger. And justifiably so. ‘How bloody dare you!’ I shrieked.

  Stevie instantly realised he’d overplayed that particular hand and tried to retract the statement.

  ‘Calm down Cass, I’m not saying it was all your fault because it wasn’t. You were a wonderful wife and an excellent mother-’

  ‘Oh good. I’m glad to hear you say that Stevie because for one moment I thought you were trying to lay all the blame at my door.’

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ he soothed.