Lou’s head was bursting with ideas for
Ma’s Café
. She kept having to break off preparing the evening meal just to write things down in her notebook. Phil came in at seven o’clock. He called, ‘Hi,’ peering over her shoulder to see what he had to look forward to gastronomically, and went upstairs to change out of his suit. It was his normal routine–with one notable exception. This was the third night in a row that he had kept his mobile with him and not put it on charge in the kitchen.
Now why would he not leave it lying around? a voice in her head questioned. Lou tried to ignore it. She didn’t want to go down that analytical road to Nightmare Land again. After Phil’s affair there was a time when anything he did out of the ordinary was ripped apart in her head: not finishing a meal, buying new underpants, chewing a different brand of gum–anything. She had found herself in that mad place where women sniffed shirts, checked cars for unfamiliar-looking hairs and stayed awake at night to see if he divulged secrets out loud as he dreamed. She had found nothing definite to substantiate the claims her paranoia was making, but still she couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think straight.
It was emotionally exhausting, being a nutter. Phil said she was cracking up, and if her behaviour didn’t stop he might as well go and do what he was being accused of. That scared her enough to fight hard against her neuroses. Each day of those inner battles was a living hell. Her mind tore her to shreds with questions. No, she would never go back to those days of obsessive suspicion again. Phil was not having an affair. End of.
But the question of the phone kept poking at her long after Phil had eaten his meal and gone to bed, and swept up in that thought path was his strange behaviour of late–the constant humming, the change of after-shave. Try as she might, it would not be ignored and pushed down. It kept springing up like a really annoying jack-in-the-box that demanded to be heard.
The prosecuting case was flimsy to say the least but she needed to think straight. It was Phil’s way of punishing her about the Des and Celia afternoon, not forgetting her friendship with Deb. The clue was in the timing, her mind reasoned. He was trying to drag her attention back to him and away from the coffee shop. Despite his little pokes at her insecurities in the past three years he hadn’t been with anyone else, she was as sure as she could be of that. But, however hard she had tried to fool herself that she trusted him as much after the affair as before it, that was really a lie she told them both. Trust was as fragile as Humpty Dumpty’s shell. But she could never let him know that she didn’t wholly trust him. He had said that there would be no point in going on with the marriage if there was no trust and that she would have to believe him when he said that he would never do that to her again–and that was that. But a vow in the end is just
words–a self-imposed boundary of nothing more substantial than ribbon. And, as such, Lou never quite lost the fear that another Susan Peach was around the corner, waiting to seduce her husband away. Maybe that day was here now and Phil would level at her that she had brought it all on herself with her café ideas and being rude to his family.
Sitting there with a coffee and her recipe book at the dining-table, Lou gave herself a slap. She was being ridiculous, torturing herself with thoughts like these; not to mention teetering on the edge of a dangerous abyss. She should go about her daily business and allow Phil to think he was teaching her his ‘lesson’. She would let his game run its course, then it would all blow over and they could get back to normal. There would be no perfume hunts or checkings of pockets because there was no other woman. Even Phil wouldn’t be that cruel.
Phil’s phone buzzed in his pocket, just as Lou had waved goodbye to him on Friday morning. It made his penis tingle as he read the sauce that appeared on the screen. The texts had started off very friendly and benign.
HELLO, HOW ARE YOU
?
HAVING A GOOD DAY
? But soon innuendo had started to creep in.
ISNT IT COLD
2
DAY
? he had sent. And the reply came:
I AM PRETTY HOT MYSELF
. Still all harmless stuff, though.
Yes, a good soup was all the better for a simmer, as Lou would say; and didn’t he know it. Bring it to the boil straightaway and you spoil it.
There was a small bag waiting for Lou on her desk when she walked into work. She opened it to find a box of matches. She didn’t understand, then she saw Karen smirking–and then she
did
understand.
Lou bounded over and hugged her.
‘Well, I didn’t want to say anything before in case I hated it or it didn’t work out,’ said Karen. ‘But yes, I’m on the course and, Lou, I have to say I’m really enjoying it. Thank you for forcing me to join. Now take those home and burn that bloody burgundy suit!’
Lou’s face was all smiles–her mouth, her eyes, even her nose was trying to curve up its corners.
‘Did you ask HR about funding you?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Karen with a snort. ‘I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of turning me down. No, I can manage and Mum and Dad and my big brother Nigel, they’ve all chipped in for the course fees. It’s manageable. Chris is going to take the children when I need to study. So…’ she rattled the bag. ‘Do as you agreed, Skinny.’
‘I think “Skinny” is pushing it a bit,’ Lou smiled, but enjoyed the novelty of being called it all the same. ‘Anyway, I already put my burgundy suit in a skip,’ she told Karen, ‘so I can’t set fire to it.’
By then everyone was clustering around Karen’s desk to see what the fuss was all about. Stan gave her a big kiss and Zoe gave her a hug and said she wished she’d known, then they could have bought a ‘good luck’ cake.
‘Never too late for that one,’ laughed Karen, but they had a round of coffees and chocolate from the machine as an interim measure.
As they stood around, Nicola came in with a, ‘What’s this? What’s going on?’
‘Just a private meeting,’ sniffed Karen, who could actually look down physically from a great height at her, as well as metaphorically.
‘I’m sure Roger will be thrilled to know he’s paying wages to people so they can hold their own private meetings in work time,’ said Nicola with malevolence as she swanned off back to her desk.
‘How does she walk with that spike stuck up her arse?’ said Karen quietly to Lou.
Stan and Zoe melted timidly back to their desks.
‘Lou, have you finished the return I left with you yesterday?’ Nicola called over, knowing there was no way she could have. Not unless she was Superwoman.
But with accounts, Lou
was
Superwoman and so could reply with all honesty, ‘Yes, it’s on your desk.’
Karen smiled a ‘fuck you’ smile in support of Lou. Nicola saw it and started to grow a blotchy neck, which usually meant that she was going to try extra hard to be foul. But Lou was extra impenetrable today. She knew one of her feet was firmly out of this office and in their coffee-house, and the other would soon follow. And later on that day she was seeing Tom, which was a pretty good excuse to smile in the face of even the worst adversity.
Lou picked up Deb after work from the bakery and they headed out of the village and into the lovely countryside on the scenic top road out of Barnsley, heading towards the outskirts of Oxworth, where Tom lived.
‘Any idea where you’re going?’ Deb enquired.
‘Sort of,’ said Lou. ‘Look out for a sign for a small estate called “The Horseshoe”.’
‘You mean, that estate called “The Horseshoe” that we passed about half a mile back?’
‘Oh poop, did we?’ Lou did a five-point turn by a five-bar gate and drove back to the signpost. ‘OK. Apparently, we turn immediately right here, then left at a pub called the Salt Pot, then there’s a long leafy lane but we take the first right again up a drive.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Deb, when they had turned onto said leafy lane. ‘That
is
nice.’
In front of them was an old double-fronted Victorian
villa with gables, set like a neat diamond in the mount of a very lovely garden with high hedges and deep borders of summer flowers that were just coming into colourful bud.
They pulled up at the side of Tom’s car–a four-by-four big, manly vehicle that Lou could sense Tom in, rattling over rough terrain with his trusty hound at his side. He came to the door and waved a welcome.
‘Hello again,’ said Deb, striding out in her confident way towards him and kissing him politely on the cheek, setting a rather daunting precedent for Lou. What the hell was she going to do now? Should she follow suit? That decision was taken from her as Tom bent down to Lou, giving her a peck on her cheek too. It got her all flustered and instead of, ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘Thanks.’
Deb hooted and unwittingly rescued her by saying, ‘Oh no, I thought she was sober, so I let her drive. Big mistake, obviously.’
Tom laughed and led them inside with a large shepherding hand that touched Deb’s back slightly as he guided them forwards, Lou noticed with a pang of envy.
A wide hallway greeted them, black and white tiles on the floor, fresh white walls and a beautiful chunky staircase in dark woods. There was a huge stained-glass window where the stairs turned, featuring a sun setting over the sea, which was flooding the hallway with lovely late-spring evening light. It was not at all like the cluttered man-zone Lou had imagined after seeing his shop.
‘This is beautiful,’ said Deb, rotating to take it all in.
‘It’s been a bit of a labour of love,’ said Tom, ‘but at least I’ve done all the knocking-down bits and am now
at the putting-up stage. I’ve plenty to go at still, though–as you’ll see in a minute.’
They followed him into a large echoey room, where the tang of sawdust suggested that the floors had been recently sanded. The walls were bare and re-plastered in patches. Apart from the huge table and chairs obviously in permanent residence there it was a blank canvas ready to create a beautiful dining room.
Tom brought a pot of pre-prepared coffee through and a big tin of biscuits.
Very nice biscuits, and obviously a new tin bought especially, although being a bloke he didn’t put them on a plate, which made Lou smile a little. There was no false ceremony with this guy–but he was all man. She couldn’t imagine him screaming at spiders or sneezing because an animal had looked in his direction, like Phil. Which reminded her. ‘Where’s Clooney?’ she asked.
‘My twin’s got him,’ said Tom, with a cheeky grin. ‘OK, before you clout me, he’s with my sister. He’s too distracting, so he’s out playing with the kids. I’m going to pick him up after we’ve finished doing what we have to do.’
‘So to business…’ said Deb, starting their meeting by using a pink wafer as a gavel.
An hour later, after Tom had shown them the plans of the place, gone through a copy of May’s lease line by line to show there were no hidden clauses, discussed terms and payment and presented May’s surprisingly neat set of accounts for Lou to cast her expert eye over, Lou and Deb were even more happy with their lot. Tom was being overly kind on the rent, Lou thought, but he seemed happy enough with the arrangement and had no
objections with the fancy plans for what they wanted to do with the place–if the bank let them borrow the money, of course. If it didn’t, the two women had discovered that they had enough saved capital between them to go for it, albeit with fewer, less fancy plans initially. Then they would need to meet again at his solicitors and sign papers. He advised the ladies to go and have a formal word with May if they wanted to check out his suitability as a landlord. Deb would, of course, and told Tom so. There were very few people she trusted on face value, however nice a profile they presented.
They were getting ready to leave when they heard Tom’s outside door open and slam shut and a jolly female voice shouted out an echoey, ‘Hello!’ down the hallway, followed by the sound of paws skittering and heels clicking on the tiled floor.
Tom leaped up but he was too late to stop the owner of the voice coming into the dining room, carrying a car seat, with Clooney bounding behind her, fussing between Tom and Lou and giving Deb a quick hello sniff in between.
‘Sorry, am I interrupting?’ said a petite lady with short white-blonde loose curls. She took in both the women with a friendly smile: the small one with the lovely red hair and shiny green eyes, and the other long and leggy and golden-haired.
Tom looked instantly jumpy.
‘No, don’t worry, we were just going,’ said Deb, curious as to who this was.
Right on cue Tom said, ‘This is my sister, Samantha.’ He scratched the back of his head nervously. ‘Sam, this is Debra and Lou, who are going to take over May’s lease.’
Sam said a formal hello whilst deriding her brother for calling her by her ‘Sunday name’. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realize you had company. I had to pop out for some nappies and I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and bring Clooney back so you wouldn’t have to come and fetch him. Plus I thought Lucy might like to see her big Uncle Tom.’ She twisted the car seat around and there, nestled inside a cosy pink blanket, was a tiny baby with a golden quiff of hair. Tom looked helplessly at Lou, Deb looked helplessly at Lou, whilst Sammy looked at the three stiff statues that now faced her in utter confusion. Her brother was the most awkward of them all.
Realizing that she was the only one of them that could rescue this, Lou gulped hard and came forward, bending to let the baby’s hand grip her finger.
‘She’s absolutely beautiful,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Want to hold her?’ said Sam proudly, wondering why her brother was doing all those weird gurning faces at her behind the woman’s back.
‘Yes, please,’ replied Lou softly. Sam unstrapped her new daughter and handed her over to Lou, who cupped her hand under the baby’s wobbly neck. She had butter-soft skin, smelled of baby powder and milk and was rooting for more on Lou’s shoulder.
Lou had never held a newborn before. She could not have imagined how delicate they were; their hands, their nails, the thin legs, the tiny socks. Again the socks triggered the passage of tears to her eyes and she had to work hard to get them to sink back. Lou knew, though, that she could no longer go through life getting upset if she was within cuddling distance of a baby. The world was full of other people’s sweet-smelling babies. She jollied
herself up and handed back the armful of pink softness to Tom’s sister who bent to the car seat to nestle her daughter back into her snug blanket.
‘We must be getting back,’ said Deb, grabbing Lou by the elbow and steering her towards the door, expecting the worst if they didn’t get out of there soon. ‘Goodbye, Sam, it was nice to meet you. Bye, Tom. I’ll go and see May tomorrow.’ And she gave him another peck.
Tom bent to kiss Lou and his lips fell softly near her ear.
‘I’m so sorry…’ he whispered before Lou interrupted him.
‘Please don’t say anything to your sister. I’d want the world to see my baby too if I was in her shoes.’
‘We’ll see ourselves out,’ said Deb and waved quickly.
Once outside, Lou sucked in two big lungfuls of fresh air.
‘You OK?’ Deb asked.
‘Course I am,’ said Lou, over-brightly.
‘Yeah, and I’m Kylie Minogue,’ said Deb. ‘Shall I drive?’
‘Please,’ said Lou with a grateful smile.
Phil couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to turn off the burglar alarm and switch on the lights when he came in from work. The house felt cold, although the central heating had switched itself on automatically over an hour ago. There was no welcoming smell of his Friday-night curry cooking, no background noise from a CD or the TV, no Lou busying about setting the table. He usually went for a run on Friday–and this early arrival was part of his mind-bending routine alteration, the effect of
which had been totally spoiled because she wasn’t here to witness it. So where the fuck was she?
A text message buzzed again in his pocket. He would have to slow down on those. Then again, if Lou couldn’t be bothered being a proper wife, who could blame him?
HOPE YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING NICE THIS WEEKEND X
it read.
YOU
2 typed Phil in return. Then he erased it and stabbed in something far less harmless.
FREE FOR LUNCH ON SUNDAY
?
XX
. Sod it, he thought. The time had come to slam his foot right down on the accelerator.