The next morning, Stevie found Danny downstairs, wearing, or rather drowning in, his dressing-gown. On the label, it said it was for four to five year olds, but omitted to add the word hippos. He was staring at the empty cake-tin he had just found on the kitchen table. His bottom lip protruded so far, it should have had a cliff warning on it.
‘Mummy, where’s the cake you promised me?’ he asked.
‘Wait and see. Breakfast first,’ said Stevie, clapping her hands like Joyce Grenfell in teacher mode. Danny had his usual orange juice and Coco Pops, and then sucked up the chocolatey milk with a straw. Then he washed his face and brushed his teeth, before getting his blue and grey uniform on for school, socks first. Everything always in the same order. Danny was a creature of habit and got upset if his routines were interrupted. Apparently, that was a sign of a gifted child, the nursery teacher had told her after an infuriating morning getting Danny down the path to school after they were late and rushing, and there hadn’t been enough time to let him read out aloud all the numbers of the houses they passed, like they usually did. Sign of a child that wants his bottom walloped more like, she had thought at the time.
Though, there was no getting away from it, he was certainly a bright little button, an added bonus because when he was born, Danny was so premature that there was a real chance he might have had some brain damage. Sitting in a hospital scared to go to sleep in case your child doesn’t survive the night was something she wouldn’t wish on any parent; they were dark, dark times.
Miraculously, her baby boy had pulled through and every year he got a birthday card from ‘The Little Fighters’ Club’ at the Special Care Unit up at the hospital. Hard to imagine that the tiny, fragile scrap and the sturdy, clever little boy now in front of her were one and the same person.
Danny was always writing and making little books, like she used to do, although hopefully not for the same reasons. She would have liked him to follow in her footsteps and write for a living, but something a little loftier than
Midnight Moon
fiction, which was for ladies who liked to escape to a land where men were men and women sighed a lot and fainted but at least the endings were happy.
‘Is my cake ready yet, Mummy?’ he asked again, as Stevie straightened his tie, playing for time.
‘Well er,…the thing is…’
The doorbell bing-bonged, a sound that translated as a hallelujah chorus in Stevie’s head as she opened the door to Catherine, newly restored to her usual auburn, wearing her best and widest smile and wooden-acting worse than an extra in
Crossroads
.
‘Hi, Stevie, here’s the cake you baked last night. I’m sorry, I walked off with it instead of the empty tin, that I was borrowing off of you. Ha, ha, how silly of me.’
Stevie mouthed, ‘I will love you forever,’ to her friend and Danny’s eyes rounded to dinner-plates as the four-layer cake covered with crushed Maltesers, Buttons, Crunchie bits and melted down Mars Bar icing made its fanfare entrance into the Honeywell/Finch kitchen.
‘Wow!’ said Danny, which, along with ‘cool’, was his favourite buzzword of the moment.
‘Go get your shoes on,’ said Stevie, spurring him on with, ‘The sooner you do so, the sooner you’ll get to show off your cake at school,’ which sent him flying down to the cabinet in the hallway as if his slipper was caught on Schumacher’s tow bar.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ said Stevie, enfolding Catherine in a big hug.
‘Don’t thank me, thank Kate. She did the cake, and after she’d put my hair right, I shoved all the bits on.’ Catherine sniffed. ‘Wasn’t that long a job,’ she added, fobbing off the fuss.
Catherine had six children, a husband, four cats, a ferret, a Chihuahua called Chico and some huge mad-looking cross-breed called Boot that looked as if it ate prop forwards for snacks. She had her hands full, but she still had found the time to get Stevie out of a hole.
‘I owe you both big time for this, Cath.’
‘Don’t be silly. So, did you sleep? How are you feeling? And did he ring?’
‘A little,’ said Stevie, ‘crap and yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘I let the answerphone pick it up. He said he was in Aberdeen.’
‘Did you 1471 it?’
‘Withheld.’
‘Sod it. So what’s your gut feeling?’ Catherine cringed in advance. It didn’t look good from where she was standing.
‘He’s in Majorca, I reckon.’
‘Holy shit! You’re a lot calmer than I would be,’ said Catherine, who would have been chewing on Eddie’s cooked liver with some chips and a nice Chianti by now, if the same thing had happened to her.
‘Yes, but I’ve got a plan,’ said Stevie, snapping off the conversation as Danny made a fully-shod appearance.
They both walked the proud little boy to school; he was champing at the bit to show off the Empress of all chocolate cakes to his friends and teacher. Lockelands was a nice little school, only a ten-minute, and very pleasant, tree-heavy walk away from Stevie and Matthew’s house in Blossom Lane. Well, it was Matthew’s house really. Stevie had sold her little terraced house, situated a few streets away, just after Christmas and moved in with him on New Year’s Day. She had been so excited then, thinking how the next Christmas on she would be Mrs Finch and Danny would have a dad. What a year it was going to be! Well, at least she had got that last bit right, but alas, not in the way she had intended.
The two sides of Blossom Lane were very different, like a new world and an old world meeting in a Dr Who-like time warp. On one side were eight clones of early 1980s box-like dwellings with a short path at the front and small square gardens at the back; on the other side was a row of four early-1800s large detached cottages, all individual, very chocolate-box pretty. Ivy and honeysuckle rampaged over the stone and gave a delicious noseful of heady scent to
passers-by in late summer. They had long gardens at the back all the way down to a little ribbon of stream and the railway line, and high crumbly walls overgrown with foliage secured each cottage’s privacy from its neighbours. The far end cottage, opposite to Matthew’s house, had been to let for a couple of months now. It was the largest of the four with a substantial old-stone garage tucked into its side. There had been no takers. It appeared character cottages went hand in hand with phenomenal ‘you-must-be-joking’ rents.
‘So fill me in on the plan then,’ said Catherine, who never failed to peer into the empty cottage window in the hope of seeing some new detail she had missed. It was her dream home: gnarled beams, big kitchen fireplace, exposed stonework. When all the children had grown up and left, she wanted a cottage just like this for her and Eddie to receive their grandchildren. She sighed at its gorgeousness.
‘Time for a coffee?’
‘Quick one. Eddie’s sorted the kids out this morning, he’ll be on his third nervous breakdown by now.’ They both knew that was a joke. There was only one creature more laid-back than Eddie and that was Boot, the dog. Eddie had found him as a puppy on a landfill site. His head was stuck in a tatty Wellington boot and Eddie’s initial thought, after extricating him, was that he was as ugly as an old boot, hence the name. He had been roughly the size of Chico the Chihuahua when Eddie brought him home. Now he could have dragged a gypsy caravan single-handed with a shire horse asleep in the back, yet he would let a baby take a bone from his mouth. He played the part of a family guard dog, though, and a cat burglar wouldn’t have
staked his chances–but you only had to look into his soft gentle eyes to know he didn’t have the capacity to hurt anything. Everyone loved Boot, Danny especially, and the dog loved him back, as he did all kids.
Stevie made Catherine wait for the details until the kettle had boiled. Catherine humoured her strange hopefulness, despite having a heavy feeling about it all, but any positive plan that kept her friend from going down the path she had gone down last time had to be supported.
‘Right!’ said Stevie, stirring in the milk. ‘Here’s what I’m going to do.’
‘Go on then,’ said Catherine, sitting comfortably.
‘I’ve got six days left until Matthew comes back. So at lunchtime tomorrow I’m having my hair done.’
‘Right,’ Catherine nodded. ‘Good girl. Make yourself feel better.’
‘Then I’m going to join the gym to get some weight off.’ Stevie beamed at Catherine waiting for her approval.
‘Well, that’s great,’ said her friend, trying her best to smile encouragingly. ‘But…’
‘But what?’ Stevie’s smile slipped a little.
Catherine sighed. With the best will in the world, Stevie wasn’t going to get down to a size zero and look like a Supermodel in six days. Even if she did, that wasn’t going to bring Matthew back to her. There were darker forces at work here, forces for which a hair-do fairy was no match.
Then again, it wouldn’t do Stevie any harm to go to a gym and see some nice fit males with bulging biceps and trim bums. Surely that was better than sitting in and thinking about what those cheating scumbags were doing. She
hoped their duplicity would catch up with them; after all, a sneaky week away on holiday was not the best way to cement a new relationship, if that’s what it was and not a one-off fling. Matthew had a conscience, and Jo
surely
would be thinking of what the mad Scot would do if he found out. That was bound to get in the way of the enjoyment of their sun and sangria, and any other ‘s’s’ they were participating in with abandon.
Catherine smiled. ‘But nothing. In fact, I’ll come with you for the first session if you like, for moral support. They’re always giving out free day passes, aren’t they, these gyms, trying to get you to join up? You can blag me one.’
‘Oh Catherine, that would be fab,’ said Stevie, her smile lit up with gratitude.
‘Which gym?’
‘Well, Matthew goes to the Gym Village one, so maybe I’d be better going to the other–Well Life.’
‘Ooh, posh and expensive–go and do it immediately. Ring up and find out how you join before I go home.’ Catherine slid the cordless phone over the table.
So, Stevie started the three-point plan that would totally absorb her over the next six days and get her man back for her.
Easy.
Listening to the gently shushing waves, savouring the scent of sun oil that smelt of coconuts, and lying next to a long, leggy woman with a Supermodel-type body nearly covered by a white bikini with a sexy little rhinestone clasp between the twin swells of her small but perfect breasts, Matthew waited for the guilt to kick in. A stray thought visited plump, ordinary little Stevie at home. She would be sitting at her computer, writing love stories for the lonely and rejected, blissfully unaware that she was about to join them in exactly five days’ time. It made him feel guilty only for not feeling guilty.
He really had not meant for this to happen at all. He had been content enough with Stevie and sliding himself gradually into the role of dad for Danny, until he had found Jo MacLean, one of the new designers, crying by his black Punto in the company car park the day after Valentine’s Day. He had only seen her a couple of times before but, Jo MacLean, with her big brown eyes and her long, dark hair and her even longer legs, was someone once spotted, never forgotten. They had spoken once, after a meeting in late January. A few of them had hung around the buffet table
drinking the last of the coffee. He’d found himself puffing up in front of her, trying to impress, implying
things
. Then a fortnight later, there he was, offering her his handkerchief in the cold and the rain and asking if she wanted a coffee in the little café around the corner from work. There she had spilled out her life to him–a relative stranger–so desperate was she for consolation. She had told him how she had recently moved into a new house with the husband she so needed to get away from but didn’t know how to because he watched her every move. She poured out stories of horrific verbal and physical abuse and Matthew had sat and patiently listened. Who could have predicted what she would be doing to the rest of his body, so soon after he’d offered up his shoulder?
Despite being flattered by her attention, at first, he really had only genuinely wanted to help her escape Adam MacLean before the big Scot went too far one day and killed her. He had told Stevie all about her at the beginning, when it had been innocent, and, horrified that someone could be treated so badly, that she had offered herself as a friend to Jo too. Stevie just couldn’t bear to see anyone being unhappy, especially when she was so happy herself, planning her wedding to the man of her dreams.
It hadn’t felt right to keep bringing Jo into his home when he knew he was falling in love with her, but Matt couldn’t help himself–he just had to see her whenever he could. Then, when Jo admitted she felt the same about him, he had almost exploded with Pools-winning pleasure. Jo and Stevie got on so well, which made it both harder and easier, but either way messier. The longer it went on,
the more hurt people were going to get, but he couldn’t give Jo up–it was not an option. Jo was a drug and he was hooked.
They hot-footed it to the sun to plan how he would finally leave Stevie and little Danny, and orchestrate how Jo could escape the Incredible McHulk. Matthew would have to make sure that he watched his back there. There was no telling what MacLean would do to Matthew, if he had no reservations about hitting a woman as fragile as Jo.
Propping himself up to look at the vision on the sun-bed next to his, Matthew knew it was all going to be worth it though. He couldn’t feel any guilt because there was no room for it in his heart, which was just too full of desire for this gorgeous being. She was
perfect
–well, except for the scar on the top of her leg where Adam’s kicking boot went in once. He had always hit her where the bruises didn’t show, she said, although she looked pretty undamaged now, and in fantastic shape. And all the sex with that fantastic shape had almost succeeded in blowing his head clean off his shoulders. Sex that was long and languorous in bed, like this week. Sex that was fast and furious as it had had to be back home, like the time in the back of Stevie’s car, which he’d felt a bit bad about, but it still hadn’t stopped him. Obviously, Stevie hadn’t been there to witness it; he had merely borrowed the car to take Jo home the night when she had come up to see the wedding dress. It had been quick, steamy, and very erotic. Sex that was dangerous and exciting, like when they did it up against a wall of an unfinished house on Jo’s estate, her long slim legs around his back, pulling him further and deeper into her. She had
been very noisy but he wouldn’t have cared if the whole British Army and the Pope had come around the corner at that moment; it would just have given it all an extra edge and he would have carried on even more enthusiastically. As he came, he remembered that Stevie would be washing up the pans and dishes in which she had just cooked them all supper. He realized then how much his feelings for Stevie paled in the face of this beautiful, long-limbed, washboard-stomached woman who needed his love and protection so much. She made him feel like he’d never felt before: a giant, a hero, a prince, Robin Hood crossed with Shrek–after the latter had taken the magic potion, obviously.
At first it crossed Matt’s mind that Jo was so desperate to get away from Adam that she might be using him as a stepping stone, until she had suggested the two of them fly away abroad in order to plan the final logistics of partner-leaving, wedding-cancelling and moving in together. Then she had gone down on him in a staff toilet to seal her intentions. By the time his breathing had got back to normal, he had booked the flights and the five-star hotel on his already overloaded Visa card.
Now he was here and it was heaven. He kicked away a stray spore of remorse, imagining Stevie, ironing his shirts and looking forward to him coming home. She would be worrying about him driving all the way from Aberdeen and not having a clue that he was 1,500 miles in the other direction sponging up the Spanish sun, blood running like sangria through his veins making him permanently half-drunk with lust.
Stevie would be okay, he had convinced himself of that. Well, heartbreak didn’t kill you, did it, and she had come through far worse. She would have to move out (thank God the house was still solely in his name!) so that Jo could move in. Little Danny would forget him soon enough. It wasn’t as if he had got used to calling him ‘Daddy’ or anything, and kids adjusted. He tried not to let the thoughts in about Danny’s Euro-Disney trip because that really would make him feel bad. Especially as the savings for it were financing his Majorcan expenses. He would put the money back in the account, obviously. He wasn’t a thief.
If asked, he would say he got the tan in the leisure facilities at the Aberdeen hotel, while Jo would say she had been under the sun-bed at the Welsh health farm. At least Stevie would never know he’d jetted off with another woman to the sun. That detail really would be too cruel.