As It Is On Telly (12 page)

‘Oh, that sounds good,’ said Dan from the edge of the dining area.

Bunty sighed. ‘What does?’

‘Bloody mary. Have you got some on the go?’

‘I’ll make some,’ said Kat eagerly, and she scurried behind Bunty for the jug. ‘I’m not going to do anything,’ she whispered to Bunty. ‘It’s just a bit of a flirt. Relax!’

Bunty blinked rapidly, pretending to wipe the steam from her eyes. Relax. Yes. That was all she had to do. Pretend she hadn’t invented the dinner party from hell, and that her husband wasn’t dallying with a Day-glo accessoried bimbette with a bottom, and that she wasn’t the only one here without at least one love interest in the offing. Relax. Flirt. She used to be the expert at it. That was her sport. Forget archery or tennis – a night of naughty asides and fluttering of the eyelashes used to be how she got through the evening, reminded herself she was attractive, wanted – alive, somehow. And of course it was never meant to go anywhere, because there was always Graham; but now there wasn’t, not for long anyway, and flirting could actually lead to something. But with who? She knew who, of course. But he wasn’t there.

So she tried to relax, and somehow, despite all her rather depressing thoughts and her constant fear that someone was going to drop a
faux
pas
onto the table and let slip all about her Croesus activities, the evening was, well, fun, she supposed. Mallory was a marvellous raconteur and held them all, Mary especially, completely spellbound with his tales of the area during the Blitz, and Beatlemania, and the three-day week. Ryan and Petra were overwhelmingly grey; in fact, Ryan only flushed when Kat asked, half-innocently, ‘So, Ryan, are you Graham’s squash partner?’

‘Squash?’ Petra laughed. ‘Ryan has bad knees. You can’t play squash, can you, darling? He can’t play squash,’ she confirmed for the rest of them.

‘Oh.’ Kat feigned confusion, pouting so prettily that Dan leaned in and practically fell down her cleavage. ‘Oh, sorry, only, Graham, I thought that Bunty had said you’d taken up squash with Ryan. Or was it football with Ryan? You two will have to be careful, anyway. People will talk.’

‘What about?’ said Graham, a tad more sharply than was necessary. Or usual.

‘They’ll be saying, Is that Graham having an affair,’ and Kat peered provocatively around the table à la Miss Marple, ‘with Ryan?’

Peels of raucous laughter echoed around the room, largely from Kat, laughing at her own joke, from Mallory, who clearly thought the idea of homosexuality was preposterous, and Ryan, whose laugh whistled through his adenoids like a zephyr up the Grand Canyon. He evidently had asthma, too, as well as terminal blandness, Bunty realised. He’d never played squash in his life. Yet he was somehow complicit with Graham. That much was clear from the exchange of glances and the look of relief that swept over Graham’s rosy face when Kat inadvertently removed the focus from what they were actually up to.

‘It’s only because they’re –’ said Petra suddenly, not seeing the funny side of it, but then there was a furtive shuffling under the table. She coloured and corrected herself. ‘Friends,’ she said firmly. ‘Only because they’re friends. They’re not gay. You’re not gay, are you, Ryan? He’s not gay,’ she finished for him before he had time to deny the charges.

There was a long awkward pause, and then Dan said quietly, ‘Oh, that’s a shame. Cos I am.’ And he fluttered his ridiculously black eyelashes at Ryan and then Mallory.

‘You’re gay?’ shrieked Kat.

‘No!’ Dan laughed uproariously, and everyone else joined in. Bunty smiled at him thankfully. For all his shovel-handed, manly, smelly-job front, ‘Dan, Dan the Drainage Man’ had a certain social charm that made all those around him feel, well, happy. She’d never met a man so comfortable in his own skin. Graham, meanwhile, was currently so uncomfortable in his that he was about to burst out of it like an overcooked sausage.

‘Relax,’ she said, filling his glass with a rather good Lafite he’d dragged out of the back of a cupboard. He’d been saving it for Kylie, no doubt.

He gave her a long, searching look; a look that she couldn’t interpret properly, but which seemed to be checking out whether she’d worked out what was going on. She stared back at him levelly, inscrutable, and then finally he chinked his glass against hers and drained the contents into his mouth. That look she understood, after so many years of translating his every grunt. ‘We might be having a crisis,’ it said, ‘but we’ve just agreed we’re not going to have it tonight.’

And they didn’t. Lamb, mangetout and new potatoes segued neatly into peach cobbler and crème fraîche, then port, more wine, chocolates provided by Kat, and then goodnights, and swapping of numbers, and a gentlemanly kiss of Mary’s hand from Mallory. It was all going so smoothly that Graham even dared to drop a vaguely proprietorial hand onto her shoulder as they waved Kat off in a cab, laughing as Dan made a very obvious grab for her breasts and then shouted, ‘Couldn’t resist, sorry. I’ve never seen boobs that were bigger than my hands before.’

‘They’re spoken for,’ squealed Kat, then she blew everyone a kiss and disappeared into the night.

Graham shook his head as he closed the door. ‘She’s mad,’ he said, though without the usual slight chilly edge of disapproval that he normally reserved for Kat. ‘And that was fun.’

‘It was. It really was,’ said Bunty. She could hardly believe it herself. Other than the odd little social slip it had been really quite an evening, pleasant and flowing and more of a giggle than she’d had in ages, since she and Kat and Cally had last been out together. ‘Quite like the old days.’

For a moment she and Graham looked at each other, both remembering their early dinner parties; not quite on a packing case because Graham had already collected some sensible furniture from his grandmother, but nonetheless on mismatched chairs and one ordinary fork in the fondue pot, and too much cheap wine and bad games of Pictionary … and as she smiled at the memory she came to with a start. Graham was running a finger along her lip.

It was another thing she remembered very well.

‘You look about twenty-two,’ said Graham, and he leaned in to kiss her.

And even though she wasn’t completely against the idea; even though Graham looked younger himself than he had in … well, forever, and even though this same evening in the past would definitely have led to sex, possibly even with a degree of enthusiasm, the worm in her mind wouldn’t stop turning. ‘Is that how old you like them these days? Twenty-two?’

Graham stopped a millimetre away from her mouth. ‘What are you on about?’ he said softly.

‘You know. Your squash partners. Twenty-two? Or, God, it’s not younger is it?’

‘What …’ Graham looked genuinely bewildered, then something occurred to him. ‘This isn’t about that computer stuff, is it? Because I’ve already told you that wasn’t me. Or … Jesus, you don’t think Ryan and I are really … you couldn’t think that!’

Bunty shrugged, feeling unaccountably hurt all of a sudden. He couldn’t even do the decent thing and confess. ‘I don’t know what I think.’

‘Well, whatever it is,’ said Graham, breathing hard, no longer from passion, ‘it isn’t good, is it? We … we should talk.’

The phone vibrated in her jeans pocket, but as she went to grab it, Graham got hold of her hand, stopping her. ‘Bun, not now, this is important.’

There was a phone number. A number starting with 0064.

New Zealand.

Ben.

‘So’s this,’ said Bunty. She walked down the hall and pressed the button.

When she turned round, Graham was already walking up the stairs to bed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Pearl
: Today we’re very pleased to have with us this year’s Super Mummy, Bunty McKenna. Bunty, welcome.

Bunty
(
inclining
head
graciously
): Pleasure, Pearl.

Finn
: Ooops! Pleasure Pearl. Sounds like something a bit naughty.

Pearl
(
giggles
): Finn. Now, we’re actually here to talk about something very serious, that might affect a lot of parents out there. Bunty, tell us more. What did you find in the bedroom that night?

Finn
(
barely
suppressing
a
snort
). Don’t tell me – a pleasure pearl. Ha!

He
leans
sideways
out
of
camera
shot
,
giggling
even
harder
,
and
Pearl
starts
to
shudder
with
restrained
laughter
.

Bunty
: (
stern
,
Super
-
Mummyish
): Actually, it was in my daughter’s bedroom, and it’s something I hope all parents will take notice of. You see, while my husband and I were having a dinner party, my daughter was upstairs emailing her friend in New Zealand. Her friend recommended a certain children’s book (
she
holds
up
the
offending
best
-
seller
), and my daughter Charlotte keyed in the name.

Pearl
: Only she didn’t get a website featuring that character, did she?

Bunty
: No. She keyed in one of the letters incorrectly, and what came up was a horrendous site featuring … um … Russian ladies of ill repute and their collection of, well, sex toys, I suppose you’d have to call them.

Finn
: Like … like Pleasure Pearls! Oh. Stop, please!

He
sinks
to
his
knees
before
the
sofa
,
crippled
with
mirth
,
and
Pearl
begins
to
join
in
.

Bunty
: It’s not funny. It’s not funny. This is serious. It’s not funny.

*

‘It’s not funny. It’s not …’

‘Funny. You said,’ muttered Graham, banging the pillow more firmly around his ears.

Bunty opened her eyes. Graham’s smooth back appeared to stare at her reproachfully, and she studied it for a moment as she pulled her thoughts together. Had he waxed? She couldn’t honestly remember whether his back used to be this hairless or not. That wasn’t funny either – not at all amusing to be unable to recall whether your husband had gone from barely washing to now having back, sack and crack done. (She’d seen the procedure on a magazine show, or was it one of those Japanese torture things?)

But definitely not funny was the realisation that your children searching for things on the internet could put in an innocent name and up would pop Madame Vanya with her array of helpful products.

It hadn’t been Ben on the phone at all. It had been Cally.

‘Bunty,’ she said, ‘what has Charlotte been doing?’

Bunty bridled, but only for a moment. She didn’t really like the fact that Cally would instantly assume that Charlotte had been up to no good, but she did have some basis for it, since Charlotte had been the cause of quite a lot of trouble in the past. ‘What do you mean? She’s just been upstairs while we’ve been having a dinner party.’

Cally paused, and Bunty could tell that under any other circumstances she would have been dying to hear what that was all about, but then she said, ‘Well, it’s 10.30 in the morning here, and Paige has just come out of her bedroom to ask me what a dildo is. Yes, you heard right. A dildo.’

‘You shouldn’t leave your stuff lying around then, should you? You and Pete and your kinky love-life.’

‘Bunty, even if I had one of those,
and
I left it lying around, I wouldn’t stick a big label on it saying what it’s called, would I?’

‘It could be in its box,’ Bunty suggested.

‘Are you drunk or something? Oh, I suppose you might be. Okay. Bunty McKenna, go upstairs now and see what your daughter is up to on the computer, because she and Paige have been emailing for the last hour and that’s how it happened.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Bunty, finally realising that Cally was serious.

Still clutching the phone, Bunty pelted up the stairs, barely wobbling in her high heels, and flung open Charlotte’s door. Charlotte nearly jumped out of her skin but then turned round with kohl-rimmed eyes so horrified that Bunty knew whatever she’d done had been a mistake. Or it might not have started out as a mistake, but it had gone too far.

A hideous image of Madame Vanya, boobs and bottom strapped down with a few thongs of leather and very little else, with something like a telegraph cucumber in her hand, winked from the laptop screen. Graham’s laptop. Bunty’s first thought, as she reached out and shut it down as quickly as was humanly possible after the best part of a bottle of heavy red, was that this was another part of Graham’s slummy little secret. But then Charlotte, bottom lip wobbling, suddenly said, ‘Mum, I’m sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose, and I was only trying to look up this book that Paige likes, ‘Vanta Paradise’ or something and all these horrible pictures came up and … what
are
all those things?’

‘You didn’t go any further into the site?’ said Bunty, hardly daring to imagine what Charlotte, still so innocent despite all her bravado, might have seen.

‘Ugh, no. It’s
gross
!’ Charlotte shuddered dramatically and shoved the laptop back into its bag. ‘I am never going on the computer again.’

‘Bunty! Bunty!’ called a tinny voice. Bunty looked around, convinced for one surreal moment that Madame Vanya was calling to her from the laptop, then remembered her mobile phone.

‘Bun, I heard all that. I’m sure it was just a mistake,’ said Cally.

‘I think so.’ Bunty sat down hard on the bed, her heart suddenly thumping against her rib cage. ‘Oh God, how awful. She’s banned from computers from now on.’

‘Paige too,’ said Cally.

‘But how will they keep in touch?’

‘They can talk on the phone, or write letters to each other. Then we can vet them like they’re prisoners. Which, of course, they are.’ Cally sounded woolly for a moment, then tuned back in on the other end of the phone. ‘Look, sorry, I’d better go. David’s waking up and Pete’s not back from refereeing yet to give him his bottle.’

‘You mean you’ve got to feed your own child?’

‘Outrageous, isn’t it? Bye, Bun-hun.’

Bunty’s whole body drooped as the phone went dead. God, she missed Cally. Charlotte missed Paige too. What were they doing a world away from each other? Well, invoking global witchery in the form of Madame Vanya, it appeared.

‘Mum,’ said a small voice next to her. Charlotte’s hand crept into hers. ‘Would you read to me? I want to get those sicko pictures out of my head.’ She made outrageous vomiting noises just to demonstrate how sick they’d been.

Bunty almost cried. Her little girl was back. Only for a moment, perhaps, and down to very dubious causes, but she was going to cherish it. Together they squashed onto Charlotte’s single bed and read
Little
Women
, which was about as wholesome a book as Bunty could lay hands on, and only later, long after Marmee had administered soup to the needy of the district and Charlotte had fallen asleep on her shoulder, depositing a goodly amount of lumpy mascara onto her linen shirt, did Bunty ease herself out of the bed and the room, and slide in next to Graham, still fully dressed apart from her shoes. After the sight of Madame Vanya there was a strong possibility she would never take her clothes off again.

*

Now she had woken up after her slightly twisted dream about Pearl and Finn – not that it was their fault in any way, but she was starting to see them in rather a different light now – she felt oddly calm. Resolved. Today was a new day. She would attempt to talk to Graham about his ‘situation’. She would forget about the Croesus Club and all that it entailed. And she would monitor every waking second of Charlotte’s day, with much the same assiduous attention that she had devoted to stalking Ben. Oh. Who? Yeah, nobody.

Charlotte needed them. That much was evident. And if Graham was too wrapped up in Kylie Smiley Pert Bum to care then she, Bunty McKenna, Super Mummy, would step into the breach.

Of course, she reminded herself as she stared at the ceiling thinking about Charlotte’s white and horrified face, it was a mistake to assume that their daughter hadn’t noticed the atmosphere about the place. It would have been very evident to her that her father was out more often (which she may have been glad about, having professed to hate him so much a couple of years ago that she’d even tried to find a new dad for herself). Bunty had also recognised the wide-eyed curiosity now accompanying the goodbyes whenever she, too, was heading out the door, taking up a new ‘sport’, meeting Kat yet again for a little drink, or hosting bizarre dinner parties with people she barely knew and who’d not long before been up to their armpits in sewage.

Yes, Charlotte was pretty savvy, despite her apparent detachment from their world. Or the world in general. And they hadn’t given this a whole lot of consideration. Bunty had merely assumed that Charlotte would live with her, and that Graham would go on to spawn little Kylie look-alikes with wife number two and would sideline Charlotte over the years. She’d be relegated. On the bench. Suddenly Bunty was filled with a fury so intense at what Graham was about to do their only child that she had to tussle with a very strong temptation to clamp the ear-covering pillow around his face, and squeeze. They had to talk. She was just wondering how to open the conversation (‘So, Graham, when you leave me …’) when Graham lifted himself up on one elbow, stared wildly at the clock over her shoulder, then screamed ‘Bollocks!’ straight down into her ear.

How had he known what she was going to say? ‘There’s no bloody need for that. You just perforated my eardrum. And it’s not bollocks, it’s very important …’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ muttered Graham, flinging back the duvet and flying out of bed. He took a backwards glance at her. ‘Fully clothed? So that’s what it’s come to now, has it? I wasn’t that desperate for sex, you know.’ He hauled some tracksuit bottoms out of a drawer and staggered around the bedroom getting into them in too much of a hurry.

‘I bet you weren’t,’ said Bunty sourly. Already getting plenty, no doubt. ‘And that’s typical, that is. It was nothing to do with you. Nothing. You didn’t see Madame Vanya wrapped in duct tape. Or maybe you did! It was on your laptop, for Chrissakes!’

‘Not that again!’ roared Graham, bouncing into his trainers. ‘There’s nothing dodgy on my fucking laptop!’

‘Well, tell that to your daughter, and to … to Social Services when they come round,’ screamed Bunty, so infuriated that she grabbed his abandoned pillow and thwacked him with it, ‘and to whoever you’re dashing off to now, while she …’ (thwack) ‘cuts off …’ (thwack to the left, parry to the right) ‘your scrotum!’

Graham caught hold of the other end of the pillow and stared at her as she panted, her logic muddled, her emotions coursing. It was the first, the only time that either of them had ever resorted to violence, other than the odd tiny foray into Madame Vanya territory. ‘You’ve gone mad,’ he said eventually, thrusting the pillow to one side. ‘Completely fucking barking. Now, let’s just calm down, eh? I have to go to play squash,’ he said, pulling a tee-shirt over his almost-defined shoulders. And no, it’s not with Ryan. And no, it’s not with some nutty woman who is going to neuter me. I suggest you have a cup of tea, take a few deep breaths, and get a sense of perspective.’

‘Don’t tell me to get a perspective, you patronising arsehole.’ And for some reason, after shrieking the last word at Graham, she burst into loud sobs. ‘You get one! You!’

Charlotte appeared at the door. ‘You two okay?’ she said quietly. She looked like she might be thinking about crying. ‘You woke me up.’

‘Sorry, love,’ said Graham. ‘Think we might have had a bad glass of wine last night or something. I’m going out to, um, you know, play squash. Hey,’ he said, ruffling Charlotte’s hair, ‘why don’t you come with me?’

She looked up at him under her fringe. ‘I don’t have to, like, play, do I?’

‘Nah. Bring a book or something. I’ll buy you a hot chocolate afterwards.’

‘Okay.’

Charlotte wandered off behind Graham to get dressed, trying to look nonchalant but evidently very pleased at getting some ‘dad’ time. Bunty sank her head onto her knees. ‘Great start,’ she moaned. So that was how it was to be – battling for Charlotte’s attention, bribing her with bigger and bigger incentives to spend time with him. It was a far cry from the days when Charlotte never wanted to leave her side. But then, there had been days – and how she’d detested them – when Graham never wanted to leave her side either. And where were they going? Was he introducing Charlotte to the other woman? Had Charlotte already met her? God! It could be someone they already knew, someone Charlotte wouldn’t consider odd to be meeting for a hot chocolate on a Sunday morning. Who could that be? Petra? A neighbour? Kat?