As It Is On Telly (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘Jesus, Graham, you gave me the fright of my life.’ Bunty clutched the side of
Daly
Bread
for support, bobbing up and down with it as she stared in horror, then confusion, at her red-faced husband.

‘Right,’ said Graham, pacing up and down the jetty, half-running to her, stepping back, hardly in control of his own movements. ‘I gave you a fright. What kind of fright do you think you gave me? A note? A
note
, Bunty. My wife and my daughter gone. Disappeared to fucking New Zealand. The other side of the world, Bunty. The
world
.’

‘Bunty?’ Another voice sounded in her ear, behind her again. What was it with these men, lurking around behind her back like some kind of pantomime baddies. ‘Bunty, what …? Is that …?’

Bunty took a deep breath and turned around. Ben. He looked utterly adorable, tanned and broad-shouldered, wearing a small boy on his hip as his board shorts flapped gently in the breeze.

‘This is him, then, is it?’ Graham pranced from one foot to the other. ‘I ought to bloody deck you, mate, but seeing as you’re holding a kid and what have you … nah, put the kid down. Lemme deck you.’

‘Graham, stop! Ben, this is … hi.’

Oh God, this couldn’t be happening. Bunty covered her face with her hands. There was Ben doing his adoring father impression, looking so solid and dependable and downright bloody huggable, and then … Graham. Graham, livid and scarlet and running around in little half-circles as if he didn’t know what to do, or who to punch, first. And talking about decking someone like he’d ever smacked another human being in his life.

Bunty half-turned her back on Graham in the hope that he wouldn’t be able to hear her. ‘Ben, I … I needed to see you, so I came … to see you,’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘You came all the way here … just to see me? Far out!’ Ben reached over and put the little boy down on the deck. ‘Go down in the cabin, Jarred, I’ll be down soon,’ he said to his son. The boy looked at Bunty with his father’s black eyes and then scampered down the steps. Pretty soon his nose was pressed against the cabin window in readiness for the show.

Ben turned back to Bunty. ‘That’s incredible, Bunty, but … why?’

‘Why?’ shouted Graham. ‘Why do you think, you daft bastard? Cos she wants some sailing lessons? Because she’s in love with you. Not me, her poor bloody husband. You!’ He hopped around some more, strangely enough not taking the opportunity that had now presented itself to ‘deck’ Ben as he’d hitherto been desperate to do, but still unable to keep his movements to himself.

‘Husband?’ said Ben, nodding.

‘Ex,’ said Bunty, hardly able to speak. ‘Soon to be ex.’

‘When you left me for him,’ thundered Graham.

‘No, no, when you left me for Verity Reynolds.’

‘Verity Reynolds? I’m not bloody leaving you for Verity Reyolds!’

‘But … then …’ Bunty swallowed down the enormous lump in her throat, horribly confused. She didn’t know which part of Graham’s statement to address first. Was he leaving her but for someone else? Was he leaving her anyway and Verity Reynolds was just the lucky bonus? Did he admit that he had been seeing a pert-bottomed blonde called Verity Reynolds? He didn’t seem surprised about the name, just that Bunty might think he was leaving for her. Leaving. He was leaving her, wasn’t he?

‘You are leaving me, though, aren’t you?’

Graham gave her a look so pained, so filthy, so full of hate that Bunty felt she would spear herself on it on the hour, every hour, for the rest of her life. ‘I am now,’ he said quietly. After one last little jig of frustration, of anguish, he turned on his heel and walked away down the jetty.

Bunty watched him, aghast. He was leaving her. Graham was actually leaving her. And … she’d got it wrong. He hadn’t wanted to replace her with a new pneumatic blonde model, but she’d forced him into it now. And Ben …

‘Oh God, Ben,’ she said, knowing that if she turned around to him now Graham would see, would know somehow through the cold prickle of the skin on his shoulders.

Ben put a hand on her shoulder, and she felt the old rush of warmth slide over her, but suddenly stop. ‘Go after him,’ he said softly.

‘But I want you,’ she said balefully. Even as the words came out of her mouth and their eyes met soulfully, she realised it wasn’t really true. Some part of her wanted him, for sure. The part that needed attention and big gestures. The part that lived inside her head, in her imagination.

Ben let out a small, cold laugh. ‘Why?’

‘I …’

‘I’ve been a self-absorbed prick. I’ve stood you up. I’ve let you down. I’ve lied about myself. But then it looks like I wasn’t the only one.’

‘You’ve ... what lies?’ The floor beneath Bunty’s feet rocked and she was sure it was neither the water nor the rum making it move. Lies? ‘What lies, Ben?’

Ben coughed in a way that suggested, ominously, that he was about to start on a list. ‘Well, the yacht. Not mine, of course. Belongs to the Daly brothers. I just crew it for them.’

‘But you were living it on it.’

Ben shook his head. ‘Do you think I could get it to and from England, on my own, in that short a time? I’d be in the world records. Nah, I was staying with Cilla.’

It was Bunty’s turn to shake her head. ‘Cilla? Your … wife?’

‘Cilla of the Croesus Club. Priscilla, to you. She’s an old mate from when I was in London on my OE, years ago. She needed men for her dating thing, so I offered to stand in.’

More rocking. ‘Priscilla’s … Cilla’s a friend?’

‘With benefits,’ said Ben with a flash in his eyes.

‘Oh … my … God.’ Bunty breathed in, lights starting to flash around the edges of her eyes as if she were coming down with a migraine, which she’d never had in her life. But she’d never before been presented with a lying bastard who’d been nothing he promised to be. Never. Except …

She remembered something. ‘So you’re not married? These aren’t your kids? Did you steal them or something?’

For the first time Ben’s face softened, and she saw something of the old Ben, the sweet and simple Ben that she’d been – God, it hurt to even think of it – dating. ‘No, I really was married. Kids are really mine. That’s why I was in England, catching up with Cilla. My wife left me. For my best friend.’

It was hard to know what to say. Perhaps because you’re a lying shit, she was tempted to say. But who knew the truth really? She didn’t exactly have a clean record herself, did she? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply.

‘Yeah, well, it won’t last. She said she loved him and everything, and chucked me out.’ Ben was talking at a pace now, his voice sharp and edgy as she’d never heard it before. ‘That’s why I went away. But she didn’t move him in, so she can’t really love him, can she?’

I don’t know, Bunty thought. I don’t really know what love is any more, but, ‘Why not?’ she said.

Ben laughed again, that harsh, ‘are-you-an-idiot’ laugh that he’d issued before. ‘Because then she’d want to see him all the time, wouldn’t she? Christ, if I met someone I really liked I’d want to be with them twenty-four seven.’

She couldn’t have sobered up more quickly if he’d hung her in the water over the dockside by her hair. Twenty-four seven. Not every couple of weeks, on a ten-day turnaround if she was lucky. She recognised the tone of his voice too. ‘You’re still in love with her.’

Ben nodded. ‘I’ve come back to try to persuade her to change her mind. She says … she says we can give it a go. Not working out quite so well with lover boy.’ That bitter laugh again. ‘Don’t get me wrong, though. You are lovely, Bunty. A great person.’

‘Yep, that’s me,’ said Bunty. ‘Really great. Salt of the earth. Dating when I’m still married. Being blown away by someone I hardly know, someone who seems … Shit!’

For the first time it hit her. That was why she’d liked him. Loved him even. That was why she’d yearned for him, followed him across the world, recognised him. Adam. He was the new Adam. The anti-Graham. Unavailable, unassailable, and frankly downright bloody horrible on occasions.

Any anger she’d been about to express (and there’d been a bit – like, Was I a game? I hear Kiwis like their sport, and, Jesus, you
were
just a slut with a shag bag while I was trying to turn you into Mr fucking Rochester!) disappeared like air from a pricked balloon. She was no better than he was. And he no worse than she. They’d both just been running away, chasing down a dream. It had all been in her head. Her own
Brief
Encounter
moment, without any of the emotion other than a bit of a frisson, an edge of excitement.

When she raised her head to tell him she was genuinely sorry, Ben was looking at her, an amused smile at the corner of his lips. ‘I can’t believe you, though,’ he said after a moment.

‘What?’ There was quite a lot not to believe; Bunty could see that.

‘Getting on a plane and coming all the way out here just to see me. I never even gave you my number, for Chrissakes.’

Hmm, that was true. How desperate did that make her sound? It was extra nice of him to point that out. Bastard. ‘Well, don’t take it personally,’ said Bunty quickly. ‘I was just bored.’ Double bastard. Ben bastard and Adam bastard, all rolled up in one.

It was time to go. Ben’s son seemed to agree, as he was now squashing his face against the glass and smearing snot down it. Bunty pointed to him.

‘Christ, the Daly brothers will kill me. They don’t even know I’m having the kids over here.’ Ben started towards the yacht, then turned around with a quirk of an eyebrow that would have had Bunty stripping, or possibly spontaneously combusting, just a few weeks before now. ‘I’ll text you, and then you’ll have my number, Crazy Lady.’

‘Too late, Ad … Ben,’ said Bunty. ‘My phone died. And I don’t want your number anyway.’

This was just the moment, she reflected as she walked away, that Ben would be especially interested in her. It was his loss.

But just what, she wondered, would her loss be. ‘Graham!’ she shouted. ‘Wait!’

He was sandwiched between Kat and Simon, who had both linked arms with him as if he were a convict. ‘I couldn’t let him drive,’ said Simon, struggling to hold Graham down as Bunty approached. ‘He’s just so incensed he’d drive Cally’s car off the wharf.’

‘Don’t fucking talk about me like I’m not fucking here!’ Graham wriggled with more athleticism than Bunty would have ever imagined he possessed, and she could instantly see just how fit he had become.

‘Graham! Graham, calm down. We need to talk.’

‘Oh!’ he roared. ‘You want to talk now, do you? After your piece of … trouser’s dumped you because you’re too much trouble? Not weeks ago when I wanted to talk. Well, I DON’T FEEL LIKE TALKING!’

‘Is he on something?’ asked Kat, tightening her grip.

‘You’re doing it again! NO, I AM NOT ON SOMETHING. NOT EVEN MY WIFE. IN FACT, I AM NEVER ON MY BLOODY WIFE THESE DAYS.’

‘And why’s that?’ said Bunty, fed up with shag bags and over-sexed men. ‘You’ve been having an affair! You’re getting all you want away from home. Don’t think I don’t know the signs, Graham – losing weight, getting fit, whitening your teeth, for God’s sake, your bloody teeth! And football matches that don’t exist and Verity Reynolds, and you had a vasectomy, Graham, a vasectomy so I couldn’t have any more children, without even asking me.’

Graham was bucking like a steer in Simon and Kat’s grip, looking distinctly like he was either having a fit, or he needed to be Tazered. ‘I wasn’t having an affair, you suspicious cow, I was trying to be interesting. Interesting! For you. I was making a great big bloody gesture like those stupid men on your endless fucking television programmes. You were so bored!
Bored
! I could see it in your face every time I came home.’

‘But Verity Reynolds? I ... I
was
bored, it’s true.’ Bunty looked at her poor wretch of a husband, tears of rage and Lord only knew what else coursing down his cheeks.

‘Well, I’ve got to tell you,’ screamed Graham, ‘you’re not so bloody fascinating yourself these days.’

At which point, Kat’s eyes grew very round, Simon dropped Graham’s arm, and Bunty staggered backwards. His words hurt her more than anything Ben could ever have said or done, because deep in her heart she knew it was true, and everyone knew that the truth hurt. All this time, she – and not just Bunty, but everyone around her – had considered Graham to be the lucky one, while she had merely ‘settled’ for someone dependable. Someone who wasn’t Adam. But what if it was the other way round. What if she’d been the lucky one? And what if now, through her own stupidity, her luck had just run out?

Graham shook himself free of Kat and Simon. He seemed calmer now, even, for a moment, as though he might be about to apologise, but then he walked over to Cally’s car, which was possibly stolen, and reached for his bag on the back seat.

He strode up to Bunty with a vigour she hadn’t seen in many years. ‘There,’ he said bitterly, thrusting something into her hand. ‘There’s your bloody grand gesture. I was crap anyway. Didn’t work any way you look at it.’

Bunty stared after the car. What did he mean, he was crap anyway? Chasing her across the world – that was a pretty big sacrifice for a proud man to make – was a grand gesture indeed. But then she realised he’d been talking about the object in her hand, and she stared at it, hardly able to think any more.