Got You Back (5 page)

At five to six she heard the car pull up outside. The door to her cottage was right on the road and opened straight into the tiny living room. The pavement was almost non-existent so it was just about possible to step straight from car to house without touching anything in between. Katie flung open the door dramatically and threw her arms round James, swamping him as he came
in. ‘Good journey?’ she asked finally, disengaging herself.

James kissed the top of her head. ‘Fine,’ he said, throwing down his bag on the sofa. Stanley jumped up to greet him.

‘And Finn? How was he yesterday?’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘I took him to the zoo.’ He sniffed the air noisily, feeling the need to change the subject, perhaps because the exaggeration was making him uncomfortable. ‘Smells good. What is it?’

‘Guess,’ Katie said playfully, a habit she had. She would ask him to guess the most ridiculous things, things he could have no way of knowing. ‘Guess who I saw today,’ she'd say, or ‘Guess what Mum said.’ ‘Guess what I read in the paper.’

‘Stuffed baby octopus and Jerusalem artichokes,’ James said.

‘No, silly, it's
coq au vin.
Do you remember? We had it the second time we went out. Both of us ordered the exact same thing on the menu,
coq au vin,
mashed potatoes and cheesecake to follow. Straight from the 1980s.’

‘Well, I'm starving,’ James said, picking her up and twirling her round. Stanley let out a frenzied bark.

‘Oh, I forgot. Sally left a message for you,’ Katie said, as they shared a glass of Pinot Noir on the small patio. ‘Can you go straight to Carson's farm in the morning? Simon'll meet you there.’

‘Did she say why?’

‘Erm… immunization, inoculation, incubation, something like that. Cows, I think. She said it wasn't anything worrying.’ She noticed that James was looking at her. ‘Oh, God, I should start writing things down, shouldn't I?’

‘It's OK.’ He smiled, taking her hand. ‘You wouldn't be you if you did.’

James rarely spoke to Sally, the country practice's receptionist, unless he had to. She had an over-familiar manner that he found irritating and which made him feel uncomfortable, as if she was trying to catch him out in a lie. ‘Good weekend with Finn?’ she said now, once he had said hello.

James ignored the question. ‘Could you just tell me what my first appointment is in the morning?’ he said. ‘Katie got a bit confused.’

He could hear the sigh in Sally's voice. ‘Carson's, nine o'clock. Routine inoculation for the whole dairy herd. Simon will meet you there. I
told
Katie all this.’

‘And now you've told me,’ James said sarcastically. ‘Thank you so much, Sally.’

‘God, that girl's awful,’ he said, as he put the phone down. He had a vague memory that he had once tried to snog Sally at a Christmas party a couple of years ago, before he had met Katie. He had a blurry vision in his head of her pushing him away and telling him he was a ridiculous old lech. It wasn't something he liked to dwell on.

‘It's my fault,’ Katie said. ‘If I'd written down what she said you wouldn't have had to call her in the first place.’

James scooped Katie on to his lap. ‘You're too nice,’ he said. ‘You see the good in everyone.’ He nuzzled her neck and simultaneously slipped a hand on to her right breast. Foreplay disguised as positive affirmation: always a good move.

‘If you look for the good in people you'll always be rewarded,’ she said, and James wished she wouldn't always kill the moment with her cod New Age philosophy.

7

Sunday nights for Stephanie were very different. After the rush of getting together Finn's things for school next day, a hopeless ritual which played out in pretty much the same way every week —

‘Where are your trainers?’

‘Don't know.’

‘Where did you have them last?’

‘Don't know.’

‘Did you wear them over the weekend?’

‘Can't remember.’

‘Where's your gym bag?’

‘Arun Simpson has got a hamster. It's called Spike.’ — and the fight to get him to go to bed by eight thirty, she usually sat on the sofa staring vacantly at the TV until it was time to go to bed herself.

Tonight, though, she couldn't even concentrate on
Ugly Betty
. Her mind was racing. She had finally given in to her worst urges and scrolled through James's emails, but had found nothing. Of course he wouldn't be that stupid. In for a penny, she had rifled through his desk and his bedside table. She had no idea what she could do next. She could ring Sally at the surgery, she supposed, but what would she say? ‘I think James might be having it away with a woman whose name begins with K. What d'you reckon?’ How humiliating was that? She could go
to Lincoln and poke about, hiding behind bushes and hoping not to be seen by James. She could get hold of the local phone book and call every woman whose first name began with a K. She didn't know why it was so important to know who K was, but without that she felt there would be no closure. She would feel like she'd been taken for a fool, losing her man to the invisible woman.

Natasha was not happy. She waved at Stephanie to move into the smaller office next door. She certainly couldn't do this if she was being watched. She looked around for a place to sit but, as usual, all the available surfaces were covered with the dresses, bags and shoes that were sent over regularly for their clients to pick from. She moved a pile of fashion magazines from Stephanie's chair and plonked herself at the desk, then took a deep breath, checked the number written on a scrap of paper, pressed the buttons to withhold her own and dialled.

‘Hi, this is Katie,’ a recorded voice sang out at the other end of the line. ‘I'm not available right now, so please leave a message after the tone.’ Natasha hung up, breathing a sigh of relief that she didn't have to go through with the conversation she and Stephanie had planned (‘Hi, I'm from Paddy Paws Pet Medical Supplies and I'm trying to get hold of Mr James Mortimer. The clinic gave me this number.’ Pause for K to say, ‘Oh, no, sorry, this is Katie [as it now turned out],’ and then her surname, hopefully, and maybe that she could get a message to James or pass on his number, then Natasha would hang up as politely as she could). Well, she had her first name. She was halfway there.

‘Well?’ Stephanie said, coming back in after Natasha had called her.

‘She's called Katie.’ Natasha shrugged. ‘I didn't speak to her. It went straight to voicemail.’

‘What did she sound like?’ Stephanie flung herself down on the sofa in the corner of the room. ‘Young? Old?’

‘Hard to tell. Youngish, I guess,’ Natasha said nervously.

‘How young? Thirty-two? Fifteen?’

‘I don't know, just not… old.’

Stephanie rolled her eyes. ‘Figures. Accent?’

‘God, I couldn't tell. Just, you know, normal.’

‘Normal south or normal north? Or normal Scottish?’

Natasha sighed. ‘Just normal. Tell you what, you ring her. She's obviously got her phone turned off. You can listen to her message and decide what she sounds like for yourself.’

‘What if she answers?’

‘She won't.’

‘But what if she does?’

‘You hang up. Here.’ She picked up the phone and redialled, handing the receiver to Stephanie, who held it away from her as if it were a bomb.

‘Listen,’ Natasha hissed. Stephanie put the phone to her ear just as Katie's voice started up again. Stephanie closed her eyes and listened intently, as if hearing the voice would give her a picture of the woman. When the message ended she slammed the receiver down quickly and sat down again, clearly depressed.

‘So… ?’ Natasha said tentatively.

‘She just sounds like a woman,’ Stephanie said, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘What do you want to do now?’

Stephanie looked at her watch. ‘We're late for Meredith. We need to go.’

Meredith Barnard, soap-opera harridan (one dead husband, two failed love affairs, one with a man who had turned out to be her brother, and a prison sentence for grievous bodily harm, all behind her in her fictional life), was not in the mood for trying on BAFTA frocks. She was angry that Stephanie had turned up late and distracted, and she didn't try to disguise it. The dresses they had brought her, she said, made her feel like a transvestite.

Stephanie and Natasha flattered and cajoled but she wouldn't budge, refusing even to step into the red number with the bustier top and fishtail skirt.

The truth was, thought Stephanie, feeling a bit sorry for her despite the rudeness, that she
did
look like a transvestite in the dresses — in any dress for that matter — but it was her who had said she wanted a more feminine image. Left to their own devices, Stephanie and Natasha would have got her into a tuxedo and a flattering pair of black trousers, gone for the whole Marlene Dietrich thing. Maybe added a false moustache and a top hat and had done with it.

‘You just haven't understood the brief I gave you,’ Meredith said now. ‘If I wanted to look like Shirley Bassey then that's what I would have said.’

Stephanie restrained herself from saying that if they
could have made Meredith look even half as good as Shirley Bassey it would have been a miracle. ‘I just wanted to accentuate your curves. You have great curves,’ she said instead. Too many of them and in all the wrong places, she thought, and nearly laughed.

‘There's a fine line between feminine and tarty, that's all I'm saying. And I really think you've crossed it with this dress.’

Stephanie knew there was no point in fighting with her. ‘Well, I'm really sorry, Meredith, if you feel that way. We'll keep looking. Trust me, we'll find you something perfect.’

‘I certainly hope so,’ Meredith said. ‘I'm paying you enough.’

By six fifteen they had reached a stand-off. Stephanie refused Natasha's offerofa drink onthe way home—as she always did on the evenings James was away because she liked to be home to put Finn to bed — and flagged down a taxi, which would drop her off in Belsize Park, then continue on to Natasha's cosy house in Muswell Hill.

‘I'm going to talk to her,’ she said ominously, as they sped up Chalk Farm Road.

‘Meredith?’ said Natasha, whose mind was still on the dramas of the afternoon.

‘Katie. I've decided I'm going to ring her and tell her I know and see what she says.’

Natasha exhaled loudly. ‘Maybe it would be better just to tell James you've found out what he's up to.’

‘No. He'll lie to me and say it's not true and then coach her not to give anything away either. I'll never find out the truth about what's been going on.’

‘OK,’ said Natasha, although she didn't sound as if she meant it.

‘When I know he'll be at work,’ Stephanie said decisively, hugging her friend as she got out of the cab.

8

Katie never looked forward to Wednesday mornings. For a start it meant saying goodbye to James until the following Sunday. His Wednesday routine was always the same; he would go into work early, see patients till one, have a quick lunch, then get on the motorway for the long drive to London. He worked in his London practice on Thursdays and Fridays, had Saturday off and repeated the journey in reverse on Sundays. This morning she had got up early — ordinarily she liked to lie in bed till nine drinking the tea that James always brought her before he left for work — and helped him sort out his bag for the next few days. She enjoyed the domesticity, the simple pleasure of handing him a pile of clean, well-ironed clothes and cooking him a hearty breakfast in case an emergency meant he had to skip lunch. This morning she'd made him eggs, bacon and mushrooms with a mountain of toast and a cafetière of freshly ground French-roast coffee. She hovered round him as he ate, refilling his cup and offering to butter his toast.

James would never have said so but he found all the attention, fussing and pampering rather oppressive. By Wednesday morning he invariably found himself looking forward to the rest of the week, the more mature exchanges between himself and Stephanie, two adults negotiating the day-to-day dealings of their lives rather
than the carer/child—adult relationship he sometimes felt he had with Katie. He loved Katie's helplessness, her childlike wonder at the world, her naïve optimism but sometimes it grated on him. Sometimes he didn't want to engage in baby talk and adolescent play-acting. Sometimes he just wanted to eat his breakfast.

Besides, by Wednesday his desire to see his son had always engulfed him. He spoke to him every day, of course, as he did Stephanie, although that often became quite stressful, having to find a quiet corner where Katie wouldn't hear what he was saying whenever she rang, pretending it was Simon or Malcolm. He would roll his eyes, mouth, ‘Work,’ and back off into the bathroom or the bedroom. Katie never seemed to doubt that he was telling the truth. It wasn't in her nature.

This morning, like any other Wednesday morning, Katie stood at the front door and waved him off, sniffling back a tear and trying to put on a brave face so as not to upset him. He, after all, was the one who had to lead the unsettled life. She might be a bit lonely on the days when he was away but she had Stanley and her friends and her lovely little home. She wasn't having to sleep on a put-me-up and eat Abi's badly cooked food. As soon as he'd left she texted him one of the many loving messages she always sent to keep him company on the journey. Later that day, unbeknownst to her, James would sit at a motorway service station, trying frantically to erase them before he got home.

Once he'd left, the other reason Katie dreaded Wednesdays crashed down on her. Every Wednesday morning for the past three months she had been seeing a regular
client, Owen, for an acupuncture session. Generally Katie loved all her clients. She believed that everybody was, by nature, good and that it was only circumstance that forced people to behave badly. And it wasn't that she disliked Owen. She felt desperately sorry for him. His life was a mess: his wife had left him and moved into the house next door with their neighbour. Lying in his bed at night, Owen had told her, he could hear Miriam and his former friend Ted having energetic sex in the adjoining room. Consequently he now slept on an air-bed in the living room and used his bedroom only for storage. He had lost his job at the local butcher's because he had been caught rubbing spittle (or at least he claimed it was spittle but, who knew?, it could have been any bodily fluid, no one wanted to look too closely) into a loin of pork that was earmarked for delivery to Miriam and Ted. Lower Shippingham wasn't a village with an abundance of job opportunities so he was now languishing on the dole, sitting in his terraced cottage day in day out, occasionally shouting loudly that Miriam was a whore when he knew she was in earshot next door.