The Birds and the Bees (11 page)

‘NO!’

‘Then he forced me to listen to his advice that I should play this exactly the opposite to what Matthew might expect of me.’

‘That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Stevie, ‘but I’m a woman and he probably doesn’t think I have the capacity for such logical thought. Chauvinistic butt-ugly thug.’

‘Actually…’ began Catherine, then snapped off what she was going to say.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh go on, say it.’

‘You’ll hate me if I do.’

‘Try me.’

‘Well, Eddie thought he seemed a nice bloke,’ said Catherine tentatively. ‘Genuine.’

‘Oh, come on, Cath, he’s bound to have developed a super-charm gland, looking like that,’ said Stevie with a mirthless laugh. ‘Otherwise he couldn’t have pulled someone who looked like Joanna. Think about it.’

‘I thought he was quite attractive close up,’ said Catherine, ‘especially with all that hair off. And he has fabulous legs. Bet his thighs are…’

‘Stop, you’re making me ill.’

‘He was looking after all the old relatives. He seemed to know all the steps to the dances.’

‘It’s something he’ll have learned in the Highlands. It’s how they unwind after biting the heads off live Sassenachs for breakfast. Hitler probably knew a few swanky moves. Apparently he could be quite charming too.’

‘You’re being silly now.’

‘I don’t like him,’ said Stevie. ‘You won’t convince me he’s a really nice bloke.’

For once, Catherine didn’t try. The last person she had said was a ‘really nice bloke’ was Matthew, and look how that seemed to have turned out.

Danny was tired out and asleep by half past seven, which left one and a half hours of absolute nerve-jangling torture in which the hands of the clock seemed to stay so still that at one point Stevie lifted it to her ear to see if it was still working. The time went trebly slow from nine o’clock until five past, when Matthew’s black Punto pulled up outside. For the seven millionth time, Stevie quickly checked her precisely chosen casual clothes in the mirror and looked to see that there was no lipstick on her teeth. Matthew knocked on the door, which indicated a big marker of their estrangement, and Stevie was careful not to jump too quickly to open it.
Slowly, slowly
, she paced herself. She opened, smiled, invited him in and then went to sit in the big winged armchair.

Adam’s words suddenly reverberated very loudly in her head. ‘
Play it exactly the opposite tae how he’d expect you tae behave
.’ Not that she was going to play it any other way, but he made her push it that one notch further. Matthew would have expected her to be tarted up to the nines ready to seduce him back. He would have expected her to sit on the sofa in the hope that he would join her and not be able to
resist snuggling up. He would have expected her to have the kettle on and offer him tea, so she did none of those things.

‘What can I do for you?’ said Stevie with a small smile.

‘Well, firstly I came to see if there was any post,’ said Matthew.

‘It’s on the hall table waiting for you,’ said Stevie, still clinging on for grim death to her friendly nice-lady smile.

‘And secondly…’ He raked his hand through his thick dark hair. ‘Sorry, it’s a bit awkward. I thought you should know, because I don’t want there to be any lies between us’–which made Stevie gulp down the biggest sarcastic laugh her voice box could hope to create–‘I…er…asked Joanna out last night.’

‘Joanna? But she’s married,’ said Stevie, taking her place on the stage to receive her Oscar for ‘best shocked actress’.

‘She’s…er…split up from Adam at last. As I found out last night. So…er…I’ll need the house back as soon as I can.’

Stevie felt shaky and sick. ‘What? You’re moving her in already–after one night?’

‘No, of course not. Don’t be silly.’ Matthew’s hand went nervously to his hair again and then he started rubbing his neck. He really wasn’t very good at lying.

He must think I’m an idiot to believe all this, thought Stevie, suddenly filled with a boiling rage which took over her mouth, totally bypassing her brain.

‘Well, actually, I was going to tell
you
, Matthew, that I’ve found somewhere and I’ll be out by Wednesday. I can’t make it any earlier than that, I’m afraid, so I hope that will be okay with you?’

‘Oh yes…great.’

Great? He actually said great
. The rage temperature shot up a few more centigrade. She was not even letting herself think of what she was saying; she just wanted to show him she was in control and okay and bigger than this. Even if she wasn’t. Even if inside she was vibrating with anger and fear and hurt, outside she would look as if she could cope. Stevie stood up, surprised that her legs had been strong enough to support her.

‘I’ll pop my keys through the letterbox when I leave. Let’s say, by Wednesday noon.’

‘Five o’clock would do,’ said Matthew, seemingly unable to cover up the sweat of his relief. If he’d had a handkerchief handy he would have probably mopped his brow at this point, Stevie thought. Like Louis Armstrong singing ‘Wonderful World’.

‘Okay, five o’clock then.’

‘Right. Brilliant.’

‘So let’s get your post,’ Stevie said, rising to her feet. ‘Where are you staying?’ She clung on to the amicable smile. It was like hanging onto something burning; it hurt and she couldn’t wait to let go of it.

‘Oh, just one of the hotels in town.’

Hotel
. So it wasn’t a grotty little B&B after all then. She wanted to ask which one, and whether Jo was staying there too, and watch him squirm because, had she had any life savings left, Stevie would have put them on the perfidious pair being holed up together in a double room in this mysterious and nameless ‘hotel in town’. But that’s what he would be expecting her to do, cross-examine him, so she
didn’t. She played outside his expectations. There was something she did need to ask, though.

‘So, about our wedding,’ she began, her voice croaking like a frog on forty Woodbines a day.

Matthew didn’t say anything; he just looked at her with big, apologetic, brown eyes.

Stevie gritted her teeth and said, ‘I thought so. Well okay,’ she managed, with a ‘let’s get on with it then’ hand clap. ‘You tell your parents and your relatives, I’ll do the rest.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, as if he had just accidentally stood on her toe and not smashed up her life with a sledgehammer.

‘To be expected in the circumstances. Especially if you’re asking other people out,’ she said, her upper lip so stiff, she doubted it would soften in three tons of Lenor.

‘Bye, Stevie, you’re such a lovely, understanding person,’ he said, and he shocked her with a big grateful hug after he picked up his post and stuck it in his pocket, which at least proved to her just how surprising the unexpected could be. She extricated herself, battling the urge to stay there and fill herself with the smell and the feel of him and to beg him not to leave her.

‘Bye, Matthew.’

She lasted five seconds after the door closed before breaking down. How could she have been so stupid as to think a nice hairdo and a few pounds off would make any difference? Hadn’t she learned
anything
from last time?

When she first suspected Mick had been having an affair, she had post mortemed herself to shreds. What was she?
Too porky, too blonde, too unfit, too arty, too short, too straight-haired, too blue-eyed, too incredibly clumsy, too crap at cake baking? What was it that had caused Mick to turn his attentions to another woman? Then she had found out who he was having an affair with. A barmaid–Linda: hook nose, yellow teeth and proud owner of incredibly fat ankles.

‘
This hasn’t happened because you’ve got a slightly bigger bum than you should have, girl
,’ said a nice, kind part within her, eager to give some comfort. It hadn’t stopped her from wanting to know just why it had happened then, to pin his actions to a reason. Why was it so hard for blokes to understand that all an ex might need to go forward was a two-minute explanation? Why did they hold up an aggressive crucifix against the demon of ‘closure’? Even, ‘I ran off with Linda because I happen to have a thing about women who look like bulldogs,’ would have been better than the not-knowing
why
. But the cowardly swines saw no advantage in facing up to what they had done and so women started ripping into themselves trying to find the answer, as they would their house if a ring had been lost and leaving no stone unturned to find it. No wonder they started boiling rabbits and sewing prawns into curtains. Well, Stevie wasn’t going to go mad this time. She wasn’t going to hide Matthew’s clothes, follow him in his lunch-hour, starve herself or give him her full emotional repertoire in a misguided, desperate attempt to get him back. All that would do was drive him further away, as she knew to her cost with Mick.

Stevie crunched herself up into a small ball and sobbed
quietly, so Danny wouldn’t hear, though she wanted to keen and howl at full belt like a wolf at the moon and let out all the pain. And what the buggery bollocks had made her say she had somewhere else to go? In three days’ time too? ‘
So what are you going to do now?
’ the sensible part of her brain shouted at the smartarse side. The smartarse side was not forthcoming with any answers.

She couldn’t stay at Catherine’s, although she knew the Flanagans would shift and jiggle to accommodate her and Danny. There would be no space to work, plus she wouldn’t be able to work anyway from the guilt of inconveniencing them. Her mother lived too far away for Danny’s school and anyway, Edna Honeywell only had a one-bedroomed flat, and a life in which there was even less room for them both. As for her father–well, he wasn’t even in the short-list of people to ring with this one.

Stevie sobbed some more, letting herself wallow in rare self-pity. Five months ago, she had had her own house, a nice full bank account and a fabtastic boyfriend who loved her just as she was. So how had she got to this place–grossly depleted savings and three days away from being homeless? She hated to admit this, but there was only one person who just might be able to stop everything slipping away from her. Stevie went out to the recycle bin in the garage where all her scrap paper was kept awaiting collection, scavenged around until she found what she was looking for, and then she rang the number on the retrieved business card.

‘Hellooo,’ said a voice full of nails and razor-blades.

‘Hello, Mr MacLean. It’s Stevie Honeywell. I think I’m ready to talk.’

It was with a certain amount of cockiness that Adam MacLean swaggered up the short path and rang the doorbell of 15 Blossom Lane the next morning, at nine thirty, as arranged, and it was with a certain amount of humility that Stevie received him. He accepted her offer of a cup of coffee and followed her into the kitchen where a percolator was already chewing on some beautiful-smelling beans. The room looked completely different when it wasn’t covered in flour, he thought. She had obviously tightened up her act a bit since Matty Boy left. It was gleaming actually, and so was the front room that they went into when the coffee was ready, give or take a bit of mess that made a home comfortable–Spiderman slippers, jotters and pens, a big tub of Lego and a very strange head made out of a sock sitting in a jam jar with grass for hair. Adam sat down on a sofa that was meant to hold four people and took up nearly half of it. On the coffee-table there was one of those infernal books that daft women read, called
The Carousel of Life
by Beatrice Pollen. He picked it up, gave the back cover blurb a quick dismissive read and put it back down again in such a way that gave Stevie no doubt of his opinion of it.

‘So?’ he said, rather smugly. ‘You changed yerrr mind.’

‘It wasn’t an easy decision.’

‘I can bet.’

They even managed to make their coffee sipping look like a duel.

‘What was it then that finally made ye ring?’

‘He–Matthew–came around last night.’

‘Aye, you said he was coming roon, when I saw you in the supermarket. With the giant cucumber.’

Stevie bared her teeth a little but didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she continued icily, ‘He told me that he and
her
had got together at Pam and Will’s wedding.’

‘Oh?’

‘And I have to get out of this house by Wednesday and cancel my wedding.’

‘Oh.’ It was quite a sympathetic ‘oh’ for him, who seemed to deduce from the speed at which she started slurping coffee then, that she was possibly quite upset about having to do that.

‘So where will ye go?’ he said.

‘I don’t have a clue. I’ll have to start looking bigtime. And packing. God, I don’t know which to do first.’ Her voice went all funny and she coughed it away.

‘So do ye want tae know what I think noo?’ said Adam MacLean, who was wearing jeans and a cornflower-blue shirt that exactly matched his eyes.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Ah think you and I should pretend to start winchin.’

Winchin?
What the hell did that mean? She needed an interpreter to converse with the bloody man.

‘I’m sorry, you’ve lost me.’

‘Winchin. It means “go-ing out to-geth-er”.’

‘Who?’

‘You and me.’

‘You and me?’ Stevie laughed, waiting for the punchline, because that was a joke, wasn’t it? And not a very funny one either. She was being serious and he was messing about.

‘No, it’s not a joke,’ he said. ‘This is part of my master-plan.’

‘Your
master-plan
?’

‘Is there an echo in here?’ he grumbled. Stevie ignored him and he went on, ‘First of all, I didn’t fight the decision for Jo to leave me. I just let her go. I knew that would affect her far more than if I acted like she might expect me to.’

Stevie didn’t ask how Jo would expect him to act. That seemed pretty obvious. It had to involve something dangerous that hurt a lot.

‘And you want us to go out together?’

‘My God naw!’ he protested a bit too enthusiastically. ‘Just to pretend.’

‘You’re barking mad.’

‘Quite possibly, but have you any sane solutions?’

That shut Stevie up because she hadn’t.

‘Any chance of another coffee, please?’ he asked. ‘With a wee bit more mulk this time, if I could?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Stevie, and went half-dazed into the kitchen. Adam picked up another
Midnight Moon
book from the table under the window. Another by Beatrice Pollen–
The Silent Stranger
–she must be
her
favourite.
Obviously, this Pollen woman was some sad old grand-maw of a writer with a loveless life who lived her dreams through characters with names like Maddox Flockton and Devon Earnshaw. Jeez, who thought o’ this crap?

Bollocks, oh bollocks, more like, he thought, closing the book and putting it back where he had found it by the window. Then his eye caught sight of the sign on the house opposite, just before Stevie returned to put a giant cup down on the coffee-table for him. It had been a joke Christmas present and was one-step short of a horse trough.

‘What’s that hoos? Is it tae let?’ He pointed to the big cottage opposite.

‘Yes,’ said Stevie, roughly understanding what he was saying.

‘Why don’t you get that wan?’

‘You are joking!’ said Stevie with a laugh belonging to Mrs Rochester. ‘I couldn’t afford that in a month, sorry, year, sorry millennium of Sundays.’

‘Will Housing Benefit not cover it?’

‘Housing Benefit?’ said Stevie indignantly. ‘What on earth makes you think I would get Housing Benefit?’

‘I…er…just presumed, seeing as you’re at the gym every day, that you didnae work.’

‘Well, I do work actually, thank you!’ said Stevie.

‘What do you dae?’

‘None of your bloody business!’ Like she was going to tell him that after he had tossed her book down as if it was some worthless piece of crap and then have him do a snidey laugh thing.

‘Sorry I asked,’ said Adam, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. He took a sip of coffee and, contrary to her silent wish, didn’t burn his throat in agony. ‘So, how expensive is it?’

Stevie sighed and got out the newspaper to show him some brief details. ‘Too expensive for me, and my
salary
.’

‘Christ awmighty!’ said Adam as the figure shot out at him from the page. ‘Be cheaper tae move into a Hilton Penthoos.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Hmmm.’ He rubbed his smooth, freshly shaven chin in thought. ‘Although the Hilton doesn’t have such a good view as that hoos has.’

‘Pardon?’

‘And because you can’t afford it, that’s even more reason for it to be the perfect place.’ He was thinking out aloud.
This was starting to look verrry interesting
.

Stevie shook her head. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Mr MacLean.’

‘If you lived there…’

‘I couldn’t anyway, even if I had a million in the bank,’ butted in Stevie, shaking her head quite defiantly. ‘There is no way I could stand to see
those
two in
this
house every day and every night, and furthermore—’

‘Hold your wheesht, woman!’ Adam growled. ‘If you lived there, you would absolutely cause them mental hell. “How could she stand to live there opposite tae us? How could she afford it?” they’d ask. Then I turn up wi’ floooers…’

Floooers?
‘If you mean “floors”, at a rough guess I think it might have them already, Mr MacLean. And possibly ceilings. Maybe even a wall.’
What is the man on!

‘Och! Not flairs,
floooers
.’

Stevie’s face, with its mask of utter bewilderment now, told him she wasn’t getting any of this and he took a fierce intake of breath before further clarifying, none too patiently either: ‘Fl-ow-errrs. If I came with fl-ow-ers, we’d mash their hids…
heads
totally wi’ all the questions we’d raise. Think aboot it. Not only have we not reacted as rejected partners should naturally in accordance wi’ the laws of heartbreak, but then we start oor own relationship–
pretend
relationship,’ he emphasized for clarity. ‘I think the wee green-eyed monster would be oot daing…sorry,
out doing
his damage within a very short time.
Basic psychology
. No one wants to be that replaceable, that quickly.’

Okay, he had a point, Stevie thought, but at what cost to her own sanity?

‘Like I tried to say to you before–
basic psychology
,’ he said again, tapping his frontal lobe skull-casing. ‘I expect Matthew thought you’d totally freak–as, I know, did my Jo of me. But we didn’t, we haven’t given them what they wanted. Trust me, their brains are trying to process the strange wonderful creatures that we are and cannae. We are
haunting
them. They are expecting more from us. They’re waiting for us to flip and revert tae type, but they aren’t gonnae get it and that will unsettle them more than anything will. Tell me that Matty Boy isn’t expecting you to kick up a fuss.’

Stevie thought of all she had told Matt about the break-up with Mick, how crazed she had acted in grief. He had listened to her patiently then, with love and understanding. She couldn’t have known then that her confession would be stored and one day used as a weapon against her. Now he would use her past actions as an excuse to extricate himself from her as quickly as possible.

‘Yes, he’ll expect it,’ she answered quietly.

‘Aye, well, there are reasons why Jo will expect the same.’

‘Obviously,’ said Stevie.

He didn’t like the way she said the word, full of implication.

‘Guid. Then, they’ll no’ anticipate this turn of events in a million years.’

Stevie considered everything he had said. She hated to admit that he might be right, but she was going to have to, because she was desperate. Crackers as the whole scheme was, it was worth a try. Well, it would have been if she’d had the money to do it.

‘I’ll ring the landlord aboot the place opposite—’ MacLean started to say.

‘Excuse me,’ Stevie tried to interrupt.
Didn’t he listen? Didn’t he hear the bit about not being able to afford it? Had the sound of all those bagpipes affected his eardrums?

‘If you’ll agree to consider moving in there, we’ll come to some arrangement about the money that disnae see you short,’ Adam interrupted back. ‘I might be able to batter the landlord down on price.’

Yes, she could imagine he would be very effective at battering. She had a sudden scene in her head of some old, defenceless landlord in a headlock saying, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll compromise–please just get off my windpipe!’

She nodded her head warily. This seemed to incense him.

‘Look, lady, I’m doing this primarily for me and Jo, not you and
him
, but unfortunately we’re all knotted up in this together. This isnae a charity thing, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘As if!’ Yeah, like that thought had crossed her mind.

‘Well then? It’s the only way, and trust me I’ve thought of every possible solution. So if you would be so kind as to give me your telephone number…’

Stevie scraped the bottoms of the barrels of her brain for any other alternatives, but came up with zilch. As he said, mad as it was, this was worth trying. Anything was worth trying. Even entering an unholy alliance with McBeelzebub here. She
had
to get Matthew back, so she swallowed her pride and it felt bitter and lumpy on the way down.

‘Okay, you’re on,’ she said, with a heavy sigh of resignation.

Once she and Matthew were reunited, they might even laugh at this one day, surrounded by grandchildren and sipping Horlicks by a fireside, with Mr and Mrs MacLean
long resigned to the trashcan of history. She scribbled down her mobile number on one of the five million pads she had littered about the place, in case of sudden literary inspiration, then Adam left quickly–a man with a mission, locked on course.

He rang her an hour later, during which time her nerves had knitted themselves into a scarf of knots.

‘The landlaird willnae budge o’the price,’ he said.

‘Pardon?’

‘Theee land-lord will not budge on the price,’ pronounced Adam slowly.

‘Oh well, that’s that then.’

‘I’ll cover what you can’t afford. We’ll sort out the details later. I’ve signed the lease and I’ve got the key, which I’ll drop around to you this afternoon, so if you’ve anything heavy to carry across, I’ll do it for you then, because you start moving in today. Ring your man tomorrow and tell him the place is empty a day early. Now go pack!’

Then he put the phone down before Stevie could manage a single word of protest.