The Bonk Squad (28 page)

“
He told me. Came straight
out with it. I’d been pushing him to get a proper job again,
instead of all the part-time rubbishy cash stuff he does.” She
reached out and waved a hand at a wasp which had flown through the
open French doors and was about to settle on Vi’s trifle. “He’s
lucky he hasn’t been caught for tax evasion, if you ask me. And I
really, really want to try writing full time. So I thought it was
fair enough.”

The wasp zoomed by for a second
attempt. Liz, with surprising accuracy for someone who had downed
several drinks, set her glass aside, slapped at the wasp, and sent
it hurtling into the whipped cream and walnuts which topped Vi’s
splendid dessert.

“
Shit!” she said, grabbing
a nearby spoon and scraping it off. She deposited it on her
holly-patterned paper serviette and pushed some walnuts over the
damage on the trifle. Both women gazed at the struggling
cream-clogged insect until Liz folded the layers over and squeezed.
“Sorry,” she added as Romy grimaced.

“
I’ll pretend it was Neill
Bloody Farrell. Liz, I’ve had it with ADverts. I’ve worked full
time all these years and earned a lot of the money we’ve lived on.
The kids are all at school now. I want a bit of time for
me
.”

“
So what did he
say?”

“
That he wanted a
divorce.”

“
Oh fuck! You poor
thing.”

“
Mmmm. ‘Romy I need a
frigging divorce first’,” she mimicked. She carried off Neill’s
Scots accent quite well. “Of course I thought he meant a divorce
from
me
, and it
came so out of the blue I just about fainted. I mean—we’re good.
We’re great. Or so I thought.”

Liz reached for Romy’s empty plate,
stacked it on her own, and stretched over to set them on the table.
She placed the waspy serviette on top. “And?” she
whispered.

“
He realized how it must
have sounded, so then he said, ‘No, no, the bitch in Aberdeen’. And
I said ‘Which bitch in Aberdeen?’, and he said ‘Ma wife, ma lawful
wedded wife. Ma
awful
wedded wife.’ Then he went very quiet. I did too.”

Liz drew a deep breath and glanced
around. They had a good turnout for the writers’ Christmas lunch.
Even some of the more sporadic attendees had made it to Meg’s home
today. The noise level was deafening—conversation, cutlery against
china, music from the stereo in the corner.

“
You
are not the bigamist,” Liz said. “He is. He’s in real trouble
I suspect, but you’re not.”

“
Except that I love him and
want him here in New Zealand—not locked up in prison on the other
side of the world. He’s Daniel’s Dad...”

“
I doubt it’ll come to
prison,” Liz said with more confidence than actual knowledge. “Wait
till I’ve got some proper info from old Dickie.”

“
I suppose Neill was trying
to be the invisible man,” Romy continued, blowing her nose on her
paper serviette and then looking around for somewhere to put it.
She dug her bag out from under the chair and dropped it in after a
few seconds’ hesitation. “We haven’t talked properly yet. I tore
out to the car and just drove like a lunatic for a while, crying
heaps. For all I know he’s an illegal immigrant, as well. Probably
came to New Zealand on a Visitors’ Permit to do mountain treks and
whitewater rafting and stuff. You know how he loves being right
away from civilization?”

“
All those family camping
trips to remote beaches and so on? But you enjoy them
too?”

“
Paradise,” Romy confirmed.
“But what if he just stayed here without applying for permanent
residency? He’s so darn keen to keep out of the limelight that I
have to wonder. He never seems to need a doctor, so I bet he’s not
on the Health Department computer. Has no proper job, so Inland
Revenue won’t know about him.”

“
He’s got a kiwi driving
license though, hasn’t he? I remember we were all comparing
photographs a few months back.”

“
I think he got one off his
old UK one,” Romy said gloomily. “Maybe. I don’t know. God...” She
heaved a huge hopeless sigh.

“
And it happened this
morning?”

“
I was due to drop the kids
at Saturday sports. And I had a niggle at Neill about a full time
job while they got all their stuff together, and he just came out
with it. I freaked.”

Liz had a sudden vivid picture of tall
fair Neill, small dark Romy, children tearing around happily, and
the bombshell blowing them all apart.

“
I roared off and left him
to it,” Romy added. “I suppose he took them in his van. There was
nobody there when I went back to get changed and grab my seafood
quiche.”

“
So he needs to sort out
his divorce, which must be possible because he’s been out of
Scotland and away from his wife for ages. Yes? How long? I know
that makes a difference. I think it has to be seven years. And then
re-marry you properly—depending on what happens in the
meantime.”

Romy reached over to the stack of
paper serviettes on the table, took another one, and began twisting
and tearing at it. “Seven years? Well, Daniel’s five, so it must be
six at least.”

“
Have another drink,” Liz
suggested. Romy shook her head, so Liz topped up her own
glass.

“
This means Daniel is
illegitimate!”

“
Sssshhh...”

“
But he is.” She hiccupped
prior to sobbing in earnest, and Liz bundled her out to the garden,
hoping the others wouldn’t notice. They paced from one end of the
dandelion studded lawn to the other, and then turned and retraced
their steps. Every few seconds, Romy sniffled into the crumpled
paper serviette. Liz took a long swallow of red wine while she
searched for anything she could possibly say to make the hideous
situation any easier.

“
You’ve got to keep it
looking normal for the children. You can do that. Go back home
after this meeting as though everything’s fine. You all have
dinner, and do whatever you were planning to do on a Saturday night
anyway...”

“
Natasha and Sarah were
going to a sleepover with some friends down the road. Just Daniel
home for the night.”

“
Are
going to a sleep-over,” Liz corrected. “Well, that’s a help.
Pack them off, get Daniel into bed early, and have a big talk with
Neill.”

Romy shrugged. Waves of anguish rolled
off her. “No, you must,” Liz encouraged. “You’ll probably find he
married really young and his wife got bored while he was out
working the oil-rigs and she was unfaithful or
something.”

“
Unless he’s got a string
of other kids and he was the unfaithful bastard. Bloody
Scotsmen—can’t keep their cocks safely under their
kilts!”

They both sniggered at the
thought.

“
No, truly,” Romy insisted,
once she’d got over her nervy giggles. “It took him less than half
a day to get
me
into bed. He’d been helping on that Community Clean-up truck
before lunch, and chatted me up with all his muscles and gorgeous
accent. Then he came sniffing around late in the afternoon to see
if he could be ‘a wee bitty help’ with anything else. I stupidly
gave him dinner, and he never really left.”

“
And this had nothing to do
with him being a great big strong sexy sinful hunk?”

“
Nothing at all!” Romy said
with half a tearful smile. “Oh Liz, what am I going to do? What
else hasn’t he told me? How can I ever believe him again if he can
keep something this huge from me for so long?”

Liz shook her head, then up-ended her
nearly empty glass and finished the wine.

Romy dabbed at her nose. “If he has to
go back to Scotland to get this sorted out, who’s going to look
after the children? I can’t keep working at ADverts with all my
long days and trips away. I won’t find another job that pays half
as well.” Her lower lip began to tremble again. “And I’ll have no
time to write my books,” she wailed.

Liz let her sob for a while—no-one
else had come out to investigate. “He won’t have to go back to
Scotland,” she said after some serious thought. “The second
marriage—the one to you—is the crime. And that happened here in New
Zealand, so that’s where it needs to be settled. I don’t know about
any immigration stuff though.”

There was an awful kind of justice
beginning to rear its head here. Romy, who had everything, might
suddenly have a lot less. All the years of earning big money, of
never having to cook or do housework; of having the sporty cars,
the gorgeous man to look after her, and the published novels,
seemed to be crashing around her ears.

Liz, who’d been keeping a big house
and garden running on her own, feeling beholden to Paul, and
working half time for laughable pay so she’d be free when her
children needed her, felt a savage little glitter of satisfaction.
She tried very hard to squash it, but it kept sneaking
through.

‘
Bitch
,’ she hissed at her own envious soul.

Meg and Bobbie had agreed beforehand
they’d collect up all the first course crockery and cutlery and set
the dishwasher going to reduce the amount of clean-up required
later. Accordingly, once plates were emptied and knives and forks
laid down they wandered around the room gathering the first load
together.

“
Need any help dear?” Vi
asked, making no move to heave herself out of her
armchair.

“
We’re fine,” Meg assured
her.

“
Want a hand with
anything?” Ian enquired.

“
A man’s place is not in
the kitchen,” Nurse Mandy simpered. Her husband’s place never
seemed to be in the kitchen, that was for sure.

“
It’s going beautifully,
darling,” Eloise assured Meg—not offering to help in the least.
After all, it had taken Eloise most of the morning to hull the
strawberries, stir in the raspberries and blueberries, and halve
and de-pip the juicy imported Californian grapes while she prowled
the kitchen getting into her Mrs. Robinson persona.

She’d tossed her hair, practiced her
accent, gone over and over the same few scenes, all the while
wondering what the dreary self-important wardrobe mistress would
come up with by way of costumes.

Should she buy a pushup bra? She’d
tried Tigger’s on while the girl was out—not that she could fasten
it up around her own more fleshy rib-cage—but she saw the intended
effect. She’d be able to wear plunging necklines without
embarrassment if she could create more cleavage. She’d cut one of
the huge grapes almost in half and unfolded it on the chopping
board like a miniature pair of breasts, and glared at the
voluptuous fruit before snipping, de-pipping and tossing the two
halves in with the rest of the fruit. For sure Johnno’s French
‘love interest’ would have big ones. She’d been obsessing about
them for days.

“
I’ll take the dessert
plates in now there’s room on the table,” Bobbie said to
Meg.

She steered her way past Ben who was
squatting by the stereo, and Nurse Mandy who was checking to see if
there was any sparkling wine left in the big green bottles.
Everyone seemed very cheerful indeed.

Meg followed with Mandy’s ice-cream
and set it beside Vi’s gargantuan trifle and Eloise’s fresh
berries.

Outside, Liz and Romy enjoyed the sun.
Meg waved at them to come inside.

“
Ready?” Liz
asked.

“
I suppose.”

“
You’ll be fine. You’re not
telling them?”

“
As if!”

“
Ian turned out
well.”

Romy nodded her appreciation at the
change of subject. “Very hot. Amazing. Who’d have
thought?”

“
Not even me until I saw
him without his shirt. He has a really good bod. Ripped as hell. I
just meant to get him into some decent clothes, and one thing led
to another.”

“
So how far?”

“
Huh?”

“
How far has it
led?”

“
Romy! Don’t
go
there.”

“
Just wondering. You
seemed…relaxed together.”

“
Not
that
relaxed. Ian?”

“
Stranger things have
happened.”

“
Not that strange,
girlfriend!”

They stepped inside, laughing. No-one
else at the lunch gained the least suspicion that Romy’s heart had
just been broken and her life torn apart.

“
Right, ladies,” Ian
called, standing and motioning for silence. The noise subsided with
gratifying speed as nearly a dozen pairs of eyes travelled from his
short dark hair, down his lean supple body with its delicious
golden tan, to his tightly-packed trousers.

“
I can see our dessert’s
ready,” he continued with newfound confidence. “We don’t want the
ice-cream melting, and I for one can’t wait to dive into Vi’s
delicious trifle. So… “ He held aloft the envelope which Bobbie had
passed him, and which contained a thank you card and rather more
Haroldson’s Garden Center gift vouchers than the group had
contributed to. “In appreciation, Meg—for having us in your home
every month, and supplying all the tea and coffee and so
on.”