The Secrets of Married Women (14 page)

I wag a fork. ‘It’s what they call Nouvelle Tapas. I read it in the Chronicle. It’s basically an excuse for them to give you an amoeba’s portion of substandard food that’s dressed up with silly names, and charge you an arm and a leg for it. And you’re supposed to think it trendy that you walk out two hundred quid short and have to go home and order a pizza.’

When Leigh sees her main course of breast of duck a la diddle-de-doos, her face falls. ‘Right, that’s it. I’m never coming here again. It makes airline food look like a hearty meal.’

I look at mine and Wendy’s. ‘Well ours is as bad. It’s supposed to be brille but it’s more like braille. As in, you can’t see it and wonder if it’s vanished into the pattern on your plate.’

‘Erm, excuse me,’ Leigh flags our waiter down so everybody can hear. ‘I think the chef forgot to put my duck on the plate.’ The waiter stares witheringly at her. ‘That is your duck.’ He points to something very tiny and un-quack-like on top of a curly leaf.

‘I thought that was the prune!’

He looks tired again. ‘It’s orbit of Muscovy breast nestled in a hand of forest greens.’ He makes a cupping gesture just to hammer the point home. Wendy’s hiding her face in her hands and her shoulders heave.

‘But it’s artistically arranged,’ I point out. ‘It’s an orbit.’

‘Orbit that,’ Leigh shoots the middle finger. After we chuckle long and hard, she changes the subject. ‘Wend, we really have to think of an exciting PR stunt to open the new Metro Centre store.’ She has just asked the waiter to send over more bread and he said, ‘Would that be a basket each, madam, or one between you?’ ‘The cheeky sod,’ she snarled. ‘I bet his penis is the size of a long olive.’

‘Oh, don’t ask me about PR stunts. I’m not very creative,’ Wendy tells her.

Leigh stops pushing her ‘hand’ around her plate, fixes Wendy with a sober stare. ‘Try to be.’

Wendy gives me an
oops!
look. Thank God she has drunk three martinis. Personally, I didn’t care for that tone.

‘Anyway,’ Leigh changes the subject again. ‘Speaking of being
creative,
Jill and I were just having a
creative
chat the other day about how to
creatively
put the spark back into your sex life.’

Were we? Where is this coming from? I scowl at her. I’m getting tired of this cryptic business in front of Wendy.

‘Why?’ Wendy stops chewing. ‘Is there a difference between putting the spark back and
creatively
putting the spark back?’

Leigh railroads over her. ‘All single women just want to be married to a good man. Yet
women who are married to good men (at least the truthful ones among us) all want to be married to somebody else's good man. Yet who’s going around talking about us? Nobody. Because we’re supposed to have what everybody wants just because we’ve got husbands. So we’re not worth talking about.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ I tell her. She’s like a glass of Alka Seltzer with longer lasting fizz. I’m getting the urge to tip her down the sink. ‘I don’t want somebody else’s man Leigh. And neither do you.’ Obviously, this is all her way of leading up to spilling all to Wendy. I hope she doesn’t. Telling one friend is a sanity saver. Telling two is a day at the circus.

Leigh loudly steamrollers over me. ‘Argh, I’m wrong actually, aren’t I? Wendy’s the only one among us who’s perfectly happy with what she’s got. Wendy just wants to be married to Neil.’ It sounds vaguely like a putdown rather than admiration.

Wendy glances up from her food. And I witness one of those rare moments where you patently see she’s not amused. ‘How do you know what I do and don’t want, Leigh?’

Leigh’s jaw drops. ‘Well, don’t you…just want to be married to Neil?’

Wendy runs her fingers up and down the stem of her glass, cool as a cucumber. ‘Not always.’

Leigh looks at me quickly. ‘Is that it? Or are you adding anything to that?’

Wendy says, ‘I don’t know. What would you like me to add?’ Again, that look that would make Saddam and his army fill their underwear.

I don’t like the turn of this. It feels like it’s pick on Wendy time just because she happens to be happy. I jump in with a funny story about how Denise at work told me her husband masturbates to porn on the Internet. ‘That’s disgusting!’ Leigh says, still staring curiously at Wendy. ‘I’d lay Lawrence in a box if I caught him doing that.’

‘Is it really that bad? Wendy says, surprising us.

‘Come on! You’re not serious!’ Leigh seems really pissed off now, perhaps because Wendy is somehow getting the upper-hand here, and Leigh isn’t the one doing the shocking anymore. ‘What if that were Neil? Doing that behind your back? Could you even see Neil doing that?’

‘Well I certainly wouldn’t want to see him doing it, and I hope he doesn’t. But could I see him?’ She shrugs disinterestedly. ‘Probably.’

Leigh’s expression is priceless. ‘Rubbish! You’re just being controversial.’

Admittedly, it’s not like Wendy to say things like this, and I don’t quite know why she is. But I’m tired of this track now. ‘Can we change the subject?’ I beg, remembering it was me who brought it up.

When Wendy goes to the loo Leigh whispers, ‘I’ve seen him every day this week, and a few evenings!’

‘You’re not still going to his house?’

She nods. ‘But sometimes we can’t make it there. We have to pull over and do it in the car.’

‘Where?’

‘In the back seat. In parking lots. Down back streets. Wherever we find when the urge strikes. Look,’ she moves aside the lapel of her jacket. She’s not wearing a bra and I glimpse her little brown nipple. And next to it is a love bite.

‘My God! What if Lawrence sees?’

‘We’re not having sex. When he asks for it I just tell him no.’

I just about manage a head shake because Wendy is coming back. ‘I should just tell her.’ Leigh says, watching her walk across the room. ‘That’d shock her, wouldn’t it?’

Maybe a lot less than you’d think
, I feel like saying.

We order desserts. Molten Belgian puddings with mint
crème anglaise
. ‘It’s very nice this,’ Leigh tells the waiter.

‘Yes. It’s baked in a bain-marie and remains moist in the centre because it’s filled with ganache.’ He gives us scathing looks and walks away.

Leigh looks at Wendy and me. ‘Good ash? What’s that mean?’

‘Maybe the chef was on wacky baccy,’ Wendy says, seeming back to normal again. ‘Although I’m not sure how that keeps it moist. Him moist, maybe. But not the cake.’ Wendy and Leigh exchange grins.

Our bill, when we recover from heart failure—after trying desperately to fathom what ash, good, bad or indifferent, would have to do with a chocolate pudding—is a hundred and twenty pounds and change! ‘The rip off merchants,’ I nearly shriek.

‘Are we leaving him a tip?’ Wendy contemplates our forty-one-pee change.

‘A small one. We have to. In a place like this.’ Leigh reaches out a hand. ‘But that’s far too much.’ She takes away eleven pence. ‘Here,’ she thrusts his thirty-pence at him. ‘You’ve been so nice. Buy your girlfriend a chip on us.’

~ * * * ~

Sunday, we have my parents, and Rob’s mother, who has been away for two months visiting her sister in America, over for lunch. My mam keeps asking which restaurant we’re in, so I suppose that’s a compliment. Out of the corner of my eye I watch her chewing away, dainty as a little bird. Occasionally, as though she feels my attention on her, she’ll stop chewing, turn self-consciously still, slide her eyes around the table at us, and then shoot enigmatic little smiles. My dad’s loving gaze combs over her hands with their tissue-paper skin, over her patient, impossibly unlined face, her butter-coloured hair, then he sends me secretive, proud smiles. ‘Tell us the story about how you two met,’ I say to my mam, who studies me like she’s going to say something very special, then she goes back to her food again. ‘I saw her at the dancehall,’ my dad chimes in. ‘She was waltzing tall-backed with a lamppost of a man who had two left feet.’ He looks at my mother who continues to eat, looking like she knows she’s being talked about. ‘I went over to her… to save her, of course, from the man with the knocky knees.’ My dad coughs, like he does when he’s high on his own bullshit. ‘I said, “Excuse me my fellow, but I must cut in…” and I didn’t say it like I was asking for permission… And I took her in my arms, and I danced with her. And we danced, and danced, and danced. And by the end of the evening I told her that one day soon I would put a ring on her finger.’

‘Did you take him seriously?’ I ask my mother who looks up, sceptically, from a mound of mashed potatoes.

‘Of course not.’ She scowls. ‘He was wasted, wasn’t he. Besides,’ she glances disdainfully at my dad, ‘he had too much of a squint in his eye for my liking. The way he was looking at me.’

‘Eh?’ says my dad. ‘I had a what?’

‘A squint,’ my mother repeats. ‘You had one of those saucy squints in your eye young man and I did not like it.’

‘D’you mean a glint?’ Rob asks.

My mother slaps a hand over her mouth, humour lighting her eyes. ‘A glint. Maybe that’s what I mean. Ooh…’ she gives us all the evil eye ‘… some people are only happy when they’re embarrassing me!’

My dad chuckles. I am happy. It’s a “good” mother day. The sun is out. The garden is pretty. The roast is tasty. Rob seems a lot like his old self. All in all, I am over-the-top grateful for small mercies.

Then it’s the start of another week again. Leigh keeps ringing after her meeting with the Nick Prick, and I tell her I have to cut down on personal calls at the office. But really it’s all becoming too much information for me. And it’s unsettling me in ways I don’t like. My mind just keeps on turning sex scenes and it has a very disturbing effect. Then Wendy rings and tells me that she and Neil are going away mountain-biking in Scotland for the weekend, so I won’t be able to get her on her mobile. ‘It’s a romantic escape. We’re not even taking the lads. We’re trusting that they won’t throw wild parties while we’re gone, and wreck the house.’

‘That’s brave.’

‘And stupid, probably. But necessary. The thing with having children is, you sometimes forget that they’re not literally attached to you. You think you have to go everywhere and do everything in a big foursome. But they’re getting too old for that, and in some ways, Neil and I really don’t mind doing a bit of early empty-nesting. It’ll be lovely just being the two of us.’

‘Have a good time,’ I tell her.

‘We intend to,’ she says.

~ * * * ~

Saturday. Rob is working again. I’m beginning to think he doesn’t live here anymore. I get the vacuum cleaner out, then put it back. I contemplate doing some gardening, but go off that idea really quick. I pace around the front room, twirling my hair. This is essentially my only fun day off and the only person I want to have fun with isn’t here. My one friend is having a great time shagging her husband this weekend, and my other is having a great time shagging somebody else’s. I am so restless. Then I get a thought.

I shower and blow dry my hair. Then I try a bunch of clothes on, wondering why nothing seems to look right on me today. After I’ve flung about thirty tops and skirts on the bed, exasperated that I literally have no clothes, I finally settle on a white T-shirt and a khaki skirt that buttons up the front and sits an inch or two above my knees.

I see him coming from my vantage point on the sand. I experience a fresh reminder of how devastatingly handsome he is. He is on a direct course for me. I lie back, tent my novel over my face and stop breathing.

‘Hello,’ he says. I pretend not to hear. But then—he kicks me. Just gently doffs his foot to my calf like he’s checking I’m alive. I peel Marian Keyes off my face, and smile. His eyes appraise my bikini and settling for a moment or two too long on my bellybutton.

‘You know, I keep seeing you. I mean, again, since that time on beach,’ he squats beside me, taps my bare shoulder with his index finger. ‘Beside bus shelter. I think you with friend. And I was certain you saw me.’

He is talking about Leigh, and that day. ‘Nope,’ I shake my head. ‘It must have been somebody else.’

‘Maybe you have twin?’

‘They say everybody has one.’ I can’t do this. I sit up and start putting things in my bag. ‘I was just leaving.’ He watches me closely. He is still squatting just inches away from me, the sun backlighting him, illuminating the attractive, wolfish, weather-beaten aura around him. I feel my attraction to him like a meteor that’s just obliterated earth. The nerves in my stomach are jumping around all over the place. Have I ever felt like this? Even for Rob?