Читать книгу: «The Big Five O», страница 4
Melody had told her to dress as an ‘authoritarian’ – a school mistress perhaps, she’d added helpfully, or some sort of forbidding character. ‘If you haven’t got tweeds,’ she’d instructed, (tweeds?), ‘then think Ann Robinson on The Weakest Link.’
Roz had looked hopelessly at her wardrobe of sweatshirts and jeans before putting on one of the simple straight black skirts she wore for work and teaming it with a high-necked blouse and some pearls her mother had given her. She still looked rather timid and mousey.
But Melody had nodded, substituting Roz’s low heels for a pair of her own perilous ones as soon as Roz arrived, and handing Roz a dark lipstick to apply. ‘You’ll do!’ she said, grinning at Roz while Roz looked wildly around her wondering which door on the landing led to the bathroom in case she actually had to throw up.
‘I’ll do the talking,’ said Melody as they went back downstairs. ‘You just follow me.’
Roz had been unable to make more than a squeak in reply before Melody, dressed in a severe black suit with her hair in a bun, opened the front door and ushered in a weedy-looking bloke called Clive, who looked as terror-struck as Roz felt.
Clive had sat in the middle of the sofa while Melody, towering above him, had kept up a ten-minute tirade about the Clive’s poor performance at work and then ordered him to drop his trousers.
Roz instinctively recoiled and looked away but Melody, handing her a leather slipper and giving her a small encouraging shove, stepped smartly forward to where Clive was bent over the arm of the sofa and brought what looked like a riding crop with a wide leather end down on his lower regions with an alarmingly loud crack.
Roz clapped a hand to her mouth as a small, shocked squeal escaped before she could stop it and Clive yelped in pain. Thwack! Melody brought the crop down hard again and Roz gasped once more. ‘Miss Sterling is very disappointed in you, too!’ said Melody, looking disapprovingly at Roz, who shook her head faintly. She looked queasily at Clive’s quivering buttocks encased in a pair of green underpants decorated, somewhat incongruously, with a pattern of holly and reindeers. ‘I’m not sure …’ she began, but Melody was issuing further instructions.
‘Upstairs!’ she roared. ‘Now we’re going to do it properly!’
Roz felt a small bubble of hysteria rise in her throat as Clive scuttled up the stairs after Melody, holding up his trousers.
‘Bare bottom!’ Melody yelled as Clive draped himself over the foot of the bed and Roz shot backwards onto the landing in alarm.
‘I really can’t …’ she spluttered, as Melody began to apply a matching leather slipper to one side of Clive’s behind, beckoning to Roz to do the same. Roz took a deep breath, trying not faint with embarrassment, before stepping forward, and giving the unappealing white flesh a timid tap with the footwear in her hand.
‘Harder,’ hissed Melody, bringing down her arm with spectacular force. ‘Please stop!’ howled Clive.
Roz immediately dropped her slipper, nearly falling off Melody’s heels, but Melody, not missing a beat, retrieved it and stuffed it back into Roz’s hand. ‘Not said the safe word,’ she mouthed, giving Clive another magnificent wallop. ‘Any more fuss,’ she said to him sternly, ‘and it will hurt even more …’
She nodded to Roz. ‘Go!’
Roz raised her arm and brought it down as firmly as she could. Clive whimpered. ‘Six more!’ said Melody, as Roz raised her arm again and they rained down blows in unison while Clive squirmed. Then it was over and Clive was dressed and downstairs and pushing notes into Melody’s hand while thanking her profusely.
Roz sat weakly on a chair in Melody’s kitchen as her friend counted out eighty pounds and handed it over. Roz looked at the four twenty-pound notes in her hand. The whole encounter had lasted barely half an hour. But she still felt light-headed.
She’d decided then that the only way she could do it again was to make an absolute rule about no exposed flesh, and to treat it like a role in a play.
Hadn’t she received rave reviews for her depiction of a wounded wife in Where Does He Go at Night? at the Sarah Thorne Theatre, when she’d gone for a part with the Hilderstone Players?
That nice lady afterwards – Sue someone – had suggested she auditioned for Mrs Gargery for the annual Dickens Play as a result. And she was a dominating sort.
Channel your inner Mrs Joe, she breathed to herself now, trying to still the hammering in her chest as she moved around the elegant rooms.
She’d had a string of part-time jobs before the position at the gallery had come up, always acutely aware that she had to fill the shoes of two parents for Amy and wanting to be there for her. She had taken the decision – perhaps wrongly, she thought ruefully – to live hand to mouth so that she could pick her daughter up from school. She’d worked in shops and pubs, as a dinner lady and a hotel chambermaid, so that the hours would fit, claimed what meagre benefits she could, just about scraping along and hanging onto the thought of finding something with a proper salary when Amy was older. Not realising how very difficult that would be, when she’d been out of the marketplace for so long.
When Amy was small she didn’t really notice how poor they were – or show any concern about her lack of a father – but she sure did now.
‘Perhaps if you’d bothered to stay in touch …’ she’d said nastily, as Roz tried to explain the limitations of just one income against a rising tide of bills and why high-speed internet could not be a priority.
Roz sighed. Didn’t Amy think her mother longed to stop the constant juggling, the endless calculations, the daily decisions over how much to allow for food so that the hot water could still go on. Didn’t she think Roz wanted to be able to give her nice things? ‘Ask Granny then!’ Amy would snarl. And so it would go on.
That was why she was doing this, she reminded herself, as she looked around for a final time, and waited – heart still banging – for the doorbell to ring.
She’d dusted, changed the flowers, rubbed a little essential oil along the tops of the radiators, so the place would smell lovely when the heating came on for its hour twice a day, and opened the windows wide in the downstairs utility room which had a tendency to damp. She’d ticked off everything on Charlotte’s list before stripping off her jeans and changing into the high heels and short, yet demure dress that she thought would fulfil ‘Colin’s’ desire for someone ‘sexy yet prim’ to beat the living daylights out of him.
She’d taken Melody’s advice and entered into a detailed correspondence with the three men who’d been in touch since her legs, neatly crossed in a pair of high heels, appeared on the website.
She’d withdrawn from ‘Mark’ quite quickly when he’d expressed a polite desire for her to smear him in peanut butter (if she didn’t mind) and then spread it on toast and eat it, and was still waiting for ‘Jimmy’ to reply with his exact requirements. So far it just seemed to involve him standing in the corner while she threatened him.
But Colin had seemed unfussy apart from wanting to have a clear view of her legs, and as long as it ‘really hurt.’ Roz looked at the cane Melody had given her and the leather slipper. Oh Christ, could she really do this?
She’d been pacing the hall for ten minutes, braced for it, but she still jumped wildly when the doorbell rang. Her palms were sweating so badly she was likely to drop the bloody stick before she could use it.
For a moment she thought about hiding in the coat cupboard till he went away, or telling him it had all been a mistake. Or even denying all knowledge and pretending he’d been the victim of a terrible hoax.
Then she thought of Amy’s face when she told her she could go on the trip to Paris after all.
Roz took a deep breath and opened the door …
Chapter 7
I left it so long because I didn’t believe it. Nothing fitted with anything I’d ever read or heard. Breast lumps – I thought – were small and hard and you discovered them in the shower. Like a pea – that’s what everyone always says. This wasn’t even in my breast really – it was above it where there’s a muscle anyway. It wasn’t even a proper lump, just a sort of … thickening … It felt like something that could have happened because I’d pulled something. Or lifted too much.
Or knocked it.
I’ve been waiting for it to go away.
But it hasn’t.
It’s got bigger. And I can no longer pretend. I’ve Googled of course. And I thought at first it was probably a cyst. Easily drained and removed. Some go away all on their own. But not mine.
But I’ve felt stressed and stress can lead to all sorts of things. It could be some sort of inflammation caused by too much cortisol.
Or a fibroadenoma. ‘A very common benign breast condition’ the website says. Describing a lump that is rubbery and moves when you touch it. I think mine moves. I’m not sure. I’ve prodded it so much it’s sore. Unless it was going to hurt anyway – in which case it can’t be cancer, can it? Cancerous lumps are usually painless – it says that on several pages.
Apart from the forum where the terminal women were talking. But everyone knows you don’t go to chat rooms with good news …
If this happened to any of the others, they’d be decisive, and go straight to the doctor and God knows they’d expect me to as well.
I don’t know what’s stopping me. It is a lump now for certain. So it’s not as if I’m making a fuss about nothing. I will phone tomorrow. I really will.
I’m just so, so scared …
Chapter 8
Charlotte threw down the newspaper in disgust. ‘Have you read this stupid woman interviewed here? She’s saying she actually felt grateful to God when her husband went on blood pressure pills and they made him impotent!’
Charlotte glared at Fay. ‘She says she’s spent thirty years in a constant state of anxiety waiting for him to stray and now she finally feels confident she has him all to herself.’
‘While presumably needing to stray herself,’ said Fay drily.
‘No, she says she’s not bothered about sex and if she is at any time, frustration is a small price to pay for peace of mind.’
Fay pulled a disparaging face. ‘Hasn’t she heard of vibrators? Silly cow.’
‘But how horrible to be always uneasy about what your husband is up to.’ Charlotte gave a sudden wail ‘I do not want to be like that!’
Fay sipped at the coffee Charlotte had made her and looked at her watch. ‘I need to be at the office as soon as I’ve had this, Hun. Tell me what’s happened.’
‘That first Wednesday – Roger came home at the usual time and said he’d had meetings all afternoon. ‘All very dull,’ he said. But there was just something. He sort of didn’t meet my eye …’
Fay waited.
‘But what could I do? He was here so if he’d seen that Marion then presumably it was in working hours and he couldn’t have been with her long because he phoned me at two and he was in the car driving and then I phoned him at half four and he was driving again – said he was popping back to Ashford to go into the office for an hour and then he’d be right back. And he was here by seven so he must have come straight home. In fact, sometimes he’s later than that if he leaves at half five and the traffic’s heavy–’
Fay sighed inwardly. This wasn’t going to be quick.
‘So basically, he’d been at work.’
‘I think so, yes, but yesterday–’ Charlotte paused and Fay waited again.
‘Yes?’ Fay knew she sounded sharp, but she’d told Len she’d be there by ten latest and surely Charlotte had stuff to get on with as well.
‘I phoned him around 3 p.m. and his phone was switched off. Went straight to answer phone. So I called him at work, and Libby said he was out of the office.’
‘Right.’ Fay drank a bit more coffee and resisted the urge to tell Charlotte to get to the crux.
‘And she wasn’t sure where.’ Charlotte’s tone suggested this was loaded with significance.
Fay sighed audibly now. ‘Well, perhaps he hadn’t told her. Doesn’t mean he was up to no good.’
‘Lib organises his diary. She’s the most efficient woman on the planet. There is no way Roger would be in a meeting she didn’t know about. She was covering for him!’
Fay shook her head. ‘If she was, why not just lie and say he had a meeting with the ABC company and have done with it?’
‘In case I checked I suppose.’ Charlotte looked irritated. ‘When I persisted, she was all vague about how he could be here and he’d mentioned he might pop in there. I didn’t believe a bloody word of it.’
‘Anyway,’ said Charlotte impatiently as Fay looked sceptical. ‘I was talking to a client the other day who said she’s got some sort of tracking on her two kids’ phones – so she can see where they are if they’re late home from school or the daughter goes out in the evening. Says it stops her worrying so much. And I was thinking – that maybe you’d know about it. So I can do it to Roger.’
‘What?’ Fay heard herself almost squawk. ‘You want to put a tracker on your husband’s phone?’
‘Yes.’ Charlotte looked defiant. ‘I do.’ She got up and reached for the coffee pot. ‘She said it’s a feature on an iPhone – you do family sharing or something. I pretended I wanted to keep an eye on Joe. But I’ve Googled it and I don’t know how to do it without getting into Roger’s phone – and as I told you, he’s changed the pass code. I wondered if you’d have any ideas.’
Fay frowned. ‘Why would I know how to hack into someone’s phone and why would I want to?’
‘I suppose,’ said Charlotte. ‘I could ask him to do it for me and say I’ve been worrying about him having a car crash and also about Joe cycling back from football practice and could we all track each other’s so we all know where we are all the time. I could say I was going to ask Becky too.’
Fay shook her head. ‘He’ll think you’ve gone crazy – and any self-respecting eighteen-year-old is going to tell you right where to get off. Anyway,’ she went on. ‘How would tracking him help him not to have a car crash? You could see that he was on the M20 but you wouldn’t know if he was whizzing along merrily listening to Drivetime or pulverised in a forty-car pile-up!’
‘But if he refused,’ – Charlotte was in no mood for logic – ‘it would show he didn’t want me to be able to see where he was going.’
‘If he refused,’ said Fay deliberately, ‘it would be because he didn’t want to go along with a wife who didn’t trust him or want to allow him any personal freedom! How would you feel if Roger came home and said he wanted to track you?’
‘I’M not doing anything wrong!’ said Charlotte heatedly. ‘He’d say no because then if he goes to this Marion’s house, he’d know I’d be able to see which road she lived in. I’ve got a feeling it’s in Maidstone.’
‘Why?’
‘There was a receipt for a coffee from the Wealdstone Hotel there. Look!’ Charlotte got up and rummaged in her handbag. She slapped a small piece of paper on the table between them.
Fay looked at it, unimpressed. ‘So? He could have been waiting for someone – or killing time before a meeting. It’s not even two coffees, for God’s sake.’
‘Or waiting for her husband to go out before he went round …’
Fay stood up. The conversation was making her feel sick and shaky inside. She spoke firmly. ‘This is crazy. You haven’t got a shred of evidence to support that there even is ‘this Marion’. Why don’t you simply ask him where he was yesterday afternoon at 3 p.m.?’
Charlotte scowled. ‘I did, of course,’ she said crossly. ‘He said he’d gone over to Arnold Greaves – it’s a company they’re buying. But if that were true, Lib would have known.’
‘Not if he popped in on the way somewhere else. Just to drop off some paperwork–’
Charlotte had topped up her own cup and held the pot towards Fay. She looked hard at her friend. ‘Why are you defending him?’
Fay waved the coffee away. ‘I am trying to be the voice of reason. Somebody needs to be!’
Charlotte sat back down and picked up her iPad. ‘Well, if you won’t help me do the phone, I will have to go to plan B. I’ve been looking at private detectives to get him followed. They can put some sort of tracking device on the car or follow them in person. But I can only do it on Wednesdays to start with, cos the one I spoke to wanted nine hundred quid a pop.’
Fay who had been heading for the door, spun back round, alarm flooding her. ‘OH for God’s sake! That’s ridiculous. What ARE you thinking of? I’ll follow him myself if you’re going to spend that.’
Charlotte leant forward. ‘Would you? Really?’
Fay walked back towards the table and leant both hands on it, looking straight at Charlotte. ‘If I did, it would only be because you were getting so upset – not because I think it is justified in any shape or form. And because I can’t stand by and let you waste money like that on some shyster who saw you coming.’
‘He’s been in the game for thirty years,’ said Charlotte calmly. ‘He was very nice actually. He’s called Pete and he specialises in philandering spouses. I told him everything and he said it did sound as if Roger had something going on.’
Fay snorted. ‘I’ll bet he did.’
‘He said he probably has a second phone anyway, and is contacting her on that.’
A dull rage thudded in Fay’s chest. Second phones were something she did know about. ‘Good old Pete!’ she said coldly. ‘It’s what private dicks do – feed your fears so you cough up vast amounts for them to go on a wild goose chase for you.’
Charlotte continued as if Fay hadn’t spoken. ‘He said in 99% cases if a wife felt her husband was playing away, he usually was. He said he trusted my instincts.’
‘And your credit card.’
‘He said he could park near Roger’s office next Wednesday and trail him.’
‘So could I. And I’m free.’ Fay spoke sternly. ‘But there are going to be conditions. And we are not doing it yet. We’ll see what happens first.’
Charlotte was looking at her like a hopeful child. Fay swallowed hard.
‘So – this is the way we are going to play it. Next Wednesday morning you ask him what he’s got on that day, and then you phone up and double check during the day with him or Libby or both. If he’s gone AWOL a second time, at the same appointed hour, I will help you investigate. But not till then – OK?’
‘OK.’
‘No talk of phone-hacking or Dickhead Pete’s illegal devices till then either.’
‘OK,’ said Charlotte again, with reluctance.
‘Because you’re being a bit manic about this Hun, and it’s not good for you.’ She stared at Charlotte for a moment longer. ‘It seems very odd to be having an affair at the exact same time each week,’ Fay went on. ‘Has it occurred to you that Roger could be doing something private? Going to AA? Having therapy?’
Charlotte smiled for the first time. ‘So, you don’t think my husband would shag another woman but you are quite prepared to believe he’s a drunk or a loony?’
‘You’d better not let Sherie hear you say that! Doesn’t she go to something where they all sit in a circle and tell each other their woes?’
‘It’s a chakra-cleansing meditation class.’
‘Knew it was something bonkers.’
‘It may be the only time the woman’s available – or he’s paying for her and it’s when he can get away!’ Charlotte looked aghast at her own new theory.
‘Or perhaps he’s having treatment for some strange medical condition he’s embarrassed about,’ Fay smiled, hoping to persuade Charlotte how farcical it all sounded. She didn’t like the way her friend appeared to losing her grip on reality.
Charlotte shook her head. ‘Oh no, believe me he’d tell me – he wanted me to look at his toenail the other night in case I thought it was poised to in-grow. I told him to go to a bloody chiropodist.’
Fay put her handbag back over her shoulder and prepared to leave again. ‘Well there you are then – that’s probably where he’s been. Marion is probably shaving off his bunions as we speak …’
‘I wonder how old she is.’
Fay tried to be patient. ‘We don’t even know she exists.’
‘That bit of paper– they’d arranged to meet for a drink.’
‘It was someone he needed to phone. He’d scribbled it down when someone gave him the message. If she’d given it to him herself, he’d have put it straight into his phone.’
‘No, he’d be afraid I’d see it.’
Fay stood up straighter. She was at the end of her tolerance for this and needed to get to the office. ‘I’ve got to go.’
Charlotte had lit a cigarette and seemed to be talking to herself. ‘Hannah was younger of course – and that’s the thing. You can’t even breathe out and sleep easy when they’re in their fifties. Nobody wants to look at us then but there are still all these young things impressed by an older man.’
She pushed the cigarette packet distractedly across the table towards Fay.
Fay picked it up. ‘Speak for yourself!’
‘Still seeing Cory?’
‘Keener than ever. He is, I mean,’ Fay added hastily.
‘And you don’t ever think–?’
Fay took a cigarette and abruptly changed the subject. ‘Isn’t it time we all went out for another drink? Discussed the party?’
‘Everything is under control.’
‘Well we may as well meet anyway – a gathering will cheer you up.’ The sooner Charlotte’s mind was on something else, Fay thought, the better. ‘And we can talk about getting the invitations printed. And how many people we can each invite. We never got onto that last time – it wasn’t exactly a bundle of laughs was it? Sherie wound up like a spring and Roz looking all traumatised. Did you find out what was wrong with her?’
‘No, not really. I think Amy’s being difficult.’
Fay inhaled. ‘I’m glad I haven’t got kids if they make you that jumpy. When you asked her how the cleaning had gone she looked as if she was being held at gunpoint. And wasn’t she pale?’
‘She’d had a bad night’s sleep, she said.’
Charlotte ground out her cigarette and put her head briefly in her hands before looking up. ‘Fay – thank you.’ For a moment, Charlotte seemed about to cry.
Fay twitched with her usual unease at displays of emotion.
‘Charlotte,’ Fay leant across the table and put a brief hand on her friend’s arm. ‘I’m going to be honest and then I really am leaving.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You’re going over the top on this one. I’ve always thought you the most sensible woman I know. But – honestly Hun. Your reaction is totally out of proportion to what’s happened. To what you actually know has happened – not what your fevered imagination is telling you.’
Charlotte opened her mouth as if to protest and then shut it again looking hopeless.
Fay looked at her friend hard. ‘Is this only about Roger? Or is there something else going on?’
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