‘I thought it was somewhere lower down the anatomical scale that was supposed to ache.’
‘My whole body aches.’
‘At your age, Tom, that’s just a touch of rheumatism, not love—or even lust.’
He fell silent. His face deflated as though he had just had a gaseous release. Perhaps she’d been right about the trapped wind after all.
‘I don’t know what I’m doing here at all.’ She dropped her fork on the plate of untouched food. ‘The whole thing has been a catalogue of crassness and stupidity. I should never have listened to you. You didn’t want to add a bit of extra spice to my marriage, you wanted to throw the whole damn chili pot on it and make it totally bloody unpalatable.’
She pushed back from the table. ‘I don’t want to fall out with you, Tom, I like working with you, but I think if I don’t go now, we’ll both say things that we’ll regret.’
‘Not so fast, lady.’ It was a loud voice for a small restaurant—booming out with a broad and less-than-chirpy cockney accent. Pamela looked round stunned, but nowhere near as stunned as Tom was. It stopped the crooning lateral thinkers dead in their tracks. She hadn’t met Tom’s wife Shirley before, but she had heard enough about her to know that it was Shirley who stood in front of her now.
‘I know your game,’ Shirley said menacingly.
‘Shirley, sit down,’ Tom hissed. ‘You’re showing yourself up.’
‘I’m showing myself up?’ Her neat, over-made-up face was red with anger. ‘You can talk. Business meeting!’
Shirley spat the word out, and some spittle landed on Pamela’s cheek, but she was too terrified to lift her hand and wipe it off. She could feel it glistening in the seductive lighting, obvious to all the lateral thinkers, who were staring at them with mouths gaping wider than the Dartford Tunnel.
Tom lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Of course it’s a business meeting. You know Pamela’s my secretary.’
She put her hands on her hips. ‘So this is Pamela?’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Pamela said quietly, and offered her hand.
Shirley looked at it as if she had been offered rat poison. Pamela retracted her hand.
‘Secretary, personal assistant, typist—they’ve all had different names and guises—blondes, brunettes and now a redhead,’ Shirley continued unabated. ‘I don’t think you’ve had a redhead before.’
The restaurant was deathly silent. The reassuring chink of cutlery and glasses had ceased completely. Pamela could hear the faint hum of the heating system, and somewhere a chair scraped uncomfortably over the polished wooden floor.
‘Mrs Pearson,’ Pamela pleaded in hushed tones. ‘Shirley. You’ve made a terrible mistake.’
‘The only mistake I made was marrying this mangy old tom cat.’ She checked that everyone had heard her. ‘Tom by name, tom by nature!’
‘Shirley!’ Tom was affronted.
The two butterflies had stopped flitting and were frozen to the spot, supporting the restaurant owner, who looked perilously close to fainting.
‘This is not what it seems,’ Pamela said calmly. But what was it? Would it really help to tell Shirley that she was pretending to have an affair with her husband to make her own husband jealous and stop him having an affair…but that all along Tom had secretly fancied his chances? No, she thought it wouldn’t. It all sounded terribly complicated, and she wasn’t sure she understood it herself. It didn’t strike her as very convincing either, once you looked at it closely.
‘Well, you can have him.’ Shirley was obviously not in the mood to be placated or reasoned with. ‘You deserve each other.’ She pointed aggressively at them both. Tom winced. Shirley lunged at the table. ‘And you deserve this.’
The bowl of Thai green curry was tipped on Pamela’s head before she knew it. The delicate fragrance of lemon grass became overpowering as it ran past her nose to drip on her skirt. It was warm and creamy. If she had been eating it, she would have been tempted to complain that it wasn’t piping hot. As it was, she was grateful that it was only tepid. The noodles were hotter, but they landed in her lap and would only ruin her skirt rather than give her third-degree burns.
Tom was wearing the sweet-and-sour chicken before the restaurant manager galvanised himself into action and grabbed both of Shirley’s arms.
‘I call the police!’ he shouted.
‘Naff off!’ Shirley kneed him in the groin, and he fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes. ‘You!’ She pointed at Tom. ‘You don’t need to bother coming home. I’m going to the solicitor first thing in the morning, and I’m going to have an injunction served on you!’ She marched past the restaurant manager, who was doubled up in agony and crashed out into the night.
The lateral thinkers hooted and hollered and broke into spontaneous applause. They started a raucous chorus of ‘Can’t Stand Losing You’, alluding to The Police the ageing pop group, rather than the police the law-enforcement group.
Tom looked perplexed. He stood hands on hips, orange sauce running from his once-pristine white shirt onto the floor. A piece of carrot hung from his gold neck chain like a limp goldfish.
‘I think you’d better go after her,’ Pamela said, smoothing Thai green curry from her face.
‘Do you think…’ He took three steps towards the door. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll get a taxi.’
‘I could run you home. Another five minutes won’t make any difference, will it? I’ll square it with Shirley as soon as I get home.’
Pamela looked at him in pure astonishment. The man had skin thicker than a whole herd of rhinoceroses. Or was it rhinoceri? ‘Fuck off, Tom,’ she said with unconcealed malice. ‘Just fuck off.’
Tom, as instructed, did fuck off. Without paying the bill. Pamela settled the account herself stoically, dripping curry on to her chequebook and trying not to cry. The restaurant manager, once he had recovered his dignity, called a taxi for her. For the next twenty minutes she was forced to endure him ineffectually, but thoughtfully, sponging her down with a damp J Cloth and the guffaws of the lateral thinkers, while she waited for the cab to arrive.
The lights were still on when she reached home—which wasn’t surprising, as it was only an hour and a half after she had left. Jamie would gloat. How she wished she could have sneaked past him and cleaned herself in the steaming waters of their shower before he saw her. Unfortunately, the crunch of the gravel heralded her arrival, and he stood with the door open as she paid the taxi fare. The driver hadn’t taken kindly to her stinking his cab out with Thai green curry and noodles and, shamefacedly, she tipped him heavily to compensate him for his trouble, which he hadn’t hesitated to point out.
‘You’re ear…ly,’ Jamie said, as she emerged from the darkness into the harsh light of their hallway. His eyes travelled over her, slowly, from head to foot, taking in the white creamy sauce, the shredded basil leaves and sundry bits of chili that still adorned her. ‘I didn’t know it was fancy dress,’ he said jovially. ‘What have you come as?’
Pamela started to cry. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
Jamie’s face softened. ‘Come here.’ He went to put his arms around her, but she pushed him away.
‘I don’t want you to touch me either.’ She stifled a sob. When MacTavish appeared from the lounge and started to lick her legs, she gave him a swift kick, and he ran for the sanctuary of the kitchen. It was bad enough to lose one’s dignity like this without being mistaken for a doggy treat.
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Stop smirking.’
‘I’m not smirking.’ Jamie’s face tightened. ‘I’m concerned.’
‘Then don’t be.’
Jamie leaned against the wall. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘I’m your husband.’
Pamela’s face tightened. ‘That is a matter for debate,’ she said tartly.
Jamie sighed heavily.
‘I’m going to bed,�
�� she said wearily, and climbed up the stairs with as much haughtiness as a walking menu can muster.
‘Do you want a hot drink?’ Jamie shouted after her.
Her heart melted. He could be so sweet when he wanted to be.
‘Perhaps some jasmine tea?’ he suggested.
For the third time that night, and the third time in her life, she used the F word.
Chapter 17
Jamie allowed his body to be buffeted by the movement of the tube train, swaying his weight from foot to foot to keep his balance. He would soon be with Teri, and she would pour oil on the troubled waters at the end of his day. For a short while he would be able to forget he was married with a mortgage the size of the national debt of a small Third World country.
Pamela was still refusing to discuss what had happened at the Thai restaurant with Tom. There had been several phone calls when she had slammed the phone down with a force that was quite unnecessary, and several answerphone messages in which a doleful-sounding Tom had begged her to return his calls. As far as Jamie knew, she hadn’t done so. Nor had she gone into work for the last three days, which was a worrying trend. She assured him that she was using up her holiday, but even he could see that was something of a coincidence following the currywearing episode.
To placate Pamela, he had tried to be as helpful and cheerful around the house as possible. It had worked to a certain extent in that the Alphabite combat had tailed off to a halfhearted effort in which Pamela limited herself to git, sod and pig—words not normally in her vocabulary, but at least brief and to the point.
Tonight he had promised to be home in time to go to Francesca’s school concert. She was playing the recorder with the music group from year one. It was destined to be a hideous cacophony of ill-timed shrills and peeps through which Mrs Rutherford wandered with the original melody of the tune on the piano with a level of skill that would provide no obvious threat to Barry Manilow.
Jamie knew this from bitter experience of The Christmas Extravaganza—a two-hour endurance test of lisps and lapses as the school performed, Mrs Rutherford announcing stoutly, ‘Favourite carols, old and new’. Mothers oohed and ahed appreciatively at their offspring’s attempts at entertaining, while fathers generally made nuisances of themselves recording the moment for posterity with the latest in video camcorder technology. Tonight it was to be Spring into Springtime, and Jamie shuddered at the thought. Francesca was the only one with any talent among them. But then, he would think that.
On reflection, Teri wasn’t likely to be in oil-pouring mode when he explained that he couldn’t spend any time with her tonight before going home. He had tried to call her all day, but she was apparently ‘in programme rehearsals’—which probably wouldn’t help her temper either. It was with a heavy heart that Jamie let himself be swallowed by the crush from the underground, squashed up the escalators and then finally spewed out, battered and broken like a recycled tin can, onto the Euston main line concourse.
She was there, waiting at the End-of-the-Line Buffet. When she saw him, she drained her coffee and walked towards him—her small, tight walk, confident and vulnerable at the same time. His heart lurched and his stomach turned, and it wasn’t the fact that he’d eaten nothing since his pork pie and pint of beer with Charlie in the Clog and Calculator pub. How long had this been going on for now? And it still didn’t feel any more right or any more wrong.
Teri passed him a polystyrene cup of coffee with a lid on it as she greeted him with a light kiss. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Shitty day?’
She nodded. ‘The worst. And you?’
He shrugged. ‘Same as ever.’ He noticed the carrier bag bulging with shopping and gave her back the polystyrene cup so he could take the bag from her. ‘It’s going to get worse.’
‘What?’
‘Your shitty day.’
‘Oh.’ Her face darkened. They set off down the slope towards the platform.
‘I can’t come back with you tonight.’
‘Jamie!’
‘I know, I know. I’ve been trying to ring you all day. I promised Pamela that I’d be home in time to go to Francesca’s school concert.’ They got on the train and found seats opposite each other. He pushed the shopping under his legs, hoping that she would forget about it.
She missed nothing. ‘You can give that to me.’ She pulled the bag from under his legs and pushed it under her own. Glowering, she thrust his coffee back at him.
‘Thanks,’ he said meekly, and took a swallow of the warm, foul-tasting liquid.
The nights were getting lighter. A true sign—other than Francesca’s concert—that spring was on its way. It enabled you to see the full squalor and decay of London as you travelled in and out of Euston, a pleasure that could be forgotten—if only briefly—during the darkness of winter. It enabled you to enjoy the full impact of the mindless psychedelic graffiti that was sprayed over everything that didn’t move.
Once you were past Watford Junction, you started to leave behind the depressing scenes of urban decay—the car-breakers’ yards, tumbledown workshops, boarded-up factories and the backs of crumbling terraced housing—and the journey became quite pleasant.
Past the faded station at Hemel Hempstead, things became positively rural. Fields, that did actually roll. Trees, lots of them, dotted about the actually rolling fields. Not the spindly, jam-packed newcomers of Milton Keynes arboreal efforts, but old majestic ones with tree trunks like proper tree trunks and room to spread their magnificent branches. Trees that had been there for centuries before anyone thought of railways.
There was the man-made meandering of the Grand Union Canal, complete with ducks and swans and quaint lock-side cottages, and the brightly coloured narrow boats moored along its sides. You could get a quick glimpse of the medieval ruins of Berkhamsted Castle if the train wasn’t going too fast and you didn’t blink. It was a shame that very often the train windows were so grimy, that everything was viewed through a veil of smeared mud and dirt. Although so few people ever looked up from their newspapers that it would probably be a waste of water to wash them.
Teri was staring out of the window, jaw set, watching the discarded milk cartons, Pepsi cans and shopping trolleys as the train clanked slowly out of Euston.
Eventually, she announced through gritted teeth: ‘I have spent all day listening to temper tantrums from the universally hated Richard Wellbeloved, and non-deleted expletives from Jez, and I am trying very hard at this moment not to start shrieking myself.’
‘I can understand that,’ Jamie said quickly.
‘No, you can’t,’ she shouted under her breath. ‘The few precious minutes I did manage to snatch for lunch I spent shopping—’ she pointed at the bag between her feet ‘—for a meal for us tonight.’
‘I tried to call,’ Jamie ventured again.
‘I bought smoked salmon, tiger prawns—’ she counted the items off on her fingers ‘—rainbow-trout mousse, a small but nevertheless expensive tin of caviar, a box of cute-shaped biscuits, champagne and, to finish off with, some tiny but highly calorific caramel meringue things with fresh cream and chocolate in them.’
Jamie looked guilty. ‘Won’t it keep?’
‘No, it won’t.’
‘Would it make you feel better to know that I’ll probably be having abusive Alphabites and burnt sausages?’
She smiled reluctantly. ‘It might.’
He took her hand and tutted softly. ‘You know I can’t help it. This is one of the hazards of being involved with a married—’ he mouthed the word silently ‘—man. I wish you could come tonight. It would be wonderful.’
Teri’s eyes widened. ‘Oh yeah, wonderful,’ she echoed sarcastically.
She was right. Why on earth would his mistress find it wonderful to sit and watch his child and her valiant attempts to come to terms with the mysteries of the recorder? Sometimes he wondered if he was losing what slender grip he had on reality.
He squeezed her hand comfortingly. ‘W
hat will you do tonight?’
‘I’ll stay at home and eat all this myself and sulk. Then I’ll watch numerous repeats on the television and go to bed early, still miserable and discontented with life.’
He smiled sadly. ‘I’ll make it up to you,’ he promised.
‘How?’
‘I don’t know.’
Teri settled into her seat. ‘Well, start thinking. You’ve got two stations, and it had better be good.’
‘You’re merciless.’
‘I’m hurt,’ she said.
It was just outside Leighton Buzzard that he finally said, ‘What about if I come to stay for a whole weekend?’
Teri leaned forward, excited. ‘Friday to Monday?’
Jamie looked unsure. ‘Saturday and Sunday.’ And when Teri slumped back in her seat he said, ‘I’ll come early Saturday morning and stay until as late as possible Sunday night.’
She looked at him warily. ‘Promise?’
He crossed his heart. ‘Hope to die.’
‘This weekend?’ Teri asked.
‘That only gives me a couple of days.’ Jamie fidgeted in his seat. ‘It might be difficult to arrange at short notice.’
‘This weekend,’ she demanded.
‘That’s unreasonable.’
‘This weekend.’
‘This weekend,’ he agreed. ‘You drive a hard bargain, Therese Carter.’
‘I’m a hard woman.’
He rubbed his temples. ‘What am I going to say?’
‘You’ll think of something.’ They were pulling into Leighton Buzzard Station. ‘You’re a clever and inventive man.’
Jamie snorted dismally. ‘You mean I’m deceitful and an inveterate liar.’
‘If you insist.’ She stood up and kissed the top of his head. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow.’
Teri jumped from the train and banged the car door. Jamie pulled his newspaper from his briefcase and settled back in the seat, flicking the paper open at the sports page in one deft move. The train moved off.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teri running along the platform, keeping pace with the departing train. She was waving and blowing kisses, and he could tell that she was shouting, ‘I love you’. He smiled and lowered his paper. ‘I love you too,’ he shouted.
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