‘What sort of course?’
‘Management Ethics,’ he said reluctantly.
‘Management Ethics,’ she repeated incredulously.
‘That’s what Pamela said,’ he snapped. ‘It was the first thing that came into my head. So that makes us equal for the television repairman.’
‘If you can’t go home, go to a hotel then.’
‘Thanks a bunch!’ Jamie punched at the channel buttons.
‘Look, I’m really sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it.’ Teri turned to check the kitchen door. She lowered her voice. ‘This is exactly how I feel when you let me down. It can’t be helped. We’ll have to do it another time.’
‘You have no idea what it has cost me to get here for you this weekend, do you?’
‘I take it we’re talking emotional cost here rather than petrol money?’
‘Have you done this to punish me?’
Teri sagged against the pillows. ‘Oh, Jamie, don’t ever think like that—if you do, we’re finished.’ Her eyes were bright with tears. ‘You know I’m as disappointed as you are.’
‘Here are your Jaffa Cakes, dear.’ Her mother waltzed back into the lounge and put the plate on the coffee table after dusting it with the J Cloth. ‘It’s nice to see you’ve put a bit of colour back in her cheeks. She looks all pink and flushed.’ A worried look crossed her mother’s face. ‘You’re not going to be sick again, are you, dear? I’ll get the plastic bucket if you are.’
Teri’s face went from pink to puce. ‘No, I’m not going to be sick.’
‘Look, I’m finished here.’ Jamie picked up his holdall. ‘I’ll be on my way.’
‘No Jaffa Cakes?’ The older woman looked hurt.
‘No, thank you.’ Jamie started to back out of the room.
‘I hope it’s nothing I’ve said to put you off.’ Her brow was wrinkled. ‘I thought they were your favourites?’
‘They usually are.’ He glared at Teri. ‘I’m suddenly not hungry.’
Teri’s mother followed him with the plate of biscuits. ‘Just one?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Just a little one?’
‘No, really.’
‘There’s hardly any calories in them.’
‘Well, okay then.’ He took a Jaffa Cake, realising that he wasn’t going to be let out until he did. ‘Thank you.’
Mrs Carter glanced at the television. ‘This still doesn’t look right to me. There’s all wiggly lines and shadows.’
‘Ghosting,’ Jamie said, confidently pointing at the screen with his Jaffa Cake.
The woman’s eyes followed a solitary crumb that fell to the floor. ‘It’s due to atmospheric tension,’ he added meekly.
‘Pressure,’ Teri snapped.
He grabbed the remote control and switched to channel four. ‘Look—perfect.’ He smiled encouragingly at Teri’s mother. ‘No problem with Coronation Street now.’
‘Good.’ She beamed benevolently. ‘I can’t live without my weekly dose of emotional turmoil, can you, dear?’
‘I could give it a try.’ He glanced meaningfully at Teri. ‘Goodness, is that the time?’ He looked at his wrist and realised he wasn’t wearing his watch. ‘So many televisions to fix and so little time.’
‘Well, it was very nice to meet you, young man,’ Teri’s mother said. ‘It was almost worth having a broken television for, wasn’t it, dear?’
Teri, blanched against the pillow, had closed her eyes.
‘Say goodbye, Therese,’ her mother instructed.
‘Goodbye, Therese,’ Teri said without opening her eyes.
Her mother tutted. ‘I’ll show you to the door.’ She ushered Jamie outside, where she whispered conspiratorially, ‘You ought to pop round again. We’d like to see you, and Therese makes a very nice casserole. Not just an ordinary old stew, but a casserole. She’s a very good cook. She takes after me.’
‘Thank you, I’ll remember that.’
‘Well, goodbye now,’ she said loudly and winked.
‘Yes,’ Jamie said uncertainly. ‘Goodbye.’
He was back in the Volvo clutching his holdall and his Jaffa Cake, not knowing what to do with either of them before Teri’s mother closed the door. ‘Damn,’ he said loudly to himself, and stuffed the whole Jaffa Cake into his mouth.
Teri’s mother peeped out of the curtain as Jamie started the car and drove off down the road.
‘He’s a very nice young man.’ She turned to Teri, who had not yet dared to open her eyes.
‘He’s not a young man—he’s thirty-seven,’ she said tartly.
Her mother bristled. ‘That’s young in my book.’
Teri remained silent.
‘Anyway, at least he’s not got three earrings in every ear like most of them have these days. And he watches his figure. I had to press him to take one tiny little Jaffa Cake.’ Mrs Carter reluctantly let the curtain drop back into place. ‘You ought to find yourself someone like that, Therese. You’re not getting any younger.’
‘Thank you, Mother.’ She would ring Clare as soon as she was better and beg her forgiveness.
Her mother wagged her finger. ‘You mark my words, young lady, he’d make someone a very nice husband.’
Teri opened her eyes. ‘You had better get that plastic bucket— I think I am going to be sick, after all.’
Chapter 21
Jamie took the scenic route back to Milton Keynes, twisting through the picturesque village of Soulbury before crossing over the Grand Union Canal and heading up the hill, past the golf club and through the chocolate-boxy Great Brickhill. It was a sharp, sunny day and groups of golfers pulled their trolleys round the course that bordered the canal—which was probably half-full of their golf balls. Jamie envied them, wishing he’d had the sense to keep a set of clubs in the boot of the Volvo. Bright shoots of green sprouted from the hedges along the tight lanes and spoke of the promises of youthfulness and hope. It depressed Jamie intensely.
He’d hit the roundabout at the bottom of the main road into Milton Keynes before he decided where he was going to go. Briefly, he considered phoning Charlie Perry and bumming a room for the weekend, but two things had persuaded him against that course of action.
For one, Charlie was unlikely to be up at this hour, given the normal aftermath of his Friday-night entertainment, and secondly, he was bound to give him a lecture—an even longer one than he had dished out last time—and Jamie wasn’t sure he could stomach that just now.
Teri was right, he had to go to a hotel. How could he return home now, especially after Pamela had been so scathing about Management Ethics? No way could he simply turn up and announce that the course had been cancelled. She could dine out on that story for the rest of the year. Anyway, she might have organised a wild night in, out or shaking all about with the grease-ball. It was hardly fair of him to pour cold water on that, just because his own extramarital aerobics had failed to get off the ground.
How on earth could Gordy enjoy having affairs?
Jamie groaned aloud. It was beginning to feel like a nightmare from which he would never wake up.
Driving through Milton Keynes on a Saturday was like driving through a ghost town. All it lacked was a bit of tumbleweed blowing down the four-lane highway. The only frenetic activity took place in the shopping mall. The city was like a little bit of America plopped down in the middle of a flattened square of beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside—a maze of vertical and horizontal roads that looked completely identical. There were no distinguishing features or landmarks, which meant that visitors got hopelessly lost. You couldn’t say to someone, ‘Turn left at the Dog and Duck Pub,’ as you could in other cities, because all the Dogs and Ducks were secreted away in housing estates.
The sun glinted off the glass slab-sided buildings, which had all been restricted to low-rise elevations and, as such, were unobtrusive on the landscape. As a student, Jamie had travelled a bit—it had once been one of his aims in life ‘to travel’. He hadn’t e
ver seen himself spending his holidays in a cottage in North Wales playing ball on a wind-lashed beach with two hyperactive children and a depressed wife. He had spent one summer in India, one in Morocco. Lands of gaudy colours, the gaggingly pungent smell of stale spices and unwashed bodies, the deafening babble of incoherent sounds and stomach-churning sights to assault the senses.
There are no snake-charmers in Milton Keynes. Or amateur dentists pulling teeth out on the streets with nothing more than a pair of pliers. Or hands that clutch at you as you walk, raking you with hard eyes more intimately than is comfortable, dirty un-innocent faces hissing aggressively ‘Rupee, rupee’ or ‘Dirham, dirham’ —the mantra to part you from your money. In this city everything is monochromatic, straight and neat, and the air smells of nothing. Jamie followed the V’s and H’s— Vertical and Horizontal roads—until he came to The Happy Lodge. It was a sad brick building that resembled an abandoned warehouse. He took his pathetic-looking holdall and went inside.
The bored blonde on Reception popped her chewing gum in one side of her mouth as he approached.
‘Do you have a room vacant? Just for tonight.’
‘Yep.’ She handed him a key card. ‘Four-oh-five. Second floor.’ The girl went back to chewing the cud.
Room 405 on the second floor. Shouldn’t it be on the fourth floor? Looking at the top of the receptionist’s head, he decided not to pass comment. Jamie found it, surprisingly, on the second floor as she’d said. It was a pleasant room. The same as any hotel room in any hotel in any city, anywhere in the world—but pleasant nevertheless.
After unpacking his holdall to give him something to do, he then wondered how he would fill the next twenty-four hours. He examined the wicker basket in the bathroom filled with minuscule toiletries, checked his nearest fire exit from the diagram on the back of the door, read the hotel directory from front to back, glanced at his watch, and still only ten minutes had passed.
He opened the mini-bar and pulled out a cold beer—despite the fact that the sun was nowhere near over the yardarm. Kicking off his shoes, he lay on the bed and reached for the television remote control, struggling to find the right button to switch it on. So much for the TV repairman in him.
It wasn’t the same watching the sports channel without Jack bouncing on his lap or Francesca trying to plait his hair. He could actually hear what the commentator was saying—and what a load of old twaddle it was—and watch the motor racing without two grubby fingers trying to explore his nose. Ace–Formula One driver Jenson Button had just spun his car on a practise lap and he had been able to watch all six of the slow-motion action replays without having to read something out of Thomas the Tank Engine in a forced Ringo Starr accent. It was altogether too peaceful.
He drained his beer and padded across the room, bringing the entire contents of the mini-bar back with him, cradled in his arms. He dumped all the bottles on the bed. There were three more beers. Two whiskies, two brandies, two vodkas. Two tomato juices, two lemonades and two bottles of club soda. Two ordinary Coca-Colas and two sugar-free, caffeine-free colas—which presumably meant two tins of fizzy coloured water and a load of E numbers. Two packets of honey-roasted peanuts, two packets of cashew nuts and two packets of pork scratchings—which looked suspiciously like old toenail cuttings. There was also a bar of expensive Swiss chocolate which was too cold to bite into; when he tried, he decided to leave it until it had warmed up a bit, rather than risk losing a tooth.
Perhaps he should follow the Therese Carter School of Therapy and drink all of the attractive little bottles in front of him as a means of attaining oblivion from his current predicament. He started on another beer.
Suddenly there was a high-pitched giggle from the room next door and the creak of bedsprings as something heavy—and still giggling—was dropped on the bed. These walls were paper thin. Jamie turned the sound up on the television.
A steady, rhythmic banging began in the next room, and the headboard beat a familiar tattoo against the wall behind Jamie’s head. He groaned and increased the volume of the race commentator, who was also winding himself up to a climax of feverish incoherence. The banging became quicker and so did the commentator. On the screen the commentator shouted ecstatically as Jacques Villeneuve crossed the line. In the next room someone shouted ecstatically, ‘Oh, yes!’ as they did too.
There was a brief respite during which Jamie’s jangled nerves started to recover. He left the television on loud in the hope that the lovers would realise there was someone within earshot and would curb their passion—or at least curb their noise. But there is something about unbridled lust that makes one oblivious to anyone else’s discomfort.
When the headboard and the earth started to move again, Jamie resignedly drained his beer and reached for the last one. After this it would be on to the hard stuff. What sort of perverts came to The Happy Lodge on a Saturday afternoon and bonked themselves senseless anyway? Lucky ones, Jamie thought bitterly.
Chapter 22
Pamela answered the telephone. It was a man’s voice.
‘Could I speak to James Duncan, please?’ She didn’t recognise the voice. It was refined, clipped.
‘I’m afraid he’s away for the weekend. On a course,’ she added without thinking.
‘Oh.’ There was a long pause.
‘This is his wife. Can I take a message?’
‘It’s very important that I get hold of him.’
‘I haven’t got a contact number for him.’ It was a lie; she knew exactly where he was. The thought made Pamela feel irritable. ‘Who am I speaking to?’ she said shortly.
‘You don’t know me,’ the man answered. ‘My name’s Richard Wellbeloved. I’m a…a friend of Charlie Perry’s. I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
‘There’s a woman on the phone for you, Therese,’ her mother said. ‘Very posh, won’t say who she is.’
Teri struggled from beneath the weight of the duvet and stretched like a contented cat before walking to the phone—despite the fact that she was still feeling less than contented.
‘Teri Carter,’ she said, much more brightly than she felt.
No one spoke for a few seconds, then the woman said: ‘This is Pamela Duncan.’ Her voice was tight. ‘Can I speak to Jamie, please?’
There was another uncomfortable silence as Teri tried to find her voice, which, coward that it was, seemed to have deserted her. ‘He isn’t here,’ she said eventually.
‘Don’t play games with me,’ Pamela snapped. ‘I need to speak to him urgently.’ There was another pause, and Jamie’s wife sounded as if she was struggling to control her emotions. ‘His cell phone isn’t switched on. I wouldn’t have phoned otherwise. I’m not in the habit of humiliating myself unnecessarily.’
‘I’m being serious,’ Teri said. She smiled at her mother and kicked the door closed. Her smile died. ‘He wasn’t able to stay.’
‘Where the hell is he then?’
‘I don’t know. I think he was going to find a hotel.’
‘Do you know where?’
‘No. No, I’m sorry I don’t.’
‘Well, if he contacts you, tell him to get his lying backside home as quickly as possible.’
‘Is there something wrong?’ Of course there was—why else would she phone?
‘Nothing that need concern you.’ The phone went dead.
Pamela put the phone down with shaking hands. Her stomach was twisted into a tight knot, and her mouth was dry. The girl had sounded even younger than she had on the answerphone, but less confident than Pamela had expected.
Why wasn’t Jamie there? What had gone wrong? If he hadn’t been able to stay, why hadn’t he come home?
Even through the unanswered questions there was a faint hope pushing up like a weed through a pavement. He hadn’t spent the weekend with Her.
But where the hell was he? Teri said she thought he had gone to a hotel. Pamela pulled the Yellow Pages out of the drawer. She would try the most obvious place first. The
place where pain and pleasure met, sin and solace, love and lust. The Happy Lodge. She dialled the number.
They had been at it for more than three hours, virtually non-stop. Jamie was feeling exhausted just listening to them. The original commentator on the sports channel had given way to another, less exuberant commentator, presumably while he refreshed himself in the BBC’s hospitality suite. Even sports commentators couldn’t keep going for three hours unabated.
Soon the shred of plasterboard that separated the two rooms was bound to give and spill the copulating couple right onto his bed. Jamie had tried banging back on the wall—although it made him feel like a complete spoilsport—but this had done nothing to quell their ardour.
He was sipping the second of the miniature whiskies straight from the bottle, alternating it with sips from the club soda bottle in his other hand when the telephone rang. He put the whisky bottle between his teeth, turned down the volume of the television with the remote control and put the receiver to his ear.
‘Hello,’ he said into the whisky bottle.
‘It’s Pamela.’
He swung guiltily off the bed and put the whisky down. ‘How did you know I was here?’
‘I’ve just spoken to Teri.’
Jamie stayed silent as the lead ball hit his stomach. Teri.
‘I know all about her. She said you weren’t there. That you’d gone to a hotel. I needed to get hold of you. Urgently. After that it was an educated guess.’ She sounded philosophical rather than annoyed. ‘Your cell phone is never switched on when I need you.’
Jamie was confused. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘No.’ Now he could hear the strain in her voice.
A lump blocked his throat. ‘Is it the kids?’ He would never forgive himself if anything happened to them.
‘No, they’re fine, but you need to come home right away.’
‘I can’t.’
‘What do you mean, you can’t?’
Jamie answered sheepishly. ‘I’ve been working my way through the mini-bar. I’m not in a fit state to drive.’
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