by Shari Low
‘Right, Mother, your enforced chill is over. Wow, you look fab! You’ll be putting selfies on Insta next.’
‘I’d rather poke my eye with a fork,’ Aggs retorted, pleased though, that Isla noticed the effort she’d put in.
Isla grinned at the standard response to any mention of social media. Aggs had successfully avoided the social media revolution, leaving it to Isla to set up Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts for the café.
‘Come on then. We’ve got loads of surprises for you today,’ Isla gushed.
Aggs held her breath. She wasn’t great with surprises and she really hated being the centre of attention or anyone making a fuss. However, it was a different thought that had the stomach butterflies on spin setting again.
Her family and friends might have a few surprises for her. But she had a few shocks of her own to deliver.
6
Mitchell
Mitchell was back in the kitchen, showered, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, and making a protein shake, when Celeste appeared in her workout gear, carrying a suit hanger which she hung on the back of the door. ‘I’m just going to go straight to lunch from the studio. No point me coming home to change when it’s on the way.’
Mitchell shook the plastic bottle to mix the chocolate flavoured gunk that was a part of his daily diet now. ‘Okay, darling. Makes sense. Where’s the lunch?’
‘City centre,’ she answered curtly, and he considered probing further, but she was making it obvious she was in a hurry, so he let it go.
Polite. Civil. Non-confrontational. When had they become so fucking pedestrian?
Once upon a time they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. Weekend-morning sex was a must, and then they’d spend the rest of the day together, desperate to milk every minute with each other.
Karma. Was that what this was?
He didn’t have time to finish the thought because she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘See you later.’
Skye came back from the bathroom and interrupted them before he could reply with another banality.
‘Well, that’s a statement,’ his daughter said, eyes wide, as she took in her stepmother’s outfit.
She had a point. White yoga pants that sat low on the hips, with a matching Lycra crop top worn very obviously braless, showing off a taut rack of abs. The fact that Celeste was now pulling on a tiny cotton, off the shoulder sweatshirt over it made little difference.
Celeste unhooked her suit hanger. ‘Worked hard for it. Deserve to show it off. Bye, sweetie.’ With an unapologetic wave, she was gone.
Skye picked up her pen and went back to her books with a nonchalant shrug. ‘Could be worse. At least she doesn’t post daily selfies on Insta. One a week on Facebook is enough to make sure everyone over thirty she’s ever met knows that she’s got an arse like a rock.’
Mitchell barely heard over the noise of his internal dialogue. This was the moment of truth. Was he really going to do this? Was he actually going to follow his wife like some weirdo stalker husband? Had they really sunk that low?
He picked up his car keys. ‘I’m heading over to the boxing gym to get a couple of rounds in.’ Hello, gutter.
Skye barely glanced up at him. ‘Cool. Go and be a middle-aged man who hits another bloke for fun. Perfectly normal pastime for a forty-five year old lawyer. If you took up archery, you could maybe spear a few people in the street as well.’
Mitchell didn’t rise to it – just kissed her on the head as he passed on his way out. Both his daughters had been blessed with Agnetha’s dry sense of humour and they weren’t afraid to use it, usually at his expense. Not that he minded. He wanted his girls to be able to stand up for themselves in this world.
Maybe that was what he was doing now. Fighting his own corner. It was the thought he needed to get him out of the door and to his Merc GLE, parked at the bottom of the steps up to their townhouse. In his twenties and thirties, he’d gone for sports cars, but now it was all about space and comfort. Yet another sign of getting older. Maybe it was time for a midlife crisis flip back to Ferrari central. Not exactly unobtrusive when following the wife though.
Her car – a white Porsche 911 – was just pulling out of the end of the street, turning left, with a few cars in between them. He hung back, wary of being spotted.
This was ridiculous. He could still stop and go back, redeem the day and his opinion of himself. Yet his foot felt like it was made of lead and was refusing to leave the accelerator.
He followed her for ten minutes as she snaked through the West End, finally stopping outside a glass fronted studio on Hyndland Road, not far from The Ginger Sponge.
The Bends. A yoga studio.
Fuck. She was doing exactly what she said she was going to do.
Okay, this was his chance to go home. Forget this. Swallow the shame and put it down to an error of judgement that no one ever had to know about.
But then…
An orange Volkswagen Beetle pulled out of a parking space right in front of him. Was this a sign that he should just wait it out? And why was he, the most pragmatic, non-superstitious man, suddenly thinking that complete coincidences were anything more than that? Christ, this was all messing with his mind and sending him batshit crazy.
With a jerking action that made the driver in the car behind him furiously beep their horn, he pulled in, parked, and leaned his head back against the seat, heart racing faster than it was after this morning’s five kilometres.
Across the road, about fifty metres ahead, he could see Celeste climb out of the car and take her kit bag and suit carrier into the yoga studio.
He switched off the engine. Needed to think. Go over the facts. Weigh up the evidence. Wasn’t that his area of expertise in his career?
He took note of the time – just after 10.30 a.m. – and closed his eyes, rewinding to the day, about six months ago, that he first suspected Celeste had checked out of their marriage and checked into someone else’s life.
The charity ball at the Glasgow Hilton was one of her recurring annual events. The Derek Evans Charity for Young Athletes. A former football player for a Scottish premier league team, who went on to play for a couple of top European clubs before finishing his career in Barcelona, Derek Evans was the local Glasgow boy done good. If you didn’t count years of tabloid headlines about his high profile affairs, which led to more headlines about his three divorces. Or was it four? Now he was living back in Glasgow and raised money every year for grass-roots football, supplying kits and upgrading facilities across the country, most of it funded by the annual shindig that brought the football glitterati, past and present, to the linen covered tables of ten with their chequebooks open.
Of course, since Celeste was organising the event, Mitchell supported it by buying a table on behalf of his company and he and his partner, Leo Oswald, had taken along eight of their top clients. Never hurt to inject a bit of social glamour into a professional relationship.
Halfway through the night, he’d begun to get an uncharacteristic feeling of unease. A couple of rows away, at the front, middle, VIP table, he could see Celeste sitting on Derek Evans’ left and they were deep in conversation. He’d shrugged it off. He’d never been the jealous type and had no reason to feel insecure. Yet…
His eyes were drawn back, time and time again, as he’d realised that to anyone in the room, Celeste and Derek looked like a couple, constantly in conversation, laughing, casually tactile and paying very little attention to anyone else.
Back then, he had a thought that felt like a sucker punch to the gut. Is that what Aggs had seen when he and Celeste began seeing each other behind his wife’s back?
There it was again. The karma. And the worst thing of all was that, despite a million pathetic excuses of justification, he deserved it.
The rest of the night had passed in a fake smiling, anxiety whirling, blur. He had to talk to her. And he had to choose his moment.
It came the next morning. When
he’d woken, he’d reached over, tenderly traced a finger along her cheek as she’d roused from her sleep. ‘Morning, darling.’
She’d flinched. Pulled away. Rolled over. Ouch.
Later that evening, he’d gone for the direct approach. ‘You and Derek Evens were pretty chummy last night,’ he’d said over a late supper of steak and asparagus, delivered in because Celeste refused to cook at the weekend. Or any other night for that matter. Skye was at her mum’s, so they had the house to themselves.
Celeste had responded with a flippant dismissal. ‘He’s a client and it’s my job to keep him happy.’
‘How happy?’ Jesus, he’d hated himself for sounding like a jealous teenager.
That one brought out his wife’s death stare. ‘Seriously? What are you implying, Mitch? You think I’m having an affair?’
‘Are you?’
She’d picked up her wine glass and taken a sip. ‘Well, wouldn’t that be ironic?’
They had both let the truth of that sit for a moment before she’d uttered a sigh that oozed irritation.
‘No, I’m not having an affair. Derek is good fun, he’s a client, and trust me, if I wanted to look elsewhere, I’d tell you first.’
They’d had that agreement right from the start and it was hard to argue. Celeste was the most upfront woman he’d ever met. She saw what she wanted and went after it every time. If she wanted someone else, wouldn’t she already be out of here?
He’d braced himself for an argument, but suddenly her shoulders had relaxed down a couple of inches and she’d purred, ‘Ooh, it’s a bit sexy that you’re jealous though. I kinda like it.’
Pushing her plate away, she’d wrapped her perfect manicure around his neck, kissed him, her tongue probing and teasing, and his concerns were instantly silenced. Aggs once accused him of being controlled by his dick, and in that moment, she was 100 per cent accurate. As he’d lifted Celeste up, she’d curled her legs around his waist and he took a few steps to the kitchen island, where they made love on the Carrara marble top. Actually ‘made love’ didn’t quite cover it. It was pure physical passion – hot, frantic and fuelled by the kind of lust that came from jealousy and desperate need. It was the best sex they’d had in months.
Afterwards, they’d showered together, watched some TV in bed.
‘Sorry, I was a tit,’ he’d told her, trying to make light of it. ‘Think it’s some kind of midlife crisis.’
Celeste had groaned. ‘Great. Although, it would probably be better for our marriage if you just bought a bomber jacket and a motorbike.’
That should have been it. End of suspicion. Case closed. Nothing to see here.
But the senses that made him a great mitigator in court, that gut instinct for lies and weaknesses, the ability to feel when danger was coming, to predict an ambush, just wouldn’t let it drop.
Then there was the factual evidence. The dropped phone calls. The late-night dinners that stretched until the early hours of the morning. The weekend trips, supposedly to scout event locations. The spa breaks that she insisted on going to on her own, despite offers from him or Skye to tag along. There was a separation, a feeling of a fork in the road and they were both now going on separate paths.
Most of this he could put down to familiarity and to the length of their relationship. The biggest change of all, though, was the one that made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. He loved his wife, but there was no denying that Celeste was emotionally high maintenance. She needed to know that she was valued and adored. He’d once thought it was a beautiful vulnerability, and he’d been happy to give her the attention she needed, but in the last few months she’d been almost low-key. Wanted nothing from him. And if she wasn’t getting the ego strokes from him, were they coming from somewhere else?
Unaccustomed to practising patience, he fidgeted in his seat of his Mercedes as the minutes continued to tick by with no sign of Celeste, until eventually, a knock on his window snapped him out of his thoughts. Bloody traffic warden.
Mitchell rolled down his window just as the small-eyed, pinched face of a man who loved his uniform contorted into a sneer.
‘You planning on buying a ticket any time soon? You’ve already been here an hour.’
Mitchell immediately went into bluff mode. ‘Sorry, mate. The wife said she was popping into the shop for five minutes. But, you know, once she gets talking…’
The traffic warden didn’t look impressed, but before he could react, Mitchell spotted a figure in a stunning white jacket and pencil skirt, huge shades adding to the glamour, alighting from the studio. Celeste had obviously changed in there, and now she was sliding into the front seat of her car.
‘Actually, you know what? Stuff it. I’m not waiting any longer,’ Mitchell shrugged, ‘She can walk home.’
With that, he indicated, then swerved out of the space, leaving a slack-jawed jobsworth staring after him.
He was pretty sure his heart rate was on the rise again as he navigated the traffic in pursuit of his wife, a new observation adding to his feeling of dread that he might actually be on to something here.
The suit. The gleaming hair. The Chanel bag. The heels.
Even for a first lunch with a potential new client, she’d gone way above and beyond on her look. Celeste McMaster clearly made a huge effort for someone today and Mitchell knew he had to find out if it really was a business meeting, or was it the kind of pleasure that led to a division of property and expensive legal bills?
As he pressed his foot on the accelerator, he had a sinking feeling that it was too close to call.
7
Agnetha and Celeste – 1997
‘She’s not shy, is she?’ Aaron drawled, putting his bottle of Budweiser down on the table on his side of their double sunlounger.
Agnetha followed his eyeline, to see Celeste, on some guy’s shoulders in the pool, playing an impromptu game of pool volleyball with a crowd she’d introduced herself to about twenty minutes ago. They were a group of graduates from UCLA, here celebrating the end of term, and very happy to welcome the gorgeous tourist into their celebrations. All plans for seeing the Vegas sights had been postponed after Celeste’s bottom lip had shot out at the very mention of an open-top bus tour. ‘What are we, like sixty? This is Vegas and it’s your birthday! We should be drinking, partying, meeting people, not traipsing around looking at things we can see on postcards in the fricking gift shop.’
Lying here at the side of the pool, snuggled in a cabana with Aaron, Agnetha conceded that she had a point. Sometimes going with the flow took you to exactly where you were meant to be. And right now, she couldn’t think of anywhere more perfect.
Aaron nodded his head in Celeste’s direction. ‘Has she always been like that?’
Agnetha took a sip of her pina colada, then winced, her buttocks instinctively clenching when she rested the ice-cold glass on her bare stomach. ‘Pretty much. She likes to enjoy herself. It’s great now, but it used to get us into all sorts of trouble when we were at school. When we were fifteen, she got us suspended because she persuaded me to sneak out to the pub at lunchtime to celebrate my birthday. We walked in and four of our teachers were already there. Caught red-handed.’
His face melted into the sexiest grin as he rolled towards her, so that he was lying on his side facing her, resting his chin on his beer, the contours of his muscular torso glistening in the heat.
‘Don’t laugh. My parents grounded us for a month.’
‘Us? She lived with you?’
Agnetha nodded, surprised that they were only having this discussion now. In the three months since they’d met, they’d spent every night and weekend together. Sometimes they were a foursome, other times in separate couples. At weekends, they’d jump in the car and head to Malibu, where they’d sneak on to the private beach at the Colony and chill in front of some of the most expensive houses in the country. During the week, they’d head to bed early, because Aaron had to be up at 6 a.m. every morning to go to work on t
he construction of a mega mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Agnetha would get up with him and, leaving Celeste to sleep, she would use the time to explore the area on foot, sometimes covering miles before Aaron got home around 5 p.m.. They’d have dinner on the roof terrace of the apartment, then catch an early night, while Zac and Celeste hit the hotels and clubs up and down Sunset.
‘She had a pretty crap life at home. Her parents split up, her dad took off and her mum loved the single life and the party scene, so even as a kid, she was left alone all the time. I knew her from school, but we were in different crowds. Then my dad gave her a Saturday job in the café when she was fourteen, and she pretty much moved in and didn’t go home. Best friends ever since.’
The pamphlet version of the story would do for now. Aaron didn’t need to know that Celeste’s mum had left her alone on Christmas Day to go to Gleneagles with her new boyfriend. And for weeks at a time while she swanned off on holiday with her latest man. Or that her dad had barely spoken to her since the day he left. Or that Agnetha’s mum and dad, Alex and Ella, had been so worried about Celeste going off the rails that they had welcomed her into their home for the whole of the last two years of school and Celeste’s mum hadn’t complained or questioned it, delighted to be free of the constraints of motherhood. None of that mattered now. They were both happy and getting on with their lives, and Agnetha was grateful that Celeste’s thirst for enjoyment had rubbed off on her and given her an appetite for adventure too. They’d had almost ten fantastic years of friendship and she treasured her friend like a sister. An unpredictable, wild, hilarious sister who was probably going to land them in jail, but she loved every crazy bone of her anyway.
Aaron reached over and pushed a red curl off her cheek. ‘So your parents are as nice as you then?’