A Spring Affair

by Milly Johnson

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t take either in tea,’ said Lou.

  Bollocks, thought Phil. They’d been together ten years–how come he didn’t know that?

  He got out the cake. It couldn’t have been more obvious that he’d made it if he’d iced Made by Phil on it. She wasn’t fooled by his trying-so-hard gesture. Did he think she was that easy to manipulate? Probably–because she had been that easy to manipulate in the past, hadn’t she?

  ‘Would you like a slice?’

  ‘Thanks, but not for me. I appreciate you making it, though.’

  Good, she’s noticed. He smiled inside, but outwardly forced himself to look disappointed. Lou felt nothing and moved the conversation forwards.

  ‘So, to business,’ she said.

  ‘Lou, you can’t be serious. Come on, love, this has gone far enough. What can I do to make this right?’ said Phil, flashing his best disarming smile. ‘Come home, Lou, I miss you.’

  ‘Phil. You miss your clothes washed, you miss your meals cooked, you miss…having your basic needs met. You don’t miss me.’

  ‘Yes, I do, Lou. Honest I do.’

  This Lou was gorgeous. He could understand why it worked for people to take some time out in their marriage if they managed to find perspective like this.

  Phil clicked his fingers. It suddenly came to him what this was really all about.

  ‘This is about that Sue, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lou. She wondered which Sue he was referring to, but really it didn’t matter. Both Sues had played their parts in the downfall of her marriage, along with Phil–and herself.

  ‘But, love, that was all sorted years ago!’

  Ah, he meant the first Sue. ‘No, it wasn’t. You never even said sorry, Phil.’

  ‘It was me that went to see her and told her not to press charges when you belted her!’ Phil’s voice rose in frustration. ‘It was me that got you out of that mess. Didn’t that say everything you needed to know?’

  ‘No, it didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry, then. I’m sorry I put you through all that. It was the biggest mistake of my life.’

  Lou drew in a big breath. Hearing that he was sorry changed nothing. It was all too late.

  ‘Phil, I want you to sign the papers and for us both to get on with our lives.’

  ‘Lou, I can’t do that.’

  Lou stayed calm. She should have known he would battle her on this point.

  ‘You’ll be wondering, of course, why I took the money from the business account.’

  ‘Well, er, yes, I was, a bit.’

  ‘I took the approximate value of your house as it stands now.’

  ‘Our house,’ he corrected.

  ‘I subtracted the amount that you paid for it before we were married,’ Lou went on, ignoring him. ‘I added on a fair figure, I think, for the value of the fixtures and fittings and divided by two, and that’s what I took out of the business account.’

  ‘That’s very cold for you, Lou,’ said Phil, affecting bewilderment now.

  Lou went on, ‘If you don’t agree with the figures, we can always let the courts decide. I think they’ll find that I’m also entitled to half your business and a substantial proportion of your pension, but I don’t intend to claim that. You can guarantee that because we’ll sign for a full and final settlement. I’ve been a lot fairer than any judge would be.’

  ‘You, lady, are guilty of fraud,’ said Phil, trying to tie down his anger.

  That was the second time she’d been accused of that recently, Lou thought with an inner giggle. She might soon have to consider getting plastic surgery, a false passport and a one-way ticket to Acapulco.

  ‘Let’s face it, Phil, you would have stopped my access to the joint account and denied me anything at all, had I not taken it first. This way at least I save you having to spend half of your savings on solicitors’ fees. As it stands, we’re sorted financially. The rest is just paperwork.’

  He picked up his trusty mobile menacingly. The whites of his eyes were very startling against his traffic-light-red face.

  ‘I could ring the Fraud Squad right now.’

  ‘Go right ahead. But remember, you gave me authority to transfer monies. If I’d really wanted to defraud you, I’d have taken the lot. I only took my fair share. I could lie and say you gave me the money and then changed your mind. And if you want to talk about fraud…’

  Lou pulled out two computer disks from her handbag and threw them on the table. ‘This one has your up-to-date accounts for the last ten years. This one has your real up-to-date accounts. I could send the taxman both. I’m sure they’d find enough discrepancies to keep them in a permanent job, charging day-to-day interest on the shortfall alone. Obviously these aren’t the only copies. You’ll get those when the divorce is final.’

  Phil’s face suffused with even more blood. He looked like a red cabbage. He felt as if he was in a maze and every entrance was blocked off. Maybe not every one–he still had one trump card left. There was one thing over which he still had control.

  ‘Well, you can wait for your divorce for bloody ever,’ he snarled.

  But Lou didn’t even blink. She had to be on drugs, thought Phil. Some freaky herbal equivalent of Valium.

  ‘I’ll make you a deal,’ she said, crossing her legs.

  He couldn’t remember her having legs like that.

  ‘Sign the papers now and let me take them in, and I’ll refund you over thirty thousand pounds with immediate effect.’

  She got her chequebook out of her bag and clicked on her pen.

  ‘How much over thirty thousand pounds?’ said Phil with a grumbling interest.

  ‘You’ll have to gamble and find out.’

  ‘What, and trust you?’

  She held out the pen to him.

  Thirty thousand quid was a lot of money and even now he knew Lou would be as good as her word. He hated to admit it, but he wasn’t going to win this one so damage limitation was his only option. He didn’t know this supremely confident and sexy woman in his kitchen. She was a very desirable stranger, though.

  ‘I wasn’t unfaithful to you after that Peach woman, you know,’ he tried.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now if you were or you weren’t,’ said Lou. ‘It was never just about another woman.’

  He opened his mouth to ask what the hell else it was all about then, but some wiser part within made him shut it. He had been a total bastard to Lou, if he faced it. There were birds before Susan Peach. And he hadn’t exactly been there for her during that fake pregnancy episode. His life with Lou flashed past him in a few lousy seconds and it hit him then what was really happening and why. Lou was leaving him, really leaving him. His marriage was ending, his control was slipping and he felt a seismic panic rumble through him.

  ‘Lou, come on,’ he said, a tremble in his voice. ‘Me and you, we’ll go on for ever. Remember what we used to say about you and me going on for ever?’

  Lou remembered. She remembered being curled up in his arms talking through the life they were going to live, a forever life of warmth and mutual support, before he snatched back his dreams and feasted on them and left her with only the crumbs he thought to spare her.

  ‘Phil…’

  ‘Look, Lou, let’s start again. Let’s renew our vows. You always wanted to go to Italy, didn’t you? We could get married in Rome. I’ll write to the Pope and ask him to officiate at the wedding, how about that then?’

  He laughed with an edge of desperation, the words tumbling out of his mouth, snagging on his throat, and Lou pitied him. He hadn’t seen this coming at all; he really did think they were going to be Fat Jack and Maureen part II.

  ‘No, Phil,’ she said slowly, but decisively. She didn’t want to go to Italy with him. He didn’t belong there with her. ‘Please, sign the papers.’

  ‘I just wanted it to be back like it was between us, Lou. I might have been a bit heavy-handed, but we were so good together once, weren’t we? We cou
ld be again. That’s all I wanted. I thought I was a good husband. I’ve never hit you, have I? I’m not mean with my money, am I? I buy you flowers, don’t I? We have great holidays–five-star always. And look at our house–it’s gorgeous. This kitchen cost twenty-eight grand Lou–all for you.’

  He could be a good husband, he knew he could. Better than most. And he was still on the way up so there was so much more to come for them. But Lou looked anything but impressed by his marital CV. She was shaking her head slowly and he knew he’d slipped from her heart. He’d gone too far. Their clock couldn’t be turned back.

  Like an accelerated course in grief, Phil had gone through denial, anger, and sadness that morning–and all that was left for him now was acceptance.

  He sighed, took the pen, got the divorce papers out of the envelope and signed them quickly, trying not to think what he was doing. Lou checked them over and tucked them into her bag, then she rested her chequebook on her knee and scribbled. Finally she stood to go, handing him over a folded cheque.

  ‘Thanks for the tea,’ she said, even though she hadn’t touched it. Phil seemed such a stranger, part of an old life which was now ended–a life that could have been so much better for them both if only they had tried harder. Oh yes, both of them–for she had played her own part in the downfall of her marriage. Like Maureen, she’d let her husband do those things to her. She didn’t stop them happening. She’d allowed him more than his fair share of the sunlight and let him push her deep into the shadows. Thank goodness she hadn’t left it too late to walk away.

  As Phil’s hand came out for the cheque he said quietly, ‘I love you, Lou Winter. Please don’t throw us away.’

  Lou’s breath caught in her throat. He sounded so desperate, so pitiable.

  ‘You wouldn’t have treated me like you did if you’d really loved me,’ she said, surprising herself with the strength in her voice.

  ‘I do love you. In my own way, I love you so much.’

  In my own way. There was nothing more to be said. It was so over.

  ‘Goodbye, Phil.’

  As Lou walked out of 1, The Faringdales for the last time, she didn’t look behind her to see Phil standing in the window watching her go, his eyes glassy with tears. She got in the car, slipped off the handbrake and drove off. Then she pulled up around the corner and sobbed.

  Phil watched her go. He couldn’t articulate the feelings inside him as she and her silver car drove out of his life for ever. There was something big blocking his windpipe that wouldn’t be coughed away. He’d been so caught up in the moment that he had forgotten all about the cheque, which he now picked up–to find that it was totally blank on the cheque side. Then he noticed two things–the first that the printed name on the cheque was Ms E.A. Casserly, the second was the writing on the back of the cheque.

  Blue eyes + blue eyes = brown eyes. Not very likely.

  He stared at it for a full minute wondering whether to get in his car and chase Lou and ask her what the hell she was playing at when she had promised him thirty grand. Then his brain began to work with the facts available. He remembered something he’d seen on the television–some medical thing–Casualty. Or was it a documentary? Family secrets coming to light when a father offered a kidney to save the life of his son. There was a connection with the colour of eyes that he couldn’t quite remember. Then it started to come to him as through a fog. The bitch. The bloody duplicitous sneaky bitch!!

  His soon-to-be ex-wife was forgotten as he made a frenzied leap for the telephone and stabbed in the short dial to the bank.

  ‘Which department, please?’ asked the switchboard lady.

  ‘I want to stop a cheque–NOW!’ said Phil.

  Chapter 61

  ‘I wish you’d sit down, you’re doing my head in,’ said Deb, putting the newly washed crockery in the cupboards. ‘You must have walked ten miles in here this morning. You’ll be wearing grooves in the tiles in a bit.’ But she was only gently cross with him. She had been where he was, worrying that Phil would work his magic. But Lou was different now. She’d found her old Casserly spark.

  ‘She’s later than I thought she’d be,’ said Tom, raking his fingers through his over-long hair. It needed a cut. Did he look scruffy, up against Phil’s neatness?

  ‘She’s got a lot to discuss with him,’ said Deb calmly.

  ‘What if he tries to talk her round?’ Tom fretted, sitting at last, although his leg seemed to have developed St Vitus’s Dance.

  ‘He probably will.’ Deb held up an arresting finger as his mouth opened to speak. ‘Phil isn’t coming in at night to a wonderful home-cooked meal or a basketful of clean socks, so of course he’s going to try and talk her round. But Lou isn’t a fool, Tom.’ Not any more.

  ‘He’s a used-car salesman. He’ll have highly honed manipulation skills,’ said Tom, getting up again to repace. He could imagine the sort of tricks Phil would try. He would have a whole repertoire of sweet words and seduction techniques. He imagined Phil Winter was a man who had no concept of losing. One who would play hard and strike low to get what he wanted.

  ‘Lou’s eyes are wide open. She sees him for what he is. She’s not going to leave you for someone like him.’

  But ‘someone like him’ was legally bracketed to Lou. It would be so much easier for her to be lulled back home to Phil than ride the rough terrain of a divorce.

  Tom caught sight of his reflection in the glass of a picture and felt suddenly outclassed. What was he? A big, rough bloke in an overall who had a job moving other people’s rubbish and lived in a house that had no wallpaper, hardly any curtains and one carpet so far. OK, he had a solid business and property, but Phil outranked him on all fronts with his polished suit, killer smile, fleets of posh cars, pots of ready money, swanky wardrobe, big house and the persuasive powers of a snake-charmer. How could a glorified scrap-man compete with all that?

  Lou opened the door and he saw straight away that she had been crying.

  ‘You OK?’ he said. He’d barely got the second word out before she moved into his arms to savour the wonderful smell and feel of him. He tried not to squeeze her too hard as the relief washed over him like a warm tide.

  ‘How are things?’ asked Deb, winking at Tom and mouthing, Told you so.

  ‘OK, I think,’ said Lou. ‘The stupid hormones don’t help. I just need to go upstairs for a bit.’

  ‘To think?’ said Tom, tentatively.

  ‘To change into something nice and elasticky around my stomach,’ said Lou.

  ‘Oh,’ said Tom. ‘Can I get you anything, love?’

  ‘A cup of orange juice and four cardboard boxes would be good,’ said Lou.

  ‘God, her funny cravings have started already,’ said Deb, turning to switch on the kettle. ‘Would you like them with or without jam?’

  ‘Whatever Tom would like, seeing as they’re going to be sitting in his house,’ Lou announced. ‘I’m moving in with him today, you see.’

  Tom said nothing but stood there with his mouth wide open in shock.

  ‘You wanton hussy,’ said Deb.

  ‘I’m glad you approve,’ said Lou.

  ‘I most certainly do,’ said Deb.

  Epilogue

  ‘Happy Anniversary, partner!’ Deb raised her mug of tea and clinked it against Lou’s.

  ‘Congratulations to you, Miss Devine. And may it be the first of many,’ smiled Lou.

  ‘I can’t believe it’s been a year.’

  ‘Yes, a fair bit has happened, hasn’t it. Biscotti?’ Lou proffered the glass jar full of biscuits.

  ‘Don’t mind if I do. I’m in the mood for a good dunk.’

  ‘Aren’t you always?’

  ‘Dirty cow!’

  They laughed together as business colleagues and best friends. Both dressed in their black uniforms with their company logo above the breast. They hadn’t used the name Casa Nostra–they’d agreed on a different name, a perfect one: Mamma’s. Ma’s Café was so well-known, they had merely Ita
lianized it. It seemed, for many reasons, so very right.

  ‘You need a bigger uniform,’ Deb said. ‘Your boobs are getting even more massive. We’ll need an extension to the building at this rate.’

  ‘It’s my milk,’ said Lou. ‘Franco must be nearby.’

  Right on cue, Tom Broom with a papoose carrying his black-haired baby son came shivering from the early chill of the morning into the bright, warm café. At his heels was his faithful dog who was as good as glued to the baby.

  ‘By heck, it was warmer than this on Christmas morning,’ he said. Franco was asleep, though, snuggled against his dad’s thumping heartbeat.

  ‘Here, have a cuppa,’ said Deb, adding cheekily, ‘No, please, don’t offer me any money, it’s on the house.’

  Tom tutted and sat carefully down, as did Clooney. It might not have been environmentally friendly to have dogs in the place, but a few of the truckers travelled with them and the dogs were as welcome as their masters in a special section of the cafe. Whilst Lou had been on her very short maternity leave, they’d employed a relative of May’s to help out. She was obsessively clean and animals or no animals, the place was constantly shining like a new pin. They’d had to keep her on–she was too good to let go.

  ‘A year,’ mused Lou again.

  The same thought passed through both women’s minds. A year ago today they’d been standing in exactly the same place, shaking with excitement and fear too. What if no one turned up? What if the scruffy old caravan on the dual carriageway that doled out greasy bacon butties had absorbed all their clientèle in the weeks Ma’s Café was closed, and refused to hand it back? Their fridges had been bursting with breakfast foods, most of it delivered by Karen’s dad; the griddles, pots and pans were ready to start cooking, and the cakes were on display in a beautiful rotating cabinet ready for the afternoon clientèle. Huge, fresh gâteaux–ranging from the ‘Marco’ (tiramisú flavoured with white icing), so rich that it defeated even Tom on test–to the light lemon and cardamom ‘TortaRenee’; and in jars on the shelves sat twenty different sorts of coffee ranging from ‘Butter Toffee’ to ‘Summer Pudding’.