‘Yes, you do,’ says Erin. ‘We never thought we’d see the day when you’d have a Significant Other.’
‘You didn’t?’ Dominique cries. ‘You should hear my mother.’
‘You told your mother?’ I ask. God, it must be serious.
‘They haven’t met yet. I haven’t changed that much. But I thought I’d lay the foundations for . . .’ Dominique’s voice trails off.
‘For what?’
Dominique pauses. ‘Nothing – forget I said anything.’
‘As if we could,’ says Erin.
Dominique lowers her voice. ‘Okay – but don’t repeat this.’
Erin and I lean in.
‘I think he’s about to ask me to move in with him.’
‘Ohmygod!’ breathes Erin.
‘Dominique, that’s fantastic,’ I tell her. And I mean it. I think. The more I hear from Dominique about her and Justin, the more I’m convinced that I was imagining something untoward about him. The guy is clearly as lovestruck as she is.
‘Yeah, well, it hasn’t happened yet.’ She leans back. ‘He’s dropped a couple of hints and . . . just call it feminine intuition.’
I’m enjoying our lunch, but I’d be lying if I said things didn’t feel strange after the revelations about Erin and Henry. I’ve tried not to let it affect me, but I can’t help it.
‘How’s Henry?’ asks Dominique, as if sensing my thoughts.
‘Fine, I think. I haven’t seen him a lot lately. You’d better ask Erin.’ Erin blushes and I feel a stab of remorse.
‘He’s . . . fine,’ she replies uncomfortably.
‘Well, I’m so pleased for you,’ says Dominique, sipping her drink. ‘We were worried after your split from Gary, weren’t we, Lucy?’
I conjure up a Stepford Wives smile. ‘Yes.’
‘And now you’re with Henry. I can’t think of a nicer couple, can you, Lucy?’
‘No.’
‘I think your prospects are pretty good, don’t you, Lucy?’
‘Yes.’
‘And since his transformation, I—’
‘How come you never told me?’ The words erupt from my mouth entirely involuntarily. Dominique looks at me as if my body has been possessed.
Erin clears her throat awkwardly. ‘About me and Henry, you mean?’
I nod.
She frowns. ‘I don’t know really. I thought there wasn’t anything to tell at first. Nothing happened. Henry accompanied me to a couple of work events and, well, we acted like friends. We’d always been friends – so why would I bother telling anyone that?’
‘But you’re not just friends now, are you, hon?’ hoots Dominique, giving her a nudge. ‘From what I hear, you’re way beyond friendship!’
Erin’s blush deepens. ‘It’s early days. It was only this weekend that anything happened.’
‘Anything?’ laughs Dominique. ‘Lucy nearly called a search-party – Henry didn’t come home all weekend.’
From the depths of my being, I try to look happy. I suspect I look as chipper as a funeral director – but I do try. Erin glances at me nervously.
I get a grip on myself, saying, ‘That’s right. It’s great, Erin. Really great.’
She smiles gratefully and I feel like such a fraud I’m expecting the Serious Organized Crime Agency to burst in. Two of my best friends have found love with each other and I have to pretend to be happy. What a horrible person I am.
‘I’m only surprised it took you so long to make a move on him,’ continues Dominique.
Erin swallows a piece of tomato. ‘I thought about it a while ago. I realized how much I liked him soon after splitting up with Gary, but I worried about having a rebound fling with Henry. If it’d been anyone else, I wouldn’t have thought twice. Then, eventually, I realized I liked him so much that I had two choices: sit around thinking about it for ever or take a chance and go for it.’
‘Well, I for one am glad you chose the latter,’ says Dominique, ‘and I bet Henry is too.’
By the time lunch is over, despite the juicy olives and heavenly main course, I’m glad to be heading back to my desk. I need something to distract me from my feelings for Henry – and sitting here with the new woman in his life isn’t it.
We split the bill and are on our way to the door. It’s then that I see him. I gasp like an asthmatic hyena.
‘What is it?’ asks Erin, careering into my back. She freezes and I know she’s seen him too.
‘What are you two doing? Oh my God.’
I glance at Dominique. Even if I wanted to stop her from witnessing Justin using his tongue to excavate the ear of his blonde companion, I couldn’t.
I can’t work out whether she’s going to cry. But she grits her teeth, thrusts her handbag in my arms and marches over. Justin stops smooching. As he glances up and sees Dominique, he might as well be facing Godzilla.
‘Shit . . . Dominique. Look – I can explain.’
‘Can you?’
He snatches his hand away from his companion. ‘Um . . . um . . .’
‘I think the word you’re searching for is “no”,’ Dominique says.
It’s clear she doesn’t want explanations anyway. Instead, she turns to a waiter and taps him on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, is that the tiramisú?’
He studies his tray. ‘Er, yes.’
‘Who’s it for?’
‘The lady in the corner.’
‘Madam?’ Dominique hollers.
Justin, his blonde, and the rest of us wonder what she’s doing.
‘Madam, so sorry about this,’ she continues politely. ‘I need to borrow your tiramisú.’
She reaches over to the tray, dips her bare hand in the bowl and scoops out some of the contents. Mascarpone and brandy-soaked sponge drip down her arm. Now we know what she’s doing. But there’s a sublime artistry about the way she smears it over Justin’s face, with the command of a Renaissance sculptor. When finished, she stands back and examines her work. Justin is entirely mute. His transformation is complete. He is Trifle Man.
She licks her finger. ‘That could be the most satisfying dessert I’ve ever had.’
Chapter 71
Despite the performance, Dominique is distraught.
I can tell because, as I accompany her back to the office, she keeps threatening to kill people. Well, mainly Justin, but a couple of pedestrians who don’t dive out of the way quickly enough too.
‘Wanker!’ she hisses under her breath, marching ahead as I struggle to keep up. ‘Wanker, wanker, wanker.’
‘He’s definitely that,’ I concede breathlessly.
‘Did you see the slut he was with?’ She spins round and takes me by surprise. I only stop just in time to avoid colliding into her, only to cause a three-person pile-up.
‘I did.’ I untangle myself from somebody else’s iPod and hand it back apologetically. In fact, the woman Justin was with didn’t look like a slut. She looked perfectly respectable – and as shocked as Dominique.
‘Wanker!’ she repeats, continuing along the street. ‘Wanker, wank—’
‘Dominique, slow down,’ I insist eventually.
She stops and turns. Her lips are trembling, her eyes filled with tears.
‘Come here,’ I demand softly, putting my arms round her and drawing her into me.
‘Oh God, Lucy, what am I going to do?’ she sniffs.
I put my hand in my bag to find her a tissue. Unfortunately, the interior of my handbag is like a jumble sale in the Tardis. I can lay my hands on a concealer, a set of keys, a miniature bottle of Molton Brown shampoo, a box of Elastoplast, six nail files, four hair bands, twelve biros, a tube of athlete’s foot cream, a shopping list from early 2008 and a travel alarm clock. But no tissues.
I rub her arm instead.
‘I’m in love with him,’ she whispers between tears. ‘Was in love with him. Oh, who am I kidding . . . am in love with him. What am I going to do?’
I spin her round and link her arm as we continue up Castle
Street.
‘What you’re going to do, Dominique, is cry,’ I tell her. ‘You’re going to call him a wanker. You’re going to hate him and love him in equal measure. You’re going to cry a bit more. Ultimately, you’re going to realize that there are men more deserving of your love.’
‘Oh God. Is that supposed to make me feel better? How depressing.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘I didn’t expect to see what I saw in that restaurant. What an idiot I am.’
‘You’re not an idiot,’ I say gently. ‘You fell in love. There’s nothing idiotic about that.’
‘I fell in love with a two-timing . . . wanker.’ Dominique’s vocabulary on this issue is uncharacteristically minimalist. ‘I’d say that was extremely idiotic. Clinically insane, in fact.’
‘You weren’t to know, Dom.’
‘Well,’ she straightens her back and wipes mascara from her reddened eyes. It’s an improvement, but she still looks as if she’s had a makeover in a blackout. ‘Never again.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Oh yes I do,’ she says defiantly. ‘Shagging about is far easier.’
But far less fulfilling. Only now isn’t the time to tell her.
We turn into Victoria Street, not caring that we’re forty-five minutes late after lunch.
It’s then, when I think I’ve had enough drama for one day, that I spot my mother on the other side of the road. She looks different: her hair is curled for the first time since she tried to recreate Farrah Fawcett’s do in the late seventies, she’s wearing enough make-up to get a job as an air hostess, and she’s in heels. The last time my mother wore heels in the daytime was for my Cousin Kerry’s wedding three years ago, and she had to have her Scholl’s surgically removed for the occasion.
If that wasn’t suspicious enough, she’s accompanied by . . . A MAN. A tall, chisel-jawed man, with a George Clooney crop and a fashionable three-quarter-length overcoat.
She’s laughing and joking and . . . Oh. My. God. My mother is flirting. I don’t believe it. My mother isn’t allowed to flirt, not even with my dad. It’s a breach of her job description.
I am rooted to the spot, my lungs drained of oxygen.
‘Everybody’s at it!’ I glare at Mum. ‘Every time I walk through this city centre, I spot somebody. At it.’
‘At what?’ asks Dominique, blowing her nose.
‘First Henry and Erin, then Justin and that blonde, and now this! I can’t believe it.’
‘Who?’
‘Look.’ I point to the other side of the street where my mother is behaving as though she’s halfway through a third date.
Dominique squints through her bloodshot eyes. ‘Is that your mum?’
‘Apparently so.’
‘She looks amazing. Who’s the guy? He’s gorgeous.’
‘Dominique,’ I hiss, ‘that is my mother you’re talking about. My mother who is married. TO MY FATHER.’
‘Good point. I’m sure there’s nothing in it. It’ll be perfectly innocent.’
I watch Mum and this impostor make their way to the plush doorway of the Avalon Hotel, a place renowned for being chic, expensive and very romantic. He puts his hand on the small of her back and guides her to the door.
Perfectly innocent?
I am perfectly unconvinced.
Chapter 72
‘DAVE, WAKE UP! COME ON, YOU LAZY GIT. WAKE UP, WILL YOU?’
I am standing outside my brother’s terraced house, throwing stones at his bedroom window.
‘DAVE! THIS IS IMPORTANT! LET ME IN!’
He surfaces like a narcoleptic diplodocus and emerges from behind the curtain. The neighbours are treated to a view of his naked torso, which is an alarming terracotta shade – a dead giveaway that he’s fallen asleep on the sunbed again.
Fixing his boxer shorts, he opens his window and scowls down at me. ‘Are you trying to get arrested?’
‘Open the door,’ I reply urgently. ‘This is important.’
‘It can’t be more important than me getting some sleep.’
‘It’s six-fifteen p.m.,’ I point out, exasperated. ‘Who sleeps at six-fifteen p.m.?’
‘I’ve just come back from a conference in Frankfurt, you idiot.’
I don’t feel at all guilty about ruining the beauty sleep of someone who’s been overdoing it on a company jolly, but it’s easier not to say this.
‘You’ll understand when I tell you,’ I call up.
‘Come back later,’ he instructs sleepily, closing his window.
‘No!’
‘Give me a shout in an hour an—’
‘MUM’S HAVING AN AFFAIR!’
He looks at me as if I am loopier than a Red Arrows formation. ‘You’re off your head,’ he mutters, starting to close the window again.
‘Look, are you going to leave me on the street to shout the gory details, or are you going to let me in?’
He grunts and turns away.
When the front door opens a minute later, I barge past and go straight to the kitchen. Like the rest of Dave’s home, the room is a cross between the Big Brother house and a permanently horny adolescent’s bedroom, circa 1992.
Posters of semi-naked Zoo girls adorn the walls and his furniture is an unsettling combination of flat-pack hand-me-downs from Mum and Dad’s place and tacky new items paid for in instalments (the electric blue plastic bubble chair in the living room is a favourite).
The feminine touches Cheryl has attempted make it even weirder. The dried flowers from Next Home are fighting a losing battle, I fear, on top of his collection of Street Fighter games.
‘Right,’ he says, appearing at the kitchen door in a short black dressing-gown and Quiksilver flip-flops. ‘What the bollocks is this about?’
‘It’s Mum,’ I sigh, putting my head in my hands. ‘I think she’s having an affair.’
He snorts. ‘You’ve been reading too many of them Jilly Cooper books.’ He marches to the fridge, sticks in his head and emerges with a carton of leftover curry.
I close my eyes in frustration. ‘I haven’t.’
‘You have,’ he grins. ‘You’ll be telling me she’s a champion polo-player next.’
‘I saw her,’ I insist.
He wanders to the cutlery drawer, removes a fork and starts making his way through a chilled chicken jalfrezi that looks more like Pedigree Chum.
‘Saw her doing what?’
I ponder for a second on how to articulate this. ‘Carousing,’ I tell him.
He frowns, taking this in. ‘Why’s she carol singing at this time of year?’
‘Not carol singing,’ I hiss. ‘Carousing. With a man.’
‘What sort of man?’
‘A good-looking one. A smartly-dressed one. One who looked distinctly like he was flirting with her. And she with him.’
He swallows his last mouthful and burps.
‘Oh God,’ I say in disgust.
‘What?’ he replies innocently. ‘No point being overburdened with a sense of decorum.’
‘No chance of that. Look, can we stick to the issue?’
‘You must have got it wrong,’ he says confidently.
‘Listen to me: she’s been buying loads of gorgeous make-up lately and going to salsa dancing and—’
‘Wasn’t it you who told her to go to salsa dancing?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘So if she is having an affair, it’s your fault.’
‘I never suggested she turn into a . . . a harlot.’
He rolls his eyes clearly still unconvinced, and returns to the fridge to see what else is available.
‘Look, there’s another thing I haven’t told you.’ I look at my hands. ‘When I saw her this afternoon, they were going into the lobby of a hotel.’
He stops in his tracks. ‘A hotel?’
I nod.
‘What’s she going to a hotel for?’
‘You tell me.’ At last I feel as if I’m getting somewhere.
‘With a bloke?’
‘A bloke,’ I nod.
Dave scratches his bum and considers this information. ‘And you really think—’
‘Dave, our mother is having an affair. I know it.’
Mum answers her mobile after three rings.
‘Ma, where are you?’ Dave demands. He’s never been big on pleasantries.
‘What do you mean, where am I?’ she hisses. At least, I think this is what she hisses because Dave and I are sharing the handset and, frankly, his big head is taking up most of the available space.
‘I mean, where are you?’
‘I’m in town, if you must know,’ she replies, bewildered. ‘I’m having a drink—’
‘Where?’ he interrupts.
‘What does it matter where?’
‘Tell me where you are, Ma.’
‘I’m in some bar.’ She sounds flustered. ‘I don’t know what it’s called. Schmooze or Booze or something.’
He cuts her off and turns to me. ‘She’s in Newz.’
‘Right,’ I reply. ‘So what do we do?’
‘We go there. Obviously.’
I pause as alarm bells start ringing in my head. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’
‘Why not? If she’s having an affair then there’s one way to make sure it stops.’
‘No. Dave, no. Really, no.’
He frowns. ‘What did you tell me for, if you didn’t want me to go and smack him?’
I’m starting to wonder myself. ‘Moral support.’
‘Moral support?’ He gives a short laugh. ‘Next time, try the Samaritans.’
Chapter 73
It never ceases to amaze me how many women are attracted to my brother. The car journey lasts ten minutes and in that time he’s winked at, smiled at and swooned at so much it almost constitutes an epidemic.
The first time it happens, when we’re next to a brunette in a VW Golf at traffic-lights, I do a double-take to check she isn’t having a stroke.
‘What do these women see in you?’ I ask, incredulous.
‘Oh, thanks. Boost my self-esteem, why don’t you?’
‘If I boosted your self-esteem it’d be propelled into orbit.’
‘As a matter of fact . . .’ he begins, then stops.
‘What?’
He shakes his head. ‘Nothing.’
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