The Fat And The Thin Of It

by Julie Croft

Banus, love.” Richard nodded slowly when I looked at him. “That apartment you’ve seen was Bob’s front for when you went over there.”

  Ah; that made sense. That was why it hardly looked lived in. And I’d tried to make it more homely for the sodding traitor by making curtains and buying bloody cushions. Both Jill and Richard were staring at me, wondering if I could take any more. I gave him permission to hammer me even further. “Go on.”

  “Well, Lola threatened to come over unless he left you and went to live in Spain permanently.” Richard paused before saying, “I think she’s pregnant, Jackie.”

  Ouch. That hurt, and it hurt for various reasons. It told me she was young enough to get pregnant, it confirmed that he was screwing her, it also told me that he’d been idiotic enough to not use protection and he’d been screwing me with the same unprotected penis that had been inside her.

  I shuddered and vowed to buy a douche as soon as I got out of there.

  “Okay, I got all that,” I said, “But why did he put on the act? Why couldn’t he have told me, let me know what his whore was thinking or simply tell me he wanted to leave me?”

  “Because he’s a low-brow, smarmy coward, that’s why.” Stated Jill in a flat tone, and Richard looked as if he agreed with her.

  I did, too, but I still couldn’t grasp why he couldn’t have said something, why he couldn’t have been more honest. I thought we’d had a good degree of communication and could tell each other things and confide in each other.

  “Richard,” I didn’t really want to ask this, but the masochistic urge was still running. “Did he think giving me those boxes of dosh would keep me happy and I’d never bother him again?” Richard was frowning, so I prodded a bit more. “Was he going to leave me with just that? Three boxes of dosh and ‘thank you for twenty-four years of your life, love’?”

  “I really don’t know, Jackie.” He seemed honest. “My opinion is that he wanted to gain some time to try and sort things out.”

  “Sort things out how?”

  Richard spread his hands. “I don’t know. Perhaps he wanted to get Lola off his back and come back to you.” He rubbed his chest and winced. “I don’t think he would leave you to get on with life with only three boxes of cash. But there again, I don’t know what his plans are, love.” Although Jackie thought he did. “If he can’t come back in the near future...”

  “Or not come back at all.” Interrupted Jill.

  “Well, we can’t speculate on that, now can we?” he frowned at Jill. “But, looking at the worst case scenario, I reckon he’ll eventually make the proper provisions for you if he isn’t planning on coming back.”

  “But he took his salary out of the account.” I said. “That would have seen me through if he’d left it as it was. Why did he do that?”

  Richard shrugged, but he had an annoyed look on his face. “That I can’t tell you, love.”

  “Richard,” I heard Jill’s voice somewhere outside the haze of my brain. “Where did the boxes come from?”

  Oh, that was a good question. I was glad Jill had thought of it. I looked at Richard and saw him glare at her, and she glared back.

  “Well, Jill,” he began with more than a little annoyance. “Bob brought back cash when he came home and gave it to me for safe keeping.”

  “But,” she retorted. “If he was coming back from Spain with cash; wouldn’t it have been in Euros instead of pounds?”

  Richard continued to glare at her, but didn’t answer. Jill continued to glare back with raised eyebrows, waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t know, Jill. You’d have to ask Bob that.” His answer was laden with annoyance then.

  “Okay,” she said evenly with her hand out. “Give me your phone and I’ll call and ask him.”

  Oh, the glaring between them got quite intense.

  “Why don’t I make some coffee?” suggested Richard. “I think we could all do with a cup.” he got up stiffly and went to the kitchen at the back of the estate agent’s.

  “Why don’t I come and help?” suggested Jill and she followed him.

  I was left to think about what Richard had said up to then.

  Bob the bastard had a mistress called Lola, and he was in Ibiza with her. Okay, I got that much straight.

  He’d been dipping his penis into both of us at the same time. Yuck. I really needed that douche.

  He’d invented, for some obscure reason I still couldn’t figure out, an incredible story about being persecuted by nasty people out to get his blood and had to disappear into the horizon, leaving me with three boxes of dosh.

  That last bit made my head spin and I had to rest it on the desk.

  Come on, girl; think. Why the story, and why the boxes of cash?

  The story could be because of what Jill had said; he was a smarmy coward and couldn’t face up to telling me the truth.

  But why such an elaborate story?

  Oh, forget that one. I couldn’t even imagine why.

  Now, the boxes. Richard had said that Bob had brought back cash every time he came home. He’d been working in Spain ever since the year after we got married, so calculating over the twenty-three years…

  Christ Almighty, that was more than twenty-five grand a year! And supposing it was for both Richard and Bob, they were up twelve and a half grand a year. Or; supposing that six hundred grand was just Bob’s cut, then he’d been bringing home double that!

  I couldn’t understand it; why hadn’t Bob simply brought the money home? It would have really been handy. For the love of Pete, it was double his take-home pay, and no tax! We could have sent Mark to a private school and he might not have grown up to be a candidate for The Jeremy Kyle Show!

  And two apartments; one I knew about and the other in Puerto Banus. I didn’t think the first cost that much, but the second one? Puerto Banus was a toff’s playground and things weren’t cheap there. What could that have worked out at; fifteen hundred a month for the two apartments’ rent? At least that, and then the upkeep…

  Oh, my head spun even harder: eighteen grand for the two apartments a year, minimum. A minimum of twenty-five grand in cash per year, brought home in his ruddy underpants…

  I couldn’t keep up with that as it just seemed so alien to my way of thinking. It seemed so alien to Bob’s way of thinking! What had he been up to all these years?

  I realised I hadn’t a clue about the man I’d been living with for almost half my life, with whom I’d had two kids and for whom I’d run his house on a bloody shoestring to make ends meet!

  Who was this man? Was the calm, sweet-tempered and loving man I’d known really Bob, or was he the swindling, two-timing son-beater I’d just discovered?

  And where were Jill and Richard? Had they gone to Columbia for this fucking bloody coffee?

  I got fed up of waiting and went to the chemist’s to buy a douche.

  Jill

  I got to Jackie’s at one o’clock, on the nose, just as she’d asked and when she opened the door, I knew instantly something was wrong.

  She was smiling, but her eyes were too wide for my liking. She reminded me of someone in a film who’d been told by a deranged psychopath to act normally when she opened the door while he hid behind a curtain with an axe poised over his head, waiting to take a chop.

  The biggest give-away was the skirt and jumper, though. It was the pleated skirt with a very generous elastic waist that she’d had for years, and she wore it on the times she lost control on her eating. The jumper was a thick-knit and practically reached her knees to cover as much as possible of her. The coup de grace was the serving platter of tea biscuits. There must have been a full two pounds of them, piled one on top of the other. When we went to the conservatory, I also noticed how quiet it was; no rap music, so Mark was probably still in bed, but moreover I hadn’t seen or heard Bob. It was lunch-time, and he always made it home for lunch when he was in England. Perhaps the psycho had Bob and Mark by the throats behind the curtain?

  Something was m
ost definitely not right. Precisely because Bob was home and she should be in good, healthy-eating spirits. And something was definitely not right when she asked me to help her check the accounts. This was all very strange behaviour for Jackie, as I didn’t think she was even aware of what bank they were with.

  But oh my Lord, my suspicion of a psycho was out-done by the story she told me about Bob disappearing into the night and over six hundred thousand pounds in cash she’d stashed all over the house! I first thought a screw had come loose as it all seemed too bizarre, too fabricated, but actually because of that, I believed her: Bob was up to his neck in something, but exactly what was the question.

  To me, there was a different side to what Jackie told me. To me, Bob was an even bigger sod than I’d reckoned and he’d done runner, leaving Jackie and Mark behind with a pittance of money compared to what he’d probably scammed and would never come back. Whatever Bob had done – fraud, bribes, under-the-table deals – it had to be a pittance, otherwise he wouldn’t have left it for her unless he’d scarpered with a much larger bundle. Richard was definitely involved as well, and both of them were treating Jackie like an idiot and the more I heard, the more my blood boiled.

  I didn’t care if it was cruel or not; I had to get Jackie to wake up and realise what exactly was going on. And, when she did, her reaction was only normal. I mean, what would any woman do once she saw what a scum-bag she’d married? I was glad she didn’t collapse into a heap and cry her eyes out, and when she