THE HUSBAND HUNTERS

by LUCY LAING

  ‘Well, he’s still a friend of Simon’s, isn’t he? It’s not as though he will have dropped off the face of the earth,’ I said, defensively.

  Even though she was on the end of a telephone line, I could almost see Rach’s eyebrows rising up so high they nearly disappeared into her hairline. But I took no notice. I was inspired - I had actually had husband material nearly within my grasp. Getting him to go out with me again would be easy.

  I got ready for the first meeting feeling mildly excited. It felt like a first date with someone you weren’t quite sure about, but you felt like it might be quite promising. The girls were all there when I pulled up in my battered blue Mini.

  ‘Come on Bee, we’ve already started,’ shouted Rach, as I came into the restaurant. ‘We’re doing a draw to see what order we’re going to walk down the aisle.’

  Soph ripped up a table napkin into five pieces and wrote the numbers one to five on each. They were put into an ashtray and Kazza was nominated to pick them out. Soph, the youngest of us at twenty-five, was picked to be the first bride.

  ‘Oh, that’s just great,’ said Rach. ‘That means we’re all destined to be over-the-hill brides. Soph will never get married for at least ten years, which means we’ll all be nearly forty.’

  ‘Well. I might just surprise you all and be whisked off my feet by a handsome stranger,’ protested Soph.

  Number two was Kazza and I was number three, which relieved me somewhat as I wouldn’t feel so much under pressure. Rach was number four and Tash was number five.

  ‘Oh that’s good,’ she said. ‘Now I won’t feel so guilty when I keep changing men as fast as I change my underwear. At least I won’t have you lot breathing down my neck every time I go on a different date’.

  ‘OK, first item,’ I said, banging the table. ‘We need to make sure that Tash understands that the word “husband” means getting committed to someone for life. And it doesn’t mean getting off with anyone else’s husband either.

  ‘Oww!’ I yelled as Tash kicked me under the table. Tash has been known to show interest in married men before - even once having an affair with a married teacher. ‘If we’re going to find husbands, we need to be looking at men who totally aren’t out of the picture altogether,’ I told her, firmly.

  Tash replied huffily that she was going on a blind date with one of her sister’s friends next week and that he definitely wasn’t married.

  ‘Good. Well, that’s a step in the right direction,’ I replied briskly. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if I will like him, but he has a floppy fringe, so that’s one good thing,’ she said. (Tash has a thing for men with floppy fringes - think Hugh Grant and Robbie from Eastenders - uurrrgghh. I’m glad our tastes in men are all different.)

  ‘Now on to a very important point that Kazza wanted raising,’ I said. ‘We need to make sure that we never give off the impression that we are lesbians.’

  Soph looked horrified. ‘Why would anyone think that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s just that when I spoke to Rach’s mum the other day, she made a comment that anyone who didn’t have a boyfriend must be a lesbian,’ said Kazza. We all looked aghast at Rach.

  ‘My cousin has just come out and told her mum that she’s living with a girl she met at college two years ago,’ Rach explained hurriedly. ‘The whole family is in shock at the moment, especially my mum. She even thinks oral sex is a myth and that people don’t do it - so she’s horrified about Caroline, my cousin, and now thinks that the whole of society is falling apart.’

  ‘Let’s hope that Paul Hardman doesn’t think the same thing, else your plans are up the creek, Bee,’ Kazza said, giggling.

  ‘Yes, what on earth is all this about sudden hankerings after Paul Hardman,’ demanded Soph. ‘I thought you took one look at him and decided he could never make a Mr Darcy and that was that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, perhaps I made a bit of a hasty decision,’ I said. Along with the whole of the female population – apart from Rach’s cousin - Mr Darcy in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice was our sex god. For months after watching it I went through life mentally dismissing anyone who hadn’t just staggered out of a nearby lake wearing a wet white shirt. As the months went by boyfriend-less, I decided I was aiming too high. Unfortunately Paul Hardman had been introduced to me about a week after watching it.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Kazza, darkly. ‘There’s always the possibility of him turning gay.’ The girls had never let me forget that one. I’d met Billy at the local gym a year ago, as I was pretending to work out with some rather feeble weights.

  He invited me for a drink and one thing led to another. But it all went belly-up two months later when I discovered he had a crush on one of the male riding instructors at the yard.

  Since then I had virtually given up hope of finding a red-blooded male.

  ‘I’m sure it won’t be like that, when Bee gets her act together and phones him,’ said Rach, breaking into laughter. ‘But we might have to warn him that he’s set for the turn.’

  ‘Oh ha, very funny,’ I said. ‘You’ll be sorry when I get a date with Steve.’

  Steve Clark ran the livery yard where we kept our horses. He was, quite frankly, the most gorgeous bloke any of us had ever seen for a long time. Well up there in the ‘Mr Darcy’ league, in fact. We all spent most of our weekends down at the yard, usually neglecting the horses, because Steve always provided a distraction. As far as we knew he didn’t have a girlfriend, and it was not for the want of trying that we were all desperate to get a date. So far none of us had. The only one of us that didn’t actually fancy him was Tash, and none of us could understand why. He was the stuff fantasy was made of, but as Tash pointed out, he didn’t have a wedding ring on, so he didn’t do it for her.

  ‘Yeah, right, Bee - there’s more chance of Paul Hardman staying straight than you getting a date with Steve,’ laughed Kazza. ‘Or if you did, he’d probably rip you off.’

  I groaned inwardly. The girls had never let me forget about my Turkish toy boy Vahid, whom I had fallen hopelessly in love with whilst on holiday one year with Kaz and he had conned me out of my £2000 life savings. I was confident that wouldn’t happen with Paul as he was well off anyway.

  The meeting was declared closed. My task was to get a date with Paul. ‘Once you’ve got him, then we step in,’ said Kaz. ‘Before that, it’s up to you.’

  ***

  An email flashed up on my screen from Kazza the next morning. I put down the

  model portfolio I was looking through and clicked the mouse. There it was, the minutes of the first meeting.

  PROGRESS REPORTS

  * The word husband was described to Tash who said she now understood.

  Tash to be tested at the next meeting.

  * Tash’s blind date. Tash is having second thoughts about her blind date - the best friend of a guy she knows from school - even though he does have a floppy fringe.

  *A strategy was discussed for Kazza’s works do. Kazza had been after James from work for ages, but so far no good, because he had a live-in girlfriend. There was a split vote as to whether she should pounce on him or not. Bee and Tash argued not - as a virtually married man takes a lot more work. But Rach and Soph decided it was a challenge worth taking.

  * HHC to make voodoo doll of work bloke’s girlfriend for Kazza.

  Kazza got very excited at this suggestion and even wanted the doll to be put on top of her computer at work. We pointed out that she didn’t want James to see her as some weirdo stalking freak who might start boiling the girlfriend’s hamster. We agreed she could keep it on her dressing table at home.

  * Soph’s school reunion was discussed and a list of her old school friends (male and good-looking only) to be put together.

  * Paul Hardman’s return from holiday is imminent. Bee to make herself available on whatever night he wants to go out.

  * Soph’s wedding. Obviously as the first bride to be, the wedding was discussed.r />
  Soph stated she had seen two potential men this week - a man in a tractor and

  some bloke in Kentucky Fried Chicken (he had five stars on his name badge, so Soph thought he must be a good prospect.)

  * Will Paul Hardman turn gay? Given Bee’s track record this is a distinct possibility. Bee therefore to rush him down the aisle before he announces he’s having a sex change.

  * Rules for avoiding lesbianism were concocted. Kazza’s concerns had thrown everyone into a mild panic. It was decided the following steps needed to be taken.

  1. No one should have any extra body piercing. Rach even decided she would take her second earrings out.

  2. Shaved heads were a definite no.

  3. Wear lots of pink

  4. Do not leave stable boots outside the doorstep. We were all bemused at that one, which was Tash’s suggestion. But she assured us that the hefty Doc Marten type boots we all used for mucking out could be interpreted as female biker type clothing.

  5. Accessorise. Rach decided she might put the second earrings back in after all.

  It had been a good meeting, I mused afterwards, as I flicked half-heartedly through our list of models. I was trying to find a suitable candidate for a shoot the following week for a jeans commercial. But my mind just wasn’t on the job that morning. It was full of last night’s meeting. Would the Husband Hunters work? Would this be the year when I would actually find myself with a decent boyfriend for once in my life? I was pinning all my hopes on my friends coming up trumps. But heaven knows, we all needed a lot of help when it came to choosing a decent man. I thought back over the years that we had known each other and disaster after disaster just kept filling my mind, like a tangled cinema reel of film. We were going to need all the help that we could get.

  ***

  I woke up in a cold sweat, and looked at the luminous green hands of my bedside clock: three a.m. My heart was racing and my mind was whirling. What had woken me up? Then I remembered. I’d been dreaming about ringing Paul Hardman - I’d been trying to get through and the phone wouldn’t connect. Then suddenly a woman’s voice had boomed down the phone: ‘He’s my husband now; get your thieving hands off him.’ And that’s when I’d woken up, heart palpitating with the embarrassment. As my breathing calmed down I told myself it was just a dream, that it could never happen like that, and Scarlett had assured me he was still single and asked about me occasionally.

  Suddenly I hated the idea of the HHC. If I hadn’t gone out all guns blazing to set up this stupid club, then I wouldn’t be under all this awful pressure now. I would have carried on slobbing through my love life, perhaps hitting thirty, then forty, still hankering after younger and younger models who walked into the agency looking for work.

  Now instead, I was wide awake at three a.m., when I desperately needed my eight hours’ sleep each night, and woe betide anyone who stopped me from getting it. Instead here I was lying in bed with my stomach churning at the thought of actually picking up the phone and speaking to Paul. God, he was going to think I was desperate. I know he had been great husband material and all that, and I couldn’t blame the girls for trying to get me hooked back up with him. But c’mon. I’d already given him the brush-off once - what man was going to take that on the chin and come back for more?

  I spent the next two hours obsessing about ringing Paul and running through all the possible scenarios in my head - him refusing to answer the phone when he saw my number flash up, or him rather patronisingly telling me that he’d met someone else.

  Consequently I slept right through my eight a.m. alarm call. I awoke at ten to nine, pulled a comb through my wild mane, dug out a white shirt from the washing basket and tried to smooth out the creases with my hand. Scarlett had already left for a six a.m. shoot by the time I’d got up. After the shoot, she walked into reception, blond hair gleaming and green eyes full of concern, and cornered me by the fax machine.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter, Bee?’ she said, taking a compact out of her Louis Vuitton handbag and applying more nude gloss to her gorgeous mouth. ‘You look like crap and I heard you crashing around in the kitchen early this morning.’

  So I told Scarlett about my awful dream. She rolled her eyes at me.

  ‘Paul will probably be delighted to hear from you,’ she reassured me, offering me some of the nude lip-gloss in a desperate attempt to smarten me up.

  It was all right for Scarlett. She wasn’t some ball of anxiety when it came to her love life. Scarlett had never had any disasters in hers as she had met Simon when she was sixteen, and they were totally, sickeningly in love. It was like permanently living on some feel-good romantic comedy set, watching the two main characters who gave you a warm fuzzy feeling inside, because everything was going so well for them.

  I might have been forgiven for having just a small streak of jealousy sparking up now and again, but I couldn’t feel jealous of Scarlett, she was just too nice. But it was a bit infuriating that she thought everyone else was as nice to each other as she and Simon were.

  That didn’t happen in the average love life, as I pointed out to the girls when we sat down for our next meeting the following week.

  ‘So, Bee, let’s have it,’ demanded Kazza, as she ripped into a piece of garlic bread. ‘Did you speak to Paul?’

  I confessed to them that I hadn’t, but, I protested, it hadn’t been for the want of trying. I’d dialled his number, putting 141 in front of it so he wouldn’t know it was me, in case he’d actually miraculously stored my number from a year ago. But his phone was switched off, and it kept going to answering machine.

  ‘Hi, this is Paul Hardman here,’ his voice came down the line. ‘I do want to speak to you, so leave your number and I’ll call you back. I rang it a few times, and let myself think that it was going to actually be this easy. Paul did want to speak with me - all I had to do was leave him my number and he would call straight back. Ha! Easy-peasy!

  But I chickened out of leaving my number and instead phoned Scarlett, demanding to know why his phone was switched off.

  ‘I’ve just found out that Paul has gone to Greece for a week’s holiday with his mates,’ she said.

  Hurrah, I had a week’s reprieve. So I promised the girls that I would phone him back in exactly four days, three hours and about forty-eight minutes, as soon as his plane touched down at Heathrow airport.

  Rach looked at me suspiciously. ‘Well, make sure you do, Bee,’ she ordered. ‘Trust us, Paul is the way forward.’ Ha! The girls were taking Paul’s return a bit too seriously. I was starting to wish that I’d never put him up for suggestion in the first place. ‘Honestly, Bee,’ I’ve got a feeling in my bones about Paul Hardman,’ Rach continued. ‘He could turn out to be the one.’

  The minutes came through the following morning.

  PROGRESS REPORTS.

  * Bee to be given behavioural therapy where she is to be shown pictures of handsome brown-eyed men and to be pricked with a pin in her arm, so she associates handsomeness with pain.

  * Soph’s school reunion. That was coming up in two weeks’ time, and Soph was wondering whether she would go. It was decided that she should go and see if any of the nerds had turned into Brad Pitt look-alikes.

  * Kazza’s voodoo doll of James girlfriend. She produced it and we all roared with laughter. It looked more like Kermit the frog. ‘Well, she has got big eyes,’ Kazza had retorted huffily. It was resolved that Soph, who had once done a needlework course when she was eight, would help her out.

  * Soph’s wedding. Magazines were produced, and the style of the bridesmaids’ dresses were argued over. We decided on a slim column-like dress with a cropped bolero jacket over the top of it. Kazza said if it turned out to be a summer wedding we could drop the fur trim off the jacket and opt for a lace version instead.

  I finished reading the minutes, and clicked them off my computer screen. God, I really hoped they would forget about that pin thing. The girls were determined I would never fall in love with, and be flee
ced by, any Turkish toy boys again, but it sounded really painful.

  So all I had to do was phone Paul Hardman. I resolved to do it that evening - and maybe start the beginning of the rest of my life. I was banking on him to be my knight in shining armour after all.

  *********************************

  CHAPTER TWO

  Soph was definitely the most beautiful of us all. She was petite, with long golden hair, naturally olive skin and gorgeous bright blue eyes.

  At twenty-five, she was the youngest too, but to give her credit, she is the only one of us ever to come close to getting hitched. She’d had a wedding planned three years ago, but there had been one problem. Henry, her boyfriend, had suddenly decided he had cold feet, just two days before their big day. He had decided that the two-point four life with Soph wasn’t for him, and he decided to go and trek down the Amazon instead.

  Tash had been furious when we had comforted Soph afterwards and had mopped her endless tears.

  ‘Well, I hope he meets that willie-seeking fish thingy whilst he’s up to his waist in smelly Amazon water,’ Tash had declared, hugging Soph.

  We had all stopped mopping Soph’s tears and gaped at her. ‘What willie thing?’ I asked.

  ‘When a man flips his thingy out in the jungle to go for a wee, if he’s standing in a river, there’s this fish and it swims right up his thingy,’ Tash explained.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ snorted Rach.