THE HUSBAND HUNTERS

by LUCY LAING

  ‘How on earth did you pull that one off?’ asked Rach in wonder.

  ‘Well, I was teaching year thirteen hockey, and I pretended I’d gone over on my ankle,’ said Kaz. ‘I’d seen James’s car driving in and he had to drive past the hockey field to get to the car park. So I shouted to one of the girls to stop his car and bring him over to help me.

  ‘So I was there in my little gym skirt, and he came running over, and tried to help me to my feet, but I told him I couldn’t walk on it, so he picked me up and carried me down to the staff room.’

  ‘Only you could pull that one off,’ I said, laughing. ‘Then what happened?’ ‘He sat me on a chair and went to the kitchen to get some ice. He wrapped it in a towel and put it on my ankle. It was quite sexy actually,’ said Kaz. ‘And he phoned me later on that evening to see how it was, so that’s a bonus.’

  We were all wild with excitement. This was a real step forward.

  ‘You could ask him out for a coffee to say thanks,’ said Tash.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Kaz. ‘I will.’

  I read through the minutes the following morning. Kaz was doing a really good job recording the meetings, I thought approvingly as I scanned down the list. I always got carried away during the meetings, suggesting and arguing over points, and I would never remember it all to write down. But she seemed to have no problem with it.

  PROGRESS REPORTS.

  * Soph’s school reunion went well. Despite us thinking that old schoolmate Joe definitely wasn’t husband material, he has turned out to be fairly perfect after all. But he is married already. Unanimous agreement that Soph should have snapped him up at the age of eleven and held on to him. Although we hoped that his kissing technique had drastically improved. Soph said she was sure it would have – she couldn’t see his wife putting up with having to wipe slimy digestive crumbs off her chin for the last five years.

  Poor William hadn’t fared so well. He was still tiny, although he had confessed to Soph he worked in a cinema ticket booth and stood on a box in the booth so people wouldn’t think he was so short. ‘It hasn’t worked with the ladies though,’ he had sighed to Soph. ‘As soon as I step off the box to get anything out of the back cupboard, the game’s up.’

  * As there weren’t many husband hopefuls at Soph’s school reunion, she is instructed to get onto Friends Reunited and try and catch up with any schoolmates who weren’t at the reunion.

  * All girls to watch at least one re-run episode of Casualty each week instead of Sex and the City. As Kaz pointed out, you never know when you will be in an expensive clothes shop and a small child will start to choke on a boiled sweet. Rach got excited at the prospect of saving some small child’s life who turned out to be the son or daughter of some rich billionaire, who would give her a million pound reward for saving their life. I pointed out that she might have to hang out around Tiffany’s or Harrods to save a billionaire’s son, rather than Karen Millen.

  * Kaz to ask James for a coffee to thank him for helping her with her fictitious ankle injury. Rach told her that if she fakes another injury to make sure it is either raining, or carry a bottle of water with her when she collapses and when he scoops her up, she can ‘accidentally’ pour the bottle of water down the front of James’s shirt and imagine him as Mr Darcy. I like the sound of that idea so much, I almost contemplate doing it myself, outside the agency and getting a man, any man would do, to carry me inside in his wet shirt. I could even get Nick to do it, close my eyes and pretend it was a rich nineteenth-century landowner. Mind you, if I attempted to pour a bottle of water down Nick’s shirt, he would probably dump me in the nearest puddle.

  * Soph told us that she had taken her wedding dress to a charity shop to be sold. She is so worried about ending up like Miss Havisham that she said she needed to get the dress out of her house as soon as possible.

  I rang Tash later on that day. ‘I’m sure Soph was hiding something about that school reunion,’ I said.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ asked Tash.

  ‘I think she may have met someone and, for some reason, didn’t want to tell us,’ I said, darkly. ‘She looked cagey, in my opinion.’

  I’m usually quite good with intuitive feelings. My grandma always said she was a bit psychic and had funny feelings that almost always proved to be correct. She had passed it on to me, and my hunches were usually right too. I told Tash this. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said. ‘But why wouldn’t Soph want to tell us if she had met the man of her dreams. I’m sure she would be shouting it from the rooftops.’

  ‘But what if there is something wrong or embarrassing about him,’ I insisted. ‘She’s not going to want to tell us about it then, is she, as she knows we wouldn’t approve. He could be a drug dealer or something.’

  ‘Soph isn’t going to want to marry a drug dealer,’ said Tash, reasonably. ‘I think your imagination is running away with you, Bee.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said to Tash, which clearly meant that I didn’t believe her. ‘We’ll wait and see.’

  ‘I’m surprised you get any work done at all, Mystic Meg,’ said Nick, down my right ear. Nearly jumping out of my skin, I swivelled round. He had been eavesdropping behind my chair on my conversation with Tash.

  ‘Eavesdropping is so unattractive,’ I told him snootily. ‘In fact I get a lot more work done than you ever would, purely because I’m female and you’re a man.’ He raised his eyebrows at me. So I carried on. ‘The simple explanation is that a woman can multi-task and a man can’t. Women can answer the phone at the same time as carrying on writing an email and scribbling down a phone message. I’ve heard you swear if someone dares to hand you a cup of coffee at the moment you switch on your computer. You can’t handle two things at once, apart from fiddling with your schoolgirl’s boobs at the same time. And you’re probably not very good at that either,’ I added snippily.

  ‘Well, if you’re so psychic what am I thinking now?’ said Nick, refusing to take offence.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, with a theatrical sigh. ‘I can’t switch this gift on and off, you know, like a light switch.’

  ‘I’m thinking how attractive you look when you get all angry,’ said Nick, laughing, as he left me spluttering into my coffee. He always seemed to get the better of me, however hard I tried to squash him down. Most of the time Nick and I got on, but there was something about him that really irritated me. I think it’s because I always got the feeling that he was laughing at me. And that was like a red rag to a bull. I switched on my computer. I’d been back from lunch for an hour already and I hadn’t done any work at all. There I was boasting about my multi-tasking to Nick when I hadn’t done a thing, except talk to Tash. I hope he hadn’t noticed. But it was very mysterious about Soph. If she had met someone at her reunion, then why on earth wasn’t she telling us about it. Perhaps it was a teacher and she thought we wouldn’t approve. I was determined to get to the bottom of this. My funny feelings didn’t usually turn out wrong. She was definitely hiding something.

  ***

  We hadn’t let Rach forget her hypnosis session. The girls all thought it would be good for her to see if she had harboured any long-term deeply repressed grudge against me for stealing from under her nose the very first boy she had ever fancied. Personally, I didn’t think it was a great idea. It was water under the bridge and I was quite happy to let things lie. Was Pete Griffiths worth falling out over, nearly twenty years later? Back then he had been a young demigod, now he was probably balding, overweight and didn’t even run to the local shops any more, let alone around a football pitch.

  But the girls were adamant. Soph’s mum had arrived back from holiday, the scary eyeball pendant had been rooted out and was hanging in Soph’s room, and the air was filled with tension.

  Rach was a bit worried that she was going to be transported too far back, and she would be in the middle ages, wearing a hessian sack with no access to any hot showers, and be having to tear raw meat off the bone with her teeth.


  Tash, who had once read a book about hypnosis, reassured her that if she started thrashing around on the couch and emitting some cavewoman-type growls, then Soph’s mum could bring her out of it anyway.

  I was still gutted about Paul and the embarrassment of being stood up, so even if Rach did punch me in the mouth whilst she was under, I decided it wouldn’t make me feel any worse than I was already feeling anyway.

  We all trooped around to Soph’s mum’s house. Her mum, Maria, is a bit eccentric. She loves wearing big baggy dresses, with strings of massive beads around her neck, and her dark hair is always wild and backcombed.

  ‘C’mon in, darlings,’ she trilled, after we had piled out of Tash’s car that evening and walked up the path. Soph was already there, and she got us some drinks as Maria led us into the lounge. I had to choke back a laugh when we walked in. It was really atmospheric. Maria had lit lots of tiny candles around the room, and there were a couple of incense sticks burning too. The chaise lounge took pride of place in the middle of the room, draped with a silver cloth. Rach looked a bit scared, and hung back as we all walked in.

  Soph handed round some large glasses of wine and we all sat drinking whilst Maria told us about her holiday and how she’d been holed up in some wooden hut that had been passed off as a spiritual retreat at the top of the Mallorcan hills.

  ‘We had to walk down the hill to the well at the bottom to get fresh water every day.’ She smiled. ‘It was the most fabulous holiday.’

  Privately I couldn’t think of anything worse. If the hotel wasn’t five star and plush then I didn’t want to know. Two years ago I went camping once at a horse-jumping event and hated every second of it. It had been a blisteringly hot weekend in August, but even though the tent was like a Saudi Arabian oven throughout the day, it was as cold as the South Pole at night - there was no sense to it. We had to have industrial-strength sleeping bags to feel even mildly warm. And then there is that hideous time when you wake in the middle of the night and desperately need a wee, and for the first few seconds you imagine you are in your nice warm bed at home, and only have to step out on the rug to walk a few feet to the bathroom. But not in a tent. Oh no. The toilet block is always invariably miles away, and you can’t find the torch. And if you are like me, who needs strong contact lenses to see anything more than an inch away from my nose, you wouldn’t be able to find them anyway. No, it was much more humiliating than that. I was so desperate, I had to wee each night in a bucket in a tent and then empty it the next day.

  ‘Imagine that you are living in Pemberly with Mr Darcy - and it’s like a bedpan,’ consoled Rach, who had come with me to the event. ‘That’s what they had to do every night, and they didn’t moan about it.’

  ‘I don’t think that Mr Darcy would have wanted to see my fat ass hanging over a bucket each night,’ I snapped back. ‘I wouldn’t mind swanning around in front of him with my heaving bosom. But I draw the line at crouching over a bedpan.’

  So the thought of no amenities, not even running water, would be my idea of a hellish holiday, I thought, as Soph’s mum started to gather up her skirts and arrange herself comfortably at the side of the couch.

  Rach scrambled awkwardly onto the silver throw and lay down, looking petrified. She was rigid, with her arms clamped by her sides. Maria reached out and picked up the scary eyeball pendant from the table and started to swing it in front of Rach’s eyes. She started to talk in a slow soft voice, and we all sat there absolutely mesmerised, wondering what was going to happen.

  Slowly, after a long five minutes, Rach’s eyes started to close and Maria asked her where she was.

  ‘In a sandpit,’ said Rach, sleepily.

  ‘Who are you with?’ asked Maria.

  ‘With Bee and we are playing with a slug,’ said Rach. I choked back a laugh at that one. I hoped she stopped right there, before she remembered that I stuffed the slug in her mouth.

  ‘Now go back even further,’ instructed Maria. ‘You are in a room and you have a line of boxes in front of you. They all have numbers in front of them. Open whichever of the boxes you are drawn to.’ Rach’s hand reached out in front of her and fumbled with an imaginary box. That was a bit freaky. ‘Now which year are you in?’ asked Maria, softly.

  ‘I’m in 1867,’ said Rach. Oh no, I was hoping this wasn’t going to happen. I hope I don’t appear in this. She started to cry softly.

  ‘What’s the matter,’ asked Maria. ‘Who is making you upset?’

  ‘It’s Robert. Why won’t he come with me as he promised? He said we would be together. What have I done wrong? ‘whimpered Rach, still with her eyes closed. We all looked at each other. What was happening - what was she remembering?

  ‘What are you wearing?’ asked Maria gently.

  ‘A white apron that is tied at the back. A thick skirt and a white cap on my head,’ said Rach. ‘I don’t like the skirt though, it’s really itchy. I’d like to take it off, but I don’t have another one.’

  By the sounds of it, Rach was a servant girl. We all leant forward in our seats, desperate to hear more.

  ‘Robert, Robert,’ she called out fretfully. ‘Wait.’

  ‘Who is Robert?’ said Kaz, a bit loudly.

  ‘Shhh,’ we all said, turning on her.

  ‘Who is Robert?’ asked Maria, softly.

  ‘He’s the landowner’s son and we have lain together,’ wept Rach. ‘Oh, there she is, oh no!’

  I didn’t like the sound of this one. Who was the ‘she’ that Rach was referring to? I started nervously fiddling with my bracelet. Rach’s arm suddenly lashed out. I was glad I’d not sat by the side of the couch.

  ‘Who is there? Who is with Robert?’ asked Maria.

  ‘It’s Annie. He’s got his arm around her. This can’t be happening to me,’ said Rach.

  ‘What’s happening?’ carried on Maria, gently.

  ‘He wants to be with me, not Annie. But I can see him with her through the window, with his arm around her, and they are talking to her father. It can’t be true. He loves me, not her.’ Rach broke out into wild sobbing, and Maria reached forward and grabbed her hand.

  ‘Rach, it’s time to come back. Go back to the boxes and close the one you opened.’ Her hand reached out again in front of her. ‘Good girl,’ now slowly open your eyes because you are back here.’

  Rach slowly opened her eyes and blinked a few times. Then she struggled upwards and sat up, looking around at all of us. It was a bit spooky to think that she had remembered a past life.

  ‘That Annie was obviously you, Bee,’ said Tash accusingly, when Maria had stood up and switched on the light again. ‘You’ve obviously got off with people that she fancies in previous lives. Pete Griffiths clearly wasn’t the first one.’

  ‘Hey, that’s not fair. You don’t know it was me,’ I protested, but privately agreeing with Tash that this Annie character probably was me. The daughter of a wealthy landowner. I liked the sound of that. I knew I wasn’t cut out for camping - and this had just explained why.

  The girls were a bit funny with me for the rest of the night, thinking that I had doubly done the dirty on Rach. Luckily she couldn’t remember any of it. Oh well, there was nothing that I could do about it now, I thought, as I walked into work the following morning. Actually there was. I could track down Pete Griffiths to see what he was like now.

  If he was nothing like the footballing sex machine we had both remembered, then that might settle things once and for all. If Rach was harbouring deeply repressed ‘if only’ thoughts about Pete Griffiths, then it might cure her. I made a mental note to suggest it at the next meeting.

  A few days later Rach rang me up at the agency. I tentatively said ‘hi’ when I saw her number come up on my mobile. I almost held my breath after answering, as I hadn’t spoken to her since the hypnosis session. If all her past life had come back to her overnight, I was for the high jump.

  ‘We need to call an emergency meeting,’ she said, her voice shaking a little. ‘Mike has just ca
lled round completely out of the blue and asked to meet up.’ I gulped. The last time Rach had seen her ex-boyfriend Mike he was completely naked on her sister Sarah’s bed - and she hadn’t clapped eyes on him since.

  ‘Rach, he’s a complete rat,’ I reminded her sharply. ‘You should have just thrown one of your expensive Jimmy Choo’s - if you had any, but those strappy silver sandals from Topshop would have done the job just as well - right at his two timing cheating face.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘But I still felt something for him when I saw him on the doorstep. My stomach just flipped over.’

  ‘I know, that’s completely understandable, but you haven’t been with another man since him, so you haven’t got him out of your system, that’s all,’ I reminded her. ‘But you’re right, we need another meeting. I’ll call all the girls and let them know.’

  ‘What’s happened - has one of the Crones had a crisis?’ said Nick, chuckling as I put down the phone to Rach. I swung round on my swivel chair to see him trying not to laugh.

  ‘I didn’t see you come in,’ I said accusingly.

  ‘Anyway, tell me how did your date with Paul go the other night?’ he asked, coming over to sit on my desk. ‘Am I allowed to go and buy a hat yet?’

  There was only one thing for it: I had to tell Nick the truth. Being a photographer at the agency, he knew Scarlett and her crowd of friends, so it was bound to get out sooner or later. And I didn’t want to look a bigger plonker than I already felt if I lied to him and he later found out the real truth.