THE HUSBAND HUNTERS
Page 10
‘Hazel would have a fit if she knew that he had turned to you,’ said Rach.
‘I agree, it’s a bit ironic to say the least,’ I added.
Tash looked offended.
‘I know I’m great in bed,’ she said. ‘But I have got a mouth and a brain as well. What do you think we did for thirty days in that bed and breakfast? Even I couldn’t keep it going solidly for all that time. We had some good talks,’ she added wistfully. ‘About what we’d like to do in the future and what type of people we wanted to be, and that sort of thing.’
‘Has she confessed to him about the affair?’ asked Kaz.
‘No, he found out by chance,’ said Tash. ‘She told him she was going round to see a friend for the evening, and then that friend phoned the house that same evening to talk to Hazel, and Rob – that’s Mr Beale - answered the phone. He said to the friend that he thought Hazel had come round to see her that night, and she said no she hadn’t.
‘He waited until Hazel got back that night and asked her had she had a good time over at her friend’s house, and she said yes, they had. He asked her what they’d done, and she said that the friend had cooked her lasagne, then they had sat in her lounge drinking a couple of glasses of wine and chatting. The more she was explaining, the more she was digging herself into a hole.
‘He let her describe the whole evening to him, then told her that it was funny, but her friend had phoned the house to talk to her that evening.’
‘I’d have loved to have seen her face then,’ said Kaz. ‘It must have been a real picture.’
‘Well, I think she went some sort of ghastly green, by all accounts,’ said Tash. ‘She knew the game was up. She confessed to Rob that she’d been having an affair for the last six months and she was in love with this gym instructor.’
‘What’s happened now?’ I said. ‘Has he kicked her out?’
‘Not yet, I think they are trying to work it out - their girls are only five and three - but he’s in bits about it,’ said Tash. ‘That’s why he needed a shoulder to cry on,’ she added sharply, looking around at us all.
She did have a point. Kaz had only seen her talking to Mr Beale in the coffee shop and when we saw her by the pavilion she was only hugging him, not lying flat on her back with her legs in the air.
Tash had then gone on to demand not only a verbal apology that evening around the table, which we all dutifully gave, but she demanded that it be written into the minutes too. So there it was, the following morning.
PROGRESS REPORTS.
* We all apologised to Tash after misjudging her. Tash has behaved thoughtfully and considerately to Mr Beale under the present circumstances and should be applauded for her Good Samaritan-like behaviour. (Tash had demanded that she dictate the full apology to Kaz to be recorded in the minutes. Privately I thought that Tash was taking it a bit too far. With her track record, we had good reason to think she was shagging Mr Beale yet again, ten years on. She was hardly Mother Theresa, after all.)
* We are going to cordially invite Jennifer Aniston into the HHC as an honorary member. Rach had protested she wasn’t leaving the HHC, only trying to get pregnant, so there was no way that Jennifer was going to have her place. So we decided that Jen could be an overseas member. We could link up to her by Skype and email her the minutes. I’m sure she’d love her love life to be sorted out by someone else. Then she could sit back and concentrate on her acting. Bee to source an email address for Jennifer’s fan club and draft the email.
* Soph’s wedding dress has been spotted hanging in the window of the charity shop. Kaz told her that if it didn’t sell, the charity shop might ring her up and tell her to take it back. Soph went white at the thought of it. (I might take pity on her and get one of my mum’s friends to go in and buy it to put Soph out of her misery.)
* Soph said that she had contacted a few old school friends through Friends Reunited, and there was one hopeful, a guy called Ben who had been in her form and who now worked in the local garden centre. Soph said he’d just been moved up into the potted plants section from the seedlings department, so that was promising. We all got a bit excited at this. It was the only bit of news we had from Soph for months. Green-fingered Ben could be the start of something good.
* Kaz reported a little gloomily that James and Caroline were currently on a week’s holiday in Portugal. Tash told her to hitch the skirt up a little higher, and Kaz said that she couldn’t as it would resemble a belt, not a skirt.
* Kaz took the beauty flash balm pictures and announced that she thought Bee’s skin now looked the most promising. (Hurrah! At last! I think Kaz has finally put the cellulite argument behind her.)
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CHAPTER SIX
Kaz came through the doors of the model agency looking like she had just won the lottery - but had accidentally flushed her ticket down the toilet.
‘What’s up?’ I asked, picking up my handbag. We were going to Saleros for some lunch, and it had been Kaz’s idea. Now she looked like I was dragging her there by her hair. ‘On second thoughts tell me when we are on the way,’ I added, as Nick was sitting at his computer and had pricked his ears up when Kaz came in.
Nick asked me about the HHC every week, usually when he had just finished a picture shoot and had lots of time to kill. Because my friends’ love lives were a lot more interesting than any model bookings I was making, I always felt compelled to stop and tell him the latest news - although obviously an edited version. I don’t know why, as he invariably took the mick out of us. But I did enjoy talking to him about it, to get a male point of view, even though I had to sometimes pretend to be offended at the things he said. It even secretly made me laugh when he called us the Has-Beens, Hags, and Crones, even though I never let him see me laughing at that one. I had to keep some dignity.
But I had to draw the line somewhere. Kaz was obviously upset, so I didn’t want Nick eavesdropping on her problems.
She waited until we were sat in Saleros before telling me her news.
‘Do you remember Pete?’ she said. ‘The guy who beat me up a few years ago.’
As if I could forget that name. All of us had wanted to go and rip his testicles off after we’d heard what he’d done to Kaz..
‘My mum’s dentist’s daughter is now going out with him,’ said Kaz. ‘I found out by chance. She was telling mum about her daughter Lisa having met this guy Pete. She isn’t happy about him because she told my mum she thinks he looks like a rough sort – but she doesn’t know the half of it.’
‘How do you know it’s the same guy?’ I said.
‘She showed mum a picture of Lisa and Pete together at a wedding recently, and mum recognised him.’
‘He might have changed,’ I said, encouragingly. ‘It was a few years ago. He may have been sorry after what he did to you and changed his ways.’
‘That’s not all,’ carried on Kaz. ‘I was on my way to work this morning and I walked past her near the school gates. She has a son who goes to our school and she was dropping him off. When I walked past her I could see that she had this huge black eye. It looks like he’s been at it again already.’
Her lip started to quiver. ‘It’s all my fault.’ Kaz put her head down on her arms at the table and started to cry.
‘What makes you think that it’s your fault?’ I said, squeezing her shoulder. ‘I should have pressed charges at the time, then it may have stopped him doing it again,’ sobbed Kaz.
‘Even if he had been banged up for a while, or even got a suspended sentence, it may not have stopped it,’ I said, reassuringly. But Kaz wasn’t convinced.
‘I’m going to have to do something about it. Before it gets worse. He could murder someone next,’ she said, her voice rising hysterically.
I was worried about Kaz. I went back to work and brooded about it all afternoon. We had wanted her to report him at the time, yet she had wanted to put it behind her and start afresh. Now her past was coming back to haunt her.
I rang her straight away. She had left school for the afternoon and she was driving straight round to see Lisa.
‘I want to get to the bottom of that black eye,’ she said.
‘Ring me as soon as you have seen her,’ I instructed.
Every time my phone rang that evening, I jumped, expecting it to be Kaz. Finally she rang me just after 10pm. She had been with Lisa for the last five hours.
‘What did she say?’ I asked impatiently. ‘Had he hit her?’
‘Well she tried to deny it,’ said Kaz. ‘I knocked on her door, and I had to knock twice as she didn’t answer at first. When she opened the door to me, it was obvious she had been crying. When I asked her how she had got her black eye, and she told me she had walked into a door. So I said to her ‘that’s what I told people when he hit me.’
‘I bet that came as a shock to her,’ I said.
‘She looked at me in astonishment. She never knew that I’d gone out with him too, in the past,’ said Kaz. ‘So I dug out some photographs of my handbag and showed them to her. It was a picture of me with my bruised face.’
‘I never knew you’d taken any pictures,’ I said, in astonishment. ‘You never told any of us.’
‘I’d taken them at the time, before the bruises faded, and hid the pictures away in a drawer,’ said Kaz. ‘I nearly didn’t take any, but something inside me told me to take some, just in case I ever needed them. I hid them in the bottom of my underwear drawer. I’ve never looked at them again, until now.’
‘What happened when you showed the pictures to Lisa?’ I asked.
‘She took one look at them and broke down sobbing,’ said Kaz. ‘She knew I was telling the truth. I asked her if it was the first time, and she had shaken her head. She kept saying over and over again that he had hit her in front of James, her six year old son.’
Kaz sounded drained with exhaustion.
‘I tried to persuade her to report it to the police,’ she said. ‘I told her I’d hadn’t done, and regretted it so much as she was now standing in front of me and I felt I’d hit her myself. I told her that if I had gone to the police at the time, then I may have spared her this anguish.’
‘What did she say to that?’ I asked.
‘She gave me a hug, telling me it wasn’t my fault and I shouldn’t blame myself. But she’s adamant she’s not going to report him. She’s worried that he may hit James. In the end, I knew I couldn’t persuade her, so I left as I was worried that he was going to come round and find me there. I left her my mobile number and told her to call me if she needed me.’
I could see Kaz’s dilemma. But I had to agree with her. If Lisa didn’t want to report Pete, then there was nothing Kaz could do. If she called the police herself and reported what had happened to Lisa, then Lisa could deny it, and Kaz could get into trouble herself.
I rang off from Kaz, promising to meet her for lunch the next day. I went to run a bath. This husband hunting lark was exhausting, I thought as I ran the hot water. There were five times as many problems as running my own life. Looking after my friends’ lives was turning out to be a full time job.
The next evening, I had to go to a party at a local gallery. It was being held by one of our biggest clients, and we were all expected to attend.
I slicked some coral lip gloss on, and forced some diamond studs through my ears. I hardly ever wore earrings, and I had to virtually re-pierce my ears each time. I’d had them pierced for my 13th birthday, and then I’d had another three piercings into my right ear when I was 17 and going through a short-lived hippy grunge stage.
Rach had come with me to have it done, and I’d wanted to get my nose pierced afterwards. I tried to persuade Rach to have it done too, but even then she was conscious about the size of her nose.
‘I want to get my nose reduced, not bring attention to it, Bee,’ she had said firmly, as we walked through town. Luckily when we had arrived at the rather dingy looking back street shop, with my ear already throbbing from three new studs, the nose stud place had been closed. We’d gone home and luckily I forgot about having it done, and never went back.
Now at nearly 30, I looked in the mirror and thanked God for the millionth time that I didn’t have a stud through my nose. I fastened the back of my earrings, and wiped the spot of blood away with a tissue.
I’d invited Kaz to come with me to the party. When we arrived at the gallery, it was in full swing. Maria, the manager of our model agency was there in all her botoxed glory. Maria had so much lip filler pumped into her swollen lips that she sounded like she had a mouth full of marbles. I’d have told her that it wasn’t a good look – if she hadn’t been my manager and could sack me.
She came over to talk to us and Kaz kept saying ‘sorry, what was that?’ . Maria kept having to repeat herself. I could see Kaz watching in fascination at Maria’s huge pink shining lips struggling to get around the syllables.
A tray went past loaded with canapés. My stomach rumbled as I hadn’t had any time for any dinner. How many could I have without looking exceptionally greedy, I thought, reaching out for several prawn vol au vents and some tomato bruschettas at the same time. I loaded my napkin. I could always follow the waitress round and grab some more in a few minutes. I stuffed one of the vol-au-vents into my mouth and felt a tap on my shoulder, I swung around frantically trying to brush the pastry crumbs from my chin, and came face to face with Nick. I swallowed the vol-au-vent so fast it almost stuck in my throat. Visions of Nick having to give me the Heimlich Manoeuvre to free a wedged prawn from my throat flashed before my eyes. Trust him to catch me at a moment when I’d been stuffing my face. He was grinning at my frantic efforts to appear cool and collected.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked, when I could finally speak again.
‘Fine until you appeared and I started choking,’ I said, glaring at him. ‘What are you doing here anyway?.
‘Maria asked me to exhibit some of my wildlife photography at the gallery tonight,’ he said. ‘So I thought I’d pop by in person and see how it’s going. I’ve had a few offers for a couple of them.’
‘That’s brilliant,’ I said.
‘I’d like you to meet Claire,’ said Nick, pulling at the hand of a girl who was standing behind him. It was his 22 year old nubile student. I had to admit, Nick had done pretty well for himself. Claire was an attractive redhead, who was wearing a simple short metallic grey shift dress, with her hair loose and curly around her shoulders.
She looked effortlessly trendy. I almost ground my teeth with annoyance that Nick hadn’t told me how gorgeous she was. He must be laughing at me behind my back about the HHC and my antics to find a husband, when he had a piece like that, hanging onto his arm. She seemed totally enthralled with everything he had to say, hanging onto his arm and looking adoringly up at him. She must be stupid, I thought cattily.
I actually felt like a Has-Been, Hag and Crone next to her. Suddenly the black trousers, heels and silver sequinned bustier top which I’d thought looked really sophisticated earlier on now made me feel like a dowdy aunt in comparison. My hair felt flat, and I felt conscious of every wrinkle, next to this youthful vision.
I turned to Kaz.
‘Let’s circulate,’ I said, trying to sound important, and flashing Nick a quick smile as we walked off.
‘Is that the Nick from your agency?’ said Kaz, admiringly, looking back over her shoulder. ‘With a girlfriend like that, it’s a good job you didn’t make a play for him Bee. He looks a bit out of your league.’
I nearly spat out the mouthful of champagne I had just swallowed.
‘Kaz, how can you possibly think he’s gorgeous,’ I raged. ‘He looks like he cuts his hair with a knife and fork. He never shaves and he thinks gyms belong on another planet,’ I said, listing Nick’s crimes one by one.
‘And you should see his wardrobe,’ I ca
rried on. ‘I agree he doesn’t look bad tonight as he’s wearing jeans and a black shirt, but normally the fashion police would be having a field day.’
‘I think you’re being a bit harsh. If he was a bit wealthier, I’d have made a play for him myself,’ said Kaz, confidently, helping herself to a mini Yorkshire pudding as the canapé tray went past. I had been so busy slagging Nick off that I hadn’t seen it, and I lunged forward to quickly grab one too, but the waitress had gone. A minute later, there was a tap on my shoulder again. It was Nick holding out a napkin with four mini Yorkshire puddings on it.
‘I saw your attempts a few seconds ago,’ he said. ‘You must be starving, have these.’
Great, so now he thinks I’m a fat pig too, I thought taking the napkin from him. Next to his gorgeous student, I now not only felt about 50, but also the size of a house.
Kaz and I left the party a few hours later and went back home. She was still going on about how attractive Nick was when I dropped her off at her house.
‘I think you missed out there Bee,’ she said, getting out the car. ‘You should have got in there before he settled for a younger model.’
‘But I don’t fancy him at all, and never will,’ I shouted after Kaz as she walked down her path. ‘So how could I have possibly gone out with him?’ She shrugged.
‘You could have grown to fancy him,’ she called back. I wound up the window and drove home, thinking about Nick. He wasn’t my type at all, although I must admit, seeing his girlfriend had needled me.
The next morning I had an idea. Tash had promised to show me how to make Duck a l’Orange, but so far she hadn’t been able to come round . I needed to start making an improvement on my cookery skills, and anyway, how difficult would it be to follow a recipe?