The Trouble with Single Women

by Yvonne Roberts

  The three male guests were fond of their own monologues. The ‘conversation’ consisted more of anecdote competing with anecdote than any interchange of opinions or information.

  In the rare intervals between the male performances, the women made small talk, mainly about the cost of private schooling, the terrors of the Friday afternoon run to their country cottages and the limitations of the local village shop.

  Fee said little. This was partly because she had nothing to say on these subjects and partly because she was aware that she had been judged before she had opened her mouth.

  ‘Oh’, the woman in brocade had pronounced before Fee had barely broken into the homemade bread roll. ‘Don’t tell me, you’re one of those relentlessly driven unattached young women . . .?’

  Fee had smiled non-committally. Ever since that initial comment, the woman had repeatedly made reference to her self-regarding spouse sitting across the table.

  ‘Donald, he’s a lawyer you know, Donald always says . . . Donald thinks . . . Donald and I believe . . . Donald . . . Donald . . .’

  Fee took a covert look at Donald. Even if she had been in the habit of stealing husbands, Donald would have had to be accompanied by a very expensive free gift before he became remotely desirable.

  The woman in brocade spotted Fee’s inspection, misread it and immediately reached across the table for her husband’s hand. He jumped, startled by this unaccustomed show of public affection.

  ‘Christ, Janie,’ he said, irritably, ‘You almost gave me a heart attack.’

  Pâté was followed by venison followed by a chocolate roulade with fresh cream and raspberry coulis.

  ‘This is fabulous,’ Fee said to Shona. ‘It must have taken you all day to prepare. I don’t know how you find the time—’

  As soon as the words were out, she regretted them. She knew that what had been intended as a compliment had been interpreted by the other women around the table – although not Shona – as a poor-little-housewife dig.

  The men, oblivious to these female nuances, chorused their agreement. ‘Absolutely right, Fee.’

  ‘Couldn’t put it better myself, Fiona.’

  ‘A terrific meal, Shona.’

  ‘Look, why don’t I make the coffee?’ Fee offered, desperate for some respite.

  Five minutes later, she was in the kitchen when Edward Spannier entered. She had her back to him but she knew who it was. It happened within seconds. He stood behind her. Without speaking, he ran his hands down her sides and lifted the skirt of her dress in one easy movement to her waist. One foot and a knee were used to wedge her legs further apart. Then, Edward Spannier attempted to insert his hands in Fee’s pants, reaching for warmer flesh.

  Fee paused for longer than she should have done; the boldness of the move had momentarily enticed her. Then she twisted sideways and stepped back hard on the man’s other foot. Edward Spannier swore.

  Fee turned. Her hair had fallen loose with the exertion. His face was that of a spoilt child’s, shocked because he had been denied – and now disbelieving.

  Edward bent to kiss her, pinning her arms. She shook her head partly to avoid his lips, partly to convey her disgust.

  ‘Stop it,’ she whispered fiercely, her anger growing. ‘For God’s sake, stop it.’

  Edward paused. Fee Travers had certainly given him enough of a come-on when they had first met. If she wanted to salve her conscience now, by putting up a bit of a fight, so be it. Edward knew the type.

  He abruptly pushed Fee against the kitchen cupboards and gripped her wrists. Fee kneed him, hard.

  ‘Don’t you ever come near me again,’ she hissed. Edward Spannier groaned and swore again. Fee heard Shona herding her guests from the dining room to the sitting room.

  ‘I’ll be with you in just a tick, Fee,’ Shona’s voice came from the hall, as if warning that time was running out. Her proximity made Edward’s actions seem all the more contemptuous to Fee.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ Fee whispered, adjusting her dress, and taking several steps away from her host. ‘Or shall I make it plainer? I find you a cheap, repulsive, self-regarding egomaniac.’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap,’ he spat back, smoothing his hair into place. ‘You’re dying for it—’

  Fee said nothing. Protest would only increase the man’s certainty. Shaken, she picked up the tray of coffee and walked out of the kitchen, across the hall and into the sitting room.

  Fee’s hair fell against her cheek as she bent to place the tray on the coffee table. She had forgotten to repin it. All Fee wanted to do was return to the comfort of her own flat and scrub the evening away in the hottest of baths.

  ‘Sugar?’ Shona had repeated the question twice before Fee realized what she was being asked. God, Fee thought, how she hated all this fake civility.

  ‘No, no, thanks—’ she replied. Shona avoided looking at Fee.

  ‘Skin the most perfect marriage and the flesh underneath is often putrid—’ Donald the lawyer was saying about a divorce case he had recently handled.

  ‘Thank God some of us can get it right,’ he added as Edward Spannier, relaxed and smiling, joined the company and gave Shona a peck on the cheek.

  ‘Everything all right, darling?’ he asked confidently.

  Chapter Nineteen

  WHAT DO you want? I’ve got fifteen-stoners . . . I’ve got still living with mother . . . I’ve got totally asexual . . . I’ve got Cliff Richard freaks . . . You name it, we’ve got it.’

  Trish Castle was speaking in the largest boardroom at F.P. & D. Also present were Will Evans, Diana Woods dressed in a frown and olive-green trouser suit, Fee Travers, and a team of five who would be responsible for drawing up HAH!’s strategy. Also present, sitting at the rear of the room, were Imogen Banks and Hilly Byrne. They were conferring about what they would and wouldn’t film to give a flavour of Fee Travers’s life.

  ‘We’ve also got every type of normal,’ Trish Castle added. ‘We’ve put them into focus groups of eight, across the country. Anything you want to know in terms of client reaction, they’ll tell us.’

  ‘Is it the right age range?’ Peter Winford, Fee’s junior, asked.

  ‘Thirty-five-plus . . . single, widowed and divorced and plenty of NPs—’

  ‘NPs?’ Imogen Banks asked, although she’d promised to remain silent and unobtrusive.

  ‘Novice partners,’ Trish Castle replied. ‘Thirty-five-plus and never had a relationship which lasted longer than three months. They also tend never to have lived with anyone—’

  ‘Thirty-five-plus and never had a long-term relationship?’ Imogen Banks queried. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I can assure you—’ Trish Castle’s face was bright pink.

  Fee smiled. As soon as she had agreed to take part in the film, Imogen Banks’s hitherto subdued image had been shed as easily as a snake’s skin. This morning, she was dressed in lime green with crocodile-brown accessories. She had also shoved a pair of large tortoiseshell sunglasses on to the top of her head. Imogen was about as unobtrusive as the seven hills of Rome.

  The group returned to the business in hand. Fee ran over the plans for the following ten days. She had decided to accede to Harry Macklin’s demand that she make use of HAH!’s facilities. This was not because she had any desire to please an F.P & D. client – she had begun to experience a strange sense of recklessness in that area ever since first saying no to Gerry Radcliffe. She had agreed to Macklin’s request because it was probably the quickest route to discovering how not to do it.

  ‘You’re going to look after the new logo, Phil?’ Fee was saying. ‘And you—’

  She was interrupted by a resounding crash as the door to the boardroom was suddenly thrown open. Gill Booth burst in, her maternity Monsoon dress billowing out, so that she resembled one of those more exotic Christmas baubles.

  ‘Oh, God—’ Fee murmured.

  Gill dramatically pointed a finger at Fee and shouted, ‘You lay another finger on my
husband, you . . . you . . . cow . . . and you will be cocktail snacks for vultures—’

  Diana Woods’s frown cleared. Will Evans half rose from his chair in alarm. The scar from his previous encounter with an enraged woman instantly began to sting. Others around the table shifted and shuffled in embarrassment.

  ‘You . . . you . . . you twat,’ Gill shouted again. Then Fee realized that Gill was gesturing not at her – but at someone behind her chair.

  ‘Not you, you!’ Gill was yelling. She was looking straight at Imogen Banks, whose face was without expression. Hilly Byrne was on her feet, her tigerskin clipboard falling to the floor. She loyally placed herself between this madwoman and her boss, mindful of her next pay cheque.

  ‘Imogen?’ Fee queried, bewildered. ‘Imogen and Simon?’

  Gill advanced further into the room, oblivious to the reaction she was causing. ‘You are screwing my husband,’ she spat out. ‘By the time I have finished with you, you won’t only need a heart, you’ll need a lung, kidney and liver bloody transplant too—’

  She began to sprint across the room towards Imogen. Hilly reconsidered her display of valour and hastily returned to her seat. Fee stuck out her foot, tripping Gill who stumbled but didn’t fall.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong woman, Gill,’ Fee attempted to explain. ‘Imogen doesn’t.’

  ‘Oh yes she bloody does,’ Gill snarled. ‘There she bloody is – tête-à-bloody-tête—’

  She pulled out a pile of Polaroids from her handbag. They were smudged but Imogen Banks was unquestionably the figure in every frame with a series of men, including Simon Booth.

  Gill slammed each Polaroid down on the boardroom table.

  ‘She does it with him . . . and him . . . and him . . . and him . . . and especially him—’ She triumphantly produced a photograph of Imogen and Simon, their arms wrapped around each other in what appeared to be the rose garden of a park.

  Gill suddenly turned on Fee. She bent towards her so that their faces were only inches apart. Hatred and pain and fear of abandonment had distorted her features beyond recognition.

  ‘You bloody spinsters are all the same—’ she hissed, unaware that spittle had dribbled down her chin.

  ‘You’re nobody’s friend. Got that?’

  Fee’s bathroom, six hours later, resembled a toy park. Two pedal cars belonging to Ivo and Euan, Percy’s bicycle, a plastic farm, a large box of Thomas the Tank Engine paraphernalia and a wooden doll’s house cluttered the space between the bath and the loo. The spare bedroom was now occupied by the two boys; Gill and Percy had taken over Fee’s bedroom and she had relegated herself to the sofa. It was the least she could do.

  At least, that is what Gill had implied when she had phoned Fee at the office in the afternoon and announced that she had left Simon.

  ‘Stay with me,’ Fee had offered immediately. It had been a long time since she had been able to do anything for Gill. And they had been friends, of sorts, for years. Perhaps the good times would now return?

  ‘Of course I’ll stay,’ Gill had replied.

  Now, while Fee struggled to house a giant box of cornflakes in a food cupboard plainly designed for a couple who skipped breakfast, seven-year-old Percy was expressing disapproval at the contents of Fee’s fridge.

  ‘It’s all so boring,’ Percy pronounced. ‘And you drink too much. Mum says you’re one of those secret drinkers. All single people are. You drink because you’re lonely.’

  ‘Give me that,’ Fee demanded, taking a bottle of white wine out of Percy’s hands. She proceeded to open it, then poured herself a glass. Watching Percy, she took a large tumbler from the shelf, placed a tablespoon of wine in it and filled the glass with lemonade.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, giving the tumbler to Percy. ‘Today, I am drinking not because I’m lonely, but because I have you for company.’

  ‘Is that good or bad?’ Percy queried, her face wreathed in smiles at her first very own grown-up drink.

  ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ Fee replied, not uncheerily.

  In the sitting room, Gill lay comatose on the sofa. It was all too much for her. She was a woman who needed control. Now her life had undertaken an ugly transformation. Nothing was planned. She didn’t grieve for the loss of Simon, but she was depressed by her own spectacular lack of judgement. She’d got the right man but the wrong woman; Imogen not Fee. Still, she consoled herself, it could just as easily have been Fee.

  ‘It’s all your fault, you do realize that, don’t you?’ she said as Fee came into the room and handed her a glass of wine.

  Fee barely took in Gill’s words. On the balcony, unsupervised, the twins were shaking her fuchsia vigorously. Pink and purple petals now lay scattered like battered confetti.

  ‘Here,’ Fee commanded Percy, who had followed her into the room. ‘Put this on.’ She handed Percy a video of Singing in the Rain – the closest her collection came to children’s entertainment. Then Fee pulled the two boys down from the balcony’s wrought-iron railings. They giggled. They were jubilant, intrigued by the possibilities for mortal danger offered by unexpectedly moving into a first-floor flat.

  ‘It’s gone,’ Ivo said proudly. Fee glanced over the balcony and saw two of her cushions – two of her large, silk, cream cushions – lying on the flowerbed below.

  ‘Christ, they’re only cushions,’ Gill commented sanguinely from the sofa, observing the changing emotions on Fee’s face – anguish, outrage, resignation.

  Of course, these were more than cushions. They were large and cumbersome and Fee had suffered extreme discomfort carrying them back on the plane from Thailand. Their hand-painted design – which would surely never withstand the trauma of dry-cleaning – coordinated beautifully with the cream and white sitting room. Or at least, it had.

  Fee experienced a moment of blinding revelation. She recognized that if she didn’t accept that a cushion was just a cushion at least for the period that Gill’s brood was with her, she would surely go mad.

  ‘Come and listen to the nice songs—’ Fee coaxed the twins instead. The three-year-olds obediently followed her into the sitting room and sat on the floor in front of the television alongside their sister.

  ‘I’m drunk,’ Percy told the two boys proudly. ‘Really drunk.’

  Three hours later, Gill was still reclining on the sofa. Fee had bathed and fed the twins and put them to bed after a chaotic game of hide ’n’ seek. She had also fed Percy and read her a story. Then she had made an emergency dash to the off-licence, prepared supper for herself and Gill, cleared away, tidied, and had filled the washing machine.

  She sat exhausted in the chair, drinking coffee and considering how much office work she had to complete before bedtime.

  Gill had eaten hugely in spite of her emotional upset. Now, she was sipping brandy as if it was beef tea and she was a Victorian heroine wasting away with consumption.

  ‘You do have to shoulder the blame for some of this, you know that, don’t you?’ Gill tried again to pin guilt.

  ‘Do I?’ Fee asked mildly.

  ‘Yes,’ she continued, a little colour coming back into her cheeks as she swigged away.

  ‘First, you distracted me, because I was sure it was you who was up to something. And second, you brought that woman into the house. She took one look at Simon and that was it—’

  ‘Whiff,’ Fee corrected Gill gently. Gill looked confused.

  Fee went on, ‘She took one whiff. Imogen says it was Simon’s smell that did it. That’s why she behaved so totally out of character. She says she hasn’t looked at a man in years. That’s what she says.’ She shrugged as if to absolve herself from responsibility for Imogen Banks’s views.

  Gill was unconvinced. ‘And what about the others? She was kicking up a bit of a stink with them, too, was she?’

  Fee sighed. ‘Imogen claims there’s a totally innocent explanation for all those photographs.’ She glanced at Gill, who had almost emptied her glass.

  ‘At least, that’s what Imog
en says,’ Fee repeated. To be frank, Fee was beyond caring about the veracity or otherwise of Imogen’s explanations. She now mistrusted her thoroughly but she had agreed to take part in Imogen’s film, and she wouldn’t go back on her word. Besides, she wanted to appear in the film.

  ‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ Gill began again, glancing accusingly at Fee. ‘You’ve got no children, no husband, no responsibilities, nobody after you every minute of the day—’

  ‘Just hang on a minute.’ Fee’s patience evaporated. ‘For ages, you’ve been telling me how much I was missing by not having a partner, not being part of a family, not having babies, not being wanted.’ She mimicked Gill’s intonation on the word. ‘Now, you’re telling me the opposite—’

  Gill waved her hand as if to magic away these contradictions.

  ‘Anyway, the real issue is how shall I handle Simon?’ Gill swirled the brandy dregs around in her glass. ‘Should I have him back? Or should I refuse?’

  ‘What if Simon decides he doesn’t want to give it another go?’ Fee asked gently.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Gill snapped.

  ‘I will not ask my mother,’ Fee reached for a towel in the bathroom and caught her shin on a toy bicycle parked dangerously near the basin.

  ‘Shit,’ she said.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit, shit—’ chorused the twins sitting in the bath. Will Evans hid a smile. It was the second night of the Booths’ invasion. He had called in and stayed to cook supper and help Fee with bathtime. Gill had fallen asleep on Fee’s bed. Percy was in the sitting room watching Casablanca.

  ‘If I ask my mother to give us a hand, she will drive us all insane,’ Fee repeated.

  ‘How long are they staying?’ Will asked, hauling Ivo or it might have been Euan out of the bath and turning him upside down to squeals of delight.