*
‘Do I need an apron too?’ he teased, looking at the black cotton apron she had wound around her waist.
She giggled. ‘If you don’t want to spill anything down your trousers it might be a good idea.’ She pointed towards the aprons hanging on a peg behind the door.
He pulled one over his head, wrapped it around his slim hips and stood next to her at the Island. She could feel her skin flushing with his presence and had to make a conscious effort to steady her hands.
‘So, here we are with the Nigiri shape,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘It is basically a block of vinegared rice moulded into this small rectangle shape with whatever topping you want to use, and tied together with a strip of seaweed.
Focusing on the rice shapes in front of her she deliberately didn’t look at his face but showed him how to place a piece of pepper on top of the rice, dampen the end of a Maki strip with a dab of water and wrap it around the two pieces to hold them together firmly.
‘OK, my turn,’ he said excitedly, copying her actions with an oblong of smoked salmon. She encouraged him throughout the process until he got it right and proudly placed his own sample next to hers on the chopping board. ‘Ta Dah!’ he proclaimed, and she giggled at his simple but genuine satisfaction.
She cleared the pieces away onto the bench near the sink and returned to the Island. ‘We can put any type of topping on a Nigiri. And I thought for Friday I could make some samples using new ingredients we’ve never had on site before – maybe squid, octopus, scallop or something. Or any of the ones we saw in Sushi Samba last night.’
At the mention of last night she saw his eyes soften and felt the hair rise at the nape of her neck. She put her hand to her throat as he stared longingly into her eyes and she heard him gasp then take a deep breath. ‘Helen,’ he said slowly. ‘Last night was unbelievable…’
She held her breath. Was he going to say it was a mistake and they should never have kissed, and that he was married and it would be for the best if they simply put it behind them and found a sensible way of working together? Automatically her mind raced, thinking of how she could reply without sounding childish and huffy.
‘And, w-well, I can’t wait to do it again as soon as possible.’
Her heart leapt with happiness and joy and she grinned at him. ‘Phew! I thought for one minute you were going to say it was all a big mistake. And I’ve thought that I was reading too much into well, you know…’
He leaned across the Island and laid his hand firmly over the top of hers. ‘Our kiss?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Yes…’ She fiddled with a piece of Maki between her fingers.
‘Helen, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life,’ he said, resolutely. ‘But believe me – kissing you would never be one of them.’
Her knees suddenly felt weak and she wanted to reach across and kiss him again, just to make sure it really had been as special as she remembered. Oh, my God, she thought, this was really happening and he definitely felt the same as her. The sound of a phone ringing in the distance brought them both back to reality and he grappled under the apron to retrieve his mobile from his trouser pocket.
‘It’s the boss – I’ll have to go,’ he whispered, to which she nodded her understanding.
Chapter Eight
Shortly after six o’clock on Friday Richard put his foot down and headed towards the M11 to drive home to Wilburton for the weekend. It usually took just short of two hours, depending on the traffic – he often found the drive monotonous but tonight he welcomed the time alone to think about Helen and the kiss.
He pulled up at traffic lights and took a long drink from a can of coke and then whistled threw his teeth – she was, he thought, the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him and he couldn’t believe that he could meet someone in five days and feel like he did – it was unbelievable.
He remembered the first day they’d shaken hands and how the touch of her skin had felt electric sending a shiver throughout his whole body. The experience had been a first for him and from that moment he’d looked forward to every minute he could spend with her. But, as the traffic moved and he managed to pick up speed again, he mused, why had he met her now? Was it fate that it had happened in this stage of his life when he felt stagnant and bored? Or, he thought naively, was he having what people called a mid-life crisis?
It had never happened before, not in the fifteen years spent working away from home had he ever had an affair. He’d usually consoled himself with the fact that he was reasonably happy with his lot in life. But there again, he’d never met a woman that he’d felt so attracted to before. Not enough to have an affair with, he decided. When she’d asked him in for coffee he’d grabbed the chance and his feelings towards her had overridden any thoughts of right or wrongdoings. Which in itself was totally out of character.
After leaving the motorway he waited patiently to join a steady stream of cars on the road into Cambridge, and stared at his face in the rear-view mirror. What does she see in me? he thought, moving his jaw from side to side. All he could see was an ordinary looking guy – someone who obeyed the rules in life, worked hard to provide for his family and never took any unnecessary risks. Well, not until now, he thought, grinning and baring his teeth in the mirror. It was these lips she’d kissed and sucked on till he’d thought he was going to explode and the desire that had raced through him had shocked him speechless. Her full, soft lips were like a magnet drawing him further into her and he hadn’t wanted to stop. She was like a super-model, he thought, bold, vibrant and full of confidence. The shirts she wore to work were always bulging with her breasts as if they were constantly looking for a way out and he struggled most days not to keep staring at them. She had the longest legs he’d ever seen on a woman and she seemed to ooze sexuality in every movement she made.
A loud toot from the car behind shook him back into reality and he realised he hadn’t noticed the large gap in the road ahead. Fidgeting in his seat and trying to ease the tightening in his trousers he moved off quickly then eventually turned off to the village of Wilburton.
*
Richard’s wife, Angela, greeted him with the perfunctory kiss on the cheek as she moved around the kitchen making supper. ‘How did your first week go?’ she asked, although Richard knew she wasn’t remotely interested in his answer. The only thing Angela was interested in was his salary, which she spent on their cottage and her two English toy spaniel dogs, Toot and Floot – who he had long suspected she loved more than him.
He reached onto the wine rack above the sink and selected a bottle of red Chablis. ‘Like I told you on the phone, it was good. Everyone on site is nice and I’m learning about the Sushi products quickly,’ he said.
He poured the wine and sat on a hard wooden chair at the long, pine table in the country farmhouse-decorated kitchen and sighed heavily. He hated the old-fashioned, character features in the property and would have much preferred smooth, sleek, clean-cut lines. But the home, as she often told him, was her domain and he’d long since given up trying to voice an opinion.
‘Where’s Emily?’ he asked in an attempt to show some interest in his family life. ‘Is she staying out again this weekend?’
Angela drained pasta through a sieve in the Belfast sink. ‘Yes. She’s staying at her friend’s tonight because they’re leaving early in the morning to go to a competition. And I’ll be joining them to watch her ride around ten o’clock.’
He felt like moaning that he never saw his sixteen-year-old daughter from one week to another but instead said, ‘Oh, well, as long as she’s enjoying herself…’
‘She’s trying hard to make the most of a talent she’s been given, Richard. And I know it’s costly but in years to come when she’s at the top of her show jumping game we’ll reap the rewards,’ she said, as she vigorously mixed a tomato sauce into the pasta. ‘And a little encouragement from you wouldn’t go amiss!’
He gulped a mouthful of wine. ‘Yes, of cour
se. Should I pick her up afterwards?’ he offered, and saw her disappointedly shake her head of tight blonde curls and purse her thin lips.
When the children were little he’d tried to do things with them at weekends. But once they’d reached their teenage years, and with him working away from home, there was a huge distance between them now which he didn’t know how to fill. Emily, by the age of twelve, had her own friends and hobbies which didn’t include him. He often felt that although he loved them dearly he’d failed miserably in building any type of relationship.
In fact, he thought, the only thing he’d done over the past few years was chauffeur them around in his car. ‘OK. Shall I come with you to watch her jump?’
Angela placed the bowl of pasta in front of him and sat down. ‘Do you really want to see her compete? Or are you coming just to appease me?’
‘I’m coming because I love my daughter and want to see her do well,’ he said, firmly.
This wasn’t the tone of voice he used to speak to Angela; it was usually more of a brow-beaten husband tone, but after his week with Helen his confidence was at an all-time high.
Her large baby-blue eyes gaped. ‘W-well, that’s good,’ she huffed, and he could tell she was rattled. It made him smile in satisfaction. He began to eat the pasta and looked at his forty-two-year-old wife. She was tiny, around four foot ten without her heels, and a petite size eight. When she’d been pregnant with their son, Christopher, the midwife had warned them that she might need a Caesarean section because she was so small. But she’d given birth naturally using her strong personality and steely determination.
Toot, lying across his feet, looked up at him with his unusual domed head but sweet and endearing nature. He ruffled the King Charles black and tan hair behind his ear and Toot whimpered in response. Neither Toot nor Floot were allowed titbits from the table but when Richard was alone he often weakened.
Angela raised an eyebrow and glaring at Richard hissed, ‘I do hope you haven’t been feeding them from the table.’
He sighed at her demeanour, finished the pasta, laid his fork in the bowl and pushed his chair back. He shook his head slowly at her and tutted. ‘I’m whacked. I’m going to unpack and have an early night.’
*
While he mounted the old rickety staircase he tried to remember how long she’d been speaking to him in this awful manner and decided it had probably happened so gradually over the years that he’d simply got used to it without realising.
He dipped his head under the large beam that stretched across the bedroom ceiling and unzipped his travel bag and lifted his laundry out onto the bed. He held the grey shirt to his face and inhaled deeply, remembering the Calvin Klein obsession Helen had worn on Thursday night and smiled. Maybe it was because he’d spent time with such a lovely person as Helen all week, he thought, and it was making him notice everything that was wrong here. He grinned – even from a distance she was having an effect upon him.
Later that night he heard Angela come upstairs and get undressed in their en suite bathroom. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her naked because she’d been doing this since their wedding night. He sighed in frustration, trying also to remember the last time they’d had sex and deciding it had to be around Christmas time. It had always been in the same missionary position with the lights turned off. He was glad for the darkness as it meant he didn’t have to see the look of distaste on her face. Even though when they were younger he’d tried to make it better and please her, he knew she’d never enjoyed it. He’d even heard her calling it the “dastardly duty” one night on the telephone when she talked to a friend. He punched the pillow, turned over onto his side and drifted into a deep sleep.
The next morning he was up early, showered, dressed and making breakfast when Angela plodded downstairs just before eight o’clock. He was determined to improve the atmosphere between them. ‘One egg or two?’ he asked, setting a pan of water to boil on the top of the Aga.
‘None for me,’ she answered. ‘In fact, I’d like to have at least three eggs left over as I’m baking a cake this afternoon for the village spring fete.’
There were only four eggs on the china hen rack, and his hand wavered as he decided whether to be rebellious and use two or do what he would ordinarily have done and take only one. ‘I’ll get some more when I take the dogs out,’ he said, spooning two eggs carefully into the pan. Her answer to this action was to slam the door and storm back upstairs.
He cracked the top from the fresh hen’s egg and dipped a white bread finger smoothed in thick butter into the lovely yellow yolk and sighed with pleasure – it was his favourite weekend breakfast. Upon reflection, there wasn’t much he liked about country life but this was certainly one thing he did enjoy.
It had been Angela’s decision to move out of Ely city and buy the rural cottage in Wilburton with its two acres of land and thatched roof. They’d never done anything with the land and nor did he ever intend to – it quite simply didn’t interest him in the slightest. When they’d first moved into the property Angela had talked about keeping chickens and growing their own vegetables but this, he knew, had been mainly to impress the neighbouring villagers. And, he sighed, it was her whole life now. She’d never worked from the day Christopher was born and concentrated her efforts solely upon looking after the children, sitting upon the parish council, organising village activities and her beloved cottage.
He fetched the dogs’ leads, pulled his leather jacket on and set out across the field with the dogs bouncing and yelping alongside him. It felt as if he was looking at his life through different glasses, he decided, and Angela was nothing but a total snob and bully. But, he supposed, he couldn’t lay all the blame on her for the way their life had turned out because he’d always hated confrontation and had done anything, and agreed to whatever she’d wanted, simply to keep the peace.
Toot and Floot fought affectionately together as they chased a butterfly and the sun shone on what was going to be, he decided, a beautiful spring day – he quickened his pace to the neighbouring farm to buy eggs.
*
On Richard’s return to the cottage he found Angela dressed in beige jodhpurs pushed into knee-high brown leather boots pulling on a new green Barbour jacket. ‘Your mum’s just phoned asking if you could pop over at some stage this weekend to see her,’ she said. ‘And I told her you’d probably go over this morning.’
It was obvious that she didn’t want him to go and see Emily in the competition and the thought of his mother, who never usually bothered him, niggled at the back of his mind. Feeling something could be amiss, he said, ‘OK. I’ll definitely come another time to see Emily and go over to Mum’s now – if you’re sure?’
She nodded in agreement while he placed the eggs carefully one by one into the rack and then left in a flurry with the dogs running around her legs.
*
Richard drove through the village past the GP’s surgery, dentist, library, junior school and Co-op supermarket then headed out towards Ely. His mum, Patricia, was seventy-six and still lived in the original five-bedroomed mansion where he’d been raised, situated near the tea rooms and the cathedral. He’d tried many times to talk her into finding a ground-floor flat but she wouldn’t be moved on the subject, and as he drove down the road towards her home he could understand why. It had remained the same clean, peaceful market town which he’d loved as a boy and young man and he would have gladly stayed there.
‘Darling,’ Patricia oozed as he walked in through the grand hall and put his arms around her. She smelt of her usual floral Givenchy perfume and he kissed her cheek then grinned happily at her.
Slowly, and with the use of her walking stick, she tapped along behind him into the lounge. She was a tall, distinguished woman with her straight, white hair trimmed neatly around her face and into the nape of her neck. Her eyes were hazel and her lips were coated in a pale pink lipstick – they twitched and smiled at him now. ‘Oh, my, you do look good. Something is maki
ng you look happier than I’ve seen in a long while.’ she asked. ‘What’s happened?’
He sat down on the settee and shook his head in disbelief. She’d always been able to read his mind and it never failed to impress and enchant him – she’d been the same with his father, who’d often playfully called her a witch. She always seemed to know when events were happening in his life and sometimes, as in this case, before he actually knew himself.
‘Me? There’s nothing happened,’ he feigned, unable to look her in the eye.
She nodded slowly, and still smiling narrowed her eyes. ‘All right. If that’s the way we’re going to play it, I can wait. But you do know I’ll get it out of you before you go…’
He threw back his head and laughed. ‘OK, what can I do for you?’ he asked playfully.
She smoothed down the pleats in her skirt and picked up an envelope from the table next to her Schreiber armchair. ‘I’ve decided to have a chair lift put in and wondered if you would read through the details and check that I’m not throwing my money away to a disreputable company.’
He leaned across to her and tenderly stroked her arm. ‘Ah, Mum. Are you struggling? Is the hip really painful?’ he asked.
She’d had polio as a child and had always walked with a very slight limp. But there was arthritis in the joint now and the surgeon who had operated once told them this was the best it would ever be.
‘The stairs are the main problem. It pulls a little when I’m going up and down,’ she said. ‘But don’t start off again about moving, because I’m not. Your father left us plenty of money and I’m going to use it…’
A Taste of Love Page 7