Fay frowned. ‘We’re not having kids?’
Charlotte stubbed her cigarette out on the wall and dropped the butt into a litter bin outside the second-hand shop next door. ‘We’re obviously having mine,’ she said firmly. ‘And Stanley is as good as family. And almost an adult!’
She strode ahead of Fay back into the coffee bar. ‘And there’s Amy,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Come on! Let’s get this show on the road.’
‘Amy probably won’t want to come,’ Roz said, trying to keep her voice bright. ‘Far too embarrassing.’
‘Of course she’ll come,’ said Charlotte. ‘I shall tell her I’m expecting her. AND she’s got to put up with you mum-dancing.’
Roz shook her head. ‘She really will go home then!’
‘Anyway, no other damn kids apart from your own,’ said Fay, swivelling her dark glossy head round to fix them all with a stern look. ‘Plus a special dispensation for the son of Charlotte’s best friend. Because they are coming to stay,’ she added grudgingly.
‘I thought we were your best friends,’ Sherie was smiling.
‘You are – but Laura is my longest-standing best friend and fulfilled the role on her own before I met you lot.’
Fay was still on a mission. ‘Can’t be doing with them running around screaming. Did I tell you about the little bastard in M&S?’
‘Ours are all teenagers,’ said Charlotte, shaking her head. ‘Of course no small children – it’s an adult party.’
‘I gave his mother the benefit of my opinion I can tell you,’ said Fay, satisfied. ‘Offered to scream the place down, and then throw myself in the chilled chicken. See what she thought.’
Roz laughed. ‘We have some right little sods on the school trips to the gallery too.’
‘So, are you going to confirm the booking, Charlotte?’ Sherie was looking bored.
‘Yep. I’ll call in to the pav and see Dan tomorrow. Tell him the Big Bash is on!’
‘And sort some vegetarian options?’
‘He’s used to all that. You saw the list – there’ll be a selection–’
Sherie looked doubtful. ‘I think we ought to mention it. And put a note on the invitations saying to let us know about dietary requirements.’
‘Or tell them to eat before they come if they’re that fussy,’ said Fay. ‘Which is what I’m about to do. I need to get home, I’m starving.’ She got up and swept towards the counter.
Sherie put her sunglasses in their case and also stood up. She was holding a ten-pound note.
Roz felt in her bag for money, hoping a fiver would be enough, but Fay returning and putting a card back into her wallet, shook her head.
‘You get it another time,’ she said easily. Roz swallowed. As if it were that simple. Which it was for the other three. If next time, the bill came to forty quid instead of twenty, they’d pick up the tab without thinking.
‘Swings and roundabouts,’ Charlotte would declare, if she ended up paying more than her share. Not realising that if Roz got the wrong sort of ride when it was her turn, she’d have to plunge even deeper into debt.
‘Can’t stand faff about the bill,’ Fay was fond of saying as she’d swiftly divide by four, not knowing that the only reason Roz had been on water was that she was desperately trying to keep that bill to a minimum.
Charlotte scrutinised her as she said goodbye. ‘Amy all right?’ she asked.
Roz shrugged. ‘You know – fifteen!’
She thought of her daughter’s face earlier, screwed up with rage and disappointment. ‘WHY can’t we ask Granny?’ she’d said over and over while Roz tried to explain.
‘I just can’t – the boiler was different – we had to be warm – I couldn’t let you have no hot water. It was a necessity and you going to Paris isn’t. And I hated doing it even then.’
Amy had pouted. ‘Granny said she never minds helping – if only you were a bit more grateful. She said when she gave you the deposit for this house you barely said thank you.’
‘Nice of her to be so supportive,’ Roz had said tartly as Amy had banged out of the room.
One of the things Roz resented most about her mother was her total lack of loyalty and her indiscretion. When Amy went on her twice-annual visit to Carshalton to stay beneath her parent’s well-appointed mock Tudor beams, she came back with a new set of clothes and a fresh tale of Roz’s ingratitude.
‘She wanted me to abort you,’ Roz felt like saying. ‘Because they thought a single woman in her thirties getting accidentally pregnant was too low-rent for words.’
Instead she tried to explain the difficult nature of her interactions with the woman to whom her status at the Rotary and Golf Clubs was everything and who had never forgiven Roz for being the one two hours away when her sainted brother had emigrated, when it would have suited her so much better had the geography been reversed.
Roz used words like ‘beholden’ – not wanting to be – and ‘self-sufficient’, something she’d hysterically promised herself in the hospital when her mother had brought a shawl and a stiffly-signed cheque for a thousand pounds and her father hadn’t been allowed to come at all. But Amy barely listened, increasingly resentful of Roz’s low-income and her own fatherless state that she blamed for money being so tight.
‘Terrible teens,’ Roz added to Charlotte now.
‘Nightmare, I remember it well.’ Charlotte looked at Roz harder. ‘Everything else OK?’
Roz nodded, her stomach churning.
‘So I’ll text you about getting together so I can show you round both places and give you the keys, and we’ll talk dosh. I was thinking an hourly rate.’ Charlotte hugged her. ‘I’ll pay well as it’s you, love.’
Roz squeezed her back, touched and terrified. The extra earnings would be good but she needed the job for more than that. For a moment she felt lightheaded as bile rose in her throat. Charlotte was the best sort of friend. Roz dug her nails into her palms to stop her feelings of panic overtaking her. Charlotte trusted her to complete exactly what was required. What would Charlotte say if she knew what Roz was really going to do …
Chapter 3
‘I really don’t know what I’m going to do.’
Charlotte sat at her super-sized kitchen table, hands clasped around her empty mug, and stared at the piece of paper she’d been looking at for at least an hour before Fay had arrived.
Fay picked it up. ‘In itself it’s not exactly conclusive, is it?’ she said, raising her precision-plucked eyebrows.
‘There was the message as well.’
‘And are you sure that was the same number?’ Fay enquired.
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I think it had seven, nine, five in it.’
‘So do half the mobile numbers in the country.’
Charlotte sighed. ‘I called you because you have an analytical mind and will take a practical approach. What shall I do?’ Charlotte said again, a plaintive note in her voice. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’
Fay ran a hand thoughtfully through her short dark hair and pulled her chair a little closer to the table. ‘OK. Let’s go through it again. Roger was looking shifty and then he got a phone message …’
Charlotte twisted the mug around again. ‘No, he wasn’t looking anything. His phone was plugged into the charger over there. I was right by it when the message came in and I could see the first line of it as a notification on the screen. There was a smiley face and ‘I’ll put you through your paces on Wednesday when …’ I couldn’t read any more without unlocking it. And I couldn’t do that because he was in the doorway as it beeped and the next thing he’d shot across the room and picked it up and read it. And put the phone back in his pocket.’
‘Which isn’t actually an admission of guilt,’ put in Fay.
‘So later,’ Charlotte went on, ignoring her, ‘when he’d left it on the side again, I tried to unlock it and it isn’t the same code any more! Why would he change the number, unless it was because he didn’t want me looking in his phone
?’
‘Well, why are you looking in his phone?’ Fay fixed her with a searching look. ‘Why not just say: who was that from?’
‘I did – and he said it was someone from work.’
‘Well, maybe it was. You know, a bit of banter. You should hear the way my blokes go on. They–’
‘Well it clearly wasn’t,’ Charlotte interrupted hotly. ‘Because later still, I asked to use his phone – saying I wanted to WhatsApp Becky and I’d left my phone upstairs and couldn’t be arsed to go and get it – and–’
‘He didn’t want you to?’
‘He handed it over as smiley as anything!’
Fay frowned in confusion. Charlotte’s face was grim. ‘And guess what? The message had gone. He’d fucking deleted it.’
Charlotte’s voice rose. ‘And it wasn’t someone from work anyway, cos their number would be stored wouldn’t it? It would say Fred or Dick. This was just a number … It’s some woman he’s met in a chat room.’
‘Oh come on!’ Fay’s eyebrows had risen further. ‘That’s going nought to ninety a bit quick. Could be a colleague he rarely deals with–’
‘Why the banter then?’
‘Or someone he usually speaks to in person so they’re not in his phone. OR–’ Fay looked inspired, ‘– it was simply a wrong number. Which is why he deleted it. And he came across quickly because he was expecting someone from work …’
‘You’re not listening!’ Charlotte said tetchily. ‘He said ‘someone from work’, which is also odd because usually he’d say the name.’
‘Why don’t you just ask him again?’
‘Because if he is up to something, I’m going to catch him at it. I’m not going to be made to feel paranoid this time.’
Privately, Fay thought it might be a trifle late for that. She frowned again. ‘This time?’
Charlotte hesitated, still turning the mug round and round on the table. ‘There was this girl in his office,’ she said. ‘Hannah. Bit of a bunny boiler. She had a crush on him and he was lapping it up till I found out.’
‘Most men would. Did anything happen?’
‘He said not. They had some drinks … She used to text him all the time though. Suppose she’s back?’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Six years or so. Laura warned her off initially before I got hold of it. By then Roger was panicking anyway because she wouldn’t leave him alone and eventually she moved away.’
‘Unlikely she’d reappear after all this time.’
Charlotte shrugged. ‘I’ve looked for her on Facebook but I couldn’t–’
Fay put hand on arm. ‘Don’t!’
Charlotte shook her head. ‘I know! I hate myself for being like this and I hate Roger for making me.’
Fay spoke firmly. ‘Now come on. We don’t know he has yet. If that Hannah caused him trouble before, he’d hardly engage with her now, even if she did turn up again. And this Marion could be anyone.’
They both looked at the piece of paper Fay was still holding – displaying the name and mobile number in Roger’s handwriting.
‘A client for example’ said Fay.
‘He doesn’t have clients any more does he? He’s the in-house lawyer.’
‘Who’s negotiating a string of take-overs – he told me about it when I came for the curry. CTG are snapping up all sorts of smaller wealth management outfits, aren’t they? Marion could be some hot-shot chief executive he had to phone back – or her secretary!’
‘Yes, she could be. But my gut tells me she’s the same woman who sent the sexual message. And I feel like I did last time. When I knew there was something up but I couldn’t put my finger on it.’ Her voice became bitter. ‘And he denied it of course.’
‘Well of course he did.’ Fay’s tone was matter of fact. ‘You said – he was panicking.’
‘And I have the same feeling again,’ Charlotte went on. ‘That he’s hiding something.’
‘Your birthday present?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Look,’ Fay leant her elbows on the scrubbed wood and looked hard at Charlotte. ‘You don’t have to wind yourself up like this. You simply say: Roger, I read that message and it sounded like innuendo and I couldn’t help noticing when I was having a poke about, that you’ve changed the code on your phone. Why?’
‘But then he’ll make up something plausible that makes me sound like a mad, jealous old shrew and then I’ll feel worse. And–’ Charlotte stopped abruptly and stood up. ‘Do you want a glass of wine?’
Fay looked at her watch. ‘Yeah ok. Len’s at the office. I don’t need to go back.’ She pulled out her phone and glanced at it. ‘Just one.’
Charlotte crossed her kitchen and opened the huge fridge, returning to the big pine table with two goblets of white and a bowl of peanuts.
She sat down and took a swallow. ‘What I’m going to do,’ she said, putting the glass down and surveying Fay with what appeared to be fresh determination, ‘is see what happens on Wednesday.’
She took another mouthful of her wine. ‘If he’s got a rendezvous planned then he’ll have to make some excuse to be back late. So then I’ll know. And if she – whoever she is – has been putting him through his paces, he’ll find it was nothing to what I’ll be doing when he gets home!’
‘OK,’ said Fay. ‘So that’s a plan. Sounds good. Now, how are we getting on with the party?’
She watched Charlotte, as her friend reluctantly allowed the subject to be changed and brought Fay up to date with her investigations into cake designs and balloon prices. ‘Two hundred in silver, a hundred in this sort of pale lilac, and a hundred in burgundy – they look really stylish grouped together. And the pale ones will have burgundy lettering – The Big Five-O!’
‘I like it,’ Fay nodded. ‘Helium?’
‘Of course. Long strings so they come up from the floor, with shorter ones for the tables.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘I thought we could let them all go over Viking Bay at the end. Video it!’
‘Yeah, great.’
There was a small silence. Charlotte had finished her first glass of wine and was pouring a second. Fay put her hand over the top of her own glass. ‘Got the car.’
‘If I even feel like having a party then–’ Charlotte added.
‘You will!’ Fay ate a peanut.
‘I wish I was more like you,’ Charlotte suddenly burst out. ‘You’re so, so – sure of everything.’
‘You are like me!’ Fay grinned at Charlotte. ‘First time I met you – when you were still with Wainwright’s and there was that bloody woman with the poodles whose mortgage hadn’t gone through – do you remember?’
Charlotte shook back her curls. ‘How could I forget? You had two vans of her furniture outside and she was wailing and all those damn dogs were yapping.’
‘We were already short of a driver – that’s why I was there – and we had another job to load up the same day. I was about to land her one when you turned up.’ Fay laughed. ‘I can see you now. ‘Enough!’ you said. ‘Calm down.’ And even the dogs shut the hell up.’
Charlotte smiled.
‘I knew then that you were my sort of woman,’ finished Fay. ‘We don’t fuck about. We’re toughies.’
When Fay had left, Charlotte poured another drink, pulling a face as thirteen-year-old Joe, arriving home from school and dumping his rucksack and sports bag in the middle of the kitchen floor, frowned at her. ‘You’re not drunk, are you?’
‘Of course I’m not.’
She supposed it made a change from his usual repertoire of grunts and for once he wasn’t surgically attached to his phone or Xbox either. ‘Fay was round,’ she said, aware as she said it, of the effects of the wine on her largely empty stomach. She took the last handful of peanuts. ‘Have you had a good day?’
Joe shrugged.
‘Homework?’
‘Haven’t got any.’
‘Don’t believe you.’
Last time, she’d tried to keep it from the kids, but Becky had picked up the tail end of the hoo-ha. Knew there’d been a woman chasing her father and had been none too impressed.
Charlotte rose and opened the fridge door, pulling out a bowl of chicken pieces she’d dragged the skin from that morning.
Fay was right. It wasn’t necessarily a repeat of anything like that. Roger had promised her. They’d made a pact never again to keep anything hidden, however bad. For a moment Charlotte felt a stab of guilt. She’d had a long conversation with Laura on the phone this morning. Lu had said she should be talking to Roger …
She pulled a baking tray from the drawer next to the Aga and began to spread out the thighs.
She was fond of Fay – as Fay had said, they’d hit it off straight away. Now they often ended up with shared clients and Fay was always reliable and straightforward. Fay kept her life uncluttered. No commitments, no husband, no kids. She worked hard, played hard – saw things in black and white. Charlotte found her entertaining and she’d filled a gaping hole when Laura had moved away. Laura was emotional and sensitive and if she were here now would have listened endlessly to Charlotte’s uncertainties and doubts. Fay was a fixer, but Laura would have hugged her and allowed Charlotte to debate the situation until Charlotte felt calm again.
The Big Five O Page 2