As It Is On Telly
Page 5
‘I’m going past the door.’ Graham straightened his tie in the mirror and waved Charlotte on. ‘Teach her a lesson tomorrow.’
Charlotte shot Bunty a small, triumphant glance then plumped into the passenger seat.
‘Both of you,’ said Bunty under her breath. ‘I’ll teach both of you a lesson.’
They both deserved one, in her view, having both struck a nerve. That Graham – perfumed, provocative, posturing Graham – was due his comeuppance was a given. And Charlotte? Well, it was true that the last time Charlotte had taken matters into her own hands it had been on a rather spectacular scale. After overhearing one of their arguments when Graham had accused Bunty of ‘getting off’ with Cally’s then boyfriend (now, oddly, Cally’s stepson), Charlotte had taken it into her head that she was the love-child of the liaison that never was. She was fairly sure she would not be able to investigate herself, so she had inveigled her younger friend Paige – Alan’s actual love child – into collecting DNA for her to do a paternity test. In New Zealand – CSI: New Zealand. For the millionth time in the last few days, it occurred to Bunty that Charlotte knew far too much about biology.
Dan’s face swam into view. ‘Could you hook me up?’ Hook me up? Wasn’t that what Charlotte’s generation called getting together for a shag? Booty call, hooking up, friends with benefits – a whole range of unfathomable, uncommitted, sleazy options for the modern courtship. She should have taken lessons from Jason the Jammy.
Dan wanted to be hooked up with her? Bunty’s breath caught in her throat. It was a very tempting thought. He was a bit younger than her, for sure, but not a decade and a half. He liked fencing. He had that rugged outdoors look – no stripy arms from tanning in a sleeved T-shirt, just the slightly ruddy look of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. Or maybe it was rust. Or worse, thought Bunty, suddenly remembering that Dan was not a sensitive Diarmud Gavin gardener type, heaving concrete one day and delicately stroking a cyclamen petal the next. This was Dan. Dan, the drainage man, up to his armpits in crap most days.
‘Um, kitchen tap?’ Dan waved the hosepipe under her nose.
‘Oh! Oh, yes, hook up the hose. I’ll … I’ll meet you at the back window. Near the sink. Kitchen tap. Right there.’
Dan nodded slowly. ‘Right. Back window. Are you … are you okay?’
‘Yes! Fine. Sorry, just a bit distracted.’ By your curiously blue eyes and black eyelashes. No! ‘Bit of an argument with my daughter.’
With something that looked very much like relief, Dan nodded vigorously. ‘God, they’re hard at that age, aren’t they? My son’s fourteen. Sometimes I wonder if we’re even related. I think my ex had an affair with Ronnie Biggs. He’s like this small criminal mastermind.’
‘You have a fourteen-year-old son?’
‘I know, I know. Don’t look old enough, do I?’ Dan leaned on the doorframe with a cheeky grin. ‘I was only twenty when he was born.’
‘First girlfriend?’
‘Nah!’ Dan laughed. ‘First proper relationship, though. We lasted eight years. Not bad these days, is it?’ He smiled again, disarmingly frank.
He was nice, Bunty decided. Their expectations of life were completely different. For her marriage had meant forever, and the house, and the two cars, not ‘anything over five years is good enough’. But she liked him, nonetheless. Dan was honest, cared about his son, worked hard at his job … And waited patiently for distracted women to attach his hosepipe to the water supply.
‘Back window,’ she said again, and closed the front door.
Mary was peeking meekly over the tumbledown fence when Bunty joined Dan for his verdict. ‘Is it in my garden?’ she asked, her voice quavering.
‘Dan, this is Mary, my … friend,’ said Bunty. Dan wiped his hand, then reached across the fence and shook Mary’s delicate veined fingers. ‘Dan’s just seeing exactly what happens when the water goes through. Is that right, Dan?’
He nodded. ‘I had a poke around with the camera last time I was here, but it was a bit inconclusive. Thought I’d try it the old-fashioned way, with water. The only trouble is, I can’t feed the hose through under the fence. The hole’s too small.’
Bunty gave Dan’s hands a furtive glance. They were enormous, twice the size of her own. One false shove with one of those and her fence would be over in a second. ‘Allow me,’ she said, and got to her knees.
The tiny grid covering the offending pipe was sitting in the tight angle between the ground and the leaning fence, which was now so far over that a rush of wind from Mary’s rapidly rotating dryer could push it right to the ground. Grabbing the end of the hose from Dan, Bunty winkled her way under her prized, denim-blue Waney Lap, head first, on her elbows. She felt like an action hero – Angelina Jolie, or someone – belly-crawling into ‘Nam,’ planting the decoy, saving her side from sure decimation. With her cheek to the damp ground, she finally lay alongside the grid. As gently as if it were a hand grenade, she levered off the metal lid and nosed the hosepipe down into its depths.
She wriggled out, bottom first. ‘Done,’ she said, brushing herself down. ‘I’ll go and turn the tap on.’
Dan and Mary waited with matching admiring expressions as Bunty trotted up the boggy garden and into the kitchen. She watched for the thumbs up, leaning against the sink. Dan and Mary were in deep conversation, then Mary headed off into her own house and Dan made his way towards Bunty.
‘It’s definitely in Mary’s garden,’ said Dan through the open kitchen window. ‘This little spring developed right beside the apple tree.’
‘Her cat’s buried there,’ said Bunty, nodding. ‘They must have disturbed something when they put Flinders in the ground.’
‘Oh God.’ Dan dropped his head onto his hands. ‘That is the worst of this job. I can stand all the shit – ’scuse me – and the smell and everything, but having to tell little old ladies we need to dig up their kitty is just awful.’
Bunty smiled. What a gentle giant. A sweet, brightly shining, rough diamond. ‘I’ll tell her,’ she said.
‘She’s gone to get cake,’ said Dan with a groan.
‘Well, then, you’d better wash your hands,’ said Bunty, with a lift in her heart. Everything was not rosy in the garden, but suddenly life was beginning to look a whole lot brighter. There were options. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
*
To: admin@croesusclub.com
From: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
Hi Priscilla,
You’ve been really really kind and everything, setting me up with Jason, but I think I’m going to pull out now. Thank you for all your help.
Kind regards
Bunty
From: admin@croesusclub.com
To: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
Dear Bunty,
Oh, that’s a shame. You know we give you three chances, and we have someone lined up who we think would be just perfect for you: 38, yachtie, tall dark handsome, Kiwi. Tra la la! Good luck with your endeavours.
Yours,
Priscilla
P.S. I hate to mention this, but I am bound to state that any further meetings with Jason will count as a successful match, and you will be charged the full Love-Lottery fee.
From: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
To: admin@croesusclub.com
P, I cannot state this more strongly – I would rather glue my eyeballs round the wrong way than ever see Jason again. And the kind of fees you should be charging for him are of an entirely different (and dubious) nature.
All the best though,
Bunty.
From: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
To: admin@croesusclub.com
Hmmm. Actually, Priscilla, could I rethink this one? We like Kiwis. One of my friends has a child by one, and another by his father, and my other friend is going out with the first friend’s ex. Good sign, huh?
Bunty
From: admin@croesusclub.com
To: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
Dearest Bunty,
I don’t really know how to respond to that. I am now tempted to tell you that the Kiwi is taken, but I am somewhat tied up in protocol.
Priscilla
From: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
To: admin@croesusclub.com
Admittedly, P, it does sound a bit weird, but it is all very, very above board. How about I don’t mention my date with the juvenile delinquent again, and you set me up with the Kiwi.
Does he have a name, by the way?
B
From: admin@croesusclub.com
To: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
Agreed. Ben will be available this Friday evening at the Connoisseur Wine Bar, 7.30 p.m. I’m assuming that I do not need to repeat our safety recommendations.
Priscilla.
From: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
To: admin@croesusclub.com
No, all dutifully remembered. Will be taking a small SWAT team to sit outside, ready to swoop.
B
From: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
To: admin@croesusclub.com
That was a joke by the way. Again.
From: admin@croesusclub.com
To: buntymckenna@ntsworld.com
I realised that, Bunty, hence the lack of a reply. I am not without a sense of humour myself, you know. But I do have other clients to attend to. Good luck with Ben.
Priscilla.
CHAPTER SIX
The guy in the window seemed unfeasibly good-looking. Bunty pretended to reapply her lip gloss while she took another furtive glance into the Connoisseur. There didn’t appear to be any other single men in the bar, from what she could glean through the artfully designed gloom, although there were several sets of single women edging their way closer to him. One actually dropped her menu near his feet, then beamed with orthodontic glamour at the lone male as he scooped it up and handed it back to her.
‘Hands off, he’s mine,’ Bunty muttered, clambering at last out of the car.
Hands off, he’s mine. Who had sung that? She almost started strutting to a ska-reggae beat as she approached the doorway. The Specials? It was definitely someone ska-ish. ‘Until the end of time …’ Not ‘he’s mine’; it was ‘she’s mine’. A male band. An eighties, ska-type, black-and-white … Through the door, past the salivating females, over to ‘Tall, Dark and Handsome’ in the corner. Reach out for his hand.
‘The Beat!’ she exclaimed, seizing his fingers.
‘No,’ said the man slowly, cocking his head. ‘I’m Ben.’
Bunty’s skin flared scarlet. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I know. I’m Bunty. I was just thinking who sang that song, ‘Hands …’, um, this song, and I just remembered it was The Beat.’
‘Hands off, she’s mine,’ said Ben with a grin. ‘I loved that song. All that ska-reggae stuff.’
‘It was just on the radio.’ Bunty fanned her face as she took the seat he’d pulled out for her. No need to explain what had actually been going through her head. ‘It’s not how I normally greet people.’
Ben gave her a small grin. ‘I like it. Different. The kind of greeting you don’t forget in a hurry – straight into a pop quiz.’
He poured her a glass of the rather expensive Chablis he had chilling at the side of the table, and Bunty checked him out. He really was quite good-looking – a broad, tanned face, dark hair, eyes so dark brown they were practically black and a hard, rugby player’s body. Of course, it was a bit of a cliché to imagine that all Kiwis played rugby preceded by poky-tongued war dances, like the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup (which Graham had insisted on watching, although he’d not been near a rugby ball in aeons). But she could certainly imagine Ben’s shoulders barging in among the others in a scrum, the thighs straining against the hem of his little white shorts, those impossibly dark eyes sparking competitively. Get a grip, Bun, she told herself sternly.
‘Thank you.’ She took the wine and raised her glass at Ben. ‘So, um, go on then, what would your pop quiz question be?’
‘Easy. I always ask Poms this, and they never know. What was the name of the famous New Zealand band headed up by the Finn brothers in the early eighties?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘I know! I know! Crowded House. I loved Crowded House.’
Ben pretended to wrestle the wine glass from her hand. ‘No, no, no. That was the nineties. Split Enz.’
‘Oh! Of course. Split Enz.’
How could she forget? ‘I got you’ was one of the many covers that Adam and his band had done. Badly, of course. Adam himself had some talent as a singer and writer, accompanied by some mediocre guitar playing, but in a place the size of Taunton it had been fairly difficult to garner enough talent to make up a band that was ever going to really take off.
But here was Ben, grinning at her rather winsomely and looking distinctly as though he was enjoying the prospect of spending an evening with her. And hadn’t Priscilla mentioned a boat? ‘So you’re a yachtie.’
‘Brought up in Auckland, the City of Sails, it’s hard to be anything else,’ said Ben. ‘I’ve just spent the last six months sailing round the world, ending up here. I hope this place was all right for you to meet up?’
Here. On the yacht. Drinking champagne. Trailing hands in the water, brushing each other’s fingers. It all sounded completely splendid. ‘It’s fine here,’ said Bunty with a smile.
‘And you have quite an unusual hobby yourself. Fencing? I’ll have to get you cutting and thrusting on the yacht.’ Ben waved for a waiter with menus. ‘Very Keira Knightley.’
Bunty groaned as she pictured the Pirates of the Caribbean scene he was envisaging. ‘Oh, no, it’s not that …’ Wait a minute, though. Ben was evidently rather intrigued by the comparison. It might have been the one reason he was interested in her – some elaborate male fantasy involving rapiers, flowing white shirts, and masked women. What the hell. ‘Yes, it’s just a little something I got interested in when I was younger.’
‘Pop quizzes and fencing.’ It came out as ‘fincing’, in much the same way that his name had sounded like ‘Bin’. ‘You’re quite an unusual woman, Bunty.’
She let out a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘You have no idea, Bin. Ben. No idea at all.’
In response, he clinked his glass against hers and drained it in one gulp. ‘Let’s eat,’ he said, in a tone that was masterful, enquiring, solicitous and hungry all at the same time.
Over dinner, Bunty discovered that the trip around the world had been an escape from a messy break-up. Ben’s wife, inexplicably in Bunty’s view, had been having an affair, a totally clichéd affair with his work associate. (Co-owner of the yacht? She’d find out later.) It was hard to imagine how his wife could have found someone preferable to Ben to shack up with. ‘My husband’s having an affair, too,’ she said, just touching the end of her finger against his.
‘Having?’
Shit. ‘Well, had, obviously, not still having, because we’re not together any more. So quite honestly I don’t know what it’s called now. It was an affair; now I suppose it’s a … a what? A relationship?’ That was what it would be when it came to the crunch. A relationship. Happy Christmas from Graham and Lycra-bottom. Drinks and canapés at Graham and Lycra-bottom’s. Wedding invitation: Graham, Lycra-bottom.
Ben put his head on one side, sympathy in his eyes for her babbling and incoherent state. ‘He’s really hurt you, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ replied Bunty automatically. Had he, really? She wasn’t entirely sure. He’d denied her the chance of having any more children, that was true. Although it was also true that she had clearly stated she didn’t want any more like Charlotte. And there was a certain proprietorial indignation, coupled with the sensation of mystery that someone else could actually find Graham attractive enough to want to take him away from her. When had she stopped finding him that attractive? Or, when it came down to it, when had she started?
‘Do you have kids?’ he asked.
Even though she was fairly sure this had been part of the profil
e, Bunty paused for a moment before replying. According to what she’d noted in his profile, he had two children, young. And he’d taken off across the world to chase out the ghosts of marriages past. It was another pop quiz question, the answer to which could either make him a) melt completely into a limpid puddle, b) practice a little more caution or c) run back to the yacht, hoist his mainsail and zip right back to New Zealand at a rate of many knots.
No answer, however, was not an option. ‘One,’ she said. ‘Charlotte. She’s thirteen. She’s really thirteen.’
Darling Charlotte. A complex child from the outset, she had become even more charismatic of late. Conspiring with her friend to get someone’s DNA was only one of the strange things she’d done recently, but Bunty supposed that slamming doors, hibernating for days with her iPod and a pizza box, and drawing strange black pictures of her parents swinging from the rafters were all just part of the usual bag of tricks that came with being a teenager.
Ben laughed. ‘Poor you. Mine are five and two. Much easier to look after, I suppose.’
‘At least I don’t have nappies to deal with.’
‘True.’
There was an awkward silence, during which Ben gazed through the etched glass onto the pavement outside. ‘You must miss them,’ said Bunty. It had to be six months since he’d seen them, unless … God, unless he’d kidnapped them and stashed them away on the boat, yacht, and was currently being sought in several different countries, extradited, entries on Match.com looking like a genuine convict .
‘Yeah,’ he said simply. There was just a glint of a tear in the onyx pools of his eyes. ‘And Charlotte? Does she live with you?’
The question took her completely by surprise, though why it should she had no idea. It was a very natural question in this situation, in this day and age. If … when … Graham left her, it would be the most important discussion they would have. Where would Charlotte live? Who would have custody? Joint custody, sole custody, shared custody – these were all phrases that Bunty could not quite believe she was going to have to get involved with. And there was no obvious answer. Charlotte needed them both – her mum and her dad. Graham didn’t cope too well with the parenting thing when left to his own devices, as evinced during their brief separation the year before. And yet Charlotte didn’t live easily with Bunty either. Maybe they were too alike. Perhaps they fought for Graham’s attention. Their gorgeous, much-loved daughter needed them both and somehow wanted neither. This was what Graham’s betrayal had led them to.