Seven Week Itch

by Victoria Corby

  ‘It’s not the crack of dawn and it’s time you got up,’ she retorted.

  Unfortunately, she was right. So, instead of telling her what she could do with herself at this unearthly hour, I struggled into my dressing-gown, waved a hairbrush vaguely in the direction of my head, and staggered downstairs, trying to unglue my eyelids.

  Rose wasn’t someone who enjoyed the fresh joys of the early morning - if she had to see the dawn she preferred to greet it on her way to bed - so what had happened that necessitated visiting me before eight o’clock? I thought vaguely as I fumbled to open the locks with sleep-stupid hands. Rose was leaning against the doorframe looking sheepish, wearing a scarlet skirt about the width of a Girl Guide’s belt in length, a strappy little top, a blouson jacket and vertiginous peep-toed sling-backs. It didn’t take a genius to work out that she hadn’t dressed like that for a morning’s shopping in Frampton. In addition both her knees had smears of mud on them, there was more dirt on her face and top, and her high-top ponytail hung limp and bedraggled in mousse-heavy hanks, as if it had got soaked and dried out again.

  Luke was behind her. He was even dirtier in a damp tee-shirt that must have been white originally and black jeans with heavy mud splashes reaching from calves to halfway up his thighs.

  ‘Oh, God!’ I said, jerking into full wakefulness. ‘What’ve you done now, Rose?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said indignantly, while Luke chimed in with, ‘We had a flat tyre.’

  Rose sighed heavily. ‘It took three hours to change it. The garage had done the nuts up so tightly they were virtually impossible to undo, and I had to stand in the rain holding the torch so Luke could see what he was doing, then the torch battery ran out, so we had to wait until daylight to finish.’ I gathered from her tone that one way and another she hadn’t been too impressed by Luke’s performance. She looked down at the ground, and I could almost have sworn she was shuffling her feet uneasily. ‘The thing is, Susie, can I come in and clean up? I’ve got something to change into. If I go home like this everyone’ll think I’ve been in an accident.’

  ‘Doing some mud-wrestling, more like, but I see your point,’ I said, stepping back to let her in. ‘Do you want to ring Jeremy to let him know what’s happened?’

  She glanced at me quickly. ‘It’s all right, I’ve already rung him.’ To tell him what? You didn’t need to be Miss Marple to know that something here smelt very bad indeed.

  ‘You’d better come in too, Luke,’ I said without warmth. He glanced at me with surprise, obviously wondering what had changed from the last time he’d been here when I’d probably been behaving with only marginally more discretion than the two teenagers the other night. ‘Would you both like coffee?’

  ‘I’d kill for some,’ Rose said in a heartfelt tone and looked back at her companion. ‘You’re so filthy you’ll leave a stain on the chairs. Perhaps you’d better borrow something clean off Susie.’

  ‘Frocks aren’t really me, if you know what I mean,’ he said, adopting an outrageously camp accent. At least he was decent enough not to point out that his hip size was smaller than mine. ‘But I wouldn’t mind a chance to wash, if that’s OK?’

  ‘Go ahead, take a bath,’ I said. This’d give me a precious few minutes with Rose, to threaten to throttle her and do various other unpleasant things unless she explained what she’d been doing spending the whole night out with someone who wasn’t her husband. ‘Bathroom’s straight ahead at the top of the stairs and there are towels in the cupboard.’

  ‘You’re a doll, Susie,’ he said kissing my cheek. Involuntarily I stiffened slightly and he looked at me queryingly before loping off up the stairs two at a time like a child.

  ‘Perhaps I should go and change too,’ Rose said uneasily, no doubt reading my mind and eager to escape from the question-and-answer session she knew was coming.

  I fixed her with a stern look. ‘Since you got me out of bed the least you can do is help get the coffee ready.’ I left her to deal with grinding the beans and looked for the aspirin. If what was rattling around in my head wasn’t already a headache, I had a feeling that what I was about to drag out of Rose would convert it into one.

  ‘Well?’ I demanded as I switched the machine on. ‘What’s this about?’

  She jumped, almost dropping the mugs she was getting out of the cupboard. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, blatantly untruthfully.

  ‘Come on, Rose,’ I said wearily. ‘I’m not that stupid. You’ve got “guilt” written all over you in six-foot-high letters.’ I looked at her with sudden suspicion; the brain was working really slowly this morning. ‘Just where did Jeremy think you were going last night?’

  ‘Oh, don’t go on at me,’ she said petulantly, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘I’ve had a really tiring night and I’m just not up to being cross­-questioned.’

  If she thought this was ‘going on’ at her she had a surprise in store. I leant back against the kitchen units, arms folded, looking at her steadily. ‘He thinks you were here, doesn’t he?’ I asked. She said nothing but the little toss of her head gave her away. ‘Oh, Rose, how could you? I told you I wouldn’t cover up for you again-’

  Her head whipped around, and she stared at me with something very akin to fear in her face. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she demanded aggressively. ‘Be all high-minded and tell him I was economical with the truth?’

  I sighed. ‘You know I won’t,’ I said wearily. There was a flicker of relief in her eyes. So the aggression was bravado. The coffee machine burbled and burped its last few drops into the pot and I poured us both a mug, pushing milk and sugar across the table to her, then took up my place against the unit again. ‘But I wouldn’t mind knowing exactly what we were supposed to be doing, so I don’t tell the wrong story if I happen to bump into Jeremy,’ I said mildly. ‘Line-dancing, poetry-reading at the library, advanced cake-making classes? And how often have we met since we went to the cinema in Leicester?’

  She flinched at the sarcasm in my voice. ‘It’s not like that,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Isn’t it? What’s spending the whole night out with Luke like then? A man, about whom, incidentally, you’ve already had one serious row with your husband. And who, also, you’ve had the major hots for and, judging from the way you were acting the other night, still do.’ She began ladling sugar into her mug as if she was trying to see how quickly it would make the liquid overflow and said nothing. ‘What’s the matter with you, Rose?’ I said in an exasperated voice, as she started to stir mechanically, apparently not even listening to what I was saying. ‘Two months ago you were swearing undying fidelity to Jeremy and you’re already playing around with another man.’ Her head shot up as I said, ‘We’ve all heard of a seven-year itch, but a seven-week itch must be something of a record!’

  She started, eyes widening. ‘It’s not like that at all,’ she whispered. ‘Really it isn’t. You’ve got to believe me.’

  ‘I’m not the one you’ve got to convince,’ I said.

  ‘Jeremy’ll believe me about last night if you back me up,’ she said, looking as if she were on the verge of tears. ‘I wouldn’t go back to Luke’s house to clean up like he suggested, so that proves I wasn’t up to anything, doesn’t it?’ she asked, with what seemed like a quite unreasonable amount of pride in her own common sense. And a considerable degree of naiveté too. ‘He was a bit shirty about that, said it was miles out of the way to come via you.’

  ‘And of course you needed to get your story straight with me,’ I added dryly. She flushed and nodded. ‘Have you any idea of what risks you’re running? This is the second time in three days you’ve used me to give you an alibi. Hamish dropped in the other night to return a book -’ I looked away so she couldn’t see my self-conscious expression - ‘so he knows perfectly well that you weren’t having supper with me.’

  ‘But I really was at the cinema then,’ she said earnestly. ‘I can even show you the ticket if you like. Well, I think I�
��ve still got the stub somewhere,’ she added doubtfully. ‘And I swear I wasn’t meeting Luke there either’ She took a sip of coffee and made a face. ‘Yuk! Who added all this sugar? I suppose I’ll have to tell you all,’ she said with a heavy sigh, as if I was being totally unreasonable, ‘but if I’m going in for the full confession bit I’m going to need a fag.’

  I can’t say I appreciate second-hand smoke before I’ve had breakfast, but this was a special case. I fished a saucer out of the cupboard and pushed it over. She lit her cigarette and drew in thankfully. ‘I wish Luke had never come to the wedding,’ she said in a heartfelt voice. ‘I’d honestly, well, if not exactly forgotten him, pushed him right away to some unimportant corner. And then he has to turn up on a day when I’m making the biggest change I’m ever going to make in my life, and I couldn’t help it, I tried not to, but I couldn’t help wondering if I was really ready to settle down. Then I thought it’d be all right if he went out with you, because your best friend’s man is like a brother, he’s off limits, isn’t he?’ I looked at her wondering if she really believed this ingenuous reasoning. What about a husband? Didn’t he put someone off limits as well? ‘When he came to visit you after the accident he…’ She hesitated, taking two nervous drags before continuing. ‘Oh Susie, I’m sorry, but he made it clear that he fancied me.’ She looked up with big guilty eyes.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I said cheerfully. She glanced at me and bit her lip, obviously not believing me.

  ‘I know Jeremy loves me, but sometimes he gives the impression he’s as keen on the lines of his new tractor as he is on mine. Luke made me feel, well, gorgeous all the time. I lost my head a little,’ she said quietly. ‘I couldn’t believe that what I wanted for so long was falling in my lap. But I didn’t mean anything by it, honestly. Then Jeremy said he wouldn’t have Luke in the house again and he didn’t want me seeing him. You should have heard him. He went on and on, like a complete domestic tyrant.’ My mind boggled, it was difficult to imagine Jeremy being tyrannical. Either he had hidden depths, or Rose had provoked him to degrees she wasn’t revealing. Judging by the look she gave me from under her lashes as she smiled wryly, it was the latter. ‘You know I’m not very good at being told what to do, so when Luke rang me to suggest we go clubbing in Manchester-’

  ‘Manchester?’ I echoed.

  ‘It’s where the best clubs are, and it doesn’t take long up the motorway,’ she said casually. She inhaled deeply. ‘I couldn’t let Jeremy order me around, could I?’ she asked, a tad defensively. ‘So I agreed to go.’

  She paused while I filled in, ‘But you still thought it’d be wiser to tell your domestic tyrant that you were having a girls’ night out.’

  She nodded. ‘I must have been mad.’ She could say that again. ‘All I could think was that it was my last opportunity to go anywhere with Luke. You’d broken up with Arnaud so you were free for him and I’d told you he was all yours, so I was going to have to step back. Luke said we’d be back by two - Jeremy knows that girls’ gossip sessions can go on for ages so that was OK - but Luke was having such a good time that he didn’t want to leave so we were late anyway and then he got this slow flat in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – he was taking the back roads because the police always stop his car,’ I interrupted.

  ‘How did you know? Then it was dawn and I knew that if Jeremy ever found out I’d been out all night with Luke he’d never believe I hadn’t even kissed him.’

  ‘Hadn’t you, really?’ I asked curiously.

  ‘No!’ I watched with interest as an untypical blush rose up her neck. ‘He tried though,’ she said quietly. ‘I think that was why he was so annoyed I wouldn’t go back to change at his house. He was hoping for…’ Her voice trembled slightly and she swallowed hard. ‘But it never crossed my mind,’ she said earnestly. ‘I thought we were just having fun. I mean, I’ve just got married.’ I believed her. Rose can be remarkably simplistic at times. ‘Jeremy mustn’t ever find out, he’d never forgive me.’

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, or give into the impulse to grab Rose by the shoulders and shake her. She looked at me with tear-filled eyes. ‘I’ll never do it again, I promise, if only you’ll back me up and say I was here.’

  ‘You know I will.’ I prayed she’d given herself a serious enough fright to make her promise of reformed behaviour stick. She still looked worryingly moist-eyed and droopy-lipped, so I said, ‘I swear not even the Inquisition’s torturers could drag your dreadful secret out of me. Don’t worry, my lips are firmly sealed.’

  She smiled at me in a watery manner. ‘I knew I could trust you. Actually,’ she confessed, ‘I rang Jeremy last night when we got the flat to say I was spending the night…’ She looked up as the sound of water rushing down the drainpipe announced that Luke had finished what must have been a liberal bath. ‘I’d better go and clean myself up;’

  ‘If Luke’s left any hot water,’ I said, adding as the gate on to the green gave its familiar protesting screech, indicating someone was coming up the path, ‘I wonder who that is.’

  Rose went ashen. ‘It’s Jeremy. Come to check up on me.’ I’d have thought he would have been more inclined to use the telephone, especially at this hour. She jumped up and rushed to the little window by the side of the door, peering through it cautiously to see who it was, and came running back into the kitchen, face, if possible, even paler. ‘It’s Hamish! What’s he doing here? He can’t see me like this, he’ll know I haven’t been staying the night.’

  She was right, even the most unobservant man would start to smell a rat over gold-dusted eyebrows and sparkling purple eyeshadow first thing in the morning. And Hamish wasn’t unobservant. Rose clutched at my sleeve. ‘He’ll tell Jeremy.’

  There wasn’t time to reassure her that Hamish wasn’t the trouble-making type. ‘He won’t see you,’ I said soothingly. ‘Quick, up the stairs to my bedroom. And don’t thump around,’ I hissed. ‘Tell Luke to be quiet as well.’

  I went nervously to the door as her footsteps retreated upstairs. At any other time it would have completely made my day to have Hamish paying me an unexpected visit, now I was afraid it was going to give me a nervous breakdown. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice my strained smile as I opened the door, as he was concentrating on giving me a very satisfactory good-morning kiss.

  ‘Why aren’t you dressed yet, lazybones?’ he asked, looking quizzically at my dressing-gown and nightie.

  ‘New style for the office,’ I said, regarding him with pleasure. ‘It was a late night and we overslept. To what do I owe this?’

  He smiled down lazily at me, sending my blood racing and almost making me forget that I had three visitors upstairs, two of them uninvited. ‘I thought I might drop in for a cup of coffee.’

  ‘What!’ I exclaimed. No-one could be in a cottage as small as this for more than a few minutes before realising it was heavily overpopulated. ‘No, you can’t. You’re due in court, aren’t you? It’ll make you late, my machine takes ages to brew, and Tilly’s got a face pack on. She’d be mortified if you were to see her,’ I gabbled.

  He looked at me with a frown, as well he might. ‘I was only joking,’ he said stiffly. ‘I think I must have left my diary here the other night and it’s got a couple of numbers in it I need for today. Have you seen it?’

  I felt my stomach contract with apprehension at a creak from the top of the stairs. Maybe it was only Tilly. ‘Yes, I think so,’ I said vaguely.

  ‘I’ll come in and see if I can find it.’

  ‘No, I’ll do it,’ I said quickly, remembering with that Rose’s bomber jacket in her favourite hot-pink was lying on the sofa. Combine that with the smell of cigarette smoke and he’d realise she was here. It was apparent to the most casual eye that the sofa bed hadn’t been used as it still had the plates from last night on it and he knew me well enough by now to be pretty certain I was unlikely to offer to share my own bed with her. I gave a silly nervous laugh. ‘Y
ou’ll only bang your head on the lintel again and you can’t appear in court with a sticking plaster on your forehead.’

  ‘I think I can remember to duck this time,’ he said.

  ‘Well, um, Tilly forgot her dressing-gown and is wandering around half dressed. She’ll be terribly embarrassed if a strange man sees her in her undies,’ I improvised rapidly, putting my hand on his chest to physically stop him coming in. ‘You stay there, I won’t be a tic.’

  Maybe Tilly in a face pack and her underwear was overkill, I thought, as I raced around the sitting room, searching down the sides of the sofa and chairs for his slim black leather diary, but I’d square it with him later. ‘Here it is,’ I said in a bright voice when I found the diary on a side table, and held it up for him to see.

  ‘Thanks,’ he called, coming in a couple of steps. The stairs creaked behind me. I spun around, heart falling through the pit of my stomach as I saw Luke, wet hair slicked back, coming downstairs wearing nothing more than my best towel. For a moment I was so stunned with horror that I literally couldn’t move. What the hell was he up to? I turned towards Hamish, who was staring at Luke in disbelief.

  ‘Hamish, it’s not-’ I said desperately, and then I felt two hands on my shoulders and before I could get my wits together enough to react was spun around into Luke’s arms.

  ‘Good morning, sweetheart!’ he carolled, pressing me to him and silencing anything I had to say with his mouth. One hand was pressed to the back of my neck so I couldn’t pull away, the other had grabbed one wrist and held it behind my back, while my other arm was trapped between our bodies. I couldn’t even pull away enough to kick him.

  Hamish cast me a repelled look so scorching I could almost feel my soul shrivel, and said in a tight voice, ‘I seem to have come at an inappropriate time. I apologise for disturbing you, Susie.’ He turned on his heel and left, just as I managed to grind my heel on Luke’s toe. Unfortunately, bare feet couldn’t do much damage even though he winced, and he didn’t let up on his effective silencing technique until the sound of the slammed door had stopped reverberating throughout the house.