Mixed doubles

by Jill Mansell

  ‘You look well,’ Mark told her, when the waiter had taken Liza’s sensible navy-blue mac. ‘New outfit?’

  She was wearing a high-necked cream blouse, brown cardigan, calf-length beige pleated skirt and sturdy lace-ups. Mark adored the subterfuge; it gave him a kick. When he shared these meals with Liza he frequently found himself on the receiving end of sympathetic glances from waitresses wondering why a good-looking chap like him should be landed with such a frump.

  They were seated in a far corner and left to study their menus. An agitated-looking blonde in her mid-twenties whisked through from the kitchen, murmured something to another waiter and whisked back again. As the doors swung shut behind her, the smell of burned garlic wafted across to their table. A party of eight, evidently still going strong from the night before, piled noisily into the restaurant and bombarded the girl behind the bar with orders. A loud cheer went up as the girl fumbled and dropped a glass on the tiled floor.

  This could be promising. Liza had been given a lecture at the staff Christmas party by her editor-in-chief.

  ‘We’ve been getting a bit of negative feedback,’ he had explained as he sloshed whisky into a half-pint mug. ‘Your reviews, my darling. Too complimentary by half. Some readers are asking if the restaurants pay us to advertise them. All this crap about enchanting presentation ... elegant sauces .. . heavenly fish dishes ... darling, a critic has to criticise, don’t you see? You need to get the claws out, bitch it up a bit. Be wicked! Think more Michael Winner, less Dana. More Private Eye, less Hello! magazine. Aim for the jugular, sweetheart. Give the readers something to smirk about. Don’t be afraid to make those restaurant owners cry.’

  Liza didn’t want to be Michael Winner. She wasn’t naturally an aim-for-the-jugular type. But she saw her editor’s point and the Dana jibe had hurt.

  In the past she knew she had tended to gloss over the occasional less-than-perfect paella, the chef’s overexuberant use of salt, the insufficiently chilled vichyssoise.

  Maybe she was about to have her chance to bitch it up a bit, here at the Songbird. Liza glanced across at the flustered waitress on her knees sweeping up broken glass and mentally hardened her heart. If the meal wasn’t up to scratch, she decided, she would go for it.

  She still had the remains of her hangover too. That would help.

  To begin with, Liza chose deep-dish aubergine Parmesan torte. Which was good, if a bit on the heavy side. The accompanying tomato sauce could have done with being a little less sweet.

  Bah, humbug.

  Mark had Provençal fish soup. He pronounced it delicious. Liza tasted some.

  ‘Too much saffron,’ she remarked briskly. ‘And the bread should be hot.’

  Mark raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Whose bed did you get out of on the wrong side this morning?’

  ‘No one’s. I’m in training to be a cow.’

  The restaurant was beginning to fill up. The party of eight, seated by the window at the front of the restaurant, emptied bottles of wine at a rate of knots and sang rousing choruses of ‘Why Are We Waiting?’. The flustered waitress, serving them finally, got her bottom pinched. The other girl, the blonde, came out of the kitchen and told them sharply to keep their wandering hands to themselves. Three fingers on her own left hand were adorned with blue catering plasters.

  ‘What happened?’ jeered the chief bottom-pincher. ‘Don’t tell me, you tried to stab the chef and missed.’

  For their main course, Mark had ordered tournedos of beef with wild mushrooms and vin santo.

  ‘Is the steak tough?’ Liza asked eagerly.’No.’

  ‘You asked for it rare. That’s not rare, it’s medium.’ Mark sat back in his chair.

  ‘I don’t think I like you like this.’

  ‘It’s my job.’ Narrow-eyed, she surveyed her lamb with polenta and artichokes. It looked divine, which was no good at all.

  Happily, when she tasted the lamb with its herb and breadcrumb coating, she hit paydirt. The garlic they had smelled burning earlier was right here, on her plate.

  The wine was good and Mark stubbornly refused to fault his sweet – which was a trio of home-made ice creams in a brandy snap basket – but Liza was well into her stride now. Her plum and apricot tart was definitely stodgy, the sweet almond pastry case way too thick. The crust around the edge, which had been doused with icing sugar in a futile attempt at a cover-up, was burnt.

  ‘It’s busy,’ said Mark, valiantly defending the little restaurant. ‘Must be good to be so popular.’

  ‘It’s New Year’s Day.’ Liza wasn’t to be deterred. ‘Everywhere else is shut. Anyway,’ she pointed out, ‘you’re only saying that because you fancy the blonde.’

  ‘I feel sorry for her. Poor thing, she’s in a flap.’

  ‘Not surprising. I’d flap too, if I had to serve up burnt offerings like this.’

  ‘Shall we ask for the bill?’

  ‘No way. I want to try the coffee. Wouldn’t it be fab if it was instant? Oh my God—’

  Liza stared at the door, opening to admit two more customers.

  ‘What? What?’

  Twisting round in his seat, Mark craned his neck to see who had come in. Liza was just glad she was wearing her glasses and mousy wig.

  It was Phil Kasteliz, Pru’s husband. He was laughing and holding the hand of a woman with piled-up white-blonde hair.

  Her leopard-print top ended above her belly button, and a black rubber skirt began several inches below it. The amount of make-up she wore was staggering. She looked like Lily Savage, only less demure.

  She wasn’t Pru by a long chalk.

  ‘That bastard,’ Liza hissed as the waitress showed them to their table. The moment they were seated, the blonde slipped off one spiky black stiletto and began teasing Phil with her toes.

  Mark looked ill at ease. He hated scenes. (It was another reason Liza had gone off him; his anything-for-a-quiet-life attitude had driven her to distraction.)

  ‘Who is he?’ He prayed it wasn’t the latest man in Liza’s life. She was in such a weird mood today. He prayed even harder she wasn’t about to start a cat fight.

  ‘His name’s Phil. He’s the pig my friend Pru’s married to.’ Her dark eyes narrowed to slits. ‘I think I want to kill him.’

  ‘So that isn’t his wife?’

  ‘That old bike, are you kidding? My God, the nerve of the man!’

  Liza’s knuckles were white around her pudding fork. Mark envisaged the headlines: RESTAURANT CRITIC PUNCTURES DINER TO DEATH.

  Or: WOMAN FORKED TO DEATH.

  Feeling sick, he said, ‘I don’t think you should cause a scene.’

  Liza gave him a pitying look. ‘No, I’m sure you don’t.’

  But for once Mark was right. Maybe it was just as well Phil hadn’t recognised her, although his attention was so clearly taken up with his companion she doubted whether her disguise was even necessary. From the look of him, he’d hardly notice if the SAS stormed the restaurant and smoke-bombed the place.

  Liza had never had much time for Phil Kasteliz. She wouldn’t have liked him even if he wasn’t an estate agent. Despite working long hours – allegedly – he always seemed tohave plenty of time left over for gambling, drinking and having a laugh with The Lads.

  Pru, who adored him, stoutly maintained that she didn’t mind her husband’s late-night excursions to Bath’s clubs and casinos. Phil worked hard, she explained patiently whenever anyone dared to criticise him. He needed to relax. He wasn’t the stay-at-home, watch-a-bit-of-TV and put-up-a-few-shelves type. Anyway, Pru invariably ended up saying, where was the harm? At least Phil wasn’t a womaniser, she had no worries on that score. He was far more interested in roulette.

  Shame it wasn’t the Russian kind, thought Liza, who had never believed a word of it anyway.

  When you were as generally lacking in moral values as Phil Kasteliz, what would be the point in making the effort to remain faithful? It was like expecting a crack addict to throw up his hands
in horror and say: Oh no, I’d never touch grass.

  So it didn’t exactly come as a surprise to find Pru’s husband dabbling in adultery, but the urge to kill him was still there.

  What annoyed Liza more than anything was the kind of woman Phil was with. It was shaming to Pru. Letting her down.

  If he had to cheat on her, he could at least have had the decency to do it with someone who wasn’t a complete dog.

  ‘Umm ... would you like coffee?’

  The young waitress was back, escaping further hassle from the rugby types and looking closer than ever to a nervous breakdown. It occurred to Mark that any stabbing spree instigated by Liza would give the waitress just the opportunity she needed to join in.

  Imagine the headlines then:

  BLOODBATH AT THE SONGBIRD.

  No, even snappier: BLOODBATH IN BATH.

  He began to nod. Liza shook her head.

  ‘Just the bill, thanks.’

  As the waitress hurriedly began clearing their table, her hand slipped. The chargrilled pastry Liza had left on her plate slid on to the tablecloth.

  ‘Oh God I’m sorry—’

  Liza wasn’t normally rude but Phil Kasteliz hadn’t improved her mood. She picked up the pastry, examined it speculatively for a moment and said, ‘So am I.’

  On their way out they passed within feet of Phil and his lunch companion. The woman, pretending to read Phil’s palm, was saying, ‘... I predict an afternoon in bed with a sexy blonde.’

  Phil’s answering smirk was too much for Liza to bear. Just loudly enough for him to hear – and when she was sure he couldn’t see her face – she murmured to Mark, ‘Yes, but where on earth’s he going to find one?’

  There was no denying it; when you were in the mood, writing a really bitchy review was fun.

  And easy, too. The six-hundred word piece practically wrote itself.

  ‘Was the chef at the Songbird having an off-day,’ Liza tapped into her word processor, ‘or a day off?’

  Too cruel? N000.

  .. I couldn’t help noticing the management’s advice to book early in order to avoid disappointment. Well, if you really want to avoid disappointment, my advice to you would be don’t book at all.’

  Unfair? Unkind? Maybe, but it was the truth.

  .. unable to face the prospect of coffee, we left. Happily, the day wasn’t totally wasted. On our way home we stopped at Reg’s mobile café on the A46. Reg’s egg and chips,’ Liza concluded with a flourish, ‘were heaven on a plate. Not a speck of burnt garlic in sight.’

  True? Well, not quite. Reg’s had been shut. But if he had been open, she was sure she would have enjoyed his egg and chips.

  Chapter 3

  Liza might have envied Dulcie her marriage but as far as Dulcie was concerned, marriage sucked.

  Anyway, she had made her New Year’s resolution now. And she was jolly well going to keep it.

  Yes, it was a shame, especially when everyone was forever telling you how lucky you were to be married to someone as dishy and wonderful as Patrick Ross in the first place, but they didn’t know what it was really like. Because what was the point of having a dishy and wonderful husband when you hardly ever got the chance to experience his dishyness because all he ever did was bloody work work work?

  It was particularly annoying, Dulcie mused, when you had been so sure you’d hit the marital jackpot. After years of falling for the wrongest men imaginable – and boy, had she had a talent for sniffing them out – meeting Patrick had come as such a shock to the system she’d barely known how to handle him. It had taken her months to learn to trust him, to realise she didn’t need to know how to handle Patrick, because he wasn’t playing an elaborate trick on her, he actually was as nice as he seemed.

  Weird. It took some getting used to, especially when you were as addicted to bastards as she had been. HHB, Liza had called it, as in: ‘Oh, Dulcie’s HHB. Hopelessly Hooked on Bastards.’

  She hadn’t meant to be, but somehow that was always the way Dulcie’s relationships had managed to turn out. Something to do with the adrenalin rush that went hand in hand with chronic insecurity, or some such crap. Reading about it once in a magazine, Dulcie had recognised herself at once. Any man who was nice to you clearly didn’t deserve you and had to be a complete wimp. If, on the other hand, he lied, cheated and treated you like dirt, you obviously didn’t deserve someone as fantastic as he was and were promptly desperate to hang on to him at all costs.

  Except Patrick Ross hadn’t been awful to her, nor was he a wimp. He had obviously never studied the rule book. Confusion all round. Patrick was witty, he was smart, he had girls drooling over him everywhere he went. Even Dulcie’s parents had approved of him, which was a startling new experience for all concerned.

  Patrick had carried on being charming, phoning when he said he’d phone and turning up when he said he’d turn up. He brought Dulcie presents, made her laugh and never embarrassed her at parties. Other girls, pea green with envy, continued to swoon. Dulcie’s mother even looked once or twice as if she might swoon too.

  It took time, but in the end Dulcie couldn’t fight it any more. She resigned her membership of the HHB club and allowed herself to fall in love with Patrick Ross. She was twenty-five, he was thirty-three. She was lazy, he was ambitious. She liked chicken breast, he liked leg. She enjoyed a drink, Patrick ‘Better keep a clear head, big meeting tomorrow’ preferred to drive.

  It was a match made in heaven. It was perfect.

  For the first four years at least.

  Things had only started to go really wrong when Patrick, tired of making money for the computer company for which he was working, decided to take the plunge and set up in business on his own. The hours he put in were ridiculous. He made junior doctors look like part-timers.

  He would leave the house before Dulcie was awake and return home just as she was crawling back into bed.

  ‘I never see you,’ she wailed one night when it all got toomuch. ‘You never see me with make-up on. It’s not fair ...’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Patrick sat down on the bed and hugged her, getting moisturiser all over the lapels of his best suit. ‘I know it isn’t fair, but I’m doing it for us. From now on things will be better, I promise. I’ll do more work from home.’

  He had been as good as his word and the result had been as disastrous as Dulcie had known it would be. She’d have got more conversation out of a Madame Tussaud’s waxwork. Patrick’s body might be there but his mind was so occupied with work it may as well have disappeared on a round-theworld cruise.

  Like a small child desperate for attention, Dulcie found herself putting three sugars in the cups of tea she took him, just to provoke a reaction. One evening, frustrated beyond endurance and having read in Cosmopolitan that the element of surprise could pep up a marriage no end, she danced naked into Patrick’s study, threw herself on to his lap and uncorked a bottle of champagne with her teeth. Children, don’t try this at home. All it achieved was foam everywhere, a chipped upper molar and a fused disk drive. All the work Patrick had been about to save was lost and he had needed to stay up all night replacing it.

  Dulcie considered suing Cosmopolitan. Her marriage had been pepped down.

  ‘Get a job,’ Liza had suggested when Dulcie had moaned to her about how bored she was.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Dulcie looked appalled. ‘The whole point of Patrick working these stupid hours is to make money. The last thing we need is me slogging my guts out as well, earning more of the stuff. That really would defeat the object.’

  ‘You might enjoy it.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t.’ Honestly, Liza had the oddest ideas sometimes.

  ‘Okay, what about charity work? Just a few hours a week.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ cried Dulcie, ‘aren’t I already suffering enough?’

  Happily, another of Liza’s suggestions met with greater success.

  ‘Why don’t you come along to Brunton Manor? Give it a try?’

&
nbsp; Brunton Manor Country Club, situated three miles outside Bath, was where Liza went to play tennis and squash. Pru, also a member, swam there two or three times a week.

  Dulcie, who was to sport what Scooby Doo was to astrophysics, wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Don’t give me that look. You might enjoy it,’ Liza argued.

  ‘People say that when they try and make you eat frogs’ legs.’

  ‘And you don’t have to do anything sporty if you don’t want to. Brunton’s a country club, not the Foreign Legion. During the day it’s full of pampered housewives drinking gin and ogling the musclemen in the gym.’

  Perking up considerably at this news, particularly cheered by the prospect of a little gentle ogling, Dulcie had agreed to go along and check it out.

  Brunton Manor had proved a revelation. It was, quite simply, one of the most glamorous country clubs in England.

  The old manor house itself, two hundred years old and built of honey-coloured Bath stone, was gloriously situated on the side of a hill with unrivalled views over the Langley Stoke Valley. The estate surrounding the house comprised ninety-three acres of wooded and landscaped gardens.

  The sporting facilities were, of course, superb.

  The club prided itself on its decidedly upmarket image, and astronomical membership fees ensured it stayed that way. People liked to boast – in passing – that they belonged to Brunton; it was on a par with casually flashing a platinum Amex. If having to pay next year’s fees was likely to keep you awake at night, Brunton wasn’t the place for you. You went somewhere less exclusive instead.

  Dulcie had fallen in love with the club at first sight. Brunton Manor was her idea of heaven.

  You really didn’t have to be energetic at all.There was an endless supply of gin, as promised.

  There was a sun-drenched terrace overlooking the glittering turquoise outdoor pool and – as Liza had also promised – plenty to ogle.