Husbands Read online

  ‘You’ve got to admit, he’s not just a busker. Not when you see him like this. He’s special,’ I add.

  Bella is always going on about making her mark, making a difference. It’s one of the reasons she admired Ben so much. He left something behind him. His droll, poignant plays make people think.

  Stevie is making a difference; he is making people happy. Even if he isn’t performing to thousands at the Royal Albert Hall, even if it is only in a pub in Richmond. Bella can laugh but people are holding up their mobile phones and texting photos of him to their mates.

  Stevie begins ‘Jailhouse Rock’.

  ‘It’s crazy that we all know the words to these songs. We weren’t even born when they were released. I never think of myself as an Elvis fan but it’s all there.’ I tap my skull and turn to Bella, hoping she’ll enthuse. She doesn’t. She looks as though she’s going to puke or faint or spontaneously combust. ‘Christ! Bella, are you ill?’

  It’s as though she hasn’t heard me. I put my arm round her shoulders and shake her. She’s not normally a big drinker and we’ve been mixing irresponsibly tonight. She doesn’t seem aware of me. The only time I’ve seen her like this before was when we went to Brighton to see a hypnotic act. She was picked out of the audience and the guy convinced her she was an egg-laying chicken. I so wish I’d had a video camera with me that night. I click my fingers in front of Bella’s eyes and shake her again. Slowly she returns to me. Her eyes darken and the pupils shrink.

  ‘I’m going. You should come too,’ she snaps.

  ‘No, Bella, don’t do this to me. I know you think I should meet a banker or even an estate agent but I like Stevie. Like like. I want to stay.’

  ‘We don’t belong here,’ she says as though I’ve just asked her to join a mad religious cult, rather than stay and have a few jars and watch hunk of the month gyrate on a stage. What is her problem?

  ‘These people are not like us. Not our sort.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The smoke’s making my eyes sting and I think I might have an asthma attack.’

  ‘You’re not asthmatic,’ I point out.

  ‘I have to go. Please come.’

  ‘No, Bella.’

  I glance around the room to assess the people Bella has taken a disproportionate and inconvenient dislike to. The room is full of people who eat too much cholesterol, exercise too little, dream more than average. They seem very much my sort. I turn to say as much to Bella but she has gone.

  Bugger, bugger, bugger her. I reach for my handbag. I’ll have to go and find her, as much as I want to kick on and drool over Stevie Jones, Bella is my best friend – even if, right now, I could cheerfully throttle her. The moment I start to push through the crowd the music changes from ‘Jailhouse Rock’ to ‘Stuck On You’.

  Stevie’s voice, deeper than I remembered – a touch more gravelly – breaks through the noise. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I dedicate this track to Laura Ingalls.’

  The crowd throws out a mindless cheer. They have no idea who Laura Ingalls is, other than a freckly, goofy kid with a penchant for big bonnets and bloomers, but they cheer anyway, such is their intense, albeit transient, love for Stevie.

  Stevie locks eyes with me and beams. It is the widest, happiest grin I have ever seen on an adult. I’m stunned. Even before Oscar stomped on my self-esteem, I knew my limits. Generally, men look at me and think ‘best mate’ rather than ‘total goddess’. I’m the type of girl men fall in love with after they have got used to my weird sense of humour and my inability to put the cap back on the toothpaste. If I was ever foolish enough to ask a man why he loved me, he’d invariably reply that he appreciated my extensive film-trivia knowledge. I am not the sort of woman who stops traffic (unless I’m stood at a Zebra crossing), but right now, I know, absolutely know, that the way Stevie Jones is looking at me is important. It means he thinks that I’m important.

  And so do many of the other people in the room. The men turn with interest, the women with ill-disguised envy, to see who Stevie Jones is singing to. Suddenly, I’m not so sure of the words to ‘Stuck On You’. So I listen carefully. Initially, I try not to read too much into it. I tell myself that it’s not as though he is saying that if we were together we couldn’t be torn apart.

  It’s just a song.

  It’s not as though Stevie is planning on catching me. He doesn’t even know me. No doubt he does this every night; he picks some woman from the crowd, sings something that seems poignant to her and throws out that smile of his. He makes her feel as though she is the only woman on the planet. I’m probably in the epicentre of a horribly shoddy, humdrum moment. I don’t even have long black hair, like the lyrics specify. I remind myself that logically speaking I am not special. This is not a special moment.

  Yet… while my brain is telling me that this is a tacky, predictable move, my heart is pounding with such ferocity that I think it is about to break out of my chest and jump up on to the stage to join Stevie and dance a jig. It feels extremely special. And, if I’m not completely deluded or plastered (both are possibilities but not probabilities) Stevie looks as though seeing me is the equivalent to all his Christmases and birthdays coming at once. I don’t think that his reaction is entirely because he thinks I’ll be an easy lay. I realize that by allowing an absolute stranger to kiss me after exchanging approximately one hundred and fifty words on a train then I have, perhaps, given off ‘available’ signals (if not ‘slapper’). But even so, it is obvious that Stevie is not without options. If an easy lay is what he requires, just about every woman in the room will happily oblige.

  I start to sway my hips. And my shoulders. For about six tracks I am the most beautiful and accomplished woman in the universe. I see myself as a sort of Kate Moss/Keira Knightley mix, with a bit of Liz Hurley mystery thrown in for good measure. Throughout ‘(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear’ and ‘A Big Hunk o’ Love’, I believe that I have a higher butt than Kylie’s. As he sings ‘Wooden Heart’, I am sure that I can do mental arithmetic faster than Carol Vorderman and I am perhaps more green-fingered than Charlie Dimmock. I could scour an oven, clean behind the back of a settee and descale the taps in my bathroom faster than Kim and Aggie, those cleaning women with their own TV show. I am invincible. Although, the more I stare at sexy Stevie, the more convinced I am that these housewifery skills, which I have long admired, will not be required. I start to focus along the lines of imitating Lucy Liu’s gymnastic ability instead.

  I have the best night, ever. Stevie dedicates tracks to me, he blows kisses to me, he tells the audience that they ought to cheer the wonderfulness of me. And they do. Complete strangers buy me drinks. They clink glasses and yell congratulations although it is unclear what they imagine I have achieved. In the fans’ eyes winning Stevie’s attention deserves extensive praise and I’m inclined to agree with them.

  I drink most of the drinks proffered, which certainly helps cement the illusion that I am the most beautiful woman in the universe and stops me considering that I am potentially making a complete arse of myself.

  I ache for the gig to be over. While I’m enjoying watching Stevie perform, I don’t want to have to share him. I hardly give a thought to Bella. And when I do, I reassure myself that she will have got a taxi and besides, she doesn’t like people fussing when she is ill.

  11. You Don’t Know Me

  Saturday 22nd May 2004

  Bella

  Amelie rings me at 8.30 a.m. I wonder what took her so long.

  ‘You’d better have a good reason for running out on Laura,’ she says.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Well?’

  I turn to look at Philip sleeping peacefully beside me. He looks almost babyish swaddled in thick white cotton sheets, cushioned by a large amount of pillows. He’s exhausted. He spent yesterday in Switzerland, seeing a client. His plane was delayed and the cab from the airport got snarled up in traffic, we arrived home at approximately the same time. Like Amelie, Philip had be
en surprised that I had cut short my girls’ night out and wanted to know why.

  I told him that I’d felt overwhelmed by a need to be with him and, more than anything in this world, I wanted to be away from the pub, full of fat, blowzy women, cigarette smoke and the smell of booze. I wanted to be in our clean, stylishly decorated, south-west-facing home. I wanted to drape my arms round his neck and squash myself against his chest. Philip had been delighted with this response and we’d made urgent love on the stairs. For once, our needs overwhelmed our desire for comfort.

  ‘I just wanted to be with Philip,’ I tell Amelie truthfully.

  There is a pause while she considers this. Unlike Philip, there is no probability that Amelie will be flattered into distraction.

  ‘Why? What’s going on?’ she asks with more perception than I appreciate.

  I shiver even though it’s a bright spring day and sunshine is flooding through the bedroom window. I choose not to answer the question and ask, ‘What time did Laura get home?’ Suddenly I’m panicked. ‘She did come home, didn’t she?’

  ‘Are you worried that she is lying prone in an alley somewhere?’

  ‘No, I’m worried she slept with Stevie Jones,’ I blurt, with more truth than I intended.

  ‘What’s going on, Bella? What on earth made you leave her like that?’

  I hesitate again. Eleven years of rigorous training battles with fleeting instinct. Can I cast aside the stringent code I’ve put in place? Can I tell her the truth? I touch Philip’s face gently. I trace his eyebrow and cheekbone. I have so much to lose. There’s everything to lose.

  Despite the needy and energetic sex last night I had not fallen into my usual deep, contented sleep, whereas Philip could barely drag himself off the landing and into bed before his eyes closed. I tried reading but the words jumped about, spitefully cheating me out of a distraction. I drank a glass of warm milk but it just left a funny cloying taste in my mouth so I lay awake all night, replaying the past, imagining the future. One was depressing, the other bleak. I last remember looking at the clock at 5.45 a.m. After that, I must have finally fallen asleep. Amelie’s call woke me from a miserable dream where I was being chased by Big Ben and I kept standing in gigantic piles of dog faeces.

  ‘Amelie, can I come over? I can’t talk about this over the phone.’

  ‘The coffee’s on,’ she replies, mirroring my ominous tone.

  Amelie opens the door to me and is clearly torn between ticking me off and giving me a hug.

  ‘I guess you’re in some sort of tricky spot?’ she asks.

  ‘You could say that. I need a coffee.’

  Amelie leads me into her kitchen where, as she promised and as is usually the case, a pot of coffee is brewing. She pours me a cup and tops up her own. I reach for the warm croissants without waiting to be offered.

  I choose to say nothing because I don’t know how to start. I stare out of the window and watch Freya and Davey who are playing in the garden. They are wearing their pyjamas, under their coats, accessorized with trainers. This sartorial chaos is nothing to do with the fact that Amelie is a grieving widow, although to the uninformed observer this may seem the case. Amelie, Ben and the kids often stayed in their nightwear throughout an entire weekend, unless they ventured out or invited company round. Ben always said that this was to symbolize a release from the tyranny of a working week. Although in reality, as he worked from home, his working week wasn’t hampered by a dress code. Amelie has continued the bohemian tradition after his death. It strikes me that she has managed to hit the correct balance of changing some things and leaving others well alone.

  ‘Amelie, what do you think of me?’ I blurt.

  Amelie stares at me, probably reflecting that the question is borderline barmy. ‘Where’s this leading?’ she asks cautiously. Of course she’s right not to jump with both feet into a character assassination or even a glowing reference.

  ‘Well, you’re perceptive. You’ve known me for six years. We’ve seen each other through the good, the bad and the frankly bloody awful times—’ I squeeze her hand. She smiles briefly. Bravely. ‘You probably think you have me pegged, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t presume,’ she replies, tactfully. ‘You aren’t easy to peg, as you put it. You’re quite an impulsive woman.’

  ‘Do you think so? Most people would look at my life and think it a scary amalgamation of clichés.’ Amelie looks puzzled. ‘Well, I am a thoughtless drifter, who can’t make a go of it in any of the numerous industries I’ve had a stab at. I was working as a waitress when I met my husband, a wealthy, older man. I know people think I married Philip to get myself out of a hole.’ I stare at the trail of flakes of croissant that sit on my lap, on the breakfast counter and the floor. I feel truly sorry for myself. I wonder if it’s too early in the day to cry.

  ‘Which people? Nonsense,’ asserts Amelie. ‘It’s clear that you love him and he loves you. Have you had a row?’

  I squeeze her hand again, poor Amelie, I didn’t want to alarm her. ‘No, nothing like that. The people who work with Philip, the other waitresses in the cocktail bar, people like them think I’m a cliché.’

  Amelie tuts and waves her hand dismissively, ‘No, they don’t.’ Then she becomes more assertive on my behalf, ‘And even if they do, who cares? They don’t matter to you.’

  ‘I do love Philip,’ I insist. ‘I didn’t just marry him because I couldn’t face my arse being squeezed by one more randy, drunken customer. But I can see why people are doubtful.’

  ‘Do you have any doubts?’ she asks.

  I take a deep breath and try to be as honest and clear as possible. I know it’s vital that I explain myself to Amelie if she is to help me.

  ‘The thing is—’

  ‘I’m starving.’

  I turn to see who is the source of the interruption.

  ‘Morning, Eddie. Gosh, you must have been playing with your Buzz Lightyear late last night.’

  Eddie looks wary: he probably thought that using a torch under the covers had fooled Amelie. Amelie doesn’t pursue the issue – she always says the trick to being a calm mum is choosing the battles that are worth fighting; a late night at the weekend clearly doesn’t fall into that category. ‘Freya and Davey were up ages ago,’ she adds.

  ‘Oh.’ Eddie immediately loses interest in food and runs to the back door. ‘Can I go play too?’

  ‘Don’t you want some breakfast?’ offers Amelie, far too much of a professional to insist that Eddie should. He takes the bait.

  ‘Maybe, OK. Hi, Aunty Belly.’ Eddie smiles at me. Normally, I am unable to resist his smile and the private nickname. Normally, I’d sweep him up in a huge cuddle and plant kisses all over his face. This morning I find it hard to mumble more than, ‘Hi, Eddie.’

  Eddie is still here. Eddie spent the night at Amelie’s. That means… I try not to panic. Maybe Laura is here too. Maybe she rang Amelie last night and they agreed not to wake Eddie and so Laura stayed here or just went home alone. Alone is the important bit. As though Eddie can sense the question I need answering he asks, ‘Where’s my mum? When will she pick me up?’

  Amelie is busy pouring Rice Krispies into a bowl. She falters for a nanosecond, Eddie doesn’t notice but the almost imperceptible hesitation tells me all I need to know.

  ‘Mummy will pick you up before lunchtime,’ she says.

  Eddie nods and accepts his breakfast.

  Amelie and I sit in silence as he slowly eats his way through the cereal. Finally, when he has finished it and three pieces of toast (has the kid got worms?), after he has located his coat and trainers and flung himself out of the back door to start his day’s adventures I am alone with Amelie and able to ask, ‘She slept with him?’

  ‘Well, we can’t know for sure but she called last night and said they were going on some place after the gig. She asked if I’d look after Eddie until morning.’

  ‘She slept with him,’ I repeat. Saying it for a second time doesn’t make it any easier
to believe or accept.

  ‘She’s over twenty-one,’ says Amelie reasonably. ‘What’s the matter, Bella? This can’t just be about the fact that you don’t like Elvis impersonators.’

  I don’t want to lie to her but I certainly don’t want to have to tell her the truth either.

  ‘I love Philip. I really do. It’s not about the large home, although I do like him having a respectable job, I’m not denying it. Before Philip I had nothing more than a Boots loyalty card so I can barely articulate my joy at having a Selfridges store card. But that’s partly because I like the yellow carrier bags, not because shopping at Selfridges means I’m rich. Of course I love our holidays in exotic places but they’re only fun because we go together and…’ I falter. ‘I love all the add-ons but mostly I love him.’ As the expression ‘the lady doth protest too much’ comes to mind, I snap my mouth shut.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ demands Amelie again.

  ‘I have so much to lose.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  I can no longer hold back the information that I’ve guarded aggressively for years. I am so lucky that I met Philip. Yeah, he took me away from the grind of a dead-end job and is paying the bills while I make my mind up about what I should do next. He’s doing this patiently and without complaint, even though we both know it could be a long wait; think the siege of Troy. But more than that, I’m lucky because he is charming, funny, interesting, kind. He’s a great husband and I want – wanted – want to be a great wife but I can feel the fates shift. My luck is running out, soon my secret will be exposed. I’m horrified.

  ‘The thing is. The surprising, non-cliché thing about me, is technically I’m a bigamist.’