Young Wives' Tales Read online

  It’s rather a good thing that Rose said the boys couldn’t come to visit today. Now at least I only have to get Auriol out of the way in order to orchestrate an opportunity for me to have my wicked way. I settle her in front of the TV with a DVD and a bowl of dried apricots. I hesitate and then return to the kitchen to hunt out some Butterkist. The apricots would undoubtedly be better for her teeth and digestive system and provide all the right sort of energy but they are less likely to hold her interest long enough for me to get a decent shag.

  I go to the bedroom and unearth some sexy underwear. Not that I have any grey items lurking in my drawers. I don’t, there is no need for ugliness, but I do have some sets that are more feminine than sexy and we’ve gone past the point of hoping that subtle feminine underwear will do the trick. I don’t think I have to consider crotchless and a nurse’s outfit just yet, but black lace and a suspender belt is the order of the day. The classics become so for a reason. I put on a pair of knee-high Gucci boots with steel heels and plenty of buckles and grab my Burberry trenchcoat. It buttons up to the chin and has military overtones that I’m hoping Pete will find exciting. I find him in his study. He’s snoozing with an open paper resting on his chest.

  ‘Peek-a-boo,’I purr into his ear. ‘It’s pussy in boots.’

  He jolts awake. ‘I wasn’t asleep, just resting my eyes.’

  He sounds like someone’s grandfather. Pushing that thought out of my head, I straddle him and sit on his lap. I gently grind my ass into his groin in the hope of encouraging a tangible response.

  ‘Are you going out?’he asks, rubbing his eyes and nodding towards my coat.

  I lean in and kiss him. ‘Just been out, baby. And it’s cold out there.’I say this in a silly, breathy, quasi Marilyn Monroe voice.

  ‘Did you buy any milk?’he asks.

  I lean in and kiss him again. It’s a long lingering kiss and somewhere very deep inside me something stirs. It’s not an emotion, lust is not an emotion.

  Peter gently pulls back from my kiss. ‘I’m not complaining about Eva, she seems very good, but we are short of a few groceries this weekend. Did she get a chance to go to Waitrose, do you know? We do need milk.’

  I grind a little harder in his lap and my trenchcoat falls open to reveal my thigh. Peter doesn’t seem to notice. ‘They do a good lunch at the Renaissance Restaurant, don’t they? Although I am a little too full now.’

  We never eat in on a Sunday; in fact we rarely eat in at all if I can help it. Our tradition is to go to a restaurant and whenever possible to pick something from a menu which we’ve never tried before. It’s good for Auriol to learn how to behave in restaurants and to experience a number of cuisines; I can’t bear kids who will only eat chicken nuggets and then with their fingers.

  I nibble Peter’s ear and try to remember what he ate. He had calves’liver and duck, not an ideal dish to have before a steamy sesh. I ought to have steered him towards something lighter, maybe chicken, or an aphrodisiac, maybe asparagus.

  I snake my arms around his neck and start to run my fingers through his hair. He doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘I’ve just been reading this fascinating article about a couple who bought their village pub and converted it into a family home. How weird is that? Can you imagine living in your local?’

  ‘I can’t imagine having a local, Peter. It’s not my thing, really, is it?’I mumble as I continue my concerted effort to find Peter’s erogenous zones. Lost treasure, I fear.

  He responds, ‘No, not unless it was a champagne bar. Still, it’s a clever investment. They stand to make a fair chunk on it. It’s already valued at 60 per cent more than they paid.’

  He’s oblivious to me.

  I am sat spreadeagled on his lap, I’m wearing little more than my birthday suit and I’m nibbling his ear. His hand has fallen on to my bare thigh, which he’s rubbing, but I get the impression he’s absentmindedly trying to warm me up rather than caressing me.

  ‘Lucy, love, if you’re going out could you get me some chocolate too. I fancy something sweet after that delicious lunch.’He leans back on his chair, pulling away from me, and slaps his belly. ‘Milk and chocolate – I don’t think we need anything else, do we?’He smiles at me, catapulting me somewhere between fury, frustration and fondness.

  I clamber off his knee and make for the door. I suppose I could have dropped my coat on the floor and stood in all my glory, surely that would have been hint enough, even for Peter, but something stops me.

  I am humiliated. I feel rejected; worse, I feel invisible. For the first time in my life I feel incapable of articulating what I want. Asking for a bloody good seeing to is a step too far.

  I leave the house and dash to Cullen’s to buy chocolate and milk, grateful to escape the stuffy disappointing domesticity that has castrated my husband. It’s no consolation at all to me that the teenage boy who is serving appears to know that under my trenchcoat I am scantily clad. His eyes linger on my boots and then lasciviously he drags his gaze up and down my body. He nearly traps his fingers in the till and he drops my change as he hands it over. But I find the whole episode seedy, not funny at all.

  I rush home, get dressed and spend the rest of the afternoon at my PC. When I consult my ‘to do’list on Sunday evening I have a neat line of ticks next to all my work-related tasks. I hesitate over the line, ‘Quality time with Auriol’, and wonder if spending twenty minutes translating the menu for her and a further ten minutes helping her select a DVD from the cupboard can be classed as quality time. In the end I carry it over as a task that still needs more attention. I delete, ‘Have sex’and don’t even bother taking it forward to the next week.

  7

  Monday 11 September

  John

  Cracking weekend, although there were times when I felt a bit like Beelzebub inciting an innocent. What has Craig been doing all his life, I wonder? Last week, when we went for a drink to sort out Tom’s stag, Craig admitted he was in the market. I think he said he ‘wouldn’t mind meeting someone special, somebody absolutely wonderful’, or some bollocks like that. Jesus, who does he think he is? Even John Lennon couldn’t make it acceptable for a bloke to talk soft shit to his mates. I chose to interpret Craig’s words to mean he needs to get his leg over. Pronto. This interpretation was partially led by the fact that I’m looking for a new fall guy. What with Tom doing the journey and all, I’ll be in need of a bit of company when I’m out and about. So I promised to help Craig in his quest.

  ‘Really?’He looked genuinely excited and hope shone right past his quarter-inch-thick lenses.

  ‘Yup, you can learn from the Grand Master. I’ll share my expertise free of charge, just for the pleasure of your company.’

  I wasn’t entirely joking. Craig is a good bloke to hang out with. Square and all that, but bright, very witty and with a thorough understanding of the rules of all games from chess to footie, which makes him good company.

  ‘You could start by ditching the glasses,’I suggested.

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to see anything.’

  ‘Hey mate, that’s sometimes an advantage when you’re on the pull. There are times when you don’t want to have to look at the fireplace while you are poking the fire, if you know what I mean.’From the look on Craig’s face, he didn’t know what I meant. ‘Maybe you could try contact lenses or have them lasered. That’s what I did. Can’t recommend it highly enough.’

  ‘Maybe’. He sounded doubtful.

  ‘Girls don’t make passes at guys who wear glasses,’I added. He shrugged. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he doesn’t expect girls to make passes at him. Who knows? ‘Well, at least a different frame,’I encouraged.

  Truth is, Craig could do with an entire style makeover. Sort of rebranding, that’s how I’d talk about him at work if he was one of my consulting projects. We need to shake off the old image (earnest old fogy, with no sense of style, fun or adventure) and reposition him as a reasonable catch. Luckily, women are very forgiving. Th
ey’ll look at him and think teddy bear, even as he stands. They’ll be thinking decent job, no criminal record, no previous wives, no kids and no body odour. Most women will be grateful.

  Even so, he could do with some new clothes and a haircut.

  On Saturday Craig met me and the lads at the park for a kickabout. I’ve been playing footie every Saturday morning since I was able to stand. I have to have a really good reason to miss the kickabout, something bigger than death or even a shag.

  ‘Come on Grandad, I’m clear, kick to me.’

  ‘Very fucking funny,’I call as I pass the ball. The cheeky bastard who calls me Grandad is a lad I work with. Good bloke. Wouldn’t call me Grandad if he thought I really was. It was only the other day he was saying how much he admired my stamina. I haven’t even dated his sister. Ha ha.

  I’m pleasantly surprised by Craig’s performance on the pitch. He’s kept in good shape and doesn’t embarrass himself (or me) at all. Couple of decent passes. It’s just a friendly so I try not to get too competitive.

  ‘Coming to the pub after the game, Craig, mate?’

  ‘Definitely, if we’ve got time for a quick one.’I look confused, so Craig tries to explain. ‘I thought we were going shopping for new clothes.’He looks embarrassed and so he should be. Luckily none of the lads have heard him.

  ‘Mate, we do need to get you some new togs but no self-respecting bloke goes shopping on a Saturday afternoon. The shops are full of women.’

  ‘But I thought we wanted to meet women.’

  ‘We do. But we want to meet them in bars, pubs and clubs. Ideally when they are half cut and frisky. Not in queues at Top Shop. Besides, there’s the game.’

  ‘The game?’

  ‘The footie game.’

  ‘But we’ve just played footie.’

  ‘The game we watch. On the big screen, in the pub, with a pie and a pint. Well, several pints to be accurate. Don’t worry, I’ll lend you some gear for tonight.’Craig looks doubtful.

  ‘It won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Nothing ever is, according to you,’mumbles Craig.

  We stayed in the pub until after six, dashed home, quickly showered and then went back out by eight. Some drinking time was lost as my mate Oscar and I spent a good forty minutes trying to persuade Craig that real men do wear pink. In the end he still opted for blue; he can be quite stubborn.

  It was a wild night. Pub, bar, club, back to mine. Craig buggered things up a bit for Oscar though. Think Os was pissed off. We’d cracked off with these three birds. All clearly available and gagging for it. Met them at the bar and they came on to the club with us. There’d been lots of drinking, flirting and dancing and it was agreed that we were all going back to mine, where a full on sesh was all but promised, when suddenly Craig refused to get in the cab.

  ‘Er, mate. What are you thinking of? Clearly it’s everyone back to mine.’I nodded to the gaggle behind him, to give him a hint. I know he’s not as well practised at this sort of thing as you’d hope. My girl was draped around me, hugging me closer than an Hermès tie. Oscar’s bird was doing this flirty bump and grind dance just in front of him, claiming that she was teaching him the steps, when in fact it was obvious that she was demonstrating the pleasures to come. And the other bird, the one that was earmarked for Craig, was hovering nervously in the background. OK, she wasn’t quite such a looker as the first two. Funny teeth and she needed to cut back on the pies, but she had great tits and besides, it’s a numbers game, isn’t it? Three plus three. It doesn’t work so well if one drops out.

  ‘Not me, thank you. I’m tired and more than a bit woozy,’smiled Craig. ‘I think I’ve drunk too much.’

  ‘There’s no such thing, mate.’

  ‘What’s going on? Why aren’t we getting a cab?’asked Goofy-Pie.

  ‘I’ve had a lovely evening, thank you,’said Craig, turning to her. He held out his hand for her to shake. She stared at it, insulted. ‘I’m just rather tired now and have lots of work to do tomorrow morning. I need to get to grips with the amendments to the maths curriculum for year sevens.’

  ‘What? You can’t go home now. The party’s just getting started.’Goofy-Pie flashed a wide grin; she was trying to be seductive but, as I mentioned, her teeth were not her strong point. Still, the woman could hardly be expected to flash her boobs in the high street, could she? ‘We’d all miss you so much if you left now. Especially me.’

  Goofy-Pie had not been particularly interested in Craig up until this moment. But as he was evidently giving her the brush-off, he’d instantly become the most desirable man in the UK. Why do women hunt out hurt?

  ‘Can you give us a minute, Sweetie-Pie?’I pull Craig out of earshot. ‘Mate, you are on a promise. We all are.’

  ‘I’m aware that there is opportunity here,’said Craig.

  ‘I thought you were looking to pull.’

  ‘No, I’m looking for someone special. Linda is a nice enough girl, but she’s clearly not my soulmate.’As Craig pointed this out, Goofy-Pie began to yell to her mate that she needed a curry or a kebab. I noticed that she was wearing a leopardskin skirt, how had I missed that? I could see the evening falling apart in front of my eyes.

  A cab pulled up beside us.

  ‘After a ride?’yelled the cabbie from an open window.

  ‘I am. He’s going home,’I replied, giving in to the inevitable. I’d seen how awkward Craig was about the pink T-shirt; I knew I wasn’t going to win this one. Besides, if we argued about it for too long in the cold night air, the moment might well be lost for all of us if the girls started to sober up and rediscover their shady morals and consciences.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly take the first cab,’objected Craig, ever the gentleman.

  ‘Mate, I’ve got some damage limitation to do here. If you’re going, get in the bloody cab and get out of here. Talk later.’

  The consequences were predictable. Goofy-Pie got stroppy and insisted on going home. Oscar’s bird said she couldn’t let Linda go home alone. My chick didn’t seem to have any scruples on the matter, which boded well – I like a girl with as few scruples as possible. In the end, Oscar got a cab with the other two as he was still hoping to get lucky. Perhaps very lucky – I know he’s still waiting to tick off a three-in-a-bed romp. All he got was left with a hefty taxi fare. My bird, Gillian, came back to mine and was as devious and lacking in scruples as I could have hoped. I didn’t surface until Sunday teatime. Result.

  8

  Monday 11 September

  Lucy

  ‘Good weekend, Lucy?’

  ‘Not especially,’I reply with unprecedented honesty. Mick asked the question. He’s a rare breed on the trading floor because he is not a total arse. We have worked together for about six months and during that time I have seen evidence of genuine humour and the occasional flash of intelligence. I yawn, ‘You?’

  ‘Split up with the girlfriend, so it wasn’t all bad.’

  ‘At least splitting up with someone creates a diversion, some excitement.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear. Is all not well in the Hewitt-Jones slash Phillips palace? Is Princess Lucy a little bored by chance?’

  Princess is his private nickname for me. I don’t find it quite as offensive as he intended.

  Mick has walked up to my desk and he’s now sitting on it so that, despite my efforts to focus on my screen and my e-mail inbox, all I can focus on is his thigh. He’s wearing a Paul Smith wool suit. It has a little more kick to it than most suits sported on the trading floor. I suddenly have an inexplicable urge to stroke his thigh. The suit I mean. I want to touch the wool. Must be. I look at Mick; he has green eyes, they are a bit like mine, i.e. arresting. He has very black hair, and for the first time I notice his lips. I can’t get carried away, as I note they are on the thin side.

  Most of the PAs want to sleep with Mick. The only ones who don’t are the ones that have already done so. Which, I understand, is not a reflection on his prowess in the sack, just a realistic appra
isal of the situation. Mick is clear; he doesn’t want a relationship with anyone who can see which sandwiches he chooses for lunch. Despite his commitment issues, ladies line up, each hoping they’ll be the one to change his mind. I suppose I can see what they see in him. Trouble.

  ‘Yes, I’m a little bored.’I stare squarely at him as I reply. I’m not in the slightest bit intimidated by or attracted to him, and the clearest way to demonstrate this is by not issuing an official denial that domestic bliss can, at times, be domestic dross. We’re both clever enough to know that it is; a denial on my part would be positively flirty. ‘Still, Pete reads me like a book. Next weekend he’ll probably whisk me off on some fabulous break.’

  ‘Romantic time in Paris, perhaps?’says Mick.

  ‘I was thinking more of a kinky romp in Amsterdam,’I reply, smartly stepping back into the role of hard-nosed bitch with three-inch-thick steel shutters firmly pulled down around my private life. ‘Can you move your butt? You are sitting on my BlackBerry.’

  Mick flashes a grin (good teeth, I wonder who his orthodontist is?). He slowly gets up off my desk and saunters back to his own bay. ‘Nice talking to you, Princess Luce.’

  ‘Thrilling,’I neatly bounce back.

  Before I started my relationship with Pete I had more than my fair share of interludes with sexy, wealthy, good-looking men. One or two of them even managed to be interesting as well. Mick’s gentle flirting is nothing new. A man trying his luck with me is as natural as breathing. I don’t believe in false modesty, it’s tedious. The thing is, I’m one of the most aesthetically appealing women most men ever come into contact with. It’s just something I’ve learnt to get used to. Like all blessings it’s mixed, not that I’ve ever met a woman who would believe me. The issue is my blonde hair disqualifies any gravitas that my first class degree in economics and my immaculate, record-breaking career might afford a plainer woman. I’ve had to work bloody hard to overcome the allocated role of office totty. Still, can’t gripe, I’d die rather than have fat ankles.