I decide I have to tell her about Raspberry Dress. At least then she won’t have to have sex with the old fart for nothing. She can find herself a nice G ’n’ T to have sex with instead.
‘Janice,’ I begin.
‘What?’
‘If he was having an affair, would you want to know?’
‘He’s not having an affair,’ she snaps. ‘He’s old, for God’s sake. Who’d want to shag him?’
‘You?’
‘I don’t particularly want to shag him.’ She takes a drag of her fag and looks at me sympathetically. ‘I have to.’
‘OK…’
‘Why do you ask, anyway?’ She knocks back her margarita in two big gulps and signals for another. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
‘Well.’ I hesitate. ‘You know I told you George and David proposed over lunch?’
‘Mmmm?’
‘Well, Jasper was there.’
‘Having lunch with you?’ she asks innocently. ‘Well, that’s fine. Why didn’t you just say? Having lunch with him’s hardly having an affair with him, is it? I trust you. And we don’t have to tell each other every little thing.’
‘He wasn’t exactly having lunch with me,’ I say. ‘He was having lunch with a woman.’
‘A woman?’ She snaps her head back. ‘What sort of a woman?’
‘Just a woman,’ I say. I don’t think she needs to know that the woman concerned was so, well, sexual that I was staring at her even before I knew she was with Jasper. If I can just get Janice to knock this nonsense on the head now…
‘Well, it could have been his sister then, couldn’t it?’
‘I doubt it,’ I say kindly. ‘She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.’
‘His daughter then?’
‘Well, that’s what I thought,’ I say, relieved. ‘Has he got a daughter?’
‘No idea.’
‘Well then.’
‘And how do you know they were having an affair?’ she demands. ‘Did they get right up on the table and go for it hammer and tongs there and then? Huh?’
‘Well, no…’
‘So?’ she snarls. ‘She could have been anyone. Someone from work even. You know what your problem is, Katie? You’re just jealous.’
‘No I’m not,’ I say, surprised at her tone of voice.
‘You’re a sad, jealous bitch. No one wants to shag you, let alone have a relationship with you. You’ve got to marry a bum bandit ’cos no one else will have you and you just can’t bear to see anyone else happy, can you?’
‘That’s just it,’ I say bravely, even though inside I’m quaking. I haven’t even had a chance to mourn my missed shag with her. We could have had a good old giggle over it, at least. ‘If you were happy, it wouldn’t be so bad. But you’re not, are you? You spent this whole holiday hoping and praying for something that just didn’t happen. You didn’t even enjoy the good bits, like the gratis shopping and, well, the fucking.’
‘He fucks like a warthog,’ she points out. ‘Not even you would enjoy that.’
I decide to ignore her. ‘You can’t enjoy anything any more because you’re so on edge about getting married. I don’t call that happy.’
‘Oh, what would you know?’ she says so harshly that I can’t help wondering if anything else is wrong. And with that, she turns on her heel and storms out of the pub.
Chapter 16
With every booking I get for Neat Eats, my confidence, as well as my bank balance, soars. The breakthrough comes one morning when I realise I’m far happier pounding red peppers into mayonnaise and shredding potatoes for shoestring chips than I ever was slumped in front of daytime TV, watching fat people biff the shit out of each other. And with my newfound confidence in my career comes a healthier attitude towards men. I decide to assume they all fancy me, unless they expressly tell me otherwise.
In writing.
Which means, of course, that by rights I can quite reasonably expect Johnny Depp, Nicholas Cage and Finn from Holly-oaks to be baying at my door on various occasions in the near future. I mean, none of them have actually contacted me to tell me I’m a complete munter, have they?
OK, so I missed out on a goodie the day I let that bakery chap slip through my fingers, snoring my head off in the bath like that instead of slinking down the stairs, slippery with baby oil and smelling so delicious that he was compelled to rip my clothes off there and then. But nobody’s bloody perfect.
And then, of course, the diminutive Colin was no great catch either. But we’ll gloss over that one. There’s no point in thinking negatively. In future, I decide, pummelling a big wedge of pizza dough into submission, I can do and have exactly what—and who— I want.