‘I don't know what you mean,' said Catherine unconvincingly.
‘Yes, you do, you lying little bugger.' He tweaked her nose.
‘Well, I think I'll have you electronically tagged just to be on the safe side,' said Catherine, but it only sounded like half a joke.
‘It's more likely you'd leave me,' said Eddie. ‘I'm hardly chuffing Hugh Grant, am I?'
‘I don't like chuffing Hugh Grant,' Catherine told him. ‘Well, I do to watch, but I wouldn't want to snog him.'
‘I wouldn't leave you, babe,' said Eddie, tilting her face up towards his and giving her a kiss on her lips that still made something deep within her tingle. He smelt of soap and Fahrenheit aftershave and home.
‘Ugh, gross,' said the cake-baking Goth in the background.
‘Mind your own business, Morticia,' commanded Eddie over his shoulder, before turning back to his wife. ‘And you, drink your tea and try to stop worrying about things you can do nothing about.'
That was easier said than done because Catherine felt that she had let her friend down in a terrible way. It was impossible for this to have happened. NO ONE got through Catherine's hair-trigger defence system for Stevie. She would never let the woman she was closer to than her own sisters go through all that crap again. Or so she had promised herself.
‘Well, all I can say is, that's men for you!' said seventeen-year-old Kate with a heavy sigh of experience. She drifted from the room like a dramatic black plume of smoke, leaving Eddie and Catherine crippled from the effort of keeping in a bout of laughter that, at that moment, was so very well-needed.
Chapter 3
When Adam left Stevie's house he got into his very nice car and took a minute to study the medium-sized detached house of his love rival. Boring, neat enough outside but nothing spectacular, how he'd always imagined Matthew Finch to be from the way Jo had described him. That was, until he'd seen a framed photo on the dresser (next to another ridiculous Midnight Moon book) of the frumpy (most likely bottle) blonde, lumpy girlfriend snuggling up to a clean-shaven Prince Charming type: dark hair, dark eyes, nice white-toothed smile. He presumed that must be him, and he was far too good-looking for her. Surely she must have realized that it was only a matter of time before Finch's chocolate-coloured eyes were drawn towards someone his physical equal, like his own doe-eyed Jo. By Jings, the very least that short, unspecial-looking untidy woman could have done was look after her house and brush her hair occasionally to keep her man interested. Anger management classes might have been a good idea too. That way, her man might not have been on red alert, looking for company and desperate for love and attention. And he might not have presented a tortured and vulnerable side to Adam's beautiful, sensitive lady of eighteen months – Joanna.
Funny though, he hadn't expected Finch's woman to look as stunned as she had done by his revelation. By all accounts, she was a heartless cow. On second thoughts, she was probably thinking about being split up from his money. That type always did.
Adam sped off down the bypass, out of the town and towards the sprawling estate of newly built ‘Paradise' properties on the edge of an ex-pit village that had recently been given an extreme makeover. There, he pulled onto the drive of the fortieth finished double-fronted detached house, a design at the top of the luxury bracket. He turned the key in the lock and then quickly deactivated the alarm that protected all their state-of-the-art entertainment equipment, although he was far more of an effective deterrent to would-be burglars than any bell would be.
She'll be back, he thought. How could she leave all this? Her dream home. He looked around at the expensive curtains and carpets, the extensive CD and DVD collection, all the creature comforts anyone could desire. All for her. He'd get her back; whatever it took, he'd get her back. How could she leave him? She couldn't leave him, he wouldn't let her.
He smoothed his hand over the freshly plastered wall where the dining room led out to their almost finished conservatory. Then with a huge primal roar, he pulled back his fist and drove it into the wall, leaving the deep, wide impression of his knuckles.
That night, Stevie didn't give way to the tears that threatened, despite a concrete blockage the size of Venus stuck in her throat. Crying meant grieving, and grieving meant she had already lost him. Crying would have sapped the energy reserves that she badly needed to draw from. This wasn't a time for emotional output; she needed her head clear in order to think. What was it about Jo that was better than her? She began to write a list. It went on a bit longer than she had anticipated and began to look like a seriously bad idea.
She remembered how, on all the occasions when she'd moaned about her figure not being quite what she wanted it to be, or that there seemed to be more little laughter lines appearing at her eye-corners, Matthew had kissed her far from perfect nose and said she was just fine and dandy as she was. Obviously not fine and dandy enough if he'd buggered off to Majorca with someone with a flatter stomach, longer legs, smaller conk and all the other sickening ers that she couldn't compete with. Not without major plastic surgery and a magic wand anyway.
Stevie turned to a new page in the pad. This time her head would lead on how to tackle this one, not her heart. She would work out a plan to get him back. She would let him slip back seamlessly into her life and pretend this had never happened. He would never suspect she knew of his unfaithful escapade. Whatever it took to make this happen, she would do.
Whatever.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Stevie found Danny downstairs, wearing, or rather drowning in, his dressing-gown. On the label, it said it was for four to five year olds, but omitted to add the word hippos. He was staring at the empty cake-tin he had just found on the kitchen table. His bottom lip protruded so far, it should have had a cliff warning on it.
‘Mummy, where's the cake you promised me?' he asked.
‘Wait and see. Breakfast first,' said Stevie, clapping her hands like Joyce Grenfell in teacher mode. Danny had his usual orange juice and Coco Pops, and then sucked up the chocolatey milk with a straw. Then he washed his face and brushed his teeth, before getting his blue and grey uniform on for school, socks first. Everything always in the same order. Danny was a creature of habit and got upset if his routines were interrupted. Apparently, that was a sign of a gifted child, the nursery teacher had told her after an infuriating morning getting Danny down the path to school after they were late and rushing, and there hadn't been enough time to let him read out aloud all the numbers of the houses they passed, like they usually did. Sign of a child that wants his bottom walloped more like, she had thought at the time.
Though, there was no getting away from it, he was certainly a bright little button, an added bonus because when he was born, Danny was so premature that there was a real chance he might have had some brain damage. Sitting in a hospital scared to go to sleep in case your child doesn't survive the night was something she wouldn't wish on any parent; they were dark, dark times.
Miraculously, her baby boy had pulled through and every year he got a birthday card from ‘The Little Fighters' Club' at the Special Care Unit up at the hospital. Hard to imagine that the tiny, fragile scrap and the sturdy, clever little boy now in front of her were one and the same person.
Danny was always writing and making little books, like she used to do, although hopefully not for the same reasons. She would have liked him to follow in her footsteps and write for a living, but something a little loftier than Midnight Moon fiction, which was for ladies who liked to escape to a land where men were men and women sighed a lot and fainted but at least the endings were happy.
‘Is my cake ready yet, Mummy?' he asked again, as Stevie straightened his tie, playing for time.
‘Well er, … the thing is … '
The doorbell bing-bonged, a sound that translated as a hallelujah chorus in Stevie's head as she opened the door to Catherine, newly restored to her usual auburn, wearing her best and widest smile and wooden-acting worse than an extra in Crossroads.
‘Hi, Stevie, here's the cake you baked last night. I'm sorry, I walked off with it instead of the empty tin, that I was borrowing off of you. Ha, ha, how silly of me.'