Jo MacLean heard the mobile ring and she clicked ‘ignore'. It was Matthew. She relished the thought of the panic he must be in now, but she felt no sympathy. Not once had he convinced her he was the Golden Goose but a second time, with that ridiculous paltry lottery win. What he had coming to him would serve him right, because if she had known the truth about his financial state, she would never have left Adam.
Out of all the men she'd had, she really had regretted letting Adam go the most. He'd been lovely – kind, generous and so very gentle. She hadn't even minded that much about the revolting ponytail and long straggly beard he had been growing to shave off for charity, and that spoke volumes. She wished now that she had stayed and married him – well, for a while anyway. He had been bitten hard before and was nervous about taking that step, but she would have won him over to the idea, had she not been distracted by Matthew and his hot-air talk about his so-called investments.
She had started to notice weeks ago that Colin Seed was a far more frequent visitor to the department than usual. Matthew had hit the nail on the head thinking Jo was the attraction. It had been so easy to hook him: a few tears by his Bentley in the executive car park and he was putty in her hands. He was the contingency plan she put into place, just in case things soured with Matthew. Jo MacLean always liked to have a contingency plan. She made sure she was in total control of her own destiny.
Then she had seen Adam with Stevie and it had driven her half-crazy. It surprised her, because she didn't think herself capable of feelings that deep. She wanted him back immediately, and it never occurred to her that the space she had left in his life would not still be open to her. She had gone to see him at the gym, wearing one of the suits he had bought for her, her hair down as he liked it best, but he had turned her down. He said he didn't love her any more.
Now Jo's suitcases were in her car ready to take to Colin's house – Colin's monstrously huge eight-bedroomed house in the most elegant part of Leeds suburbia – and even better, she had persuaded him to take the position in New York.
Adoration, love-gifts, a new life in the Big Apple and pots of real money to look forward to – this time Jo MacLean, the ultimate bird of passage, thought she really had cracked it.
Matthew drove carefully home because his hands were shaking too much to speed. He felt as if he was in The Blair Witch Project – a big foresty mess that he couldn't get out of, and things could only get worse. He pulled up noisily outside his house, plunged the key into the lock then crashed through the rooms, calling out Jo's name in despair. She was not there, and nor were any of her things. His house looked shabby and dusty and full of ugly unwanted bits. It wasn't unlike his life.
Jo rang Adam from the car, just before she turned into Colin's drive. She told him she had left Matthew and had nowhere to go. She found herself sobbing real tears, and when she told him that she was sorry for everything and loved him, truly loved him, she meant it.
He told her she had no idea what love was and he put the phone down.
Chapter 50
By her own admission, this was ridiculous. Stevie had all the same feelings as a seventeen year old on her first date as she waited for Adam to come home from work that night. She had been so full of nervous energy back then, waiting for David Idziaszczyk to knock on her door and take her to Rebecca's nightclub, that she had been sick on her shoes in the hallway and had a mad scramble to wipe up and spray her legs with her mum's Youth Dew. She dipped into the memory of her first love and smiled. On the day she finally learned to spell his name, he'd dumped her. She thought her life had ended and there were many dramatic wailings to be had. The heartbreaks didn't get any easier with age but neither did the love-bugs, now tickling the walls of her tummy, get any less active.
Danny was staying the night at Catherine's because there was a teachers' ‘inset' day at school tomorrow, whatever they were. Latin for ‘a rest from the little buggers' probably. Cath was always offering to babysit at the moment, for her own mischievous reasons, and tonight, well, Stevie was not prepared to look a gift horse in the mouth.
She checked the large coffee cake cooking in the oven. She was quite proud that she had managed to make it without blowing up the lovely cottage kitchen. The vegetables were all ready in their pans, the fillet steaks in the fridge waiting to be cooked, the wine breathing on the work surface. Why she was going to all this trouble was anyone's guess. Adam MacLean wouldn't look in her direction in a million years, she knew that, but some little romantic (and stupid) part of her wanted to run with the feeling that he might. Just for a few days. Just until her head could get around the fact that soon they would go their separate ways and probably only see each other in passing in the gym. Then one day she would see him roaring past her in a sports car with a gorgeous, tall, slim woman next to him, her long, dark hair streaming behind and Stevie would be a distant memory, an amusing after-dinner tale at best. I once knew a woman who wrote for Midnight Moon. Now, what was her name again … ? And Stevie would still be alone, still writing out fictional lives full of the hope and love that she wanted so much for herself.
She was just rolling the edges of the big cake in battered-up Flake when he came in, dropped his bag by the door and smiled as the cocktail of nice domestic aromas hit him at full pelt. He carried a couple of bottles of wine in his hand. He just wanted to savour the last few days of being with her, he knew that was all he had left. He should have told Stevie that Jo had gone, but he feared that would accelerate her journey back to his arms. He should leave now and not prolong the heartache, but he just wanted to be with her, a little longer, an hourglass-worth of time with someone who had the same voluminous capacity to love as he did. Someone warm and generous, imperfect, irritating, annoying, frustrating, bloody lovely.
‘Hi,' she said. ‘I got some steaks, if you want one. Nothing special.'
She had baked. This was special. Well, to him. No one, except his Granny Walker, had ever made him a cake before.
‘I got some wine, if you fancy a glass.'
‘Yes, I do, thanks. There's a bottle open already over there.'
‘Ho'd on a wee minute until I get oot o' this clobba.'
He said he liked his steak well done, not still moo-ing and struggling on the end of his fork, as she had once thought he might. She slapped them in the pan and as they sizzled in the hot olive oil, she smiled to herself, thinking about him upstairs, changing out of his work ‘clobba'.
He poured two glasses of the open red, when he at last came down in a T-shirt and jeans. She tried hard not to look at his muscular arms, the definition of his chest under the snow-white material, his fantastic chunk of a bum and big crushing thighs shaping the denim.
‘Where's the wean?'
‘He's at Catherine's. They're having a cinema night. The Incredibles again, I think, for the forty-billionth time.'
‘Och, that's a shame. I was going to have a kick aboot wi' him in the garden.'
Fond of him as Matthew had been, he had never once said ‘that's a shame' when Danny wasn't around, Stevie suddenly realized. Then again, she had realized quite a lot recently. Mostly how pale her real relationship with Matthew had been, even when placed at the side of this imaginary one with Adam.
‘Can I help?' he asked.
‘Yes, you can pass me the brandy and those peppercorns, unless you want your steak plain.'
‘Aye, plain for me, please. I want to taste that meat, it looks braw … good.'
‘I understand you now, you don't need to translate.'
He smiled. The wine swirled in his head already. He wanted to get horribly plastered and rip all her clothes off, but for now, he got on with slicing some tomatoes.
‘Bea Pollen!' he chuckled, when they were sitting down on the sofa, mellowing after a lovely meal and gentle banter. They had both suggested having a sobering raspberry-truffle-flavoured coffee afterwards. He, before he really did rip her clothes off, and she before she leapt on him and made a complete twat of herself. They had both kicked off their shoes and their feet were inches apart on the big long footstool. She couldn't imagine ever borrowing his socks. He had the biggest feet she had ever seen. She tried hard not to think what that might mean, scale-wise.