Lemonade and Lies (2 page)

“Penny for them,” said Alice, managing to look wise as well as sober, even though she’d drunk the lion’s share of the two bottles. She was more practiced at it. All those late lunches. Me? It’s normally a rushed tuna sandwich in the staffroom and a mug of stewed, tepid coffee, because no one’s bothered to put on a fresh brew. And I’m certainly not in Alice’s league when it comes to shifting alcohol.

“What?”

“Penny for your thoughts.”

“Funny, that’s what I was thinking about. Pennies.”

“Jill,” she said, her tone impatient. Like I was some sort of lost cause. “Get a man. Take the bloody job. And send the kids off to their grandparents for a week.”

It sounded easy when she said it. A concise, three-bullet-point plan. Probably the sort of thing Alice had to come up with every day in the office. But life is far more messy. Still, if I’d known how much messier it was about to get, I might have given more than a passing thought to Alice’s strategy for sorting out my life.

Don’t you hate queuing up at the ATM
? You wait for somebody to check their balance and when you think it’s safe to move closer, they decide to top up their mobile. Even so, I try to remain good humoured
and
good mannered. Do unto others etc. Pity we’re not all the same. Because Friday was a very, VERY bad day, Automated Teller Machine-wise, that is.

I’m still reeling from it. But the bank says they are ‘actively investigating the irregularity with my account.’ That’s okay then! And
irregularity
? Is that what they’re calling it now? When you have your pin number shoulder-surfed and your account emptied.

I can’t believe it’s happened. But the fraud guy at my bank seems to think it’s quite normal. His email began with one of those FYI things, which immediately put me off. If he couldn’t be bothered to write ‘for your information’ I didn’t see much chance of him catching my shoulder-surfer.

The guy said it happens all the time. Is that supposed to make me feel better? The fact that some scumbag had been hovering behind me, clocking my pin number. Marking the back of my coat with a small, chalk dot. And waiting for his mate to bump into me further down the street to steal my card. Job done.

I didn’t know my purse was missing right away. Not until I reached the supermarket check-out with a full basket, and five minutes to spare before I had to pick the kids up from the expensive childminder. Why is it when embarrassing stuff like that happens, there’s a queue of gawping rubber-neckers wondering how you’ll deal with it.

I thought I dealt with it heroically. I didn’t pout. Or blame anyone else. Just pulled together what dignity I could, left the plastic bags by the till for someone else to unpack, and took myself and my red face back to the car. Which wouldn’t start. Well I said it hadn’t been a great day.

Had to phone the childminder to say I’d be late, and wait patiently for a bus I wasn’t sure would arrive. (Reading bus time tables when you’re not used to them is like deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs.)

The small rural village of Trispen, where my after-school childminder plied her trade, wasn’t that far.
Not when you have a working car, that is.
But having to get there on public transport was one more problem in a day splattered with them.

Still, as my mother says: “life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.” She’d read it somewhere. I blame her for the underlying optimism in me that spots the faint glimmer of light in life’s dark corners.

So, like my mother, I’d stood at the bus stop making lemonade. Magically turning negatives into positives. Positive 1 – if my purse hadn’t been stolen, I might still have ignored the tiny sporran Alice bought me during one of her jaunts to the Edinburgh Festival. I’d put some money in there for luck. It might just be enough to get me and my kids back home. Positive 2 – there actually was a bus that ran out to Trispen. Positive 3 – the rain that had started to fall was only a light drizzle.

Even so, I’d allowed myself a small, indulgent sigh. As days go, it wasn’t one for the record books, but some days are like that. Still, there’s no point in griping. It doesn’t change a thing.

*

“Do you know how
serious
this is?” she said.

It had been six months since the woman had phoned me. A year since Bill himself had spoken to either me or his kids. And now here was his mother expecting me to drop everything, and turn myself inside out to find her precious, bloody son for her.

I didn’t answer.
She’d
phoned
me
. Let her fill the awkward gaps, for I didn’t have a thing in common with the woman. And she’d made it plain that I would come last in any daughter-in-law-of-the-year contest.

“Look - I know we’ve never really seen eye to eye,” she said.

Understatement, it’s an art
. Judith Murdock’s tone didn’t go with her words. It was haughty, even though she wanted a favour. She hadn’t got a handle on this communication thing, for she wasn’t a people-person. Unlike her son.

Bill had been a real charmer. But it was all false. And I’d fallen for it, like others he’d sucked in; including the twenty-one year old computer tech he’d left me for. He was down-sizing. I was thirty-two.

You’d think I’d be glad to get rid of him. I mean the man turned out to be a proper bastard. But rejection is never easy. There was pain and confusion; fear about the future, how I’d manage by myself and look after the kids. My confidence had wobbled and my self esteem took the lift to the basement. For days I’d halted by any mirror that hove into sight, checking for imperfections, taking inventory.

The face: not too ugly. Not Munroe exactly (the actress, not the guy who christened Scottish peaks). Still passable in a good light. Not too many lines there, apart from a few across my forehead when I concentrate, but then those are covered up by my fringe. Blonde hair still as thick and glossy as it was when Bill first ran his fingers through it, said it drove him wild. Body: not too bad, still slim considering two small lives had built a home in there for nine months.

“Jillian! Are you listening to me?”

I wasn’t. “What?”

“I said we’ve got to do something.”

Surely she wasn’t expecting me to join the Bill fan club.

“William was worried,” she said. “He thought someone was following him. He could be in some sort of trouble.”

“Why?”

“He hasn’t phoned me for two weeks. He always phones me on a Friday night before I go Sequence Dancing. It’s unlike him not to keep in touch.”

“Tosh!” (
Tosh
?) I don’t know what made me go for something so pathetically lame when I’d wanted to say bollocks. But keeping in touch wasn’t exactly a Bill speciality.

“Now look here . . .” she said.

“Bill doesn’t give a shit about me or the kids or anybody else on the planet. He’s gone off for some fun as usual.”

“Language, Jillian! I just thought you’d be interested in what was happening to your children’s father.”

“Children’s father? That’s rich,” I said. “He knows as much about parenting as my tits know about playing the piano, Judith. Which isn’t one hell of a lot.”

“Well really!” she blustered. And I knew I had her on the ropes.

Yes
, I was interested in what Bill was up to. I wanted to know why he hadn’t paid the child support that was due. He had his own recruitment agency and was making good money.

I could hear Judith puffing away in the background, waiting for something. Don’t ask me what. She knew how I felt about her son. About the way the bastard had abandoned us. Granted he’d left us the laptop, his fancy sound system and all his techie toys, but that was only because he’d wanted a fast getaway, for he’d also stripped the money from our account.

“Jillian,
please
. . .”

It took an effort for the woman to plead. It wasn’t natural to her. And part of me – the compassionate me – felt a small surge of sympathy for her. She’d built her life on the shifting sands of her son, a self-centred bully. She was to be pitied surely?

“He’s the children’s father”, she whined again, as if the repetition would somehow impress me. It had the opposite effect. It buried the compassionate me and allowed the survivor to resurface. The woman who’d struggled to keep a roof over our heads when that job was down to her spoilt son, a weakling with as much backbone as a retarded worm.

“When he acts like a father, I’ll treat him like one,” I said and slammed the phone down. My hand shook.

I went to the kitchen. There was an emergency bottle of wine in the fridge. It’s not like I’m a piss artist or anything, I can take the stuff or leave it. But the kids were in bed. The dishes were washed. Tomorrow’s prep was done. And, unlike Alice, I don’t need to know which vineyard my wine comes from. Right now a glass or two of
anything
over 11 percent would help undo the damage done by the formidable Judith Murdock and her absentee son. Serve him right if he was in trouble.

Three glasses later (my glasses are small) I was wishing all sorts of bad luck on the man: plagues of locusts, boils and all that dramatic, biblical stuff. Not like me at all, I’m not usually vindictive. But the Californian Chardonnay was a lethal 14.5 percent. So I blame that. If Alice had been there, she’d have warned me to be careful what I wish for. But she wasn’t, so I wished away.

*

James McDonald was a tall, striking man with an unfortunate name, unless of course you were a fan of Big Macs. He wasn’t what you’d call buff, more on the slim side. Not exactly eye-candy, as Alice had already pointed out. But hardly an eye-sore. And there was something about him that was memorable; the way he carried himself, his confidence. He wasn’t heading for senility either. I’d put him down as late thirties, but he had one of those faces that wasn’t easy to fix a number to.

Yes, he definitely had charm. Still, as a divorced mother with two small kids and a mortgage the size of the national debt, I already had enough on my hands. I couldn’t act like a singleton and throw myself into a frustrating search for the perfect bloke.
But that doesn’t mean I’m dead.
A man would be good. But the right man. Not that Bill had set the bar high.

There were things I liked about James McDonald. He reminded me how good it was to laugh. But there was an unnerving directness about him, bluntness even. Questions he’d asked, and the way the dark hazel eyes had fixed on mine made me feel uncomfortable, like the protective shell I’d grown was being cracked open.

With time, I might have got used to this directness. But James had blown it. He’d become downright creepy, bombarding my phone with messages, posting notes through my letter box.

“I’m putting the phone down,” I said. I was getting braver about that sort of thing. First the demon mother-in-law and now James McDonald.

“No! Don’t do that. Please, Jill. It’ll only take a few minutes – promise. But it’s imperative I see you.”

Imperative? Hardly romantic, was it? Still, there was something in his voice, desperate but sincere. And for the first time, I thought that maybe the man had more on his mind than seeing the inside of my bedroom door.

He jumped into my silence with both feet. “Look, I need to explain some things to you.”

“What? Like who you
really
are? You’re not a businessman, are you?” It had suddenly come to me. A belated flash of insight, and something about the way he’d asked endless questions on our first (and last) date. More than the usual getting-to-know-you stuff.

“That too,’ he said. ‘But I like you, and I’d hate anything bad to happen to you.”

Although his tone was matter-of-fact, there was something sinister in the words, an underlying threat. And I was someone who dealt in words. Who analysed every nuance in them. Suddenly, I found it hard to breathe.

The phone was so heavy in my hand that I dropped it. The room went into a sickening spiral around me and I sank awkwardly into the sofa, watching its pattern blur, listening to the dramatic thud of my own pulse. Its amplified sound screamed in my ears, till it was replaced by the screech of tyres in the road outside, the desperate pounding on my front door -
and the splintering noise as someone prised it open without a key.

I’d never fainted before. It’s not a thing I’d recommend. And the reason was a mystery. I wasn’t weak from hunger, hadn’t given blood, and I definitely wasn’t pregnant. For that to happen, sex needs to rear its rowdy head. So, immaculate conceptions aside, it’s not like me to faint.

I’m usually tougher, try to take life as it comes, the good and the bad. Something to do with my no nonsense, Northern up bringing maybe. Or my mother. Although relations between me and my mother have sometimes been strained, she is a strong woman who has overcome more than her share of tragedies. She’d lost a son. I’d lost a brother. She’d been resilient and I guess her resilience had rubbed off on me.

“Feeling better?”

It was James McDonald cradling one of my hands in his. I pulled the traitorous thing from his grasp, but the man didn’t take the hint and kept on smiling. He didn’t expect an answer either. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for an intelligent human to flop on a sofa like a stranded haddock with its mouth open, unable to form recognisable words.

“Don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal,” he said.

“What?”

“For the body to shut down for a while - when it’s had a shock and things become too much for it.”

What did he think I was? A favourite family pet, to be patted on the head? Patronising pillock.

“My kids . . .” I screamed. But it only came out as a hoarse whisper. I swung my legs quickly onto the floor and forced my brain to reconnect to reality. But the floor turned into this huge sponge thing that my feet just sank into. James McDonald moved smoothly into knight-in-armour mode and caught my sagging body under the armpits before it hit the Wilton. He hauled me back onto the sofa.

“Too soon,” he said, his face changing from idiotic, grinning gargoyle to sympathetic bystander in one easy adjustment.

The man was starting to piss me off now.

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” I said.

“You tried that ambitious manoeuvre too soon. Give it a few minutes, and drink this.” He held a glass of water to my lips. “Drink slowly,” he warned, like I was an idiot who needed an instruction manual for the simplest task.

I ignored my growing frustration, gritted my teeth and drank.
Slowly
. My head began to feel less like a balloon that someone had let the air out of, and it became easier to breathe.

“Better. You’ve got some colour. Blood pressure’s probably coming back to normal.”

“You a paramedic now?”

“No. But you pick things up in my job,” he said.

“Lots of injuries in accountancy, are there?”

He laughed. A natural, easy laugh that rattled around loudly in his throat. “I think we both know I’m not an accountant, though my work does involve finance.”

I couldn’t think of an answer. Right now all I had were questions, but it wasn’t easy to pull them out of my head. I dragged myself into a sitting position, blew out some stale air and thought about the most important question.

“You’re not going to throw up, are you?” he asked dubiously. It was the first time he’d looked uncomfortable. Maybe cleaning up puke wasn’t in his plans.

“I need to see my kids,” I said, “make sure they’re okay.”

“They’re fine. Still sleeping.”

“
You went into their bedrooms?
”

“Sure. I guessed you’d be worried about them, and I had to make some noise breaking in. Figured they might be scared.”

“O … kay.” I hoped it was. Maybe it was time to start trusting people again, for they couldn’t all be like Bill-the-Bastard. And this guy looked decent enough. Could be that he really was trying to help, but what he was trying to help with wasn’t clear.

I relaxed, and put the kids on the backburner for the time being. Better not to wake them now anyway. Especially Tom. He was still having a rough time after the divorce and didn’t get to sleep easily.

“Now, tell me who you are,” I said, “why you’re interested in me, and what you’re doing breaking my door down at ten o’clock at night. I expect any damage to be fixed by the way.”

“Sure.” His face slipped into a smile and the quiet confidence that radiated from it made me feel safe.
And
confused. The red warning flag in my head shot up. And the sensible part of me (the bit that worked hard, hardly ever played, cooked macaroni cheese for tea because it was cheaper than steak) reminded me that I didn’t need any more complications in my life. At least not ones that came with three-piece-suits and testosterone attached. We’d been doing all right as a family, a family with a matriarch at its head. But I grinned right back. Because I don’t
always
listen to the sensible Jill.

*

“Mum, can we get a dog?”

It was the last thing I’d expected from Tom. Since his dad left he’d hardly given me the time of day. So I figured he blamed me for Bill walking out, and the kind of make-do life we’d been forced to live ever since. His eyes were sad.

I’m no psychologist, but it stuck out a mile that Tom was looking for a life raft to cling to. Something to fill the gap left in his life by a missing dad.

I smiled at my son. He was an easy kid to smile at. I felt a cliché galloping towards me and fought to hold it back. But he was the perfect picture of childhood innocence. Fair haired. Blue eyed. He was also an intelligent little fireball, outgoing; full of questions about life’s puzzles. Most of which I couldn’t answer for him.

But lately he’d become hard work: sulky, withdrawn, using every flimsy excuse to fight with his sister.

“Well – can we?”

“Eh?”

“Mu-um! You never listen.”

What? Of course I listened to my children. That’s what a good mother did, and right now I was working hard to be a mother and a father.

“I do
so
listen. That’s not fair.” The lame, whiney words had left my mouth and it was too late to haul them back. Stupid, arguing with a six-year-old. And bleating on about fairness when I was meant to be the adult in this outfit. Instead, I sounded like some pubescent teenager.

“So? Can we . . .?”

This was one of those times when
we’ll see
or
maybe
just wouldn’t cut it. Tom was a smart little cookie, and promises of some rose-coloured-dog-inhabited-future weren’t going to be enough. His small, round face began to crumple as he held my gaze and struggled manfully with the tears about to invade those massive blue eyes.

So I came to an instant decision. No weighing up of pros and cons, or considering the financial implications - i.e. vet bills, dog food. And time out of an already manic schedule for dog-walking. Plus the fact that our small townhouse was no place for a dog.

“Okay,” I said, and breathed a sigh of relief as the sadness in his face changed into a massive grin. I’m not usually a pushover, and try to teach my kids the importance of working for everything in life. And the difference between the words ‘I want’ and ‘I need’.

“Mum – you’re cool.”

The ultimate prize. It was like a million pounds deposited in my bank account and I beamed straight back. My son loved me again, even if it took the promise of a mutt to do it. And with any luck it might get rid of the cat.
As you know, I’ve never been fond of the cat.

“One condition, though,” I said.

“Uh?”

“Not a huge thing. Not a great bounding hound. Just your normal, family size, everyday dog.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said. But something in my son’s face said that we’d be eaten out of house and home by an animal the size of a small pony.

Okay! So I
am
a pushover.

*

“So, what did
he
say then?” Alice wanted all the gory details of my last meeting with James McDonald. Maybe she was writing a book, a bonk-buster, and was filing stuff away for future reference. I’d this vague notion myself about being a writer, trying to get my children’s stories published. Not a dream exactly. I couldn’t afford those, not with two small kids to provide for, a mortgage and soon – a dog.

You might wonder why I hadn’t dragged Alice into this. She works for a publisher. But I’m not the sort of person to make use of friends. If I was, I wouldn’t be driving a banger of a car, but the new one that Alice had offered me.

“James?” she prompted.

I thought back to my last meeting with the man. Me: languishing on the sofa. Him: taking charge of my convalescence. He hadn’t said anything; that was the trouble. He hadn’t given me a single clue why he’d been worried about me in the first place. He’d put his number on my mobile – ‘just in case’. In case of what? That was something I should have asked. But I hadn’t. For his overpowering charm had bled over into my common-sense.

“Well?”

“What?” I said.

“Pull it together, girl. The man obviously fancies you and it’s not like you’ll have men beating the door down, is it?”

“Shit, Alice – that’s not fair.” My self esteem was already in the toilet.

Alice looked downcast. “If you can’t take a joke, I’m off. He beat your door down, right?” She made a half-hearted attempt to gather up her massive Suzi Tamarez handbag. My friend always had her finger on the pulse of the latest trendy fashion, whereas I was content nowadays with a working pulse. She’d tried to convert me to the up-beat designer who made these iconic and oversized bags. Rock and roll with a splash of fun was how Alice described them. But to me, hers looked just like a large shopping bag, though it had a lining embossed with a Guns and Roses print. “Ideal for schlepping around town,” was Alice’s verdict when she’d found them. But I wasn’t sure what schlepping was, or if I’d be any good at it.

“I was an idiot, right?”

“Why? 'Cause you fancy the bloke?” she said.

Did I? I wasn’t sure. It had been a while since men had featured in my life and as for sex . . . Well, that had been so long ago I’d need to read the manual, and buy a whole new set of underwear. I felt my face flush and changed the subject.

“I didn’t even ask him what the emergency was,” I said. “And what about Bill? My gut says this has something to do with him.”

“The man’s a first class shit,” said Alice.

“Sure, but . . .”

“What? You feel sorry for him now?”

“No! But what if he’s done something that’ll drag us all into trouble?” I said.

“Bill? He wouldn’t have the imagination.”

“Really?”

Alice had the decency to blush. She’d been caught up in his spell the same as I had. She’d fancied him, but had backed off to leave room for me. The definition of a true mate. And someone else more promising had soon come along; one of the high-fliers she goes through with the ease of a hot knife through butter.

“Concentrate on this new one,” she said, “he looks like a contender.”

“Says who?”

“Your Aunty Alice’s advanced people-reading-skills.”

“Sure!” But the thing was I
wanted
to believe her.

Alice bounded off the sofa with an unnatural energy and blew me a dramatic kiss. Despite her theatricals, she wasn’t shallow, but a good friend who’d been there for me when the going had been rough and others had shuffled away in embarrassment.

“Just forget Bill,” she said, “and whatever bother he’s got himself into. He’s just a big girl. A mummy’s boy who’ll never amount to anything. Take my advice and forget the little shit and move on with your life, gal. You deserve it. Phone you when I get back from Frankfurt. Take care.”

I gave my friend a hug. It was good to know she was there. Not exactly hovering in the background, but when life ganged up on you, she’d be ready with a decent Merlot. I laughed.

“There you go. Chin up, and don’t give that loser another thought. He’s gone from your life for good.” It was one of Alice’s famous exit lines.

I watched her car drive off into the distance, towards London and another life. I hoped she was right. And that her people-reading-skills wouldn’t bounce right back and bite us both in the bum.