Venus Envy (20 page)

I had to be prepared to face Ellen Jones. And her mother. Maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on Kevin Harv.ey the

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postboy. I mean, let’s face it. Kevin was straight. Single. Between puberty and death. And up for it. What more could a girl want?

The big kitchen had copper pans and dried hops hanging from the ceiling, and bacon and mushrooms sizzled invitingly on a huge green Aga as we wandered in. Keisha’s heels click-clicked on the sandstone floor as she breathed in the scent. There was warm baked bread on the oak table, and a pot of fresh coffee, and some fishy thing - kippers? - and pots of marmalade and Marmite and home-made honeycomb in a jar. Sue Cooper was cracking the top off a brown speckled egg, wearing jodhpurs and a neat cashmere jumper. Her long, smooth hair looked as glossy as a Red Setter’s coat, and she had the sleek look of a pedigree greyhound. Various Sloany boys were making eyes at her as they stood around draining coffee and wolfing slabs of toast and honey.

‘I’m starving,’ Keisha announced.

‘Well, do help yourself.’ Sue’s effortless superiority really put my back up. ‘Everyone’s just piling in. And Alex, try anything, Mrs Drummond wants us all fattened up. Oh. Crispin, you know how we girls always worry about our weight -‘ this to one of the young bucks drooling at her across the pepperpots ‘but Alex is so lucky, she simply doesn’t mind. She eats anything.’

I wanted to have just a cup of English Breakfast, but unfortunately I was too hungry. Keisha piled toast and mushrooms and crispy bacon on both our plates. I knew I was going to eat every scrap of it, so I tried to copy Keisha and pretended I didn’t care.

‘Oh.’ A rangy whippet of a girl stretched herself like a Siamese, and half the boys’ eyes slid off Sue and on to her. ‘I’ve strained myself so badly in the Harbour Club, I can feel muscles I didn’t know I had.’

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‘Can I feel them, Melissa?’ asked one of the lads, to roars of laughter.

‘God, I love Charlie for asking me over,’ said another. ‘He really does have the most distracting friends.’

They all introduced themselves. Danny Boyle, film producer. John Crates and Bill Radcliffe, City types. Ted Loman was training for Formula One, Lionel was an MP’s researcher and Karl Arthurs was a solicitor. And Whippet Girl Melissa was a-kindergarten teacher, one with blue eyes, blonde hair, a slender frame and the clear desire to marry somebody with money. Penny, Bill’s wife, was doing a catering course, Gillian was married to Ted - which, judging from her tone of

, voice, was career as well as a description. All of them were the kind of women who would stay home looking after the children, but with a nanny or two to do the dirty work for them, and then frown on girls like me who wanted to do something with our lives, other than be a postscript to a man.

The men were successful and the girls were decorative. Isn’t life grand?

I was trying to gulp down a forkful of bacon without being noticed when all the heads turned, and the girls were instantly on their feet, scraping their chairs back on the flagstones.

My fork stopped in mid-air. My God, it was Ellen. And she hadn’t slimmed down to nothing or had radical plastic surgery. She was. not quite the heifer she was, but she was still Fergie rather than Di, and she still had that brush of freckles right across her nose. Her ample bottom was snug in a pair of faded Levis and she’d thrown a comfy suede shirt over her straining bosom, and her red hair was dyed a nice

coppery mahogany, and she looked great.

Happy and great. Glowing with it.

My emotions were thrown for yet another loop.

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‘Ellen.’ I got up shyly, and she did a classic double, triple-take, she was staring at me as though she could hardly believe it. Blimey, did I really look that bad?

‘Xandra! Oh, Xandra!’ Ellen squealed like a mad piglet, and hurled herself across the room at me. ‘Oh wow. Mummy told me you were here but I didn’t really believe it. How are you, it’s so great to have you here! Now everything will be perfect!’

I introduced Keisha and Bronwen, who’d slumped her way downstairs when nobody was looking. Ellen was bouncing around like Tigger, she was so bloody happy. Ellen is the only person I’ve ever met who went for Xandra rather than Alex. She just got everything wrong, that girl. But she was the one who was getting married.

A shadow fell in the doorway and I lifted my head from Ellen’s bear-like hug to see Charles Drummond, smiling away as though he only drank Perrier on his stag night, which, let’s face it, he probably did. Charles looked much the same as usual, except he’d toughened up and he appeared to be completely bald. Actually this suited him. Better than being a ginge, anyway. He looked like Patrick Stewart off Star Trek and now he was coming up behind Ellen and smothering the back of her neck in kisses. Everybody went ‘Aaah,’ dutifully.

‘Xandy, it’s terrific to see you. Tom will be so thrilled, and your friends, yes,’ Charles said, shaking hands warmly.

‘It’s Ales these days.’

‘Oh, Xandy, always so contrary,’ Charles laughed annoyingly. Who are you calling Sandy, slap-head? I thought but didn’t say. ‘Have you got a fella yet? Oh no, Tom told me you were onthe shelf. Better make a move on some chap smartish, eh, before the dust settles!’ He roared with laughter.

Bronwen jumped in to defend me but Sue got there first, teasing Ellen loudly about babies. ‘Charles will

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want his own cricket team. You’ll be so snowed under.’

‘What about you and Clan?’ asked Gillian, flashing her own wedding ring smugly. ‘You see, Alex? The married life really has so much to recommend it.’

‘Not according to all the husbands who ask me for a quick poke,’ said Keisha suavely.

A dead silence fell, as though someone had just flung ” a dead racoon on to the honeypots. Bronwen couldn’t help it, she was going to giggle. And she had a mouthful of coffee. She whipped around just in time to spray it over the sink.

‘Well, really,’ Melissa sniffed.

I was biting my cheeks trying not to laugh.

‘No, honestly, you wouldn’t believe it,’ Keisha continued, not batting an eyelid. ‘Six of them last night. It was disgraceful. With their wives in the same room.’

‘Which ones?’ asked Danny curiously.

‘Don’t know. And wouldn’t say if I did,’ Keisha told him smoothly.

And then everyone started talking very fast.

I got to eat precisely four mouthfuls of bacon before the next bomb dropped.

‘Alex, we have a couple of friends of yours over. They deal with John and Bill sometimes, as well as my coochie-pie,’ Ellen said warmly.

‘Great, who’s that?’ I asked with total disinterest. ‘Oh, it’s your old boss,’ Ellen squealed, ‘Seamus Mahon, and his wife Dolores, I know you’ll be.dying to catch up.’

I took a determined swig of coffee. It was hot and it blistered the inside of my mouth but I hardly noticed. The room was suddenly hatefully bright, like it

becomes when you’ve got flu.

‘How lovely,’ I managed.

Oh God, I had to get out of there. But did I? I was pierced by an absolute longing to see Seamus again, up here where he couldn’t hide behind an office wall. And where he’d” get to see my new cut and colour, my new suit, where he’d realise that I had friends and connections too. I had been invited here and it was nothing to do with him.

I wanted to sit firmly on Renewed Hope, to drag it back into the cage of Realistic Despair where I’d locked it up for the last week. But it was a slippery little bastard. It kept undoing its chains with its teeth.

Seamus here! That bad to mean something, didn’t it? I wanted to dive on the Daily Mail and check Jonathan Cainer’s horoscope, he’s always very positive. Amazing how all girls think the star sign thing is crap, I mean I know I do, but whenever I g.et a good one I’m always hopeful just the same. If it’s bad I iay it’s a load of cobblers. There’s a great story about the Daily News tabloid in New York that hired this columnist who was always writing things like, ‘Today your wife will sleep with your brother and your dog will get cancer of the liver.’ So many readers complained, that the proprietor wrote her a note: ‘Dear Madam Zaza, As “

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you will have foreseen, we will not be renewing your contract …’

It looked like destiny when Seamus first spoke to me, but now.., and I’d changed, I had truly. I was a sophisticated working woman, I wore designer stuff and I had a flash hairdresser. I was not even a secretary any more. He had to respect that, right? He had to see I was not that coffeeospilling klutz any more.

‘I hear Dolores has bought a stunning Versace electric-blue dress suit,’ purred Melissa.

Keisha looked at me and lifted one eyebrow just a touch. Yes, that ‘I hate you, you rich cow’ jealous ” thing was squirming in my tummy like a polecat in a

sack, but I was also curious. To get another look at the , creature who had that ring on her finger. At a woman who allowed Seamus to carry on the way he did. I wanted to see how she reacted to me. She must know something, surely? Could she be that stupid? And though I longed for Seamus, would I want to be the wife, if the wife had no career and was constantly cheated on?

And all these thoughts took under a second to process. God, if only our office computers were that good. I had spun the whole thing out before that gulp of coffee had hit the back of my throat.

‘Darling, do go and hurry Tom up,’ Ellen said to Charles. She reached across the table for the Alpen and winked at me. ‘He’ll be so thrilled finally to see you again. He was up for hours last night, talking about you to Seamus, when all the other boys were watching that awful stripper.’

‘Boys will be boys, darling,’ Charles said, handing her the cream and sugar. Ellen still had her appetite, I saw, but I couldn’t concentrate on how much cream she was drowning her cereal in. What had Tom and Seamus been saying about me? What a racer for him when Tom had mentioned I would be here!

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I beamed, I had glorious visions of Seamus in his cups, unbending to Tom that he missed me and couldn’t live without me. In vino veritas and all that.

‘Tom did most of the talking, Seamus just let him prattle on,’ Charles said, ‘but then Seamus has always been a great listener, don’t you think, Alex?’

I could feel Keisha and Bronwen’s eyes boring into

the back of my shiny layered crop.

‘We didn’t socialise,’ I replied.

Keisha moved in and swooped like an angel of mercy to save me. ‘Done, AI?’ She bustled about, grabbing my plate and cup, giving me a breather to recover my poise. I was buggered if I was going to let all this turmoil bubble over in front of the perfect wives here. Darling little Melissa and marvellously married Sue were having too good a time laughing at me as it was.

‘Wonderful, are you all eating properly?’ It was Mrs Drummond, looking fresh as the Morning Glory trumpets outside the kitchen window. She was wearing a moss-green trouser suit, very elegant, with calfskin boots. She was just a million miles away from Mum and her relentlessly colouroco-ordinated ‘brights’ (crimson skirts and jackets, blue shirts and matching shoes). ‘We’re going riding in Bridlington woods today, for anybody who can manage it.’

‘Oooh, terrific, I love your wonderful ponies,’ purred Gillian.

‘Well, Hector’s been pining away since you were here last,’ said a warm voice I recognised.

My God, it was Tom! I knew I was being rude, but I had to check him out twice to see if it truly was him.

He smiled across at me. His grin was so open: none of Seamus’s mystic seductiveness about it at all. Tom Drummond would never make you think of soft babbling brooks and plucking harp-strings. He’s the kind of geezer who thinks plucking harp-strings is for “

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poofs. As for poetry, well, Tom once called rugby

‘poetic’. It was as lyrical as he ever got about anything. ‘Hello, Alex,’ he said. Cheerfully.

I’d have jumped up and given him a hug, but the room was too crowded for anything that spontaneous. ‘Tom, where’s the rest of you?’

I’d love to be able to tell you that Tom Drummond was now as svelte and gorgeous as Tom Cruise, but it wouldn’t be true. He must have dropped about a quarter of his body weight, though. He was tall and stocky instead of fat. The rolls of flab that used to settle comfortably round his belly had been exorcised and replaced by taut muscle. Now you could see ox

like shoulders and a ridiculously square chest where all , that lard had been. He could play rugby himself now.

‘Army,’ Tom said succinctly. ‘Don’t like chaps carrying around too many extra pounds.’

I was painfully aware of Keisha and Bronwen staring at him like he was Mel Gibson or something. How ridiculous, and Tom would tease me about it for e.ver. He was just a walking mass of testosterone when we were at college - even in his Giant Haystacks days some idiot females would flirt with him. I kicked

Keisha’s ankle and that snapped them out of it. ‘Your hair’s different.’

‘You’re observant.’ I grinned back. Really, it was like all those years had sloughed away: we were teasing each other the way we always had. I was utterly pleased to see Tom, at last an ally up here.

What could he and Seamus have been discussing? I couldn’t wait to probe him. What had he said? And what did Seamus think?

‘Tom, the house looks so incredible,’ breathed Penny, the catering student.

‘Mmm, the gardens are heaven,’ said Sue, and now they were all over him, this bunch of House Beautiful harpies, flirting away in their mumsy cardigans and

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cable-knit sweaters. And their husbands didn’t seem to mind, either. God, it’s pathetic how people suck up to people with money.

‘Alex, introduce me to your friends,’ said Tom, after a few murmured ‘So kind’s and ‘Glad you think so’s.

‘Hi, I’m Bronwen and I work in fashion,’ Bronwen said, fluttering her eyelashes to deadly effect.

‘I’m Keisha, I’m researching on Up and Running,’ Keisha purred, doing a sort of husky thing with her voice.