Got You Back (10 page)

‘Was it that girl who won the TV programme?’

‘Like I said, I didn't ask,’ James said tetchily. ‘I really have to go.’

‘OK,’ Katie said. ‘Night, then.’

‘Night, night,’ he said, and made the little kissy noises that were part of their nightly ritual. Katie forced herself to do the same.

Two minutes later, as James was coming down the stairs, now changed for bed, Stephanie got a text:

James just called

it said.

Apparently has been in pub all evening with Peter. Abi at Sound of Music.

How ironic, Stephanie thought, that I'm the one getting late-night texts from K now.

‘How was he?’ she asked James, as he came in and crossed to the sideboard to pour himself a whisky. He seemed a little stressed.

‘Oh, fine, false alarm. The foal is as right as rain, apparently.’

‘And how did his date go?’

‘I didn't ask. None of my business.’ He wiped his brow as if he was feeling hot, which, of course, he must be. Ordinarily Stephanie wasn't so interested in the goings-on in Lincolnshire.

‘Strange, isn't it, that he told you he had a date if you think he wouldn't want you to know who with?’ Stephanie said.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘It's almost like he wants it to get out. Maybe you should talk to him about it. Ask him straight out. He probably hates living a lie. I mean, it must be so exhausting.’

‘Yes,’ James said cautiously. ‘Mustn't it?’

15

James had noticed that Stephanie was looking good. Gone were the sweatpants and Juicy Couture zip-up tops she usually wore round the house, an antidote to her work self, which, she said, she felt had to be faultlessly turned out in whatever fashions were prevalent, however unflattering and ridiculous they might be. In their place she had taken to wearing a flippy little A-line skirt that grazed her knees and a vest top with stringy straps — ‘spaghetti straps’, he thought they were called — which looked both respectable and sexy and which, he had decided, made him feel distinctly uneasy. It wasn't that he had forgotten how good his wife could look. It was just that he wasn't used to being made so aware of it any more.

He called Katie as soon as he arrived at the surgery in the morning. He knew what she would be doing: she always got up slowly, sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea and reading the papers before she could face doing anything else. He liked to think about her twirling the pencil in her hair as she tried to do the crossword. He imagined her stretching out her hand to find the phone when it rang, smiling when she looked at the caller ID. She always looked a bit like a bushbaby when she woke up, wide-eyed and vulnerable with her honey-coloured curls in an unruly mess round
her face. She didn't answer till the phone had rung six times.

‘Oh, God,’ James said. ‘I didn't wake you up again, did I?’

‘No,’ said Katie, who had been standing over the phone trying to decide whether to answer or not. ‘I was upstairs.’

‘Did you sleep OK?’

‘Perfect. How about you?

‘Peter and Abi had a row so that kept me awake for a bit.’

‘Oh, gosh, you poor thing,’ Katie said, with all the fake sympathy she could muster. ‘You must feel terrible. Tell me all about it.’

‘Oh, it was nothing, really, just the usual. Domestic. “You never do the washing-up”, that kind of thing.’

‘Really? They argue about who does the washing-up?’

‘Something like that. To be honest, I couldn't hear the details.’

‘How long have they been married? Ten years? And they still argue about who does the washing-up?’

‘Listen, Katie,’ James said, ‘I've got surgery, I'd better go.’

Despite her unhappiness, Katie smiled as she put the phone down.

Natasha and Stephanie were trying to persuade
ingénue
actress Santana Alberta (real name Susan Anderson, but she had decided early on that she needed to stand out and thought her dark, exotic looks demanded a dark, exotic name) that wearing the sheer halter-neck chiffon
number they had all agreed on without any underwear was a foolish career move. Santana had worked hard to be taken seriously after forcing her way into the public's attention through a series of relationships with much older (and therefore very grateful) well-known men.

The truth was, she wasn't a great actress, she would never have stood out from the crowd of other pretty but uninspiring young hopefuls if the histrionics of her private life hadn't guaranteed her a regular place in the tabloid press. There was the time she had left her ageing actor boyfriend's house after a huge row, wearing nothing but one of his tuxedos and a pair of Jimmy Choos. Luckily the paparazzi were there to capture the moment because she had had her manager tip them off earlier in the day that this might happen. Or the time she and her music impresario lover had had a fierce argument in the street, conveniently outside the cinema where a big film première was taking place and where the photographers were trying to fill the couple of hours between capturing the arrivals and departures. Fortunately Santana had been wearing a skimpy new dress from the latest Julien Macdonald collection (which Stephanie had found for her) that perfectly complemented the black eye she was left with, and looked great splashed across the front page of the
Sun
.

With Stephanie's help Santana had gained something of a reputation for herself as a trendsetter. Unfortunately she was starting to believe what she read about herself, so she no longer silently accepted that, when it came to style, Stephanie knew best. She had recently made her first film — a low-budget biopic that had passed audiences by with barely a mention, but she had spent a lot of
money having her PR people place stories with the gossip mags: ‘Santana in line for BAFTA nomination’, that sort of thing. ‘An insider says that Santana Alberta's performance is being hotly tipped to win awards,’ they went on to say, although luckily they never actually revealed that the insider was, in fact, her mum. She had hoped that if it was said often enough then people might start to believe it, and somehow it might actually turn out to be true. Of course, she hadn't actually been nominated for anything, or even short-listed for that matter. But the extra hype had meant that BAFTA had asked her to present an award and she was damn well going to make sure she got noticed.

‘It's sexy,’ she whined now. ‘And it's important I look sexy. Otherwise they'll just print pictures of Helen Mirren again and I won't get a look-in.’

‘It's tacky,’ Stephanie said, losing patience with her. ‘If you want to look like a stripper that's up to you. I'm not going to tell you you look good because you don't. And if you'd rather find another stylist who'll tell you exactly what you want to hear, that's fine too.’

Natasha shot her a glance that said they couldn't afford to lose Santana as a client. Few other people required their services on such a regular basis. ‘Tell you what,’ Natasha said, ‘why don't I sew in an extra layer? Just to cover up you know, your actual… bits. It's much sexier to give them a hint of something rather than the whole meat and potatoes.’

Santana pouted sulkily. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘As long as it'll still get me in the papers.’
‘What's up with you now?’ Natasha hissed at Stephanie, while Santana was in the toilet, changing back into her own clothes.

‘Oh, sorry,’ Stephanie said sarcastically. ‘My life's falling apart, that's all.’

‘Listen,’ Natasha said, ‘I'd have thought it was more important now than ever that you concentrate on work. You're about to become a single mum.’

‘Thanks. I needed reminding of that.’

‘I'm just saying, don't let this thing with James mess your life up. If you do he's won. What's the point of teaching him a lesson if you're in as bad a way as he is when it all comes to a head? You need to be looking fabulous and happy and successful while he's trying to crawl his way out of the gutter.’

Stephanie managed a half-smile. ‘You're right. I know you're right.’

When Santana came back into the room, now in skinny jeans, with an ill-advised man's shirt, waistcoat and hound's-tooth-check flat cap of her own choosing, Stephanie went over and gave her a hug. ‘Sorry, Santana,’ she said. ‘My husband's being a prick and I shouldn't take it out on you. You go to the BAFTAs with your bits on show if you want to. Dangle baubles off it if it makes you happy. It's up to you.’

Santana, who was by nature a kind girl, hugged her back. ‘It's OK,’ she said. ‘I know you only have my best interests at heart.’

Katie was uneasy. After the initial excitement (not to mention the effects of the alcohol) had worn off she had
started to question whether or not she was doing the right thing. Whatever James had done didn't justify what she and Stephanie were about to do. Two wrongs most definitely didn't make a right. It felt mean-spirited, lying and deceiving and scheming just like he had been. But she also couldn't deny that there was a satisfaction in knowing that he was oblivious to their plans. It made her feel as if she had some power, that he hadn't managed to completely ruin her life.

‘Are we doing the right thing?’ she said to Stephanie, almost every time they spoke.

‘I have no idea,’ Stephanie always said, which didn't help much but she always asked Katie to stick to the plan, and for reasons she didn't quite understand, Katie always agreed.

So far, Stephanie and Katie's plan hadn't progressed much beyond the initial decision that D-Day was James's fortieth birthday weekend. They had decided that Stephanie would throw his party in London as if nothing was wrong, then turn up at the Lincolnshire party the next day where the two women would confront him together in front of his colleagues and friends. That was as far as they had got. It needed another element, and when they were having one of their surreptitious phone conversations, a week or so later, to compare notes, Katie inadvertently said something that sparked off a whole other chain of events.

‘Did you know he takes payment in cash off most of the farmers up here? Keeps it out of the books altogether. I just thought you ought to know because of… well… you know… alimony and all that. When it comes to it.’

‘Really?’ Stephanie said, suddenly interested. ‘He's never mentioned it. I wonder what the tax people would say about that.’

Katie gasped. ‘We can't!’

‘No, you're right. We can't. Shame, though. I wonder what else there is about him that we don't know. Maybe it's time we tried to find out.’

16

James, it turned out, had several more secrets. Some were easier to discover than others.

He was widely known in their little village community, Katie told Stephanie, for his dinner parties, at which he produced ever more complicated and sophisticated dishes for admiring groups of local dignitaries.

‘Dinner parties?’ Stephanie had said, incredulous. ‘He can't even boil an egg.’

‘Exactly,’ Katie said. ‘He goes into Lincoln, buys all the food pre-prepared, then passes it off as his own.’

‘Hilarious,’ Stephanie had replied, trying to imagine a version of James who would give a shit about people thinking he could cook. ‘You should get him to organize a dinner party soon. For some of the people he wants to impress most.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Let's live a little.’

Katie laughed. ‘OK.’

His parents, Stephanie told Katie, were not estranged from him as he had told her, but loved to come for the weekend whenever they could. ‘I'm sure they'd love to meet you,’ she said. ‘Maybe I'll suggest they pay James a surprise visit in Lincoln.’

‘I'll clear out the spare room,’ Katie laughed. Maybe
Stephanie was right and there was some fun to be had in getting back at James.

None of these were big things — the one major skeleton in James's closet already took up most of the space — but they could be tiny mosquito bites, little parcels of humiliation on the way to the big prize. To James, his public image was everything. If they chipped away at that then he would need them — the two women who, he believed, loved him unconditionally — more than ever. Perfect.

James had been looking forward to his latest social gathering for weeks. He had suffered undercooked pork at the Selby-Algernons’, dog hair in the soup at the McNeils’, a two-and-a-half-hour wait for dessert at the Knightlys’, and now it was his turn to shine again. He liked all of his dinner party hosts, the conversation always flowed along with the wine, but mostly they were the sort of people he felt he
ought
to be friendly with.

Hugh and Alison Selby-Algernon were the alphas on Lower Shippingham's social list. They lived in the biggest, most impressive house in the village and Hugh was something big in investment banking. In James's Top Trumps of Lower Shippingham's A-list, Hugh and Alison could beat pretty much every other resident in every category.

Close behind came Sam and Geoff McNeil, who had lived in Lower Shippingham for thirty-five years. Sam held an influential position on the local council while Geoff was something big or other in the Rotary Club. Then there was Richard Knightly, a partner in a local firm
of solicitors, and his wife Simone, a journalist on the
Lincoln Chronicle
.

OK, so it wasn't exactly a cutting-edge social circle — Sam and Geoff had a tendency to steer the conversation round to the Church whenever they could — but it didn't hurt to be in with the right people. Stephanie would never go along with what she called his ‘social-climbing ways’, but Katie understood how important it was to make an effort.

The four couples met once a fortnight and took it in turns to host a dinner at home. The first time it had been James and Katie's turn James had got into a last-minute panic about Katie's somewhat rustic cooking. He loved her food, he really did, but it wasn't exactly Cordon Bleu. So, he'd persuaded her that he should go into Lincoln and pick up something freshly prepared from the big deli in the town centre. He'd bought dressed lobster to start, beef Wellington that simply needed heating up and a
tarte Tatin
with ‘homemade’ custard. The Selby-Algernons, the McNeils and the Knightlys had gone into raptures as they tucked into the starter, and the moment for James to come clean and admit that the food was shop-bought had passed. Worse, he had found himself taking the credit and elaborating on the details of the afternoon he had spent slaving away over a hot stove.