The Birds and the Bees (16 page)

That morning the bed had seemed much emptier and colder than before and it hit him hard and low that Jo might just have gone for ever. Then he sprang out of that cold lonely bedroom and he knew that it wouldn’t happen, because he wouldn’t,
couldn’t
let her go–and even if he had to marry that bloody Stevie woman to make Jo intrigued or jealous enough to come back to him, then he would–although he hoped to heaven and back that it wouldn’t come to that. Then Adam opened his birthday cards.

Catherine flopped on the sofa and stuck her feet up on the footstool.

‘Here you go,’ said Eddie, and placed a large glass of white wine in her hand.

‘Thank you, my big gorgeous darling,’ said Catherine.

‘Flaming Norah! How many have you had already?’

Catherine laughed and took a mighty swig that she felt snake down to her tum and then rocket back up to her brain. ‘God, I needed that. I mean, much as I love my kids, I do so enjoy this time of night when it’s just you and me,’ she said, snuggling down into the big cushions on the sofa and grabbing the TV mag. There was a Dalziel and Pascoe on in half an hour on cable, and the curry was due to arrive in twenty minutes from the Koh-i-noor. Bliss!

‘All right if I go out with Large White and Judd tomorrow for a couple of jars? I’ll be back by eleven,’ said Eddie. Not that he had to clock in and clock out, but he had a faulty male wire that compelled him to ring home and give info and not be on an elastic band. In fact, all the considerate things that according to
Men are from Mars
…he shouldn’t have done if he had a willy.

‘Yeah, course,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to ask me, love.’

‘I know,’ he said and smiled over and she smiled back and they settled into an easy relaxed silence whilst the box entertained them.

‘Funny though,’ said Eddie eventually.

‘What is?’ said Catherine, holding out her drained glass for a fill-up. Eddie reached down to the side of him and recharged it for her.

‘Well, I’ve been thinking, if you did mind about me going out for a night, say if you were the possessive type, you wouldn’t exactly let me go to a health spa for a week, would you?’

‘You’re going to a health spa?’ said Catherine.

‘Am I hell. I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about that Jo and the big Scottish bloke. How come he never let her out of his sight but he was okay about her going to that health spa? You know, the one she never actually went to.’

‘Hmmm, I see what you mean, yes,’ said Catherine.

‘I was watching him at the wedding, you know, and he looked an okay bloke to me. I don’t buy all that wifebeater stuff. Something wrong somewhere.’

Catherine nodded. Her thoughts had been running along the same lines, but her brain reminded her how wrong they had been about Matthew. Maybe they weren’t such good judges of character as they believed. Still, interesting point. She should tell Stevie.

Catherine lifted the phone to dial Stevie’s number when it rang in her hand and she picked up to find the very person she wanted to speak to. It happened quite a lot to them.

‘Listen,’ said Catherine excitedly, ‘Eddie’s brain grinds slowly but exceedingly small and he’s just come up with the point that if Adam MacLean had Jo on such a tight leash, how come he was okay about letting her go to a health farm for a week?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Stevie, mulling it over. ‘It’s a bit weird, I suppose, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, isn’t it.’

‘But then Adam MacLean is weird full stop. He probably had a “plan” to do with that, too.’

‘No! Do you think?’ Catherine said.

‘Most likely. Maybe he suspected something but gave her some space to smoke her out.’ It wasn’t information Stevie attached any great significance to, but, nevertheless, she filed it in her mind under ‘B’ for MacLean. Then she went on to tell Catherine about that day’s adventure with Matthew and the parcel, pausing periodically to allow a few choice expletives to air from her friend. Stevie found it gave her some comfort to be free temporarily to hate the man out loud whom she still wanted so very much within.

Across the road, all thoughts of cancelled weddings were now in the wheelie bin with the box of stationery. With an arm around his sleepy lover, Matthew flicked lazily through Ceefax at the news, then the football results, then the numbers for the previous night’s lottery draw. Not that he expected anything; he had only won about three tenners ever, or so it felt. At one point he had been buying Thunderballs, EuroMillions, Hot Picks, Extras, Daily Plays and then the Irish Lottery too until he realized he really,
really
couldn’t afford to carry on, and resigned himself to the occasional Lucky Dip and a regular line twice a week. He had just changed his numbers to his and Jo’s birthdays and the date they first made love. Numbers that were now on the screen in front of him.

‘That can’t be right,’ he said, dislodging Jo for a moment in order to get out his ticket from the drawer.

‘What’s the matter?’ Jo asked. She was just about asleep with the delicious combination of a very nice white wine, a very nice warm room and a very nice man stroking her arm very nicely.

‘I’ve won the Wednesday lottery!’ said Matthew, checking the screen numbers against his ticket numbers. A cold hand grabbed his innards tightly as he thought it was out of date, then realized to his relief that it wasn’t. Jo, now fully awake, snatched it out of his hand and double-checked it.

‘Five, you’ve got five. My God, how much is that?’ she shrieked.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ he said. He didn’t like to hazard a guess.

‘How do you find out?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve only ever won tenners.’

Jo looked at the back of the lottery ticket. ‘You have to ring Camelot! Quick, hand me the phone!’

Matthew handed her the phone. The line was engaged, so was his head. He could clear all his debts and start a clean slate. He would tear all his Visas up and live within his means. Then again, it was sensible to keep one or two to pay for purchases and holidays, for the extra insurance they gave. A holiday in Barbados for instance, Jo in that white
bikini during the day, that little red G-string during the evening and nothing at all during the night.

‘Try again!’

‘Still engaged!’

‘Here, let me try!’

‘Anything?’

‘Engaged again.’

‘Matt, go and get some champagne.’

‘What?’

Jo kissed him. She was fizzing like a bottle of Bollinger. ‘Go and get some champagne. We have to! Oh please. Let’s toast our luck.’

She looked at him in that sultry big-lashed way of hers that was full of lust and promise of even more lust. Goddammit, she was gorgeous. He didn’t need champagne to make his heart any more thrilled. He would have got the same effect from a carton of Um Bongo if it was shared with Jo. But she had other ideas.

‘Please, darling. If ever there was a champagne moment, this is it.’

‘
Twenty quid for some champagne
,’ said the part of his head that governed his pant-area. ‘
You’re going to have thousands in the bank in a couple of days, you can please the lady with a bottle, surely?
’

‘Okay,’ he relented, and she jumped up and down and clapped her hands like a little girl.

‘Bring back two,’ she said. ‘We’ll get horribly drunk and ring in sick tomorrow and then spend all day in bed and plan what we’re going to do with the money.’

Matthew already had his shoes on.

‘Don’t ring again until I get back,’ he warned sexily. ‘Or I’ll have to smack your bottom.’

‘Ooh, promises, promises,’ she said.

‘You’re my good-luck charm, that’s what you are,’ he said, pulling her into his arms and kissing her lovely juicy lips.

‘You’d better not be long,’ she purred. ‘Although I might have slipped into something more comfortable by the time you get back. My, it’s so hot in here,’ and she unbuttoned her shirt a couple more notches.

He shot out of the door to the car with a smile as big as his erection, although both reduced a little when he saw the light filtering through the blinds across the lane. A kind thought slipped through all the black ones that said he really should give Stevie some money from his winnings towards the cancelled wedding and what he owed for Danny’s holiday.

But then again, if she could afford to live in that cottage
…
And Jo said he had to be cruel in the short run to be kind in the long run.

In a trice Matthew had justified keeping his winnings for himself and Jo, and he drove to the off-licence for their champagne.

There was a message waiting for Stevie after she had come back from an Adam MacLean-free hour on the weights at the gym.

‘
Bea darling, it’s Crystal. Just ringing to see if everything’s okay
,’ which was her boss Crystal Rock’s (yes, really) way of saying, ‘Where the fucking hell is your manuscript? It’s overdue and I never have to chase you–so what’s wrong?’

Stevie bit the bullet and rang her back immediately.

‘Darling!’ Crystal said, when her latest PA (Danielle?) put her through. Stevie tried to learn their names, but none of them seemed to last more than a week. Crystal was scare-ee, although somehow she and Stevie had always managed to get on just fine.

‘Hiya, Crys, sorry I’ve not been in touch.’

‘I was worried about you, darling,’ said Crystal, who had a voice like an expensive smooth cocktail.

‘I was just ringing to allay your fears and say that my manuscript is nearly ready.’

‘Nearly? Oh now, darling, you’ve been neglecting me for your wedding plans, haven’t you?’ said Crystal, with a heavy threat tangled up in the light banter.

‘There isn’t going to be a wedding,’ said Stevie, who was quite aware she was using her distress to buy herself some time. She couldn’t lose this job, and if she could sell her soul to MacLean in exchange for her man, she could sacrifice her pride for her work. She could virtually see Crystal shifting forward at her desk and putting her Pomeranian, called ‘Eiffel’, down on the floor, as she did when chat became serious.

‘No wedding? What on earth do you mean?’

‘Matthew has…has found someone else.’

‘Oh darling, the absolute…’

Stevie winced at the word she used, although even she had to admit it actually sounded quite classy being issued via Crystal’s Swiss-finishing-school-educated voice-box.

‘Look, it’s fine. When
can
you get it to me?’ said Crystal in a rare moment of leniency.

‘I’ll email it Tuesday first thing. It’s nearly finished, I promise,’ gushed Stevie, issuing a silent prayer of thanks upwards. She was out of the frying pan.

‘I’ll expect it, darling. Oh, and start thinking about the next one. We’ve had an absolute glut of Mediterranean heroes and yet our own Scots and Irish boys have been totally neglected.’

‘I’ll do an Irish.’

‘No, I’ve given Paul the Irish. I want you to take the Scot. Call it
Highland Fling
–you know the format. But let’s have some red hair and Gaelic testosterone and plenty of it.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Stevie, who suddenly felt herself being catapulted out of the pan and thrown into a very hot fire.
How the hell could she make a sex symbol out of a red-haired Scot
when she would be imagining that
…
that man?
He would end up killing the heroine with a giant-handed slap in Chapter One–and how flaming romantic was that?

Matthew rose from bed feeling incredibly sick. Sick in head, stomach and heart. The line to Camelot hadn’t been engaged after all, it had been faulty, although they hadn’t known that when they were ringing excitedly at five-minute intervals. After seven more attempts, they cracked open the first bottle of champagne, and after that was drained they started dancing. After the second bottle of champagne, to which they had added brandy and brown sugar to make cocktails, Matthew had carried Jo upstairs and attempted to make love to her, failing dismally–not that either of them cared. They were going to be rich–well, rich enough to have a bloody good spend and a fantastic holiday
au soleil
. More importantly, he could put off that ever-looming money talk with Jo. The fates were smiling on him.

He was woken up by Status Quo playing in his head, a stomach like a cement-mixer and Jo shaking on his shoulder to say she had eventually got through to Camelot to find he had won five hundred and fifteen quid, which he could collect from a post office.

Five bloody hundred and bloody fif-bloody-teen quid for five bloody numbers
. They weren’t the only f-words that crossed his mind and that was from a man who hated swearing.

‘A record number of winners on that draw,’ Camelot had said, with a copious amount of sympathy.

Four hundred and seventy five quid ‘profit’ then, if you
took off the price of the champers. It wouldn’t even make a small dent in what he owed so there wasn’t much point in chucking the money to a Visa company. It would be like throwing a microscopic blob of plankton into the mouth of a ravenous Great White shark. No, they might as well enjoy it with something frivolous. Ironic really–having to spend the money on something to take the pain of such a win away.

Jo brought him Paracetamol and coffee and he threw them up so she brought more. She was such a sweetheart and he loved her for caring, especially because she was as sick as he was and kept saying over and over again to him that it really didn’t matter. He rang in work for them both, getting much sympathy for the food-poisoning excuse he used, but was too ill to care if he was believed or not. Then he crawled into bed, falling asleep as soon as his arm had encircled the gorgeous, but limp, woman at his side.

‘Hello,’ said Stevie, picking up the phone.

‘Adam MacLean. Hreyooo?’ boomed
his
voice. Why did he have to be so loud all the time?

Stevie felt her whole body stiffen. ‘Fine, thank you. How are you?’

‘Okay. So, anything to report?’

‘Not really,’ said Stevie, ‘unless you want to know that his car is still outside. So they haven’t gone to work today presumably, although that’s a very trivial detail and I’m almost sorry to have mentioned it.’

She could sense his jaw muscle tighten and twitch with annoyance at the other end of the line and she got a little
thrill out of that. Yes, writing about a Scot in her new book might be fun. She could have him jumping like a puppet to her call. She could have him trampled by a beautiful white horse, ridden by the gorgeous young strawberry-blonde heroine. She would call her Evie. Evie Sweetwell.

‘I rang to say I think we should initiate the next stage,’ he said, smilingly polite, although he was probably crushing the skull of some small animal to offset the pain of trying to be nice.

‘Whatever you say, Mr MacLean.’

‘Can you get a babysitter tomorrow?’

Uh-oh, this was sounding ominous. A siren was going off in her head and there were so many warning flags they were doing a very long Mexican wave down her spinal column.

‘Er…not sure, why?’ she asked, but knowing Catherine would help out in a crisis. Kate wasn’t courting at the moment and saving up madly for whatever seventeen year olds save up for and would gladly welcome twenty quid, full access to a blackcurrant cheesecake and a sly couple of Bacardi Breezers.

‘Because I think you should go oot, it being Saturday night an’ all.’

‘Me–out? Where?’

‘With me.’

Oh farts!
‘With you?’

‘Get yer best clobba on, lady,’ said Adam MacLean. ‘I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty. We’re aff to the picturehoos.’