The Birds and the Bees (20 page)

There was a single ladleful of chilli left. Stevie offered it to Adam, but he refused.

‘That was awfa nice but I am so full,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He stood and started clearing plates. Stevie tried to protest, but he counter-protested and won.

‘Coffee?’ she said, as he started loading the crockery into the dishwasher.

‘Naw, you’re okay,’ he said, meekly for him. ‘It’s obvious there’s going to be no joy tonight. I’ll away.’

Stevie nodded. She was disappointed too. She had so wanted to aggravate the inhabitants of 15 Blossom Lane with Adam’s visiting presence as much as the latter himself did. Probably more because she genuinely loved Matthew; she didn’t just see him as a possession that was not allowed to leave, as MacLean saw Jo.

‘You’d better put those floooers in water,’ he said, in a tone that suggested she was ungratefully at fault for not doing it immediately. ‘Are there vases in the hoos?’

Stevie had found two in the cupboards whilst the rice had been cooking. She would tend to them; after all, it was no fault of the flowers that they had been bought by Adam ‘Control Freak’ MacLean.

‘Yes, I’ll do it soon. Thank you for reminding me,’ she
said tightly. She would set her stall out early and make sure he knew she wasn’t one for doing what
he
dictated.

‘Nae bother,’ he said. ‘It would have been actually worth it if they’d seen them, though. Cost an absolute fortune.’

‘Would you like me to pay half?’

‘No, you’re okay.’

‘I’ll wave them over if I see them arriving.’

They both smiled unwittingly at each other. Then they realized what they were doing and stopped it immediately.

‘Start thinking aboot the next step,’ said Adam, returning at warp speed to gruffness.

‘Your cheque,’ reminded Stevie, handing it over.

‘Yes, thank you,’ he said, shoving it in his back pocket.

‘Oh, and here.’ She handed him a flat packet of handkerchiefs.

‘What’s this?’

‘You lent me a hankie, remember? I couldn’t get the blood out. So, there you go. They only sold them in threes.’

‘You didn’t have to go and do that.’

‘Yes, I did.’

Hmmm
,’ thought Adam MacLean and walked to the door. She was trying awfully hard to prove she wasn’t a freeloader. Too hard, in his opinion, and she was wasting her time because he knew exactly what sort of person she was.

‘Good night then, Mr…
Adam
,’ said Stevie.

‘Good night, and thanks again for the food.’

He got into his car. It was dark now and it was obvious Matthew and Jo weren’t in after all. He drove off slowly, turning right at the end of the lane, not seeing the couple
rounding the corner on the left. They had taken a long walk into town to see the Denzel Washington film and then broken the journey home by calling in at a bistro. The woman’s eyes closed in on the numberplate.

‘God, that was Adam! What was
he
doing in here?’

‘It’s okay,’ said Matthew, putting his arm around her shoulders. He was the picture of heroic calm although inside his nerves were jangling.
Treble shit, he’s come looking for me. I’m dead
…
HEEELLLPPP!

The dishwasher was contentedly humming, washing away the evidence of Adam’s unsuccessful visit. How many more of them to go before Matthew and Jo saw them? Maybe they were destined to miss them by a whisker every time. Maybe she and Adam would both be eighty and on their four-millionth bouquet and chilli before Matthew spotted him knocking at the door. By then his cataracts would be so bad he wouldn’t have a clue it was Adam, though.

Stevie couldn’t have said that the evening had been ‘pleasant’, but then again it hadn’t been ‘unpleasant’ either. The big man’s manners were surprisingly nice, and there had even been a flash of vulnerability at one point. Then again, she was too soft, too emotional, and any chink in Adam MacLean’s armour had been put there for her to see. He was manipulative, that much she did believe from Jo. She had something he wanted and he had to keep her sweet and on side.

Stevie started to head up to bed. She clicked off the light, then immediately put it back on again because she knew that she wouldn’t sleep. Maybe half an hour torturing
Damme with some psychological twists and turns from Evie might help. Just half an hour.

There was no sign that
he
had been near the house at all when Matthew and Jo got home. No forwarded post through the letterbox, no booby traps, no death threats written in blood on the door. As Matthew closed the curtains on the day, across the road, the light shone from the downstairs cottage window. One eye of light that suddenly went off once and then on again. It was as if it had winked at him.

Stevie saw Adam twice in the next week, but only in passing. He nodded to her from a distance when she was on the lat pulldown in the gym and she nodded in return. Then he nodded again a couple of days later when she was leaving, and once again, she nodded back. It was like the birth of another language, because there was something in each nod that told the other person that no, they had nothing to report.

They hadn’t instigated any more action. First, they wanted to see if the seeds they had planted had sprouted over the week. But eventually it looked as if they might have to re-open Parliament because the couple across the road continued to travel to work together each morning in perfect loved-up harmony, still walking the ten steps’ distance from the front door to the car holding hands and making Stevie’s stomach heave with jealousy and hurt. The pain seemed to get worse, not better.

On the seventh day since seeing Adam MacLean in the lane, the tension had actually started to leave Matthew’s shoulders and he let himself finally believe that he was not suddenly going to be accosted by Jo’s estranged husband,
or his own ex-partner, because he still couldn’t quite believe she had accepted the break-up with so little reaction. In fact, on one occasion he had actively encouraged her to make a move after seeing her buzzing near the kitchen window and so had darted straight out to deliver some post that had arrived for her. He knew she had seen him, and he
knew for absolute definite
that at the very moment when he reached the letterbox she would open the front door as if by total coincidence and force him to engage in conversation. However, no, he was wrong. Not a sausage.

He almost wished she would flip and start throwing things at him because he wanted to bring this to a head finally. He was certain she was up to something and it was driving him mad trying to work out what it could be. He had a theory but it was too ridiculous to take seriously.

The post was occupying a lot of his mind recently. Every day seemed to bring a new bill, a new demand, and his mortgage payment had bounced. He was perpetually on the brink of asking Jo to contribute financially, but how did you broach a subject like that with a woman who spent every lunchtime in Harvey Nichols? Especially after what he’d told her about his bank balance.

He decided to soften her up and went shopping in his lunch-hour and bought fillet steaks and champagne and raspberries, white chocolate, cream and cognac and accompanying nice-meal vegetables. Expensive, but he hoped it would be a worthwhile investment for him. He ran Jo a bath after work and told her to stay in there until he called
her, then he brought her up a glass of chilled champagne and popped a truffle into her mouth and kissed the chocolate from her lips, and retired to the kitchen to work at a feast fit for the queen of his heart that she was.

She came down in her robe to find the table lit by candlelight and a beautiful romantic supper waiting for her. He topped up her glass, chinked his own to it, and said, ‘Cheers.’

‘What’s all this for?’ she said with surprised delight.

‘Because I love you,’ he said, pulling out the chair for her, and tucking her under the table.

Then, after the main course, he served her raspberries soaked briefly in cognac resting in a cloud of cream whipped with the melted chocolate, with coffee to follow. Her eyes were full of heaven tasted. Matthew was a seductive cook. He just hoped he had been seductive enough. He led her to the sofa, snuggled, and caressed her.

‘Jo,’ he said, then taking her hands between his, ‘I want you to divorce MacLean as soon as possible. I don’t like the thought of you being married to him at all.’

She answered him by pressing her body hard against his and kissing him urgently. ‘He’s not in the way.’

He squeezed her to him. ‘Serve MacLean his divorce papers, please.’

‘There’s no point.’

He stopped kissing her neck and looked confused. ‘Why not?’

‘I’m not married to Adam.’

He pulled back from her. ‘What?’

‘I’m not married to him. Surely you knew?’

‘No,’ he said, with a great sweeping puzzled inflection at the end of the word.

‘MacLean is my maiden name, pure coincidence. Common enough, though, I suppose, if your ancestors are Scots. We just lived together.’ She snuggled into him once again. ‘So you see, he is out of my life totally; we have no bindings to each other.’

‘Oh, I see.’ She hadn’t mentioned it. He would have remembered that one. And hadn’t she always referred to MacLean as ‘her husband’? ‘But don’t you have any financial commitment to him? The house, for instance?’ he asked cautiously, in case she realized why he was asking.

‘Alas no!’ said Jo. ‘I didn’t have any money to put towards the house when we lived together. Adam took everything I had–he was very clever. Told me he was “looking after it for me” and that was the last I saw of it. That’s why it’s so great to go out at lunchtimes and spend, spend, spend, and be with someone who looks after me for all the right reasons, who doesn’t try and tell me what to do or take what I have.’ And with that she kissed him with a fervour that threatened to pop his lungs like twin balloons landing in a patch of nettles.

‘Oh…er…great!’ Matthew said, when he was eventully forced up for air, although his head was screaming, ‘
Bugger bugger bugger
…’ He had been counting on Jo’s share of the divorce money. He had already spent a chunk of it in his head on a conservatory and a return trip to Majorca.

She raised her head and walked her long-nailed fingers
saucily up his chest. ‘Anyway, why did you really want me to divorce him?’

‘Er…’

‘Because you want to marry me yourself, maybe?’

He took her lovely face in his hands. Well, it hadn’t featured in his immediate plans but, seeing as she had come to mention it, yes, waking up to Jo MacLean for the rest of his life would be better than any Euromillions jackpot win. Well, almost. But he knew that he’d have to do better than a roast-beef dinner at the White Swan for her.

‘Jo, I would marry you tomorrow but I’m not asking you until I’m able to give you the wedding I know you’d want. Classic cars, morning suits, lobster for the wedding breakfast…’

Jo’s head started to run with the theme: ‘Mmm, seven bridesmaids and pageboys. Red roses filling the church…’

‘No expense spared for you, my love,’ he said. ‘So, alas, we’ll have to wait.’

‘Your investments are due to mature soon though, surely–so you said.’

‘Ah yes…’

Which was not entirely a lie. An insurance policy his mum had set up for him was due to mature on his thirty-fifth birthday at Christmas. It would yield about five thousand pounds, but he had slightly exaggerated the figures to impress her at the early courting stage. Well more than slightly. Added two zeros at the end actually.

‘We could honeymoon in the Med. Cruise maybe? Italy, Sardinia, we could go back to Spain again, Oh Matthew, it will be wonderful!’

‘Jo, there’s something…Ahhh!’

Her hand started to knead him
there.
He had to tell her the truth about himself tonight. There had been too many lies and deceptions and he wasn’t really that kind of person. Her fingers were delicious and then he heard the rasp of his zip. Suddenly she was out of his arms and kissing a molten trail down his shirt.

‘Stop, please, Jo…oh!’

Mañana
–as the locals had said so often in Majorca.

The children broke up for a lovely sunny May half-term at the end of that week and Stevie took time off from writing about other people’s love-lives to do nice things with her boy. They had a day at the seaside and the zoo, and she made a million egg and potted-beef sandwiches for a major picnic with Catherine and the kids in Higher Hoppleton Park. Then, on the Friday, Stevie and her son had a burger in town and mooched around trying to find a present to take to his friend Josh Parker’s fifth birthday party the next day. She didn’t really want to go, for more than one reason, but Catherine’s little boy Gareth had been invited too and her friend was forcing her along. She said it would occupy her mind and stop her moping at home, and Josh was, after all, one of Danny’s special friends. He was a lovely kid, and his mum, Jan, was very sweet. There was just one tiny problem, which stopped her socializing with the Parker family.

She settled on a badge-maker because Danny had one and it was a toy that he frequently played with, sadly not the case with the 80 per cent of his toys that lay untouched since his last birthday and Christmas. Mostly ones with irritating little bits in that became detached from the rest of
the pack and ended up embedded in her foot or snarled up in the vacuum cleaner. She had ashamedly binned a few toys with missing pieces that rendered them unplayable with, and there was nothing worse than trying to reconcile stray pieces with their mother toy. She had felt quite wasteful about it until Catherine had admitted probably sneaking the equivalent of Toyland into the wheelie bin over the years. The badge-maker, however, remained cared for and the pieces were always dutifully returned to the box after a craft session. He had umpteen ‘superhero’ badges reflecting his various egos. His favourite alter ego was ‘Dannyman’. He had designed a badge which was blue based, like Superman’s, but instead of the S there was a D. Stevie had adapted a pair of pyjamas for him with the same design.

Her brain found a tenuous link to Danny’s pyjamas and Matthew. One day, Matt had stuck a paper M on his chest and he and Danny had chased each other around the house saving the world. She had laughed so much she had cried. Just like she was starting to do now, in the middle of flaming Woolworths.

It was useless. Matt was slipping further away from her, and Adam’s silly ‘plan’ wasn’t doing anything to stop it happening.

‘
Remember, he hasn’t actually seen you together yet. Matt needs to see you and MacLean together
…’ said the part of her brain that apparently was still holding out some hope.

Stevie fished her mobile out of her bag whilst she was standing outside Argos and rang Adam MacLean. He answered after five rings.

‘We need to hammer this home once and for all,’ she
said, talking over his hello. ‘They need to see us together next time for definite. How do we do it?’

And Adam, who had been about to ring her with the next stage of his plan, outlined his suggestion.

‘You’re going to do
what
?’ said Catherine incredulously down the phone.

‘Follow them,’ said Stevie.

‘Why can’t he just keep leaving his car outside your house? They’d soon realize something was going on then, surely?’

‘Yeeesss, but we’ve tried that and so far it hasn’t worked very well. We have to force them, once and for all, into seeing
us
together. So he’s hiring a car on Sunday so we can follow them in secret and then surprise them by turning up where they do.’

‘Bit hit and miss, surely?’

‘Well, with the luck we’re having, probably, but they seem to go out quite a lot and they will definitely go out on Sunday.’ She knew that because Matthew hated Sunday evenings in the house. He had always dragged her out when they could get a babysitter. ‘Come on, let me treat you,’ he would say. Although most of the time she had ended up paying. She wondered how many times he had done the ‘empty wallet’ trick on Jo. Probably never.

Catherine grimaced a bit. ‘It just seems so much desperation and hard work. Are you sure it’s worth it, love?’

Stevie cut her off there and then, refusing to face the fact that every plan they made gave a spark of hope–then seemed doomed to fail.

‘Yes. I want him back, more than ever. I miss him so much, Cath,’ she said, and it was true. Each morning it was becoming harder not to look out of the window and see him get into the car. It pierced her to see them together, but she still wanted to snatch every sight of him that she could. That morning she had stood there, not caring if he caught her watching or not, tears streaming down her face, until commonsense pulled her backwards, just before his door opened and unravelled all her good work so far.

Jo had kissed him when they had got into the car, as if sensing they were being watched and was staking ownership of her man. Jo, who had been her friend, the woman who had gone shopping with her, eaten at her table, cuddled her son, exchanged secrets. It was almost a worse deception than Matthew’s.

There couldn’t be any such thing as karma, otherwise why were they so happy after causing so much destruction, when all Stevie had done was love and her heart was shattered?