The Great Christmas Breakup (23 page)

Damn.
Carson was already on his way
to his assignation – our battered car was turning the corner.

Looking around frantically I saw
that
Joel, a Mexican cleaner fr
om the building across the road who worked at Flindes,
was heading out
.

‘Joel, can I pay you to drive me somewhere?’

He looked at me suspiciously. Then again, he looked at everyone suspiciously. ‘Why?’

The truth was most expeditious
at that point.
‘My
bastard
husband is seeing another woman –
that’s him in our car. I want to catch him at it.’

In i
mmediately appreciation
of my predicament
(
‘M
y own mother was a cheatin’ bitch
’
)
, Joel told me to get in his tiny Ford Fiesta, and my door wasn’t even closed before he’d roared off in hot pursuit of Carson.

*

Carson’s
first port of call was,
ridi
culously,
LollyBliss.

‘Why he going
right
into Manhattan?
’ Joel asked. ‘Nothing is open.
’

‘He’s a cheating bastard,’ I said. ‘They go where the action is.’

But why was he pulling up
the clapped out Toyota
outside of
LollyBliss
?

Lolly hadn’t said she
was opening.

Joel pulled up
opposite
him, illegally parking near a hydrant.
‘He’s going to get us both booked.’

‘I’ll pay, don’t worry.’

I didn’t concern m
yself with the where I would find
money for a fine.

The door opened as Carson approached. Lolly must have been expecting him.

‘
She’s
having an affair with
him
?’ Joel said, sighting the satin sheet of blonde hair.
‘
Man, s
he is
a looker.’

‘She can’t be having an affair with him
, she’s a lesbian.’

‘Oooh,’ Joel said, now even more attracted to Lolly.
‘I should hang with you more often.’

Carson and Lolly? No, couldn’t be. Not when Lolly was so keen on her vacuous salesgirl.

Unless . . .
that was just a ruse?

I
remembered Lolly saying ‘the only person I’ve ever loved’.

Did she mean Carson?

Perhaps my
friend
had
planned to tell me
the
sordid
truth, and then changed her mind?
At which point she’d
come up with a s
tupid story about being gay.

Get a grip, Scarlet. This is Lolly, remember?

No, wait, Carson was already back out on the street again, carrying a wrapped bundle.

A present! He’d bought a present from Lolly.

For who?

It couldn’t be me. I received pathetic calendars from has-been gurus such as Jocelyn Priestly.

Joel and I slouched down in our seats until Carson had driven off.

‘You still want me to follow him?’

‘Yes, please. Thanks Joel.’

Joel was extremely ade
pt at surveillance, staying a few cars behind but managing to turn where Carson turned and keep him in sight.
It helped that it was Christmas Day and the traffic was minimal.

Soon he was headi
ng downtown, and next we were
in the trendy Meatpackers district.

‘I
used to live here,’ I told Joel, ‘w
hen it was a dive.’

Carson pulled up in front of a small, recently converted hotel. Joel snuck in behind a truck t
hat had
maneuvered cautiously
out of a driveway and
then stopped,
blocking one lane of the road.

‘Engine trouble,’ Joel noted. ‘Excellent.’

We watched as the hotel
porter came out
, dressed in a slick navy suit.
Carson had a brief
discussion with him, after which
the porter nodded, took the cash
that Carson offered, and
held the door for him.

A tip! When we can’t pay the electric!

I was seething at the sight of my husband wasting
money on some bimbo. He’d probably got me a
pair o
f bed socks that year as a gift – or something equally unromantic.

One year he gave me chocolates a kid from school had given him.

And had told me where they had come from!

This year,
Jessie and J had the best the
local discount
shop
s
had in stock – while their father had money to throw away on tips to hotel porters.

Joel and I sat in silen
ce for a while, then he
suggested I go and confront them.

‘They should be naked by now,’ he said unhel
pfully. ‘No denying it when Mr Willy is standing to attention
, is there?’

‘It already looks bad enough, don’t you think?’ I didn’t need to feast my eyes on my husba
nd doing it with some size 10 earning
two hundred thousand a year, did I?

N
ot long after he’d entered the hotel,
Carson returned,
striding
purposefully
towards his car again. T
here was no p
arcel
in sight now.

But there was a broad grin on his face.

Bastard!
He’d bought the
gift for the slut
.

‘Wow, that didn’t take long,’ Joel commented.
‘Maybe
he didn’t
do anything?’

I l
ooked at my watch. ‘Ten minutes is plenty of time, trust me.
’

Joel
sniggered.

When it
was clear that Carson was headed
back towards Brooklyn, Joel didn’t bother t
ailing him, but we still arrived back home just after my soon-to-be-departed
husband had finished parking the car.
Carson had always been a super cautious driver.

As I leaped from Joel’s car, Carson spied
me, and even from across the street,
the look of complete terror
on his face was
deeply satisfying
.

Yeah, I’d be scared too, if I were you.

‘Woul
d twenty be okay?’ I asked Joel, leaning in through the window.

‘On the house,’ he said, ‘unless you like me to arrange for him to be beaten up? That
would
cost about a hundred.’

‘No, thanks, I’ll handle it f
r
om
here. But please, at least take ten, for
the
petrol.’

Joel graciously accepted, and I patted his hand and
strode
over to where Carson was standing.

Unbelievably
,
h
is
face was
now
like thunder.

How dare he be angry!

Before I could utter a word, my
phoned
binged
, indicating a text.

Lolly.

Carson
organized
to
come by and get you a gift.
And
I think he
might have overhea
r
d me and Luce talking about how Robert likes you. I think he has the impression you are having an affair.
Gross.
Soz. Lx.

Lolly was right, it was gross. Good. Let him think I was straying
.
Of course
I’d told Lolly that Robert was a
total
psycho, but, typically,
fate would have it that Carson didn’t hear that being relayed to Lucinda.

Plus,
the gift
that was supposedly for me
had conveniently vanished, hadn’t it?

It was a gift for that
lawyer, not me.

Lying bastard!

Lying to Lolly as well as
to me. D
idn’t he think I’d find out?

Maybe he wanted me to find out?

So that I’d dump him.

Well, darling husband, your dreams are about to come true!

Carson snarled at the sight of the phone.

‘I suppose that was your mate Lolly. So much for your bullshit story about window dressing.
Who is he?
’

‘It wasn’t bullshit.
If you could be bothered, you could go
and
see the windows. No
t tha
t you’d
have the time,
not
with all your extra curricular activities.
’

‘That’s not what I heard. Lolly and her girlfriend made it very clear.
’

Girlfriend? No, he didn’t mean like that.
Carson wo
uldn’t know that lesbians existed.

‘Tough
.’

What a nerve. Porking his lawyer ex and
then
accusing me of having an affair. Pot, kettle?

I
began to walk away. To pack. T
o leave.

Carson stormed after me.
He grabbed my arm.
‘Tell me who he is?’

‘What?’

‘This guy.
How did you meet him?’

The situation was laughable. He
was betraying me
and
trying to flip the situation to exonerate himself.

Well, i
t wasn’t going to work
,
Mr
FuckingIvyLeague
SmartyPants
.

‘A decent person, unlike you!’

I thought about Robert suggesting
a three-way with the transsexual and wondered how I could even say he was decent with a straight face.

Because Carson is cheating
with that lawyer, that’s how
.

‘I should have listened to my mother,’ Carson threw at me. ‘She told me you’d up and leave the moment someone better came along.’

‘
After y
ou being a
lying,
c
heating arsehole, the
reason
s
I am leaving
are as follows:
your rabid mother, closely followed by your
insane
slut of a sister.’

‘Come on, that was uncalled for. Mom never actually had rabies – it was a legitimate human virus.’

I stared at him for a moment. He winked, and I realized that he was
joking; treating me just like Jessie;
placating me like a child.

Taking a step towards him, he must have thought I’d had a change of heart, because he leaned as, as if expecting a kiss.

Instead, I snatched the car keys that were in his left hand, and jumped into our old bomb of a vehicle before he had time to register what was going on.

Racing around to the passenger seat, he got in and tried to reason with me, as I sat there, observing the displays.

I’d had a couple of lessons when I was young – it couldn’t be that hard to drive a car, could it? Cecily 2 drove that huge truck of a thing Rufus owned, didn’t she? 

Without a licenc
e.

‘
Scarlet, you don’t have a licenc
e, so don’t you
dare
turn on the ignition.’

I turned on the ignition.’

‘Scarlet, you don’t know how to put the car in gear, just slide over and–‘

I shoved the clutch into first and revved the engine.
The engine objected but complied.

Carson
finally
worked out I meant business.

‘Stop, you can’t! We won’t be insured if you crash. Think of the kids.’

I turned to him. Why did I even think the watery blue of Robert Simpson’s eyes were more attractive than Carson’s? Even as angry as I was, his ocean blue peepers had a calming effect.