The Other Woman (6 page)

Now, she was on her fourth drink. Mac drank soft drinks. They sat side by side on a wall seat, the huge leather bag in which she carried her tape-recorder and half the contents of her files between them, until Mac found its presence uncomfortable.

‘I'll put it up here,' he said, picking it up and sliding it on to a shelf above his head. He hadn't expected the weight; the bag slipped a little, and as he righted it a loose tape slid out and fell to the floor. He stooped to pick it up, reading the label. ‘Sharon Smith?' he asked. She felt her cheeks go pink, and he looked at her when she didn't

answer.
She snatched the tape from him. ‘Just work,' she said, standing

up and pushing it back into the bag. She sat down again, hoping

she hadn't reacted too obviously.
Mac knelt one knee on the imitation pink velvet to push the

bag further back, and his hand rested lightly on her shoulder as

he righted himself again. ‘There we are,' he said, sitting beside her.

‘So – what brings you out on a night like this?'
Melissa took a fortifying sip before she spoke. ‘ I was working

late,' she said.
‘Winding down?' He looked at her drink.
‘Something like that.'
He looked at her seriously. ‘Take it from one who knows,' he

said. ‘Tiredness, whisky and cars don't mix very well.'
‘I don't intend driving any more tonight,' she said.
He frowned, puzzled.
‘I'm staying here,' she said.
‘I see.' He made himself more comfortable, moving closer to her

as he did. ‘ You … you don't live in Stansfield, then?'
She coloured slightly, and he noticed. ‘Yes – but I don't fancy

driving in this.'
He looked at her curiously. ‘Won't anyone be missing you?' he

asked.
Melissa felt the flush grow deeper. ‘Why the third degree?' she

snapped.
He held up his hands. ‘ Sorry.'
‘So – what's your story? How come you're here?'
He smiled. ‘I was covering the opening of the leisure centre,' he

said. ‘I left early, and got lost. Finally worked out how to get home,

found myself passing a hostelry and came in.' He looked at the

bitter lemon. ‘ I've broken most of my bad habits,' he said. ‘But I

still can't pass licensed premises.'
Melissa looked round at the empty tables and chairs, looking

like a low-budget film set before the actors have arrived. ‘It must be for the company,' she said, startling herself. It was, in its way, a joke. She wouldn't have thought that possible.

He smiled. ‘ The company's all right from where I'm sitting,' he said quietly, his eyes looking into hers.

‘And is no one missing
you
?' she asked, her voice as low as his had been.

He shook his head. ‘No one's missed me for years,' he said.

Melissa sipped her drink. ‘Poor Mac,' she said.

He smiled. ‘ They did once,' he said. ‘I don't blame them for giving up on me. I had.'

She glanced at the soft drink, and he nodded. ‘You weren't a football fan in your teens, then?' he said.

She shook her head, smiling a little at last. ‘You're an ex-footballer?' she asked.

‘Ex-footballer, ex-husband, ex-alcoholic and ex-convict,' he said. ‘Or so my ex-wife likes to describe me.'

‘Ex-convict?'

He smiled. ‘Oh, yes. After spending the best part of ten years in an alcoholic stupor, I finally crashed the car through a shop window. I got six months, and I'm still disqualified from driving.'

Over the next few drinks, Melissa got a rundown on the rest. He had used his time in prison to resurrect his brain; he had dried out, he had got himself straight. He hadn't looked at a betting slip or a woman or a glass of anything stronger than fruit juice since the day he'd come to in hospital with a nurse flitting past, two years ago. His wife had left him early in their marriage for an accountant, taking their then three-year-old son with her.

‘Do you see much of your son?'

She had hit a nerve. They lived in America now, and his son didn't know who his real father was; Sandra, Mac's ex-wife, had begged him to stay away. So far, he had. But maybe not for ever, he added. He'd soon be able to afford the fare.

She looked at him. ‘Do you think you should tell him who you are?' she asked.

He shrugged. ‘ I don't know. Do you think I should?'

‘Me?' she said, startled. She really didn't need anyone else's problems tonight. She had surprised herself by being able to make small talk, even, but she supposed that that was second nature now, after years of doing interviews.

‘I'd like to know.'

She shook her head. ‘But I've got nothing to do with it,' she protested.

‘But you do all these articles on …' He shrugged again. ‘I don't know – moral dilemmas. That's what this is, isn't it?'

Melissa smiled a little sadly. ‘ I'll say,' she said. Then she looked at him. ‘You don't sound much like an ex-footballer,' she said.

His still-dark eyebrows rose very slightly. ‘You mean I'm not supposed to know words like ‘‘moral dilemma''?'

She blushed, then rallied to her own defence. ‘You pretend not to know them,' she said. ‘You had to hedge it round with ‘‘I don't know'' and ‘‘that's what this is, isn't it?''

He smiled. ‘That's a habit you get into if you think you're cleverer than everyone else and you don't want to admit it in case you get a hostile reaction,' he said.

‘And were you cleverer than everyone else?' she asked, her voice gentler than the question, a trick she had perfected over the years.

He sat back. ‘The blokes I played with,' he said, his forefinger on his thumb as he began to count them off. ‘One of them's the manager of a First Division side and has been for the past eight years. One of them's the managing director of his own sporting goods business. One of them took a pub in the Cotswolds …' He let his hands drop. ‘No,' he said. ‘I wasn't.'

Her eyes held his.

‘But you're clever,' he added.

‘Am I?'

‘You were a university lecturer, according to the sports desk,' he said.

She smiled. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘For about five minutes'

‘Why
The Chronicle
?' he asked. ‘I would have thought that the ladies' page was slumming for someone like you.'

‘It pays quite well,' she said. She didn't argue with his definition of her activities; one reason for the pseudonym was so that her more academic acquaintances didn't find out what she did for a living. ‘And I enjoy it,' she said. She had enjoyed it. Until this evening.

His eyes went from hers to take in the rest of her. ‘You're not anything like any of the other women I've known,' he said.

‘Oh?'

‘No. They all wore lip-gloss and had their hair dyed.'

‘And because I don't, you want my advice on what you should do about your son?' she asked incredulously.

‘I'd like to know what you think,' he said. ‘That's all.'

She considered that. ‘Does he know he has a real father somewhere?' she asked.

‘Yes. They legally adopted him. I think he assumes he was in an orphanage.'

‘How old is he now?'

‘Fifteen.'

‘Then it has to be between you and him,' she said. ‘I'd be inclined to think that he has the right to know.'

‘Yes,' said Mac. ‘But would he want to know?'

Melissa thought. ‘You could use a third party,' she said. ‘A solicitor, or someone. He could write to him, letting him know that the possibility exists of meeting his real father. Then it would be up to him.'

Mac's brow cleared a little. ‘I said you were clever,' he said. ‘I never thought of that.'

‘What did you do once you'd decided to walk the straight and narrow?' Melissa asked, changing the subject quickly before he could get round to asking her if she knew any solicitors.

‘I signed on as unemployed,' he said. ‘And I did anything they gave me, anything I could find myself. All over the country.' He smiled. ‘It was a good way to see the place – maybe I should write a book about it'

‘What sort of jobs?'

‘Labouring, gardening, washing windows, cars. I've been an ice-cream salesman, a courier – on a pushbike. I still don't have my licence back.'

‘What brought you here?'

‘You have to be somewhere,' said Mac. ‘I thought there might be work on the building sites, but there wasn't. I got a job in a garage – I'm a sort of a salesman.'

Melissa sighed. Mac's work record sounded very like a hair shirt to her. ‘ How did the column come about?' she asked.

It turned out that the sports editor had taken his car in for its MOT, and had been startled to find an ex-international footballer in the showroom, when he had gone to drool over the new cars. Mac had persuaded him to let him put his name above a column.

‘He was as startled as you to discover that not only could I write my name, but I could write the column too,' he said, teasing her.

It was being syndicated to a few local papers now, and some money was coming in. But he still worked for the garage.

He sat back again and looked at her. ‘So why have I just told you my life story?' he asked.

She shrugged, and drained her glass, feeling pleasantly woozy and warm, despite everything. ‘I don't wear lip-gloss,' she said. ‘No,' she relented, smiling at his offended look. ‘ I suppose it's just talking to a stranger. It's easier.'

‘You're not a stranger though, are you?' He leant over towards her, and tapped her knee lightly. ‘You're adrift in an open boat too. I can tell.'

She made to stand, to go and get another round, but he caught her arm and gently pulled her back down, taking her empty glass.

‘It's no answer, Melissa,' he said. ‘Believe me.'

He released her, but there was a tension between them now that he had touched her. She hadn't led a particularly sheltered life prior to Simon, but she had never picked up a man in a bar before. She could pick Mac up; that much was obvious.

She had toyed with the idea when he had first arrived, and it had seemed crazy. She barely knew the man. By the time she had finished her drink it had seemed an attractive idea, and now that she had downed her fourth, all she knew was that he was right. She was adrift in an open boat, and he could rescue her. He could put his arms round her and haul her into safe harbour for the night.

She wanted that more than anything, and set about getting it with the same single-mindedness as she had done everything else since meeting Sharon Smith. It didn't take long; she did have another drink, despite Mac's advice, then excused herself and went to the ladies to look at herself in the mirror. Her head felt a little detached from the rest of her, she conceded, but otherwise she was all right.

He stood up as she came back.

‘Bag,' she said, leaning across him to reach up to the shelf.

‘Let me get it,' he said, but it was too late; she had caught the bag but lost her footing as she tried a too-complicated balancing manoeuvre for her displaced centre of gravity. She fell against him so that all three of them landed on the pink velvet; him, Melissa and the bag.

‘Sorry,' she said, giggling just a little tipsily as she lay sprawled on top of him. She felt his physical reaction as she moved, and smiled at him, disentangling herself slowly, as much for her own benefit as his. ‘Let's go,' she said.

He didn't need to be asked twice.

Frances had come up to bed while Lionel was in the bath; he had made as little noise as possible as he got into bed beside her, though she could have slept through an air-raid. He wasn't sure why he was taking such precautions anyway; if she did wake, there would still be no conversation, and no need to answer the questions that he could feel hanging over him. Questions that would be asked. Sooner or later.

Her heavy, rhythmic breathing filled the room, and he lay in the darkness, wide awake. He wasn't convinced that he would ever sleep again, but the worry and the fatiguing drive home had worn him out, and his eyelids grew heavy.

They shot open again as the dream which had instantly invaded his unconscious mind became unbearable.

home this time; the light was on again. But of course, he remembered, he of the carefully contrived alibis had deliberately left it on, as it would have been if he had never been home. Which would, of course, be his story.

Their house was built at the top of a hill just on the town boundary, where built-up areas gave way to farmers' fields with sheep grazing, and tiny villages. It was a solitary listed cottage which stood on the bypass, and with which Melissa had fallen in love when they had moved to the area. The view was non-existent tonight, he thought, as he looked at the soft cloak in which the town had wrapped itself.

The front door opened directly into the living-room with the open staircase on the left; she wasn't home yet. There was an odd quality to the emptiness of the house; an abandoned feel. Simon felt like he had when the floodlights had gone out, and it was the house that was doing it to him. Without Melissa, without even Robeson, yelling for food and wrapping himself round his legs, it didn't have much to offer. Where
was
Melissa? Had something happened to her?

He put the kettle on for coffee, chiding himself for being fanciful. She had said she was doing a late interview. Why in the world should he feel as though her absence were somehow sinister?

He had had no idea that Sharon had any involvement with Jake Parker; perhaps they were just passing the time of day. But why would that make this other man react like that? If that was how it had happened. And no matter how you looked at it, Sharon was at the football match. Why? And why hadn't she told him? She had said she was meeting someone – why wouldn't she have said that that was where she was going?