As It Is On Telly (15 page)

‘Dan, this is lovely. Did my drainage bill pay for this?’

‘No,’ said Dan comfortingly. ‘But it was the down payment on my TVR.’

There was a lot of money in drains, apparently. They chatted about it as Dan skimmed the roads towards the squash club. ‘Let’s face it,’ said Dan, ‘people will always pay more for something they’re not prepared to do themselves. And drains affect everyone.’

Bunty blinked. ‘Wow. I never thought of that. That’s why you take days to turn up. Everyone has drains.’

‘They do. Occasional blockages. Pooh and disintegrated sanitary towels spilling out into the garden. And they don’t all have Dan, Dan the Drainage Man on hand. I could make an absolute mint if I could clone myself.’ Dan pulled into a dark corner of the club car park and dropped the car into neutral. ‘Look, is that him?’

‘Yes. And he is with Ryan. Weird.’

The men were traipsing out of the squash club, not a racket between them but clearly post-exertion of some kind. Ryan was sporting a spectacularly crotch-grabbing pair of shorts that did his long dangly legs no favours whatsoever, and probably accounted in part for the strange gasping way in which he talked. Graham looked very much more at ease; although he was pink and a little glowing, he had showered so that his fair, tufty hair parted over his ears, and his clean polo shirt hung loosely over his jeans. ‘He’s lost more weight,’ said Bunty. He looked almost fit.

‘You do know there’s a gym in there as well, don’t you?’ said Dan.

‘No, is there?’ It sort of made sense, of course, that a squash club might have other fitness facilities too.

‘It’s not a very good one, but it’s got all the right equipment. And it’s bloody cheap.’

‘Cheap? It’s cheap? Oh, of course!’

Bunty could hardly believe her own stupidity. He was looking fitter because he was getting fitter, because he was going to the gym, the gym with Ryan. And it was cheap. Cheap. That’s why they were going to the squash club and not the flash place outside town with a pool and a bar and everything. Because they were a couple of financial advisors! They went for the best financial deal, not the sexiest facilities. And why would he be getting fit? For her! For his own wife! To surprise her with his lean physique and entice her into bed with his dexterous deltoids, and convince her that sex was just for play now as he’d had a vasectomy.

‘He’s not having an affair at all,’ she whispered, wondering why some part of her felt strangely disappointed while the rest of her experienced a surge of elation. ‘He’s been going to the gym!’

But Dan had thrust the car into gear. ‘Let’s not count our chickens,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s been going to the gym
because
he’s having an affair. And maybe, Jesus, you don’t think it
is
with Ryan like Kat said, do you? Only he’s getting into the car with old stringy-legs.’

‘Yeah, but it makes sense to share a lift from work, doesn’t it?’

‘We’ll just check, shall we?’

Dan eased out into the fitful traffic, taking advantage of the dusk, and followed Ryan’s car. Bunty sat with clenched hands, honestly not knowing whether she wanted Graham to go to work, go directly to work not passing go, not passing affair signs; and then not really knowing why she should have any doubts at all about how glad she should be that her husband was dallying. ‘There. Coleman Street,’ she said, pointing through the gloom.

Dan followed her finger and then turned to her knowingly. ‘He’s not turning. Look, they’re going straight on. What are you up to, you strange, silly bastard?’ he muttered under his breath.

‘They’re stopping!’ squeaked Bunty. ‘Pull over, pull over!’

Needing no second bidding, Dan stuck on his left indicator and swerved in behind a parked car. They could just see Ryan’s car idling at the kerbstone. ‘That’s Graham’s car,’ said Bunty, seeing the dark Mondeo just in front of Ryan’s. ‘So they parked out here and drove back in together.’

‘Why would they do that?’ Dan peered around the car in front of them. ‘Hang on. Graham’s getting out. He’s saying goodbye to Ryan. He’s moving towards his car. He’s getting his hand out of his pocket, he’s … ’

‘Dan, I can see all this. He’s … ’ Getting into his car, she was about to say, but then Graham swivelled on his heel and approached the door of a tall Georgian house.

‘He’s knocking on the door. He’s smiling. There’s a blonde woman. He’s kissing her on the cheek. Oh. Now the other cheek. He’s going inside. He’s closing the door.’

‘Dan,’ said Bunty. ‘Will you shut up?’

‘Okay,’ said Dan meekly. He looked at her for a long moment, then patted her arm. It was like being belted by an air hammer. ‘Home?’ he said softly.

Bunty nodded, not daring to speak too soon in case her voice wobbled and gave her away. Home. Whatever that was. She certainly didn’t want to hang around until he came out of the house of the blonde again. The Kylie. The … She glared at the metal plaque next to the front door, hoping for a moment that it might say ‘counsellor’ or ‘psychiatrist’ or even, weirdly, ‘prostitute’ but which in fact said ‘Verity Reynolds, Media Consultant.’

So there it was. Graham and Verity. Graham and Verity and Charlotte. Happy Christmas from buff Graham and Kylie-ish Verity and my bloody Charlotte who would have to call herself Charlie with Verity Reynolds for a stepmother. ‘Home,’ she croaked.

She had to bury her nose in her daughter’s artfully tousled hair. While there was still time.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

What the hell was a ‘media consultant’ anyway? Bunty thought crossly as she slammed the front door behind Graham’s retreating back the next morning.

He had come home an hour-and-a-half later than Bunty. Judging by his usual performance that should have been sufficient to copulate perhaps one, one-and-a-half times. To establish the truth, Bunty resorted to giving him a quick sniff, which she turned into a fake sneeze, but he just smelt the same as always. Only when she remembered the shag bag did she figure out why – he was obviously careful to shower before returning home. Unable to meet his eye, Bunty buried herself in Charlotte’s homework, with only half-faked parental concern, and then lay in the bath until he was likely to have fallen asleep.

Over breakfast that morning he had watched her with a slightly wary eye, as though he was expecting trouble. Well, let him, she thought. It was all right for him with his Verity Reynolds and his newly honed physique. Where was her Ben when she needed him? She’d not even had sex and she felt more guilty than Graham clearly did. Finally, as she banged her way through the creation of Charlotte’s vegan packed lunch wondering if one large carrot would suffice as she hadn’t bothered shopping for anything else, he ventured to speak.

‘I’m going to be home by six tonight.’

‘Ooooh! Lucky us,’ said Bunty, thrusting Charlotte’s lunch box into her backpack.

‘Um. Shall I bring home some dinner? Chinese?’

‘If you like.’

‘I thought we could eat it in front of the TV. There’s a good financial programme on at seven thirty.’

Bunty paused. Was that what he did with Verity Reynolds? Chinese and a viewing of some financial programme. It hardly seemed likely, and she was suddenly incensed at the unfairness of it all. Verity Reynolds would get keen and clean Graham, trying-hard Graham, look-at-my-new-abs Graham, and then he’d come ‘home’ to them and they’d get bloody takeaways and the same old drone on the TV. How dare he? How absolutely dare he?

‘Graham, I can hardly wait,’ she said with ill-concealed venom.

The first thing she did when left on her own was to make like Charlotte and head for the computer. It was a shame that Graham had taken his laptop with him; it would have been interesting to see how quickly Verity Reynolds popped up in the drop-down list of histories. Pulling herself in close to the computer, Bunty tentatively typed ‘V’ into the Google bar. She was immediately greeted by the list from hell – Vanya, Vagina, Vigina … ‘Oh my God!’ she shrieked, smacking the ‘delete history’ button, and hastily adding an ‘e’ to the existing ‘V.’ Nothing. Even when she’d typed in the whole of the name Verity, there was nothing obvious on the search engine, apart from one Verity Lambert who had been something to do with
Doctor
Who
. That was media, wasn’t it? She was old, though, Bunty noticed when looking at the dates. Dead, in fact. Definitely not the Verity she was looking for.

Only when she’d typed in ‘Verity Reynolds Media Consultant’ did the computer produce any results. Verity, it seemed, offered a broad portfolio of media services (‘Bet she does,’ snarled Bunty. ‘Phone sex. Internet sex. Got them all covered, hey, Verity?’) There was a professional-looking photograph of a pert blonde with a long bob and an expensively veneered smile, and then a list of credits which, to Bunty’s amazement, featured
On
the
Sofa
with Pearl and Finn among other TV shows. What did she do with them? Bunty reached for her phone.

‘Kat, what does a media consultant do?’ In her employment services role, Kat was bound to know.

‘Oh, a range of things,’ said Kat. ‘It can be advertising, selling media space, buying media space, PR, writing press releases. I think I’ve got a junior role coming up if you’re interested.’

‘Course I’m not interested!’ Bunty wished she could pour the image of Verity Reynolds down the phone to her friend. ‘I’ve found the woman that Graham’s been seeing. She’s a media consultant. Verity Reynolds.’

‘Right,’ said Kat, ‘let me ask some people and I’ll get back to you. Have to be before tonight, of course.’ And she let out an excited ‘
Yes
!’

‘What’s happening tonight?’

Kat tutted loudly. ‘Uh, I’m leaving, on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again. Not that you’d care.’

‘Oh God. You’re going to see Simon. I’m so sorry, Kat, I forgot.’ Bunty finished with a sigh. She’d been so wrapped up in her own domestic dramas that she’d completely forgotten that her friend was looking forward to meeting up with her own Kiwi man. An image of Ben flitted into her mind and she pushed it to one side. ‘Do you want a lift to the airport?’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Kat. She always forgave her friends so easily. ‘Dan’s dropping me off.’

‘Dan? My Dan? I mean, Dan, Dan the drainage man?’ Alarm bells clanged in Bunty’s head. How many Dans did Kat know? Was she going straight from one man to the other? Was everybody in the world – across the world – at it?

‘The very same, although I like to think of him as Dan, Dan, with the very big … van. I need the space. For my luggage,’ said Kat. ‘I’ll miss you though.’

‘Me too. Give my love to Cally.’

‘Right. And I’ll call you back if I hear anything about Veronica Ronald.’

‘Verity Reynolds.’

‘Right. Big hugs from the big jugs.’

‘Kat, you are
gross
,’ said Bunty, in a pretty good imitation of Charlotte, so that they were both laughing as they put down the phone. Gaaad, she was going to miss that woman, particularly right now when she needed her friends around. Both her best mates on the other side of the globe. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was very bloody fair at the moment.

And talking of not fair, time for a bit more stalking. Bunty drove across town in a dream, a mental version of some form of
Beauty
and
the
Geek
playing through her head, where Graham (geek) had to choose between Bunty and Verity (beauties – well, relatively anyway) and Kat ummed and aahed with her finger on her pouty lips between Simon and Dan, and Verity, somehow, wrote press releases about the whole thing for the TV pages of the
Evening
Standard
. Before she knew it, she was driving up Verity’s road and pulling up just near her house.

She ducked down behind the steering wheel. Quite what she’d intended to do once she got her, Bunty wasn’t at all sure. This was what they’d do on a programme, wasn’t it? Turn up at the house. Confront the lover. Maybe punch her in the face? Bunty shuddered. Violence still didn’t come naturally to her, no matter how satisfying it looked on TV. She closed her eyes. What was she doing here? What could she possibly achieve by turning up at the home (office?) – home stroke office – of her husband’s mistress and sitting outside her house, other than working herself up into an impossible frenzy, which she would probably, let’s face it, take out on Charlotte.

Tap tap tap.

Bunty’s eyes flew open. She had slumped so far down behind the wheel that her chin was on her chest. She swivelled her eyes right. Crouching down on a level with her was the beaming face of Verity Reynolds, so close that Bunty could see the artfully applied false eyelashes, adding depth to the corners of almond-shaped eyes, which were a rather startling shade of green. Fake, thought Bunty. Fake eyelashes. Fake corneas. Even the bottom was probably fake – a pair of those wonder tights with false buttocks shoved in them so everybody could get a Beyoncé Bum just by dragging on their fishnets. Verity Reynolds’ arse was probably as flat as her exercised belly.

Tap tap tap. Verity was signing madly for Bunty to wind down the window. That involved switching the engine on, and as Bunty had temporarily forgotten her own name, she opened the door instead, pulled it to quickly in case Verity Reynolds intended to punch her first, then opened it again.

‘Are you my ten thirty?’ Verity Reynolds had the voice of a newscaster, somewhere between headmistress and just plain mistress.

‘Your what?’

The woman consulted the Blackberry in her hand. So she even knew how to use one of those. Bitch. ‘Ten thirty. Susie Williams. Sell your house in thirty minutes.’

Was that an order? Did she already have designs on her goddamn house? ‘I … I don’t want to sell my house.’

Verity opened her beautiful mouth and laughed right down a full octave, like someone running their finger across a piano keyboard. ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaa. No, silly. You’re not Susie Williams then.’

‘No, I’m Bun … Buh … Benito.’ Oh crap. Mussolini. That must be the man version. ‘Benita.’

‘Oh. Love. I could help with that stammer,’ said Verity sympathetically, laying a manicured hand across the top of the door. Bunty resisted the temptation to slam the door shut. ‘But if you’re not Susie at ten thirty, then she’s a bit late, but she might turn up so I’d have to pencil you in for another date. Here’s my card. Sorry to disturb.’

She waggled her fingers at Bunty with a cheery grin and disappeared back in the house. Bunty stared after her, bewildered. What had just happened? She thought she was about to be set upon by her husband’s lover but instead she’d arranged to meet up with her to deal with her non-existent stammer. And … and … and, oh Christ, maybe she did have a stammer, she thought, as her ideas failed to gather themselves into any coherent pattern. And Verity Reynolds was … nice. She couldn’t be nice. She wasn’t allowed to be nice. Bunty did not want anything about her competition to be nice at all. She wanted to hate her. Instead, she could almost see what Graham would see in her, apart from the obvious prettiness (fake as it was); VR seemed efficient, and friendly, and sort of … energetic. If she had kids, and she obviously didn’t, she’d run the PTA with her left hand while media consulting with her right, and still manage to look ‘Stunning in Something Simple’ at the fundraiser while Little Verity and Veritas ran the fruit-juice stand.

Hmm. Maybe she did hate her after all.

But overall, it wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair at all. And there was someone else pulling up in a nifty little Nissan Figaro, similarly highlighted, pony-toothed and pony-tailed, and swishing up to Verity Reynolds’ front door and doing that whole ‘mwah mwah, dahling’ air-kissing then tossing her head around while she apologised for being late. It was a clone. A Verity Reynolds clone. Good God, was Graham involved in some sort of
Stepford
Wives
perfect-woman creation plan?

‘Calm down, Bunty!’ She really had to get a grip on her imagination. Nonetheless, the meeting with VR, the in-her-face evidence that Graham was looking for something else, brought home an untidy collection of realisations. One, she wasn’t enough for Graham any more. Two, if even she found someone to be attractive because they were efficient and energetic, why wouldn’t your average red-blooded male? And three, if she didn’t even come up to par for Graham, no wonder Ben had lost interest. ‘He’d love Verity Reynolds too,’ she thought mournfully. Someone in charge of her life. Someone vivacious. Fun. Rather like Bunty used to be.

And she put her head on the steering wheel and sobbed, not for Ben, or for Graham, but for the person she used to be, with dreams and expectations, and a
joie
de
vivre
which seemed to have disappeared into the drainage system along with Flinders. Everyone around her seemed to be moving on – Graham, for sure; but Cally too, and now Kat. And pretty soon even Charlotte would be leaving home, off to university, or nannying in America, or Club Med waitressing in Europe, or …
something
interesting. While she, Bunty McKenna, had not even managed to set herself up successfully with a new husband for when the existing one dumped her. She had failed, as a wife, maybe as a mother, perhaps even as a person. She had failed in life. F on her score card. A big fat F.

As her sobbing eased, Bunty lifted her head. She was still outside Verity Reynolds’ house, with make-up like Alice Cooper and no suitable reason for being there. Enough, she decided. Feeling a little better after wailing like a small child for a good few minutes, she rammed the Mini into gear and set off on a trip around town. Enough. She had moped and circumnavigated, and reacted to the negative and not the positive. Enough. A new plan was needed. A positive one. ‘ENOUGH ALREADY!’ she screamed out of the sun roof, feeling alive again for the first time in ages. She was going to take control. She might even get in touch with Priscilla again.

As if reading her mind, her phone rang.

A New Zealand number. ‘Hello,’ she said cautiously. It might be Cally. Or it might not.

‘Do you absolutely hate me? I wouldn’t blame you,’ said a deep voice.

Bunty pulled over instantly, shaking her head in disbelief. Wasn’t it always the way? Just as she’d decided to move on, do something new, the man who’d disappeared, ‘Mr Ten Days On and Ten Days Off’, had decided to rear his not-so-ugly head again. ‘Ben. What a surprise.’

‘I know, I know.’ He sounded slightly drunk. ‘I piked on you again, and yet you’re still talking to me. I’m so sorry. I just got into a hard time over the kids again, and I couldn’t face talking to anyone, especially – forgive me for this – especially someone who’s kind of going through the same thing.’ Ben sighed, then hiccuped.