As It Is On Telly (8 page)

From: [email protected]

Ah, silly me. I simply meant that you don’t have to pay it yet. Enjoy your date!

Kind regards

Priscilla

CHAPTER EIGHT

Unfortunately the joyously anticipated date with Ben had to wait a day. Graham had
plans
.

‘What plans?’ Bunty wanted to wrestle the newspaper out of his hand and bat him across the head. How could he have plans? He never did anything on a Saturday night. And it would have to be this Saturday night, the one Saturday that Bunty wanted to get out. ‘You never have plans.’

Charlotte snorted from her armchair, much to Bunty’s surprise; she’d assumed her daughter was listening to her iPod. Instead, she was listening to them. ‘Whaddya mean Dad never has plans. He’s like the king of plans. The Prime Minister of Plan City. The Pope of Planning in Popedom …’

‘Okay, I get it,’ said Bunty.

‘Good,’ replied Charlotte, checking out her spots in the back of her iPod. ‘Cos I couldn’t think of anyone else who’s, like, really important. Oh. What about the Arch Angel of Canterwotsit?’ It was a clearly a rhetorical question, as she was already feeding her earphones back through her curtains of hair.

‘Bishop. Archbishop of Canterbury.’ Bunty frowned at her daughter. She’d managed to turn the head of the Anglican Church into a character from
Heroes
. What exactly did they teach them at school these days?

Anyway, she’d got distracted. Plans. That’s what she’d been thinking about. Graham’s plans. To be fair, Charlotte had a point. Graham did have plans – of the one-year, five-year and retirement variety. He pored over maps for hours prior to any journey or holiday, and took great delight in proving the
AA
Route
Planner
wrong, as if they’d ever listen or care. Plans for Christmas, Easter, Halloween, music lessons, any other extracurricular activities had all been beaten into strictly even shapes on the gigantic white-board of Graham’s mind.

But that’s all they ever were. Strategies for the future. Nothing about now. About spontaneity. About suddenly deciding without warning to go out on a Saturday night without his wife or his child. ‘So where are you going tonight?’ she asked after Graham had retreated back behind his newspaper.

The paper lowered, a quick flick that just allowed him to make pacifying eye contact before re-entering his shroud of lies. ‘Actually, it’s tomorrow as well. The team’s playing away tomorrow – Coventry – so me and the lads are going up to give them a bit of support.’

It would all sound quite reasonable coming from someone else, but Bunty spotted the obvious flaw. ‘What team? What ‘lads’?’

‘Um, Chelsea? They’re in the semis for the cup final, you know.’

Clever, thought Bunty. Get me on the one thing you know I can’t answer you back on. Sport – men’s sport particularly – did not even enter her consciousness as entertainment. Tennis was necessary for her social standing; the gym was a means to an end – her rear end, to be exact, to stay in any kind of shape to be admired by drainage men and Kiwis. But sport as something requiring spectators? Pointless. Pointless and expensive, which was the one reason she was surprised Graham had introduced this into his routine.

‘Right, so you’re going to drive up and stay over in Coventry, at say two hundred pounds, and then pay forty quid for a ticket to go and see – What is it you usually call them? – ‘eleven talentless pricks kick a sheep’s bladder around?’’ Bunty pulled the newspaper down. ‘And what ‘lads’?’

Graham sighed, but at least had the decency to look a little shifty. ‘Ryan from the office has hired a mini-bus and we’ve all chipped in a bit. We’re staying at his auntie’s in Solihull, and Ryan’s mate has a season ticket and he can’t go so it won’t cost me anything. And as for the talentless prick thing, well, I did think that, I’ll admit. But then I started doing the financial planning for a league player and I changed my mind. Very savvy, half of these footballers. Look at Beckham.’ He shook out his newspaper again. ‘Happy now?’

No, she wasn’t bloody happy, not happy at all. It had all come out a bit too easily. Well
planned
. An AA charted route through the land of lies. But even more than that, she couldn’t now announce that she was going out. The date with Ben was off. It was only when she slipped into the kitchen to do some furtive texting via Priscilla that the irony of her behaviour hit her. Well, she decided, hitting the send button, she’d been driven to it. It wouldn’t have crossed her mind to have an affair if Graham hadn’t beaten her to it.

She watched him with narrowed eyes as he headed up the stairs to pack his bag, handing her the newspaper on the way. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind, Bunty,’ he said, with a roundabout attempt at an apology. ‘It’s your favourite telly night. You know I hate all that stuff. Thought you’d like to get me out of the way.’

‘Oh, believe me I would,’ said Bunty with rather more malice that she’d intended.

Graham looked slightly alarmed for a moment, as if she was actually foreseeing his demise, then stuck his meaty finger on the TV page. ‘
Search
for
a
Superhero
at 7.30,’ he said softly in a come-hither sort of a voice. ‘
You’ve
Got
Talent
, followed by
The
New
Pans
People
, and two hours of Ant and Dec making stars wallow in gravy. What do you want me here for?’

Bunty allowed him a small smile. ‘That’s true. I would rather be here with Ant and Dec.’ Or Ben, she thought wickedly.

Graham smiled back, relieved, and Bunty did a double take. Had his teeth changed? They looked straighter. And whiter. Or maybe they just appeared whiter against his more tanned skin. Tanned skin? She looked again and for a moment had a horrible mental image of Graham turning into Peter Stringfellow, but was distracted by him calling over the banister: ‘Charlie, go and get that surprise for your mum.’

There was no reply, since Charlotte was obviously plugged into the mains, so Graham hollered one more time, while Bunty gave up and walked back into the lounge. Hands on hips, she stood in front of her daughter until Charlotte rolled her eyes and removed her earplugs. ‘What?’

‘Well, Charlie,’ said Bunty with heavy irony. How come everyone knew about that apart from her? ‘Your dad wanted you to get the surprise he had for me.’

‘Oh. Here.’ Charlotte fished down the side of the cushion and withdrew a squashed box of chocolates. ‘These are for you while you’re watching TV tonight.’

Bunty peered under the wrinkled Milk Tray lid. ‘Half of them are missing.’

‘I ate the ones you don’t like.’

‘How do you know which ones I don’t like?’

‘Du-uh. I’m your daughter, aren’t I?’ And with that indisputable truth, Charlotte tutted loudly, helped herself to the last coffee cream, and wandered out of the lounge.

For a long moment Bunty stood in the middle of her lounge-cum-dining room trying to decide which object to hang onto as the walls revolved around her. Who were these people, living in her house with her? Graham, or someone who was starting to look like an air-brushed version of him, was taking unprecedented football trips away with ‘the lads’, none of whom she’d ever heard of before, and was buying her boxes of guilt chocolates, while inexplicably highlighting her favourite programmes in green ink. If he’d come downstairs in a leopard-skin thong with a packet of ribbed ticklers under his arm he couldn’t have announced more clearly that he was having an affair. Except he wouldn’t need the ribbed ticklers any more, she reminded herself, apart from … yuck! Apart from reasons of hygiene and the avoidance of STDs. And Charlotte – her daughter, indeed, but someone who became more of a mystery to her with each passing day, with each new hormone, and who took it for granted that she should have half of whatever was given to her mother as some sort of inalienable right – didn’t have the courtesy to tell that same mother, the mother who’d given up – what, a career? Not exactly, perhaps, but the mother who’d given up, well, lots of things to be with her – that she’d now changed her name. Was that how she’d brought Charlotte up? Had she failed at the one job she’d been given permission to do? It was a sobering thought. She sank onto the sofa in a mood of mystified misery as the phone in her pocket trilled.

‘Hu-o,’ she mumbled through a very chewy chocolate caramel.

‘Any luck on the babysitting front?’ Ben sounded incredibly close by, and Bunty instantly ducked behind a cushion, dribbling toffee down the velour.

‘No, sorry,’ she said indistinctly.

‘It’s not your weekend, then?’

For a moment the arrogance of the man almost amused her. Okay, so she wasn’t able to go out with him that weekend, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have a life without him, for goodness’ sake. A girl – woman – could still have fun without a bronzed Kiwi in tow. But then she realised what he meant. Not her weekend. Her weekend of freedom while the ex took over the childcare. He meant that it wasn’t her weekend
off
. ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Not this weekend.’

‘I understand,’ said Ben, and Bunty’s heart flowered again. Of course he did. He had kids. He was divorced, or separated, like her. Only she wasn’t quite. He continued, ‘Could you get away for an hour tomorrow? Lunch, maybe.’

‘Oh! Well, I’ll try. My daughter’s bound to be at a friend’s anyway.’ If she’d thought faster, she could have made Graham take Charlotte with him. He kept saying it would be good for her to take up a sport.

‘Great! How about the Pig and Cauli at one.’

What was it about that place? ‘Or that wine bar we met in last time?’

Ben sounded disappointed. ‘It’s a bit fancy schmancy for lunch, don’t you think? I fancy some good old fashioned tucker.’

‘Okay,’ said Bunty with a grin. ‘See you at the P and C at one.’

She hung up quickly as Graham’s bag nosed its way into the room. ‘Right then, love, I’ll be off.’

‘I didn’t hear a mini-bus,’ she said, looking out at the empty street.

‘Oh, we’re meeting up at the squash club.’ Graham dropped a kiss on the top of her head and backed out of the room quickly. ‘See you tomorrow night.’

Bunty watched frostily as he reversed up the driveway, his wheels spitting out gravel on either side. Squash club. Right. Football. Yeah, right. Mini-bus to Coventry. Double, triple right. Did he think she was born yesterday? ‘Well, du-uh,’ she said in a surprisingly good impression of her daughter. Graham was so involved in his little tryst that he couldn’t see how bloody obvious he was being. Obvious and a little bit pathetic. If Bunty hadn’t been quite so mad with him, she could almost have sympathised. In a distinct grump, she squashed herself into the corner of the sofa with her battered box of Milk Tray, the remains of the bottle of Chablis and the remote control. Ant and Dec had better be good tonight, she thought.

Three hours later she woke up in a pool of chocolate drool, after a particularly lurid dream in which she was jelly-wrestling with Ant, then Dec, then both. What woke her up was Dec scrabbling to the edge of the jelly pool (which was, she was startled to note, Charlotte’s old rubber paddling pool with various Disney characters in swimming trunks cavorting around the edge), and screaming, ‘GET ME OUT OF HERE! GET ME OUT …’

‘Mum,’ said a voice in her left ear. ‘Mum! You’re shouting.’

Charlotte had removed the wine glass from her hand and was busy turning the volume down on the TV. ‘You’ve slept through all your favourite programmes. Why don’t you go to bed?’

‘I … um … I think I might. What time is it?’

‘Ten thirty,’ said Charlotte, surfing through the channels until she landed on some sort of teen horror movie.

‘Right,’ said Bunty. She heaved herself out of the sofa, made sure the back door was locked and headed up the stairs. It wasn’t until she had cleaned her teeth and put on her least sexy pyjamas (what was she on about – they were
all
the least sexy these days) that she realised what she’d overlooked.

She went back downstairs. ‘Charlotte,’ she said sharply.

‘Hmmmm?’ Her daughter barely looked up from the TV.

‘Bed.’

‘Aw, bu’ Muu-uum …’

‘I’m the mother. You’re the child. Go to bed.’

Just in case, Bunty waited until Charlotte had trolled up the stairs before going up herself. Her life was twisted. They were having some
Freaky
Friday
moment, where her routine and Charlotte’s were somehow reversed, where Graham had a new set of imaginary friends, and where she was trying to work out how to dispose of her daughter for an hour in the middle of a Sunday so she could go on a date.

Twisted.

Exciting. But twisted.

CHAPTER NINE

Pearl
: So tell us, Bunty, when did you start to fall for Ben?

Bunty
(
coyishly
tucking
hair
behind
ear
): Well, Pearl, I would probably have to say it was after our first lunch at the Pig and Cauli. He was very, very charming.

Finn
: And your husband was behaving a little outrageously at this point?

Bunty
: Absolutely. Pretending he was off to football matches when no such matches existed. Getting thinner and browner.

Pearl
(
rolling
her
eyes
in
a
co
-
conspirator
fashion
): All of which just confirmed for you, after the vasectomy debacle, that he was having an affair.

Bunty
(
sighing
): It did, Pearl. You know, I think I’ve been a good wife. I’ve done all the homemaking a woman could do. Our daughter was happy, well-rounded. But I suppose it just … just wasn’t enough for Graham.

Finn
(
to
camera
): We’re here talking to Bunty McKenna about her new book,
My
Husband
the
Adulterer
.

Pearl
: And it’s a tale a lot of women, and possibly some men, will be more than able to relate to. Bunty, tell us why …

*

Bunty sat up in bed, brushing her dark fringe out of her eyes. Christ, ten o’clock. If Charlotte was any younger, there would have been a strong danger she could have burnt the house down by now. These days it was more than likely that Charlotte was still in her bedroom, either in bed, or lolling in front of the dressing table trying on stolen makeup (pilfered from Bunty or other friends’ mums, not Boots the Chemist, although the way she was heading Bunty wouldn’t absolutely swear that was the case).

Ten o’clock. Two hours to go until her clandestine meeting with Ben. Hence the interview dream, she supposed – her subconscious was paving the way for her forthcoming adultery. Had she been a good wife? Tick. Well, at least she had done all the things that good wives did: learnt to cook, produced dinner parties for bosses at the mere sniff of a raise or promotion, planned holidays and packed for them, washed and cleaned and polished and painted, injected a modicum of enthusiasm into the biweekly bedtime sports and never, ever strayed. That made her a good wife, didn’t it? Or homemaker, as she was supposed to call it these days. Well, she’d made the home, and now Graham was breaking it. Her adultery was perfectly justified.

And Charlotte
was
happy and well-rounded, insomuch as she hadn’t descended into the black-garbed depression and apparent drug-taking of the Emo or Goth (Charlotte had tried to explain the difference but it made no impression on Bunty, other than she was glad that Charlotte was not yet either). So she was a little harder to empathise with these days, what with her constant lugubrious lolling around the place and endless supply of facial quirks to denote that Bunty was a permanent embarrassment to her – she had actually said to Bunty recently, in tones of great seriousness, to ‘like, never, ever speak in front of my friends again. In fact, if you didn’t speak in public at all, like, ever, that would be really, really good.’ All because Bunty had asked her friend (some strange vampiric girl called Jacinth, who to Bunty’s untrained eye had definite Emo or Goth tendencies) if she’d like to stay for tea. Nobody did ‘tea’ any more apparently.

Anyway, at least she wasn’t suicidal, self-harming, anorexic, bulimic, dating her teacher, meeting convicts in chat-rooms … Well, Bunty would have to keep an eye on that one, but it did seem that the worst thing that Charlotte was up to right now was a bit of giggly probing into inappropriate websites. Perhaps probing was the wrong word, thought Bunty with a wince. But it made her think of something.

Graham hadn’t taken his laptop. Scampering out of bed, Bunty pulled the computer out from behind his chair, and booted it up as quickly as she could. The broadband connection was pretty instant; Graham had taken care of all the Wifi stuff – shame he didn’t care so much about the wifey. Bunty tried a few of the topics that had appeared on the downstairs computer, but to no avail. In fact, when she looked at the things that popped up in place of the naughty words, Bunty wondered that anyone would find Graham interesting enough to have an affair with. No penises, but pension predictions. Not boobs, but bookings for Financial Strategies for Paupers. Viginas? Nothing. Even typing in ‘vaginas’ only brought up ‘vagaries in the US dollar affects housing market’. Maybe he was having an affair with his job, thought Bunty viciously, trying to think up more rude words. He obviously adored it.

Her lexicon of lechery exhausted, Bunty went instead to the Chelsea site. It was very illuminating. ‘Bastard,’ she hissed. Not only were Chelsea not in the cup finals, they weren’t even playing at Coventry. They’d played the previous day, at home. There was no way he was in a mini-bus with ‘the lads’ on his way to an away match. Well, not the football type, anyway.

‘Right.’ Bunty packed away the laptop, her crisis of conscience fully resolved. ‘Shower.’

After a quick phone call to Kristiana to check she was available for a two hour lunchtime sit on Bunty’s sofa watching the
Eastenders
omnibus, all expenses paid, Bunty launched herself into a full preparation for seduction. Not that it mattered whether she was shaven into alabaster smoothness today – there would be no sex for ages – but she wanted to be sure that when Ben swept her up into his arms, she would smell and feel and look so edible that he wouldn’t be able to resist. He would clutch her tightly around the waist, lips parted slightly, the pupils of his eyes pulsating with love, their hearts pounding against each other like cartoon hearts with the knowledge, the anticipation, that this would be the first, the most perfect, the most fulfilling kiss of all time. A
Brief
Encounter
kiss, heart-stopping, exquisitely painful. Love like it was on TV.

Half an hour later she trailed downstairs in a dress rather shorter than any she had worn for, well, the whole century, now that she thought of it. Charlotte looked up from her cornflakes, spoon paused en route. ‘Where are we going?’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ said Bunty, parting her fringe this way and the other to see which way looked more seductive. Actually neither did. That was the only thing with short hair. It lay the way it was cut, and that was that. No swishing of the tresses from one side to the other, the parting undulating across the head while a swoop of hair hung sexily over one eye. Bunty’s hair against the grain made her look like Tin-Tin. She gave up and pulled it forwards again with her fingers, suddenly realising that Charlotte was now eyeballing her with the utmost suspicion.

‘Well, who’s coming for lunch then?’

‘Nobody. Well, Kristiana is coming to keep an eye on you. There’s lasagne in the fridge and you can finish your science homework without my help, can’t you, and …’

But Charlotte wasn’t listening. ‘Who’s that then? Someone thinks they’re coming for lunch.’

‘Oh Jesus.’

Charlotte snorted. ‘Mother. That is not Jesus.’

The figure striding across the gravel was dressed in a striped shirt, tight jeans and very cool Armani sunglasses. ‘I didn’t say Jesus,’ said Bunty hastily. ‘I said Jason.’

What the hell was he doing here? Bunty sprinted to the front door, hoping to head him off at the pass. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she asked, more directly.

Jason eyed her up and down like a prize cow and let out a filthy wolf-whistle. ‘You scrub up nice. Were you expecting me? Oh, hello.’

This was to Charlotte, who had appeared in the hall in her cute but too small pyjama top and shorts. ‘Hiya,’ she said, spooning cornflakes into her mouth. Bunty winced again. When had Charlotte stopped being tongue-tied, mute in fact, in front of the opposite sex? First Daniel. Now Jason. She’d be introducing herself as Charlie next and inviting him in to view her laptop etchings.

‘Charlotte! Back inside,’ snapped Bunty, before turning her withering glance on Jason. ‘How did you get my home address?’

‘Followed you back the other night, didn’t I.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘That’s appalling. How were you even allowed into this Croesus Club? No, don’t tell me,’ she added as an afterthought, seeing Jammy draw in a breath to impress her with his credentials. ‘You have to go,’ she said.

‘But I’ve got a lunch date,’ said Jason, clearly enjoying seeing her squirm.

‘Jason, we have
not
got a lunch date.’ Honestly, the cheek of the boy was quite astonishing.

‘Not with you,’ he said with a smirk, looking along the hall behind her.

‘Oh. My. Christ.’ But how? Charlotte must have been on the same website as her. She
was
meeting convicts in chat rooms. Even if Jason wasn’t a prisoner yet, he was soon about to be. ‘She’s thirteen, you sick perv. What is it with you and age?’

At this, Jason at least had the grace to look a bit confused. A flush seeped along his greasy cheekbones. ‘She told me she was twenty-five.’

‘Twenty-five? Does she look twenty-five?’

Jason shrugged. ‘Lot of people don’t look their age these days. Do they, Bunty?’

This was horrible. Worse than horrible. Everything was sliding into a nightmarish, Technicolor horror-film. Any second now the doors and windows would all slam closed, and she and Charlotte would be left alone with this ghoul, this spotty, over-privileged axe-murdering stockbroker, and it was all her fault. She’d welcomed him into their lives. Agreed to meet him. Lied about herself. Tipped ice in his lap and then come straight home – of course he’d bloody well followed her. And then he’d peered in, rubbing his oily hands up and down his thighs and God only knew what else as he espied her baby, her little girl, and waited for Graham to be gone for him to carry out his master plan. Leering. Leaning over to shake her hand.
Let’s
think
of
it
as
a
business
venture
.
Two
for
the
price
of
one
.
You
,
the
old
trollop
,
and
her
,
the
young
floozy
…

Get out, she was about to scream. Get out, get away. She’d miss her date with Ben. Oh God, how could she even be thinking about dates with Ben. Dates with anyone. Look what a previous one had led to. But then his weasel head spun around at the sound of tyres on the gravel. ‘Ah. Here she is,’ he said.

Kristiana swivelled her long legs out of the door of her ancient Honda Civic. ‘Ah. Jason. You made it.’ She caught sight of Bunty in the doorway. ‘It is all right with you, Bunty, yes? I met Jason after babysitting the other night. His car had broken down right outside! And I thought he could have lunch with Charlotte and I.’

‘Charlotte and me,’ corrected Bunty automatically. Of course, she thought crossly. Because correct grammar was really what mattered now.

‘You are staying too?’ Kristiana was understandably confused.

Bunty covered her face with her hands. ‘No. Nobody is staying. At least, I’m going out, and Jason is leaving – not together! But I think you’ll appreciate, Kristiana, that Charlotte is at an impressionable age, and Jason appears to be too, so I think it would be better if you met outside of my home, if you don’t mind.’

Jason turned pink and then started to gesticulate to Kristiana. ‘And don’t think you can come back the minute my back’s turned, Jason.’ Did he think she was blind? Born yesterday? ‘Kristiana, can I trust you on this? Because if I can’t you’d better say now, and you can find someone else to babysit for in future.’ She resisted the temptation to add ‘Jason, perhaps.’

It was Kristiana’s turn to go red. It was all Bunty could do not to sneer in Jason’s face. Business deals? She could teach him a thing or two. There was no way Kristiana would take him over Bunty – a higher-than-average pay rate to mind a child who was hardly a child any more meant far more to a struggling student than the odd flash dinner. Kristiana stuttered, her English coming slightly unglued. ‘Of coarseness. I would not dream to make Charlotte imp … impressioned. Jason,’ she added primly, ‘I will give you text. Tomorrow.’

‘All right,’ said Jason eventually. He’d clearly been outmanoeuvred, and he looked at Bunty with even more lascivious respect than he had the other night. With a sweep of a pointed finger at Bunty, which she took to mean ‘I might be shagging the help but you are hot, baby’, he slimed his way back across the gravel, clambered into Jammy the Golf and roared off.

‘I am sorry, Bunty,’ said Kristiana, looking genuinely contrite. ‘I did not think …’

‘It’s okay. I was young once, you know,’ replied Bunty. Young? Once? Young and dating and ‘I remember what its like’? The hypocrisy of the situation made her want to laugh really. She’d stopped the babysitter having a date because she, mother of the babysittee, and married at that, was off on an illicit date herself. Oh yes. I’m such a good mother, Pearl. The best. Salt of the earth. Maldon bloody sea salt at that.