One Night in Italy (22 page)

Delete, delete, delete. She typed ‘SAUCY!’ instead, with a winking emoticon. Was it better to be a cliché or sound like Kenneth Williams? She was too confused to decide. She sent it off and sat there breathlessly for a few minutes, waiting for him to respond.

When no reply came, she guessed she’d missed the moment. Knowing Pete, he’d be passed out snoring under the brushed nylon covers of his mum’s spare bed, soggy tissues in the bin, a satisfied smile on his face. Feeling an odd mix of disappointment and relief, she got into her pyjamas and went to bed herself.

‘So what have we baked this week?’ asked Marla on Thursday. ‘Please not more of that vegetarian stuff,’ she added brightly, her smile so toothy and dazzling it almost fooled Anna into thinking she was being nice. ‘I can’t be doing with rabbit food, do you know what I mean? How do people
survive
?’

‘Cake,’ Anna replied briefly, looking up from her computer. She was typing up the nicest ginger cake recipe, feeling confident that her readers were going to enjoy this one. Once she’d cut the dusty bits off, it had been spicy and moist and magically seemed to get better with every passing day.

‘Ahh,’ said Marla, sounding doubtful. ‘Hmmm.’

‘What do you mean,
Ahh, hmmm
?’

Marla cocked her head on one side, eyes wide. ‘Well, I don’t want to criticize, obvs, but are you sure that’s wise? Because it’s, like,
January?
And everyone’s totally watching their weight, with New Year’s resolutions and that?’ If you didn’t know better, you’d think Marla was deeply worried on Anna’s behalf.

Luckily Anna did know better. ‘Not everyone’s on a diet,’ she replied, typing quickly even though she was making spelling mistakes.

‘Oh, I know! I mean –
I’m
never on a diet, thank God! I’d die if I was fat, I would totally, like, shoot myself. But I know not everyone is blessed with an athletic metabolism, like
moi
.’ She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Not that I’m saying
you
should be on a diet, Anna.’

She so
was
saying Anna should be on a diet. ‘God forbid anyone should think
that
, Marla,’ Anna said with admirable restraint, and went on typing crossly at an unsustainable speed.
Combinge the floor with the bakisng wperowe
, read the second line of her recipe.

‘People always say when they meet me, no
way
are you a restaurant reviewer! You’re so slim! Do you actually, like,
eat
the food, or do you just look at it and smell it? It’s so funny! Hashtag hilarious!’

Hashtag liar, more like, Anna thought, typing even faster.
Beat the eeggs and stirs intoa the mizgture.
She was just wondering how she was going to unclench her jaw and squeeze out a reply when the telltale clip-clop of power heels came from behind her.

‘Ladies, good morning,’ said Imogen, arriving on a waft of Dior. Today’s suit was funereal black because the newspaper’s proprietor, Dick Briggs (or Big Dicks as everyone called him), was expected in for a meeting. ‘Marla, Anna, do you have a minute? I’ve had one of my brilliant ideas, if I say so myself.’

‘Super!’ simpered Marla, batting her long eyelashes like an ass-kissing faun.

‘You’re on holiday next week, am I right?’ Imogen asked her.

‘Yes – sorry to rub it in, guys, but I’m off to Malaysia for a bit of winter sun,’ Marla announced to the office at large, like anyone was remotely interested. ‘I promise I won’t go on about it
too
much, but can I just say, five-star hotel, thank you very much, and one of those infinity pools and—’

Imogen spoke over the boasting. ‘So while you’re away, I thought Anna could step in and write your column,’ she said. ‘Is that all right with you, Anna? Only I thought it would be the perfect next step for you, already being our foodie expert.’

The silence that followed was so absolute you could have heard a raindrop splash into an infinity pool.

‘Oh,’ Anna said in surprise. ‘Really? That would be great.’

‘No!’ Marla protested, barely disguising her fury. She made a valiant attempt to recover herself, but her smile looked as strained as Big Daddy’s wrestling pants. ‘I mean . . . Sadly, I’m not sure Anna would be
quite
right,’ she said. ‘The thing is, you need experience to be a restaurant critic. No offence, Anna, but this is an exacting skill, and . . .’

Imogen narrowed her eyes. ‘I think she’ll do a very good job,’ she said in her most severe take-no-prisoners sort of a voice. ‘Marla, if you could brief Anna and give her some handover notes before you go . . .’

‘But—’

‘Thank you, Marla. Thank you, Anna. Look forward to seeing how you get on. Splendid!’

Marla stared after her with undisguised contempt. ‘The readers aren’t going to be happy about
this
,’ she said bitterly, before turning back to Anna, thin-lipped. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Anna, you’re a great little journalist . . .’

Great little journalist! Patronizing cow. Anna had been working at the paper years longer than Marla.

‘And you’ve done a very nice job on the old
baking
. . .’

She said it as if Anna had been writing about dogshit.

‘But, you know, my readers are very fond of my particular style of writing. It’s quite witty and clever . . .’

First I’ve heard of it, Anna thought darkly.

‘So, no offence, but . . .’

Anna had heard enough. ‘It’s a sodding five-hundred-word restaurant review, Marla, it’s not exactly the Opinion page in the
Guardian
. I’m sure I’ll manage.’

Marla gasped in outrage. ‘Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, maybe somebody
else
should fill in for me,’ she snapped. ‘I’m sorry to hear you’re so
dismissive
of the central part of the entertainment round-up.’

‘For crying out loud!’ roared Colin, like a bear woken from hibernation. He banged a fist on his desk. ‘Will you just put a sock in it? Some of us are actually trying to work around here.’

Marla swung round to her desk and began a furious assault on her keyboard, her mouth as tight and puckered as a cat’s bum. Anna couldn’t help a secret smile to herself. Stand-in restaurant critic, eh? ‘Our foodie expert,’ Imogen had called her. That was definitely what you called a result.

Chapter Eighteen

L’agenzia di lavoro
– The employment agency

Catherine barely slept a wink on Sunday night. The few dreams she had were threaded through with anxiety: someone else living in the house, her looking in from the outside, unable to open her own front door . . . Then she’d wake up in a cold sweat and feel sick that it might actually come true.

When she wasn’t stressing out about being homeless, her brain was trying to unravel the strange mystery of all that money in Mike’s account. Something was definitely fishy there. Sure, he was on a good salary as a senior GP with various responsibilities at the surgery, but it wasn’t
that
good. Not good enough to have squirrelled away thousands and thousands of pounds in a secret bank account anyway. So where had the extra money come from?

All the crime novels she’d ever read started jostling to the forefront of her mind. Was he blackmailing somebody? Was he involved in some kind of fraud case? Had he . . . Her eyes boggled. Had he been killing off pensioner patients and somehow doctoring their wills?

By the time dawn broke, she knew she wasn’t going to get any more sleep, so she got up and made a strong coffee. Then she retrieved the document files and spread the papers out on the kitchen table. No, she definitely hadn’t imagined it. According to the bank statements, Mike had been receiving regular large sums of money (five or ten thousand pounds a time) for the last year and a half, always from the same company – Centaur. He probably wasn’t bumping off little old ladies, then, unless Centaur was an evil mastermind intrinsically linked with the plot.

She dusted off the old laptop (Mike had taken the newer, whizzier model with him) and turned on the wifi. If he was up to something dodgy, then she was going to discover exactly what, she thought with a sudden burst of energy. Hell, she was still his wife, wasn’t she? His soon-to-be-destitute wife. She had a right to know.

‘What are you hiding from me, Mike?’ she muttered under her breath as she opened up the browser.

Despite her best attempts, she didn’t get very far with her internet sleuthing. According to Google, there were hundreds of companies all around the world called Centaur, none of which she could imagine having any connection to Mike, however hard she tried. She frowned hopelessly at the bank statements while her second cup of coffee cooled, knowing that she was missing something crucial but unable to work out what it might be.

She was just about to go and have a shower when a thought struck her. Whether she could solve the mystery or not, with Mike threatening to sell the house from under her, she was really going to have to get a job soon. Like, maybe today.

Later that morning, Catherine walked into Jenny Hayes Recruitment in town, dressed immaculately in her one and only black suit. She was ready to do battle. How hard could it be?

‘I need a job,’ she said bluntly to the woman behind the reception desk. ‘Anything. I’m not choosy.’

The receptionist didn’t react for a moment. She was about Catherine’s age, with black-rimmed, oversized glasses that made her head look slightly pinched. (Had she been a forceps birth? Catherine found herself wondering.) There was a mug on the desk which read ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’, which was kind of ironic as the receptionist looked less like cracking a smile than anyone Catherine had ever seen.

Catherine was about to attempt communication a second time when the receptionist spoke. ‘You need to send in a CV,’ she said in a bored monotone, her eyes still on the screen in front of her. She typed something quickly, her polished nails flashing over the keyboard. ‘Then we’ll put you on our database and contact you if something suitable comes up.’

‘Yes, I’ve done that,’ Catherine said politely. She’d sent out about twenty in the first week of January in a flush of New Year optimism. ‘But I haven’t heard anything back from you. So I was just wondering—’

‘Name?’

‘Catherine Evans.’

The receptionist sighed as if this was all completely pointless, then typed in Catherine’s name. ‘Mill Cottage, Forge Lane?’

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘No. We’ve got nothing. Sorry.’

Catherine gritted her teeth. ‘There must be something I can do. Honestly, I don’t mind, whatever it is.’ Out of the agency window her eye was suddenly caught by the sight of a young man embracing a much older woman. The woman was very glamorous, in a classic fawn trench-coat and just-blow-dried blonde hair. As they pulled apart, smiling, Catherine realized with a shock that the young man was Freddie from her Italian class. Whoa! She hadn’t expected him to be dating a woman like that.

The rude cow behind the counter was coughing pointedly. ‘I
said
, any office experience?’

‘What? Oh, sorry. Office experience. Well, I’ve done a bit of filing and what-not for my husband.’ She crossed her fingers surreptitiously.

‘Any data-entry experience?’

‘Um . . .’ What the hell did that mean? ‘I’m a quick learner?’ she ventured.

‘Can you type?’

‘Kind of. Not . . .’ She mimed fast-typing fingers. ‘More like . . .’ She mimed hunt-and-peck-typing fingers. ‘But I do get there in the end. And I’m good at spelling. And punctuation. I got an A in my English Language G C S E.’

The receptionist’s nostrils twitched as if she could smell something disgusting.

‘So yes is the answer,’ Catherine babbled. ‘Yes. I can type.’

‘But not . . .’ Now the receptionist was miming fast-typing fingers with a look of contempt.

‘No. Not . . .’ She decided not to do the mime again. ‘Not like that.’

The receptionist shook her head. ‘Sorry. We don’t have anything right now,’ she said again.

‘I can get faster!’ Catherine cried. ‘I promise. I’ll practise all day until I’m . . .’ She gripped her fingers into fists so they couldn’t embarrass her with any more stupid mimes. ‘Until I’m really amazingly fast. Until I’m scorching keyboards with my incredible typing.’

There was a terrible, slap-in-the-face sort of silence for a few moments, then the receptionist began typing pointedly again. Fast, proper typing, without looking down at the keyboard, Catherine noticed glumly.

‘
Was
there a job, then?’ she persisted. ‘If I’d been able to type quickly, would you have given me details of a job? I can do it, whatever it is. Why can’t you just give me a chance?’

The receptionist fixed her with a steely glare. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said for the third time, not sounding very sorry at all. ‘We. Don’t. Have. Anything. Right. Now.’

Chastened, Catherine dropped her head. ‘Thank you anyway,’ she found herself saying meekly, before scuttling away.

Outside, she leaned against the wall, feeling humiliated. Well, that had gone about as embarrassingly as humanly possible.