Strictly Love (13 page)

‘It's okay,’ said Emily. ‘Katie explained that it was partly Rob's fault.’

‘So you don't mind me ringing?’

‘Nope.’

‘Good,’ said Mark. He lingered for a moment, then said, ‘Curry. Beer. Rob. You know. Must go.’

‘Yes,’ said Emily.

She watched as Mark headed for the offie. Just before he entered, she called after him, ‘I know we nearly finished your
Green Wing
DVD, but we‘ve still got the whole of
Spaced
to watch.’

Mark stood in the doorway and grinned.

Chapter Fifteen

 

‘Hello stranger.’ Katie greeted Emily with a hug as she came through the front door. ‘Am I pleased to see you. George spent last night throwing up, Molly hasn't stopped screaming all day, and Aidan's throwing a paddy because I dared to suggest that he go in the bath.’

‘How long's Charlie away for this time?’ Emily asked sympathetically.

Katie shrugged. She didn't want to admit that Charlie hadn't actually said when he was going to be back. Nor that he had yet to ring her. When she'd tried both the work flat and his mobile all she'd got was the answerphone and a ‘
this mobile is switched off
’ message.

‘A week, I think,’ she said vaguely. ‘Ooh, flowers, lovely.’

‘And chocolate, wine, and if we're having a girly evening I thought you might like to see
Grease
.’

‘You shouldn't have,’ said Katie.

‘Oh, I think I should,’ Emily replied. ‘I've been a bit crap recently. In fact, a lot crap. I wanted to say sorry.’

‘Don't be daft –’ Katie was saying, when a yell from upstairs stopped her in her tracks. There followed the sound of thundering footsteps and Aidan appeared halfway down the stairs saying, ‘George hit me!’

‘Did not!’ George stood indignantly behind him. ‘Just because I wouldn't let him borrow my Xbox.’

‘Children who‘ve been throwing up half the night shouldn't actually be playing with their toys at bedtime, I think,’ said Katie.

‘But Mum –’ the boys chorused in a desperate competition to get her on their side.

‘But Mum nothing,’ was the swift response. ‘Bed! Or I'll tell Dad.’

‘So?’ shot back George. ‘It's not as if he cares.’

‘George, that is enough!’ Katie was shouting now. ‘You do not speak about your father that way, do you hear?’

‘It's true,’ muttered George, ‘he cares more about that rotten job than us.’

‘That rotten job pays for your Xbox,’ said Katie. ‘Now say goodnight to Emily and get back to bed the pair of you. And NO more fighting.’

The boys trotted dutifully back upstairs and Katie ran a hand through her hair. God, these fights with the boys were exhausting. And ever more so when she had to deal with them on their own. Charlie being away was taking a toll not just on her, but on the kids too.

‘Sorry about the chaos,’ said Katie, conscious that due to her energy levels being at rock bottom she hadn't even managed the twenty-minute frantic scoop-up of toys and the speedy hoovering of the lounge that she had planned before Emily's arrival.

‘You should see my place,’ consoled Emily. ‘And there's only one of me.’

‘But I bet you manage to plump up your cushions,’ said Katie. ‘And I'm sure your house is odour-free.’

She picked up a bottle of milk, which had rolled out from under the sofa when she had gone to straighten it after the boys had been using it for the Black Pearl in a game of
Pirates of the Caribbean
. God only knew how long the milk had been there. It smelled rank.

‘Only when Callum isn't there,’ said Emily.

‘So, go on,’ said Katie. ‘Tell me how it's going? And I take it
all back. I don't really think he's the most useless tosser in the world.’

‘Yes you do,’ said Emily. ‘And you're right.’

‘Oh,’ said Katie. ‘So what's happened now?’

‘It's over,’ Emily told her. ‘For good. I caught him snorting coke again, and told him that was it.’

‘Yes, right,’ said Katie, trying to look as though she believed Emily.

‘Don't look like that,’ Emily replied.

‘Like what?’ protested Katie.

‘As if you've swallowed a bad penny,’ said Emily. ‘I know. I know. I've said it before. But this time, I mean it. I'm really not going to have him back.’

Katie went to fetch some wine glasses and a corkscrew while Emily put the DVD in.

‘So where does this leave you and Mark then?’ Katie wanted to know as she poured them both a generous slug of wine.

‘Nowhere,’ said Emily, ‘why should it?’

‘Mark had
nothing
to do with your decision?’ Katie left the question hanging.

There was a long pause.

‘He might have had a bit,’ admitted Emily eventually. ‘I don't think he meant to upset me. Whereas Callum – Callum pretends to care for me, but all he's really interested in is himself and where his next fix is coming from.’

‘And Mark?’

‘He's just different, I guess.’ Emily looked down at her hands, and paused again, as if she was finding it difficult to know what to say. ‘Ever since Dad died, I've been fighting this feeling that what I do is just so pointless. That the world I'm in is so vacuous and facile. It's not where I thought I'd be right now.’

Katie grimaced.

‘I think we all end up in places we don't expect to,’ she said kindly. ‘And it's understandable you should start questioning
things when your dad died. It's a major life event, and has probably made you reappraise everything. I know that's how it was for me.’

Katie thought back to how quickly she and Charlie had got engaged after Dad had died. At the time it had seemed so natural. Life is short. Seize the moment. Love doesn't come along every day. It was only now, looking back through the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight that she wondered if she had rushed headlong into making a terrible mistake?

‘So, I'm reappraising,’ said Emily. ‘And I think Mark may be part of that. If he wants to be.’

‘I can really see that,’ said Katie as they settled down to watch the film. ‘God, I'd forgotten how well John Travolta could dance.
Those hips
. They're something else, aren't they? I'd give anything to partner a man who danced like that.’

‘Have you tried to persuade Charlie to come dancing with you?’ Emily asked.

‘Apart from it being a bit difficult to go out with someone who's never here, no,’ said Katie, looking wistful. ‘I haven't bothered. Charlie isn't too keen on dancing nowadays. More's the pity.’

‘There's always Rob,’ said Emily, singing along loudly and out of tune to ‘Summer Lovin'’.

‘I'm not
that
desperate,’ said Katie, throwing a cushion at her.

But as she settled down with her drink to watch the film, mesmerised by the sight of John Travolta's thrusting hips and the sheer joyous energy of the dancing, she couldn't help the picture of Rob dancing that popped unbidden into her head, and wondered what it would really be like to shimmy up to him. Was
he
the one that she wanted?

Mark was sitting on a train at Victoria, sipping a cup of coffee while staring vacantly at the
Evening Standard
he'd bought for no other reason than that there was a news stand by the entrance
to his platform. Flicking through to the celebrity gossip section, he read that Jasmine was going to leave no stone unturned in her fight to discover the evil swine who had let the world know that her pearly gnashers weren't quite as pristine as she'd imagined. It appeared her multi-million pound contract with
Smile, Please
! really was in jeopardy, though, if the paper was to be believed, the ongoing column-inch value of her story seemed to be ensuring a steady stream of appearances on chat shows, and there was talk of her being signed up to front some ridiculous new programme all about cosmetic surgery.

Mark put the paper down and sighed. His meeting with James, the rep, had gone as well as could be expected. James had yet to see any evidence of wrongdoing from the other side, but had hooked Mark up with a lawyer.

‘I'm sure when it comes to it, they'll back off,’ James had assured him. ‘They‘ve got bugger all to link you to the leak. If we can find out who it was that let the press know, I'm sure we can sort this out easily.’

‘And what about the General Dental Council?’ In a way Mark was even more worried about that. If the GDC decided that he had seriously let down a patient, who knew what repercussions there could be for his career. He didn't always enjoy dentistry, but it was the only thing he knew.

‘Unless Jasmine puts in a complaint about you, it probably won't be an issue,’ said James.

Mark wished he could share James's confidence. But James had given up dentistry years ago in order to work on the legal side of the industry. He no longer remembered what it felt like at the coalface, nor could he probably imagine the cold weight of fear that had lodged deep in Mark's stomach. Mark knew he had done nothing wrong, but with the weight of a publicity-hungry celebrity hell-bent on revenge, what hope did he have of proving it?

The train was filling up rapidly. People were squashing in like
sardines. It made him grateful that he'd never been a commuter. He only hoped that Jasmine's antics weren't going to ensure that he joined their ranks.

‘Is this seat taken?’ A woman squeezed through the people jammed next to the doorway and grabbed the seat next to him with the ease of a seasoned commuter. Mark was always too polite to behave like that. Every time he came to London he marvelled that everyone reverted to stampeding animals.

‘Mark! What a surprise!’

It was Emily. If anything was likely to lift him from his gloom, it was seeing her.

‘Emily,’ said Mark. Then he added stupidly, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Going home from work. You?’

‘Oh, just been to some boring dental thing,’ he said. He felt reluctant to tell her about what was happening to him. After the debacle with the children, Mark was determined to regain Emily's good opinion of him.

‘I thought you were a teacher,’ he said. ‘Don't you work locally?’

Emily blushed a deep scarlet.

‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘I suppose you had to find out sometime.’

‘Find out what?’

‘Mark,’ Emily said. ‘I'm really, really sorry. You're not the only one who's not been telling the whole truth.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I only said I was a teacher to get you to like me more,’ Emily said.

‘Why on earth would you do that?’ Mark was genuinely puzzled.

‘It was what you said about lawyers,’ Emily confessed. ‘You seemed to hate them so much.’

‘I do,’ said Mark, thinking
even more than I used to
. ‘So what's that got to do with you?’

‘Please don't hate me,’ said Emily. ‘But the thing is, I am one.’

‘One what?’

‘A lawyer,’ said Emily.

‘I hope you told her where to get off.’ Rob was horrified when Mark told him later that night about the conversation he and Emily had had on the train.

‘Actually, no,’ said Mark. ‘I laughed and said it didn't matter.’

‘What? Are you mad? The woman lied to you, for fuck's sake. How do you know you can trust her?’ Rob shook his head pityingly at his friend's folly. ‘you've been out of this game too long, my friend. You need Uncle Rob to take you in hand.’

‘And I lied to her,’ said Mark. ‘Point is, we were both hiding stuff from one another. And now we're not. So we‘ve wiped the slate clean.’

‘So when are you seeing her again?’ Rob had the patient air of one who has seen it all before.

‘Later in the week,’ Mark told him. ‘We're going out for a meal.’

‘And will you both be gracing the dance floor again with your presence?’ asked Rob.

‘We might be,’ said Mark. ‘So long as that isn't going to cramp your style.’

‘My style would take a lot more than you jumping around in your size twelves to cramp it,’ said Rob. ‘I still think you're being an idiot, though. There are plenty more fish in the sea.’

‘Yes, but they're not Emily,’ said Mark. ‘She's the first woman who's meant anything to me since Sam. I can't just walk away.’

‘Don't say I didn't warn you,’ Rob cautioned. ‘I just hope you're not about to make a prize tit of yourself. Again.’

‘I may be sad,’ Mark said, settling down in front of the TV, ‘but it's better to be a tit than to spend my days flitting from woman to woman without ever committing to any one of them.’

‘You only say that because you don't have it the way I do,’ said
Rob with a lightness he suddenly didn't feel. Since Mandy had disappeared over the horizon he hadn't spotted any more potential at the ballroom-dancing classes. Maybe the supply was drying up. Or maybe he was losing his touch.

Rob told himself not to be so stupid. There were plenty of other women, and he'd never had difficulty pulling before. It was just that he'd hit a barren patch. Nothing had changed.

Except perhaps you, a little voice whispered. Rob had spent fifteen years running away from his past, running away from commitment. He'd always told himself that that was what he wanted. So why, now, did he feel so very lonely?

Chapter Sixteen

 

‘
Muy bien, mis chicos
. You two are doing so well, I might have to think about moving you up to the intermediate group,’ Isabella announced to Rob and Katie at their next dance class, as she helped them perfect their quickstep. ‘If you wanted you could even try out for a medal.’

‘What do you say, Katie?’ Rob asked. ‘You know how I'm longing to show you my best moves.’

‘I'll think about it,’ said Katie, as she pulled back laughing. She carried on laughing as Isabella clapped her hands to indicate that the music should start up again. Rob twirled her round the room and she felt light and pretty, and free. All the things she never felt normally.

She found less and less to laugh about at home these days; she was tense with the boys, miserable with Molly. Her perfect home was beginning to feel like a prison. Rob, it seemed, was the only person who could make her laugh. Charlie certainly didn't any more. When he was at home he barely communicated with her, spending hours in his upstairs office. Several times she had caught him in furtive whispered conversations on the telephone, which he'd cut short when she came in. Her suspicions were aroused, but it was proof of what exactly? Katie was enough of a realist to know that Charlie was displaying all the signs of a man with a mistress, but too much of an ostrich to want to really face up to the truth. She couldn't bear the fact that the
carefully constructed edifice she had erected of a perfect family life might be crumbling apart. She hadn't even confided her suspicions to Emily.

The one person who had seen through her was her mum. Which had surprised Katie. It wasn't as if they were close. The last time Mum came to lunch, Charlie had snapped at Katie a couple of times and Mum had pursed her lips and looked askance in that infuriating superior way of hers, as if she could see something that Katie couldn't.

Tonight she'd come to babysit. Being Mum, she made a great fuss about the fact that she'd had to drive the full half an hour from Crawley to get there. ‘Some of us still work, you know,’ she'd bitched before she had even got her coat off.

Katie bit back a response, so practised was she in the art of not getting into fights with her mother, but it had got them off to an unsettled start. Mum had proceeded to tell her that she spoiled Molly (was it, Katie wondered,
really
possible to spoil a baby?) and should leave her to cry more often, and made loud remarks about women with over-tidy houses having too much time on their hands.

But the crunch had come when Katie came downstairs from putting Molly in her cot.

‘I don't mean to pry,’ began Mum, ‘but is everything okay between you and Charlie?’

‘What makes you say that?’ Katie said waspishly. She knew she was being defensive.

‘He does seem to be away on business rather a lot.’

‘It's not his fault,’ protested Katie. ‘It's the way work is nowadays. At his level he has to be really involved in everything to do with this merger.’

‘I'm sure you're right, dear,’ said her mother, ‘but I couldn't help wondering if –’

‘Well don't,’ said Katie with an air of finality. ‘Don't wonder. Everything's fine.’

‘If you say so,’ her mum responded, in a tone which implied she didn't believe a word of it. ‘You can always talk to me, you know, I would understand.’

‘Thanks,’ Katie had said shortly, ‘but there's nothing
to
talk about.’

Besides, what could her mother possibly understand about her situation with Charlie? It was totally different from what had happened with Mum and Dad. It was Mum who'd deserted Dad, and left him in the lurch just short of his fifty-fifth birthday. He'd never recovered from the shock and less than two years later he was dead from a heart attack. Katie laid the blame squarely on her mother, and their relationship had never fully recovered.

‘So you're going to give it a go?’ Rob jerked her back into the present. Funny, how while dancing in his arms she could just drift off.

‘Give what a go?’

‘This medal thing,’ said Rob. ‘It might be a laugh.’

‘You're right,’ said Katie. ‘It might be a laugh.’

And heaven knows, she could do with one of those.

Emily hovered nervously outside the King's Head pub, a cosy pub on the High Street, where she was meeting Mark before going for a curry. It was a warmish spring evening, but then it was nearly May. The cheerful sound of birdsong had accompanied her walk into town. It was lovely, the evenings were getting lighter, and Emily felt she was finally casting off the slough of despondency she'd felt over the winter. She loved this time of year, with its hint of new beginnings and promise, but she wondered if she'd made a mistake with the light strappy summer dress and cotton jacket she'd chosen. Her legs were certainly feeling the chill due to her having opted for sandals.

Maybe April was a little too soon to discard her boots. She
had felt the need to feel feminine, though. All the time she'd been with Callum, he'd barely noticed the way she looked, so unless she'd been coming from work she'd tended to go for the same jeans and T-shirt routine. Tonight she had spent a ridiculously long time choosing what to wear, and was regretting that she didn't have a convenient flatmate to check out how she looked. At one point she'd been so desperate for approval Emily had rung up Katie to ask if she could come round and model a couple of outfits, but hearing the sickness bug had now spread to Molly, she'd subsequently decided against it.

‘Hi.’ Suddenly Mark appeared as if from nowhere in all his heart-stopping gorgeousness.

‘You look lovely too,’ he said. ‘Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, you know.’

‘Oh God,’ said Emily, 'did I really say that heart-stopping gorgeous thing out loud?’

‘You did,’ said Mark, ‘but I won't hold it against you.’

And then suddenly it didn't matter what she was wearing, or whether he'd notice that her heart was pounding and her hands were sweating, because she was out, alone with Mark. And there was no place she'd rather be.

‘What'll you have?’ asked Mark as he led her to the heaving bar.

‘Vodka and tonic, thanks,’ said Emily.

‘I thought you drank beer?’ Mark asked.

‘I do in the week. But it's Friday, and I'm celebrating,’ said Emily.

‘Celebrating what?’ Mark grinned.

‘Ooh, I don't know, the fact that it's Friday?’ She hoped that her own grin wasn't quite as goofy as she feared it was.

‘We could of course celebrate a new beginning,’ said Mark, as he skilfully guided her to an empty table nestled in the corner.

‘That too,’ said Emily, and chinked his glass.

There was a brief pause, before Emily said, ‘I really do owe you an apology, though. I should have come clean about being a lawyer before. It was just that you seem to have such a downer on them. We're not all bad, you know.’

‘And you seem to have such a downer on kids.’

‘Touché,’ said Emily. ‘Actually, I don't. Have a downer on kids, I mean. I quite like them really. But experience has taught me that a woman of my age, body clock ticking and all that – men don't tend to want you to talk babies straight away.’

‘Most men probably don't,’ said Mark. ‘But I'm not most men.’

‘I'm beginning to realise that,’ said Emily apologetically. ‘Anyway, I'm sorry I overreacted. I can see if I'd been straight from the beginning you wouldn't have felt the need to lie in the first place.’

‘I probably deserved it,’ said Mark. ‘Though, to be honest, I felt worse about deceiving the girls than I did you. Gemma has only just forgiven me.’

‘Go on then,’ said Emily, ‘tell me all about them.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Mark. ‘There's nothing more boring than a proud parent.’

‘And are you a proud parent?’

‘Of course,’ said Mark. ‘Look, here's a picture of them. This is Gemma, who you've already met of course. She's thirteen, and here's Beth, who's ten.’

‘Oh, aren't they lovely,’ said Emily, feeling a peculiar mix of delight at Mark's obvious pride in his pretty daughters, who shared his arresting brown eyes, and a slight pang of envy that the little blonde one, certainly, took after the unknown mother, whom she hoped Mark had stopped thinking about.

‘I think so,’ said Mark, putting the photos away, ‘but then I am biased. What about you? Tell me about your family.’

‘Not much to tell,’ said Emily. ‘Mam, two sisters, all living near
Swansea. That's it.’ She still found it hard to miss Dad out from the list.

‘Are your parents divorced?’

‘No,’ Emily swallowed. ‘My dad – he died six months ago.’

‘Oh, I'm sorry,’ said Mark, reaching for her hand.

‘It's okay,’ Emily said, trying to bite back the tears. ‘He'd been ill for a long time. He worked for a building firm in the seventies who had, shall we say, a rather cavalier approach to health and safety. Dad ended up working on a site where there was asbestos. He was ill for most of my teens.’

‘Emily, that's dreadful,’ said Mark. ‘I really am sorry.’

‘At least he's not suffering any more,’ she said.

‘What was he like?’

‘He was wonderful,’ said Emily. ‘As a kid he was always taking us out, giving us treats. He couldn't do that once he was ill, of course. But he was so brave. He's the reason I'm a lawyer, you know. I wanted to take on companies like his and get them to pay decent compensation …’

Her voice trailed off.

‘But instead?’

‘I seem to have got a bit sidetracked,’ admitted Emily. ‘The thing is, the firm I work for pays really well – I've got a huge mortgage and Mam got herself into a bit of a mess with scratch cards after Dad died. She's spent thousands on stupid offers, and calling those damned phone lines that promise you prizes. I'm helping her pay off her loan. I hate my job, but I can't afford to leave.’

‘I have days like that,’ said Mark. ‘You never know, though, maybe the job of your dreams will turn up someday soon.’

‘Maybe,’ said Emily.

‘Do you want another drink here, or one at the restaurant?’

‘It's a bit noisy here,’ said Emily, looking around at the pub, which was even busier than when they'd arrived.

‘Okay, restaurant it is,’ said Mark. He took her hand as they
left the pub as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Emily's heart was singing. After all the angst and stress of the last few weeks she felt this was where she was meant to be. Here was a man who seemed to genuinely care for her; she'd be a fool to let him go.

‘Are you sure you're okay with me having kids?’ Mark asked as the waiter sat them down at their table. ‘They are really important to me, and you do need to understand they have to come first. But I can see they could complicate things.’

Emily didn't say anything for a minute. Mark was right. The kids were a complication. One she had never factored in before. Perhaps she should walk away now. But then she'd never known anyone like Mark before. She instinctively felt he was worth a little complication. She took a deep breath.

‘Yes, really, I am,’ she said. ‘I think it's great that you clearly have such a good relationship with them.’

‘I couldn't honestly say I have that great a relationship with Gemma at the moment,’ said Mark, ‘as she's going through a bit of an awkward phase, but they do mean everything to me. And I need you to understand that, if we're to get anywhere with this

– whatever
this
is.’ Emily took his hand and held it tightly. ‘The kids are part of you. And I'll do my very best not to

make that a problem.’ ‘Good,’ said Mark. ‘Love me, love my kids. That's the way it has to be.’ ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Emily. ‘Now, what wine do you recommend?’

‘How did you manage to persuade me to do this?’ Rob had just sat through a turgid presentation of the course he had found himself inveigled into helping on. ‘I'm missing my dancing class for this.’

‘Because I am wonderful and you love me deeply,’ said Jen.

‘Don't flatter yourself,’ growled Rob. ‘How am I going to keep with Mr Muscles over there?’

Mr Muscles was the highly toned and visibly hunky representative from Face the Fears, the activity company that was running the course. He had the innate confidence of the sporting jock, and Rob had loathed him instantly. Once upon a time, Rob had been active in adventures sports, enjoying climbing, hiking and canoeing, but since the accident he had dropped all of that. Watching Mr Muscles only highlighted how flabby and out of condition he really was. Perhaps he should start following Mark's lead and pop to the gym a bit more often rather than the pub.

‘It's not a contest,’ said Jen, laughing. ‘Honestly, Rob. Don't you ever grow up?’

‘Nope,’ said Rob. ‘So, this trip, then. Do you think it really helps the Year Nines to do team-building?’

‘We think so,’ said Jen. ‘Don't you do anything similar at your school?’

‘Nah, not really, but my lot are as apathetic as I am,’ confessed Rob. ‘The only reason I'm doing this is because of you.’

‘I do appreciate it, really I do,’ said Jen.

‘How good on the old health and safety stuff are they?’ Rob nodded at Mr Muscles. ‘I mean, I know he talked the talk, but abseiling, climbing, canoeing … There's a lot of potential for things going wrong there.’

‘I had you taped as a gung-ho adventuresome kind of guy,’ said Jen, somewhat surprised. ‘Surely you agree that some element of risk is worth it to broaden these kids' horizons.’

‘I do,’ said Rob, ‘in principle. And I agree we‘ve all got a bit obsessed with health and safety. But things can go wrong. I went on an adventure week very similar to this when I was at college and a kid died in a climbing accident. It was no one's fault, but it's left me very wary of doing this kind of thing.’

‘I'm not surprised,’ said Jen, ‘but honestly, we‘ve been using
Face Your Fears for years and they have an excellent safety record.’

‘I'm sure they have,’ said Rob. ‘I'm just a bit paranoid about it, that's all.’

‘Are you sure you still want to come?’ asked Jen. ‘You should have said – you know, about the accident.’

‘It's fine,’ said Rob lightly. ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Well, if you're sure …’ said Jen.