Strictly Love (21 page)

‘Will do,’ Mark answered, and left, leaving Katie with an unspeakable feeling of sadness. Mark and Emily would probably never be together after this. What a pity, when they seemed so right for each other.

And you and Rob – are you right for each other?
The question popped into her head, but she ruthlessly brushed it away.

Chapter Twenty-seven

 

The day of Charlie's party dawned bright and fair. Katie had been in an orgy of planning for weeks now, and was keyed up from the effort of keeping it under wraps. She was fairly sure Charlie didn't suspect a thing, though Marilyn had nearly given the game away by announcing something loudly about seeing them next week when they'd visited the other weekend. Luckily, Charlie, as usual these days, seemed too preoccupied to notice. In fact, the way he was just as preoccupied while with his parents as he was while with her was giving Katie hope. His distant air and lack of engagement in family life probably had less to do with her and more to do with a clearly impending midlife crisis. He had made several references over the last few weeks to the approach of his fortieth. The way he'd gone on about it anyone would have thought it was a death sentence.

‘It's only your fortieth,’ she'd joshed him. ‘Don't you want to celebrate it?’

‘Not particularly,’ he'd said.

‘Oh,’ Katie had said in dismay. ‘What, really? You don't want a party or anything?’

‘You know I hate parties,’ had been the response.

Katie had nearly told him at that point. But surely everyone liked parties, didn't they? No one could really be upset if the people they loved had sorted out a surprise party for them, could they? She sincerely hoped not.

Katie and Marilyn had cooked up the idea of telling Charlie they were going out for lunch with his parents to celebrate the birthday, but of course they were going straight to the golf club instead. In the end, Katie had been unable to organise the last-minute preparations her end, so had gratefully left the decoration of the room and the sorting out of the caterers to Marilyn and Charlie's sister, Lucy, who was cut from her mother's mould. She'd also invited Emily, who was bringing the cake, plus flowers for Marilyn, and Charlie's birthday present: a Red Letter day's racing at Brands Hatch. Katie thought they'd covered all bases, but she felt absurdly nervous as Charlie drove up the drive of Ranelagh Golf Club. She sent Marilyn a surreptitious text.
We're on our way
.

They were ushered from the plush reception area into a small anteroom.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Charlie. ‘Where are Mum and Dad? I thought we'd be meeting them here?’

Just then his mother came in through one of the doors.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘happy birthday. We‘ve got a little surprise for you.’

‘I hate surprises,’ said Charlie, shooting daggers at Katie.

Katie felt like she was going to be sick. She followed Charlie through to the main reception room.

‘Surprise!’ A hundred people leapt forward with party poppers and screams and shouts. A band (wait a minute, Marilyn had ordered a band?) started to play ‘Happy Birthday’. And Charlie stood in the middle of it all, looking like thunder.

‘What the bloody hell did you have to do this for?’ he hissed. ‘I said I didn't want a party. I said I didn't want to celebrate. But little Ms Organisation always has to butt her nose in where it's not wanted. Why the hell don't you ever listen?’

Emily walked into Charlie's fortieth birthday party with a feeling of impending doom. She was late with the cake, and felt that
Charlie's formidable-sounding mother might have something to say about that. The trouble was the Ranelagh Golf Club was so exclusive it didn't bother to signpost itself, so Emily had spent a fruitless half an hour driving round in circles before eventually finding a local to tell her the way.

There was music playing that sounded like it had been piped out of the 1950s. She hadn't had Charlie down as a sultan of swing. But then again, from what Katie said, it would be typically selfish of his mum to organise music on his birthday that she herself liked. There was a party going on, but the atmosphere didn't feel exactly party-ish. Emily snuck in quietly and looked round the room, hoping to spot Katie and discreetly offload the cake to her.

The room was fairly busy with the sort of people Emily couldn't imagine herself socialising with normally: greying stockbrokers talking loudly about their bonuses mingled with braying women talking even louder about horses. No wonder Katie hated coming down here. There was no sign of Katie, or Charlie, and Emily was beginning to feel slightly anxious, when someone tapped her on the shoulder and said, ‘There you are. You must be Emily.’

Emily turned round to see a very well dressed, smart woman in her sixties with perfectly coiffured greying hair. She spoke as if Emily was some kind of insect beneath her feet. This, presumably, was the dreaded Marilyn. Marilyn held her hand out, and Emily felt at an immediate disadvantage, given that she was holding the cake and flowers.

‘Sorry,’ she said, trying to extricate her arm from under the cake box. In doing so, she knocked the box onto the floor. ‘Oh sod,’ she said, then, ‘Sorry’ again. Marilyn looked horrified, and Emily wished the floor would swallow her up.

‘Let me take that,’ said Marilyn in despairing tones, and opened the box. Emily watched in horror as she realised half the cream on the cake was now squashed against the lid. ‘Really!’ said Marilyn, and whisked it away, presumably for repairs.

Feeling at a loose end, Emily wandered aimlessly round the room, rather wishing Katie hadn't invited her. She didn't know anyone here at all. It looked like it was all Charlie's friends. Presumably, all Katie's friends, like Emily, would feel they stuck out like sore thumbs.

Eventually she saw Katie in the corner. She was wearing a flowing flowery summer dress, with gold sandals and a light cardigan. She looked lovely, and she'd lost more weight since the dancing weekend. Emily frowned. She hoped everything was all right. Katie, never forthcoming about her private life, had shut up like a clam recently. Emily felt sure it had something to do with Rob, but whatever it was, Katie wasn't telling.

‘How's it going?’ Emily said as she reached her friend. ‘I met your dragon of a mother-in-law, and I'm really sorry but I dropped the cake –’

Emily stopped mid-sentence. Things were clearly not all right.

‘Whatever's the matter?’

‘Not here,’ muttered Katie, and dragged her friend into the ladies, where she promptly burst into tears.

‘Oh Katie,’ said Emily, ‘what is it?’

‘It's everything,’ said Katie. ‘I thought giving Charlie a surprise party would make everything okay, but he hates it. He stormed off at the beginning and I haven't spoken to him since.’

‘Oh,’ said Emily, not knowing quite what to say. ‘Maybe he just needs to calm down.’

‘I don't think so,’ said Katie, looking thoroughly miserable. ‘Everything's been going wrong for ages. I don't know whether he's having some kind of midlife crisis or something, but we‘ve barely had sex in months and we hardly talk any more. It's like I'm living with a stranger.’

‘Katie, you should have said,’ Emily told her, putting an arm round her friend. ‘Why didn't you?’

Katie pulled a face.

‘Fear of failure, I suppose. I've set so much store by my marriage, I didn't want to admit that it might be falling apart. I'm not very good about talking over my problems. Besides, I knew once I got started I wouldn't be able to stop.’

‘Everyone has rough patches,’ argued Emily. ‘It will get better.’

Katie looked bleak.

‘That's what I've been telling myself,’ she said. ‘But I can't really believe that any longer. I think I may have to face the truth. It's over. Or near as damn it.’

She wiped her eyes with a tissue.

‘There's something I haven't told you,’ she added.

‘About Rob?’ Emily hazarded a guess.

‘Oh lord, is it that obvious?’ Katie looked truly horrified.

‘Well, I have no idea what went on, but it's clear that something happened the other week,’ said Emily. ‘Go on, spill the beans.’

‘It was after we danced the rumba,’ said Katie in a whisper. ‘He kissed me.’

‘Well, you know what he's like,’ Emily replied.

‘Yes, I do,’ said Katie. ‘But the thing is – I wanted him to.’

Katie floated through the rest of the party in a daze. Her crying in the loos had left her with a terrible headache. Luckily, with Emily's help she'd done a fairly decent job of repairing her face, and she was well-used to containing her feelings, especially where Charlie's family were concerned, so no one apart from Emily knew anything was wrong. Charlie had studiously avoided her all day, spending his time slapping the backs of boring blokes he knew from the City. Marilyn and Lucy were in full Caldwell Takeover mode, so there was nothing for Katie to do except wander about aimlessly, trying to engage the periphery relations like Charlie's aged deaf Auntie Glenda in conversation. It was so dull, in the end Katie persuaded Emily to go home. ‘I have to be here,’ she argued, ‘but you don't.’

Wistfully, she wished she'd pushed Marilyn into letting the kids come, but Marilyn had been adamant that she didn't think the occasion was suitable for children. Katie had had to promise them a day in London with their dad to make up for the disappointment of not being there. Katie suspected the real reason Marilyn had barred her grandchildren was because she was worried how the Golf Club would stand up to the combined assault of George and Aidan. Katie's mum had stepped in and was looking after them. Katie wondered idly if this out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to the kids had been the way Charlie had been treated when he was young. It would certainly account for a lot.

The afternoon dragged on. Katie felt more and more morose and stupid. She couldn't drink because she was driving, and judging by the way Charlie was knocking them back it was just as well one of them was staying in control. Why had she let herself get carried away with the idea that having a party would solve all their problems? She was kicking herself for her stupidity. Marilyn seemed oblivious to the idea that Charlie might not actually be that thrilled about the honour being done him, and despite Katie's efforts to stop her was insisting there was a grand ceremonial cake-cutting and speeches.

‘Come on, dear,’ Marilyn said as she came bustling up to Katie, who was moodily leaning against the wall, wishing that she was somewhere completely different, ‘time to cut the cake.’

The cake, Katie was relieved to see, had been restored to its former glory by one of the kitchen staff, although there was a slight dent in one corner. Marilyn had gone to the trouble of putting the forty candles Katie had managed to rustle up all the way round the cake. Katie wished she hadn't brought them; she had a feeling that Charlie wouldn't be impressed.

Marilyn insisted that Katie walk with her towards Charlie holding the lighted cake, while the band played ‘Happy Birthday’ again. Katie was swallowing hard. Charlie looked furious, and
she knew that he wasn't going to let her forget this humiliation in a hurry.

No one but her seemed to have noticed, however, and there was much laughter and commotion as Charlie tried and failed to blow the candles out. Damn. She'd accidentally brought along some never-ending candles that she'd bought for George's birthday. In the end Charlie simply picked them up and doused them in his beer in disgust.

‘Right, is that it?’ he said. ‘I need another beer.’

‘Certainly not,’ said his mother, and proceeded to wax lyrical about Charlie's birth and early childhood. If anyone was going to make a speech about her son, it was definitely going to be her. Apparently from day one she'd known Charlie would be a success.

Charlie looked like a worm wriggling on a stick. Katie wished she could get Marilyn to shut up. Was she really that thick-skinned that she didn't realise what torture this was for her son? Eventually Marilyn paused for breath, and Katie darted in with the flowers she'd brought and said a quick thank you to Marilyn for all her hard work. That, she hoped, would be that. But she'd reckoned without the combined might of the Caldwell clan.

‘Speech, speech!’ the roar went up, and Charlie was thrust forward into the spotlight. A place where she knew he hated to be.

‘Right, well. Hmm,’ Charlie mumbled. ‘I suppose I should say thank you. I wasn't expecting any of this. In fact, I said outright I didn't want any of this, but my mother and wife between them seem to know what's best for me, so here we all are.’

There was a nervous titter at this. People looked at each other questioningly.

‘You all think I'm joking, don't you?’ Charlie waved his beer around him wildly. ‘Well, I'm not. Forty years I've had of this. My mother planning my life down to the last T. And now she's got my wife in on the act too.’

Katie moved forward. ‘Look,’ she hissed, ‘I'm really sorry about this. I got it wrong, but this is neither the time nor place to air our dirty laundry.’

Charlie staggered backwards.

‘I think it's the perfect time,’ he said. He stood looking at everyone as if working out what he was going to say. ‘I'm forty next week,’ he continued. ‘Quite a milestone, eh? I think it's about time I stopped living the life other people want me to lead, and started to live how I want to, don't you?’

‘Charlie, what on earth are you talking about?’ Katie felt as if someone had poured a bucket of cold water all over her. She knew what was coming. She'd known it for months.

‘The thing is,’ continued Charlie, ‘my marriage is a sham. It always has been. Turns out women aren't my thing at all. It's taken me forty years to discover I swing the wrong way, but now I've found out, I'm not going to put up with it any longer.’

‘What do you mean?’ Katie was confused now. What was he on about?

‘I'm a friend of Dorothy,’ said Charlie.

‘Who's Dorothy?’ Marilyn looked so puzzled that Katie nearly burst out laughing, though she had never felt less like laughing in her life.

‘Dear, dear Mother,’ said Charlie. ‘You tried so hard to make sure I became a full-blooded male, didn't you? All those sailing weekends, and all that effort to get me in the rugby team. But it didn't work. I'm as queer as queer can be.’

‘You're
what?
’

‘I'm gay,’ said Charlie. ‘And, for the first time in my life, I'm proud.’