The Birds and the Bees (12 page)

Adam arrived with the key just as Stevie was disconnecting her computer. Together they walked across the road to inspect her new temporary home, whose formal address, according to the lease, was Humbleby Cottage, the houses on that side of the road having only names, no numbers. Humbleby was something of a misnomer, because there was nothing the least bit humble about it from the outside aspect and even less from the inside, as they were to find when they unlocked the door and went in. Adam hadn’t (unfortunately) banged his skull on the beams and fatally injured himself. They were deceptively high and his head cleared them easily, although maybe it wouldn’t be wise for him to start pogo-ing to any punk records whilst he was there.

The cottage was chocolate-box pretty. The kitchen was roadside with a huge Yorkshire stone inglenook fireplace, an old working Aga and original wooden floors with thick patterned rugs over them. Thankfully, the modern world had been allowed in too and there was central heating and double-glazing with security windows throughout. There was the bonus of a good-sized, well-equipped separate study with hundreds of bookshelves, a lounge with an even
grander fireplace, and a darling little sunroom around the back looking out onto a long private cottage garden, which apparently had been maintained by a gardener in the absence of a tenant. Upstairs was a huge spacious girly bathroom and two massive, pretty bedrooms with exposed beams.

For some reason, Adam had smiled slyly when he said, ‘Only two bedrooms, eh?’

She hadn’t even dared to ask what
that
might have meant.

A domestic service had been going in once every three weeks to dust it down, so the cottage was ready to move into without Stevie having to clean it or scrub out the cupboards. It was immaculate and fully furnished with some very nice stuff.

‘Whit do you think?’ said Adam.

‘It’s lovely,’ said Stevie. She would have to be very careful and try not to fall in love with it. Her relationship with the house would have to be a casual one. Although she was beginning to doubt her ability to fall in love with anything again. As soon as her heart touched something, it seemed to scare it away.

‘Right–got anything heavy I can move for you?’

‘I haven’t got a lot of things,’ she replied. ‘I sold most of my furniture with my last house because it wouldn’t fit in Matthew’s.’

‘You must have something, mon!’

‘Just my computer for now.’

‘Let’s go and get it then.’

So off they went back to Matthew’s house and he carried
her computer over and set it up for her in the little study. It would be a change to work in some generous space for a while, she thought, after being cramped in the corner of Matthew’s tiny dining area.

‘Work from home, dae you?’ he asked as he was twiddling with leads.

‘Yes,’ she said, without furnishing him with further detail.

‘On this?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. He didn’t need to know any more and she had no intention of enlightening him and earning his ridicule.

‘So, what’s next?’ he asked, when the computer was up and running.

‘Well, I’ve got some books.’

‘C’moan then,’ and he marched back over like a Black Watch soldier on parade. She hadn’t unpacked most of them from her last move so they were all still conveniently in boxes under the dining-room table. Matthew had been going to buy her some shelves for her birthday, but he had not had the spare money and the date had come and gone. He had bought her some smellies from Marks & Spencer instead–the sort of soap collection one would buy for a spinster aunt with dodgy olfactory workings.

‘They’re a bit heav—’

‘Nonsense,’ Adam said, and lifted the first one up as if it was an empty crisp packet, then he came back for the other two and carried them as effortlessly. The bloke was an ox. He should have been out ploughing fields, not running leisure facilities.

‘What noo?’ he asked, not even a bit out of breath.

‘Nothing really. The rest will just be suitcases and black bags. I can manage those myself when I fill them.’

‘Right, I’ll be in touch,’ he said, and then he dropped the cottage keys into her hand and went without further ado.

After he vroomed off, Stevie rang Catherine to tell her how the previous night had gone with Matthew.

‘I still can’t believe how he’s treated you,’ her friend said, when Stevie filled her in on the details, ‘and then to pretend he wasn’t going out with Jo until the wedding! He’s got such a nerve. What will you do?’

‘Well, if you’ve a spare half an hour, I’ll show you,’ Stevie replied.

‘Show?’

‘Can you get your butt over here? You won’t regret it.’

‘I’m in the car already.’

Five minutes later, Catherine was there and Stevie led her silently and mysteriously over the road. Catherine gasped when she produced a key and slid it into the lock of her favourite house ever.

‘You’re not moving in here? You can’t afford this, can you?’ she said with breathless excitement.

‘Yes, I am, and no, I can’t,’ said Stevie and proceeded to tell her the Adam MacLean part of the story.

‘You lucky cow bitch from hell living here,’ said Catherine.

‘In other circumstances, maybe,’ said Stevie.

‘Well, even for a little while it’ll be nice,’ said Catherine, whose eyes couldn’t move fast enough around the inside of the house. ‘Bloody hell, Steve, it’s like a Tardis. It’s even
bigger than it looks from outside–it’s massive, in fact, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. No wonder it’s so expensive.’

Stevie nodded. Yes, it was beautiful, apart from the view from the kitchen–for the home she was leaving would sit there framed in the window like a taunting picture:
Ner ner ner ner ner, you don’t live here, but guess who-o do-oes
.

‘Well, for the record, I think it’s a bloody good idea of Adam MacLean’s,’ said Catherine.

‘Do you?’ Stevie was surprised at that. Catherine wasn’t usually one for wild schemes and mad impulses, or for siding with people who beat up women for a hobby.

‘Yes, I do. I’m not condoning violence, don’t get me wrong, but I think Jo and Matthew both deserve a taste of their own medicine,’ she went on.

‘Will they get it though?’ said Stevie, who had made tea for two in her new temporary home and opened up a celebratory packet of chocolate shortbreads. Not that she had anything really to celebrate. Yet.

‘Well, it’s worth a try,’ said Catherine and nudged her lasciviously. ‘You and Adam MacLean, eh?’

‘No,
not
me and Adam MacLean. There is no me and Adam MacLean. I want to hang onto my teeth and ribs a bit longer, thank you. Besides, the man is barely house-trained. Trust me, I wouldn’t give the bloke so much as the time of day if I wasn’t so desperate.’

‘Fantastic legs, though. I could imagine them—’

Stevie held her hand up and staved her friend’s verbal flow.

‘Please, no Adam MacLean sexual fantasies. I’m trying to hold onto the contents of my stomach.’

‘Well, he doesn’t come across to me as the violent nutter
she
said he was. Plus, can you really believe her word on all this? Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt?’

‘He’s “acting” the non-violent type for our benefit, that’s the point. He can’t risk losing his temper because he needs me as much as I need him. But I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him.’ Which wouldn’t have been very far at all. The bloke was a walking sofa.

‘Is there a house phone? You’ll have to give me your new number.’

‘I’ll sort it out tomorrow–well, the day after tomorrow,’ said Stevie.

‘Why, what’s happening tomorrow that’s so important?’

‘Tomorrow I’m going to cancel all the wedding stuff.’

Catherine abandoned her biscuit and came over to give her a hug. ‘I can do all that for you,’ she said.

‘No, no, it’s all right,’ said Stevie, with cry-shiny eyes. ‘I do appreciate it, but you’ve got enough to do.’

‘Naw, now the kids are all at school or nursery, I actually find time to breathe. I feel a bit lost, to be honest,’ said Catherine with a sad little smile.

‘I have to do it myself,’ said Stevie. ‘I have to face facts that this wedding is not going to happen.’

‘God, Stevie, you are so strong.’

‘Trust me, I’m not,’ said Stevie, with a little laugh. One kind word would have turned her eyeballs into Niagara Falls.

‘The offer will still be there in the morning, but I won’t bully you for once,’ said Catherine, stroking her friend’s hair as if she were Boot, whilst thinking to herself, What an idiot you are, Matthew Finch!

Stevie and Catherine had been friends from nursery school, although it hadn’t started out that way. They had both fought viciously over the Cinderella crinoline in reception class and had to stand facing the naughty wall together. Somehow after that they had become friends, bonding over the Play-Doh shape machine and a few Spangles. The friendship grew from strength to strength, even when Catherine got pregnant at seventeen to a trainee boxer, Eddie Flanagan, although he was hardly the candidate the heavyweight boxing community had been holding out for. Eddie had about as much edge as Boot. Stevie had been prepared to hate him for coming between her and her best friend, but you couldn’t dislike Eddie, not even if you were on mind-altering drugs. Catherine and Eddie married and went on to have kids and animals, whilst Stevie had taken the university route, during which time their friendship took a pen-pal turn for three years. Then Stevie came home and worked through a succession of dead-end jobs by day whilst she pursued her dreams of becoming a writer at night. Whenever she felt like giving up after a post-box full of rejections, Catherine was always there, spurring her on with her commonsense and fighting talk. She was the sister Stevie wished she had had, and could be very scary when crossed.

‘Right, come on now, this isn’t knitting the baby a bonnet,’ said Catherine, who had knitted quite a few baby bonnets in her time. ‘Let’s get ready to rumble.’

Stevie carried her clothes on hangers straight over the road because there didn’t seem much point in packing them only to have to unpack them at the other end all
creased up. For herself, she picked the pretty pink bedroom at the back, which overlooked the garden. The front bedroom was larger but she did not want the first thing she saw when she drew the curtains every morning to be the house where her fiancé and his new lover lived. She carried her toiletries over in one of the cardboard boxes she had cadged from the Happy Shopper around the corner. She took the soft white towels she had recently bought too, leaving Matthew with his ancient ones that were more like wafer-thin loofahs. She would have left him a couple of hers, until she visualized Jo using them.

Shoes took up one of the new suitcases she had bought for their honeymoon. Catherine took the plastic-covered wedding dress over. Stevie hoped she might get some of her money back on that but either way, it needed to be got out of sight as soon as possible. She was stripping her bed when Catherine walked in on her from bagging up some of Danny’s toys.

‘What are you doing?’ said her friend, standing over her with her hands on her hips.

‘Well, they won’t want to sleep in my sheets. I was just changing them.’

‘Don’t be so soft, Steve. Stick them in the laundry basket and leave them. Let them make up their own bed and lie on it.’ Then she shook her head at the irony of her words. Catherine had her ‘do as I say or else’ face on, so Stevie obeyed.

She took her Le Creuset pan-set from the kitchen and her new super-steamy iron and the ironing board that she had bought only a couple of weeks ago. There was just the
rest of Danny’s room and bits and bobs to pack up, and then they had to call a halt to the day’s mission, as it was time to pick up the children.

‘I’ll come round with Eddie about seven o’clock,’ began Catherine, shutting up Stevie before she started protesting. ‘I’ll bring you a couple of spare duvets and some sheets and pillows to tide you over, and he’ll carry the microwave over for you.’

‘I can’t take the microwave.’

‘Who bought it?’

‘Well, I—’

‘Who bought it?’ Catherine said again, being extra stern.

‘I did,’ Stevie relented grudgingly, ‘but for both of us.’

‘You can’t split it so you take it. Besides, the cottage doesn’t have one,’ said Catherine, who was beginning to realize that Stevie’s financial contribution to the arrangement had been a lot greater than was fair. It looked as if Matthew hadn’t paid for much of anything at all and there she was, thinking he had been so generous. Certainly, on the times they’d gone out to dinner, he was very extravagant with his money. She had taken that as a strong indicator that he was a good provider. Something else it appeared she was wrong about.

‘Look, do you want
her
baking her spuds in it, whilst you and Danny do without?’ urged Catherine, watching Stevie still deliberating over the microwave.

That was the clincher. Catherine really should have been a psychologist. Or a Kray.

‘Okay, I’ll take it then.’

‘Don’t you dare try and lift it yourself. I know what
you’re like, Stevie Independent Honeywell, it’ll weigh a ton! Promise?’ admonished Catherine with a heavy wag of her finger.

‘Yes, Sergeant Major, sah, I promise!’ said Stevie, saluting her. Then she went to pick up her son and tell him, with a softening ice cream en route, about their new domestic arrangements.

Danny’s new bedroom was much, much bigger than the old one, plus he had a double bed in it, which was ‘cool’, and once he was full of chicken nuggets and was arranging his toys in his new space and had put Mr Greengrass Head on the kitchen windowsill, he seemed easily content with the changes. It was a real relief for Stevie who hadn’t known how he would react. She’d had visions of him screaming and clinging to the door whilst she tried to drag him over the road and crying, ‘
I won’t go, I won’t go!
’ but he trotted over quite keenly and said, ‘Wow!’ and ‘Cool!’ a lot, which was always a good sign.

She and Danny had taken some other bits and pieces over, then Eddie and Catherine arrived and helped to move the boxes of Stevie’s videos and CDs and DVDs. Eddie transported the microwave and Danny’s portable TV. There was a huge TV in the cottage and speakers all round the room. Eddie, a gadget maniac, fiddled and foddled and found out how to switch it to cinema surround.