The Birds and the Bees (27 page)

It was Catherine’s youngest daughter Violet’s birthday that same day.

‘Vio can’t wait to see her new pyjamas!’ said Danny that morning, skipping his way to school.

‘Oh Danny, you didn’t tell her and spoil the surprise, did you?’ said Stevie.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Danny indignantly. ‘I just said that it’s something she can wear in bed.’

‘Great,’ said Stevie, shaking her head.

The Flanagan matriarch picked Danny up from school to whisk him away for a party at Burger King, allowing Stevie time to get stuck into
Highland Fling
. She had sent Crystal the synopsis and was waiting for a call to see if she liked it. Knowing Crystal as well as she did, she rather thought she might. It was turning out to be the best
Midnight Moon
she had ever written. There was a knock on her door just after six and she opened it to find Adam on the doorstep.

‘I didnae like coming straight in.’

‘Well, it’s going to look pretty weird if you start knocking, considering you’re supposed to be living here.’

‘Aye, I suppose so,’ said Adam and he bent, placing his cheek near to hers to simulate a kiss, just in case they were being watched. She noticed that he smelt of work and clean sweat and woody aftershave. ‘Where’s the wee ’un?’ he asked as Stevie closed the door.

‘He’ll be scoffing a big burger now. It’s Catherine’s daughter’s birthday so he’s at her party.’

‘Ah, I see. Have you eaten?’

‘Er, no, I’ve only just stopped working.’

‘Come on, what is it that ye dae?’

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said.

He dropped his bag near the hall table where Stevie had put down her post–a postcard from an old schoolfriend and her unopened wage slip from
Midnight Moon
. The motif on a big brown envelope caught his eye. A large moon with a clock face sat in it.

‘You get post from
Midnight Moon
?’ he said with an amused twist to his lip. ‘What is this then?’ He pretended to open it.

‘Give me that, please!’ said Stevie, quickly abandoning the kettle, but Adam put it well out of her reach, high above his head. Well, as high as the beams would allow.

‘I’m serious, Adam, let me have it.’ Stevie jumped up. She didn’t want him to know what she did. He had made her feel sad enough, in the pathetic sense of the word, about her job. She wanted that envelope back now, but it was impossible. Adam danced around and Stevie leapt up like a Red Indian around a totem pole. It caused a very odd picture in the window, which Matthew, staring obsessively through
his
window, saw.

Despite his money troubles, despite his hiccup with Jo, despite worrying why he seemed to see Colin Seed hovering around whenever he looked up these days, Matthew still had a huge chunk of worry space saved up for Stevie. He knew MacLean was using her, probably to tempt Jo back by driving her crazy with jealousy. He knew one day soon the charm (whatever that could be) would stop and the violence would begin. Surely no woman, not even Jo, would want to see Stevie as scared and beaten as she had been. Whilst this thought was on his mind, he saw Adam MacLean and Stevie involved in some kind of tussle by the window, although hardly a fair one with her at Bonsai and him at Californian Redwood height.

Jo had just about been ready to forgive him and had come up for a snuggle when Matthew almost threw her out of the way and thrust open the outside door.

‘Hey, look,’ said Adam, dropping his arm, ‘your man’s on his way over here and he means business. Start laughin’. NOO!’

‘Laughing? What do you mean, “laughing”?’

‘As if we’re having a good time.’

‘I’m not that good an actress!’

‘C’moan, nooo!’

Stevie shrugged, but complied anyway. ‘Okay.’ She managed a pathetically lame laugh.

‘Och, try and dae better than that.’

‘I can’t just laugh like that.’

‘Stevieareyouatiglsh?’

‘Am I a what?’ said Stevie.

‘Quick!’ said Adam.

‘Quick wha…arrrgghh!’ In a flash Stevie suddenly found herself being slammed onto the floor. Then for some bizarre reason Adam ripped his shirt open like the Hulk and sat astride her.

‘What the hell…!’

‘Sorry!’ he said in advance as his hands made claws and descended.

Matthew didn’t bother to knock before trying to open the cottage door, but it was locked and he banged hard on it. Stevie was screaming, which made him bang more. Although the more he listened, the less sure he was that those screams were ones of pain. She was laughing maniacally and actually sounded more like she was being tickled than assaulted. In between various requests for him to stop whatever he was doing, she was shrieking out Adam’s name and that, for a reason he was not prepared to admit to himself, made him even angrier.

‘Stevie, let me in!’ He threw his shoulder into the door, but it was massive and oak and he couldn’t have broken it down if he was Rambo with a cannon.

Suddenly, Stevie arrived at the door looking very tousled. She was so red-faced, he could have been forgiven for thinking that she had just been mainlining beetroot. Her hair was mussed up, she was straightening her clothes and he got the distinct impression that she had just been rolling around on the floor. There in the background, Adam MacLean appeared to be getting up from the same floor
with his shirt ripped open and looking too fucking pleased with himself for Matthew’s liking. Plus he was none-too-subtly adjusting his trousers.

‘I heard you screaming, Stevie, are you okay?’

‘I’m…er…fine,’ Stevie said breathlessly.

‘MacLean wasn’t hurting you then?’

‘Er…no, quite the opposite actually.’

Too much detail, thought Matthew with an inner wince. ‘Oh, right–sorry to have bothered you,’ he said stiffly. He turned to go, then, when he was at a safe distance, spun around with his finger projecting towards Adam like Harry Potter’s wand.

‘You hurt her, MacLean, and I’ll…I’ll kill you!’ he spat. ‘And leave her money alone as well!’

Adam didn’t react, other than with a surprised Roger-Moore lift of his eyebrows. He stood there trying not to look amused, watching as Matthew stabbed at him a few more times before retreating quickly across the road whilst his luck was still in. Finch was being awfully protective towards this violent firebrand he supposedly couldn’t wait to get away from.
Hmmm
.

Stevie was astounded. She hadn’t seen Matthew act that passionately since–well, ever. Whatever she might think of MacLean, he certainly knew his
basic psychology
very well. That didn’t stop her taking her hatred of him to new heights, though.
How dare he do that to her! Who did he think he was?

‘Wow,’ said Adam when Stevie had shut the door. ‘There’s a turn up. Sorry, by the way. I saw that trick once on a John Wayne film. It worked then as well.’

‘You…’ struggled Stevie, not able to find a word insulting enough.

‘Tell me why
Midnight Moon
are writing to you.’

‘Go to hell,’ said Stevie, snatching her letter and charging into the study where she sat and wondered if her heart would ever stop thumping.

Sheepishly, Matthew trudged back across the lane, thinking, I must have caught them at it! How could Stevie sleep with someone who beat up women? Was she so desperate to try to make him jealous that she would compromise her own safety and that of her child? If so, was it working? He honestly didn’t know which leading emotion had sent him flying across the road to her defence.

Jo was waiting for him with a slow handclap.

‘How gallant,’ she said. ‘Shame you didn’t do that for me when I needed rescuing from him.’

‘She didn’t need rescuing,’ said Matthew bitterly. ‘I thought she was screaming because he was beating her up when actually they were about to have sex.’

‘Sex?’ said Jo.

‘You know, that thing we used to have.’

‘Fuck you!’ said Jo, and starting raining slaps on him.

‘Jo, what’s happening to us?’ said Matthew, wincing at her language, catching her hands and holding them still. He needed to focus on his problems with Jo, but he was having real difficulty getting the image of Stevie and MacLean having sex out of his mind. They must have been doing it on the kitchen floor. She’d never wanted sex like that when
she’d been with him. Nor had he ever heard her make those sorts of noises before. He hadn’t really associated her with that kind of passionate activity.

‘How could he? With
her
?’ said Jo.

‘Why are you so bothered about
him
?’ Matthew asked.

‘Why are you so bothered about
her
?’ Jo countered.

She pulled her hands away from him and started pacing up and down the room like a caged tiger. ‘We need to move. I don’t want to stay here watching Adam and that bitch living out their lives in front of us.’

‘Why are you so horrible to her, Jo?’

But Jo wasn’t listening; she was lost in a world filled only with herself.

‘…I mean, is that why he said, “Okay, off you go then”? Is that why he didn’t try to stop me? Not even a kiss or a hug goodbye. He even carried my bloody suitcases to the car for me. Why was that, eh? Because he was carrying on behind my back with that short, fat cow. If you think about it, it’s the only answer. The bitch, the treacherous fucking bitch!’

‘Did Adam let you go that easily?’ said Matthew. ‘I thought you said he—’

‘How soon can you realize your investments, Matthew? Let’s buy a house away from here, please. Leeds. One of the nice ones in the country that we saw in the
Yorkshire Post
.’

Now is the time
.
She needs to be told
.

‘About my investments,’ said Matthew quietly, trying to moisten his nervous dry lips with his nervous dry tongue. ‘Sit down, Jo, a minute, will you, please.’

‘Okay, Matthew, I know what you said, you’re broke at
the moment. We’ve had too many expensive meals out recently. But if we moved, we wouldn’t feel the need to go out and get away from
that house
so much.’

He gently shushed her.

‘Jo…’

Then he began.

The next morning, Adam awoke to a flurry of whispering outside his new temporary bedroom door.

‘Can I go in and see him?’ said a small boy’s not so quiet voice.

‘No, you’ll see him later.’

‘Please, Mummy!’

‘No. Now come on and don’t make any noise or you’ll wake him up.’

‘But I
want
to wake him up, Mummy!’

‘Come on, Danny, that’s not very fair waking him up early, now is it? Superheroes really need their sleep, you should know that.’

‘Aw, okay.’

Adam smiled. He reckoned they were counting down the days now until Dannyman, his fellow Superhero, would be back living across the road. A thought which made his smile fade surprisingly quickly.

Matthew awoke feeling totally exhausted and already started ticking off the hours until he could catch up on some sleep. He hadn’t had as much sex as that in one night
since the Fresher’s Ball at University, but that had been a far less complicated experience.

Jo had taken yesterday’s news that he was not in fact a half-millionaire in the making pretty well, considering. Although he hadn’t quite told her the
whole
truth, but tempered it slightly for the sake of his own pride. The story given being that his investments had taken a substantial crash and the only way he could recover the losses was to leave them where they were for at least five years. He told her he had a meeting with the bank to discuss the best plan of action as far as his ‘investments’ were concerned, and was sneaking out from work later on the pretext of going to the dentist. Who knows, he might even find out that all was not quite as bad as he had painted it. His story would give him five years’ breathing space to sort himself out. He might even win the Lottery (properly this time) in that space of time. At least it was finally out in the open to her that he was broke
now
and that there couldn’t possibly be a big wedding in the near future, or more than one meal out per week, if he was expected to foot all the bills. He sneaked that in to see if she might consider actually helping him out here by contributing. She hadn’t offered.

Contrary to what he thought might happen, Jo had not shouted or screamed or thrown anything heavy in the direction of his cranium. She had just nodded her head resignedly and forced out a smile and said, ‘Well, that’s that then.’

Then, when they had gone to a bed in which he expected not only the cold shoulder, but a cold back, cold legs and cold everything else, she had surprised him by
instigating sex. Quite energetic, almost brutal sex actually. She had wanted him to bite her all over in her passionate throes. At one point, he felt like going to the window and checking to see if the moon was full, because she was like an animal–insatiable and wild. Matthew wasn’t really the type to mix up pain with pleasure, though, and he fulfilled her requests quite half-heartedly. He had managed to give her a sucky love-bite on her chest, which he regretted the next morning because she wore her blouses quite open, and it was showing there as an ugly, painful-looking bruise. When he mentioned this, she had laughed and kissed him lightly on the nose and told him not to worry, and if he was lucky, they might try it again later on. Matthew didn’t want to be that lucky. The whole experience hadn’t sat well with him at all. He was all for passion–sex with Jo had been great and exciting in the beginning–but recently, he had found himself missing the gentle intimacy and more considerate, warm love-making which he had enjoyed with Stevie, before he got greedy. He had an uneasy feeling about this turn in their sex-life.

Adam had a day off, and as Stevie hadn’t come back after dropping Danny off at school, he presumed she had gone into town. He had just grilled up half a farmyard full of bacon and stuck it in between two half-loaves of bread when the phone rang.

‘Hellooo,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ said a cut-glass voice on the other end. ‘Is Bea there?’

‘Sorry, hen, wrang number.’

‘I can’t have, she’s on short dial. Is Stevie there? Stevie Honeywell?’

‘Stevie’s oot…
out
at the moment. Can I help you at all?’

‘And you are?’ purred the voice.

‘Adam MacLean.’

‘Ah,
you’re
Damme MacQueen.’

Poor awd thing is deaf
, thought Adam and spoke more slowly. ‘No. A-dam Mac-Lean.’

‘Yes, I heard you, darling.’ The voice cut like glass too. ‘I’m Crystal Rock, Stevie’s publisher at
Midnight Moon
.’

Ah, thought Adam.
Interesting
.

‘Sorry,’ he bluffed. ‘I apologize. Of course she has told me so much aboot you.’

Crystal gave a little tinkly laugh. She was half in love with Adam already.

‘And I am getting to know all about
you
, Mr MacLean, or should I say Mr MacQueen.’

‘All good things, I hope,’ he sparkled back.

‘Well, if the hero of
Highland Fling
is based on you, I think we can expect to have a bit of a bestseller on our hands.’

What was that name she’d asked for at first? B something or other?
Adam reached over and picked up a nearby
Midnight Moon
by Betty Proctor and said craftily, ‘Do you think it will be better than
Forever in Dreams
?’

‘Oh, good God, I hope so. Betty Proctor isn’t a patch on Beatrice Pollen. She only lasted two books. Bea, sorry, Stevie, has a very great following. Can you ask her to give me a ring and tell her, in the interim, that I
love
Damme
MacQueen,
I love
Evie Sweetwell and I want the rest of the chapters of
Highland Fling
finished ASAP. I’ll simply die if he doesn’t kiss her soon.’

‘I will do that indeed.’

‘And tell Miss Honeywell that she is a very dark horse and I expect a full update when she calls. She’ll know what that means.’ Crystal gave a very salacious giggle and finished with a ‘ciao’ that was as rich as a tiramisu. Adam put the phone down slowly. Well, well, well! No wonder she wouldn’t tell him what she did after all the scorn he had, inadvertently, poured on her stories. So that’s why there were Beatrice Pollen books all over the place. He worked his way along the shelf until he came to a book written by Ms Pollen, then he got himself a coffee from the nice full percolator that belonged to Beatrice, aka Stevie, settled down with book and breakfast in the sunroom, and began to read.

Matthew rang Jo to see if she wanted to go out for lunch but once again, she declined. Then their paths crossed when he was going out for ‘his dentist’s appointment’. She scurried away from him, which confused him, because he thought they were friends again now, what with all that sex and promise of more. She looked quite worried about something. Maybe it was delayed shock after what he had told her last night. He would buy her a present on the way back from the bank, he decided.

‘Flaming heck!’ said Robert Gilroy, Matthew’s account handler. He looked about twelve and made Matthew feel the same age with comments like, ‘What a blooming mess!’
No doubt he would send out for lashings of ginger beer in a minute.

Matthew nodded regretfully.

‘Is this the full picture or is there more? People do tend to hide stuff and it’s hardly wise if you want help.’

‘That’s it,’ said Matthew. ‘Honestly.’

Robert Gilroy tapped away on his laptop, and then twisted it round for Matthew to see.

‘That’s how much interest you’re paying per month at the moment on all your debt.’

‘Bloody hell and a half,’ gulped Matthew.

‘The thing is, we’ve given you one consolidated loan already and what did you pay off?’

‘Er…’ said Matthew, feeling that he was going to be asked to bend over in a moment and have a cane applied to his rear end.

‘Enough said, I think,’ said Robert Gilroy. ‘For a person who earns this much money per annum, you should have a good amount of disposable income. I’m having trouble believing how you actually manage to eat.’

‘I need help,’ admitted Matthew, closer to tears than he had been in years. ‘I’m a spendaholic.’

‘Do you spend to make yourself feel better? Spend to win and influence people?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you considered counselling in tandem with this?’

‘I can’t afford any,’ said Matthew despairingly.

‘It’s free if you go through your doctor.’

‘I may need to,’ said Matthew. ‘But so far as the actual money goes, can you help?’

‘Well, yep,’ said Robert Gilroy, and watched as Matthew’s tense shoulders dropped with relief. ‘You’ll be tied to this debt for at least five years but it will give you breathing space to have some quality of life. The debt will be cheaper if you secure it against your home, obviously. That wouldn’t be a problem–you have plenty of equity in the house, I see. How solid is your job?’

‘Rock solid,’ said Matthew with absolute surety. He was good at his job, knew what he was doing and the company was financially stable and growing healthily so there were no worries about securing the loan against his house.

‘Right, now get out your plastic,’ said Robert Gilroy.

‘What–now?’

‘Yep.’

‘All of it?’ Matthew started to cold sweat.

‘On our own card account we can give you zero per cent interest for fourteen months. You will be able to transfer sixty per cent of your debt over to it, but when the card itself arrives, I suggest you cut it up, although I haven’t said that. Okay, let’s have the cards.’

Matthew felt like a child that had been asked to turn out his pockets and have all his sweets confiscated. For his own good though, before they rotted all his teeth.

Robert Gilroy handed him a pair of scissors.

‘I’ve got a present to buy. For my girlfriend,’ Matthew whimpered as the scissors scraped his emergency Goldfish.

‘Give her a massage,’ said Robert Gilroy. ‘She’ll only moan that you’ve made her fat if you buy chocolates.’

‘I was thinking of a gold necklace.’

Robert Gilroy raised his eyebrows. ‘She’ll leave you anyway if you continue to wake up screaming and sweating in the middle of the night because you’re so debt-ridden. If your heart doesn’t give out first. Cut, please.’

Matthew sliced. So severe was the pain, he had to look down because he thought he had cut his finger off.