More to Life Than This Read online

  The Mercedes was approaching warp speed when he careered into the drive of number 20, Acacia Close, spraying gravel into the vibrant red salvias in the borders.

  He yanked the front door open and raced in. The kitchen was empty. He flung open the lounge door. Joe was sitting in the corner, arranging a platoon of plastic soldiers in front of a battalion of Star Wars characters. Blood-curdling battle noises were coming from his mouth. In true male fashion he seemed oblivious to the female distress being aired on the sofa, where Kerry lay curled up in a ball hugging a cushion to her middle. Her sobbing had dried to a feeble snivel, but her face was stricken and pale. Natalie was wiping her forehead with a face-cloth.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ He could hardly squeeze the words out.

  The snivel increased and turned rapidly into a sob again.

  ‘Don’t cry, darling,’ he said helplessly. He turned to Natalie who looked the picture of calm. She simply mouthed something at him and he had no idea what it meant.

  ‘She said it hurts,’ he gasped. ‘Is she sick?’

  ‘It does hurt!’ Kerry took up wailing again.

  ‘You said you were going to be brave, Kez,’ Natalie admonished. ‘It was going to be our little secret.’ She squeezed Kerry’s hand. ‘I think you’re going to have to confess.’

  ‘Confess?’ Jeffrey wanted to slump into the nearest armchair, but feared if he did, he’d never get up again.

  Kerry cried harder.

  Natalie met his perplexed gaze directly. ‘She’s had her navel pierced.’

  ‘Her what?’

  ‘Her belly button,’ Natalie expanded. ‘She’s had it pierced.’

  Jeffrey slumped into the nearest armchair. Speechless.

  ‘She said she’d always wanted it done.’

  Jeffrey hoped this was a follow-on dream from the Bondi Beach one and soon he would wake up and still be safe and sound behind his desk at Hills & Hopeland.

  ‘She’s twelve years old,’ he said faintly. ‘Always is a very short time.’

  ‘She didn’t think it would hurt so much,’ Natalie explained calmly. ‘But the pain doesn’t last long.’

  ‘I take it you know this from personal experience?’

  Natalie nodded. My goodness, a tattooed bum and a pierced belly button. Jeffrey closed his eyes against the vision.

  ‘By tomorrow, she won’t know it’s there.’

  ‘But I will,’ Jeffrey shouted. He pointed at Kerry. ‘And very soon your mother will.’

  ‘You promised you wouldn’t be cross,’ Kerry howled.

  ‘I’m not cross, Kerry,’ he said. ‘I’m furious!’

  She howled even louder. How on earth was he going to explain this to Kate? This made eating chilli con carne on Monday instead of Wednesday pale into insignificance.

  He turned on Natalie. ‘And where were you when she needed you?’

  ‘I was at the chemist, buying surgical spirit to bathe it. You didn’t have any.’

  ‘That’s because we’re not accustomed to having our bodies pierced on a regular basis,’ he shouted.

  ‘It’s very handy to have in,’ Natalie assured him.

  ‘Get out,’ Jeffrey said through clenched teeth. ‘You’re fired.’

  Her head snapped up and there was a pained look in her eyes. ‘Fired?’ she said. ‘Fired?’

  ‘Fired,’ he repeated flatly.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re being hasty?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Jeffrey held up his hand.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘We can dress it up as a discussion if you want, but the conclusion will be the same.’ Jeffrey set his jaw. ‘Leave now, Natalie. I never want to see your face in this house again.’

  Kerry bawled with renewed vigour, and Joe, Darth Vader abandoned, was looking as if he’d like to join in.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like time to consider this?’ Natalie pleaded. ‘We’ll laugh about it in the morning.’

  ‘I doubt it very much,’ Jeffrey said crisply. ‘Now kindly take your hands off my daughter. You’ve done quite enough for one day.’

  Natalie stood up and walked to the door.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Kerry cried.

  Natalie met his eyes and shook her head sadly. As he heard the door close quietly behind her, he realised his hands were shaking violently.

  chapter 17

  Jeffrey had left the kids with their closest neighbour, Mrs Barrett, for the evening. Kerry still hadn’t forgiven him; neither had Joe. Now he sat gloomily on a high stool in Tim’s kitchen. There appeared to be tomato ketchup smeared copiously over every flat surface including the floor. ‘I’ve sacked Natalie,’ he said miserably.

  ‘The Body?’

  ‘Yes. She’s gone.’

  ‘Never!’ Tim looked at him in disbelief. ‘You get the chance to spend the week alone with those legs and, instead of getting her in the sack, you give her the sack?’ Tim scraped burnt fish fingers into the bin. ‘What happened?’

  Jeffrey rubbed his eyes. ‘It’s too tawdry to go into.’

  ‘Does it involve the intimate and mutual exchange of bodily fluids?’

  Jeffrey glared at him. ‘No, it does not.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tim looked hideously disappointed.

  ‘She took Kerry to get her belly button pierced,’ Jeffrey said tightly.

  ‘Her belly button?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tim rubbed his chin. ‘And that’s it?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’ his friend snapped.

  ‘Not really, mate,’ Tim replied.

  Jeffrey felt his heart sink and three more wrinkles etch themselves into his face. ‘Well, it is in my book.’

  ‘It must be a pretty bloody tame book then. Who wrote it—Barbara Cartland?’

  Before Jeffrey could protest, a car pulled up in the drive. Tim looked out of the window. ‘Aye, aye,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Mrs Shaw’s here. We can go now.’

  Jeffrey followed him into the hall, where Tim let in an elderly, slightly nervous-looking woman.

  ‘They’re in there.’ He pointed at the lounge and she followed him in. ‘It’s very good of you to come at such short notice, Mrs Shaw,’ Tim grovelled. ‘As I explained, we’re off to visit a sick friend.’

  The boys were stationed on either side of the lounge—one with a sub-machine-gun, one with a bow and arrow. Both had walkie-talkies. They looked up and smiled angelically at the baby-sitter.

  ‘Now, you two,’ Tim warned. ‘Remember, hamsters are sensitive creatures. I don’t want to come home and find Little Ham cowering in his cage again. Do you hear?’

  Two butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth faces beamed at him. ‘Yes, Dad.’ Their attention returned to the no man’s land of the Ikea hearth rug.

  Tim turned to Mrs Shaw, whose hair already seemed to be whiter than when she had arrived. ‘Just keep them away from matches, superglue and any sharp or particularly blunt objects and we shouldn’t have a repeat of last time.’ He nodded to her reassuringly.

  Reluctantly, she took her coat off. ‘Don’t be late,’ she said faintly.

  ‘We won’t.’ Tim winked as they closed the door.

  ‘Sick friend?’ Jeffrey asked.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  The golf club was unusually quiet, even for a weekday night. A few stalwarts were scattered through the Tartan lounge, putting their lives to rights over a pint of Theakston’s Old Peculier traditional ale.

  ‘Evening, Frank,’ Tim said to the barman. ‘How’ s the cold?’

  ‘Gedding bedder, thanks,’ he sniffed.

  Tim turned to Jeffrey and shrugged. ‘Now call me a liar.’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ Jeffrey obliged.

  ‘Two pints of Theakston’s, Frank,’ Tim said.

  They took their drinks and sat down at a window table, watching the keen golfers practise their putting on the manicured green outside.

  ‘I’ve got a joke for you,’ Tim said, smacking his lips as he put his pint down. ‘An eld
erly billionaire is talking to his stunning young wife. “If I lost all my money,” he asks her, “you’d still love me, wouldn’t you?”’

  Jeffrey raised his eyebrows.

  ‘“Of course I would,” she cried, “and I’d miss you too!”’ He laughed politely.

  Tim scratched his head. ‘Not funny?’

  ‘Just not in the mood,’ Jeffrey said apologetically.

  ‘Regretting dispensing with the services of Miss Australia?’

  Jeffrey nodded, when what he really wanted to do was close his eyes and weep. He would never see Natalie again.

  ‘I’m beginning to think I’ve acted like an intolerant prat,’ he admitted.

  ‘True to form then,’ Tim said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You didn’t really give her the flick because of the heinous crime of belly-button piercing?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘She must think you’re a right wanker.’

  ‘Kerry could get septicaemia or hepatitis!’

  ‘Or she could get a bucketload of street cred in the playground tomorrow,’ he pointed out. ‘Girl power and all that. She’s accelerated your child’s blossoming into womanhood. You should be happy.’

  ‘Kate will go ballistic.’ Jeffrey cringed.

  ‘Women are always going ballistic about something.’ Tim shrugged dismissively. ‘It could be a lot worse,’ he said sagely. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are with your kids. I think mine have signed a pact with the devil in return for our souls. They’ll probably pierce their own belly buttons given half the chance—with one of my screwdrivers. Then there’d be hell to pay. I spend a disproportionate amount of my life at the A and E department at Milton Keynes General Hospital. I’m on nodding terms with all the staff. I’m hoping to get an invite to the Christmas party.’ He smirked lasciviously. ‘All those nurses in stockings.’

  Jeffrey tutted.

  ‘And here’s you,’ Tim continued, ‘one little teeny-tiny crisis and you’re acting as if the whole world’s falling apart. You’re getting very middle-aged in your outlook, old buddy.’

  ‘You sound like Kate,’ Jeffrey said, surprised. ‘I’m sure she thinks I’m an old stick-in-the-mud. How can I prove to her that I can move it and groove it with the rest?’

  ‘Don’t use words like groove it for a start,’ Tim advised. He hugged his Theakston’s to his chest. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  Jeffrey looked suspicious.

  ‘Would you rather play a round of golf or play around with Halle Berry?’

  ‘Well,’ Jeffrey contemplated, ‘the golf would certainly last longer.’

  ‘Danger. Middle-aged married man thinking.’ Tim held up a finger. ‘There should be no hesitation in answering that question if all of your love cylinders were still firing.’

  ‘I’m not sure where my love cylinders are.’

  ‘I rest my case.’ Tim preened himself.

  Jeffrey watched enviously as a man in checked trousers on the putting green holed ball after ball without faltering. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that in one lifetime we spend an average of six months on the loo and only two weeks French kissing?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I read it in Kate’s copy of Cosmopolitan.’

  ‘That bloody magazine should be banned. Sonia reads it, too. She thinks it’s the ruddy Bible. According to Cosmo,’ he sneered, ‘all men over thirty-five are crap in bed.’ He looked mortally wounded. ‘I’m fabulous,’ he said. ‘Not quite as athletic as I once was, but still fabulous.’

  Jeffrey wasn’t sure that he had ever been fabulous. But he wanted to be.

  Disconcertingly, he’d thought a lot about it since Natalie arrived. She’d made blood flow in places that were previously as stagnant as their garden pond. Jeffrey put down his pint. Solace wasn’t to be found in the form of alcoholic consumption, he decided. ‘I’ve had enough, Tim. I’m going to push off home. I’ll only bring you down, too, if I stay around in this mood. You’d be better off sharing flu remedy stories with Frank.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Tim picked up Jeffrey’s glass and headed towards the bar. ‘A few little pints of best bitter will do you the world of good.’

  ‘Just one then,’ Jeffrey agreed reluctantly.

  ‘This is Theakston’s finest therapy for a broken heart,’ Tim assured him.

  ‘I haven’t got a broken heart.’

  His friend leaned on the bar and stared directly at him. ‘Are you sure about that?’

  Jeffrey avoided Tim’s eyes and turned to the window as a means of deflecting his knowing look. The man with the hot putter had gone and the sun was low in the sky, the still softness of dusk filtering in through the trees. He hadn’t answered Tim and the question hung in the air like the cigarette smoke all around them. Did he have a broken heart? The truth was, he wasn’t at all sure.

  chapter 18

  Ben was sitting surrounded on all sides by the scary eco-warrior women. They were all wearing loud tapestry waistcoats and one girl had a single cotton braid twined through her long crimped hair. She was giggling loudly at everything he said. Too loudly.

  Kate and Sonia had been late getting to the dining room because Sonia hadn’t been able to decide between the red velour Dash sweatshirt or the Gap cotton stripes, and all the good places had gone—i. e., the ones next to Ben. Instead, they were sharing a table with four elderly women from Farnborough, who were, apparently, having great Fun with Fur Fabric. Kate took a deep breath and tried to sink her Chi to her Tan-Tien, now that Sam had told her exactly where it was.

  Looking away from Miss Giggly Tits momentarily, Ben caught her staring at him. He smiled and she hurriedly returned her gaze to her lasagna, feigning rapt attention and noting that her Chi had gone completely to pot and was whizzing round her body totally unfocused.

  ‘I’m knackered,’ Sonia complained. She rubbed her neck. ‘Here was I, thinking I’d be spending the week swimming, sauna-ing and sunbathing, and all we’ve done is bloody exercise.’ She said it like a dirty word.

  ‘This is an exercise course.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’ Sonia hugged herself carefully, as if she thought she might break.

  ‘Anyway, I thought you liked exercise. You go to the gym twice a week.’

  ‘That’s not because I like it. It’s because my body requires large amounts of Toblerone and I have to go to the gym in order to accommodate that need.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I should never have let you persuade me to come,’ Sonia said resignedly. ‘I thought at least I’d have lost a few pounds by now, exercising morning, noon and night.’ She pinched at her waist. ‘Not a sausage. I wanted to go home slim and svelte and sexy and make Tim mad with desire, but a steel band could still play “Yellow Bird” on the dimples in my thighs.’ Sonia prodded her.’ Kate!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not listening to me, are you? You keep looking dreamily at the beautiful Ben.’

  ‘I do not.’ She lowered her voice in case the four elderly ladies suddenly found their conversation more riveting than fur fabric.

  ‘And he keeps looking dreamily at you.’

  ‘He does no such thing.’

  ‘He does.’ Sonia inclined her head. ‘He’s doing it again.’ She smirked. ‘Look at him.’

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘I think he fancies you.’ Sonia waggled her eyebrows in the style of Groucho Marx.

  ‘And I think you’re mad.’

  ‘Go on, give him a look.’ She made encouraging nudging movements with her elbows.

  Kate scowled. ‘What sort of look?’

  ‘You know.’ Sonia rolled her eyes seductively. ‘A vampish, come-to-bed-and-ravish-me look.’

  Kate sighed. ‘I could never do that sort of look even when I was young.’ She prodded the remnants of her lasagna. ‘That’s probably why I married the first man I ever dated.’

  Sonia tutted.

  ‘And besides,’ Kate continued in a whisper, ‘I don’t want him
to come to bed and ravish me. He’s nice. He’s pleasant company. End of story.’

  ‘You are so boring,’ Sonia moaned, letting her fork clatter to her empty plate.

  ‘And I happen to be in love with my husband,’ Kate insisted.

  Sonia sensibly let the subject drop. She looked round at the dessert table, her eyes passing quickly over the fresh fruit salad and settling on anything that involved double cream. ‘I’m off to the calorie gallery,’ she said decisively. ‘The chocolate centre in my brain needs serious re-stoking, and only Death by Chocolate will do.’ She stood up. ‘I could practise my wood element though, by having some white chocolate log, too.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s quite what Sam meant when he said you should incorporate T’ai Chi into your daily life.’

  ‘I’m doing my best,’ Sonia huffed. ‘Do you want some?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ Kate shook her head. ‘Shall I go and get us some coffee?’

  ‘You go through,’ Sonia said. ‘I could be some time.’ A naughty twinkle flashed in her eye as she took up her spoon and headed purposefully towards the waiting desserts.

  chapter 19

  ‘Black, no sugar,’ Ben’s voice said next to her ear as she poured herself some coffee.

  Kate’s free hand flew to her chest. You could always tell when a man was approaching because they jingled. Their pockets were full of loose things that chinked together in a little tune. Old or young, scruffy or smart. Corporate executives were the worst offenders. And headmasters. They all jingled. Except Ben. He was conspicuous by his lack of warning jingle. ‘You made me jump,’ she laughed nervously. ‘I was miles away.’

  ‘Back home?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she admitted.

  ‘Want to tell me where?’

  She poured him the requested coffee and handed it to him. ‘I was wondering why everyone else looks so contented as soaring white cranes and why I feel I’ve as much co-ordination as Daffy Duck.’

  ‘Ah.’ Ben raised a finger. ‘Appearances can be deceptive.’ He sat on one of the wicker sofas and stretched his long legs out before him. ‘We’re all probably struggling just as much.’