Perfect Alibis
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Synopsis
PA's agency offers Perfect Alibis for the unfaithful. Stephanie – bored housewife and disillusioned mother – wants a job, and Madeleine's recruitment company appears to be the ideal place to go. Except that PAs isn't quite what it seems. Far from providing companies with Personal Assistants, the agency offers Perfect Alibis to unfaithful women. And as Stephanie soon discovers, there are lots of them about! Founder member Patsy is a serial philanderer and there's a dark side to her best friend Millie. For the well-heeled ladies of Edenhurst, PA's is a ticket to risk-free adultery. So when Stephanie's first love, Troy returns to town even she is tempted. But her life is soon in turmoil, and that's before the tabloids get involved….
“Jane Wenham Jones has written the story you've always wanted to read about infidelity - and how to get away it.” – COSMOPOLITAN
“This comic novel is a perfect read for bored gossips”- OK! MAGAZINE
Release date: October 25, 2012
Publisher: Headline
Print pages: 305
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Perfect Alibis
Jane Wenham-Jones
Prologue
HOW TO FEEL HAPPY, strong, uplifted, tingly, light, free and altogether bloody fantastic:
Drink champagne
Eat chocolate
And have three orgasms in the afternoon…
Patsy stepped from the shower, deliciously sensual, beads of water bouncing off skin still slippery with oil. She ran light fingers down her belly, wriggling pleasurably at the memory of the hands that had smoothed and massaged, teased and caressed. The set of muscular buttocks she’d admired pumping up and down in the dressing-table mirror, while she’d writhed beneath them.
Mmmmn!
This was sex at its best. The moments when doubts dissolved and she was invincible. She was high and exhilarated, so fortunate to have it all… Her body gleamed in the huge mirror. She struck a pose, hand on hip, back arched, pouting as she winked appreciatively. Not bad!
Body quite firm, boobs still holding up, bottom not sagging. None of that disgusting cellulite stuff to be seen in vast quantities wobbling its way along the side of the pool at the Health club. Her face was still damp with steam. Her hair curled in fetching tendrils around her post-orgasmic flush.
She preened. Not bad at all for thirty-eight.
She picked up one of the fluffy towels and wound it around her shoulders, savouring the feeling of elation that hummed beneath her skin. Never mind Prozac! What one needs, girls, is a bit of Afternoon Delight…
She rubbed the towel down the length of one smooth golden leg and grinned.
This one was a bit different. He had energy and vitality. He thrust her down onto the bed and he went at it for all he was worth. Bit of a change to feel a hard lean body on top (behind/to the side/anyway she damn well wanted it!). The last time she’d had sex with Dave she’d run her hand across the soft layer of jelly over his stomach and she’d actually shuddered. Dave clambered on, grunted a bit and clambered off again. This one, well, this one…
Kicking the towel aside, she threw open the bathroom door, one hand cupping a thrusting breast, her thumb circling the already interested nipple in a way that she knew would give him an instant new hard-on.
“It’s no good,” she called as she strode into the bedroom beyond. “You’re just going to have to shag me again!”
He was standing – still naked – at the other side of the bed. At the sound of her voice he swung round. She saw the startled panic cross his features.
For a moment they hung there frozen. Both staring stricken at the mobile in his hand. From which was emanating a strange series of strangled squawks.
His wife? How had she found out he was here?
He put a frantic finger to his lips.
Bit late for that now.
Despite his height, there was suddenly something vulnerable and baby-like about his naked body hunched over the phone. His voice had a hoarse note that wasn’t usually there. His mouth twitched as he spoke into the receiver.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
She heard the roar as he jumped.
Christ! Dave!
Patsy clutched at her stomach. He flapped his free hand at her, signalling her not to speak. Goddammit she could barely breathe!
He sounded as if someone had hold of his balls – (As soon they might well have). “Of course your wife’s not here. I’ve told you, you’ve got the wrong number! Calm down…”
She saw his fist clenching and unclenching. She stood, one hand to her mouth, heart thumping.
He was sounding desperate. “I don’t know who you are but I can assure you…”
The squawking had stopped. He looked from the phone in his hand back to her. “He’s coming round!”
For a moment they just stared at each other. Then he dropped the mobile and she made a mad grab for the chocolate wrappers.
Her heart was hammering painfully; adrenalin roared around her body, making her fingertips tingle. She could hear her breath coming in pants as she scurried about the room gathering clothes and belongings.
Knickers! Where are they? “My bra! What did you do with it?”
“You weren’t wearing one.”
“I was!”
They dashed to and fro, stumbling and fumbling in their panic, screeching recriminations at each other as they scrabbled frantically for clothes, pulled at bed-sheets, swept up wine glasses and tissues.
“Why on earth did you speak?”
“How did I know you were on the phone? Oh Jesus where’s my mobile?”
“Didn’t you hear it ring?”
“Of course I didn’t. I was in the shower. Shit, there’s only one stocking here. Why did you answer it?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s my phone. I thought it was Robbie. He always withholds the number.”
“Robbie? Who the bloody hell’s Robbie?”
“It’s his house! He told me he’d warn me when he was coming back.”
“You stupid bastard! Where are my shoes?”
“I’m stupid? How the hell did your old man get my number? And how does he know where we are?”
“I have no idea!”
“But he’s got the address! Couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“It wasn’t me!”
She’d got everything but her footwear in her arms now. He had on a T-shirt and socks. She didn’t fancy him at all. “You’d better get some clothes on,” she said.
He stood dithering in the middle of the room, his palms rubbing against each other. She saw the fear on his face as he howled, “What are we going to do?”
“I am going to get the hell out of here,” she snapped, “and you’d better get downstairs and come up with something bloody good!”
“But how…?” he began plaintively. Ignoring him, Patsy carried her clothes into the bathroom and slammed the door.
She leant back against the blue tiles, her fingers barely able to turn her skirt the right way out. Shakily, she picked up her mobile phone and scrolled through for the right number, pressing the send button, holding her breath as she heard ringing at the other end.
She felt a rush of relief as it was answered immediately. “Get M! I need her. It’s all gone wrong. I’m here and – ”
Patsy threw back her head in frustration as she was interrupted.
What?? Her voice shot up several octaves, “What do you mean? You know very well what I’m talking about! This is Patsy. Patsy King.”
Christ! These bloody trainees. In her panic she’d forgotten. She took a deep breath and started again, her voice icy.
“Mrs K here. Calling for assistance. Red Alert!”
Operation Caught-with-your-fucking-trousers-down.
At the other end of the phone, there was a click and another, more familiar, voice spoke quietly and calmly. “Control. Where are you?”
Right in the shit.
She was breathing more evenly when she came back out. The bed had been straightened, the pillows piled back into the same pattern they’d been in when she’d arrived that morning.
Patsy ran along the landing and down the wide stairs. She saw her shoes on the rug in the hall. He was fully dressed again, and pacing up and down. A ring on the doorbell made them both jump. He moved towards her, blocking her path, and looking into her face in agitation. “What are we going to say?”
She stepped past him, pushed her phone into her handbag, pulled fingers through her hair in the hall mirror. “I’m off. You stay and tell him he’s got it wrong!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I can’t let him see me!” He grabbed her arm, looking into her face pleadingly.
But Patsy shook him off, shoved her feet into her shoes and swung her bag over her shoulder. The doorbell rang again.
“He heard. He knew it was you!” he said.
“Then tell him he’s paranoid.”
The bell jangled one last time. As they heard the outer door open, they ran through the doorway into the dining room. Then someone was thumping loudly on the glass on the inner door.
“Let me in!”
Patsy darted across the room, and tugged at the french windows.
Jesus! “They’re locked. Quick!”
She could hear the terror in her own voice now as the beating on the door intensified. In a second he was at her side, twisting at the small white catch, pulling the door open and propelling her through. Behind them was the sharp cracking of fractured glass.
“Open up you bastard!”
Patsy darted across the immaculate lawn, putting a hand up to check both earrings were still in place.
Keep him away from the back windows. Keep him talking. Her heart was hammering at full power again. She pushed the hair from her sticky forehead as she reached the summer house and crouched gratefully behind it, panting.
She imagined she could hear faint shouts coming from the house and shuddered as a vision of Dave’s fist slamming into her lover’s nose filled her head.
He was tall. But Dave was an elephant.
An angry one…
She thought about the gravel drive by the side of the house. To reach it she would have to break cover and run across the grass.
Okay if Dave were still in the hall or one of the rooms at the front but if he were rampaging around the house searching for her and happened to look out of a window at the back…
The tall hedge behind her was too high for her to clamber over. She’d have to get out the front way on to the road.
There was a bed of bushes and shrubs over to her left. Maybe she could use them to hide herself as she made her way around the side of the house towards the driveway. Cautiously, she peered round the little wooden building.
The house looked peaceful and mellow in the afternoon sunshine, no hint of the ructions going on within. There was nobody visible at any of the windows.
Taking a deep breath, Patsy ran full-tilt across the rest of the grass to the side fence. Dropping to the ground, breathing hard, she crawled behind a lavender bush and eased herself along on her stomach feeling like someone from a Territorial Army poster. God, she was going to be filthy. The bushes here were taller, so she was able to get first onto her hands and knees and then into a crouching position to scuttle her way uncomfortably along the hedge towards the drive. Only a couple of small windows here. She held her breath and ducked beneath them. All was quiet.
At last she reached the end of the flower bed. Just a small ornamental wall to climb over, a couple of yards of gravel to cross and she’d be out of sight. But she had to cross in front of the big kitchen window first.
She squinted through the rhododendrons and jumped.
There was a figure at the curtains.
Patsy shrank back against the hedge and curled into a ball, eyes tightly shut, the blood roaring in her ears. God who was that? Dave? Had Dave murdered him? (Terrible waste of a marvellous shag but would at least save all that messy business of endings.)
But her scrambled brain couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was panic that had made it look like her husband. Hadn’t the figure been taller than that?
Or had he found untapped strength and fortitude and done away with Dave? (Convenient from a sexual freedom, inheritance and paying out of life policies point of view but there were the children to think of…)
But then surely he’d be out here to see where she was?
She raised her head a fraction of an inch and opened one eye. Heart thumping, she peered through the leaves once more. There was no one there. No sign of movement at either of the windows. She wondered what the hell was going on in there.
She’d have to move now, while she still had the chance. Patsy took a last look and leapt to her feet. Taking a deep breath, she bounded across the grass, hitched up her skirt and straddled the wall. There was a sharp crunch as her foot hit the gravel and her heel snapped off.
Shit! She did a mad hop-dash down the drive, mercifully hidden now by trees, and tugged open the small side gate, gasping as she reached the grass verge beyond.
Come on! Come on! Her eyes flitted anxiously back to the gates as she brushed bits of earth and mud and twig from her once-lemon T-shirt.
Dave could come tearing out here any minute.
She looked at the stockings hanging in ribbons around her blackened knees as a white BMW drew up beside her. The rear door opened.
The girl driving was new. She nodded as Patsy scrambled into the back. “OK?”
“Just drive!”
Patsy flung herself down on the back seat as the car pulled away.
The girl spoke over her shoulder: “I can pull up once we’re well away. Start getting your things off.”
The girl’s hand came back over the seat, dropping a new pale lemon T-shirt and matching shoes onto the floor of the car.
“Careful!” Patsy jerked her head to avoid being struck by an identical heel to the one she’d just broken.
A packet of stockings landed next to the shoes.
“There’s some wet wipes down there too.”
Patsy tugged at her T-shirt, trying to pull it over her head. Not the easiest exercise in the world when trying to lie flat and keep one’s head below the window.
The girl was still talking. “There’s two bags of shopping on the floor and an Evening Standard. Weather in London’s been much the same as here – not cold but grey, overcast.” Her voice was a bored drone: “The train to Edenhurst left Victoria at 4.17 p.m. You had to stand until Bridgewater South. Ticket cost £11.40 for a cheap day return. We’ve put it on his card.”
Patsy was scrubbing at her knees. She turned onto her back, lifting a leg into the air to wriggle the fresh stockings into place. “I’m going to have to sit up in a minute…” She pulled her skirt up round her waist, fumbling with the suspenders.
“We’re nearly there.” The girl swung the steering wheel as Patsy rose to see the rows of parked cars outside the entrance to Chartwell station. Five minutes down the line from Edenhurst.
As she got out, the girl handed her a carrier bag from Peter Jones and another from Selfridges. “DKNY T-shirt, earrings and a scarf and that moisturiser you wanted. And here’s your ticket.”
She looked at Patsy critically. “I should do something with your hair and make-up before you get off.”
Patsy took the bags. “Yes! Thank you,” she said sharply. “Tell M I’ll call her.”
“Sure!”
The girl got back behind the wheel, started the engine and raised a desultory hand in a wave.
Patsy shook her head. And when I do, I’ll have a word about staff attitudes.
She walked onto the platform a moment before the train came in, getting into the first carriage that stopped opposite her. She sank into a corner with her bags, then got out her mirror and stared at her glassy eyes. She looked like a disaster victim. A blanket round her shoulders and she could be an extra on Casualty.
There was still a dark mark on her skirt the wet wipes wouldn’t shift. Still, trains were filthy places. She pulled a tube of foundation and a comb from her bag. Where was Dave now?
Or were they both dead? She could see it all. Dave crouched panting over him, viewing the bloody mess of gristle and pulp that was once such a photogenic face while he, in a last-ditch heroic struggle, lifted his right hand (in which he was holding the Sabatier carving knife he had grabbed from the work surface when Dave, hand on his collar, was pounding his head up and down on the continental tiles) and plunged the blade into Dave’s heart…
Two funerals, but the distinct possibility she could come out of the whole thing unscathed – especially if she created a story for the tabloids around a passionate disagreement over a drunken gambling debt. Double sympathy from the community at large – a widow and ex-victim of compulsive addiction.
But as she blended in her make-up with a long, manicured finger, she grimaced at the thought of the least palatable scenario. Her husband forcing the truth from him, throwing her out on some paltry amount of maintenance and the Daily Detail writing her up as an incurable old slapper, dredging up her past indiscretions and getting them to give points out of ten for the quality of her blow-jobs…
The train was drawing in to Edenhurst Station. Patsy stood up and moved towards the door, giving her appearance a final check in the reflection of the window. Her blonde hair was back in place, her lipstick freshly applied.
Dave was on the platform, looking breathless and rather red. He rushed up to her, one meaty hand taking her arm, eyes searching her face.
She leant forward and kissed his sweaty cheek. “Darling! How thoughtful of you to meet me!”
He stopped, chest heaving, as she smiled at him.
She looked at him in concern. “Are you all right?”
He seemed to be having some sort of emotional struggle. His lips opened and shut as he grasped her elbow again.
“Good day?” he asked at last.
“Oh you know! Apart from the crowds and the dreadful people.”
She shook back her hair at the injustices of department store shopping, deftly disentangling her arm and filling his with carrier bags, taking a surreptitious look at his knuckles as she did so.
“I do hope you haven’t parked too far away,” she said over her shoulder as she headed purposefully towards the ticket collector, “My feet are killing me.”
She looked sideways to check her reflection in the window of the buffet-bar, and gave a tinkling laugh. “Goodness! I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge!”
Chapter One
LOSS OF LIBIDO IS a common problem affecting women of all ages. It may simply be that the two of you have got into a rut and lovemaking has become stale or routine. Work together with your husband to bring the excitement back into your marriage. Set aside time for just the two of you, dress up in sexy underwear, watch an erotic film together, try having sex in a different place, at an unusual time or in a new position…
Stephanie slapped down the magazine and moved towards the vegetable rack. What these articles never told you was what to do if you just didn’t fancy him any more. What to do if, even after three viewings of Emmanuelle, when you found yourself squashed into the cupboard under the stairs at five in the afternoon with your legs wrapped round your neck, you still just thought, yuck!
“It’s not that I don’t feel like it sometimes,” she’d explained to her friend Millie. “After Nine-and-a-half Weeks was on TV I didn’t know what to do with myself. I kept having dreams about Mickey Rourke and waking up all sweaty… But I still didn’t want to make love with George.”
“Supplements!” Millie had said.
Stephanie selected some potatoes, looking ruefully at the dresser, where a small basket already bulged with pots.
Oil of Evening Primrose stops PMT (in theory).
Selenium ditto.
Ginkgo Biloba improves memory (not always to be recommended), helps reduce appearance of cellulite (not seen much evidence yet).
Korean Ginseng (to perk her up).
Resta-Nerve (to calm her down).
St John’s Wort (to stop her being a miserable cow).
She crossed to the bin, tossing in a potato that had turned a luminous and, no doubt, cancer-inducing green, turning another in her hands, looking it critically in the eyes.
Calcium (so her bones wouldn’t crumble).
Multi-vitamins (as general precaution).
Millie had not been deterred. “Have you tried Zinc?”
Zinc!
Millie said she’d gone off it after she’d had Ben and couldn’t bear Patrick anywhere near her. Then she’d gone to a homeopath, started taking zinc and wham! Back to normal. She’d said they’d done it four times in one day when they went to Barbados.
Stephanie shuddered.
Millie had tried to be helpful.
“What about a drink first?”
“I just can’t. Even with a few drinks.”
Even in fact with a lot of drinks. Even after George had brought home champagne to celebrate his company’s latest take-over and she’d drunk the best part of a bottle and a half. And he’d got out the massage oil. Even then…
“I end up being sick,” she’d said.
The difference, thought Stephanie now, poking about among the greens, picturing Millie’s high cheekbones and wide sensuous mouth, was that Millie was still sexual. She filled the sink, hearing her friend’s laughter. Saw her tossing back her glossy hair. She could hear her now, “Of course I am – thirty-six – I’m at my peak!”
But Millie had always been bursting with it.
On her wedding day, Millie had looked like a gypsy queen, all long dark hair, red lips, nipped-in waist and swelling cleavage. She had stared into Patrick’s eyes as if she wanted to eat him. (In Stephanie’s bridal pics, she looked as if she needed a lie-down.)
Millie still arrived here some mornings, flushed and glowing. Millie still pushed her breasts out when she entered a room. Millie giggled and made jokes, passed comments laced with innuendo. Millie still liked sex.
Stephanie plunged her hands into the cold water. She herself felt like a withered old prune in that department. Or she had done. Not only did the bits no longer work, they curled up in horror and hid under the covers (or would do if under the covers wasn’t precisely where the danger lurked). Until today.
She pulled back outer leaves, sliced through stalks, pausing to look up through her kitchen window at a tiny white plane in the square of bright blue sky. She thought about the passengers undoing their seatbelts, waiting for the drinks to come round, settling with their in-flight magazines, and felt an odd little ripple down the back of her neck.
Coconut oil on warm skin, cold wine on hot terraces, a vibrant splash of bougainvillea down a white wall… She suddenly wanted to be feeling excited, expectant, going somewhere, anywhere…
Did any of those people up there wish that they were safely back in their kitchens doing the sprouts?
Kelly whined outside the back door, scratching at the wood. Stephanie looked at the clock. Another thrilling day gone. In which she’d done nothing but make beds and scrub toilets and arrange flowers and peel sodding potatoes. And pour coffee for–
The ripple shot all over her.
What was it about past loves? Why did exes still have that power to grab you by the solar plexus and bring up all sorts of feelings that should have been dead and buried long ago?
There should be an operation on the National Health. Attachment Amputation. Separation-anxiety by-pass. So when it’s over, it’s over. You could see them in the street, trill: Hi-how-are-you? Fine? Oh Good-that-is-good, and feel rather less than you did when talking to the milkman (unless it was that relief milkman that came just for the fortnight three Christmases ago. Mmmn!)
Stephanie thought she had got to that. Thought she’d dealt with it all.
Obviously not.
“You want to get a life!” she told her rubber gloves.
She pulled the plug from the sink and let the water swirl away. “You need,” she said to the gritty remains, “to get a job!”
This had been the master plan when Madeleine and Ken came to dinner. George wanted to invite them. Ken bought all the insurance policies for his car dealership through George’s company and George could still thrash him at squash.
Stephanie had said, “What a good idea!” not because she particularly wanted to spend all afternoon with a slab of mad cow oozing blood over her kitchen or take hours over a home-made Tiramisu but because Madeleine was a business hot-shot who ran a secretarial agency cum virtual office set-up and even George – who never showed much enthusiasm for any of Stephanie’s friends or things female in general – thought she was marvellous.
If Madeleine got her a job, George might stop his discouraging noises. So Stephanie had cooked her heart out and listened to the three of them comparing computer systems she’d never heard of and waited her chance. But when the cue came, George was monopolising their guest.
“How’s business then?” he asked as he poured wine.
“Oh!” Madeleine threw back her head and laughed. Rolled her eyes in mock despair. “Fine! If I could just get the bloody staff.” Madeleine had a low, slightly raspy voice.
. . .
HOW TO FEEL HAPPY, strong, uplifted, tingly, light, free and altogether bloody fantastic:
Drink champagne
Eat chocolate
And have three orgasms in the afternoon…
Patsy stepped from the shower, deliciously sensual, beads of water bouncing off skin still slippery with oil. She ran light fingers down her belly, wriggling pleasurably at the memory of the hands that had smoothed and massaged, teased and caressed. The set of muscular buttocks she’d admired pumping up and down in the dressing-table mirror, while she’d writhed beneath them.
Mmmmn!
This was sex at its best. The moments when doubts dissolved and she was invincible. She was high and exhilarated, so fortunate to have it all… Her body gleamed in the huge mirror. She struck a pose, hand on hip, back arched, pouting as she winked appreciatively. Not bad!
Body quite firm, boobs still holding up, bottom not sagging. None of that disgusting cellulite stuff to be seen in vast quantities wobbling its way along the side of the pool at the Health club. Her face was still damp with steam. Her hair curled in fetching tendrils around her post-orgasmic flush.
She preened. Not bad at all for thirty-eight.
She picked up one of the fluffy towels and wound it around her shoulders, savouring the feeling of elation that hummed beneath her skin. Never mind Prozac! What one needs, girls, is a bit of Afternoon Delight…
She rubbed the towel down the length of one smooth golden leg and grinned.
This one was a bit different. He had energy and vitality. He thrust her down onto the bed and he went at it for all he was worth. Bit of a change to feel a hard lean body on top (behind/to the side/anyway she damn well wanted it!). The last time she’d had sex with Dave she’d run her hand across the soft layer of jelly over his stomach and she’d actually shuddered. Dave clambered on, grunted a bit and clambered off again. This one, well, this one…
Kicking the towel aside, she threw open the bathroom door, one hand cupping a thrusting breast, her thumb circling the already interested nipple in a way that she knew would give him an instant new hard-on.
“It’s no good,” she called as she strode into the bedroom beyond. “You’re just going to have to shag me again!”
He was standing – still naked – at the other side of the bed. At the sound of her voice he swung round. She saw the startled panic cross his features.
For a moment they hung there frozen. Both staring stricken at the mobile in his hand. From which was emanating a strange series of strangled squawks.
His wife? How had she found out he was here?
He put a frantic finger to his lips.
Bit late for that now.
Despite his height, there was suddenly something vulnerable and baby-like about his naked body hunched over the phone. His voice had a hoarse note that wasn’t usually there. His mouth twitched as he spoke into the receiver.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
She heard the roar as he jumped.
Christ! Dave!
Patsy clutched at her stomach. He flapped his free hand at her, signalling her not to speak. Goddammit she could barely breathe!
He sounded as if someone had hold of his balls – (As soon they might well have). “Of course your wife’s not here. I’ve told you, you’ve got the wrong number! Calm down…”
She saw his fist clenching and unclenching. She stood, one hand to her mouth, heart thumping.
He was sounding desperate. “I don’t know who you are but I can assure you…”
The squawking had stopped. He looked from the phone in his hand back to her. “He’s coming round!”
For a moment they just stared at each other. Then he dropped the mobile and she made a mad grab for the chocolate wrappers.
Her heart was hammering painfully; adrenalin roared around her body, making her fingertips tingle. She could hear her breath coming in pants as she scurried about the room gathering clothes and belongings.
Knickers! Where are they? “My bra! What did you do with it?”
“You weren’t wearing one.”
“I was!”
They dashed to and fro, stumbling and fumbling in their panic, screeching recriminations at each other as they scrabbled frantically for clothes, pulled at bed-sheets, swept up wine glasses and tissues.
“Why on earth did you speak?”
“How did I know you were on the phone? Oh Jesus where’s my mobile?”
“Didn’t you hear it ring?”
“Of course I didn’t. I was in the shower. Shit, there’s only one stocking here. Why did you answer it?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s my phone. I thought it was Robbie. He always withholds the number.”
“Robbie? Who the bloody hell’s Robbie?”
“It’s his house! He told me he’d warn me when he was coming back.”
“You stupid bastard! Where are my shoes?”
“I’m stupid? How the hell did your old man get my number? And how does he know where we are?”
“I have no idea!”
“But he’s got the address! Couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“It wasn’t me!”
She’d got everything but her footwear in her arms now. He had on a T-shirt and socks. She didn’t fancy him at all. “You’d better get some clothes on,” she said.
He stood dithering in the middle of the room, his palms rubbing against each other. She saw the fear on his face as he howled, “What are we going to do?”
“I am going to get the hell out of here,” she snapped, “and you’d better get downstairs and come up with something bloody good!”
“But how…?” he began plaintively. Ignoring him, Patsy carried her clothes into the bathroom and slammed the door.
She leant back against the blue tiles, her fingers barely able to turn her skirt the right way out. Shakily, she picked up her mobile phone and scrolled through for the right number, pressing the send button, holding her breath as she heard ringing at the other end.
She felt a rush of relief as it was answered immediately. “Get M! I need her. It’s all gone wrong. I’m here and – ”
Patsy threw back her head in frustration as she was interrupted.
What?? Her voice shot up several octaves, “What do you mean? You know very well what I’m talking about! This is Patsy. Patsy King.”
Christ! These bloody trainees. In her panic she’d forgotten. She took a deep breath and started again, her voice icy.
“Mrs K here. Calling for assistance. Red Alert!”
Operation Caught-with-your-fucking-trousers-down.
At the other end of the phone, there was a click and another, more familiar, voice spoke quietly and calmly. “Control. Where are you?”
Right in the shit.
She was breathing more evenly when she came back out. The bed had been straightened, the pillows piled back into the same pattern they’d been in when she’d arrived that morning.
Patsy ran along the landing and down the wide stairs. She saw her shoes on the rug in the hall. He was fully dressed again, and pacing up and down. A ring on the doorbell made them both jump. He moved towards her, blocking her path, and looking into her face in agitation. “What are we going to say?”
She stepped past him, pushed her phone into her handbag, pulled fingers through her hair in the hall mirror. “I’m off. You stay and tell him he’s got it wrong!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I can’t let him see me!” He grabbed her arm, looking into her face pleadingly.
But Patsy shook him off, shoved her feet into her shoes and swung her bag over her shoulder. The doorbell rang again.
“He heard. He knew it was you!” he said.
“Then tell him he’s paranoid.”
The bell jangled one last time. As they heard the outer door open, they ran through the doorway into the dining room. Then someone was thumping loudly on the glass on the inner door.
“Let me in!”
Patsy darted across the room, and tugged at the french windows.
Jesus! “They’re locked. Quick!”
She could hear the terror in her own voice now as the beating on the door intensified. In a second he was at her side, twisting at the small white catch, pulling the door open and propelling her through. Behind them was the sharp cracking of fractured glass.
“Open up you bastard!”
Patsy darted across the immaculate lawn, putting a hand up to check both earrings were still in place.
Keep him away from the back windows. Keep him talking. Her heart was hammering at full power again. She pushed the hair from her sticky forehead as she reached the summer house and crouched gratefully behind it, panting.
She imagined she could hear faint shouts coming from the house and shuddered as a vision of Dave’s fist slamming into her lover’s nose filled her head.
He was tall. But Dave was an elephant.
An angry one…
She thought about the gravel drive by the side of the house. To reach it she would have to break cover and run across the grass.
Okay if Dave were still in the hall or one of the rooms at the front but if he were rampaging around the house searching for her and happened to look out of a window at the back…
The tall hedge behind her was too high for her to clamber over. She’d have to get out the front way on to the road.
There was a bed of bushes and shrubs over to her left. Maybe she could use them to hide herself as she made her way around the side of the house towards the driveway. Cautiously, she peered round the little wooden building.
The house looked peaceful and mellow in the afternoon sunshine, no hint of the ructions going on within. There was nobody visible at any of the windows.
Taking a deep breath, Patsy ran full-tilt across the rest of the grass to the side fence. Dropping to the ground, breathing hard, she crawled behind a lavender bush and eased herself along on her stomach feeling like someone from a Territorial Army poster. God, she was going to be filthy. The bushes here were taller, so she was able to get first onto her hands and knees and then into a crouching position to scuttle her way uncomfortably along the hedge towards the drive. Only a couple of small windows here. She held her breath and ducked beneath them. All was quiet.
At last she reached the end of the flower bed. Just a small ornamental wall to climb over, a couple of yards of gravel to cross and she’d be out of sight. But she had to cross in front of the big kitchen window first.
She squinted through the rhododendrons and jumped.
There was a figure at the curtains.
Patsy shrank back against the hedge and curled into a ball, eyes tightly shut, the blood roaring in her ears. God who was that? Dave? Had Dave murdered him? (Terrible waste of a marvellous shag but would at least save all that messy business of endings.)
But her scrambled brain couldn’t be sure. Perhaps it was panic that had made it look like her husband. Hadn’t the figure been taller than that?
Or had he found untapped strength and fortitude and done away with Dave? (Convenient from a sexual freedom, inheritance and paying out of life policies point of view but there were the children to think of…)
But then surely he’d be out here to see where she was?
She raised her head a fraction of an inch and opened one eye. Heart thumping, she peered through the leaves once more. There was no one there. No sign of movement at either of the windows. She wondered what the hell was going on in there.
She’d have to move now, while she still had the chance. Patsy took a last look and leapt to her feet. Taking a deep breath, she bounded across the grass, hitched up her skirt and straddled the wall. There was a sharp crunch as her foot hit the gravel and her heel snapped off.
Shit! She did a mad hop-dash down the drive, mercifully hidden now by trees, and tugged open the small side gate, gasping as she reached the grass verge beyond.
Come on! Come on! Her eyes flitted anxiously back to the gates as she brushed bits of earth and mud and twig from her once-lemon T-shirt.
Dave could come tearing out here any minute.
She looked at the stockings hanging in ribbons around her blackened knees as a white BMW drew up beside her. The rear door opened.
The girl driving was new. She nodded as Patsy scrambled into the back. “OK?”
“Just drive!”
Patsy flung herself down on the back seat as the car pulled away.
The girl spoke over her shoulder: “I can pull up once we’re well away. Start getting your things off.”
The girl’s hand came back over the seat, dropping a new pale lemon T-shirt and matching shoes onto the floor of the car.
“Careful!” Patsy jerked her head to avoid being struck by an identical heel to the one she’d just broken.
A packet of stockings landed next to the shoes.
“There’s some wet wipes down there too.”
Patsy tugged at her T-shirt, trying to pull it over her head. Not the easiest exercise in the world when trying to lie flat and keep one’s head below the window.
The girl was still talking. “There’s two bags of shopping on the floor and an Evening Standard. Weather in London’s been much the same as here – not cold but grey, overcast.” Her voice was a bored drone: “The train to Edenhurst left Victoria at 4.17 p.m. You had to stand until Bridgewater South. Ticket cost £11.40 for a cheap day return. We’ve put it on his card.”
Patsy was scrubbing at her knees. She turned onto her back, lifting a leg into the air to wriggle the fresh stockings into place. “I’m going to have to sit up in a minute…” She pulled her skirt up round her waist, fumbling with the suspenders.
“We’re nearly there.” The girl swung the steering wheel as Patsy rose to see the rows of parked cars outside the entrance to Chartwell station. Five minutes down the line from Edenhurst.
As she got out, the girl handed her a carrier bag from Peter Jones and another from Selfridges. “DKNY T-shirt, earrings and a scarf and that moisturiser you wanted. And here’s your ticket.”
She looked at Patsy critically. “I should do something with your hair and make-up before you get off.”
Patsy took the bags. “Yes! Thank you,” she said sharply. “Tell M I’ll call her.”
“Sure!”
The girl got back behind the wheel, started the engine and raised a desultory hand in a wave.
Patsy shook her head. And when I do, I’ll have a word about staff attitudes.
She walked onto the platform a moment before the train came in, getting into the first carriage that stopped opposite her. She sank into a corner with her bags, then got out her mirror and stared at her glassy eyes. She looked like a disaster victim. A blanket round her shoulders and she could be an extra on Casualty.
There was still a dark mark on her skirt the wet wipes wouldn’t shift. Still, trains were filthy places. She pulled a tube of foundation and a comb from her bag. Where was Dave now?
Or were they both dead? She could see it all. Dave crouched panting over him, viewing the bloody mess of gristle and pulp that was once such a photogenic face while he, in a last-ditch heroic struggle, lifted his right hand (in which he was holding the Sabatier carving knife he had grabbed from the work surface when Dave, hand on his collar, was pounding his head up and down on the continental tiles) and plunged the blade into Dave’s heart…
Two funerals, but the distinct possibility she could come out of the whole thing unscathed – especially if she created a story for the tabloids around a passionate disagreement over a drunken gambling debt. Double sympathy from the community at large – a widow and ex-victim of compulsive addiction.
But as she blended in her make-up with a long, manicured finger, she grimaced at the thought of the least palatable scenario. Her husband forcing the truth from him, throwing her out on some paltry amount of maintenance and the Daily Detail writing her up as an incurable old slapper, dredging up her past indiscretions and getting them to give points out of ten for the quality of her blow-jobs…
The train was drawing in to Edenhurst Station. Patsy stood up and moved towards the door, giving her appearance a final check in the reflection of the window. Her blonde hair was back in place, her lipstick freshly applied.
Dave was on the platform, looking breathless and rather red. He rushed up to her, one meaty hand taking her arm, eyes searching her face.
She leant forward and kissed his sweaty cheek. “Darling! How thoughtful of you to meet me!”
He stopped, chest heaving, as she smiled at him.
She looked at him in concern. “Are you all right?”
He seemed to be having some sort of emotional struggle. His lips opened and shut as he grasped her elbow again.
“Good day?” he asked at last.
“Oh you know! Apart from the crowds and the dreadful people.”
She shook back her hair at the injustices of department store shopping, deftly disentangling her arm and filling his with carrier bags, taking a surreptitious look at his knuckles as she did so.
“I do hope you haven’t parked too far away,” she said over her shoulder as she headed purposefully towards the ticket collector, “My feet are killing me.”
She looked sideways to check her reflection in the window of the buffet-bar, and gave a tinkling laugh. “Goodness! I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge!”
Chapter One
LOSS OF LIBIDO IS a common problem affecting women of all ages. It may simply be that the two of you have got into a rut and lovemaking has become stale or routine. Work together with your husband to bring the excitement back into your marriage. Set aside time for just the two of you, dress up in sexy underwear, watch an erotic film together, try having sex in a different place, at an unusual time or in a new position…
Stephanie slapped down the magazine and moved towards the vegetable rack. What these articles never told you was what to do if you just didn’t fancy him any more. What to do if, even after three viewings of Emmanuelle, when you found yourself squashed into the cupboard under the stairs at five in the afternoon with your legs wrapped round your neck, you still just thought, yuck!
“It’s not that I don’t feel like it sometimes,” she’d explained to her friend Millie. “After Nine-and-a-half Weeks was on TV I didn’t know what to do with myself. I kept having dreams about Mickey Rourke and waking up all sweaty… But I still didn’t want to make love with George.”
“Supplements!” Millie had said.
Stephanie selected some potatoes, looking ruefully at the dresser, where a small basket already bulged with pots.
Oil of Evening Primrose stops PMT (in theory).
Selenium ditto.
Ginkgo Biloba improves memory (not always to be recommended), helps reduce appearance of cellulite (not seen much evidence yet).
Korean Ginseng (to perk her up).
Resta-Nerve (to calm her down).
St John’s Wort (to stop her being a miserable cow).
She crossed to the bin, tossing in a potato that had turned a luminous and, no doubt, cancer-inducing green, turning another in her hands, looking it critically in the eyes.
Calcium (so her bones wouldn’t crumble).
Multi-vitamins (as general precaution).
Millie had not been deterred. “Have you tried Zinc?”
Zinc!
Millie said she’d gone off it after she’d had Ben and couldn’t bear Patrick anywhere near her. Then she’d gone to a homeopath, started taking zinc and wham! Back to normal. She’d said they’d done it four times in one day when they went to Barbados.
Stephanie shuddered.
Millie had tried to be helpful.
“What about a drink first?”
“I just can’t. Even with a few drinks.”
Even in fact with a lot of drinks. Even after George had brought home champagne to celebrate his company’s latest take-over and she’d drunk the best part of a bottle and a half. And he’d got out the massage oil. Even then…
“I end up being sick,” she’d said.
The difference, thought Stephanie now, poking about among the greens, picturing Millie’s high cheekbones and wide sensuous mouth, was that Millie was still sexual. She filled the sink, hearing her friend’s laughter. Saw her tossing back her glossy hair. She could hear her now, “Of course I am – thirty-six – I’m at my peak!”
But Millie had always been bursting with it.
On her wedding day, Millie had looked like a gypsy queen, all long dark hair, red lips, nipped-in waist and swelling cleavage. She had stared into Patrick’s eyes as if she wanted to eat him. (In Stephanie’s bridal pics, she looked as if she needed a lie-down.)
Millie still arrived here some mornings, flushed and glowing. Millie still pushed her breasts out when she entered a room. Millie giggled and made jokes, passed comments laced with innuendo. Millie still liked sex.
Stephanie plunged her hands into the cold water. She herself felt like a withered old prune in that department. Or she had done. Not only did the bits no longer work, they curled up in horror and hid under the covers (or would do if under the covers wasn’t precisely where the danger lurked). Until today.
She pulled back outer leaves, sliced through stalks, pausing to look up through her kitchen window at a tiny white plane in the square of bright blue sky. She thought about the passengers undoing their seatbelts, waiting for the drinks to come round, settling with their in-flight magazines, and felt an odd little ripple down the back of her neck.
Coconut oil on warm skin, cold wine on hot terraces, a vibrant splash of bougainvillea down a white wall… She suddenly wanted to be feeling excited, expectant, going somewhere, anywhere…
Did any of those people up there wish that they were safely back in their kitchens doing the sprouts?
Kelly whined outside the back door, scratching at the wood. Stephanie looked at the clock. Another thrilling day gone. In which she’d done nothing but make beds and scrub toilets and arrange flowers and peel sodding potatoes. And pour coffee for–
The ripple shot all over her.
What was it about past loves? Why did exes still have that power to grab you by the solar plexus and bring up all sorts of feelings that should have been dead and buried long ago?
There should be an operation on the National Health. Attachment Amputation. Separation-anxiety by-pass. So when it’s over, it’s over. You could see them in the street, trill: Hi-how-are-you? Fine? Oh Good-that-is-good, and feel rather less than you did when talking to the milkman (unless it was that relief milkman that came just for the fortnight three Christmases ago. Mmmn!)
Stephanie thought she had got to that. Thought she’d dealt with it all.
Obviously not.
“You want to get a life!” she told her rubber gloves.
She pulled the plug from the sink and let the water swirl away. “You need,” she said to the gritty remains, “to get a job!”
This had been the master plan when Madeleine and Ken came to dinner. George wanted to invite them. Ken bought all the insurance policies for his car dealership through George’s company and George could still thrash him at squash.
Stephanie had said, “What a good idea!” not because she particularly wanted to spend all afternoon with a slab of mad cow oozing blood over her kitchen or take hours over a home-made Tiramisu but because Madeleine was a business hot-shot who ran a secretarial agency cum virtual office set-up and even George – who never showed much enthusiasm for any of Stephanie’s friends or things female in general – thought she was marvellous.
If Madeleine got her a job, George might stop his discouraging noises. So Stephanie had cooked her heart out and listened to the three of them comparing computer systems she’d never heard of and waited her chance. But when the cue came, George was monopolising their guest.
“How’s business then?” he asked as he poured wine.
“Oh!” Madeleine threw back her head and laughed. Rolled her eyes in mock despair. “Fine! If I could just get the bloody staff.” Madeleine had a low, slightly raspy voice.
. . .
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