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CHAPTER ONE Bald men have sex. Stevie was willing to bet her next
three free weekends that bald women didn't. She glared at the follicly-challenged Porsche driver
on her left as he revved his engine, ready to carve her up the minute the
lights changed. It was a common phallacy - she chose the word advisedly -
that baldness in men was due to an excess of that virile male hormone,
testosterone. But no-one went round claiming bald women were sexy little
nymphets underneath their wigs, did they? Men and women spoke a different
language. In Stevie's experience, men of a certain age and income who were
fat, old, or ugly were invariably described as substantial, distinguished or
rugged. Women who were fat, old or ugly were invariably described as fat, old
or ugly. The Porsche driver leered and blew her a kiss. Stevie
upped her glare to full beam. Typical. How come she never got stuck in a
traffic jam next to Tom Cruise? It was her own fault for ending up next to a
Porsche. She was currently working on the theory that a man's fuckability was
inversely proportional to the value of the car he was driving. Extensive
research on her part suggested that the most favoured habitat of Homo
Fanciable was a beaten-up, two-tone Volkswagen Beetle with its wing-mirrors
missing. In these days of nineties austerity, they were hardly ever found
anywhere near the wheel of a fully-insured, kosher-MOTed, M-reg sports car. Stevie couldn't help feeling cheated. In 1987, the
year she'd finally turned sixteen and been able to take advantage of all the
gorgeous, rich young men cluttering up wine bars everywhere she'd looked, the
entire country had been plunged into world-wide recession. Overnight the wine
bars had been turned back into Co-Ops and the filofaxes repossessed. In 1995
the only men left propping up the bars were maudlin drunks weeping into their
Frascati over their negative equity and alimony payments. The lights changed to green. The only vehicle able to
move was the paperboy's BMX. Stevie glanced at her watch. If she'd known they
were going to dismantle the A264 again she'd have stayed in bed an extra
twenty minutes and avoided the rush hour. She might even have had time to put
her make-up on after she'd put her contact lenses in, rather than before. She
flipped the sun visor down to check herself in the mirror. She couldn't in
all honour give herself more than four out of ten this morning, not after
last night. 'House-white' was not a word she wanted to hear ever again. At
least she hadn't outlined her eyes with scarlet lip-pencil by mistake, like
she'd done last Friday. She'd looked like a rabbit with myxomatosis all day,
and no-one had said a word. It was only when she'd collected Jack from
nursery school that afternoon and seen his painfully accurate painting of his
nanny that she'd realised what she'd done. No wonder his teacher had looked
at her so strangely. She jumped as a car beeped impatiently behind her.
Before she had a chance to coax Damien into first gear, the Porsche driver on
her left had pulled sharply across her lane of traffic and shot past her,
gesturing rudely in her direction. Stevie stuck her tongue out at him. May
your clutch forever disengage. She remembered his leer and swiftly amended
that to crutch. Her thoughts were still occupied with boiling wax and
sharpened knives when she swung Damien into Bronwyn and Robin's gravel drive
ten minutes later. She braked suddenly as she came bumper to bumper with the
local florist's van. Bronwyn and Robin must have made it up, then. She
wondered how much it had cost him this time. The florist gestured for Stevie to move backwards,
unaware of the information which Stevie and four nervous driving examiners
shared regarding her ability to perform certain mandatory reversing
manoeuvres. Stevie studiously examined her bitten nails. The two vehicles
faced each other for several minutes before the florist bowed to the
inevitable and reversed sulkily back up the drive. Stevie squeezed Damien
past the van and parked, opening the door and extending her legs gracefully
before her the way the model did in the Pretty Polly ads, for the benefit of
the rather gorgeous florist driving the van. It was only when she tried to
stand up that she realised you had to be six foot four to complete the
manoeuvre successfully. She glanced up and saw that she now had the full
attention not only of the florist and his mate but the postman and milkman as
well. It was difficult to be inconspicuous in a bright pink Fiat Panda with
lime-green seats. The salesman had made a selling point of the colour, told
her it would be a bonus, she'd never lose it in the car park. He'd been
right, she never had, no matter how hard she'd tried. Stevie straightened her short denim skirt and casually
stretched her arms and rotated her wrists as if the Pretty-Polly bit had just
been part of her morning exercise routine. The two florists grinned at each other. 'Mmm, nice chassis.' The dishy one nodded. 'Well-upholstered, good
suspension. I wonder how she takes a corner?' The two florists fell about. Stevie decided to cut her
losses and show them what they were missing. She walked slowly up the garden
path in what she hoped was a seductive fashion, rolling her hips from side to
side and wishing she'd worn her black stilettos instead of the dog-eared red
trainers that had been first out of the wardrobe. By the time she reached the
rhododendron by Bronwyn's gazebo she was no longer Stevie of the Generous
Hips, size twelve and five-foot seven if she really stretched and wore two
pairs of her brother's thick rugby socks. Now she was the unapproachable
Stephanie Colvin, international jet-setting supermodel, a waif-like size
eight and six feet tall in her Fogal-stockinged feet. 'Stevie, are you all right?' The catwalk disappeared in a puff of reality. 'Oh - er
- hi, Robin. Sorry I'm late.' Robin eyed her doubtfully. 'Are you sure you're OK?
Only you were walking a bit strangely, you haven't pulled a muscle, have
you?' 'No, no, I'm fine.' Stevie was keen to change the
subject. 'Where's Bronwyn?' 'I wouldn't go in just yet if I were you. Bronwyn's -
um - a little bit upset.' Stevie peered over his shoulder at the roses strewn
around the entrance hall. 'I thought you two had made it up?' Robin twitched. 'Well, we did, but then there was a
bit of a mix-up with the flowers. It really wasn't my fault, they muddled up
my order -' 'Oh, Robin, you nob-end.' Robin shifted uncomfortably, but didn't argue. Stevie
pushed past him and started to pick up the pieces of broken crockery before
three-year-old Jack toddled down the stairs and cut himself. Bronwyn had
surpassed herself this time, but Stevie didn't blame her. Robin's fortieth
birthday was fast approaching, and he was mounting a last, desperate bid to
recapture his lost youth by means of mounting every last, desperate woman he
could find. In the past few months, he'd grown his hair long and taken to
wearing Raybans instead of his usual bifocals, but the result was less the
Mel Gibson he hoped for than Lovejoy meets Victor Meldrew. Stevie glanced up as Bronwyn appeared in the doorway,
still undressed in her faded blue candlewick dressing-gown, her fiery red
hair unbrushed and crackling around her thin shoulders. 'I'm taking Jack to stay with my mother this week,'
she hissed. 'I'm not having him upset any more. You can go back home, Stevie,
have a holiday. I don't want any witnesses to what I'm going to do to this
bastard.' 'Look, Bron, there's no need to drag Stevie into all
this -' Bronwyn ignored Robin, hovering in the background. 'Do
you know what that stupid shit's done? He only sent me some flowers addressed
to that British Airways slut he's been screwing. "Darling Libby, thank
you for a wonderful night, I'll make it up to you later, love
Robby-boy." Jesus, it's bad enough being stuck with an unfaithful,
lying, cheating son-of-a-bitch. I didn't realise I'd married a complete moron
as well.' Stevie stared at the floor and tried not to laugh.
Robby-boy. Oh please. 'Bronwyn, I told you, the florists made a mistake.
They muddled up my order. It's over with her, I promise -' 'Damn right it is. By the time I've finished, even
Lorena Bobbitt's going to feel sorry for you.' Robin backed away as Bronwyn advanced towards him.
'Bronny, please -' Bronwyn scanned the open-plan kitchen-cum-living-room
for something else to throw, her supply of crockery evidently exhausted. Her
eyes lit on the stack of blue Le Creuset saucepans in the corner and, as one,
Stevie and Robin dived for cover behind the squashy white leather sofa. 'She's never going to chuck those?' Robin whispered.
'They weigh a ton. I can't even strain spaghetti with them without
dislocating my shoulder.' 'You should've seen her after she found out about you
and that blonde from The Packhorse,'
Stevie whispered back. 'Took us two days to pick up all the pieces. It was
like with pine-needles from the Christmas tree. Little bits of china turned
up in my knickers for months.' The milk saucepan smashed into the wall ten feet to
their left, gouging out a large chunk of plaster before ricocheting across
the parquet. Stevie gave thanks that Bronwyn was a rotten shot. By the time Robin had made a
hasty exit through the French windows and Bronwyn had stormed off to her
mother's with Jack, Stevie was too exhausted to go back home to the flat she
shared with her best friend, Julia. She poured herself a medicinal
gin-and-tonic and sank back into the leather sofa with the TV remote control
in one hand and, in the other, a box of Belgian chocolates Robin had
belatedly bought Bronwyn for Valentine's Day last week, completely forgetting
his wife was on a diet. She switched on
Good Morning with Anne and Nick but changed channels when she realised
they were doing a feature on swimwear. It was only the twentieth of February,
there was plenty of time to get back into shape before she exposed herself to
ridicule on the beach. She promised herself she'd do an extra ten sit-ups at
her aerobics class this afternoon to make up. It wasn't fair, men never got
cellulite. God just might be a man. She leafed idly through a stack of Bronwyn's magazines
as she tried to decide what to do with herself. She wasn't used to all this
spare time. Normally by Being a nanny was not all it was cracked up to be. Her
friends fondly imagined she spent the day sipping Margaritas by Bronwyn and
Robin's swimming pool, rocking a cherubic, ad-clean baby cooing softly in his
pram with one hand while she rubbed suntan lotion into her shoulders with the
other. The wisecracks were not deflected by the twin facts that she lived in She toyed with the idea of getting him under the
Trades Description Act. Life was hardly the halcyon paradise she'd envisioned
when she'd answered their ad for a nanny three years ago. They'd offered her
a salary that had been half as much again as she'd been earning at the local
nursery, and the idea of looking after one harmless little baby plus a few
'light household duties' instead of seventeen four-year-old psychopaths had
been irresistible. Stevie had assumed that since Bronwyn didn't work, her
hours - 'eight-thirty until six, five days a week, oh, and three weeks
holiday a year' - wouldn't be that exhausting. She hadn't known then that
keeping track of her husband Robin was a full-time job, involving as it did
daily searches through his trouser pockets, careful analyses of his credit
card statements and secret readings of his milometer to make sure he hadn't
travelled any unexplained distances. Stevie wished Robin's cock had a
milometer as well. It would save them all a lot of trouble. Bronwyn had had neither time nor energy to spare for
little Jack, who had been the result of a misguided attempt to inject some
romance back into their marriage. Bronwyn had taken it as read that Stevie's
signature on her contract of employment meant she was responsible for Jack
whenever he was awake, which in the first six months of his life was every
two hours, day and night. Technically, Stevie had been 'living out'. In
practice, she and the sofa had become intimately acquainted, and on the days
when Bronwyn and Robin weren't speaking, she'd had to fight Robin for
possession of it. They'd also neglected to explain at her interview that
'light household duties' included repainting the spare bedroom after the
water tank burst, lacing Bronwyn into a corset from Rigby & Peller in a
desperate attempt to derail Robin's roving eye, and shinning up the drainpipe
and crawling over the roof to run the baby's intercom wires round the house
because Robin got vertigo and Bronwyn's life insurance had run out. By the time she'd realised she'd been had, Jack had
started sleeping through the night, and Stevie had been so grateful to go
home every night to six blissful, uninterrupted hours of sleep in her own
soft bed that she'd been prepared to put up with anything. And of course,
there'd been Jack himself. He'd been worth everything, even the diabolical
spring in the middle of the end cushion that got her in places her lovers had
to wait six dates to reach. She replaced the magazines on the bookshelf and bent
to pick up Jack's favourite battered teddy, half-stuffed beneath the sofa in
question. He'd only just stopped taking it everywhere with him. Stevie
straightened the chewed green ribbon round its neck, inhaling the sweet baby
smell of talc still lingering on its fur. Her heart ached every time she
thought about it, but her days with Jack were numbered. In a couple of
months, he'd start at nursery school full-time instead of one morning a week,
and Bronwyn certainly didn't want any more children. She clearly expected
Stevie to spend the time she'd have spare looking after the house. But Stevie
hadn't become a nanny to end up dusting ornaments and drowning her brain in
gin and daytime TV. Perhaps she should've stuck to teaching the tiny terrors
at nursery. At least that way she'd have had a new batch every year to keep
her busy. She picked up Jack's anorak from the floor and walked
through into the hall to hang it up. Maybe she could give Paul a ring and
meet him for lunch. There wasn't much point staying here if Bronwyn had taken
Jack to her mother's, and she wasn't meeting Julia at the gym until six. She
had plenty of time. He'd be so pleased and surprised to see her on a Monday.
Normally she could only meet him on Fridays, when Jack was at nursery. Weekends
and evenings were out, of course. She punched the first three digits of Paul's office
number, panicked, and hung up. Stevie knew from past experience that, in her hands, a
telephone could become a deadly weapon. She'd spent too many nostalgic evenings
in the company of a bottle of white wine and a Carly Simon CD not to fear the
consequences of picking up the phone on impulse. Ex-boyfriends were her
particular weakness, although anyone she hadn't spoken to for a least a year
was a potential target. One night, very drunk, she'd talked dirty for
half-an-hour to a man she'd finished with because he was unbelievably boring.
Twenty minutes after her phone call he'd come rushing round to her flat in a
taxi, knocking enthusiastically on the door and waking all the neighbours up.
She'd had to hide in the loo for two hours until he'd given up and gone home.
She hadn't been anywhere near Carly Simon this morning
and Paul wasn't yet part of her ex-directory, but it was better to be safe
than sorry. It was one of the first rules of being the Other Woman: Never
Phone, unless you can put on a thousand and one different voices when his
wife answers. She stared sternly at her reflection in the hall mirror. It's
your own stupid fault you've turned into a craven moron. You went into this
with your eyes open. You've only got one person to blame if it all goes
horribly wrong. She stuck out her tongue at herself, then peered a bit
closer at the mirror. That looked suspiciously like the beginnings of a
double chin. She lifted her baggy black sweater and scrutinised her
waistline. How long exactly did it take for a chocolate to reach your hips? A
day? A week? Or was it instantaneous transmission? If only Paul didn't like his women like matchsticks.
Unfortunately she was more Rubens than Lowry. Paul had already started to
make pointed remarks about her usefulness in the event of a puncture. She ran up the stairs in sudden panic and leaped on
the bathroom scales, then leaped quickly off again. The dial couldn't have
been zeroed. She fiddled with it for a moment, then stepped on the scales
again, more cautiously this time. She winced as the indicator passed the nine
stone mark, closed her eyes and spent a minute trying to work out how much
you had to deduct for the clothes you were wearing. After five minutes'
experimentation, she discovered that if she leaned forward and balanced her
elbow on the soap dish and put her left foot in the bidet she could get the
dial down to eight-and-a-half stone, but it was hardly a long-term solution. This skirt was on borrowed time. The saddest words in
the English language - next to 'Can't we at least be friends?' -had to be 'I
think you'd look better in a larger size.' Some Scarlet Woman she was. If she
didn't watch out she'd end up wearing Laura Ashley. 'Are you absolutely
sure this'll help?' Stevie asked doubtfully several hours later. Julia propelled both herself and Stevie through the
door to the gym. 'Look, do you want Paul to go back to his wife or not?' 'He hasn't exactly left her yet,' Stevie pointed out. 'And he's never going to if you keep eating chocolates
and hiding in the changing rooms until the cooling-down exercises,' Julia's
voice was stern. 'You have to do more than put on your leotard, you know. You
actually have to join in sometimes.' 'The only way I'm going to lose weight is by signing
up on the next Space Shuttle mission,' Stevie sighed. 'Don't be a wimp.' Stevie slowly followed Julia's pert neon-pink
lycra-clad bottom up the stairs to the aerobics gym, cursing her luck at
having a raven-haired nymphet for best friend. On a good day, Stevie knew she
could look rather fetching herself, but to achieve 'rather fetching' she had
to work at it. She had to blow dry her shoulder-length unnatural blonde hair
for an hour and a half, her head
dangling upside down. She had to use half a tube of Clinique concealer to get
rid of the shadows under her rather muddy blue eyes. She had to spend half an
hour putting on her makeup to create the illusion that she wasn't wearing
any. She had to encase her legs in 5 denier black ankle-enhancing stockings.
She had to choose her clothes with the care of a military strategist to avoid
looking pear-shaped, square-shaped or shape-less. Julia, on the other hand,
could have a streaming cold, stay out until three in the morning, leave all
last night's makeup on, get up after less than four hours' sleep, throw on a
black bin-liner and still look absolutely ravishing. Stevie arrived exhausted at the top of the stairs,
wishing with every superfluous ounce of her being that the aerobics class
wasn't mixed. A dozen svelte model-types were lounging decoratively around
the gym, pretending to ignore the leering glances of the muscle-bound hunks
casually tossing weights around as if they were juggling Ping-Pong balls. The
women glared jealously at Julia as she entered the gym, their expressions
turning to relief as they saw Stevie creeping in behind her and realised the
light entertainment had arrived. At Stevie tried to divert her thoughts from suicide as
she saw the man next to her peddling halfway up At three minutes past three she got off the bike and
lay exhausted on the rubber mat. She did her leg curls and thought about a
double gin-and-tonic. She did her squat thrusts and thought about Paul. She
did her arm-stretches and thought about Paul's wife. She did her abdominal curls
and thought about suicide again. She stood in the shower forty minutes later and
examined her body. She was probably a medical miracle being alive at all. She
was just living on borrowed time. She was still composing her funeral service and trying
to decide between 'I'm your best friend!' Stevie yelled. 'What happened
to loyalty, kindness, do-unto-others?' 'It's for your own good,' Julia grunted, wresting the
biscuits from Stevie's desperate grasp.
'You'll thank me for this one day.' Stevie doubted it. She had a sneaking suspicion Paul
was not worth this much pain. And he certainly wasn't worth giving up the chocolate-chip
cookies. 'How many people have you slept
with?' 'How many have you?' 'I asked first,' Julia said. Stevie sat cross-legged on the end of her bed and
stared across the hall at her flatmate, who was lying on her stomach on her
own bed cradling a bottle of Liebfraumilch. They'd deliberately positioned
their beds this way so that they could talk to each other from their own
rooms without having to move. 'What, all of them?' Stevie asked. 'One-night stands,
everything?' 'All of them.' Stevie thought for a few moments, then started
scribbling in the Care Bears notebook her mother had given her for Christmas.
Julia took a swig of wine and waited for her to finish. Ten minutes later Stevie had shown no sign of letting
up. Julia watched in astonishment as Stevie turned the page for the second
time. 'Shit, you're like a one-woman service station,' she
said. 'How many have you got to so far?' 'I'm not telling you until you tell me. Go on, you
write down all yours and we'll swap at the end.' 'Oh, all right.' Julia refilled her glass and started writing on the
back of an envelope. After a few minutes she stopped. 'That's all?' Julia nodded. 'But that's ridiculous. You haven't even got past the
postmark. Did you put in all the ones you didn't even enjoy?' 'Yes, and the ones who couldn't get it up. Seven
altogether. Now come on, how many?' 'Twenty-six.' 'Twenty-six?' 'Well, Peter Davis got two entries, because we split
up and got back together again. So it's twenty-five really. 'Twenty-five! You've been with Paul for the last two
years, Stevie, so that's twenty-four other men between the ages of -?' 'Seventeen.' 'Thank you. Seventeen and twenty-two. That's nearly
five men a year!' Stevie looked miffed. 'If I was a man you wouldn't
think twice about it. You'd be jealous.' 'How many do you admit to if a man asks you?' Julia
said. 'What have you told Paul?' Stevie reached out and took the wine bottle from
Julia's outstretched hand. 'Five.' 'Why five?' 'Well, he's never going to believe I'm a virgin, for a
start. And men don't like to think you've only had one or two lovers before
them, it makes them think you take sex too seriously, as if this is it and
sleeping with them is a big commitment. And no matter what they tell you
about being New Men and liking a woman with experience, no man wants to think
everyone's had a swig of the bottle. Ten's too many, three's too few. So I
tell them all five.' 'I don't know how you keep a straight face.' 'Here, let me see your list.' 'Only if I can see yours.' They put their lists on either side of the wine bottle
in the centre of the hall and swapped on the count of three. Stevie dipped a jaffa cake in her glass of
Liebfraumilch and wriggled back against the headboard. 'Has Hugo accepted
your proposal yet?' 'I've tried everything. The first time I asked him was
when we celebrated his new job on the steps of St Peter's in 'He's bound to say yes sometime,' Stevie said. 'I'm just terrified I'll spit it out on the 6.35 from 'I'll be lucky if I even get that far with Paul.' Julia curled her endless legs beneath her and swept
back her curtain of silky dark hair. Stevie tried not to hate her. 'Why the hell do you put up with him? He's never going
to leave Amy, you know.' 'He might if I lost weight.' 'I'm serious, Stevie. Even if he leaves her - which he
won't - you'll spend the rest of your life checking his pockets and calling
his office to see if he's where he said he'd be.' Stevie knew Julia was right. Being right was something
Julia did well, along with remembering birthdays and never being overdrawn.
It wasn't fair. Beautiful women were supposed to be dippy and forgetful, it
was expected of them to make the rest of womankind feel better. They
certainly weren't meant to be practical, intelligent and level-headed as well
as devastatingly attractive. Clearly someone had screwed up somewhere along
the line. Julia would never have got involved with someone like
Paul. It wasn't that she had a big moral thing about it, she just had the
sense to realise that for every man who actually left his wife, another
hundred were waiting for the kids to grow up, the mortgage to be paid off,
the kitchen extension to be finished, or the cat to get over its flu. Stevie
knew that in the first spine-tingling glance across a crowded room, Julia
would have instantly spotted the tell-tale gleam of a wedding-ring and left
Paul to share his quiche lorraine with someone else dumb enough to fall for
his line in wifely misunderstanding. Someone like Stevie. Stevie'd never meant for any of this to happen, of
course. Unlike Julia, whose point of view was based on common sense and
statistics rather morality, Stevie'd always despised women who had affairs
with married men. She'd seen Bronwyn's tears and desperation and positively
loathed the painted little tarts who'd caused them. She'd seen friends in the
throes of a passionate love affair with a man who would - really would - leave his wife just as soon as
he'd managed to transfer his assets out of the country, and watched them
spend one miserable Christmas after another alone, sniffling uncomforted into
lonely pillows as deadline after deadline passed, and had felt nothing but
contempt and pity. The first morning after she and Paul had slept
together, she'd stared at her reflection in the mirror and tried to reconcile
it with the image of the Other Woman, the Home Wrecker, the Superbitch, that
her mother had brought her up to despise. Other Women didn't have roots and
spare tyres, they didn't bite their nails or have spots the week before their
period. But one night of - OK, she couldn't deny it - unbelievably fantastic
sex had suddenly turned her into one, and even now she couldn't quite get
used to the idea. She'd never wanted Paul to divorce Amy and marry her. Well,
not at first. But recently she'd found she wanted him to think about it, at least. She'd met Paul Whittington two years ago at one of
Bronwyn and Robin's summer barbecues. They'd hardly spoken that first day
-she hadn't been allowed to fraternise with the guests - but he'd caught her
eye across the crowded lawn and given her a deep brown stare which had lasted
four, unflinching seconds. It was the nearest she'd ever been to sex without
touching. She'd known right from the beginning that he was
married, but somehow it hadn't seemed important. His wife had been a nebulous
shadow in the background, a little piece of gold on his left hand. When in
the ensuing weeks they'd bumped into each other at bus stops and supermarket
checkouts, with a frequency she'd found hard to put down to coincidence,
they'd chatted about things anyone could have safely overheard - the baby,
the weather, how England was doing at Rugby - but they'd smiled a lot, and
afterwards she'd always felt a little more excited than she should have done.
Paul had been thirty-six then, fourteen years older than her, a plausible,
urbane sales representative for a company that manufactured screws. The irony
hadn't occurred to her until later. About three months after they'd first met, she'd found
a note tucked beneath Damien, the Fiat Panda's windscreen wiper. 'I need to
talk to you. Can we meet? (Friends).' It was the 'friends' bit that had given him away, a
clever little distancing trick which had made clear that friendship was the last
thing on his mind. But she'd met him for a drink anyway, and she'd watched
the way his floppy blonde hair curled over the edge of his dark collar and
noticed the tiny gold hairs peeking out from the wrists of his snowy white
shirt that someone else had ironed. She'd crossed and uncrossed her legs and
tossed back her head when she laughed and accidentally let her hair sweep
across the back of his hand when she'd leaned forward to pick up her drink.
He'd smiled and let his eyes lock with hers every time she dared to meet
them, and when his lips had brushed hers in farewell his kiss had tasted
sweet and heady, like wine. He'd dropped her off at her flat in time for News at Ten without suggesting that he
came in for coffee because they'd both known that this was only the start of
it. She'd lain in bed that first night and told herself
that she was grown-up enough for a no-strings affair with an older man in a
burnt-out marriage. Things always worked out if you tried hard enough. She
could justify an affair. His marriage had been a mistake from the start. He'd
been too young, they'd grown apart, his wife had her own life. For God's
sake, they didn't even have sex anymore. They hadn't had children. Children
would have changed everything. Anyway, it was his responsibility, he'd be
doing the cheating. She had no-one to cheat on. It wasn't her problem, she
was single. She'd finally slept with him on their sixth date.
Afterwards, she'd watched him get up to throw the squishy condom down the loo
and shower the scent of sex from his body, and known intuitively that
everything had changed between them. Pre-Durex, Amy had been a problem they'd
faced together, like Stevie's charming hesitation. Paul had been the one with
the dead marriage, practically begging her to change his life. Now he had
everything and she was forever at his mercy, pathetically grateful for a
snatched half hour or a hurried phone call - always made by him - that
invariable ended with an abrupt 'I've got to go' and the burr of the dead
receiver in her ear. She'd known it was serious last month, when she'd
walked into the newsagents on the corner, picked up her usual copy of Cosmo, and turned to the article about
Divorce before the one about Multiple Orgasms. Stevie drained her wine glass and chased the soggy
crumbs of 'Shit, I nearly forgot!' Julia leaped off her bed and
ran through into the living room. Stevie could hear her opening and shutting
drawers as she raised her voice and carried on talking. 'I saw an ad in The Lady last week when I was looking
through the house-sitting column for my sister, you know, the one with
nerves. I meant to tell you about it before. It sounds perfect for you.' Julia reappeared, leafing through the magazine. 'Here,
listen to this. 'English couple living in 'It doesn't really say that -' Julia laughed tossed the magazine onto Stevie's bed.
'Almost.' Stevie stared at the magazine. 'Don't be ridiculous! I
couldn't possibly!' 'Why on earth not?' Stevie hesitated. 'Well, Paul for a start. And you!
What about you? I couldn't go away and leave you on your own. Who would you
live with? Who'd help you open the child-proof locks on your paracetamol?' 'Stevie, Prick Whittington is an out-and-out bastard
who'll never leave his wife. I'm earning enough commission at the estate
agents now to pay your share of the rent too, and I'd quite like the extra
room. I might even be able to persuade Hugo to move in with me if he didn't
think he'd have to face you without your makeup every morning. And your
brother lives downstairs. Oliver can open the paracetamol for me.' For a brief moment, Stevie imagined actually picking
up the phone, arranging an interview, maybe even getting the job. 'I can't. They'd never give me the job.' 'Why not? You're the right age, you don't smoke -
well, not cigarettes, anyway - you can drive, you've got experience and
no-one could say you're not flexible, not with twenty-five men under your
belt.' 'But what about the 'organised and responsible' bit?' 'You can lie, can't you?' Stevie was struggling. 'But the job'll have gone by
now. You said yourself it was last week's magazine.' 'For God's sake, Stevie, stop being so negative. You'll never know if you don't try.' Stevie thought again of all the gorgeous Italian men
just waiting for a glimpse of her highlights. Julia was right: she had all
the right qualifications. She'd got her NNEB, she'd taken care of Jack since
he was two weeks old. She could drive (ish), she was presentable - well, she
would be if she had her own bathroom and two hours to spare every morning
-and literate, and she didn't have any communicable diseases unless you
counted a |