Part 3 (1/2)

'What was it then?' Catherine leant eagerly forward.

'Haven't a clue,' shrugged Stevie. 'I said I wasn't interested in hearing it.'

'Why not? You could at least have listened to what he had to say! You do have something in common here, after all.'

Stevie shuddered at the thought of having anything in common with him.

'I think I could guess at a push what he'd suggest,' she said. 'Something to do with sawn-offs and hitmen.'

'Ooh look,' said Catherine, picking up his card. 'He's the General Manager here.'

'I hope you're flaming joking. I've just signed up for a whole year!' said Stevie, s.n.a.t.c.hing back the card to see it there in black and white, and red and a touch of navy blueAdam MacLean, General Manager of Well Life Super-gym, Dodmoor, Barnsley, and the scribble of his mobile number. The information knocked Stevie for six because he looked more like the head of 'Thugs International' than something sensible, respectable and managerial.

A picture came into her head of him pus.h.i.+ng past her and coming into the house. If she hadn't opened the door, she would still have been in blissful ignorance. Jo and Matthew might have just had a quick fling and that could have been the end of it. Maybe that's all it was: a last-minute explosion of freedom before he finally settled down and got married. It happened. Stevie was thirty-six; she wasn't the naive baby she'd been nearly five years ago when she had found out about Mick, even if Mick and Matthew were very different animals. Mick wouldn't have felt the slightest bit of guilt, but she knew Matthew would be crippled with it and most likely pacing the Spanish hotel foyer vowing never to do anything like that again. But then he had to go and tell her just because he found out about it and got upset and wanted to upset everyone else too. No, she'd heard what McBigmouth had to say once; she wouldn't make that mistake again.

'He can go and stuff a live haggis up his backside,' said Stevie decisively. Then she bit down and burnt the other side of her mouth on the panini.

Chapter 8.

Paris smiled that special smile of hers as Brandon took her into his arms.

'I love you so much,' she said, her red lips parting slowly to alert him to the fact that she was ready for his kiss. Brandon let her fall heavily to the ground.

'I'm sorry, love, but I'm mad crazy bonkers over another woman. She's got everything you haven't, so no one can blame me really. So this is the big El Dumpo, I'm afraid. Well, have a nice life, pet.' And with that he expertly mounted his Spanish black stallion and, bearing a rose between his teeth, stuck his boot spurs into the side of his horse, who whinnied and galloped him away to his new love La Joanna, which in Spanish means 'crafty two-faced cow'.

Stevie sighed, pushed back her chair and looked at the words that plopped out of her printer on the page. Yet another sheet to join the ream of bad writing destined for the recycling bin in the garage.

'Yeah, this is really going to pay the bills, pratting around like this,' she said to herself. She had a block as big as Everest in her writer's flow. In fact, she might as well log off for ever, then get a job in a factory sprinkling cheese on pizzas.

It was not often that writing felt like hard work, but today it did. Not that she usually wrote at the weekend, but seeing as she hadn't touched her keyboard since last Monday, she thought she might take advantage of the hour whilst Danny played Harry Potter on his GameCube. He was busy zapping toadstools to get Bertie Botts beans to buy some spells at Hogwarts, and he seemed quite content, although Stevie felt guilty that she wasn't doing anything more exciting herself to entertain him.

She always tried to do something special at the weekendstake him for a walk to the park, or do some gardening together, or play board games. It was a kickback, she supposed, from her own childhood. She would get piles of games for Christmas and birthdays, but find there was no one to play them with. Her mum was always too busy to sit down and shake a dice, and even though their tiny home was like a new pin, Edna Honeywell was continuously scrubbing or Bra.s.so-ing the ornaments. Later, Stevie suspected that was probably just an excuse to avoid getting roped into playing Frustration or Ker Plunk and, much as she herself liked a nicely kept home, she vowed never to make such a G.o.d of the housework that she was too busy to play with her own children. Her dad worked long hours and so when he did get home, he could barely manage a 'h.e.l.lo', never mind a game of Cluedo. He needed to save his energies for the rabid arguments that Stevie listened to as she lay trembling in her bed.

So one day, Stevie simply stopped asking her parents to play and turned to herself for entertainment, drawing and scribbling, reading and writing, constructing little books and stories of love and happy families that became longer and more structured and crafted. She never showed them to anyone, they were her own private treasures. Her diaries were highly detailed too. In them, she found an overflow pipe for her frustrations and ambitions and crazily mixed-up emotions. Especially when her father ran off with the woman with a really thick neck a few doors away, and her mother, in vengeance, took a slimy lover whose eyes were too close together and who stared too long at Stevie's budding b.r.e.a.s.t.s for her comfort. It had been a difficult time and stained her teenage years with some memories she would rather forget. She had burnt the diaries in the end; they had been useful to write but far too painful to read.

It had been a relief to get away to university to study English, made possible because it was in the old days when students of moderate-earning parents got grants and they only had to stump up the minimum payment, which her dad did out of guilt because it was easier to give presents and money than time. That was why she always wanted to give a child what she had never hada parent's interest and attention. Preferably two parents, although that chance seemed forever to be slipping past her.

Today, though, she did not want to play with Danny and that made her feel mean, although she had accepted a long time ago that she wasn't Supermum. She just wanted to go to the gym and hurt herself with big weights, then come home and soothe the aches in a hot bath, wrap herself in her fluffy towelling robe and fold onto the sofa to sleep until Tuesday, the day that Matthew came home.

It was an incredibly soggy day. The air was damp and the Yorks.h.i.+re earth was dealing with the aftermath of heavy showers through the night.

'I'm bored,' said Danny, quitting Harry.

'Me too,' said Stevie. Paris and Brandon would have to wait. If only she could write her own destiny as easily as she could theirs. Then again, maybe that wasn't wise, with the self-destructive mood she was in at the moment. She would only have had herself trampled by Brandon's horse just to get some relief from the pain gnawing away inside her.

Well, she couldn't curl up and do nothing, that was for sure. Cooping a bored child up in the house with a bored adult was like mixing petrol and struck matches.

'Danny, get your wellies on and your big coat,' she said impulsively.

'Cool. Where are we going?'

'Bluebelling,' said Stevie.

There was a lovely wood at Pogley Top that she had once discovered with Mick when they had driven aimlessly out to christen her new (well to her, anyway) car. The ground had been far too muddy to explore in his best shoes and her heels, which was a shame as Mick was all for having his wicked way with her, right there on the thick carpet of scented bluebells. It was on that day he proposed.

Matthew had taken her there too one warm spring day when they had first started courting. He had made up a basket that was full of the most delicious food, only for most of it to get wasted when they spent all afternoon snogging on the gingham tablecloth under the trees, feeding each other the odd Twiglet to keep up the strength in their lip muscles.

Danny sat in the front of the car on his booster seat, trying to read the road signs and asking what they meant.

'Why's that say ”n”?'

'It's not an n, love, it's an upside down u. It means No U-turnsyou can't turn round there.'

'What's that one mean, Mummy?'

'Hump-back bridge,' said Stevie, checking for oncoming traffic and then taking the b.u.mp at a speed not conducive to good car maintenance. Her son gave a thrilled little scream, the way she used to on the trip to the grand annual Church picnic at Higher Hoppleton Park. Every Sunday, Stevie was shunted off to St John's, whilst Edna gave the house a good bottoming. It was one of her better moves though, for Sunday School gave Stevie most, if not all, of the lovely warm moments she would carry with her into adulthood, the picnics being top of her list. The kindly old men of the church would ferry everyone from the holy meeting-place to the park, overtaking each other en route, much to the delighted shrieks of the 300 kids piled up on the back seats well before the days of rear seat car belts. Then, young and old, little old ladies in hats and the Reverend alike had played rounders, football, picked bluebells, eaten egg and cress sandwiches, and b.u.t.terfly buns. Aw, those picnics had been so wonderful. She loved May bluebells for the fond memories they evoked. They seemed to feature in all her happiest memories.