Kitabı oku: «Someone Like You», sayfa 10

CHAPTER NINE

Leonie was not thrilled with herself. Despite spending many arm-aching hours painting, the kitchen did not look the way she wanted it to. The plan had been simple: inspired by endless television make-overs, Leonie had convinced herself that she too could turn a small cottage kitchen into an exotic Egyptian-inspired room with the aid of midnight blue paint, some artistic stencilling and a can of metallic spray paint. Unfortunately, what looked easy in half an hour on the telly with scores of helpers, expert carpenters, an interior designer and an entire TV crew ready to help out if necessary, wasn’t easy in real life. After three evenings and her entire Sunday spent knee-deep in old newspapers with the animals sulking in another room, the kitchen looked desperate. Two of the walls were a frighteningly dark midnight blue with silver stars supposedly reflecting the silver of the knobs she’d bought for the cupboards. The cupboards themselves had been painted primrose to go with both the freshly painted woodwork and the other two walls, but instead of gliding on to the carefully prepared surfaces, the paint had dried in myriad globules so it looked as if the doors had developed smallpox.

Her idea of having stars on the ceiling had been lovely and very celestial, but midnight blue everywhere had made the room – small and, luckily, south-facing – a bit gloomy. So she’d wearily repainted two walls. It took three coats of primrose to cover the blue.

Meanwhile, the stencilled border, which the stencil book she’d borrowed from the library described as ‘an Egyptian-inspired motif of birds and animals’, resembled something inexpert four-year-olds might daub on their first day at school in between peeing in their seats and sobbing for their mummies.

‘It’s a bit ambitious, Leonie,’ her mother had remarked kindly when she arrived that afternoon with some flowers from her garden and home-made tea brack to celebrate the children’s return.

‘I like it better today,’ Claire said, finding a vase for the off-white roses and putting the kettle on to boil at the same time. ‘It was too dark when it was all blue.’

‘I know.’ Covered with paint and exhausted after forty-eight hours of decorating, Leonie was shattered. Her black leggings were like a Rorschach blot of primrose and blue paint, and Danny’s old grey sweatshirt wasn’t much better. Every inch of her hands was crusty with emulsion and she needed an hour in the bath at least.

‘What have you been up to all day, Mum?’ Leonie asked, reaching under the table to pet Penny’s silky ears. Penny, who’d been largely ignored during the painting, hummed in bliss.

‘I worked on Mrs Byrne’s daughter’s wedding dress for hours. The pair of them should be strung up. Every time I do something, she changes her mind and I have to rip it. Mrs Byrne insists on hanging around while I sew and the cats keep winding themselves round her legs so she’s permanently covered with fluff. I’m going to run out of Sello-tape getting cat fur off her dress.’ Leonie’s mother had been a seamstress and, on retirement, had started her own dressmaking business. She was very good, and her tiny Bray front room was permanently full of hopeful clients wanting a debs dress or wedding outfit knocked up for half-nothing.

Claire took out her cigarettes and lit up. ‘I stopped at five and came down here for a break. Will I make us some tea, or are you rushing?’

‘You stopped at five o’clock?’ Leonie shot up in her seat as the words sank in. ‘What time is it now? I’ve taken my watch off so it wouldn’t get covered with gloss and I thought it was only three at the latest.’

‘It’s half five.’

‘Oh, Mother of God, the kids are coming home in an hour,’ wailed Leonie. ‘I’ll never change and make it to the airport on time.’

‘Well, I did think you were being very relaxed about getting to the airport. Sure, what do you want to change for? Just go like that,’ said her mother sensibly.

‘I wanted to look lovely for them coming home,’ Leonie said, rooting around under newspapers for her keys. ‘I wanted the house to look lovely too…’

‘They’ll be so pleased to see you, they won’t mind a bit of paint. I’ll rustle up some supper for you all, shall I?’

Tired from the transatlantic flight, the trio emerged half an hour late behind a trolley jammed with plastic bags, rucksacks and bulging suitcases. Mel and Abby were fashionably pale, thanks to many teen magazine articles warning of skin cancer. Danny, on the other hand, was mahogany. All three wore new clothes which made Leonie instantly guilty: their father had obviously decided they were dressed like ragamuffins and had kitted them out from head to toe in new gear. She was a bad, spendthrift mother for frittering away money on a holiday when the kids needed new stuff. The knowledge that at least three-quarters of her clothes came from second-hand shops remained firmly at the back of her mind.

Mothers were supposed to dress in desperate, cast-off rags as long as their offspring had the newest designer clothes and whatever variety of trainers Nike were advertising twenty-four hours a day on MTV.

‘You’ll never guess,’ squealed Mel excitedly as soon as the new clothes had been admired and they were in the car, rattling along the motorway.

‘Yeah, Mel’s got herself a boyfriend,’ interrupted Danny.

‘Have not!’ shrieked Mel.

‘Yes you have,’ Danny said, sounding less like a nineteen-year-old and more like his fourteen-year-old twin sisters. Well, more like Mel. Not Abby. Abby was so grown up she wasn’t fourteen – she was going on forty.

‘Haven’t! And that wasn’t what I was going to say!’ roared Mel.

‘Stop it,’ said Leonie, wishing they’d waited at least until they were a mile away from the airport before the inevitable row. Danny and Mel sparked off each other like pieces of flint. Every conversation between them turned into an argument. It was because they were so alike. Abby was thoughtful and grave, like her father. Her siblings were the complete opposite.

Mel’s favourite sentence when she’d been four was, ‘I want Danny’s…’ Danny’s dinner, Danny’s drink, Danny’s toys. If it was his, she wanted it. And he, at the wise old age of nine, had been just as bad. Mel’s favourite cuddly toy – without which she refused to go to sleep – had been hidden with Danny’s Action Man collection for three whole murderous, sleepless nights before Leonie found it when she was hoovering.

The current argument subsided purely because Danny decided to play with his new Discman and stuck his earphones in with a bored shrug that said, ‘Women, huh!’ Leonie shuddered to imagine what a Discman cost. Hundreds of dollars, no doubt. Ray must be making a mint.

‘Will I tell her?’ Abby whispered to Mel.

‘Yes.’ Mel was sulking now. She stared out of the window with her pointed little face in a sulky pout. The beauty of the family, Mel could even sulk prettily. With her father’s big dark eyes, delicately arched eyebrows, translucent skin and full lips, she looked like a teenage catwalk model trying to look moody for a photo shoot.

‘Tell me what?’ asked Leonie, fascinated and dying to hear every bit of their news.

‘It’s Dad…’ Abby began slowly.

Mel couldn’t bear it. She had to interrupt: ‘He’s getting married,’ she cried. ‘To Fliss! She’s gorgeous, she can ski, and we’re all invited to Colorado with them – and for the wedding too. She’s going to get us dresses made. I want a short one with high boots –’

She shut up at a quick poke in the ribs from her twin.

‘I know it sounds a bit sudden, Mum,’ said Abby delicately, wise beyond her years and knowing the news might be hard for her mother to take.

Sudden, thought Leonie, struggling to keep her eyes focused on the road. Sudden wasn’t the word. Ray was getting married again. She could barely take it in. She was here with nobody and no romantic prospects while he, the one she thought would flounder because he was so quiet, so introspective, so broken-hearted when they’d split up ten years previously, was in love and getting married.

A lump swelled in her throat and she was glad that it was Danny in the front of the car with her, unobservant Danny who was locked into his Discman and some thumping ambient beat. Watchful Abby would have noticed her mother’s eyes filling with tears right away.

‘Well,’ she managed to say, the words nearly sticking in her throat, ‘that’s great. When is the big day?’

‘January,’ said Mel wistfully, already imagining herself in groin-level flimsy silk, her long legs in knee-high boots giving middle-aged men heart attacks. ‘Fliss’s family have a cabin in Colorado and they’re going to have a winter wedding in the snow. Imagine! Us skiing. That’ll teach snotty Dervla Malone to boast about her holidays. Stupid cow thinks going to France is posh! Huh. She can kiss my ass.’

‘Melanie!’ Leonie narrowly avoided a daredevil bus driver and shot her daughter a fierce glare in the rear-view mirror. ‘If that’s the sort of language you’ve picked up on your holidays, you won’t be going anywhere. We don’t swear in our house.’

Mel flicked back her straight dark brown hair insouciantly, crinkling up her perfect little nose as she did so. ‘Lighten up,’ she muttered under her breath.

‘I heard that,’ Leonie replied tightly.

‘Aw, Mom,’ pleaded Mel, deciding to be conciliatory in case she wasn’t allowed to go to the wedding. ‘Sorry. But that’s not bad language. In Boston, people say that all the time. I mean, everyone in Ireland says “fuck” every five minutes. All Dad’s friends say so. They think we say “super-fucking-market”.’

‘Mel!’ hissed Abby.

‘We do not say that word all the time, and I don’t want to hear you say it either, got it?’ Leonie snapped, wondering why the Von Trapp family reunion wasn’t working out the way she had planned. So much for giant hugs and tearful murmurings of: ‘Mum, we missed you so much, we’ll never go away again.’

One child had become an American overnight and couldn’t wait to get back there to see her father’s fiancée, another was immersed in music and had refused to be hugged. Only dear sweet Abby seemed vaguely pleased to be home.

‘Tell me about this gorgeous fella you’re not going out with,’ Leonie requested in an attempt to get the conversation back on an even keel.

Both girls giggled. ‘Brad is his name,’ explained Abby eagerly. ‘He’s sixteen, tall, with naturally blond hair and he drives a jeep. He was nuts about Mel. He brought us both for a pizza.’

‘Brad, mm,’ said Leonie with a fake smile, her mind doing cartwheels. A sixteen-year-old with his own transport going out with her little girl! Melanie was only fourteen – a very knowing fourteen it had to be said, but still fourteen for all that. What the hell was Ray thinking of! She could have been assaulted, raped, anything!

‘His parents are Dad’s friends, and we weren’t out long,’ Abby added. ‘Dad said he’d murder Brad if we were gone more than an hour and a half, and the pizza place is just down the street.’

‘I wasn’t that interested,’ Mel said airily. ‘He’s too immature for me.’

‘He wasn’t,’ protested Abby and, with a catch in her voice, added, ‘he was lovely.’

I wished he’d fancied me instead of Mel, were the unspoken words.

Leonie’s heart ached for her much-loved daughter, the one who looked just like her. Abby had none of her twin’s effortless prettiness. Abby was as tall as Mel but stocky, with a solid body, mousy brown hair like Leonie’s before she got at it with the bleach, and a round, pleasant face that was only enlivened by her mother’s startling blue eyes. She was a steady, reliable estate car to Melanie’s sleek, capricious Ferrari, and she knew it.

Leonie adored her and saw such beauty and strength of character in Abby’s kind, loving face. But fourteen-year-old girls didn’t want strength of character: they wanted to look like drop-dead gorgeous movie stars and have teenage boys falling at their feet like flies. Mel did, Abby didn’t. And there was nothing their mother could do to even matters up.

At home, the girls rushed out of the car, eager to see their beloved Penny, Clover the cat and Herman.

‘Penny,’ they squealed in unison as their grandmother opened the front door and Penny sprang out like a caged tiger, hysterical with delight. A huge group hug ensued, with everyone trying to cuddle Penny and have it proved that they were her favourite and had been missed the most. With typical feline indifference, Clover refused to have any truck with cuddles, flicked her tail sharply in disapproval and shot off into the garden.

‘She’s affected by the paint fumes,’ muttered Leonie’s mother wickedly.

Luggage was dropped carelessly in the hall, waiting for Leonie to haul it to the various bedrooms.

‘Mom!’ said Mel, aghast, on entering the kitchen which had been magnolia the last time she’d seen it. ‘What have you been doing?’

‘Having an orgy with Francis Bacon,’ laughed Danny, coming up behind his sister and staring at the brightly coloured disaster area which his grandmother had failed to tidy up completely. ‘Were you helping, Gran?’

‘No, and don’t tease your poor mother. She’s been trying to brighten this place up,’ she said sternly, heading to the cooker where a chicken stew was bubbling appetizingly. ‘Your mother needs a hand to tidy up.’

‘I’ve got people to phone,’ said Mel, backing out of the room rapidly at the notion of ruining her nails cleaning up all that horrible newsprint and emulsion. Fliss had given her a French manicure before they’d left for Logan Airport. Domestic work would ruin the effect and she wanted her hands perfect for the next day when she’d pay a visit to her arch enemy and supposed friend, Dervla Malone.

‘Me too.’ Danny was gone like a shot, leaving Abby, her mother, grandmother and a still joyous Penny amid the endless paint-splattered newspapers and cans of paint.

‘I’ll help, Mum,’ said Abby loyally.

‘No, love, we’ll eat in the living room,’ Leonie decided, looking dismally at the chaos and deciding that she couldn’t face a proper clean up. She’d bag all the newspaper and that would be it for the moment. ‘Thanks for cooking,’ she added, giving her mother a peck on the cheek.

They ate on their knees in the living room with the TV on while Danny controlled the remote and flicked from channel to channel in between wolfing down chicken and rice.

Green, thought Leonie, looking around the small but cosy room with its apple-green walls and profusion of plants. Green was the colour she should have painted the kitchen. Not horrible midnight blue. If they could cope with blue for a week, she’d re-do it all next weekend. Maybe a paler green…

Mel’s words intruded into her brain, dragging her away from paint.

‘…Fliss is really nice,’ Mel was whispering to her grandmother, who was nodding wisely and trying not to look at her daughter.

Leonie felt her face burn, knowing her mother pitied her and hating it. Claire had loved Ray and had been heartbroken when they’d got a divorce. ‘There aren’t as many fish in the sea when you’re actively looking, Leonie,’ she had said gently at the time. ‘You love each other: can’t you get on with it and stop looking for true love? I’m so afraid you’ll regret this.’

Ten years on, she’d been proved right, Leonie thought bitterly. Ray had had several long-term girlfriends while she, the great believer in true love, had had so few dates that flirting with the postman was her idea of romantic excitement. And he was past sixty and grizzled looking.

She pretended to concentrate on the sitcom Danny was watching and surreptitiously listened to Mel telling her grandmother all about the holiday.

‘Dad’s house is lovely but not big enough for us, Gran, although it had en suites everywhere,’ said the girl who’d been raised in a succession of small homes and now lived in a cottage with one bathroom and a constant queue for it.

‘Fliss wants to convert one bedroom into a dressing room for herself. She has so many clothes!’

Yeah, snarled Leonie to herself. Probably all band-aid skirts and second-skin leather things. She imagined a cheerleader type, shimmering blonde hair and teeth that had never eaten too many sugar-laden Curly Wurlys as a child. Or maybe she was a hard-bitten businesswoman, another lawyer, all power suits like someone from LA Law. Suddenly Leonie stopped, horrified at herself. What was wrong with her, she wondered blindly. She’d wanted to leave Ray, she’d started the whole agonizing process of separation and divorce – so why was she now jealous of this gorgeous Fliss? He was entitled to another life; she’d practically pushed him into it, hadn’t she?

What sort of person was she turning into if she begrudged Ray a little happiness? A bitch, that’s what. A cast-iron bitch.

Abby was eating very little of her dinner. She normally wolfed it down, eating far more quickly than her twin who nibbled daintily. Now, Abby pushed bits of chicken listlessly around her plate. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ Leonie asked in concern, staring across the coffee table to where Abby sat beside her grandmother on the sofa-bed.

Abby smiled brightly. ‘Fine, Mum, fine,’ she replied. ‘I’m just not hungry.’

‘That’d be a first,’ guffawed Danny.

Abby’s eyes glistened but she said nothing.

Leonie gave her an encouraging grin and vowed to kill Danny when she got him alone. He wouldn’t know how to spell ‘thoughtfulness’, never mind know what it meant. Abby silently took the plates out to the kitchen while Mel rummaged around in a very trendy vinyl handbag Leonie had never seen before. More holiday goodies from a doting father.

‘The holiday snaps,’ Mel announced happily, finding a huge wad of photo envelopes. ‘I can’t wait any longer to show them to you, Mum.’

Leonie cranked her jaw into a steely smile and hoped she could fake a bit of pleasure at the sight of the beautiful Fliss.

Leonie, Claire and Mel squashed up together on the two-seater to view the precious pictures. The first batch of photos were typically Mel – ones where people had their heads chopped off or shots of the glamorous shops in Boston where the reflection from the glass meant you couldn’t see anything.

‘I don’t know how they didn’t work out so well,’ Mel said in consternation as they all tried to figure out who was who in one particularly blurry picture.

The next batch was better.

‘I took them,’ Danny said loftily from his position as king of the remote control.

After a couple of photos of the girls and Ray, who looked healthy and tanned, there was Fliss.

‘That was the day we took the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard,’ Mel said wistfully as she passed the photo along to her mother.

Leonie stared in shock. Instead of the young, gorgeous girl she’d imagined, Fliss was at least her own age. But there the similarity ended. As tall as Ray, she was slim with dark, boyishly cut hair and the sort of beautiful unlined face that made Leonie wonder when Revlon would be signing her up for a moisturizer advertisement for stunning women over forty. She wore faded jeans on endless legs and a navy polo shirt tucked in at the waistband. In every picture, she was smiling, whether she was hugging Ray or laughing with Mel and the notoriously camera-shy Abby. Even Danny had been coerced into the photos and had posed, long hair windswept, on the ferry beside Fliss.

‘She’s lovely and she’s very clever, you know. She’s a lawyer in Daddy’s firm,’ Mel prattled on, unaware that Leonie was passing the photos along to Claire with the frozen movements of a robot. ‘She has the most wonderful clothes. Daddy teases her for being voted Best Dressed Lawyer in the firm two years in a row!’

Leonie knew she’d never be voted best dressed anything, not unless outsized silk shirts and all-encompassing voluminous skirts suddenly became haute couture.

‘The most incredible thing is she practically never wears make-up,’ Mel added in awe, knocking the final nail into her mother’s coffin. ‘Mascara and a little gloss, that’s all. Although she gets her nails done. Everyone does in America.’

Leonie thought of her own pancake-plastered face and the long minutes she spent applying her goodies every morning. She wouldn’t leave the house without lipliner, kohl and blusher, never mind just a bit of gloss and mascara.

The pride in her daughter’s voice when she talked about this elegant, glamorous stepmother-to-be made her wonder what Mel really thought of her. Had Mel longed to have a mother just like Fliss, instead of a faux-jolly one who flirted outrageously and laughed loudly at even the most unfunny jokes in order to cover up her insecurities? Painfully, she saw herself through Melanie’s eyes: a big fat woman who tried to hide her bulk with ludicrous flowing clothes and tried to make herself interesting with make-up.

‘Time for Coronation Street,’ announced Claire loudly. ‘You’ll have to show me the rest of your pictures tomorrow, Mel – I can’t miss Coro. Now, get out to the kitchen and make us a pot of tea. I’m an old woman and I need sustenance. Biscuits would be nice too.’

Mel responded to her grandmother’s voice with total obedience. It was Claire’s manner that did it, Leonie thought, grateful for the interruption. If Leonie had asked for tea, Mel would have moaned, ‘Let Abby do it. She’s out there.’

As it was, she collected up her photos and went out to make tea, humming happily to herself.

‘Change the channel, Daniel,’ ordered Claire imperiously.

He did and the strains of the soap’s theme tune filled the room. Claire patted her daughter’s knee in a gesture of solidarity. Leonie knew her mother would never speak about Ray’s new love unless asked for her opinion, but she would be aware just how raw Leonie felt, simply because she knew her so well.

They sat through two hours of television before Claire took her leave. ‘I’ve got four bridesmaids’ dresses to make this week, so I need an early start,’ she said as she collected her keys from the pottery bowl in the hall. The girls appeared from their room to kiss their grandmother goodbye; Danny roared ‘bye’ from the kitchen where he was making a crisp-and-cheese sandwich for himself.

Claire hugged her daughter last of all: a tight, comforting hug. ‘Phone me tomorrow if you need to chat,’ was all she said, a coded message that meant: If you want to sob down the phone about Ray and Fliss.

After she was gone, Leonie pottered about, tidying up the sitting room and starting on the disaster area that was the kitchen. Mel had left the photos on the coffee table in the sitting room and they drew Leonie like a magnet. She wanted to look at them again, to see how beautiful Fliss was, how slim, how perfect.

Like a dieter drawn inexorably to the last KitKat nestling at the back of the cupboard, she couldn’t resist looking. Danny was engrossed in some cop show and wouldn’t notice, she hoped. Quietly, she snatched the photos and brought them into her bedroom. Penny followed her loyally and lay down on the bed with her as she flicked through the envelopes feeling guilty.

Afraid Mel would somehow know which order the photos were in, Leonie carefully went through them so as not to mix them up. There were loads more of Fliss, more than Mel had shown them.

In one, they were obviously all at dinner in some swanky restaurant. Mel was sitting beside Fliss wearing what looked like a very adult sparkly top that Leonie didn’t recognize. Abby looked her normal self in a white shirt, but Ray was utterly transformed. He looked as sparkling as Mel’s top. The next photo was a close-up of Ray and Fliss, and his face was animated in a way Leonie never remembered it being. He looked utterly content. He’d never looked that way with her, Leonie reflected sadly.

She flicked through the rest of the pictures, feeling more dispirited than ever. After a while, she put them back in the envelopes and stuck them in the kitchen in the old wicker basket on the table where she kept the bills and letters. That way, if Mel had been looking for them, Leonie could say she’d put them in the basket for safekeeping.

In the girls’ room, Abby was in bed reading Pride and Prejudice, her favourite book, while Mel was at the dressing table painstakingly cleansing her face with cold cream.

This was a new routine, Leonie realized. Normally, Mel didn’t bother with any cleansing ritual; she blithely imagined that acne was for other, less naturally pretty girls and never so much as wiped off the mascara she wasn’t supposed to wear. Now, she was industriously patting her face with cotton wool pads as if she was a restorer working on a muddy Monet.

Leonie sat down on the edge of Mel’s bed. ‘It’s lovely to have you back,’ she said, wishing she didn’t feel like an intruder in their bedroom after a mere three weeks’ absence.

‘Yeah,’ muttered Mel. ‘Wish we weren’t going back to school though. I hate school. I wish it was January.’

Unusually, Abby wasn’t in a mood to talk. She often followed her mother into bed, sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, stroking Penny’s velvety ears and talking nineteen to the dozen until they realized it was half eleven and gasped at the thought that they had to get up at seven. Tonight, she smiled a suspiciously thin smile at Leonie and went back to her book, obviously not wanting to be drawn into any conversation. Maybe she, too, was missing the perfect Fliss, Leonie thought sadly.

Feeling in the way and miserable, she retreated. She turned off the hall light, locked the back door after Penny had been outside for her ablutions, and warned Danny not to have the TV on too loudly. Then she went to bed.

She rarely switched on her clock radio at night but tonight she felt lonely, so she flicked the switch. A late-night discussion show was on and the subject matter was dating agencies.

‘Where would ya find a fella in the back of beyond without some help?’ demanded one woman, fighting back against a male caller who felt that paying for introductions was the last resort of the hopeless.

‘I bet you look like a complete old cow,’ the male caller interrupted smugly, pointing out that he was married with four kids.

‘And I bet your wife is screwing around on ya, ya old curmudgeon,’ retorted the woman.

The radio host intervened, sensing the argument was going to hit the four-letter-word level. ‘We’ll be back after the news,’ he said smoothly, ‘for an interview with a couple who found true love in the personal ads.’

Leonie was hooked. An hour later, she turned the radio and her light off and lay in bed in darkness. She wasn’t alone after all. There were lots of people who felt lonely and didn’t know where to go to meet new partners, people who felt too old for the twenty-something pub scene and too young for tea dances. The woman on the radio had been like Leonie: a lonely woman who couldn’t imagine falling in love ever again. Two adverts in her local Belfast paper later, she was dating a lovely man. Now they were getting married and were going to be the subject of a documentary about finding love in unusual ways. Why shouldn’t I try that too, Leonie asked herself. If she had a man, she wouldn’t feel depressed about Ray and Fliss, or about how Mel seemed bored to be home, or about how fat she was getting, or anything.

She curled her toes up under the duvet at the thought of her exciting plan: she’d take out a personal ad or join a dating agency. Her mission, should she choose to accept it, was to find a man. That was it, she had to have one. And then she’d feel better about herself. Wouldn’t she?

‘What does GSOH mean?’ Leonie asked, staring at her horoscope in the tiny kitchen during the ten minutes they tried to snatch each day between morning rounds and the beginning of surgery.

Angie, the practice’s only female vet, looked up from the crossword she did effortlessly each morning in seven minutes flat. ‘Good sense of humour,’ she replied in her crisp Australian accent. Clear grey eyes scrutinized her colleague. ‘Why?’

‘Nothing.’

A moment passed.

‘You thinking of personal ads?’ Angie asked.

Leonie flushed and grinned. It was always a mistake to bullshit Angie, who was one of the smartest women she knew. ‘Yes. Desperate, isn’t it? I’m never going to meet a man round here, am I?’

‘Not unless you want to run off with the postman – who does fancy you, in my opinion. He takes a long time delivering the mail when you answer the door.’

‘You’re a cow, Angie. He’s practically at retiring age. And if he’s the best I can do, I may as well give up. It drives me mad, you know. People think if you work in a vet practice the place is a throbbing hotbed of lust with hormones all over the place because we deal with animals. I don’t see why,’ Leonie said plaintively. ‘What’s so sexy about staring at Tim’s face while he operates on some cat’s anal glands?’

‘It’s the old doctors and nurses thing,’ Angie remarked sagely. ‘Romantic novels are full of doctors and nurses having it off in between quadruple bypasses. It’s fictional fantasy, but everyone thinks it must be the same here. It’s the white coat that does it. Women want to be bonked senseless by a guy in a white coat because he’s in charge and they can indulge their “I couldn’t help it, m’lud, he made me do it” fantasy.’

‘Fantasy’s all very well, but the reality is very different,’ Leonie said, giving up on her horoscope because Virgos were going to have a bad day and fight with everyone. ‘Tim’s happily married, Raoul is engaged and, unless we both turn gay, you’re out of bounds. Maybe if Raoul went back to South America, we could hire a new hunky young vet and our eyes would lock over the operating table when we were neutering a ginger tom.’ She sighed at the thought. ‘Then again, he’d want to be deranged to fall for a divorced mother of three, wouldn’t he? An insolvent mother of three, at that. I’m broke again, Angie, my overdraft is in the stratosphere and Mel is whingeing on about new clothes…’