Kitabı oku: «How to Win Back Your Husband»

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Author Bio

Acknowledgement

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Endpages

Copyright

Chapter One

The cake was a triumph. It stood in the centre of the table, surrounded by all the discarded paraphernalia of a full-on party. Half-empty plates of gone-cold sausage rolls, tiny triangular sandwiches with indeterminate fillings, the bread starting to curl at the corners, and several lipstick-stained wine glasses, abandoned because no one could remember whose was whose and it was just so much easier to go and find a clean one.

Nicci had to admit that, despite her misgivings, the cake had turned out to be all that Jilly had promised it would be, and more. Her friend had done a fantastic job. It was a big, square, impressively ornate not-quite-wedding cake, iced in white and wrapped around with a wide band of blood-red ribbon. The scattered roses beautifully arranged in the corners, each one handmade with skill, determination and a generous helping of sugar paste, were surrounded by symbolic – perhaps rather too obviously symbolic – rings of spiky icing thorns. And right in the middle, two little icing people, crafted to the last detail, with even their hair exactly the right colour, sat very slightly apart, not touching at all, their backs turned tellingly towards each other.

It was the perfect cake for the occasion. It was just a shame that the occasion itself was so far from perfect. In fact, if she really thought about it and stopped trying to plaster a phoney smile on her face, Nicci would have to say that it was probably one of the worst occasions of her entire thirty-three-year-old life.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ Jilly shouted, pushing her way towards her through the crowd and trying to make herself heard above the bumping, thumping music that someone, in their attempt to jolly things along, had turned up way too loud.

Nicci nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak.

‘Oh, come on, Nic. Chin up. This day could be a real turning point for you,’ Jilly went on, dropping her voice as the CD moved on to a slower, quieter track. ‘Your new life starts right here, right now. You’ve got your freedom back. You can start letting your hair down again and having some fun. And that has to be celebrated, surely? Well, maybe not celebrated exactly, but certainly marked.’ And then she burst into a fit of Rioja-fuelled giggles and slung her arm wildly about Nicci’s shoulders. ‘Marked! That’s a good one. Get it? Or un-Marked, more like!’

Nicci bunched her fists and closed her eyes, and squeezed all four up as tightly as she could. She didn’t want to be un-Marked, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. This was Mark’s divorce. Not hers. It was not what she had wanted at all, but it was racing along so quickly now, completely out of her hands, as if she was on a runaway train that had somehow set off without its driver, and she had no idea how to stop it. But she was definitely not going to cry. Not if she could help it anyway. Not now, in front of everybody, not when they had all tried so hard to get her into the party mood. Crying could wait until later, after they’d all gone home, when she was alone in bed and gazing at the empty space beside her where Mark had always been.

‘I declare this party a man-free zone!’ Jilly’s voice rose above the hubble-bubble chatter of slightly tipsy bare-shouldered female bodies, all swaying awkwardly together to the romantic and not entirely appropriate made-for-two music that wafted through the semi-darkness from the other side of the room.

‘Not only the party. The world!’ a high-pitched voice she couldn’t quite recognise shouted in reply, and a great cheer went up into the air, along with a champagne cork, an explosion of party popper streamers, and a pair of skimpy leopard-print knickers. God knows who they belonged to!

They were all only trying to do what they thought was the right thing. Nicci knew that. These girls had been her friends for ages, some of them since school. Together through thick and thin, through hockey fields, and painful periods, and silly diets that never worked, doodling their way through double maths, and sobbing in the loos together over boys who, looking back, she knew had absolutely never been worth it. Her friends. She loved them all, and they were all here tonight to support her, to show solidarity, and to try to help her, or that’s what they’d said anyway, every one of them, as if they were reading from the same clichéd script, as they’d turned up on her doorstep, one by one, shivering in their party frocks, with their bottles of cheap plonk and their forced Who needs men anyway? faces.

But they were here to help her do what exactly? Celebrate? Cheer up? Move on? Forget? Any one of the above. Or all of them, probably, with Get Drunk thrown in for good measure. Jilly even made it sound like regaining her freedom was a good thing, but all freedom meant was that from now on she was on her own. Mark was gone. From her house, her bed, her life. And it was looking horribly like there was no going back.

He had taken the first step towards making it a formal ending. It wasn’t just a mistake any more, a bad patch to be got through, one of those it was still possible to recover from. The decree nisi told her that. It had arrived on Wednesday and was now hidden away in the top drawer of the sideboard, having been read and reread and then tucked back inside its long flat envelope, along with the latest exorbitant bill from her solicitor. And just knowing it was there made it hard to think, or care, about pretty much anything else. How had it come to this? That a once loving and passionate marriage had gone so badly wrong, had dwindled away to almost nothing, and neither of them had done a thing to hold on to it?

‘Come on, Nic. Time to cut your cake!’ Jilly weaved her way towards her from the kitchen, brandishing a rather scary-looking carving knife and a teetering pile of assorted plates, stopping as she reached the CD player to turn the volume down. ‘And for you to make a wish.’

‘It’s not my birthday. You’ll be bringing out candles and a box of matches next!’

‘You are quite right. It is not your birthday.’ Jilly hiccupped a little, lifting her hand to cover her mouth, giggled, and had another try. ‘This is a far more momentous and auspicious occasion than a plain old birthday, which is, after all, something all of us have every year, and most of us over the age of thirty are starting to wish we didn’t. So, I think this calls for more than one plain old birthday-style wish, don’t you? I hereby appoint myself as your fairy godmother…’

‘Oh, get on with it!’ someone shouted from the back.

‘Okay, okay. So, as I was saying before I was so – hic – rudely interrupted, I am your fairy godmother, and this is my magic wand…’ Everyone dodged out of the way as Jilly waved the knife around her head three times, wobbled a bit, and almost dropped the plates which rattled ominously against each other in her other hand as she finally lowered them to the table. ‘And I am granting you not one, not two, but three wishes. So, come on, cut the cake and wish away, and then we can get back to the important business of having a good time.’

Nicci took a deep breath. A good time? How was she supposed to have a good time? This wasn’t another of those wild hen parties or nightclub jaunts they’d enjoyed together so often over the years. The ones where they’d all laughed and danced and had too much to drink, without a care in the world. The sort she could stagger away from, knowing her husband would be there outside, waiting to drive her home, as he always was. There to snuggle up to in bed afterwards, to hold her head if she was a teeny bit sick, and then bring her a cup of tea and a couple of aspirins in the morning. No, this was about as far from one of those fun-filled parties as she could possibly imagine.

And as she looked around the room, it struck her that this was the first and only party she had ever held in this house where Mark hadn’t been right here by her side. So, okay, he would probably have been muttering about the cost of the food or worrying that the noise might be upsetting the neighbours, but he would have been here. Quietly taking care of things, and taking care of her. And now he wasn’t, and it was looking like he might never be again.

There was no reliable, dependable Mark to lean on this time. Had she really called him boring? Actually said it to his face? Honestly believed for a second that things might be better without him? Or that someone more exciting, less set in their ways, someone with more get-up-and-go, could somehow take his place? It was only now that he had actually got up and gone, and her whole life was suddenly about to become so frighteningly different, that she knew just how wrong she had been. It wasn’t someone else she needed. It was him. Mark.

Life had been exciting once. When they were younger, when they had done so many things together, before all the domestic routine and the deadly dull weight of adult responsibility had fallen on their shoulders. Life had been fun. Because they had made it fun. And there was no reason at all – apart from the one small but all-too obvious fact that he had left her – that they couldn’t have that again. If they made the effort. If they really tried. All she had to do was convince him of that. All she had to do? Who was she kidding? If only it was that easy…

Nicci stared at the floor for a moment, gulping back the lump that had formed in her throat. Someone had dropped a tissue under the table, and suddenly she could picture Mark at that hilarious Halloween party where they’d first met, all trussed up in a mummy costume he’d cobbled together from a packet of toilet rolls that kept unravelling in a long white tissuey mess all over the carpet. And her in a witch’s dress her mum had made for her on the old Singer sewing machine years earlier and she could only just still squeeze into. He’d found it hilarious when the side seam had burst open to reveal the sort of greying bra she really shouldn’t have been seen dead in.

She’d gone home and chucked out half the contents of her undies drawer after that, promising herself he would never see her in anything so hideous ever again, and he never had. Oh, and they’d had their first dance together that night too, with candles flickering, and a trail of cobwebs dangling from the ceiling and catching in their hair. And their first ever kiss. It had tasted of pumpkin and…

Nicci snapped her head back up again and stared at the knife Jilly had pushed into her hand. What? Where? Oh, of course. Not a pumpkin. A cake. She tried to focus on the present, reluctantly shaking the memories away. Just cut the cake. Get it over with. The sooner the better.

She could see phones being pulled out of bags, her friends lining up their camera screens and pointing them at her, ready to capture the moment for ever, and no doubt for Facebook too, as they formed themselves in a circle around her.

‘Happy divorce day to you…’ It was Jilly who started the singing, but within a millisecond everyone else was joining in. ‘Happy divorce day to you. Happy divorce day, dear Nicci. Happy divorce day to you!’

Oh, God. This was awful. Just too bloody awful. She held the knife with two hands now, up high, like an executioner in the seconds before he brought the axe crashing down on some poor soul’s neck. Giving it her full concentration, and pretty sure she was the only sober person left in the room, she lowered the tip of the blade to the icing, in just the right place, and felt the sugary softness start to give beneath the pressure as she slid the point of the blade down between the two sad little people on the top.

Okay, so they were only made of icing, and their faces didn’t really look quite right, but she knew exactly who they were meant to represent. Mark and Nicci. A pair, made to be together and stay together, but now about to be forced apart. A wave of guilt swept over her as she realised that she was the one holding the knife. Her marriage was as good as over, and it was all her fault.

To wild cheers and a volley of camera clicks all round, she made herself do it. Made herself keep on cutting, almost sawing, her way through the layers of icing and marzipan and sponge and jam, until the cake eased itself apart in a cascade of crumbs, with one little person left hanging, bottom first, over the precipice on each side.

There! It was done. Everything carefully divided into two. Right down the middle. Just like her marriage. All very equal, all very fair, all very civilised. Your half, and my half. That’s how they had done it. Books and music, chairs, towels, scissors, pots and pans. A sofa for me, a bed for you. They’d even tossed a coin for the lawnmower. Most of Mark’s share hadn’t actually gone yet, but it was earmarked, almost as if it had little post-it notes stuck to it, just waiting for the day he had his own permanent place and came to claim it. Yours and mine. His and hers. There was no ours any more. Just a wardrobe half empty, and a closed joint account, and a For Sale sign nailed inexpertly to its wooden post in the front garden.

‘Wishes!’ Jilly yelled, hushing everyone with a frantic flapping of her hands. ‘Come on, Nicci. Don’t forget your wishes.’

‘Not out loud, though,’ someone else added. ‘Or they don’t come true. Everyone knows that.’

And, with a legitimate reason to close her eyes and drop the smile at last, Nicci stood silently and still, let her thoughts run silently through her head, and wished.

Wish One: I know they mean well, but I wish they would all just take their lumps of cake, grab their coats, go home right now, and leave me alone. They won’t, of course, and I know damned well that I will have to show willing and go along with this charade, and have a few drinks, or a lot of drinks, and party for hours yet, probably till I drop. Which may not be a bad thing, actually. There’s a lot to be said for sleep, especially the dreamless kind.

Wish Two: Even though I know it can never come true, I wish that I could somehow turn back the clock. Back to when it all started to go wrong, so I could make sure that it didn’t. Or at least to the night of that awful school reunion, so I could do things differently. Not have that stupid fight before I left the house, not drink too much when I got there, or better still not go there at all. And certainly not have to set eyes on Jason bloody Brown. Then, or ever again.

Wish Three: This is an easy one, and the one I want to happen more than anything. It’s that Mark, my gorgeous, sexy, funny, and very nearly ex-husband, will one day find a way to forgive me. And that, wherever he is and whatever he does, he will be happy. It’s what he deserves. I just wish… (Oh, hang on. Is that Wish Four? Or Five, even? Oh, what the hell! No one can hear me). I wish, I wish, I wish, with every inch of my stupid broken heart, that he could be happy with me.

Chapter Two

Mark Ross sat on one of the high stools at the bar in The Red Lion, nursing an almost-finished pint of bitter that had been in his hand so long it was warm, and swinging his foot idly against the wood panelling. There was some sort of band, a girl singer in a white cowboy hat, and two half-hearted guitarists, playing on the little wooden stage in the far corner, which gave him the perfect excuse not to have to speak. What was there left to say anyway?

‘Want another?’ his mate Paul mouthed at him, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet, and Mark nodded. There was nothing to go home for, so why not? Home! That was a joke. The small bedsit he’d rented on a short-term lease, while he waited for the estate agents to do their bit and his share of the house sale money to come through, could never really be called home. It was more like a featureless box, graced with all the basics any bloke on his own was going to need. A bed, a small dining table and chairs, a TV he’d brought with him, two lumpy armchairs and an ancient sideboard, a fridge and a microwave. And lots of boxes stuffed full of many, but by no means all, of his worldly goods, still packaged up and likely to stay that way for a while longer yet.

That was it really. It was somewhere to store his stuff, rustle up some sort of meal for one when he got sick of eating takeaways, and a place to lay his head down at night. Nothing more. So, why not have another pint? In fact, now that he was here, he might as well stay and have several.

‘We’re taking a short break now. See you again later!’ the singer announced chirpily, swinging her dyed blonde hair from side to side and flashing a cleavage that would make Dolly Parton envious as she reached for her bottle of water from the floor. There was a clattering through the mike as stools scraped back and the guitars were laid down, and everyone in the audience made a general dash for either the toilets or the bar while they had the chance.

‘Shall we move over to a table?’ Paul handed Mark his new pint and Mark quickly drained what was left of the old one. ‘Get away from the rush.’

Mark stood and followed his mate across the pub to an empty table by the window. It was impossible to see the stage properly from this angle, which was probably why nobody else had nabbed it, but that didn’t bother him. It was all country and western stuff, not really his scene, and he dreaded the almost inevitable rendition of D.I.V.O.R.C.E that was bound to come up in the second half.

‘So, it’s all over then, is it? No going back?’ Paul took a swig from his drink and started playing with the beer mat, flipping it up from the edge of the table with the back of his hand and trying to catch it before it fell. It was obvious that talking about emotional stuff didn’t come easily. Mark could almost feel the thumping great feet of the elephant in the room.

‘Looks that way. I got the decree thingy a couple of days back, so less than six weeks to go and it can be made final. Just got the house to sell and then I can start putting my life back together.’

‘Jeez, I’m sorry, mate. Can’t be easy after – what is it now? Seven years, is it? Eight? God, it only seems like yesterday we were all dressed up in those penguin suits and trying to get the flowers to stick in our buttonholes. Mine fell out halfway up the aisle, and Nic’s mum caught it in that enormous great handbag of hers that was lying open on the floor, remember? Like a blooming Venus fly trap, that thing. What a laugh! And that joke I told in my best man’s speech. The one about the sick cow and the two horny bulls. Remember that one? Had everyone wetting themselves!’

‘I’d rather not talk about it, really. Any of it. The wedding. Nicci. Her mother. It’s still a bit raw, you know?’

‘Fair enough. Nice girl though, your Nicci. Quite fancied her myself! Not that I would have…you know. Not what mates do, is it? But I don’t suppose you really want to hear about that either, do you?’

‘No. I don’t.’

They sat in silence for a while, Paul none too subtly eyeing up a couple of girls in short skirts who had just wandered in and were trying to jostle their way into a narrow gap at the crowded bar.

‘Mmm, nice arse,’ he muttered, not quite to himself. ‘I bagsy the blonde.’

‘Don’t even think about it, mate. A quiet drink, you said. We are not here to pull.’

‘Speak for yourself! Anyway, it would do you good to get back in the saddle. You might be a bit out of practice after all this time, but you never forget, you know. It’s just like riding a bike, if you’ll excuse the expression. Not that you’ll get far with that ring still on your finger.’

‘Habit, that’s all.’

‘Right. But, as I was saying, when I’ve broken up with a girl, I always find that there’s no better cure than a bit more of the same. Hair of the dog, works every time, if you know what I mean.’

Mark couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Yeah, right. Not that you’ve ever had to properly break up with anyone, because you’ve never actually had a relationship that’s lasted more than a couple of months! And can I remind you that I’m not just breaking up with some girl? Nicci’s my wife, my supposed to be forever girl. Or she was, anyway.’ He took a slug of beer and gave Paul a gentle nudge with his elbow. ‘Oh, go on, get over there and fill your boots if you must, but leave me out of it, okay? I’m not ready for any of that stuff. Not yet. And the way I’m feeling right now, not ever.’

‘No, you’re all right. I’ll leave it. Male solidarity, and all that. I’ll stop here with you. I figure your need is greater than mine. And they came in as a pair, so you can bet they won’t want to be separated. And even I, Casanova that I am, don’t have enough charm to take on the two of them by myself. And, besides, the next round is on you, so I can’t miss that. Just waiting to see those moths come flying out when you open up your wallet!’

‘Ha! The amount of money I’ve had to pay out lately, I’d be surprised if they can find anything left in there to feed off. What with the solicitors, and the deposit for the flat, and the rent. And I’m still having to cough up for half the bills at the house, not to mention the mortgage payments. It’s not where I’d imagined all our savings ending up. I’ll be glad when the whole sorry business is over, I can tell you.’

‘And you were always so sure exactly where you were heading. Your famous ten-year plan, remember? Fancy church wedding at twenty-five. A small house to get you started, then a move up to something bigger. With a real gardener’s garden, you said, whatever that meant. Two cars. And your first kid at thirty-five. A boy first, then maybe a girl later. As if you could pick and choose! I can still remember the day you drew it all out on the back of that soggy beer mat the night of your stag do. Before you got pissed, obviously. Like some kind of spider diagram, it was, your whole adult life sewn up before it had hardly started. Mr Organised!

‘I laughed about it then. We all did, but you nearly achieved it, didn’t you? Okay, so you didn’t actually get the bigger house but, let’s be honest, that was a bit ambitious on a bank clerk’s wages, and the one you’ve got – sorry, had – is still a darn sight better than the poky place I like to call home. It just seems a shame, that’s all I’m saying. You and Nic. A waste, you know…that you didn’t make it all the way to the two point four kids and the happy ever after. Don’t you think there might still be a chance…’

‘No, mate. Let’s not go there, okay? It’s over. The plan’s not worth the paper it was written on. Or the cardboard, to be more accurate. I may as well have ripped it up right from the start and saved myself all the hassle. And the cash. End of. It didn’t work out, but I’m okay about it. Over it. Really. Or I will be. Just give me time, that’s all.’

And then, to the sound of raucous clapping, mainly from their own family and friends hogging the front row, the band came back on and, even though he couldn’t see much, Mark was able to turn his chair in their direction, which meant turning his back on Paul for a while, and he let his thoughts take over.

End of? Was it really? He couldn’t forgive Nicci. Of course he couldn’t. And he couldn’t contemplate taking her back. What bloke could? But he did love her. Always had. Whatever she had done, and whatever he may have said to the solicitors and to his worried parents and to anyone else who asked, he wasn’t over her, and he definitely wasn’t okay.

***

When Nicci woke up it was already ten o’clock and her head was banging. What time had they all gone home last night? She couldn’t remember. She wasn’t even sure if they actually had all gone home, so it was with some trepidation that she hauled herself out of bed, checked that she was decent – big T-shirt and a pair of pants, so that was okay – and peered into the guest bedroom. She didn’t like to think of it as Mark’s bedroom, even though it was where he’d slept for those horrible final nights before he’d moved out. If only he was still here. Better in a separate bedroom than not in the house at all. At least they could have talked, tried to work through it, had some sort of chance…

But this morning she was pleased to find both the room, and the bed, empty of everything but the usual clutter. The third bedroom, the one she had always secretly thought of as the nursery, was currently full to the rafters with boxes containing a lot of the odds and ends that Mark wanted to take with him but didn’t yet have anywhere to put. God help anyone who’d decided to crash down in there! She took a cursory peep inside, just in case, but it was all she could do to ease the door open. Nobody there.

Kicking a few strands of silly string and a lone balloon out of the way on the landing, she wandered down the stairs, not at all sure what, or who, she might find when she got to the bottom. She yawned so hard she felt she just might dislocate her jaw.

In the living room, the curtains were still closed, which was probably a good thing as she wasn’t sure her bleary eyes were quite ready for the glare of sunlight just yet. ‘Yuk!’ Her bare foot sunk down into something decidedly squishy. She lifted it and bent down to take a closer look at the mess between her toes. Cake!

‘Sssh! Some of us are trying to sleep here.’ The long shadowy body of Jilly slowly uncurled itself from the sofa. ‘What time is it anyway?’ she mumbled, groggily, rubbing her eyes. ‘I have to be at work by nine. Big order to finish.’

‘Well, you can forget that. You’re an hour late already. Should’ve set the alarm on your phone.’

‘Oh, shit. I thought I had. An hour late? Really?’ She jumped up, knocking a pile of cushions and a stray glass flying across the carpet. ‘Look, Nic, you don’t mind if I grab the bathroom first, do you? I brought a bag with me, in case I didn’t make it home, and it has to be somewhere around here, with work clothes and my toothbrush and stuff. I can be in and out in five minutes, I promise.’

‘That’s fine. Just let me pop in there for a wee, then you go ahead. There’s nowhere I have to be. It is Saturday after all. In fact, I think I might go straight back to bed.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s all right for you, I’m sure, but Saturday happens to be a working day for some of us. Me, at least. Oh, God, I knew we shouldn’t have had the party on a Friday.’

Nicci walked back up the stairs to the bathroom, with Jilly hot on her heels, and sat down on the loo, leaving the door open a crack so they could carry on talking. ‘If it had been up to me, we wouldn’t have had a party at all.’

‘Spoilsport!’ Jilly plonked her bottom down on the top step. ‘Don’t you want to put it all behind you, have a bit of fun? That was what last night was meant to be about, you know. You, and your future.’

‘I know, I know. Just don’t rush me, okay?’ Nicci flushed the loo and peered at herself in the mirror as she splashed a handful of water over her face. What a sight! Her brown hair hung in straggly knots and her roots needed doing, her eyes were distinctly bloodshot, and there were big streaky blobs of black around each one, where she hadn’t bothered taking off her mascara before falling into bed.

At least Mark wasn’t here to see her looking such a fright. Not that she was sure he would have noticed. He seemed to have stopped noticing a lot lately. She’d even come home with a streak of green paint across one ear once and he hadn’t said a word. The inevitable familiarity setting in after living with someone for so long, she supposed. Maybe not just so long but too long, she’d thought, as she’d stormed off to the reunion that fateful evening and drunkenly fallen into the waiting arms of Jason Brown.

Oh my God! Jason Brown, a man she hadn’t seen for years and would probably never see again. What on earth had she been thinking? The truth was that she hadn’t been thinking at all. Well, not clearly. Somehow she’d left her sensible head at home that night. It was where sensible seemed to belong. With Mark, who probably had the word Sensible stamped all the way through him like a stick of Blackpool rock. And, talking of rock, yes, she’d rocked the boat. No denying that, but maybe it had needed rocking. Just not quite so hard.

And if she hadn’t, they might still be together now, mightn’t they? She and Mark. The so-called perfect couple. That’s what everyone else seemed to think. But the cracks had already been there, spreading slowly through their lives, and their marriage, long before Jason Brown came along to open them up as wide as the Grand Canyon. Mark must have known that as well as she did, deep down. It was just that neither of them had talked about it. They’d both just let life drift along, and themselves drift slowly apart, seemingly going nowhere, or not together anyway.

As she kept telling herself, she may have been the one to push their marriage over the cliff but, if things had been right, they wouldn’t have been so dangerously close to the edge in the first place, would they? So, who knows? Maybe it would all have been over sooner or later anyway. Not that there was any comfort in that, and if she was trying to get rid of her own feelings of guilt it really wasn’t working.

‘Come on, Nic. Get a move on. I haven’t got all day!’ Jilly’s voice cut into her thoughts as she elbowed her out of the way and started running the taps in the bath. ‘Got any nice smellies? I need something to get rid of the whiff of stale wine. I swear someone must have tipped a whole bottle over me, ’cos I’m sure I didn’t drink that much. According to the doctors at the fertility clinic, I’m not really supposed to be drinking at all. You know, getting my body ready for whenever we go for our next try, but we were celebrating, weren’t we?’ Jilly lifted an arm and buried her nose into the crease. ‘Even so, I didn’t drink enough to smell this bad. Even my armpits reek!’

Nicci pulled a face. She probably didn’t smell too good herself. ‘Look on the windowsill. I think there’s some bubble bath left. The blue one, supposed to be for stress relief or some such nonsense. Don’t touch the lime and coconut bath bomb though. It’s my last one, from Christmas, and I’m saving it.’

‘What for?’ Jilly laughed, picking it up anyway and crinkling its cellophane wrapping. ‘Next Christmas? That’ll be here soon enough, and then you’ll probably get given another lot.’

‘I doubt it. So just keep your mucky paws off it, all right? And don’t use all the hot water.’

‘Yes, ma’am!’ Jilly saluted, peeling off her crumpled dress as she shoved Nicci outside and closed the door behind her.

Nicci made her way around the house, opening curtains and picking up the worst of the rubbish from the living room floor. She was pleased to find there were no more unexpected guests lurking in armchairs or sleeping it off under the table, although under the table turned out to be not a very pretty sight, having caught the worst of the fallout from the mangled cake. It looked like she’d be spending the best part of the day with a hoover, a wet cloth and a pile of bin bags.

But all that could wait, at least until Jilly had gone. Breakfast and coffee first. She filled the coffee machine and plugged it in, and pulled out two mugs from a cupboard. But when she opened the fridge door, there was no milk. And no eggs. All the bread had been used up making last night’s sandwiches, so no toast either. And some kind soul had finished off the orange juice with bits in, and put the empty carton back in the fridge as if hoping she might not notice.

She made the coffees, automatically adding two heaped spoons of sugar into one before remembering that it was meant to be for Jilly and not for Mark, and having to pour the whole mugful away again. She made Jilly another and left it on the worktop. If she was much longer in the bath, it would probably go cold before she got to drink it. Tough. Serve her right for not getting up and out sooner.

Nicci’s stomach growled ominously, in a Feed me right this minute kind of a way. She realised now just how little she had eaten at the party. There were always the leftovers, she supposed, as she carried her mug through and surveyed what was still out on the table. Needs must, and all that. She picked up a sandwich. The filling, whatever it had once been, seemed to have been picked out of it, and the bread that was left was so hard it could break teeth! Maybe not.

One thing there was still plenty of, of course, was the cake. By the time it had been cut last night nobody had been particularly interested in eating it. It would seem it had been viewed more as a symbol of the occasion than a genuine foodstuff. But it would be a shame to let it go to waste, after all Jilly’s hard work.

She popped a clump of it in her mouth and chewed. Not bad, actually. The jam was a bit sweet for this time of the morning, when a bacon and egg butty would have been her meal of choice, but it was pretty good just the same. The little icing bride and groom sat together now on the edge of the cake board, where someone must have helpfully repositioned them, the girl staring out towards the kitchen, the boy tipped over sideways and resting on his head.

She picked him up and wiped the crumbs off him before turning him the right way up again and setting the two of them face-to-face. They may only be edible figures, but she didn’t like to see them the way they had been last night, backs turned towards each other. She thought maybe, when the cake itself was all gone, she might hang on to them. Silly, obviously, wanting souvenirs, but there was something about them, and about who they were supposed to be, that meant she couldn’t just throw them away.

She could hear the bath water gurgling noisily down the drain as Jilly flung open the bathroom door with a loud bang and dripped her way hurriedly down the stairs. She had wrapped one of Nicci’s fluffy pink towels around her, or tried to, as there was barely enough fabric to reach around and meet in the middle, let alone conceal what was left of her modesty. Had she had any, that was.

‘Got a bigger towel, Nic? And a hairdryer? God only knows what Sheila is going to say when I roll up late. I can’t risk looking a mess as well. I hope that wine smell’s worn off. She won’t want me anywhere near the customers otherwise.’

‘Jilly, calm down. You’ll be fine. And it’s only a glorified cake shop. Not the Ritz!’

‘Huh! Don’t you let Sheila hear you say that.’ She lifted her voice an octave and did the best impression of her posh boss as she could manage. ‘Cake shop? Certainly not. Gibson’s, I will have you know, is the finest patisserie this side of gay Paree!’

‘Oh, you do make me laugh! You sound just like her.’

‘Hairdryer, Nic?’

‘Oh, yeah, sorry. It’s by our bed. I mean my bed. And towels are in the airing cupboard on the landing. Help yourself. Oh, and there’s no milk left, so the coffee’s black, if that’s all right with you?’

‘I guess it’ll have to be. Beggars can’t be choosers.’ Jilly grabbed her coffee with one hand, hanging on tightly to the towel with the other, and sped back up to the bedroom, her voice trailing behind her. ‘Which brings me to Plan B…’

‘And what might that be exactly?’ Nicci would have followed her but she couldn’t quite find the energy.

‘The next phase of the Save Nicci Ross campaign, of course,’ Jilly shouted, from somewhere above her head.

‘Jilly, I don’t want to be saved. Can’t we just…’

‘Can’t stop. No time to explain right now.’ Already the sound of the hairdryer whirring away at top speed was drowning out any hope of continuing the conversation. ‘Meet me for a drink later at Albie’s, and all will be revealed.’