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‘Coriander. Lots of it. Ignore the recipe and put loads in. If you buy too much you can always freeze it.’
‘Thanks, darling. It’s just I left the list at home.’
‘No problem.’
‘Listen, must go. This phone’s giving me a headache. I’ll call you soon. We haven’t had a proper chat in ages.’
‘OK. Speak to you later.’
‘Bye.’
Lizzie shouldn’t be allowed to cook when she was feeling hungry. While she might not be about to admit it, this mountain of pasta was comfort food. Clare knew her cravings for spaghetti, shepherd’s pie and lasagne all came on days when Lizzie was feeling vulnerable. It was as if the food of her youth represented a surrender of her adulthood. When things got really bad, butterscotch and chocolate Angel Delight would follow for dessert.
Clare tactfully kept the conversation away from parties and instead talked weekend turnover tactics. Union Jack’s was a restaurant that thrived on word of mouth. Its modern British cuisine was raved about by its regulars, but they were still a long way off becoming a household name or selling a tie-in cookbook. A few Evening Standard recommendations had helped to put it on the map, and occasional visits by celebrity local residents meant that other Londoners were happier to go out of their way just on the off-chance that they might eat alongside someone they had seen on TV or an album cover, but the challenge was to fill the place at weekends when, Clare imagined, most of their patrons visited friends in the country, jetted off for glamorous weekends or entertained in their interior designed, feng-shuied living spaces in fashionable West London.
They were strategising hard when the doorbell rang. Clare was mid-mouthful, so Lizzie drew the short straw. At 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday it could only be the tea towel and oven glove salesman, or possibly the Putney branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Lizzie whooped as she looked at the screen integral to their state-of-the-art intercom—essential security kit for two women living on their own and a sound investment made after being taken in by the persuasive sales patter of a not unattractive salesman at the Ideal Home Exhibition. This way they could hide from persistent exes, uninvited relatives and the aforementioned tea towel sellers without passing up any opportunities to flirt with cute delivery men or missing out on bona fide guests.
The cause of Lizzie’s excitement was a man on the doorstep. A least she thought she could see someone behind the huge bow and…what was it? Frustratingly, even with her eyeball almost resting on the screen, she couldn’t quite see. She took the stairs two at a time, arriving back in record time clutching a large wicker basket laden with all things wicked. Moist chocolate brownies, assorted mini-muffins and huge soft cookies were piled high on gingham napkins. Heart racing—along, Lizzie hoped, with her metabolic rate—she inhaled a couple of mouth-watering samples before tearing off the accompanying card.
‘Well…?’ Clare joined her on the sofa, licking her fingers as she tucked in. She couldn’t believe that Lizzie hadn’t read the card downstairs. This demonstration of will-power was very out of character. ‘What does it say?’ Clare leant up against her shoulder so that she could read the message simultaneously. Lizzie was being painfully slow and insisting on opening the envelope carefully so as not to tear it.
All the card said was ‘Call me,’ followed by two phone numbers. An 0207 number and a line of digits with more eights and sevens in it than were healthy. It looked long and confusing enough to be a mobile number.
Lizzie was beaming, and reprimanded herself silently for having doubted him earlier. How long should she wait before she called? As if she could read her mind, Clare decided to ask her outright.
‘So when are you going to call?’
Clare was scraping their now abandoned lunch into the bin. They had both already eaten more than enough to exceed their total recommended calorie intake until tomorrow lunchtime.
‘Mmm. In an hour or so?’ Lizzie feigned nonchalance. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with straight away, but she knew that Clare saw every man as a recipe for disaster. Lizzie, on the other hand, couldn’t help being an eternal optimist. One day she hoped to be rewarded for her dedication to an often disappointing cause.
‘So keen. You are, of course, assuming that they’re from Matt.’
‘Well, when Mum wants me to call she tends to use the phone rather than sending an edible carrier pigeon.’
‘Maybe they’re from Drive-Time Danny.’
Lizzie was hit by an instant wave of nausea totally unrelated to the amount of sugar she had just ingested, and for a few seconds her perfect moment evaporated. But Danny probably didn’t think he had to send anything to anyone—except perhaps a signed photo of himself. They had to be from Matt. Had to be.
Clare hadn’t meant to sound negative. And she had to admit sending cookies, muffins and brownies was a sweet—and sure-fire—way to Lizzie’s duvet.
‘I suppose there’s no harm in giving him a call this afternoon…’ Clare knew that Lizzie would do whatever she wanted to, but by giving Lizzie her endorsement she hoped she would be seen in a less negative, spoil-sporty light. She couldn’t help it if she had been let down one time too many. ‘Why don’t I make us a cup of coffee and then you can ring him? Or, if you’d rather wait until I go to work, I’ll be out of here by four-thirty.’
Lizzie had drained her mug long before Clare, and now had cold feet. Clare had been teaching her to live life without her heart on her sleeve and Lizzie admired her style. She was now inclined to leave it until Monday, but then she might have missed the moment altogether, and she couldn’t honestly see herself doing any work until she had got this out of the way. Besides, it was what she told her readers all the time. Be yourself and don’t play relationship games, because unless both parties know the rules you’ll lose every time.
Right. Time for her to take some of her own advice. She picked up their walkabout phone, dialling and wandering simultaneously, and tried the 0207 number first. It went straight to answer-phone. The voice on the message didn’t really sound like the one she remembered from last night, but it didn’t sound like Danny either. She left her name and number before hanging up, just in case it wasn’t his voicemail at all.
As she dialled the mobile number she prayed that the scribe at Muffin HQ wasn’t dyslexic or innumerate. All her nerves needed now was for this to be a wrong number. With each ring her heart edged a little bit closer to her mouth, until finally the phone rang out, irritatingly diverting to voicemail.
‘Hi, you’ve got through to Matt Baker…’
Lizzie could have jumped for joy at the relief that the delivery had definitely been from the right man.
‘…I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now, but please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’
Lizzie hung up and held the phone to her chest. What should she say? After a few moments of pacing she decided less was more and rang back, obediently leaving her name and number but no message. Now she would have to make sure that her phone was free to ring by not using it.
When it rang five minutes later both Lizzie and Clare nearly fell off the sofa. After a great deal of arm-waving on Lizzie’s part Clare answered it. Lizzie knew her behaviour was pure fifteen-year-old. Of course it wouldn’t be Matt. It was far too soon.
‘Annie. Hi. Yes, thanks…’
Her mother. Again.
‘I’ll just get her for you… Don’t keep her too long…’ Clare smiled mischievously ‘…only she’s waiting for an important call. I know… I know…’
What did she know?
OK. Yes, I’ll tell her. Fine. Thanks. Hope to see you soon. Right. Bye for now.’
Whose mother was she anyway?
‘She says you can call her later. Apparently you arranged to have a chat?’
Lizzie rolled her eyes. ‘Hardly. I just said we’d speak later. You know—Some Time Later, not Within Three Hours.’ Her mother still didn’t understand that some adult children didn’t speak to their parents several times a week, a day or an afternoon. But Lizzie knew she got lonely on her own, especially at weekends.
Clare had barely put the phone down on the sofa next to her before it rang again.
‘Oh, well, maybe she’s forgotten something…’ Clare chucked the receiver, still ringing, at her flatmate. ‘She’s your mother…and I’ve got to get ready.’
‘Yup?’
‘Lizzie?’
Damn… She should have known. The one time today she hadn’t answered the phone with her ‘heylo’ hair-flick and it was him. Bloody typical.
‘Matt! Hi! Thanks so much for my food parcel. It’s wonderful.’
Too effusive? But Lizzie had never really been able to do ‘aloof’, and she wasn’t about to start now. She leapt to her feet, instinctively wandering out of earshot to her bedroom.
Clare turned the radio down and occupied herself with silent chores, listening out for any nuggets of information that might waft down the stairs. She knew she shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but she and Lizzie didn’t do the secrets thing and hearing it first hand would only save time later. As Clare strained to hear she was only managing to pick up the odd word, so she crept a bit closer to the stairwell which brought her instant rewards.
‘…oh, right… Are you feeling better…? Great… I know…I know. There seems to be a lot of it about.’
A lot of what? Clare wondered to herself. Syphilis? Flu? Office-party-related shagging? Now Lizzie was laughing. Now more talking. Clare paid closer attention.
‘Work in the morning…on a Sunday? Poor you. Mmm…yes…I see what you mean. Mind you, I’ve only got a hot date with my post bag…wild, crazy thing that I am.’
Clare balked. Sympathy with a hint of empathy. Lizzie was spiralling into the romantic quagmire as usual. She never was quite as hard to get as you would think from reading her column.
‘Lunch tomorrow? OK… Yup… Better than OK—great. Where shall we meet? …don’t mind…I eat everything…usually all at the same time…’ Lizzie laughed out loud again.
Clare smiled at Lizzie’s ‘joke’. Matt might think she was being witty and spontaneous, but if he stuck around for long enough he would discover that it was one of Lizzie’s standard lines.
‘OK. Perfect. See you at 1:00 p.m. Bye.’
Clare returned to the kitchen as quickly as she could without actually running, and faded the radio up while clattering pans together in the sink. She busied herself with scrubbing the Bolognese pan and waited for Lizzie to report back.
Lizzie rang off and would have flick-flacked to her study had she ever got higher than the shoulder-stand BAGA level of gymnastics. Instead she whistled her way there, and happily immersed herself in work.
Clare was happy for her. Just as long as Matt wasn’t going to let her down. The trouble was, despite the hundreds of letters she received each week alerting her to the contrary, Lizzie did have a tendency to look for the best in people. With a failed marriage behind her, Clare was more cynical. When your perfect husband is unfaithful six months after he says ‘I do’ it affects your perspective. Her rose-coloured spectacles definitely had a darker tint than most.
chapter 4
Thump… Thump… Thump…
Her pulse was currently reverberating around the inside of her cranium in Surround Sound. Her joints were aching and her eyeballs were hot and dry in their sockets. It wasn’t a hangover. That meant only one thing…but she couldn’t be ill. In thirteen years of schooling she’d only been absent for a handful of days, postponing any ailments for the lengthy holidays when she wouldn’t be missing out or overtaken by any of her classmates. She knew she was fiercely competitive—whether it was careers, gym attendance or just a Christmas game of Monopoly. It was in her DNA. As she struggled to the bathroom in an attempt to begin her daily routine and kickstart herself into action Rachel knew that today she would be forced to admit that she was human. It was a grand admission.
At least it was a Saturday. Work could wait twenty-four hours. They wouldn’t have official confirmation until Monday, but she was sure they’d won the account. Rachel smiled into the mirrored cabinet above the washbasin as she imagined telling the partners. She’d be walking on air.
It now appeared that all that air was in her eyelids; she’d never seen them looking quite so puffy. A quick prod of her neck and underarm area confirmed that her glands were up, and after sticking out her tongue and making the traditional self-diagnostic ‘aaaaah’ noise she searched the shelves for suitable drugs. Adding a couple of soluble aspirin to a glass of tepid basin tap water, she weakly swooshed the water round in the hope that the resultant whirlpool effect would speed up the fizzing process. It might only be 9:30 a.m. but the day already felt as if it was slipping away.
Rachel stared into the mirror, pawing in disbelief at the pallor which must have descended in the dead of night—along with the contrasting purple shadows which stretched under her eyes and shaded the sides of her nose. As she downed the grey aspirin suspension she grimaced at the nostalgic familiarity of the bitter bitty aftertaste. From the sad day that she had outgrown Calpol, aspirin had always been administered by her mother at the first hint of a temperature. Rachel shuffled back to bed and, teeth now chattering, crawled under the duvet, her breathing shallow to conserve heat.
She hadn’t had a sick day for at least a year, and had been working six-day weeks for almost as long. She simply didn’t do colds and minor afflictions. At least she was alone, free to doze in front of the television without interruptions. Her husband had left earlier, to tidy some things up in his office, and she knew where to find him—not that she did the needy wife thing very often. It wasn’t her style—although she did wonder whether he might prefer it if she was a little bit ditsy and less competent occasionally. This was the downside to a day in bed: too much time to think—and there was plenty in her personal life that merited attention. But she’d managed to dodge her problems for months, and she certainly didn’t want to face up to them when she was feeling as shitty as this.
After channel-surfing for over an hour, Rachel knew she must be seriously ill. Twenty minutes of morning television was usually enough to persuade even the most apathetic couch potato to rise from the cushions and do something with their life other than fantasise about remodelling their neighbour’s garden. Exhausted, she finally succumbed to unconsciousness, and when she next opened her eyes her body was on fire. Feverish strands of hair stuck to her scalp and her cheeks almost stung with the intensity.
Momentarily disorientated, she soon noticed a note on the floor. She craned her neck in search of the alarm clock: 14:07. Which day and which year she couldn’t be sure. Her brain was definitely lagging behind at the moment.
Rach
Didn’t want to wake you.
Thought these might help while away the afternoon. You might as well celebrate your temperature with an overdose of trash, fashion and recipes!
Off to Banbury to brainstorm with a client. Back later. You can get me on the mobile if you need me.
Beside the bed there was now a pile of magazines and a bottle of his cure-all—Lucozade. In all the years they’d been together she’d never once professed to like it, but she knew it was the thought that counted. Ironically, she didn’t appear to have the strength to open the bottle. It promised to be an energy provider—but only if you could get past the plastic seal.
Rachel’s palms were ribbed with the pattern on the cap when she finally heard the fizz and collapsed back into the pillows. Pathetically she sipped at the orange sticky solution and wrinkled her nose as she dramatically swallowed each mouthful as if it were her last. While she waited for the sugar to pervade her bloodstream she half-dozed while her mind wandered. He’d always been the thoughtful one, and she was always too busy to notice. Maybe she should book them a surprise holiday somewhere glamorous.
Rachel closed her eyes. She could do with a tan, and that feeling of the sun warming her skin as the sea breeze whipped over her bare tummy…
She’d barely seen him recently. Just the familiar shape of his back as she crawled into bed and the routine noises of his exercise bike, shower and toast ritual every morning. She hid behind her eyelids until he left for work at seven—that way she could focus on her day without having to make interested conversation while he brushed his teeth. She did love him in her own way, even if she had trouble demonstrating it.
Rachel pulled a face. The thought of physical intimacy was a total turn-off. She just had too much on her mind. Thank God she was married. At least there wasn’t pressure to be out there sleeping around and regaling the team with tales of random sex in unusual places. But there had been a time when they’d made love whenever their paths had crossed, day or night. Now they barely made cups of tea for each other.
In her fluey haze Rachel suddenly became preoccupied with the fact that he’d made it all the way to her side of the bed while she was asleep. In theory someone could have broken in and stolen everything from around her before pumping her full of bullets and she wouldn’t even have woken up. She really should stop watching Crimewatch. She’d always been terrified of being burgled when she was in the house, and this quality thinking time wasn’t helping. In a minute she’d have to get up and check the house for unlocked windows just in case. In a minute.
As another chill spread through her bones Rachel snuggled down in her now sweaty, fever-ridden T-shirt. Sport seemed to be dominating the television, and she turned it off assertively. Somehow her head couldn’t cope with the combined noise and bright light from the screen any more. Even on the lowest volume setting it felt as if everyone was shouting. Rachel realised that this could be turning into a whole weekend in bed. If anything she was feeling worse, not better. Just as long as she was back in the office on Monday morning… She might even manage a couple of hours tomorrow if she was feeling a little less wobbly…
Rachel flicked through the selection of magazines. This was a rare treat. She never actually had time to read the ones lying around the office, and they were only really there to monitor rival campaigns. She was impressed with his choice. Some of her favourite titles plus a selection of the newer British shelf-fillers. The fashion pages had always been one of Rachel’s must-read sections of a magazine, but as she leafed through next season’s essentials she observed that the models seemed to have got younger and thinner since she’d last looked… Thirty-six next birthday, yet it only seemed like yesterday that she had been celebrating her twenty-fifth. Now she was sounding old. She was starting to think things that she had heard her mother say years ago.
Rachel read the copy printed alongside the pictures. It would be far more useful for the reader if they could be just a fraction more honest: Cristalle—it was all about the name; you just didn’t get catwalk models called Joanna or Jane—wears a trench coat that you will never be able to afford and that will never look this good on you, probably because you won’t wear it over your best underwear to nip to the supermarket. Gypselle has been airbrushed to look good in that bikini. Petra pouts for Peckham in an outfit worth the GNP of a small developing country…
Half an hour of ludicrous fashion suggestions, a few potential new looks, an innovative way to apply eyeshadow and several irrelevant horoscopes later, Rachel found herself reading a problem page. They’d always been the most interesting part of a magazine when she’d been at school. Educational, voyeuristic and at times aspirational. All the girls had pored over the pages and learnt a great deal about G-spots, blow jobs and old wives’ tales—all stuff they’d claimed to have known about years before as they’d committed the information to memory before hurriedly stuffing the magazines into their desks at the first glimpse of a member of staff on the horizon.
Over twenty years later Rachel was still gripped. It appeared that agony aunts had come on leaps and bounds. Normal, humorous, down-to-earth and practical advice. Not evangelical or hypothetical. She squinted at the photo. This one wasn’t unattractive either, and, at a guess, was about her age. Rachel digested the page and accompanying column in minutes, before sitting back on the pillows. She didn’t need to pay a shrink to tell her that the reason she was so interested in other people’s problems was because she had several of her own.
For all her denial and self-justification, Rachel knew that every way you looked at it she was taking him for granted. But she simply didn’t have the energy to spoil him at the moment. She’d read the marriage repair articles, she knew it wasn’t about grand gestures but just about doing things together, but time was the one commodity that she couldn’t spare and it was impossible to fit a weekend away into a Sunday afternoon.
She was sure that in a few weeks things would calm down at work—but wasn’t that what she’d said in July? And now it was December. And if she was doing a bit more taking than giving at the moment surely she could make it up to him in the long term…wasn’t that what this lifelong partnership deal was all about? He’d tried to get them to ‘talk’. He’d said she didn’t listen. That everything was always on her terms. They’d laughed about that. But what if he’d given up?
Rachel shook her head. He adored her. Everyone said so. He’d always run to his work when things weren’t going well. She’d taught him to. Besides, if it kept him occupied what was the harm? At least if he was busy she didn’t feel quite as guilty.
Part of the problem was her lack of an available sounding board. Her mother would tell her to reassess her priorities, but then her mum could single-handedly set women’s emancipation back one hundred years in one afternoon with her traditional take on married life. Rachel knew she didn’t approve of her daughter’s lifestyle. And she adored her son-in-law. Their friends all saw them as some sort of golden couple and outsiders saw a good-looking, high-earning, well-dressed couple—people will excuse almost anything if you are aesthetically pleasing—out there getting what they wanted from life. It was a masterful deception. Rachel knew that she should swallow her pride and well-disguised insecurity streak and just call one of her older mates, but she couldn’t help but see it as a weakness that she couldn’t cope.
It must have been a combination of these reasons, coupled with her abnormally high temperature and a strange heaven-sent force, that drove Rachel to do something that she had never thought she would ever do. Taking the ‘Ask Lizzie’ column to her study, she wrapped herself in a blanket and flicked on her computer. It was as if an alien force had entered her body. She half expected Mulder and Scully to appear shouting in the doorway, just as it was too late to save her, but something compelled her to sit down at her computer and type out a letter.
It flooded onto the page. Rachel couldn’t get the sentences out fast enough. Seeing the words on the screen was cathartic, and much less expensive than hiring a therapist, and somehow it was a relief not to have to say any of it out loud. She could admit to herself that she was a bit of a selfish, self-centred control freak with workaholic tendencies who had taken her husband for granted via a keyboard, but actually vocalising it would be a whole different ballgame.
One long, convoluted paragraph later, Rachel looked up. There it was—her life in black and white. She added a few commas and full stops before signing it without thinking, then deleted her name and, remembering the problem page etiquette of her youth, typed ‘Desperate Matt Dillon fan, London’. Smiling, Rachel replaced the pseudonym with the more credible ‘Name and Address Withheld’ and pressed print quickly, before she lost her nerve.
Deleting the document from her hard drive, she held the only hard copy above the wastepaper basket for a few moments, resisting the urge to scrunch it into a ball, instead folding it and putting it in a self-seal envelope. She hadn’t enclosed her address. She didn’t really want or need an answer. But by sharing everything with a total stranger at least now she felt she’d been proactive. She addressed the envelope and slipped it into her briefcase. Maybe she’d post it. Then again she could always shred it tomorrow at the office if she changed her mind.
As she clambered back into bed Rachel closed her eyes and promised herself that she would make more of an effort. Five years of marriage were worth fighting for. She was far too young to be a divorcee. These agony aunts are fantastic, she mused. She felt tons better already.
chapter 5
Sunday morning dawned a little earlier than usual at 56 Oxford Road. Lizzie had been wide awake for a good half-hour, pinching and tensing various body parts and wondering whether it was physiologically possible that she had put on a visible amount of muffin-related weight since Friday night. If she concentrated hard she was sure she could feel a spot on her nose. Perfect timing. A first-date outbreak. She resisted the overwhelming urge to wipe her t-zone on the duvet cover and finally conceded that more sleep was out of the question. Time wasn’t going to tick by any slower if she got up.
Soon Lizzie was languishing in her second bath in twelve hours. Last night’s had promised to detoxify her and this morning’s foaming oil was supposed to be sensual, although it smelt more like a melted down throat lozenge than an aphrodisiac to Lizzie. Maybe that was where she’d been going wrong all these years.
A strange transformation was taking place. Over the last couple of years, via a gradual process of attrition, Clare had introduced a new dimension to Lizzie’s cleansing ritual. A quick splash with soap and water had been outlawed, and while at first she had complained about the complexity and expense of it all, Lizzie now secretly enjoyed her ablutions. Her brother might have taught her how to spit bathwater a very long way, but he hadn’t given her the inside track on exfoliation and soap-free cleansers. Thanks to Clare, Lizzie now had a beauty ‘routine’ of sorts.
Fifteen minutes ago she had decided to administer an amateur mini-facial to her over-cleansed pores in preparation for lunch. Only now, reading the small print on the back of the tube, it appeared she needed a muslin cloth. But where on earth did you get a muslin cloth before eleven on a Sunday? And what did you do with it the rest of the time? Her bathing idyll shattered, she hurriedly washed the mask into the bathwater and pulled the plug.
Once safely returned to dry land, she inspected her shins slowly to check she hadn’t missed any hairs on her earlier shaving spree while debating what to wear. At least if you met someone after work there was only so much you could do in a maximum of five minutes with mascara, a hairbrush and a hand towel in the Ladies’. Sunday lunch usually called for the ‘girl next door’ look, but this was proving difficult to plan as she didn’t know where Matt lived or where they were going. As Lizzie moisturised all over she couldn’t help wondering whether this was all a waste of time. The more effort she made, the more disappointing the date usually turned out to be. But the pampering was for herself. Honest.
Back in her bedroom, Lizzie stood in front of her chest of drawers, the towel tied round her waist gradually loosening itself, forcing her to gyrate her hips slowly as if trying to keep an invisible hoop aloft. Clare must have thought this was some sort of pre-date limbering up process when she chose that moment to bring Lizzie yet another cup of tea. Maybe it was a thinly disguised attempt at sabotage. Lizzie was sure that she had read somewhere that tea was bad for cellulite. The towel finally fell to the floor.
‘Great, Liz, he’ll love it. The nude look is really in this year. You might think about a few accessories though.’
Lizzie reclaimed the damp cold towel and tied it firmly round her body, using her armpits to clamp it in place before taking her tea from Clare.
‘Ha-ha…’ A slight edge of panic crept into her voice as she just stared into the open drawer. It might as well have been empty for all the inspiration its contents were currently emitting. ‘What on earth am I going to wear?’
‘Why don’t you start with underwear?’ Clare climbed into Lizzie’s bed to watch her getting ready. She’d given up on dating. She didn’t want to have to think about putting a loo seat down when she stumbled to the bathroom during the night, and her days of removing pubic hair embedded in the soap because Mr Shag didn’t believe in using a sponge were over. But if Lizzie was still determined to give men the benefit of the doubt then at least Clare could experience the first date build-up vicariously, and of course she was there to give Lizzie all the sartorial and moral support she needed.
