Husbands. Part 9

'I'm trying to put her off him before she gets in too deep,' I reply. Amelie stares at me as though I've lost my mind. 'Well, they haven't had s.e.x so it's not serious.'

'You are kidding, right?' asks Amelie. 'They might not have had s.e.x but it is obvious that it is serious. She calmly referred to Oscar as Eddie's dad. That's more serious than s.e.x. She's besotted with Stevie to the extent that she's already feeling less bitter about Oscar.'

'So you think Stevie is a rebound thing? A way to get over Oscar?' I ask hopefully.

'No. The osteopath was the rebound thing and he didn't help her get over Oscar anyway. I'm saying that Stevie must be the real thing.'

'No,' I yell, frustrated and angry with Amelie, Stevie, Laura and myself. Mostly myself.

'This is such good news,' says Amelie with a beam.

I can't share her enthusiasm. 'I'll have to move quickly to split them up.'

'I can't believe you're even thinking it. You of all people. How could you be contemplating something so cra.s.s and selfish?'

'Survival,' I mutter.

'Laura was a messy heap when you met her. She embodied meltdown. She'd still be shuffling about in her cardy and maternity slacks if you hadn't befriended her. You gave her back her confidence and hope. You did such a good thing, Bella. How could you be thinking of doing such a terrible one now?' I hate it that Amelie thinks she's a good enough friend to give it to me straight. 'Sorry to sound harsh but what are friends for if not to keep you grounded?'

I want to say friends are there to discuss the idiosyncrasies of fas.h.i.+ons with. Friends are there so you never have to drink copious amounts of vino alone, but I can't be flip.

'I've never seen Laura so cheerful and confident. She's glowing and I hope I don't sound too tactless he seems pretty keen on her too.'

I stare at Amelie, horrified. 'Do you think so?'

'Yes. He is taking her to see Chicago, for goodness' sake. You have to recognize that as an act of devotion.'

'He'll tell her,' I mutter ominously.

'You have to tell her first. And you have to talk to Philip.'

'No,' I shout. Again, dozens of necks snap in our direction. We are definitely the floor show at the Palais, this lunchtime. 'There has to be another way.' I ponder for a moment. 'Maybe I should talk to Stevie.'

'It's a start,' concedes Amelie.

'I could get a divorce, a quickie. They only take about two minutes nowadays, don't they? After all, we've been separated for an age there must be grounds. Then I can tell Philip that he and I are not quite legally married.'

Amelie scowls. 'I can't see the ambivalence of the situation. You are either married or you're not.'

'Well OK, we're not,' I admit reluctantly. It breaks my heart. I want to be married to Philip. I feel married to Philip. 'But it will be better than telling him now because I won't have to say I'm married to someone else. I could just tell him there was a legal technicality: that the paperwork for our wedding was filled out incorrectly. It's not even a lie.' I allow hope to glimmer for the first time in six days.

'It's hardly the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He'll expect you to be specific. He's not the sort to be fobbed off with vagaries. It would be better to come clean,' argues Amelie.

'I'll fudge, I'll get round it.' I've been burying my head in sand for years; I have no intention of emerging now. 'And then Philip and I can get remarried, quietly. No one need ever know. And Laura and Stevie can do, well, whatever they want to do.'

I see this as the ultimate in self-sacrifice and magnanimity. I may not want Stevie now but gift-wrapping him for someone else is still hard. Deep down, somewhere untouchable, I had furtively believed that he was mine. He always has been, in a forever since the start of time sort of way. I may not have seen him for eight years, I may not even have thought about him for months on end but somewhere in my subconscious Stevie registered as mine. Amelie clearly doesn't see my sacrifice, because she pulls the face she normally reserves for Freya and Davey when they are squabbling.

Laura returns to the table. Her newly acquired glow has dimmed. I wonder if she was expecting a call and he hasn't rung or maybe he's just sent her a blowout text. Goodo. If he ditches her I won't have to meet him.

'Anything wrong?' I ask.

'Odd that you should ask me that, I was just going to ask you the same thing,' says Laura. 'Are you OK? You've been acting very strangely today.' I look at her blankly, not daring to allow any expression to flicker across my face. 'Look, I want you to be honest with me. What is your problem with Stevie?'

'I haven't got one,' I mutter.

'Good, because if you have, you should tell me. I know you objected to him being a busker but he isn't a busker.'

'Yes, you said, a teacher. That's great.'

'If you know of any real reason I shouldn't be going out with Stevie, then as a mate you should tell me now.'

This is my moment. I could confide in her as I have done with so many other, admittedly smaller, issues in the past. When I took slimming tablets Laura was the only person I told, and of course she convinced me that they were nonsense and sent me to the gym. When I missed my period just before Philip and I got married it was Laura who sat outside the bathroom door and waited for the results of my peeing on to a stick. It was a false alarm, stress had sent my body into disarray. Laura knew about the men I'd stood up, men I'd waited by the phone for. She knew when I highlighted my hair and that I always wore a Wonderbra on a first date. She knows everything about me well, practically she's been firmly ensconced on my side for three years now, I want to keep her there.

Fleetingly, I consider whether if I come clean Laura will conspire to keep my secret from Philip. Maybe I could persuade her to. But what if I can't? What if she is angry and confused at the situation, not an unreasonable response, and what if she insists on exposing me to Philip? I feel Amelie holding her breath, willing me to fess up, do the right thing. But I can't, daren't, do it.

My own plan has to work.

I shake my head, sick with shame. 'I'm just worried about you,' I mumble, which is true. The more shaming bit is I'm more worried about myself. 'I don't want to see you hurt,' I add. And I don't want to see Laura hurt. She has been through one ma.s.sive break-up, which nearly killed her, and Amelie is right, she's fallen for Stevie. If I could put the bigamist thing to one side and think about Stevie and Laura as a couple I'd have to admit that they suit one another. I want my new plan to work, for everyone's sake.

'I'd like to meet him properly,' I say.

'You would?' Laura's former radiance reappears.

I smile despite myself. 'Yes. This whole thing has got off on the wrong foot.' That much is true. 'Why don't you and Stevie come to supper this Sat.u.r.day?'

'That would be great. Oh, he has a gig then, a wedding. Can we make it the week after?'

I wonder how much damage can be done in a week. But, as I have no choice, I agree.

'He'll be so pleased,' enthuses Laura. 'He's dying to meet you. I've talked about you a lot.'

I take this comment and Stevie's keenness to meet Laura's friends at innocent face value because considering the alternative that he might have an inkling that I am Belinda McDonnel from Kirkspey and not Bella Edwards of Wimbledon, would turn me to stone.

'And you'll come too, won't you, Amelie?' I offer.

'Wouldn't miss it for the world,' says Amelie.

Whereas I, on the other hand, would give the world not to have to throw this particular supper party.

18. Tonight is So Right for Love.

Friday 4th June 2004.

Laura.

'Is he asleep?' I ask, as Stevie enters the kitchen.

'Almost. I read The Man on the Moon, Fox in Socks and Peter the Pirate's Parrot.'

'Ha, sucker.' I grin. They're all fairly long books. 'I always spell out the terms before I start the bedtime story. Two short ones or a long one. Never two long books. Three long ones is unprecedented. He'd have you in there all night, given the chance.'

'I don't mind. I quite enjoy it,' says Stevie. I steal a glance and can see the faintest trace of a blush on his cheekbones; clearly he wasn't one hundred per cent comfortable with the confession. But I am delighted.

'You're lucky you didn't meet us last year. Then he just wanted the same book over and over again. His favourite was this really annoying one about sounds in a builder's yard. I ask you! It's hardly got what I require from a novel. No tension, no big romance, no-'

'Resolution?' interrupted Stevie.

'Exactly.' Now I feel a little shy; it's time to change the subject. 'I think we're about done here. Why don't you grab a bottle of wine from the cooler and we can go and put our feet up while the steak marinates and the veggies are roasting?'

I've prepared dinner while Stevie supervised Eddie's bedtime. Eddie insisted that Stevie bath him, clean his teeth and read the story. Normally I relish that time of the evening and not just because it signals that it's nearly time for sleep. I love the intimacy of curling up with Eddie and reading to him as we wind down from our frenetic day. I like to watch as his eyelids become heavier and heavier until the day's fun finally overwhelms him and his eyes close. I could look at his lengthy lashes resting on his rosy cheeks forever. I snuggle tightly, breathing in his essence and savouring his childhood. I thought I'd be put out when my services became surplus to requirements and I certainly hadn't expected it to occur quite so quickly, but when Eddie demanded that Stevie run his bath and read his story I felt totally comfortable.

I heard lots of laughing and splas.h.i.+ng from the bathroom and when I went in to retrieve grubby clothes, the floors and walls were drenched; clearly bathtime is a much more boisterous occasion with Stevie than it is with me, no wonder Eddie was giggling so hard. I listened as Stevie read familiar stories in an unfamiliar way. He used different voices for characters and he insisted on acting out the swashbuckling scenes. I thought that Eddie would never settle, far too excited and enjoying the unfamiliar surge of testosterone in our home, then I heard Stevie sing a lullaby in a quiet, melodious tone. I had to swallow hard so as not to do anything really stupid like cry into the vegetables. It's not as though I was chopping onions, nor is it a particular time of the month.

I've promised Stevie a very special meal in tonight. We've had a night out this week and I wasn't happy about getting another babysitter. Stevie offered to pay, he said it was only fair as it was half the cost of the date. I explained it wasn't about the money, I just didn't feel right leaving Eddie again. It has been an exceptionally busy fortnight for us all and we need some chill time. I promised Stevie a home-cooked meal and I explained that while I didn't want to blow my own trumpet, I am pretty confident that my steak with rosemary will be the best he's ever tasted.

Besides the babysitting I have another important motive for staying in, lurking around my murky mind I still believe that good cooking is the way to a man's heart. Put plainly, I hope that my steak and veg will be a way to Stevie's meat and veg.

It's the strangest thing. I am pretty sure that Stevie likes me really likes me. After all, we've spent almost every evening together since we met. So, it's a little embarra.s.sing to report that tonight, a whole fortnight after The Bell and Long Wheat gig, Stevie and I still have no carnal knowledge of one another. Absolutely none. We haven't even indulged in tonsil tennis. I'm at a loss.

I'm aware that my b.o.o.bs have compet.i.tively challenged one another to a race to reach my waistline and I have crow's feet around my eyes (and G.o.d knows they can't be laugh lines because even Coco the Clown hasn't laughed enough to have that many lines). That said, I've caught Stevie looking at me with what I believe to be good old-fas.h.i.+oned craving. He couldn't take his eyes off my legs when I wore a micro-skirt to visit London Zoo last Sat.u.r.day he missed seeing most of the animals. I'm pretty sure I don't repel him physically, and as he's spending all his free time with me he can't hate my company, which makes the whole abstinence-non-s.e.xual-dating thing even more unfathomable. He's not shy. He's not inexperienced. To my knowledge, he doesn't have any awful diseases. So I'm at a loss.

I've considered calling Bella. She's normally so good at reading men. She doesn't see them as the alien species that I know they are. Besides, I always turn to her if I have a problem. Anything from not being able to get my meringue peaks to stand up high enough (her helpful advice was buy them at M&S), to how to handle my ex-in-laws, my 'out-laws', as she calls them. Yet I haven't rung her. The problem is, while we're all getting together tomorrow evening, and she says she wants us all to be friends, I don't believe her. I wish I did.

In the last two weeks I have seen Bella once and we have spoken on the phone twice. Both calls smacked of the perfunctory as we made arrangements for her supper. There's something wrong between us. I don't know what I've done to upset her. I get the distinct impression that she doesn't like Stevie, but that's impossible because she hasn't even met him.

Anyway, as I can't discuss Stevie with her, I'll have to rely on my own instincts. The conclusion I might have drawn in the past is that he has fallen for me, but not Eddie. As a single mum I make it clear that Eddie and I come as a job lot. I'm not looking for a father for Eddie he has one of those but, whoever I date has to be aware of my responsibilities and that the little man in my life comes first. It takes a special kind of guy to be so unselfish. But Stevie has fallen for Eddie. After lengthy internal debate and a brief bout of self-doubt, followed by several firm talking-tos, the only conclusion I can draw is that Stevie has not had the opportunity to get rude and cheeky with me. I'm not absolutely convinced by this but, for lack of any other reasonable explanation, I'm going with it.

I've decided to create an opportunity for him to make his move. I've pulled out all the stops. Besides the fine cooking, I've dimmed the lights, put on some soft music (a Costes CD bought especially for the occasion, even I could see Barry White was overdoing it) and lit dozens of candles. I have no shame. Blow it, I'm not trying to be subtle. I considered lying down naked in the pitch-black on the off-chance that he'd accidentally stumble across me. My patience is running short.

I've dressed to impress or, more accurately, I've dressed to be undressed. On Thursday after lunch with the girls, I nipped to La Senza, the normal girl's Agent Provocateur. I settled on a lacy underwired bra and matching hot-pant knickers. In red. I had a moment of panic when I wondered if the effect was a bit tarty. Eventually, I decided that wasn't a bad thing. As I said, I'm not going for subtle.

I follow Stevie through to the sitting room and stare at my feet, not quite brave enough to meet his eye as he confronts the music and more candles than Westminster Abbey burns at Christmas. Still, there's no place for last-minute nerves now. I collapse on to the settee, pat the cus.h.i.+on next to me and I wave the empty wine gla.s.ses I'm carrying. 'Come over here with that wine, I'm parched.'

Stevie obliges, sits next to me and pours the wine.

'What shall we toast?' I ask.

If that's not an all-time great opener I'm going to retire from this game, because while I haven't been dating for, well... too long, I remember endless occasions when I'd ask some guy that question, and he'd say, 'Us.' That's the script. It never failed. And, after the clink, he would lean in to kiss me. 'Us.' Clink. Kiss. Every time.

I carefully glance at my watch. The steak needs to marinate for another forty-five minutes. It is possible that we'll have got down and dirty before we even eat, which is favourite because my stomach will be flatter.

'Elvis,' says Stevie.

'What?' I gasp my disbelief. I start up from my slouched recline. That's it, I'm out of here. I am going to retire from the game. I am wearing red lacy underwear and s.h.i.+ny red lipgloss. I'm fluttering my eyelashes enough to cause a serious draught and I'm flas.h.i.+ng a healthy dose of cleavage and he wants to toast Elvis.

'Let's toast Elvis.' Stevie has a huge grin on his face and if I wasn't choking on disappointment I might concede that he has never looked cuter. 'I've been dying to tell you. There's this annual compet.i.tion. An Elvis Tribute Convention and Compet.i.tion to find the King of Kings in Europe. I've already got through the UK heats. Babe, you might not have known it but I am the UK King.' His words are tumbling out in an excited cascade. I grin manically, trying to take it all in. 'But I never expected this. I'm in the final! And it's taking place in Las Vegas.' I smile and nod but can't get a word in edgeways. 'Vegas can you believe it? Normally the convention is held somewhere like Blackpool or Newquay. But as it's the anniversary of what would have been Elvis's sixty-ninth birthday, there's been all this special sponsors.h.i.+p money thrown at it.'

'Why not wait until the seventieth anniversary, more of a round number?' I ask.

'To avoid confusion, because next year there will be a global event and the European one would be swallowed.'

'I didn't realize it was such a serious business.'

'But the very best bit is I get to take three other people with me. All expenses paid for a long weekend. Can you believe it? Dave and John are well up for it. What do you say?'

'That's fantastic.' It would be impossible not to be pleased for him. 'Is your mum chuffed?' I ask.

'My mum?' Stevie pulls away from me. In all the excitement I hadn't realized just how close his face was to mine. Just millimetres away. 'I haven't called her. Yeah, she'll be chuffed.' He sounds a bit confused.

'Has she travelled much?' I doubted it. Stevie comes from a background where there isn't much money spare for things like foreign holidays.

'G.o.d, I feel like an absolute s.h.i.+t,' says Stevie; his excited face folds like a pack of cards.

'Why?' I ask.

'I hadn't thought of taking my mum. Isn't that terrible of me? I was hoping you'd come.'

'Me?' I grin, astonished.

'But if you think I should take my mum...'

'Oh, no. Well, yes. Obviously, if you want to.' I try to swallow back my disappointment. Why couldn't I have kept my big mouth shut? I steal a glance at Stevie, he's grinning.

'Actually, she isn't too keen on long-haul travel. She thinks a train trip to the nearest market town is a major expedition and needs several weeks to prepare. Nor does she like the sun. Whereas I imagine you'd feel great stretching out by the pool, soaking up some rays.'

'Oh, I would, I would.' I laugh. 'But what about Eddie?'

'Couldn't his dad look after him? They'd have a bit of boy-to-boy bonding time. Or one of your mates Amelie? Bella? They'd help out. You deserve a holiday.'

I do deserve a holiday. Or at least I want one so very much that I'm prepared to justify it on just about any grounds. I'm sure Oscar would have Eddie for a few days, Amelie would certainly pitch in. Bella too, of course. Probably. Besides, this isn't any old holiday. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It's free and it's with Stevie. He's inviting me on holiday. He wants me there to support him in this compet.i.tion.

'I'd love to go.' I grin, 'If you are sure.'

'I'm positive. Is that a deal then?'

'It's a deal. Shake on it.' I hold out my hand for Stevie to shake.

He takes hold but doesn't shake. He turns it over, then carefully traces one of the lines on my palm that curves around the fleshy bit underneath the thumb and then slowly up my forearm.

'The thing is, Laura, I was hoping we could seal the deal with something a little more intimate than a handshake.'

Yesssssss.