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  Maggie nodded her assent and turned to stare at her foiled reflection. She looked like some kind of cyber clown.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ Sarah said, as she adjusted the dryer over Maggie’s head and set the timers, ‘is be careful what you wish for, OK?’

  ‘Mmmm?’ Maggie replied. She was already miles away.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Hellooo!’

  Pete jumped, dropping the shirt he’d been about to change into. The greeting had been preceded by a quick double knock and a theatrical entrance. Pete considered covering his nipples, but then thought better of it and let his hands drop to his sides, his fingers twitching uselessly, not covering anything, least of all his embarrassment. Thank God he had his kecks on, at least. The woman stopped briefly in her tracks and regarded him, raising one eyebrow just enough to make him totally paranoid.

  ‘Oh dear!’ she babbled, her accent full-blown home counties. ‘I’m always walking in on people – don’t usually get such a result, though!’ As she laughed uproariously her silver earrings jangled. Pete mustered a smile in return and, scooping his shirt off the floor, pulled it on over his head, thankful that he’d left the majority of the buttons done up. Or rather Stella had. It was his dark green and dark blue striped Paul Smith shirt, his going-out one, which he’d been wearing on the night of the proposal. She’d pulled it off him as they were making love, just before she’d looked him in the eye and said, ‘You do understand I still have to go, don’t you?’

  Pete blinked and realised that the woman he sincerely hoped was Angie was waiting for an answer to something.

  ‘Um, yes?’ Pete tried out of left field.

  ‘Oh good,’ Angie replied. ‘And you found everything OK?’

  Pete looked around his room.

  ‘Yeah, I just had a shower, I hope that was all right?’ He smiled, oblivious to the instant blush that coloured Angie’s cheeks.

  ‘Of course it was. Your home too now!’ She seemed delighted at the thought and hopped a little hop. ‘Well, anyway, Falcon said he’d asked you up The Fleur. God knows why, it’s a stinky old pub. Only Falcon, his mates and two old men drink there, so I thought if you like I could give you a little tour. I’m cooking and we could eat first, if you like?’

  Pete opened and shut his mouth. Angie seemed like a nice woman, but maybe just a bit too much of a nice woman for him just at the minute. He realised she was going out of her way to be kind, and he was grateful, but he wasn’t sure he had enough conversation in his head right now to manage a whole evening with her.

  ‘Angie, right?’ he said with a smile. ‘That sounds good, it really does, but could we make it tomorrow? It’s just that what with all the travelling and shit today, I’m knackered. I thought I’d just go out for a wander round, maybe have a jar or two and pick up a Chinese on the way home. It’d be great to have dinner with you and Falcon, but I’d like to be able to get my head in gear first, if you don’t mind?’

  Angie beamed at his gentle rebuttal. In fact she appeared to positively glow from the rejection.

  ‘Of course not, of course I don’t mind.’ She put her hand on the door as she left. ‘I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a real gentleman living here instead of just that rough-neck so-called punk, even if I do love him!’ She giggled as she shut the door gently behind her, and Pete sat down on the bed.

  He caught his reflection in the small mirror fixed to the wardrobe and ran his fingers through his dark blond hair until it stood up in rough spikes. Stella liked it that way – she said it made him look a bit like David Beckham, which frankly he baulked at, but Stella had said she liked it and he’d gone with it. Funny how he’d never had a thought about what he wore or how his hair looked before Stella. In the last few years he’d picked up a few basics he knew she rated in a man: slight stubble, ruffled hair, a proper going-out shirt in the evening instead of just a T-shirt or a Leeds top. And a squirt of something he’d call perfume on a girl. He’d stuck with it even when she wasn’t around, and he wasn’t going to stop now. After all, she was coming back, wasn’t she? To marry him? Pete gave himself a cursory glance in the mirror.

  ‘David Beckham my arse,’ he said out loud, musing as he left that he had never in his life been called a gentleman before.

  ‘I can’t actually believe you just said that!’ Maggie stared at Sarah’s reflection in the mirror as she examined her artificially hoisted-up breasts.

  ‘What they never tell you about toupée tape,’ Sarah said quickly, attempting to sidestep the issue, ‘is that you need half a roll for each boob. You never see J-Lo or Madonna with two tons of sticky-back plastic on each tit, do you?’ She glanced at Maggie’s reflection and said mysteriously, ‘Or do you?’

  Maggie stared miserably at her chest. Considering that one of her breasts was currently an inch higher than the other one and that neither was as high as it once was, maybe letting Sarah dress her for her first officially single night out wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had. Both of her boobs looked like they’d been caught in a post office sorting machine. Not even the fantastic new hairstyle Sarah had created for her, which shimmered with three or four different colours and yet still looked natural, improved the effect much.

  ‘Can’t I just wear a bra and a normal top?’ Maggie pleaded. ‘The black one with the V-neck? That’s all right isn’t it? “Deep Lunging V”. It’s flattering. I know because I saw it on the telly. The last time I went out on the pull it wasn’t obligatory to have half your tits hanging out. And I’m fairly sure that a B cup doesn’t require this much tape …’

  She remembered Sarah’s previous comment.

  ‘Now, can we get back to what you were just saying, please?’

  Cringing, Sarah attempted to distract Maggie by handing her the scarlet, glittery, plunging backless top, which Maggie, if she hadn’t been told otherwise, would have called a hanky.

  ‘Darling, it’s been obligatory to get your tits out to pull a man since the beginning of time. And at least you’re the right size to be able to go backless and strapless. So count yourself lucky and put on the top,’ Sarah commanded, hopeful that her bossiness would steer the conversation away from her stupid, flippant comment.

  She should have learnt by now, after a lifetime of friendship, that you never said anything off the cuff to Maggie, not unless you were prepared to back it up with a full theory and postmatch analysis. She thought she’d made her feelings on Christian crystal clear this afternoon in the salon. But obviously, unless it was painted in six-foot-high black letters, it wasn’t clear enough for Maggie, and she didn’t want to risk more tears ending the night before it had even begun.

  ‘Anyway, the last time you went out on the pull was last century. I, on the other hand, have been on the pull continuously since 1989 and have fitted in bringing up two kids and running my own salon, so trust me – I’m an expert.’ She tied the laces of the top. ‘The aim of this evening is to get you back on the market before you pass your sell-by date, and for that we need flesh, flesh, flesh!’ Sarah hollered uproariously, and liberally topped up Maggie’s wine glass, hopeful that it would help her to forget.

  ‘Get that down you. Numb the pain.’

  Maggie obediently gulped down the wine and attempted a final derailment of her friend’s remorseless party train.

  ‘Look, maybe you are a come-what-may-I’ll-conquer-it kind of girl, and I respect you for that, but I’m not. I’m a give-up-and-go-to-bed-at-the-first-hurdle kind of girl.’ Maggie stared at her alien reflection and thought, This isn’t me all this razzle-dazzle. I’m a simple person, neat and efficient. I pay attention to the tiny details that make up the whole picture. I’m a well-tailored suit and good shoes sort. This outfit, to me, is a fashion version of chaos theory. She looked at Sarah, who was crimping her ruby red streaks. ‘When you said can we get together for a girls’ night, I thought you meant staying in with pizza or something, talking things over. Not getting all razzed up and going on the piss. I’m not ready. It’s o
nly been a couple of weeks. I’ll probably drink too much and cry in the bogs, or sleep with a short man with hairy shoulders by mistake.’ Maggie looked at her pleadingly. ‘You don’t know what you’re unleashing by taking me out there!’

  Sarah examined her excruciatingly closely.

  ‘This afternoon you were going on about persistence and being single-minded. Anyway, do you think,’ she said, wielding a glitter stick at Maggie like a combat-standard magic wand, ‘that when I’ve finally got a good enough excuse to have a night out away from the kids I’m going to stay in and have pizza? I haven’t been out with you for eight months. I want a pint with my bestest pal!’

  Sarah gave Maggie the same kind of perfunctory make-it-better hug she’d give Sam when he was crying over nothing much, and dabbed at her eyelids with the glitter stick. ‘Good God, woman, you have to start somewhere, don’t you? Do you want to be sitting at home all suicidal while Christian’s out flinging his harlot around by the ankles? Well, do you?’ Sarah demanded, thinking this was good, this was exactly the kind of pep talk Maggie needed to forget what she’d accidentally said ten minutes ago. It was tough love – bollock-hard ten-pints-a-night tough love.

  Maggie returned her gimlet-eyed gaze wanly and supposed that no, she did not, and yes, even if right now the very thought of touching another man made her want to dissolve into a screaming puddle of pain, at the very least she didn’t want to look defeated. St Albans was a small city, more of a largish town really, and in a largish town, front was very often everything, even if on this particular occasion it had been Sellotaped into an approximation of a Henry Moore sculpture. If, for example, she was to run into Christian, she wanted him to see her all dazzling with her new hair and be allured by her – or something. She wanted word to go round that she was coping well and looking good. She was only in the early stages of her plans so she wasn’t sure if ‘word going round’ would be enough or even if it would happen, given that her local profile was a pretty low one, but it was a start, and you never knew who you might run into. And for some reason Maggie had a niggling feeling that she was going to run into someone tonight.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘You’d better give me some more of that wine then.’

  Sarah obliged and clapped her friend lightly on the shoulder, congratulating herself on getting away with it.

  ‘Good. Now try to remember that this is the first time in living memory that I’ve had one of my old mates to go out with. I’m looking upon this as a new era in our lives, Maggie. The terrible twosome reunited once again twice monthly while my nanna’s still lucid enough to have the kids!’

  Maggie flashed back momentarily to Sarah at eighteen, her skirts short enough to reveal the tops of her stockings, and her make-up, applied in this very room, thick enough to ice a cake. She, on the other hand, had been all natural look and sensible trousers, donning a black top that fell off of one shoulder if she was feeling really risqué. She looked at herself now, hazed slightly by a flood of white wine. All she could see was two boobs at different heights bobbing despondently under a glittery hanky. She yanked the top off over her head.

  ‘I’ll wear a bra and my black top,’ she said with determination, wincing as she pulled off the toupée tape.

  Sarah shrugged with disappointment. ‘You’re so behind the times. Please at least make it a push-up. We’re not joining a nunnery here.’

  Maggie started rummaging through the suitcase she still hadn’t unpacked and fished out a black Wonderbra. ‘And listen,’ she fixed her friend with a determined gaze. ‘I want to talk about what you just said to me. What did you mean when you said that, Sarah?’

  Sarah’s stomach sank and she flopped on to the bed, rolling her eyes before reapplying her lip gloss and checking her roots in a handmirror.

  ‘I meant what I said. That I never did like Christian. I thought he was a twat from the word go.’ She smiled at Maggie, fluttering her lashes in an attempt to be comic, though so far Maggie had yet to see the funny side of anything concerning her one true love.

  ‘You think he’s a twat?’ Maggie asked her in amazement.

  Sarah shook her head apologetically. ‘And then … over the years, I warmed to him. Nice manners; seemed to treat you OK. Wads of cash. I thought, you know, first impressions aren’t always right. But, well, Nanna always says you can judge a book by his cover, and it turned out that I was right. He was always a twat, that’s all I’m saying. I mean, he was shagging his new girlfriend behind your back. It’s not such a newsflash, is it?’

  Maggie spluttered into her wine and Sarah felt the mad urge to say what she meant grip her once again.

  ‘I’m sorry, mate, but I said to myself the first time I met him that he was a stuck-up, ignorant wanker and that you’d be better off without him, but, you know, you seemed to like him …’

  Maggie looked from Sarah to her bemused reflection and then back again.

  ‘You could’ve said something before,’ she sighed. ‘Before I fell in love with him for ever and ever.’

  Sarah plonked herself down beside Maggie and rested her head on her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic. No one falls in love for ever.’ She thought briefly of Aidan Carter and dismissed the thought immediately. ‘One day you’ll fall in love again and it’ll be better than it ever was with Christian.’

  Maggie moved away from Sarah, pulling her off balance.

  ‘What about you? When are you going to fall in love again?’ she challenged.

  ‘I don’t do love, love,’ Sarah said briskly. ‘Now move your arse off that bed and let’s go out!’ She strode to the door and held it open.

  Taking a deep breath and adjusting her bra, Maggie headed out into the real world, shaking like a nervous wreck.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ Pete asked the woman at the bar. She was pretty, if not quite his type: dark, slim and small with huge brown eyes. He knew he wasn’t hitting on her, but it occurred to him seconds after his comment that that was the last thing she’d be thinking. However, he was sure he knew her somehow.

  Maggie turned to him incredulously as she tried to elbow her way to the bar and gave him her most scathing glare.

  ‘Oh, please,’ she said coolly, and pressed closer into the noticeably youthful crowd that thronged around the chrome bar of St Albans’ trendiest nightspot, thrusting her twenty over the heads of some teenagers and shouting, ‘Two vodka mules, please!’

  Sarah could have gone up to the bar at least once, but no, she insisted that this was all part of Maggie’s rehabilitation. More like an excuse for her to sit on her arse and play footsie with the rugby player at the next table. Maggie gave an unconscious scowl. She knew and Sarah knew that he was not the sort of bloke who’d want anything serious to do with a mother of two, but Sarah didn’t seem to care. In fact she seemed to actively prefer the men who wouldn’t hang around long. ‘Love, my love,’ Sarah often told Maggie over the years, ‘just gets in the way of the game plan. You’re much better off without it, you’ll see.’ Oh well, thought Maggie, I am seeing and I don’t like it.

  Maggie felt a tap on her shoulder and he was there again. Scruffy blond hair and flashy blue eyes that he probably thought got him in anywhere he wanted with anyone. Well, not with her.

  ‘No,’ Pete persisted. ‘I mean, I have actually seen you before, but without all the … stuff on your face.’

  He looked closely at her and for a moment she wondered if one of the false lashes that Sarah had remorselessly glued to each eyelid had begun to unstick and curl up like a dead caterpillar.

  ‘I know!’ Pete clicked his fingers. ‘I saw you in the street this morning. You were crying.’ His face softened and behind her Maggie could hear the barman ask her for some money as she carefully rearranged her face into a perfectly blank mask. ‘I wondered if I should go up to you or something,’ Pete blundered on, ‘but you seemed like you wanted to be alone. And also, in my experience, women don’t like strange
men approaching them in the street.’ Maggie turned away from him. ‘Or in bars, for that matter …’ Pete kicked himself, belatedly realising his clumsiness.

  ‘I had something in my eye,’ Maggie said abruptly, handing over her note to the barman and taking two bottles and some change. Disconcerted, she made her way back through the crowd. Why didn’t she just say that it wasn’t her? Why did she openly admit to blubbing in the street? Why was it that after having her heart pulverised into mush, her dreams ripped almost to shreds and her hopes thoroughly dashed, she was also left with a compulsive desire to jump to the front of the queue whenever a chance of public humiliation was on the horizon? She hurried over to Sarah, sensing the crowd close over the strange man as she headed back to her table.

  ‘Christ, talk about a busman’s holiday,’ Maggie said to Sarah as she sat down. ‘That’s the trouble with working in the pub – it makes going out seem like work. Except here there are customers. Mum and Dad don’t really have customers.’

  Sarah didn’t answer, but instead waved a long bare arm at Maggie in agreement, which Maggie considered a privilege as her face was almost entirely submerged under the ravenous attentions of the rugby player.

  ‘Oh God, couldn’t you at least hold on until last orders?’ Maggie said bleakly. She wanted Sarah to reassure her about the crying in the street thing. She wanted her to say something down-to-earth and blunt like she usually did. Instead her hand offered Maggie a ‘What can I do?’ apology and Maggie settled back in her chair, nursing her bottle and regarding the ravenous crowd eyeing each other with a barely concealed ferocity. It hit her then, like a sharp slap: she had nothing to do with any of these people any more. No one here, except Sarah, knew who she was, or cared.

  Before Christian, before Maggie had allowed herself to believe it was safe to love him, she’d followed Sarah, hunting in bars just like this one, constantly looking, searching for that chance, for that certain blue eye, a particular kind of mouth, a sensitive nature, and she’d have dated whatever approximation presented itself. Until Christian, with his self-taught upper-class accent, his manners and his hang-ups. All these things made her love him, gradually more each day they spent together. Now here she was again, turned loose back into the field, and she couldn’t stand it – couldn’t stand the thought of going through it all again. She felt too tired and too in love, still, with Christian. She had to make her plan work, she had too. It was too late in her life, she was too set in her love for anything else to be an option.