Any Way You Want Me Page 6

  It was that ‘bird’ word . . . it sounded too casual. It sounded like he was laughing at me. And the bit about having to ‘stay put for a while’, too. For a while? Then what was he planning to do, after the ‘while’ was up? It made him sound such a wanker!

  I sat back, considering. It could have been worse, I supposed. At least I got some kind of a mention, even if it was in a macho, posturing sense. And at least he still thought I was gorgeous – or had he just put that to show off to the other blokes from his school?

  I stared at the words until they started jumbling up into nonsense before my eyes. If he was being absolutely truthful, strapped to a lie detector, what would he have written then?

  Am settled down in a tired relationship with Sadie. She was a right minx when I first met her, but she moans a lot these days. Goes on and on about how hard it is to look after our kids – when she was the one who wanted them in the first place! And it’s not like she does anything else – I mean, the house is always a pigsty, and nothing ever gets ironed . . .

  There were tears in my eyes. Stop it, stop it, I scolded myself. He wouldn’t think that, would he? I was just beating myself up after the morning visit to Supermum. Comparing myself with my own mother got me nowhere. She always seemed to win.

  I was just about to shut down the connection when a creeping sense of guilt came over me. Hang on a minute, I thought. Here I was, complaining about his terminology but I hadn’t even mentioned him in my message. I’d pretended he didn’t exist. So who was I to make a fuss about being called a gorgeous Cockney bird?

  I went back to find my entry, fingers feeling clumsy on the keys. I’d delete it, I vowed. I’d put in the truth. Why on earth had I lied about my life like that? As if I was ashamed of it or something!

  ‘Mummy, I hurt my finger. Mummy!’

  Molly’s voice from the hall made me jump. God, and now I’d let my child injure herself while I was faffing around spying on my partner. I closed down the connection at once, put the laptop out of trashing range and ran to find her.

  Two beautiful children, Alex had said, and a gorgeous Cockney bird. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

  Was it?

  There was nothing from Danny the next day. Still nothing the day after that. By the time Wednesday evening had rolled around and I was frantically trying to pluck some of the werewolfishness out of my eyebrows ready for my night out with the girls, Danny Cooper had started to fade from my mind again. What had I been playing at? It had been a silly mind game. A fantasy. And as for that job . . . it was ridiculous. I must have had too much sun. In February. Either that, or I was losing the plot.

  ‘What you doing, Mummy?’

  A little nudie imp had appeared behind me. Alex had come home early so he could bath the children and put them to bed for me, and Molly had obviously spirited herself out of the bathroom, because here she was, all pink and shiny, hair wet and sticking up absurdly, chubby bare legs scrabbling their way up onto my and Alex’s bed.

  ‘Hello, lovely,’ I said, tears welling in pain as I pulled out a clump of wayward eyebrow hairs. ‘Ouch. Do you want to run back and get your pyjamas on?’

  ‘You draw on your eyes now, Mummy?’

  She was gazing at me with great interest, head on one side. I barely wore make-up these days, but on the rare occasions she’d seen me putting it on, she had been fascinated by the eyeliner application – indeed, had tried to copy me by putting pink felt-tip along her own eyelids.

  ‘Maybe in a bit,’ I said. ‘Quick, go and get those jim-jams on with Dad. Quick!’

  She bounced a few times on our bed and then scrambled down and vanished as quickly as she’d materialized. I smiled as I rolled on my lippy. I was really looking forward to seeing Becca and Cat. Just a quick pint, we’d all agreed previously, but then, a couple of hours ago, Becca had phoned me to say that she’d booked us a table at some glam new restaurant in Battersea.

  ‘It’s been ages since we did something nice. And this is my treat. No arguments,’ she’d said.

  ‘Bec, you don’t have to do that,’ I’d replied automatically, calculating how much money I could reasonably cadge off Alex. Becca had expensive taste and was used to her men paying for it most of the time.

  ‘I said, no arguments,’ she repeated. ‘My treat. Call it an early birthday present if it makes you feel better. I’m going to cab it over there, I think. Shall I pick you up about half-seven?’

  ‘Yeah, great. See you later!’

  I smacked my lips together and smiled at my reflection. Although I wasn’t given to gratuitous shameless boasting, I had to say, I was looking pretty good by my usual bare-faced hasty-ponytailed standards. I was wearing a bell-sleeved powder-blue top that showed a good inch of cleavage, black kick-flare trousers and my favourite old stack-heeled boots. My hair was piled up on my head with just a few loose tendrils curling around my face. My eyebrows were plucked, my skin was looking perkier than it had done for months, thanks to three goodish nights’ sleep on the trot, and I had treated myself to a new hazelnut lipstick.

  ‘Phwooarr,’ Alex said, running an appreciative hand over my bottom when he saw me. ‘Can I come with you?’

  I air-kissed him and the kids so as not to smudge my lips. ‘No chance. Girls only.’

  ‘Molly a girl,’ my daughter said at once. ‘I come, Mummy?’

  The taxi beeped and I laughed, checking my face one last time in the hall mirror. ‘Nice try, Molls. Girls over three only. Night night. Bye!’

  Becca hugged me when I got into the cab. Her perfume smelled exotic and musky; my own squirt of Green Tea had to struggle not to be smothered by it. She was wearing a grey trouser suit and a shocking-pink shirt. ‘Just come from the office,’ she explained, seeing me glancing at her briefcase. ‘We’ve been all heads down on this new campaign before it launches next week.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said, struggling to remember what campaign she was working on. Becca was a creative in advertising. A creative what, I had often wondered, but it seemed to be just a one-word job title.

  ‘The new Renault,’ she added. ‘For men on the move!’

  I giggled. ‘Is that really the slogan?’

  ‘No, that’s just what we call them. Men who wet their pants over big engines, revs, horsepower, all that nonsense. Anyway, I’m not going to talk about that all night. How are you?’

  ‘Well,’ I started, planning to launch into my excitement about tracking down Danny on the internet. Then I caught the cabbie’s eye in the mirror and changed my mind at the last minute. I didn’t feel like talking about it in front of him somehow, so I told her about our night at Julia and Mark’s instead.

  To be honest, it was quite refreshing to have something to talk about that Becca might actually be interested in. Before Molly was born, we had sneered about how dull women became when they hit motherhood. ‘Promise me you’ll tell me if I get like that,’ I’d begged her. ‘Shoot me if I start telling you about poo or sick or romper suits, like they’re remotely interesting.’

  ‘You don’t have to ask, babe, of course I will,’ she’d agreed. ‘That goes for gory details of the birth, too. If I so much as hear the word “stitches”, our friendship is officially terminated.’

  Since I’d crossed the line into parenthood, though, that conversation had never been referred to by either one of us. I didn’t know if she was too kind to remind me of it, or if she thought I was in too deep to drag back to sanity. I did know that I’d mutated into one of those very women we used to scoff at. I’d moved to the other side, changed teams. While I could talk in encyclopaedic detail about breastfeeding and potty training and language development, Becca still talked about hot dates, nightclub binges, and holidays in Third World countries. We were like different species.

  Becca shuddered at my descriptions of Julia and Matthew. ‘Ugh! She sounds like some sort of power-dressed ogress,’ she grimaced.

  ‘She was,’ I said. ‘The sort of woman who kisses you on the cheek, then doesn’t both
er telling you she’s left an enormous lipstick print there.’

  Becca nodded. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’ She pulled out a compact mirror and checked her own lipstick. ‘He sounds rather nice, though,’ she added.

  ‘Who, Matthew?’ I said incredulously. Maybe I’d been too generous when I was describing him. Maybe I should have spelled him out in more obvious terms. Read my lips: Womanizing, booze-mottled, lecherous old piss-head . . .

  ‘No, he sounded hideous – Mark. Mark sounded nice.’

  I was silent for a second. Mark. ‘Yeah. He was, actually. He was lovely.’

  ‘Fifteen pounds forty please, gels,’ the cab driver said, pulling up outside a glass-fronted building.

  I tried to pay for it, but Becca pushed my pound coins away. ‘I’ll get it. No, honestly. I’ll put it on expenses. Could I have a receipt, please?’

  ‘Now,’ she said, as we walked up to the door. Swanks, it was called, and it certainly looked incredibly swanky inside, all immaculate white and bleached wood. ‘This is meant to be a bit special, so I hope you’ve got your celeb-spotting goggles on. Did you see the review it got in Time Out?’

  I shook my head, not bothering to add that there wasn’t really much point in my buying Time Out these days.

  She made a circle with her thumb and first finger and held it up. ‘Top-notch.’ She grinned. ‘Oh, Cat, hi! We were just about to go in.’

  Cat hugged me and kissed Becca on the cheeks. ‘Let’s do it, then,’ she said.

  Over our food – top-notch indeed – we got down to the business in hand. Gossip.

  ‘How’s your love-life then, Bec?’ Cat asked.

  A smirk slid over Becca’s face. Her mouth twitched. ‘Pretty shag-tastic, thanks for asking,’ she said.

  ‘Tell us!’ Cat demanded.

  ‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Star sign, job, sex-factor rating,’ Cat added, all in one breath. ‘Now.’

  Becca spluttered. ‘Easy, girls,’ she said. ‘He’s called Nick. He was what you might call a sperm-of-the-moment decision.’

  Now it was my turn to choke on my drink. ‘Becca!’

  Cat’s eyes had lit up and she had put down her fork in anticipation. ‘Tell. Us. More,’ she insisted. ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘Browns,’ Becca said. ‘Work leaving do on Monday. I came, I saw, I conquered.’

  ‘And then you came again,’ Cat giggled.

  ‘Exactly.’The smugness was practically visible; it was coming off her like steam. ‘It was a bit embarrassing, actually. I was quite drunk and eyeing up the talent with my mate Polly. I spotted Nick and said to her, “Right, I’m having him.” Only thing was, I said it a bit loudly.’

  We rocked with laughter. ‘Oh, no!’

  She grinned. ‘Oh, yes. He winked at me and said, “I heard that,” very pointedly. I thought I was going to die on the spot, and there’s Polly absolutely wetting herself laughing at me. But . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It worked. I did have him. And he’s lovely.’ She smirked and twizzled some rocket leaves round with her fork. ‘And he’s wadded.’

  ‘Of course,’ Cat nodded. ‘Wouldn’t expect anything else.’

  ‘So what happens now?’ I asked. ‘Seeing him again?’

  She munched through her leaves. Becca was one of the few people I knew who actually chose to eat salad because she liked it, not just because it wasn’t fattening. The freak. ‘Seen him again already,’ she said. ‘Last night. He took me to Nobu.’

  ‘Ooooh,’ we chorused. Blimey, even I’d heard of Nobu.

  ‘Oooh indeed,’ Becca said. ‘Do you know, I really really like him. He made me laugh. And he’s good in bed as well. He makes me feel like . . .’ She broke into song. ‘Like a natchural wooooman . . .’

  Her cheeks were flushed as she waved her microphone fork around. Sparkly eyes. An I’ve-had-fab-sex-in-the-last-twenty-four-hours glow in her skin.

  ‘Well, I’m very happy for you and not jealous at all,’ I said, trying to keep the sigh out of my voice. All that sex and romance and giddiness . . . It had been a long time since I’d felt like that. My cheeks were only flushed from alcohol, and shouting at my children these days.

  ‘I’ve got some news too,’ Cat said. ‘Tom and I are going to move in together. A domestic tom-cat, as he put it.’

  ‘Ooooh!’ Now it was my and Becca’s turn to be the Trisha-audience-style chorus.

  That was good news. Tom was lovely. Cat had been with him for years, but it had been quite on-off, on-off – mainly because they both had feisty firework tempers and the kind of rows where one person stormed out or threw books at the other one’s head or said horrible, hurtful things that made the other one cry and say even more horrible, hurtful things back.

  Cat had always been charming and lovable in my eyes, though. She was the sweet youngest sister, as opposed to the sensible oldest sister (Lizzie) and the awkward, troublesome middle one (me). Cat was the kind of person that everyone adored. She had long blonde hair, green eyes and freckles and a nose that scrunched up when she laughed. If you strayed into her bad books, though, ouch – you knew about it. That cat could scratch.

  ‘That’s brilliant, really brilliant, Cat,’ I said warmly, squeezing her hand across the table. ‘His place or yours?’

  ‘Neither,’ she replied, grinning back. ‘We’re going to sell up and buy somewhere new. Somewhere that’s ours. It’s so grown-up it’s terrifying. Which is why we’re going to have a fuck-off-great, month-long, young-guns holiday first, to cushion the blow.’

  ‘Like it,’ Becca nodded. ‘Anywhere in mind?’

  I poked my cutlery around my plate and tried not to listen too hard as Cat started telling us about her plans for India, how she couldn’t wait to get back there, how she was desperate for a sunny beach to lie on, Goan fish curries, haggling for rugs in Anjuna market, palm trees, cold beers on the balcony at the Panjim Guest House . . .

  I slugged my wine down. ‘Shall we get another bottle?’ I said, interrupting Cat’s Passage to India monologue. There was only so much jealousy I could deal with in one evening, after all. Any more of this and I’d be forced to run out of Swanks screaming and crying and checking myself into the nearest loony bin. Or something.

  ‘Have we finished it already?’ Becca asked, picking up the bottle and peering through the murky green glass. ‘That didn’t take long.’

  As she waved a hand to the waitress, I noticed somebody staring at me across the room. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him. Blue eyes, sharp shirt, sexy cheekbones. Was he one of the dads from Molly’s playgroup scrubbed up for a night out? Someone Alex played football with? He was smiling and waving, and then he made one hand into a phone shape and held it up to his ear. ‘Call me,’ he mouthed.

  Then I remembered. Jack.

  Oh my God, it was Jack from the other night, the one I’d lied to, the one I’d told I was a scriptwriter! I smiled back quickly and nodded and turned around to the table, heart thudding uncomfortably. Shit. I hadn’t expected to see him ever again, let alone a week or so later.

  Cat kicked me under the table. ‘Who is that piece of eye candy over there you’ve just been flirting with?’ she hissed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re doing the dirty on Alex?’

  ‘No!’ I could feel my ears turning red and the blush sinking down into my neck. ‘He’s just . . .’

  ‘Go on, Sade, you can tell us. He is nice. Out of ten, I’d definitely give him one.’

  ‘Cat, stop it! And stop staring!’ I was giggling like a ten-year-old with nerves. ‘He’s someone I met, that’s all. Nothing more than that. Nothing.’

  ‘Well, he keeps looking over here,’ Becca said. Then she frowned. Remembered. ‘Hang on – isn’t he the guy who was in the Prodigal the other night?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, he is. Jack.’

  Cat’s eyes were so wide, I could see the whites around her pupils. ‘Oh yeah? So what happened with you and Jack? Why is he telling you to call him?’

>   Becca leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin resting on her hands. ‘Yeah, Sade. Why is he telling you to call him?’

  I put down my cutlery, cleared my throat. I had to explain, then. There was no way they were going to let me off without giving them every single detail.

  ‘So what’s going to happen now?’ Cat wanted to know when I’d finished.

  ‘Nothing!’ I said hotly. ‘Look – his number went through the wash, didn’t it? I can’t ring even if I wanted to. And, of course, just a small detail, I don’t want to.’

  ‘Of course,’ Becca said, nodding her head, lips pressed together in a smug smile.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Cat agreed. ‘Turn down a babe like that? Of course.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I groaned. ‘Look, I’m a responsible mum, I’m settled down with my long-term partner, I’m . . .’

  Then I thought about the alter ego I’d invented on the website. The Sadie who worked at Channel 4, the Sadie who had chosen career over kids, who larged it up every night. Jack was just the kind of man she’d go for, wasn’t he?

  Sod it.

  I stood up. ‘Just a minute,’ I told them and walked off.

  What’s she doing?’ I heard Cat saying behind me. Her voice had gone up an octave.

  ‘Is she going over there?’ Becca asked incredulously.

  She was. I was. All the way to Jack’s table. It’d be worth it just to see their faces.

  ‘Hi, Jack – oh, sorry to interrupt, everyone,’ I said sweetly. I batted my eyelashes, glad of the extra-length mascara I’d whacked on them. ‘Jack – I’m so sorry I haven’t called. I managed to lose your number. Could you give it to me again, please?’

  Someone at the table sniggered. The old ‘give it to me’ phrase always appealed to someone’s juvenile humour. Had I said it deliberately? I wasn’t even sure myself.

  Jack pulled out a business card and pressed it into my hand. ‘Now, don’t lose it again,’ he ordered, pretending to frown and be stern. ‘And ring me!’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, smiling as prettily as I could. ‘I will.’