Diary of an Unsmug Married (34 page)

When I reach the lobby, I spot a taxi that’s just dropped someone off at the hotel, so I dive into the back of it and arrive home before the
Newsnight
credits have finished playing. Max is asleep on the sofa and hasn’t heard me come in, so I tiptoe upstairs and take a shower, as fast as I can. I feel
so
grubby – even though I’ve already had chicken pox.

Not that I was likely to catch anything else, given that there was no exchange of bodily fluids of any kind. There wasn’t any nudity, either – so I could have worn my thermals, after all.

FRIDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER

I wake to mad beeping from my mobile. A barrage of texts, all from Johnny.

‘Good morning.’

‘I’m so sorry about last night.’

‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’

‘When can we meet again?’

‘I’m on the train. And wishing I wasn’t.’

Max looks a bit curious, so I tell him the texts are all from Orange.

‘Bastards,’ he says. Orange’s relentless marketing is a sore point with Max. He always claims that they send him so many text messages that they obscure the very few that I send him – which is why he never replies to those.
That’s
the sore point with me – though, to be honest, it’s probably a good job he rarely uses his phone, otherwise it might have been him calling me last night, instead of Johnny’s wife calling him – at exactly the wrong moment.

Unless it was exactly the
right
moment, to stop me in my tracks …

Five more minutes and
anything
could have happened, though further injuries seem a more likely outcome than sex, on the basis of what had gone before. God knows why Johnny wants a repeat performance of
that
.

I’m not at all sure that I do. As it is I can barely look at Max when I leave for work.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ Greg says as I walk into the office fifteen minutes later.

‘Oh, shit,’ I say. ‘I forgot to text you.’ Then I realise the significance of what he’s just said. ‘Oh,
hell
! Did you report me missing to the police?’

‘Um, no,’ says Greg. He fidgets a bit, and then says, ‘Want a coffee?’

He’s obviously forgotten that that’s
my
job for the next two months, to repay him for the lift to Johnny’s hotel last night. I’m about to say so, when I realise why I’m off the hook.

‘
Why
didn’t you phone them?’ I say. ‘Weren’t you worried about me?’

‘Well, I would have been,’ says Greg. ‘But, after I went for a run, I fell asleep in front of the TV and didn’t wake up again until eight am. This exercise thing really tires you out.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I say. ‘I could have been dead, for all you knew.’

‘Don’t be daft, Mol. If you can cope with the nutters we get here, you can definitely handle an oil baron by yourself. So how
is
the man from Moscow, anyway? A success in the bedroom as well as the boardroom?’

‘What man from Moscow?’ says The Boss. ‘And
what
did you say about success?’ He has a snakelike ability to creep up on you. It’s quite repulsive.

‘Igor,’ says Greg, winking at me. ‘And I was being ironic. Substitute “failure” for “success”.’

How does Greg do it? How does he
know
?

SATURDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER

I am obviously not cut out to have an affair, so I am going to be much nicer to Max and see if I can win him back from whatever – or
whoever –
it is I need to win him back from. And I’m going to ignore Johnny’s attempts to persuade me that it’s pointless to try. He’s just being cynical, or opportunistic, or both.

I shall help Max with the gardening today and see if we can bond over a love of nature.

‘I can manage by myself, Mol,’ he says, ‘if you’d rather do something else.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ I say. ‘Now how can I help? Nan always said green fingers were hereditary, and she was a
brilliant
gardener.’

After I have fallen over a trowel, cut through the tap-root of my favourite clematis and dug up a stack of freesia bulbs by accident, Max suggests I get a deck chair and ‘sit down and enjoy the autumn sunshine, out of harm’s way’.

Out of Ellen’s way might have been safer. No sooner have I made myself comfortable than she appears, hanging a pile of washing on the line. Why has she only got
matching
sets of underwear?

‘Still smoking, then, Molly?’ she says when she spots me over the back wall. (Why
do
people think it’s necessary to state the bleeding obvious?)

‘Um, yes,’ I say. I almost add, ‘D’you want to make something of it?’ but decide that would make me sound like Steve Ellington, so I don’t. I remain a master of restraint. I’d say
mistress
but, in the presence of Ellen, this would provoke uncomfortable thoughts.

‘You really should give up,’ says Ellen. ‘It’s a filthy habit.’

I have no idea why some people’s filthy habits are deemed disgusting, while certain other people’s are considered worth bragging about and doing in public – mentioning no names beginning with
E
– so I light another cigarette from the butt of the previous one, just to show Ellen who’s the boss.

The effectiveness of this is somewhat undermined by an immediate coughing fit, but I think I manage to disguise it by pretending that I have choked.

While Max pats me on the back, a little too hard, Ellen turns her attention to him.

‘You should give up, too, Max,’ she says. ‘Nicotine’s linked to erectile dysfunction, you know.’

Max stops patting my back, but doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that, so I do it for him. Unasked.

‘Not a problem Max is familiar with,’ I say, before realising what an idiot I am. Even if Ellen doesn’t already know the truth of that statement –
argh
– now she’ll
definitely
want to check it out.

‘God’s sake, Mol,’ says Max, disappearing into the shed and closing the door with a bang.

‘Anyway,’ says Ellen, after a pause. ‘I suppose I’d better get on with this.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘So should I.’

The trouble is, I’m not exactly sure what ‘this’ is, in my case. Or in hers.

SUNDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER

Max is in a horrible mood, and seems to be getting through an entire packet of extra-strong mints every five seconds. He’s trying to super-glue the root of the clematis back together, but his concentration isn’t up to its usual standard.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ I say, after he’s spent the last five minutes swearing about having stuck two of his fingers together. ‘And why do you keep eating so many mints?’

‘I’m giving up smoking,’ he says, peeling his fingers apart.

‘What?’ I say. ‘Why?’

‘Why?’ says Max. ‘Don’t be silly, Mol. Everyone knows it’s not good for you. And it’s like having social leprosy these days.’

‘Well, not when
both
of us smoke, it isn’t,’ I say. ‘And we never go anywhere socially, anyway. Or are you thinking of getting up close and personal with someone else? Someone who
doesn’t
smoke?’

Max sighs, then pops another mint into his mouth. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he says while he chews. ‘I want to give up before I enter my next decade. Just like you said
you
were going to. I’m a bit more determined than you are, that’s all.’

Talk about unfairness. Has Max forgotten the provocation I was subjected to on
my
birthday?

‘Well, that wasn’t my fault,’ I say. ‘What with Ellen and her very public search for a big you-know-what at my party, and The Boss going on about Gordon Brown, it’s no wonder I forgot I was supposed to be giving up.’

‘Excuses, excuses,’ says Max.

There is nothing as annoying as a reformed smoker, except for the people who attempt to reform them.

I’m trying very hard not to jump to conclusions and lose my temper, though – so I’m quite glad to see the back of Max, when he agrees to give Josh a lift to Holly’s straight after lunch.

Less than two minutes later, Josh comes pelting back in through the door, leaving it open.

‘Mum, have you seen the cat?’ he says, his voice almost drowned out by the sound of Max shouting, ‘Charlie!
Charlie!
’, outside.

‘No,’ I say. ‘He’s probably still out shagging. There seem to be about ten females on heat around here at the moment.’ (Not to mention the noisy human kind.)

‘No, he
isn’t
,’ says Josh. ‘He was asleep in the wheel arch of the car again, when Dad and I got into it just now.’

‘Then you know where he is already. So why are you asking me?’

‘Well, I told Dad Charlie was sleeping there—’

‘And?’ I say. I don’t like the sound of this, or of Max’s increasingly frantic tone. He’s still calling for the cat.

‘And Dad said not to worry – that Charlie’d move as soon as the engine started. Only he didn’t. Or not fast enough, anyway.’

Marvellous
. So now Max is a nicotine-deprived cat murderer. I’m just waiting for the Facebook hate page to be created when Josh explains that, although there was a big bump, Charlie then ran off somewhere, yowling and looking very cross.

‘So he’s not dead yet,’ says Josh. ‘But we’ve got to find him and take him to the vet as fast as we can.’

Honestly, I’m sure some people have
restful
weekends.

We search for hours, but there’s no sign of Charlie anywhere. Josh is distraught and keeps telling us that cats always go somewhere off the beaten track to die. This is not particularly helpful in the circumstances.

When it gets dark, we have no choice but to admit defeat and go indoors. Max looks devastated, and Josh even more so.

We’re all in the kitchen, sitting in silence, not knowing what to do next, when there’s a bang at the back door. The cat flap flies upwards and Charlie comes barrelling through it, shakes his fur, then swaggers off into the hallway.

Max grabs the cat basket, scoops Charlie into it, and then we pile into the car and race to the vet’s.

‘You may have been right that we should have bought pet insurance,’ says Max on the way back home. ‘Especially as I feel like killing the bloody cat properly, after that. Sixty-five quid, and there’s
nothing
wrong with him!’

‘He’s obviously better than Josh at ninja rolls,’ I say.

Max doesn’t laugh. Giving up smoking
obliterates
your sense of humour.

MONDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER

‘Good news,’ says Dinah when she rings me at work first thing this morning. ‘Dad says he’s bored.’

‘That’s not good news, you idiot,’ I say. ‘It’s
always
bad –
and
dangerous, you know that. And, anyway, how can he be bored? He’s still in Thailand with the Porn Queen for another two weeks.’

‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong, Molly,’ says Dinah. ‘As usual. He’s coming back early, so which one of us is the idiot now?’

I ignore that, as I’m more interested in finding out what’s going on. Di says that Dad emailed her last night, said that he was ‘bored with lying around in the sun, even though the company is lovely’, and ‘fed up with scorpions the size of lobsters lying in wait for him in the toilet’ – so he’s decided to fly back early. Tonight.

‘I’ve got to go and collect him from Heathrow tomorrow,’ says Dinah. ‘He reckons he’ll be too tired to get the train.’

‘Your dad’s obviously got it out of his system,’ says Max when I tell him later. He makes it sound as if having something to get out of your system is the norm.

Connie’s pleased about it, anyway. ‘I only ever wanted a cuddly grandad,’ she says, during tonight’s phone call. ‘Not a pervy one with a girlfriend called Porn.’

Then she bursts into tears.

‘Talking of funny names,’ she says, ‘I
hate
my new job. I wish I hadn’t applied for this internship now.’

‘Why?’ I say.

Doesn’t Connie realise what an honour it was to be selected? There aren’t many internships as prestigious as this, nor as well-paid. She could be stuck at the cinema with Josh, for four hours a week.

‘A trained monkey could do what I’m doing,’ says Connie, sounding oddly like her brother for once. ‘Or a robot. And my boss is
awful
.’

‘Oh, well – join the club on that one,’ I say. Now she sounds
just
like me.

‘Mum! He’s
much
worse than Andrew,’ says Connie, who barely knows The Boss at all. ‘He talks to the male interns all the time, but he only speaks to me when he has no choice.’

Talk about déjà vu. My maternal sympathy finally kicks in, only a little later than it should have done. (I’ve been trying to stick to my ‘if it isn’t cancer, then shut up about it’ rule until now.)

‘Oh, Connie,’ I say. ‘You poor thing. I know all about bosses who behave like that. Give it another week, and then speak to yours about it if it doesn’t improve.’

‘I would, Mum,’ she says. ‘But I can’t pronounce his name properly. I can’t call him Dr Snuffleopagus, can I?’

TUESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER

I’m in the kitchen at work, making coffee and mulling over how to respond to Johnny’s latest series of emails – all still trying to persuade me to change my mind about a second meeting – when the phone begins to ring.

‘Ah, Mr Beales,’ says Greg. ‘No, I’m sorry.
Still
no progress on ensuring that speeding tickets become null and void if the policemen who issue them get themselves run over while doing so. As I think Molly may have already told you, we are not wholly optimistic of success on this particular issue.’

I stick my head around the doorframe and pull a face, but Greg’s not paying any attention to me. He appears to be reading
The London Review of Books
at the same time as listening to Mr Beales.

‘Yes, well,’ he says. ‘I think you may have a somewhat dystopian view of society, if you’ll forgive me saying so.’ There’s a pause, and then he says, very slowly: ‘Dys-
to
-pian.’

Then he hangs up and starts leafing through a copy of
New Scientist
,
while I search for a safe place to put his coffee down on his desk. It seems to be covered with piles of new magazines and journals, though I can’t see a copy of
Hello!
magazine
anywhere
.