Authors: Jill Marshall
As It Is On Telly (6 page)
‘She’s gone to get cake,’ said Dan with a groan.
‘Well, then, you’d better wash your hands,’ said Bunty, with a lift in her heart. Everything was not rosy in the garden, but suddenly life was beginning to look a whole lot brighter. There were options. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
*
From: [email protected]
Hi Priscilla,
You’ve been really really kind and everything, setting me up with Jason, but I think I’m going to pull out now. Thank you for all your help.
Kind regards
Bunty
From: [email protected]
Dear Bunty,
Oh, that’s a shame. You know we give you three chances, and we have someone lined up who we think would be just perfect for you: 38, yachtie, tall dark handsome, Kiwi. Tra la la! Good luck with your endeavours.
Yours,
Priscilla
P.S. I hate to mention this, but I am bound to state that any further meetings with Jason will count as a successful match, and you will be charged the full Love-Lottery fee.
From: [email protected]
P, I cannot state this more strongly – I would rather glue my eyeballs round the wrong way than ever see Jason again. And the kind of fees you should be charging for him are of an entirely different (and dubious) nature.
All the best though,
Bunty.
From: [email protected]
Hmmm. Actually, Priscilla, could I rethink this one? We like Kiwis. One of my friends has a child by one, and another by his father, and my other friend is going out with the first friend’s ex. Good sign, huh?
Bunty
From: [email protected]
Dearest Bunty,
I don’t really know how to respond to that. I am now tempted to tell you that the Kiwi is taken, but I am somewhat tied up in protocol.
Priscilla
From: [email protected]
Admittedly, P, it does sound a bit weird, but it is all very, very above board. How about I don’t mention my date with the juvenile delinquent again, and you set me up with the Kiwi.
Does he have a name, by the way?
B
From: [email protected]
Agreed. Ben will be available this Friday evening at the Connoisseur Wine Bar, 7.30 p.m. I’m assuming that I do not need to repeat our safety recommendations.
Priscilla.
From: [email protected]
No, all dutifully remembered. Will be taking a small SWAT team to sit outside, ready to swoop.
B
From: [email protected]
That was a joke by the way. Again.
From: [email protected]
I realised that, Bunty, hence the lack of a reply. I am not without a sense of humour myself, you know. But I do have other clients to attend to. Good luck with Ben.
Priscilla.
The guy in the window seemed unfeasibly good-looking. Bunty pretended to reapply her lip gloss while she took another furtive glance into the Connoisseur. There didn’t appear to be any other single men in the bar, from what she could glean through the artfully designed gloom, although there were several sets of single women edging their way closer to him. One actually dropped her menu near his feet, then beamed with orthodontic glamour at the lone male as he scooped it up and handed it back to her.
‘Hands off, he’s mine,’ Bunty muttered, clambering at last out of the car.
Hands off, he’s mine. Who had sung that? She almost started strutting to a ska-reggae beat as she approached the doorway. The Specials? It was definitely someone ska-ish. ‘Until the end of time …’ Not ‘he’s mine’; it was ‘she’s mine’. A male band. An eighties, ska-type, black-and-white … Through the door, past the salivating females, over to ‘Tall, Dark and Handsome’ in the corner. Reach out for his hand.
‘The Beat!’ she exclaimed, seizing his fingers.
‘No,’ said the man slowly, cocking his head. ‘I’m Ben.’
Bunty’s skin flared scarlet. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I know. I’m Bunty. I was just thinking who sang that song, ‘Hands …’, um, this song, and I just remembered it was The Beat.’
‘Hands off, she’s mine,’ said Ben with a grin. ‘I loved that song. All that ska-reggae stuff.’
‘It was just on the radio.’ Bunty fanned her face as she took the seat he’d pulled out for her. No need to explain what had actually been going through her head. ‘It’s not how I normally greet people.’
Ben gave her a small grin. ‘I like it. Different. The kind of greeting you don’t forget in a hurry – straight into a pop quiz.’
He poured her a glass of the rather expensive Chablis he had chilling at the side of the table, and Bunty checked him out. He really was quite good-looking – a broad, tanned face, dark hair, eyes so dark brown they were practically black and a hard, rugby player’s body. Of course, it was a bit of a cliché to imagine that all Kiwis played rugby preceded by poky-tongued war dances, like the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup (which Graham had insisted on watching, although he’d not been near a rugby ball in aeons). But she could certainly imagine Ben’s shoulders barging in among the others in a scrum, the thighs straining against the hem of his little white shorts, those impossibly dark eyes sparking competitively. Get a grip, Bun, she told herself sternly.
‘Thank you.’ She took the wine and raised her glass at Ben. ‘So, um, go on then, what would your pop quiz question be?’
‘Easy. I always ask Poms this, and they never know. What was the name of the famous New Zealand band headed up by the Finn brothers in the early eighties?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘I know! I know! Crowded House. I loved Crowded House.’
Ben pretended to wrestle the wine glass from her hand. ‘No, no, no. That was the nineties. Split Enz.’
‘Oh! Of course. Split Enz.’
How could she forget? ‘I got you’ was one of the many covers that Adam and his band had done. Badly, of course. Adam himself had some talent as a singer and writer, accompanied by some mediocre guitar playing, but in a place the size of Taunton it had been fairly difficult to garner enough talent to make up a band that was ever going to really take off.
But here was Ben, grinning at her rather winsomely and looking distinctly as though he was enjoying the prospect of spending an evening with her. And hadn’t Priscilla mentioned a boat? ‘So you’re a yachtie.’
‘Brought up in Auckland, the City of Sails, it’s hard to be anything else,’ said Ben. ‘I’ve just spent the last six months sailing round the world, ending up here. I hope this place was all right for you to meet up?’
Here. On the yacht. Drinking champagne. Trailing hands in the water, brushing each other’s fingers. It all sounded completely splendid. ‘It’s fine here,’ said Bunty with a smile.
‘And you have quite an unusual hobby yourself. Fencing? I’ll have to get you cutting and thrusting on the yacht.’ Ben waved for a waiter with menus. ‘Very Keira Knightley.’
Bunty groaned as she pictured the
Pirates
of
the
Caribbean
scene he was envisaging. ‘Oh, no, it’s not that …’ Wait a minute, though. Ben was evidently rather intrigued by the comparison. It might have been the one reason he was interested in her – some elaborate male fantasy involving rapiers, flowing white shirts, and masked women. What the hell. ‘Yes, it’s just a little something I got interested in when I was younger.’
‘Pop quizzes and fencing.’ It came out as ‘fincing’, in much the same way that his name had sounded like ‘Bin’. ‘You’re quite an unusual woman, Bunty.’
She let out a slightly hysterical laugh. ‘You have no idea, Bin. Ben. No idea at all.’
In response, he clinked his glass against hers and drained it in one gulp. ‘Let’s eat,’ he said, in a tone that was masterful, enquiring, solicitous and hungry all at the same time.
Over dinner, Bunty discovered that the trip around the world had been an escape from a messy break-up. Ben’s wife, inexplicably in Bunty’s view, had been having an affair, a totally clichéd affair with his work associate. (Co-owner of the yacht? She’d find out later.) It was hard to imagine how his wife could have found someone preferable to Ben to shack up with. ‘My husband’s having an affair, too,’ she said, just touching the end of her finger against his.
‘Having?’
Shit. ‘Well, had, obviously, not still having, because we’re not together any more. So quite honestly I don’t know what it’s called now. It was an affair; now I suppose it’s a … a what? A relationship?’ That was what it would be when it came to the crunch. A relationship. Happy Christmas from Graham and Lycra-bottom. Drinks and canapés at Graham and Lycra-bottom’s. Wedding invitation: Graham, Lycra-bottom.
Ben put his head on one side, sympathy in his eyes for her babbling and incoherent state. ‘He’s really hurt you, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ replied Bunty automatically. Had he, really? She wasn’t entirely sure. He’d denied her the chance of having any more children, that was true. Although it was also true that she had clearly stated she didn’t want any more like Charlotte. And there was a certain proprietorial indignation, coupled with the sensation of mystery that someone else could actually find Graham attractive enough to want to take him away from her. When had
she
stopped finding him that attractive? Or, when it came down to it, when had she started?
‘Do you have kids?’ he asked.
Even though she was fairly sure this had been part of the profile, Bunty paused for a moment before replying. According to what she’d noted in his profile, he had two children, young. And he’d taken off across the world to chase out the ghosts of marriages past. It was another pop quiz question, the answer to which could either make him a) melt completely into a limpid puddle, b) practice a little more caution or c) run back to the yacht, hoist his mainsail and zip right back to New Zealand at a rate of many knots.
No answer, however, was not an option. ‘One,’ she said. ‘Charlotte. She’s thirteen. She’s
really
thirteen.’
Darling Charlotte. A complex child from the outset, she had become even more charismatic of late. Conspiring with her friend to get someone’s DNA was only one of the strange things she’d done recently, but Bunty supposed that slamming doors, hibernating for days with her iPod and a pizza box, and drawing strange black pictures of her parents swinging from the rafters were all just part of the usual bag of tricks that came with being a teenager.
Ben laughed. ‘Poor you. Mine are five and two. Much easier to look after, I suppose.’
‘At least I don’t have nappies to deal with.’
‘True.’
There was an awkward silence, during which Ben gazed through the etched glass onto the pavement outside. ‘You must miss them,’ said Bunty. It had to be six months since he’d seen them, unless … God, unless he’d kidnapped them and stashed them away on the boat,
yacht
, and was currently being sought in several different countries, extradited, entries on Match.com looking like a genuine convict .
‘Yeah,’ he said simply. There was just a glint of a tear in the onyx pools of his eyes. ‘And Charlotte? Does she live with you?’
The question took her completely by surprise, though why it should she had no idea. It was a very natural question in this situation, in this day and age. If … when … Graham left her, it would be the most important discussion they would have. Where would Charlotte live? Who would have custody? Joint custody, sole custody, shared custody – these were all phrases that Bunty could not quite believe she was going to have to get involved with. And there was no obvious answer. Charlotte needed them both – her mum and her dad. Graham didn’t cope too well with the parenting thing when left to his own devices, as evinced during their brief separation the year before. And yet Charlotte didn’t live easily with Bunty either. Maybe they were too alike. Perhaps they fought for Graham’s attention. Their gorgeous, much-loved daughter needed them both and somehow wanted neither. This was what Graham’s betrayal had led them to.
‘Bastard,’ she said hoarsely, only then becoming aware that Ben was looking at her, frowning, waiting for but not wanting to push her into an answer.
‘Are you sure … is this a good idea?’ Ben touched her hand gently. ‘Are you ready to get into something new?’
Hmm, let me think about this, she wanted to say. Gorgeous man? Check. Right age? Check. Rich? Cheque. Hurt and slightly vulnerable guy needing someone to pick him up, to fall in love with, who could completely empathise with the whole thing of being cuckolded? Double, triple, quadruple checkity check. ‘Well,’ she said eventually, ‘it might be a bit soon. But I’m willing to risk it. If you are.’
He rewarded her with such a grin that her heart nearly fell into her napkin.
*
From: [email protected]
Dear Priscilla.
I think I love you.
Bunty
From: [email protected]
Dear Bunty, I am truly hoping this time that this is one of your jokes as I am not of that persuasion, and it is not something you listed on your profile. We have been known to make matches of the same-gender variety, but there are agencies better suited to your proclivities if that is what you’re seeking. I could recommend a few?
Priscilla
From: [email protected]
P, of course I’m joking, you daft tart. Don’t you know me by now? Maybe what I should have said is that I love him – Ben. Well, not love, yet, but boy, a mighty good start. Bx (that’s just a polite letter kiss, BTW, not a proper lezzy type kiss) for you.
From: [email protected]
I see. I am glad your meeting went well. I will charge the Love Lottery fee to your Visa card account.
Priscilla.
From: Bunty [email protected]
Hold your horses, Priscilla! We’ve not even had a second date yet! I’ll let you know when we announce the engagement and perhaps you can charge us both then?
Bunty
