But they’re playing some game that they want to finish and so I get the inevitable protests, though not just from Charlotte, from both of them.
God, I hate Skype.
‘We’ll only be a couple more minutes,’ Felicity beams back from the screen. ‘By the time you’ve got changed we’ll be finished.’
‘I am changed.’
‘Oh, sorry Mrs Jameson, I thought you were wearing a sarong.’
I look straight into Felicity’s cold blue eyes and instead of saying what I think, instead of calling her the little bitch that she is, I smile brightly at her as I click off the screen. ‘You’ll see Charlotte soon.’
I don’t like Felicity - she lives across the road with her helicopter pilot daddy and her highflying executive mummy, Simone, and she goes to Charlotte’s new school.
Felicity’s the popular one.
And soon, so shall be Charlotte.
I’ll make sure of it.
He’s calling for us to hurry up and, as I step out into the hall, for the first time he sees me. I mean, with the dress and shoes - the full effect. He runs a very approving eye over me. ‘You look great.’
‘Felicity thought she was wearing a sarong,’ Charlotte says.
Bloody Felicity.
But he just laughs.
And then he looks at me, I mean, he properly looks at me and, if we didn’t have an eleven-year-old present…
Well, lets just say, I’m actually looking forward to getting home tonight.
I wave to my neighbour - she gardens constantly, or rather, she gets a view of the goings on in the street behind the guise of her garden shears. I’m sick of her trimming the privet between our two houses. Shouldn’t privet mean private? Why can’t she stop trimming it like we’ve asked her? I must get him to have another word.
‘Here.’ He picks a piece of honeysuckle and pops it in my hair and then he lifts my chin and I think he’s going to kiss me. ‘Behave tonight.’
I smile.
I go to say something about misbehaving later, but I am not to add pressure, I remember, from my many hours spent with Dr Google. I carry on being subtle but I’m just fizzing inside, because I know this is working…
I can flirt for England too.
And often men don’t even know when I am!
We drop Charlotte off and I chat for a brief minute with Simone before we drive off. We find Jess and Luke’s new home easily – or rather the GPS does and we park with the other Audis and Mercedes in the driveway. When we get out he takes my hand and he gives it a squeeze and as we walk up to the door I’ve a feeling he wants a kiss. Maybe we were about to, but the door opens without us having to ring.
‘Wow!’ Jess beams as she opens the door. ‘You look great!’ She takes the wine and the flowers we’ve bought and we do the kiss, kiss thing and I see that she goes a bit pink when he kisses her.
He does that to most women.
He can flirt for England too!
‘Thank God you two are here…’ Jess says and I know exactly what she means – these nights are painful at best.
If there's one thing they should warn you, when you marry that sexy older man, it's that you inherit his friends, who all just happen to have really liked the first Mrs Jameson.
Especially Luke.
It’s a bit too complicated to explain right now, as we have to go through, but in a nutshell, Luke lived with the Original Jameson’s for a few months when he was seventeen and I think he sees them sort of as parents.
Which means he thought their marriage was perfect.
But then along came Lucy!
And, of course, it was all my fault.
Jess is the only relief here. She and Luke married about two years ago, though Jess and I have been best friends for years. When I first had Charlotte and I’d put on some weight, Ricky told me about a Pilates class in the village and that’s where I met her. Jess is an “out there” Welsh girl, she's funny and sexy and she finds these nights as excruciating as me.
‘Honestly,’ she rolls her eyes. ‘It’s agony in there.’
‘I’ll sort them out,’ he winks to Jess. We walk through to the lounge and do the kiss, kiss thing with the dinosaurs and I can feel disapproval from the wives and the opposite from the men…
Perfect!
‘Lovely dress,’ says Shirley, who’s Greg, the MD’s wife.
‘It’s not a dress,’ he says, ‘it’s a sarong. I had to haul her out of the shower or we’d never have got here…’
He does sort them out as promised – he’s just so good at things like that. He’s got charisma I guess and, within a few minutes, the rooms lifted and you can see Jess start to relax. ‘The house is gorgeous.’ I look around the lounge and out to the hallway. I know a thing or three about real estate and it’s clear that they’re doing really well. There’s a large study to the left of the lounge, with a built in desk and there’s Luke’s leather sofa, which has survived a few moves. Apart from that, I don’t recognise any of the furniture – they must have spent a fortune filling it.
‘I’ve just shown everyone around, but I’ll give you a little private tour later,’ Jess says and we smile at the thought of brief escape.
I don’t often drink but thank God for wine tonight because dinner is hard work.
Conversation starts sticking at the starter.
It probably has something to do with the mini sticky onion tarts with Teifi cheese getting in their dentures. I mention Charlotte and her Skype and that sort of grinds them slowly towards the present date, gets their miserable goats going and the conversation re-started. They really are the most opinionated, boring, disapproving lot. They start moaning about adverts, not just on the internet but also on the television and radio, about how everything is discussed these days.
‘There was one on the radio the other morning, about erectile dysfunction!’ Shirley says and I start to laugh, because I had Charlotte in the car when it came on.
‘Yes I know,’ I say, joining in. ‘Charlotte asked me what it was.’ There's a small ripple of laughter.
‘And what did you tell her?’
‘I told her to ask her father,’ I smirk and now they really do laugh, only I wish they wouldn't. I can feel his disapproval. Shit, I want to take it back! I didn't mean it like that, I wasn't talking about him, I was just trying to make conversation.
I struggle through the crispy duck we’re having for main and when Jess gathers up the plates I help her, just for the excuse of a quick bitch in the kitchen.
‘It's your turn next month!’ Jess reminds me. ‘What are you going to make?’
‘Cyanide casserole.’
‘That's not elegant enough Lucy.’ She’s warming up sauces and I’m waiting for her to open the fridge – for the inevitable Trio of Desserts we all have to make these days. ‘We could add arsenic to the desserts,’ Jess grins as she stirs, ‘just a little bit each month.’ She does make me laugh. ‘Can you get the ice cream cake out of the freezer?’ Jess calls over her shoulder. She doesn’t notice my silence as I stare into the freezer; she’s chatting away as she makes one jug of hot chocolate sauce and one jug of butterscotch.
‘What happened to my trio of desserts?’ I try to make a joke but my voice has gone all husky.
‘Who's got time?’ Jess says and she proceeds to tell me the recipe. ‘You get a good ice cream and a mud cake which you break up and stir in to the ice cream, along with Crunchies and Snickers, all chopped up, add Maltesers and a big slug of Baileys too. Then, wrap it in cling film, put it in a cake dish and you shove it all back in the freezer. Great isn't it?’ Jess says, peeling off the cling film and sprinkling chocolate flakes over it as I watch. ‘Don't worry.’ She must have seen the slight horror on my expression. ‘I used gloves to mix it.’ Then she winces as she remembers that I’m allergic to ice cream. ‘Lucy, I forgot!’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ It’s no big deal, I tell her. ‘I’ll just skip to the cheese.’
‘Are you sure?’ Jess checks and I nod. We start to carry the desserts through and I see my husband look from the plate and up to me as I hand him one and I know I’m being served another warning to behave.
I go to get the next lot of plates and, as I do, Jess asks would I mind putting the rest of the cake back in the freezer?
I do so, and then I carry the last couple of plates through.
‘Not for me, thanks.’ Luke pushes the plate away from him and carries on with his conversation and I try to focus on what’s being said. They’re talking about something that happened around the turn of the century and, of course, I can’t concentrate. My eyes keep moving to Luke’s discarded plate. To the ice cream that’s melting. I don’t get how he can just leave it; I don’t get how Jess has eaten half of her slice and seems finished.
‘Lucy will know.’ Luke drags me into the conversation. ‘Remember that guy who headhunted Cameron - you remember don’t you? We were on that boat on the Thames – when you still worked there.’
I have no idea who he’s talking about.
‘Anyone want seconds?’ Jess stands.
It’s the only thing I can hear.
‘You must remember him,’ Luke insists. ‘He was talking to you for ages.’