‘You’re a kind friend who worries about my feelings, but he’s an ex-husband, Callie,’ said Evelyn. ‘Thoughtless is pretty much what he does. He thinks it’s quite reasonable to say to me that he and Anka are going to the Seychelles for a week when I’m worrying about how the windows are rotting and need replacing. Then, he starts telling me about the villa with private butler and I can truly see how women kill their ex-husbands and bury them under the patio.’
‘He left you enough money in the settlement, didn’t he?’ said Callie, astonished at the revelation about rotting windows and the implication that this could be a problem. Rob was rich. How were Evelyn and his children living in a house that needed work they weren’t able to afford? She’d never asked this before. Finances were so personal. But then, Evelyn had never told her that Rob discussed dinners with Anka, Callie and Jason before, either.
‘He gave me more or less enough money,’ Evelyn agreed, ‘although he hid a lot of it.’
Callie was stunned. She’d just assumed Rob had been decent to Evelyn: Jason had implied as much.
‘I felt ashamed. I just couldn’t tell you,’ admitted Evelyn. ‘And I mean, you’re married to Jason, Rob’s friend and partner, how could I possibly say,I think my husband is hiding shedloads of money from me. Funny, right?So my lawyer did a little bit of forensic accountancy work in order to track down the money, but there comes a point when you have to stop. Besides, Rob was all over it and said to my lawyer, ‘Let’s do a deal for a lump sum rather than alimony.’ It’s OK, we’re happy with that, he provides for the kids pretty well. I have locked-in college funds for them. But the house is old and the maintenance is a nightmare.’
Callie inhaled sharply. Evelyn had gone so far as to make sure her sons had their college money sorted – she must really not trust Rob.
‘I’m stunned, Ev,’ she said.
In her mind, she was thinking about Jason and the possibility of him trying to hide money from her in a divorce.
This must have been written all over her face.
‘Jason adores you,’ Evelyn said instantly. ‘I truly believe that. Just don’t do what I did – ignore your fears. If you’re really worried, say something. I let Rob carry on with other women for years and he began to think it was normal: having women flirt with him, sleeping with them.’
‘That’s not what marriage is supposed to be about,’ Callie said quietly. ‘It’s supposed to be forsaking all others.’
Evelyn shrugged. ‘Rob was always a bit of a player, Callie, but I honestly don’t think Jason is. He adores you.’
‘I know,’ said Callie, relief in her heart. It must be just business upsetting her husband. The alternative was horrible. What would she do if the lens of his admiration was turned away from her? How could she cope with that?
And yet, did she want to start a conversation with her husband about the possibility that he was cheating on her? She had nothing to go on, nothing. Perhaps Evelyn was right and it was just work. Rob would know and he appeared to tell Ev everything.
And all marriages went through ups and downs. It couldn’t all be a bed of roses. Even roses had thorns.
Sam
Mamma Mia!
I look like I’ve eaten a basketball.
I look pregnant – at last!!
Sam stood sideways in the mirror of her bedroom – not something she had ever spent much time doing before she got pregnant because she was tall and annoyingly slim, as her little sis, Joanne, liked to say – and examined the bump protruding from her body.
She hadn’t thought she was showing too much for the first six months, but now she’d hit the eight-month mark it was a whole other story. She, the woman who couldn’t conceive, looked hugely pregnant and it had happened almost overnight.
Showingwas one of the secret pregnancy words.Carryingwas another. Joanne had explained it to her and this blissfully arcane pregnancy language had come in handy during the early months.
‘You’re carrying to the front,’ the woman in the corner shop had said out of the blue when she was fifteen weeks. ‘Definitely a boy.’
Sam had nearly dropped the milk and the emergency chocolate biscuits she’d gone into QuikShop for in the first place.
‘Do I look pregnant?’ she asked the woman eagerly, as she put her stuff on the small counter.
‘Ah, love, when you’re my age, I can almost spot the pregnancies five minutes after they’ve had sex.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Any other kids?’
‘Er, no, this is my first,’ said Sam, then waited for the Sage of QuikShop to sigh and mutter about women leaving it too late to have babies because they were obsessed with their careers.
Half the planet appeared to think nearly forty was old to get pregnant.
