‘There she is, my beautiful wife,’ said Jason, spotting her and drawing her close. He was annoyed at her late arrival, she could tell from the glitter of his eyes. He was a stickler for punctuality, but he would never say a word. For the crowd, he kissed her lightly on the mouth.
The crowd purred and Jason smiled: he loved the limelight.
‘Nice dress,’ he whispered only for her and she felt the pressure of his fingers moving gently up the dress to caress the underside of her breast.
‘I needed to look perfect for you, darling,’ she said for the benefit of the audience, the knowledge that Jason approved of this dress, of how she looked, calming her along with the Xanax. When did she become this insecure? She hated it. Hated how her sex drive had plummeted and how intimacy had become a chore.
What if the Inner Crone drove her husband away?
He was a good man, despite his ferocious need for more: more money, more things, more prestige.
Now, his fingers traced a line along the skin of her exposed collarbone as if they were alone and the crowd of women all sighed a little at such romance.
‘Where were you, Cal?’ he muttered so nobody could hear. ‘I thought I’d have to send out a search party. Someone keeps groping my backside.’
Callie grinned at the thought of her Alpha-male husband complaining about being groped.
‘Now I’m here, I’ll keep your admirers in check,’ she said, shooting a glance around at his harem and wondering who was drunk this early in the evening and feeling up the host. ‘I was checking on Poppy.’
‘Happy?’
‘Oh, fine. I’d like to think she’s miserable she’s not down here, but she insists it’s all wrinklies and she’d have no credibility if she came to it.’
‘Made her point and now she has to stick to it,’ Jason said with a hint of pride.
Poppy was in her room with four girls from school and Brenda, who was the family housekeeper and Callie’s closest confidante apart from Mary, was keeping an eye on them and feeding them.
‘Daft kid, she’ll be sorry one day, missing all this.’ He gestured around the room and in the process, let go of his wife, which was her signal to mingle.
She didn’t touch any of the cocktails, knowing that alcohol and Xanax were an unfortunate mix.
‘Callie, it’s a beautiful party and you are beautiful in that dress.’
The speaker was small, pretty, had short curling dark hair and, unlike most of the guests, was a real friend who’d known Callie for a long time.
‘Evelyn, I’m so glad you could come!’
Evelyn was the first wife of Jason’s long-time business partner, Rob.
She was a dear friend. They met twice a week at Pilates classes and giggled together over whether their pelvic floors had hit the basement yet. With Evelyn, Callie didn’t have to pretend to be the super-rich, super-happy ex-model wife. She could merely be herself and discuss hot flushes, where this excess waist flab was coming from, and wonder where their sexual reawakening had got to. Before Mary had gone to Canada, the three of them had gone to Pilates together.
‘You look lovely too, Ev. Red really suits you,’ said Callie, admiring Evelyn’s red jersey dress, which they’d shopped for together. She pulled her friend into a hug.
Rob and Jason had been thick as thieves ever since they’d got out of a big City firm and set up their own hedge fund brokerage. They weren’t hedgies anymore, they told everyone. They did lots of things, mainly private property investment, which was very complex, the way Jason explained it.
‘Oh, just a bit of this and a bit of that,’ as Jason said expansively when anyone asked.
Callie didn’t ask anymore.
Evelyn and Rob were now divorced. She’d finally thrown Rob out of the house when his sleeping around had got too much for her.
‘I put up with so much for the kids, because I didn’t want them to have divorced parents, but hey, he’s never around anyway, always “working”,’ she’d said bitterly to Callie at the time. ‘Which means screwing his newest girlfriend.’
Six years on, Evelyn and Callie were still friends and it had been a bone of contention between Jason and Callie when she insisted on inviting Evelyn to the party.
‘Rob’s coming with Anka,’ Jason had said, jaw clenched. ‘We don’t want a scene.’
Anka was the girlfriend who’d stuck: the clichéd, much younger, tall blonde with ski-jump Slavic cheekbones, a fragile beauty and no apparent issues with waist flab.
