A hard blue cushion was stuck with pins, red tailor’s chalk lay beside the one-metre wooden rule and, pinned to a cork tile on the wall, the measurements that demarcated Tamzin’s waif-like figure were written onto a female outline.
Diane looked at the materials around her. She felt scratchy eyed and light headed; not remotely like starting on Tamzin’s mammoth order. But the garments wouldn’t make themselves. Tamzin, although Diane hadn’t seen her for over a week, had seemed to be looking forward to the new clothes and it was apparently a miracle for her to look forward to anything. Diane had an itch to help her if she could.
But she’d lain awake for too many anxious night hours recently asking herself what she’d done and feeling her stomach turning over at the answer. Twenty-five years she’d been faithful to Gareth, through thick and thin (or thin and thinner), good and, latterly, bad. After the row about Diane’s inheritance – or lack of it – sex between them had faded until abstinence was habitual. Until then Gareth had never let anger interfere with his desire for her.
But there was something of which she was in no doubt: even if he no longer wanted her, he wouldn’t want another man to want her.
She could just imagine his cold rage if he ever discovered her back-of-the-car sex.
How sordid it sounded! But it hadn’t seemed it. James, both caring and urgent, had wanted her. And wanted her. She’d run with her instinct and satisfied a craving for human contact of the kind she hadn’t even realised she’d been missing so badly. Waves of desire had washed her onto a dangerous beach.
But that had been then.
Before the cold light of several days had illuminated the fact that she knew almost nothing about James and only had his word for it that he and Valerie hadn’t, um, met in the middle for years. And he hadn’t said anything about meeting anybody else’s middle. Casual sex could be his norm. It had seemed to come easily enough, complete with suggestions about hotels. She had come easily enough, too: one cheesy chat-up line and she’d hopped into his backseat like a curious teenager.
Carefully, she checked that her lengthways fold ran accurately along the warp of the fabric, then pinned and pressed it, a bad hang to a garment grating on her like a screeched note would on a musician.
She sat back on her heels and surveyed her sketch and the pattern she’d cut for a double-breasted shirt with collar and slightly gathered sleeves. Tamzin needed to avoid anything too fitted until she regained some weight. Either side of the centre panel Diane would embroider whorls of tiny stem stitch and French knots, working in and around the little chrome rings as she went. Subtle and unusual, Diane’s offbeat ornamentation would suit Tamzin better than ribbon or ruffles.
She examined the cutting edge of her scissors. They’d soon need sharpening, and Gareth normally did them.
Downstairs, the phone rang.
Motionless, she listened. If she got to it before it stopped ringing, it wouldn’t be James. He hadn’t phoned on Tuesday. Or Wednesday or Thursday. The man didn’t phone a woman after a one-night stand, she’d come to realise. That’s what made it a one-night stand. Dur! So what did he do? Probably, he smiled with vague friendliness when he next happened to encounter her and maybe asked how she was. If he didn’t mention the sex unless the woman was misguided enough to oblige him to, then it had been nothing special. He whistled in the shower as he swilled away Scent of A One Night Stand Woman and he forgot the whole thing.
The man certainly didn’t swear and panic and attempt a belated douche job as an optimistic form of contraception, trying grimly to calculate when his period was due before hurrying off to Dr Cooke for advice.
The phone continued to ring.
Diane lunged inelegantly to her feet, a leg buckling because she spent too much time on her knees on that hard floor. She raced for the stairs, wishing she had telephone handsets all over the house so that she didn’t have to drop what she was doing and fly to where the phone was fixed to the wall.
She jumped into the narrow hall. The phone still rang. She snatched up the receiver with a breathless, ‘Hello?’
‘Can we swap hospital visiting slots with you, today?’ It was Ivan, blunt to the point of rudeness, typical of him that he didn’t even bother with ‘Hi, how are you?’ Of course it wasn’t James.
‘OK.’ She matched his economy with her own.
‘You can go in the evening.’
‘I can, can’t I?’
‘Only we want to go to the footie tonight and we’ve got half a day off.’ Ivan and Melvyn worked at the same mammoth packaging plant.
‘Have fun.’
‘And you can stay over at ours.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘But our Gary wants –’
‘It’s very thoughtful of you all to worry but I’ll drive home.’
‘It’ll be dark.’
‘I’ll put the headlights on.’
Staring through the kitchen window after ending the call, she didn’t immediately return to Tamzin’s shirt. Clumsy and incompetent, Ivan was attempting to manipulate her. She would discover why – she’d had years of practice. It was just a question of being methodical. It would give her something to think about other than James.
