Oh …dangerous.
With his good hand he covered one of hers. Her soft little hand with cute dimples over the knuckles. He sighed and made his voice as kind as he could because Stella had been his mistress for a long time. ‘It’s not Diane that I have to part from, Stell.’
After Stella had stumbled out he stared out at a colourless, hazy sky. He was going to miss her. He’d enjoyed the affair from its slap-and-tickle beginnings to its surprising metamorphosis into an actual relationship. He’d even sort of enjoyed the break in the middle, the aggro, her stubborn refusal to realise that her role was to come back to him. She’d gone too far by going off with that younger guy but he’d ended both that and her marriage with one whisper in the ear of her husband.
Stella hadn’t been right for the husband; she was too wilful, too much fun. A lot of fun, was Stella. But the unpalatable truth was that he couldn’t – for the present – have both his wife and his girlfriend.
He picked up his mobile phone, selectedValerie. She picked up curtly. ‘Yes?’
She was missing the pop; it was bound to make her grumpy, going cold turkey on both cigarettes and alcohol. Economically, he told her about Stella.
‘Sorry to hear,’ she returned.
‘I’ll miss her.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘We had a lot of fun.’
‘That’s the idea.’
He hesitated. ‘What’s up?’
She sniffed. ‘I have the arse with you, dear brother. You’ve been lying to me about your wife. She’s not a reclusive agoraphobic or a sobbing mess scarcely able to look after herself. Why did you lie? To me?’
Concern creased his brow. Valerie actually sounded angry. In the last two years he’d intrigued, interested and amused her and she’d confided in him. She had not been annoyed with him.
He gave vent to a gusty sigh. ‘Why does anybody lie about a thing like that? Because they wish things were different. I’m trapped in my marriage and I tried to pretend that I wasn’t. I’m sorry.’
‘Trapped? But I respect her. She’s a valiant sort of woman. Scraping along financially while you laze around in your cottage with your bit on the side or shoot about in the chopper with me. I like her, too.’
Alarm blossomed in his chest. Gareth admired Valerie to the point of hero worship and never felt impatient with her as he did with Melvyn and Ivan who were, let’s face it, low-achieving but high-spending. He loved them, but it was a job – his job – to keep them out of the Small Claims Court and out of the hands of the cops. Ivan was bloody silly and would buy anything from some junkie down the pub, even when it was quite obviously so hot that it glowed. And Melvyn had to have every new gadget that hit the High Street, all of it on the never-never. BlackBerry, TV, camera, DVD, MP3.
He loved his brothers but they were exasperating, the way they needed pulling out of the shit all the time.
Yet he was proud to share blood with Valerie, who he’d never had to help with a damned thing. Her mind was fast, her opinions decided, her finances awesome.
‘It’s not like you to be snotty about something so trivial as my maritals,’ he said, abruptly. ‘What’s really the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on.’
‘Nothing unexpected.’
He waited.
Her voice filled with tears. ‘The CAA have taken my licence away. James brought the letter in today.’
Cautiously, ‘You must’ve expected that. They’d already suspended your medical certificate.’
‘But that was because I’ve suffered multiple fractures. Not because I was unfit to fly.’
He let his voice become censorious. ‘In what way were you unfit to fly?’
A pause. ‘Alcohol above the permitted limit.’
He sighed. Balls. Here he was again – listening to the troubles of a sibling. ‘I could’ve told them that. Having been the poor sod in the helicopter. You’ve told me the “eight hours from bottle to throttle” rule, and you do tuck it away, Sis. You should’ve stuck to your rule about not drinking before a flight.’
