It's Raining Men Part 5

'Yes, it will be great,' replied Lara, hoping she sounded convincing.

'I can't even remember the last time I saw you face to face. Five years ago, wasn't it?'

'Ha ha.'

It was ridiculous that they all worked for the same company and yet saw each other so rarely. Lara couldn't remember when she had last spent any quality time with Clare either.

'Things okay with you, then, Lara?'

'Absolutely,' said Lara, injecting a positivity into her voice that she didn't feel. Her paranoia was ridiculous. How the h.e.l.l did teenage girls have such a handle on psychology? And why? Lara had fallen over backwards to join the family home without putting anyone's nose out of joint in the process. She had never tried to take the main motherly role although, from what she had learned of Miriam's maternal skills, she didn't have a great deal to worry about. Miriam was a barrister; that her nickname was 'Barracuda Barrett' was an indication of her warmth and gentleness. Not. She had left James for a High Court judge who lived in France and they commuted weekly into London on the train, staying at their very sw.a.n.ky pied a terre in Knightsbridge. Miriam, luckily, had no interest in wasting her time picking fights with her ex-husband's new partner. Lara suspected she didn't ever appear in Miriam's conscious thoughts. But it wasn't the brilliant glacial ex-wife that Lara was worried about; no, it was young, 'spicily s.e.xy' Tianne. She would try her best not to think that, as soon as she was out of the house, Tianne would move in. That was a ridiculous notion. She had to trust James not all men were the same. Even if all the ones she had been out with seemed to be of a very similar design.

'Lud okay?' Lara asked. Now he sounded like a nice man. She liked the look of the big square-shouldered Ludwig on Clare's photos so much. It was clear from what Clare had told them that he adored her.

'He's good, yeah,' said Clare, with a forced lightness to her voice. She flicked her eyes to the clock. 'I'll tell you about him when I see you. Have to flee got a meeting in ten.'

'Ha, me too,' said Lara. They said: Have to flee got a meeting in ten to each other so much, it was almost a stock catchphrase.

Lara had a lot to do before she left for her holiday, especially as her second in command, Elise, wasn't as competent as she would have liked her to be probably because her heart wasn't in it at all. Mind you, Lara could hardly blame her. Working here was like appearing in a seventies sitcom: the men were sleazy and gropey and the women were second-cla.s.s citizens, even those as high up in managaement as she was. Giles Billingley saw anything in a skirt as fair game.

'I'll pick May up first then we'll drive around for you.'

'Lovely,' said Clare, her mouth now full of a bacon and Brie sandwich. The canteen was too far up itself for her liking. Everything had to be complicated: boiled egg and caramelized onion, beef, Stilton and walnuts, quiche slices with leek and cranberry. It was just wrong; someone was trying far too hard to fuse together ingredients that didn't want to be mixed and totally c.o.c.king up the tastes. They should have got their fundamentals right and concentrated on the bread first, she thought. She could show them how to make a proper loaf, given half the chance. She wished she had more time to bake. Although there was no one in her life to do any baking for now. 'See you tomorrow evening. Time?'

'I'm picking May up at about eight so we'll ring when we set off from hers.'

Lara then pressed the speed dial for May, but she had to ask if it was May when she picked up because her voice sounded drier than a sand pit.

'May?'

'Yes. Hi, Lars.'

'You okay? You sound rough.'

'Me? I'm totally fine,' May lied. She had just had to take two tablets because she had the stirrings of a migraine from holding in all that stress, and she hadn't had one of those for a long time. She wanted to run away from the paperwork on her desk, search out Michael and face him head on with the thousands of questions which were fermenting in her brain. She didn't want to phone him or text him. She needed to look into his eyes when she spoke to him. She needed to see him chuckle and say, 'What the f.u.c.k was that matron talking about? If you don't believe me, I'll take you to see Susan and then you can find out for yourself which one of us is telling the truth.'

'I've just been speaking to Clare. She's getting quite giddy about tomorrow,' said Lara, hoping that May wasn't coming down with something. She sounded very croaky.

'Me too,' May answered, forcing enthusiasm into her voice. 'I'm packed and ready. Have been for days.'

'That's good,' nodded Lara, then she chuckled. 'I have the sneaking suspicion that Clare will be taking a few bottles of bleach with her. And her slow-cooker. And her stain removers.'

'I wouldn't be at all surprised,' smiled May. 'Bless her. Mind you, if Clare can't get ketchup out of a s.h.i.+rt, no one can.'

Clare made them both laugh with her obsession with all things cleaning and cooking. But not unkindly so. Lara was convinced there was a TV programme in it the Domestic Accountant. Clare didn't mind them taking the mick out of her in the slightest. Especially when she could chalk points up in the air for things like successfully advising Lara on the best way to get chewing gum out of her step-son's favourite shorts.

'Anyway, this is just a quick one,' Lara went on. 'I'll be at yours for about eight tomorrow evening. Okay with you? It'll be nice to have a catch-up.'

'Yes, lovely,' said May, battling the tremor in her voice. 'I can't wait.'

But she could wait. The last thing on her mind at the moment was going away on this trip. And a catch-up would be very one-sided because, if her worst fears were realized, there was no way she was going to tell her friends all about this mess.

'Me neither,' said Lara.

'Great,' said May. 'Have to flee got a meeting in ten.'

'Yep, me too. See ya tomorrow.'

Lara stuffed her own sandwich into her mouth and washed it down with a coffee that had gone lukewarm. Everything in her day went at eighty miles an hour. Would she be able to handle a slow pace for a week and a half? She had an inkling that the holiday would be cut short after two days as all three of them were too addicted to their desks. And, feeling as insecure as she did at the moment, maybe that wouldn't be too much of a bad thing.

Chapter 14.

May didn't have a meeting in ten, but she wasn't in the mood for small talk. She forced numbers and calculations of gross and net margins into her head in an effort to stop the questions and theories which were demanding to be heard. She batted them away with all her might, and added up, filled in spreadsheets and let plans of setting up Mr Terry's wholefood restaurant in Clapham take over her brain.

Her PA knocked on her office door and then bobbed her head in.

'Night, May.'

May glanced at the clock. It had somehow become seven o'clock. The last time she had looked at it, it had been three. Michael would be on his way over to her flat, expecting to share the Marks & Spencer's meal for two which awaited them in her fridge.

'Night, Berenice. See you tomorrow, lovely.'

'You work too hard,' said Berenice, a bright and pretty girl in her early twenties ambitious but good-hearted with it.

'It's seven o'clock and you're still here too,' countered May.

'Yeah, but I've been sitting reading a magazine since six. I'm meeting friends for a meal. It wasn't worth me going home and I don't feel like shopping have you seen the weather?'

May looked through the window and saw the rain las.h.i.+ng the gla.s.s. She had a sudden urge to open the window and let it fall on her face, saturate her, flood her mind and wash away every last memory of that man.

'Have a nice time,' said May. 'Where are you going?'

'Some Malaysian place,' said Berenice. 'Seventeen of us for my friend's twenty-first. See you in the morning. I'll be early, but not so sure about bright.' And with that she gave a little wave and closed the door.

Twenty-one seemed a million years behind her yet it was only twelve. Twelve years ago she finished her Business, Management and Leaders.h.i.+p degree at Exeter and it had felt as though the world was her oyster. Too bad she'd harvested an oyster in a month with no R in it.

May gulped down the ma.s.sive lump of emotion clogging up her throat as she put on her coat and switched off the office light. For the five-minute walk to the Tube she played a game with herself, working down the alphabet and naming a film star for every letter, anything to avoid thinking about the scene that would soon be played out at home. On the Tube she tried not to look at the couple opposite her who were holding hands and whispering to each other. The woman had s.h.i.+ny brown hair and love was making her chestnut-coloured eyes s.h.i.+ne. Just as May's had been s.h.i.+ning until that morning's trip to Clapham. It was her own fault. She should never have let herself fall for a married man it was hubris, karma, kismet.

She wished she had never struggled to put up her stupid umbrella in the flash storm last November. She wished she had told the man who stopped to help her put it up to p.i.s.s off and leave her alone. She wished she hadn't accepted his offer of a coffee and shelter from the rain in a nearby tea shop in Covent Garden. She wished she hadn't let him open the door for her, pull the chair out for her, work his charm on her. She wished she had walked out there and then when he told her he was married to a dying woman. She wished she hadn't let him convince her he was lonely and tortured and stumbling through life not knowing where he was or what he was doing any more. She wished she hadn't been a stupid idiotic soft touch with a scar on her face who was so sodding grateful to be loved and found attractive that she believed all the rubbish that tumbled out of his lying gob.

It was impossible to stop the tears from falling by the time she reached her street. She tried to push them back into her eyes, but they wouldn't go. She deserved them. She let them drip steadily down her pale cheeks and then had to stand at the corner in the rain and steady herself before she approached her front door. Michael's company Mondeo was parked outside her house.

As she put her key in the lock, May realized she didn't have a plan of action. Even if she had, she would have ignored it, though. Her head went into a spin as she heard his cheery call.

'Hiya. I thought I'd make a start on dinner. Found everything in the fridge.'

May took off her coat and hung it on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, on top of Michael's. Then she doubled back, removed her coat from touching his and hung it on a peg on the wall instead.

May walked down the hallway towards the kitchen. Every step taking her closer to a confrontation she didn't want to have but knew she must. Oh, please, please make him have a plausible explanation. I'll never put another foot wrong in my life, G.o.d, but please do this one little thing for me.

Michael looked so carefree and happy as she stepped into the kitchen. He was wearing her ap.r.o.n and taking the top off the potato dauphinoise carton. She didn't know where to start, what words to use.

'What's up, darling?' He noticed the expression on her face and hurried around the table to embrace her.

When her hand shot out to stop him and her voice delivered a fierce 'Don't!' he looked at her as hurt as if she had slapped him across the face.

'May?'

'How old did you say Susan was?' She hadn't known what she was going to say until she said it. Her words were as much a surprise to her as they were to him.

'Thirty-five,' he said, without a quiver in his voice or a nervous blink of the eyes. 'What makes you ask that?'

'She isn't in her nineties, then?'

'What?' He angled his head, like dogs do when they are trying to understand what is going on.

'I said, Auntie Susan isn't in her nineties, then?' Her voice was trembling.

Michael's eyebrows arranged themselves into an arc of confusion but a flickering tic under his eye had appeared. He was holding his composure, but only from the nose down. He had been well and truly rumbled and he knew it.

'I know,' said May, sounding a lot stronger than she felt. 'I know that Susan Hammerton is in her nineties and that you are her great-nephew. I know that you go and visit her with a blonde your real wife, I presume?'

G.o.d, this sounded like an episode of Jeremy Kyle. All that was missing was a three-toothed best friend brandis.h.i.+ng the results of a DNA test.

'You can't know that because it isn't true,' Michael blurted out.

'I do know it because I went to The Pines this morning. To see if there was anything I could do for your wife.'

He gasped. 'Why did you do that? Don't you trust me?'

'What?' May's jaw dropped so low that it was in danger of hitting the floor.

'I'm not married,' he chipped in quickly. 'I've never been married.'

May stood there in the sort of shock that follows a bucket of iced water being tipped over the head. He had admitted one lie. How many more would come tumbling out behind it?

'Who was the red-haired woman in the photo you showed me, the one you told me was Susan?'

'Just an ex. An old ex. I'm sorry.' Michael sank to the chair and his head dropped into his hands. He began to sob and May's upper body instinctively lurched forward to hold him a habit established over the last nine months of emotionally propping him up but her more sensible legs remained rooted to the spot. 'Oh G.o.d, what a mess. I'm so sorry, May. Everything got out of hand.'

Got out of hand? What the heck did that mean?

Michael rubbed his eyes but May couldn't see any moisture on his cheeks or fingers. Were his tears false as well?

'Okay, okay, here's the whole truth. Oh, May . . . I . . . love you so much.'

Instead of making her insides as soft and squidgy as a newly baked cookie, those words now made May's heart freeze. They were like getting a cheap, wilted garage bouquet by way of an apology.

'Promise me you'll listen and not leave.'

May didn't speak. She couldn't have moved even if she tried. Plus, where would she go? This was her house. Eventually she nodded slowly. 'I'll listen.'

'Okay . . . okay,' began Michael with a p.r.o.nounced shake in his voice. He was pressing his hands down as if he was trying to tell someone to shush, but the only person speaking was him. 'When we first got together, I was scared of getting too involved too quickly, do you remember?'

May nodded again slowly but she couldn't clearly recall it because her thoughts were wrapped up in thick fog that sense couldn't penetrate.

'I didn't mean to say that I was married,' he blurted. 'But once the words were out, I couldn't take them back. I thought if I said something like that to you, you wouldn't get involved with me. I didn't intend to fall in love with you and for this to be such a big mess.'

Once again his head dropped like a lump of lead into his hands and then he sniffled, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, raised his head and smiled. 'I'm so glad it's out in the open now. Come and give me a hug.'

May's emotions were in a tailspin. She looked at Michael with his arms opening like the petals of a big tropical flower, and a sensible voice inside her reacted to the scene and asked, Is that it, May? Is that all you're going to get? Is that all you deserve? When she didn't leap instantly into his arms, his expression changed from relief to confusion.

'May, what's wrong?'

If May's heart hadn't been in lockdown, she would have laughed at this point. Was he serious?

'Are you for real?' she asked.

'May. I've told you the truth now. And it's better for you because I know you didn't like the idea of me being a married man . . .'

Now she did laugh. One humourless, confounded hoot of laughter.

'And how long was Susan going to stay alive? Were you going to have her die and then go to the funeral?'

'May.' He actually had the nerve to appear shocked that she could suggest such a thing. May looked at him but didn't recognize him. It was as if someone had taken her lovely Michael, stripped out his insides, put something dark and nasty back instead and then re-presented him to her. How could he even hope to shovel such a big putrid heap under the carpet as if it were a crumb that he couldn't be bothered to pick up? This was like one of those Internet romances where people fell in love but it was all a hoax and the person they thought they'd met didn't really exist. Susan Hammerton had become a real person to her. May had felt truly guilty about her, sad for her, angry for her; she had even wanted to give some money to the home to make her last days as comfortable as possible. She had no doubt now that Michael would have invented a funeral and had her cry buckets over a woman who had never inhaled one single breath. He would have walked into her house with a black suit on and a sad ba.s.set hound face and let May cook for him, ma.s.sage him, comfort him and then take him to bed. Whatever he said in protest, she knew that's what would have happened.

'I . . . I didn't think that far ahead. I was getting more and more tangled as the days went on . . .'

'Oh, what a tangled web we weave,' said May to herself. And boy was Michael one trussed-up spider.

A rush of anger swept through her like a forest fire raging over dry twigs. 'And who was the woman you took to see your wi- aunt?'

He waved his hand in the air. 'Ah, that was someone I had a couple of dates with. Ages ago.'

'At the same time as me?'

'No.' His eyes flickered left. He was lying.

'Why did you tell her the truth and not me?'

'I didn't like Kim as much as I liked you.'

That made sense. Not. Her name was Kim, then. That detail hurt.