If some other man had been touching his wife's body he would...he would...
'Dad! You look like you're having a panic attack!'
It's Veronika, sparky and glittery and dancing around him like a boxer.
'Veronika!' Suddenly he is feverish for information. He grabs her arm. 'Do you send text messages to your mother? Did you text her this morning?'
Veronika rolls her eyes. 'No, Dad, I guess I didn't, seeing as I don't have a mobile phone, seeing as I don't believe in mobile phones, seeing as I know for a fact that they cause deadly brain tumours. I've read all the research. It's just like smoking and the tobacco companies. There's a massive cover-up going on. I've told you all this before. You don't listen. Anyway, Dad, I've got something to tell you. I want you to meet my friend Audrey. My girlfriend, Audrey.'
Ron drops Veronika's arm and stares at her but right through her. Margie told him a lie. But Margie is incapable of lying. She'd tried to organise a surprise party for him once and he'd been onto it within seconds. And on her fortieth birthday, when she'd learned the truth about Alice and Jack, she had been distraught. 'How am I going to live a lie?' she'd asked him, after she told him the true story, which she was allowed to do apparently because they'd been married for twenty years, so it was OK according to the Law of Connie, after he'd signed a confidentiality agreement, of course.
If Margie had lied it could only mean one thing. She's having an affair. His wife is having an affair at a Weight Watchers party right now. But wait a sec, there probably is no party! That's what people do when they're having affairs. They make stuff up! She's probably in a hotel! In a Jacuzzi! Drinking champagne with some hairy-chested dickhead, probably in real estate! And champagne goes straight to her head! And she'd be impressed if he told her it was Moet, when it was probably Great fucking Western! And she could be doing anything. She could be...she could be...Ron shudders with violent revulsion.
'Dad?'
Veronika swims back into view. 'I know it's a shock,' she says kindly.
She knows about the affair! She feels sorry for her humiliated father!
Ron clutches again at her arm. 'So you know everything? She's told you all about it? OK. Fine. I can deal with that. Just tell me where she is.'
Veronika's face scrunches up with irritated confusion. 'Tell you where who is?'
'Your mother, of course!'
'I don't know where Mum is, Dad. She told me she had to go to some function with her Weight Watchers friend. Oh God, this is just so typical. I'm trying to tell you something important. I'm trying to introduce you to my girlfriend, Audrey.'
The girl sticks out her hand and Ron shakes it. 'Nice to meet you, Audrey,' he says automatically. 'I'm sorry, I have to call my wife right now. There's a family crisis.'
He pulls out his mobile phone and begins to dial. 'I'm sorry,' he says again distractedly to Veronika, who has her hands on her hips, her mouth slightly open and that familiar expression of disgusted disappointment.
'Oh for Pete's sake!' Veronika grabs her friend's hand and drags her off into the crowd.
Margie's phone begins to ring and Ron presses his mobile to his ear with a clenched sweaty fist.
Rick has finished his fire-eating performance and has come over to see Sophie. His hair is sweatily tousled, his chest very wide. Sophie wonders if Veronika has really thought this lesbian thing through.
He says, 'You look beautiful.'
'Well, you look extremely sexy,' says Sophie. She has now had two glasses of deliciously good mulled wine and is feeling buoyant and slightly in love with everybody. 'Do you have a horrible taste in your mouth from all that fire-eating? Do you want some fairy floss?'
'No thanks. I've been wanting to talk to you. I came around yesterday but you weren't there.'
Sophie gives him a flirtatious look through her eyelashes and is conscious of her cleavage. Her heart lifts. She doesn't know why she's even been worrying about this. Rick is perfect for her. Her body knows it. Her heart knows it. Her mind knows it. He is the one. She is definitely, absolutely going to sleep with him tonight and it's going to be damned good. It will be the beginning of a whirlwind romance with sex, sex, sex, and talking till dawn and walks on the beach in chunky jumpers and frolicking in parks throwing Frisbees, and she'll be pregnant just in time for her fortieth birthday.
'I'm here now,' she smiles, and gives her wand a provocative flick. 'How can I help you? Need me to perform a spell on you?'
'It's a bit awkward. I just thought I should tell you that I've got back with my ex-girlfriend.'
OH, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!!!
Sophie lets her wand drop. She's going to remember that wand-flicking, eyelash-batting performance and cringe for the rest of her life.
'Oh, I see,' she says. She pauses. 'I suppose I could turn her into a frog.'
He grins ruefully. 'I should have told you when we went out that I'd only recently come out of a relationship, but I didn't want you to think I was one of those guys with all this baggage, and I really thought we were over for good. But then she sent me an email the other night and we just started being honest with each other about our feelings.'
Please excuse me while I vomit into my fairy floss.
'I'm sorry,' continues Rick. 'I had a great time with you the other day. It's just that I was with her for years and I can't turn my back on that.'
Sophie gives him a radiant smile. 'Of course you can't! I understand. Absolutely. I hope things work out for you.'
'Yeah, well, I really want to make a go of it, tie the knot, you know, all that boring stuff, settle down, be a dad. I'm ready for all that.'
He's ready to be a dad. It's hurting Sophie's face to smile. 'That's great, Rick, really. Hey, do you think you could get me another one of those mulled wines?'
Just when he thinks it's going to voicemail, she answers the phone.
'Hello?'
Except it's not Margie, it's a man's voice. It's him. He has a deep, salesy, I've-got-money-and-a-big-dick voice. He is definitely in real estate. He probably wears a gold bracelet and carries a man-bag. Ron feels like his head is about to explode.
Ron says, with considerable difficulty, 'Who is this?'
The bloke answers, 'This is Ron. Who's this?'
RON? 'This is Ron!' roars Ron.
The bloke chuckles. 'Oh. Good name, mate.'
Ron speaks through grimly gritted teeth. 'Do you want to explain why you're answering my wife's phone?'
'Margie is just getting dressed. Do you want me to get her?'
Now his head does explode. 'ARE YOU FOR FUCKING REAL?'
'Oh, darling, you are not!' says Enigma. 'Stop being silly.'
Enigma is feeling snappy. Nobody has brought her anything to eat, except for that sandwich, which was hours ago; Margie really did go out tonight, which Enigma didn't truly believe was going to happen right until the last minute; the baby is starting to get all tetchy and squirmy-and where is his mother for heaven's sake, there has been no sign of Grace for ages; and now here is Veronika announcing, quite loudly, that she is one of those homosexuals. Enigma has no problems with those homosexuals in general. They seem like decent, kind people and they dress beautifully. She just doesn't like it when they flaunt their funny ways in public, such as that awful Mardi Gras. It's not necessary. People can do what they like in the privacy of their own homes. However, it is quite ridiculous to think that her granddaughter is one of them. Besides which, she thought it was only the men who were the homosexuals. Why does Veronika have to be such a tomboy?
Enigma smiles politely at the Japanese girl who seems to have given Veronika these ridiculous ideas and does her best to set her straight. 'It's just that we don't do that sort of thing in our family, dear.'
'Don't be so rude, Grandma!' cries Veronika.
'Well, we don't, Veronika!' Enigma is incensed. She has just made a real effort to be polite to this Japanese girl, especially when you consider that one of Enigma's loveliest boyfriends during the war was a POW in a Jap
anese concentration camp and came back all skinny and miserable and not at all lively any more!
The Japanese girl says, 'It's OK, Veronika. Let's talk about this another time.' She says to Enigma, 'Is that your great-grandson you've got there?'
'Yes, this is little Jake.' Enigma immediately holds out the baby hopefully. 'Would you like a hold of him, dear? My arms are aching.'
'Oh, Grandma, Audrey isn't here to help you babysit!' says Veronika, but the girl takes Jake, which is a relief for Enigma's poor arms.
'So, you're from Japan, Audrey?' asks Enigma socially.
Veronika huffs and puffs while Audrey says, 'My parents are Malaysian actually, but I was born here.'
'Oh, well, Malaysia!' Enigma tries to think of something nice to say about Malaysia. Didn't Laura used to make quite a nice beef dish from Malaysia?
But just then a very unattractive, underdressed man comes charging out of the crowd and grabs Veronika's elbow. 'Are you Veronika Gordon? I've been looking for you all night! I've got information about the Munro Baby.'
Aha! It's the Kook! Enigma is delighted to have the opportunity to give this silly fellow a piece of her mind. 'I am the Munro Baby sitting right here in front of you,' she says firmly. 'I'm afraid you are a con-man, young man, and goodness me, you're not dressed nearly warmly enough!'
Sophie looks at her watch. They say that the time it takes to recover from a relationship is half its length, and she dated Rick the Gorgeous Gardener for approximately three hours, so by her calculations she has approximately twenty more minutes of grieving left to do. She takes another mouthful of her mulled wine. It really is the best mulled wine she has ever had in her entire life. It gives her a warm spicy glow right at the centre of her chest, which is now spreading to her knees. She tries to identify the red wine they've used. Definitely a Shiraz.
She probes tentatively at her heart. Yep, she's over him. Ahead of time! The man was entirely inappropriate. They were completely incompatible. He didn't 'especially like eating out'! He got up at six a.m. and did yoga each morning! How irritating. He was a vegetarian! She couldn't stand vegetarians. Clearly, he wasn't the 'young man' mentioned in Aunt Connie's letter. He was a red herring. A vegetarian red-herring. Now, where is that Ian the Sweet Solicitor? He's meant to be dropping by tonight. Sophie has always had a very clear, very definite preference for Ian. Could it be that Aunt Connie had a premonition that Grace was going to leave Callum and she actually meant...? It wasn't beyond the realms of possibility, was it? Oh, yes, Sophie, Connie was really hoping that Grace and Callum's marriage would break up just after they'd had a new baby. I'm sure she would have approved of that. Definitely. Good one. You THIRTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD LOSER.
'Sophie! Hi!'
It's Thomas and Deborah, and baby Lily in a stroller-a stern message from the cosmos about thinking of breaking up happy families, when you could have been the mummy in this one and you let the chance go because you thought you could do so much better. The three of them are wearing matching raspberry-coloured jumpers. Lily is an adorable munchkin with creamy skin and huge chocolatey eyes. Looking at her, Sophie experiences one of those unexpectedly painful bursts of longing and regret that makes her dig her nails into the palms of her hands. Stuffed it up, buttercup.
'Well, hello there! Let me get you all some fairy floss,' says Sophie.
'Oh, no, Lily is much too young for fairy floss!' Deborah leaps in front of Lily's stroller with arms outspread to save her child's life.
'Gosh, just in the nick of time,' says Sophie. 'I was about to ram it down her throat.'
Thomas, Deborah and Lily all stare blankly at her, and Sophie laughs merrily to try and make it sound like that was a clever witticism rather than the bitter barb of a childless ex-girlfriend.
'How are you, Sophie?' asks Thomas stiffly. 'All settled in to the house?'
'Yes, I am. I'm very happy.' She overdoes the charm trying to make up for her earlier remark. 'I'm so grateful to Aunt Connie. I'm very...blessed.'
Blessed? Where did she unearth such a word? She sounds like a middle-aged spinster in a cardigan and pearls. She is, of course, a middle-aged spinster in a fairy costume.
'Good!' Thomas rubs his hands together like a country minister. 'Great!'
Sophie has a sudden memory of sitting on a kitchen bench with her legs wrapped around Thomas's waist and watching his pumping buttocks reflected in the kitchen window. They had both been proud of themselves for having sex in the kitchen because it was proof of a proper movie-style passion (although they never did it again). Afterwards Thomas had made her fantastic scrambled eggs with Tabasco sauce and she had really thought she loved him. It is so strange that you can end up having such polite, awkward conversations with somebody with whom you once shared such intimate moments. She feels this is so interesting that it really should be commented upon, and nearly does, before realising it is perhaps not appropriate and perhaps she is a little tipsy. A drunken Fairy Floss Fairy is probably not good for Scribbly Gum Island's corporate identity.
She notices that Deborah is also holding a glass of mulled wine. 'Deborah!' she cries rapturously. 'Isn't this wine extraordinarily good?'
Deborah grudgingly smacks her lips. 'It is quite flavoursome.'
Thomas frowns. 'Not enough nutmeg. Too much lemon.'
'That's exactly what Veronika said!' Sophie feels suddenly very fond of them both and turns to Deborah. 'Don't you just love the way this family talks about food? They get these irritable, earnest expressions, like scientists.'
Deborah opens and shuts her mouth. She breathes in deeply through her nostrils as if she's about to sneeze. Then she says, 'I'm the sort of person who says exactly what she thinks, and I think I should say this.'
'Deb!' Thomas's face contorts and his arm shoots out and grabs her elbow as if to save her from falling off a cliff. Some wine spills onto Deborah's hand and she glares at him. 'Now look what you made me do!'
'We'll get you some more!' says Sophie helpfully. 'Thomas, why don't you get us both some more?'
'Because I'm starting to suspect they've overdone it on the brandy,' says Thomas.
'Rubbish!' says Deborah.
'Oh definitely not!' says Sophie.
'Oh Jesus,' says Thomas.
Deborah drains the rest of her glass, hands it to Thomas, licks her lips and says to Sophie, 'He's still in love with you. Did you know that? You're the love of his life.'
'Where are you?' asks Ron. 'Tell me where you are, right now.'
He has become icy calm. He is going to find this man and kill him with a single, efficient blow to the head.
'No need to get your knickers in a knot, Ron. We're here at the Hilton. Why, do you want to come and watch? It's no problem.'
'COME AND WATCH?'
Ron slams his expensive mobile phone to the ground and grinds it beneath his heel, much to the pleasure of a group of boys who assume he's a street performer beginning some sort of violent skit.
'Oh Deborah, I'm not, I know that I'm not!' says Sophie.
'She's not,' says Thomas. 'I swear to you she's not.'
Deborah wails, 'Then why did you say it? Last night? Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about!'
Sophie thinks, oh my goodness, he didn't! (Although it's hard not to feel flattered.)
Thomas looks like a man who has been kicked in the kidneys. 'This is excruciatingly embarrassing.'
'I don't care if it's embarrassing. You still love her! You said her name when we were making love! That's what's known as a Freudian slip, and Freudian slips mean that's what you really think deep down in your superego or something!'
'Deborah,' says Sophie earnestly, lovingly. Poor Deborah! Poor, sweet, travel-agent Deborah! 'The thing is, Thomas and I weren't at all compatible. We had a terrible sex life! Terrible!'
'Oh, God, you're both drunk,' says Thomas.
'And you've got such a beautiful baby girl!' cries Sophie, gesturing lavishly at Lily.
'Don't you bring Lily into it!' says Debo
rah fiercely.
'Oh, well, I just meant-'
'I know exactly what you meant!'
Sophie isn't sure that she likes Deborah's tone. She was just trying to be nice. She tries to think of something devastatingly clever to say about Deborah's grasp of Freudian theories but she can't quite remember anything about Freudian theories herself, even though she got a high distinction on an essay on the subject at uni.
But then they're interrupted. 'Sophie! I've been looking everywhere for you.'
It's Ian the Sweet Solicitor, and he's perfect. He's dressed in a casual, stylish-but-not-too-stylish suede jacket and black jeans. He looks tall and funny and gently intellectual. Sophie cannot think what her problem has been. This is the man she will sleep with tonight. This is the man who she will have a mature relationship with over the next few months, including weekend getaways, possibly a trip to Europe, champagne brunches with friends, dinners with parents, lots of sophisticated sex in his luxury apartment, followed by one of those elegant barefoot weddings on the beach, and she'll be pregnant with her own Lily-baby just in time for her fortieth birthday.
'Have you two met Ian?' asks Sophie, all tasteful conviviality. She pats Ian's arm possessively to make it very clear in an entirely subtle way that they are an item. 'Aunt Connie's solicitor?'
'Yeah, hi, Ian! We've met! How are you?' Thomas pumps Ian's hand, looking at him meaningfully as if to say, I've been taken hostage by these two women, save me!
'Do you practise divorce law by any chance, Ian?' Deborah gives a tinkling laugh. 'I'm just wondering, that's all. No particular reason, except that last night my husband and I were-'
'I think it's time we found ourselves a good strong cup of coffee.' Thomas takes a firm hold of her elbow. 'Come on, Deborah.'
'Oh, well done, you remembered your wife's name! Did you have to really concentrate?'
But she allows herself to be led away, with Thomas pushing the stroller and Lily beaming and waving a chubby hand, 'Bye, bye! Bye, bye!' as though she's as desperate to get away as her father.
Ian watches them go and shakes his head. 'Ah, it brings back so many happy memories of married life.'
Sophie chuckles lightly in a way that indicates it will obviously be very different when they're married, and says, 'How have you been since I saw you last?'