‘The house is just adorable. Mum and Jan worked so hard setting it up for us. Dad’s bought all new carpets and appliances. I’ve got such plans for the interior. I think I’m going for modern with a twist of “olde worlde”. We’re going to save up for bits as we go along. You must come and see it.’ Greer was on a roll. The boys had left the girls to it and were now standing at the bar with a group of male pals. How Loveday longed to be with them.
‘I’d love to,’ said Loveday, feeling horrible but trying to sound normal. ‘How was the honeymoon? Was the hotel nice?’
‘It was sooo luxurious. Our room was huge with a balcony overlooking the pool and our own table and chairs out on it. One day we had breakfast out there. Room service. Just a continental breakfast, croissants, black coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice. I loved it, but Jesse didn’t want to do it again. You know what these boys are like. He wanted the full English in the dining room. Most nights we ate in the English bar in the marina, but once or twice I made him eat local stuff. He liked the paella … and the calamari, until I told him it was baby octopus.’
Loveday grimaced. ‘Octopus?’
‘Yes. He’s a fishermen! I thought he ate anything that came out of the sea.’
Loveday had been around the fishing boats all her life, and enjoyed cod and chips as well as the next woman, but octopus was going too far. She kept smiling, but as Greer went on and on, about the weather and the pool and the waiters round the pool, and the one waiter that Jesse got really jealous about because he was paying so much attention to her, and how being married gave her such a feeling of enormous security, and on and on and bloody on, Loveday fought the desire to tell her best and oldest friend to shut up.
Here, with Greer sitting right in front of her, she was struggling with the conflicting and terrible feelings she felt crashing around within her: jealousy that Greer had been alone with Jesse for so long; overwhelming guilt about sleeping with Jesse; horror at how she’d betrayed her best friend, betrayed Mickey. The last four weeks had been hell for her. She’d been dreaming of Jesse coming home. Stealing away with him, up to the sheds, to talk and make love and disentangle themselves from the mistake he’d made in marrying Greer. In her most optimistic moments, she’d imagined him coming back and explaining to Mickey and Greer what had happened and, after a while, in due course, after the divorce, Jesse would marry Loveday and Mickey and Greer would be happy for them. Everyone would understand what a mistake it had been for Greer and Jesse to marry and they’d be glad that a mistake had been rectified. They’d see that, and they’d all be so much happier. In the meantime Greer was still chuntering on, and it was seeming increasingly unlikely that was going to happen.
‘Perhaps you and Mickey would like to come over to Pencil Cottage tomorrow night? Just kitchen sups. Spaghetti Bolognese?’
Loveday flicked a glance over to Mickey at the bar and saw Jesse heave himself off a well-worn bar stool and begin to walk towards them. She answered Greer with a vague, ‘Erm … yeah, I’ll ask Mickey.’ She was so alert to Jesse getting closer to them that every atom in her body started to shake. He reached their table and took a seat on a low stool opposite Greer, who immediately took his hand. ‘Hello, husband!’ She glowed. ‘I’ve just been telling Loveday all about our honeymoon.’
‘Not everything, I hope,’ he said, looking at the floor, finding a beer mat to pick up.
Greer blushed a little. ‘No. Stop it. What are men like?’ She looked at Loveday and raised her eyebrows. ‘Honestly! Boys have one-track minds, don’t they?’
Loveday picked up her pint of shandy and tried to look world-weary. ‘Gosh, don’t they?’
Greer twittered on, ‘I’ve just asked Loveday and Mickey round for tea tomorrow. Loveday wants to see the house.’ Jesse looked sharply at Loveday, who gave her head the slightest of shakes. Greer cantered on oblivious, ‘And I know you’ve missed Mickey. I thought I’d do spag bol.’
Jesse was still looking at Loveday, but with an expression she couldn’t interpret. Why was he being so cold towards her?
She blurted hurriedly, ‘I didn’t say I wanted to see the house … well, not the day after you come home. You need to get settled.’
Jesse turned to Greer. ‘Yeah, we’ve only just got home, love. Let’s get ourselves sorted out first.’
Mickey ambled over and put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. ‘Come on, big man. I’ve got a hot game of bar billiards to play with you.’
Jesse stood up and, putting his hand in his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and took out a ten-pound note. ‘You girls get yourselves a drink and maybe something to eat. Mickey and I have some serious cueing to do.’
Both young women were silenced. Greer felt slighted, abandoned by her husband on her first night home, and Loveday felt, without having the right to feel it, dumped.
Just before ten thirty, Pete the landlord rang the old ship’s bell behind the bar. ‘Last orders, ladies and gentlemen. Last orders, please.’
*
Greer and Loveday were sitting where the boys had left them almost two hours before. In front of them was a barely touched prawn sandwich (Greer’s) and the last crumbs of scampi and chips in the basket (Loveday’s). They were each nursing a drink and had run out of conversation. The bar was thinning out and, across the floor, they could see into the games room, where Mickey and Jesse, more than tipsy, were whooping with jeers and laughter after each cue shot.
Pete was calling out to the stragglers, ‘Drink up now, ladies and gents. Time to get home.’ He was moving between the bar and the tables, collecting up the dirty glasses and ashtrays. He stopped by Loveday and Greer. ‘Welcome home, Mrs Behennna. ’Ow was the honeymoon?’
‘Lovely, thank you,’ said Greer with an automatic politeness.
‘Glad to have your mate back, aren’t you, Loveday?’
‘Yes,’ said Loveday dully. ‘Yes. Very glad.’
‘I’ll round those two lads up for you,’ Pete assured them. ‘You’m ladies need your beauty sleep.’
Pete was as good as his word and within a couple of minutes Jesse and Mickey appeared, still giggling with each other.
‘Get my coat, would you, Jesse?’ Greer was irritated and impatient to get back to Pencil Cottage.
Jesse took the long black coat off one of the row of pegs by the pub door and handed it to her. ‘I mean, can you help me into it?’ asked Greer with an edge to her voice.
‘Since when couldn’t you put your own coat on for yourself?’ he asked her.
‘It’s what husbands do for wives,’ she told him, handing the coat back to him.
Loveday zipped up her scarlet padded Puffa jacket and opened the pub door. A wall of now icy February air hit her and she was glad to breathe in the freshness of it after the fug of the Hind.
Mickey stepped out behind her and put his arm through hers. His eyes were glassy with beer and he smiled soppily at her. ‘That was a nice evening. Did you have a good time catching up with Greer?’
‘Hmm,’ said Loveday tersely. ‘I know all about bloody Gran Canaria anyway.’
The pub door opened again and a coated Greer and a sloshed Jesse appeared. ‘Gosh, it’s cold,’ shivered Greer. ‘But of course after a month of winter sun we’d feel it, wouldn’t we, Jesse?’
‘You would ’cos you ain’t got enough meat on your bones. Not like Loveday. I bet she’s warm as toast, eh, Loveday?’ Loveday couldn’t believe that Jesse could be so heartless towards her and felt tears stinging her eyes.
Mickey grabbed at Loveday’s bum and gave it a good squeeze. ‘Yeah. She’s got enough flesh on her to keep her warm.’ Jesse laughed with him, and Loveday, feeling like a heifer, turned towards home.
‘By the way, Mickey,’ she heard Greer saying, ‘I’ve invited you and Loveday round for kitchen sups tomorrow. Spag bol. Six o’clock?’
Before Loveday could warn Mickey not to accept the invitation, he had, with great bonhomie, replied, ‘Lovely. That’d be just the ticket, eh, Loveday?’
‘That’s sorted then,’ smiled Greer, before taking Jesse’s arm and looking up into his eyes in a way that made Loveday feel sick. ‘My husband and I are to give our first dinner party to our best friends.’ She stood on her tiptoes and gave Jesse a slow kiss. ‘Excited?’
To Loveday’s horror, Jesse returned the kiss with warmth. ‘Let’s get you home, Mrs Behenna.’
He wheeled Greer round and walked her off towards Pencil Cottage. Mickey pulled Loveday towards him. ‘Must be nice to be married. Jesse was telling me they had a great honeymoon.’
‘Did he?’ Loveday felt empty.
They started walking towards Loveday’s house. She said, ‘My mum’s not back till tomorrow. She’s gone over to Auntie Sheila’s.’
‘Will you be all right on your own?’ asked Mickey, not understanding what she was saying to him.
She spelt it out. ‘I thought you might like to stay over and keep me company?’
‘What? You mean like …?’
‘Yes, Mickey, that’s exactly what I mean.’
‘Loveday,’ Mickey said thickly, and Loveday returned his overjoyed smile with one of her own. She may not have Jesse, but she had the power to make Mickey the happiest man in the world.
*
Jesse and Greer were lying in their new bed in their new bedroom in their new house. Greer was listening to the old place talking to itself as it settled its eaves onto its ancient rafters and cob walls. She couldn’t have felt happier. Pencil Cottage was her home. Growing up, this had been the one house in the whole of Trevay that she had dreamt of owning. And now she did. Well, OK, her dad’s company owned it, but it was hers to live in and love.
She turned and snuggled into her husband, who was recovering after a short, sharp, drunken but satisfying – for him – five minutes of lovemaking.
‘Are you happy?’ she asked.
He was getting fed up with her always asking if he was happy.
What would she do if he told her the truth? If he just opened his mouth right now and said:
‘No, as a matter of fact I’m not particularly happy. I only agreed to marry you because my father and your father persuaded me that it would be good for me, for them and for the whole financial health of Trevay. Our boats would get a better deal with the fish market; we’d freeze out the boats from further up and down the coast. They told me that you were the best catch in Cornwall and I’d be a lucky man to have you as my wife. And I am so thick, and so greedy, that I went along with it and sold my soul to the devil.
‘I am no longer my own man. I married you and received a house, a job and a honeymoon as payment. I am a whore; I don’t want to be lying next to you tonight, I want to be with Loveday. Yes, fat Loveday with no prospects. She has been a loyal friend to you and you despise her.
‘I made love to her once, the night before our wedding, if you want to hear the gory details, but now I’m married to you. It was cruel of me to talk about her flesh keeping her warm and to kiss you in front of her, but I was cruel tonight because I wanted her to get the message that I cannot give her anything. She deserves to be with a good man like Mickey. And you don’t deserve to be with a shit like me. I’ll try to be the best husband I can to you and to make you happy, but am I happy? You’re happy, your dad’s happy, my dad’s happy, so who cares if I’m happy or not? Only Loveday, and she’s as miserable as I am.’
He shifted a little so that Greer could rest her head on his shoulder. ‘Yes, I’m happy, maid,’ he said, and lay still, staring into the unfamiliar darkness of his new home.
*
Mickey couldn’t believe that, at last, Loveday was his. She had led him up her narrow stairs and taken him into her bedroom, which looked the same as it always had. The grey carpet with swags of spring flowers woven into it was the same one that the four friends had played endless games of Monopoly on. He remembered that he and Jesse had had a huge fight, one Christmas, over paying the bill for a Monopoly hotel he’d put on Park Lane. Jesse had refused to hand over the money and they’d ended up brawling on the floor. Loveday had ended the fight by getting in between them and forcing them apart. Greer had quietly and carefully simply folded the board and put all the pieces back in their little boxed compartments.
The wallpaper was the same too, but now the A-ha posters that had littered it had come down. He’d been so jealous that Loveday had fancied Morten Harket. ‘He’s a poof,’ he’d told her, and got a whack for his trouble.
Her single bed with the old satin eiderdown was still pushed up against the wall, and her teddy, Annabel, was still sitting on the pillow.
Loveday didn’t put the bedroom light on. Instead she let the light from the landing spill softly into the room. She took his hand and knew he was nervous. ‘Come on. Sit on the bed with me.’
He sat next to her and watched as she put Annabel down on the carpet. Then he kissed her more deeply than he’d ever dared before.
She felt for the buttons of her denim shirt and began undoing them, before shrugging it off to expose a large black bra, straining against the flesh and weight of her breasts. Mickey stopped kissing her and looked in wonder at her. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he breathed.
She helped him with the tricky clasp of her bra and, after that, he needed no help in easing both of them out of their clothes and in between the cool sheets. As inexperienced as Loveday was, she knew that where Jesse had been a lover with passion and force, Mickey was altogether different. He was tender and careful. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the pleasure he was giving her. He wasn’t Jesse. He was Mickey, and she prayed he would never, ever find out about her and Jesse.