By the time the weekend rolled around, Mike had never felt more emotionally overloaded in all his five decades, his mind constantly leapfrogging from one worry to the next: the Highwater contract, Kathryn and her dubious fellow travellers, Norma and her job, his obsession with Claudia, Seamus devouring all the food, his ‘surprise’ birthday party, being eligible for Saga holidays, and last – but certainly not least - his bloody blood pressure.
Which was not being helped by Judith’s incessant wittering about her WI penguin speech.
‘Do I look all right?’ she asked, hovering in the doorway beside her wheelie case as she awaited her lift to the conference. ‘I’m not sure about my hair.’
‘What aren’t you sure about?’ ventured Mike, not daring to vocalise his opinion about it now resembling the colour of Fanta. Praying she was of the same mind, a glimmer of hope shimmered: that she might never fraternise Giuseppe’s rip-off salon again, thereby saving enough money per year to fund the rehabilitation of all the penguins and flying squirrels in the world.
‘I think Giuseppe’s taken a tad too much off,’ she whimpered.
Noting her trembling bottom lip, Mike hid his disappointment and arched an eyebrow, feigning surprise. ‘Absolutely not. You look lovely,’ he rejoined, kissing her cheek. ‘Go and knock the WI socks off with your speech.’
She managed a tentative smile, before uttering, ‘Oh God. I think I’m going to be sick.’
As much as he loved his wife and – because it formed part of her – her orange hair, Mike heaved a sigh of relief as he waved her off a few minutes later. Despite her fragile state, she returned his wave with a feeble one of her own from the back seat of the car, as she clutched an empty carrier bag - ‘just in case’.
Her constant agitation about her speech couldn’t have come at a worse time for Mike, when – with everything else going on - his own nerves were seriously frayed. He needed to apply some mental sticking tape and hold them together a little longer, however, until he presented what had turned out to be his rather fabulous designs for the stable block to Melandra.
‘Blimey, you look knackered,’ the nut-brown owner of Highwater Hall exclaimed – in her usual subtle manner – when she pulled open the enormous front door to him that afternoon.
‘I am a bit,’ confessed Mike. ‘Been up all hours working on your plans.’
She grimaced. ‘Oh dear. Your poor wife must hate me. You’ll have to take her out for a nice dinner or something this evening to make up for it.’
‘I would, but she’s away for the weekend.’
No sooner had this admission been voiced, than he regretted it, his chest constricting as he observed the woman’s plump tongue flick over her frosted pink lips.
‘Away for the weekend, eh?’ she echoed, her lascivious tone making Mike not only want to button up his suit jacket, but to tug on his heaviest winter coat, balaclava hat and thickest gloves – despite the thermometer hovering around the twenty-seven degrees mark. ‘While the cat’s away the mice will play.’ She followed the idiom with a shrill cackle. One that made Mike’s innards curdle.
‘Should we, um, look at the plans?’ he squeaked.
‘We most definitely should,’ she purred, running a finger along the wrinkled, brown curve of her breast.
Mike couldn’t figure out whether it was Melandra’s sickly-sweet bubble gum perfume that had made him struggle to breathe during his presentation; or that she’d insisted on pressing her chubby thigh against his for the duration; or his own excitement at revealing his killer idea.
Whichever, the constriction tightened a shade further at her completely unexpected response:
‘Jay had the same idea.’
Mike’s jaw plummeted to the floor. ‘Jay had the same idea,’ he repeated incredulously.
She nodded. ‘Ah ha. So, unless one of you comes up with something that sets their work apart from the other’s next week, I’ll have to toss a coin to decide who to give the job to.’
Mike had no idea how he managed the drive back to Lovelace Lane. His brain must have switched to autopilot, all his thought processes being focused on other things - namely the unsettling and highly unlikely coincidence of him and Jay chucking out the same ideas. No matter how hard he focused, he failed to comprehend it. He and his rival might share the same letters after their names, but there endeth all similarity. From what he’d seen of Jay’s work, their ideas were as far apart as Koh Pong was from Kingston-upon-Thames. So how, after Mike had dredged up every scrap of ingenuity, creativity and originality, could Jay possibly have come up with the same result? Somehow, though, he had. Meaning the entire deal now hinged on him injecting a final spark to his plans; something to make them utterly outstanding.
Only he couldn’t think of a single thing.
At his desk, gazing blankly at the computer screen, he realised, for the first time in his career, that his ideas pot had run dry. During his many years as an architect he’d come up with some great concepts. And he’d considered his plans for Highwater Hall among them. But, despite all his hard work, all his blood, sweat and tears, they hadn’t been good enough.
And what to do about it, he didn’t have the first clue.
Other than talk to Judith. Tell her everything. She’d know what to do. She always did. Only she wasn’t there.
She was at the stupid bloody WI conference talking about penguins.
Which meant, with Victoria and Seamus away in York, he was on his Jack Jones. Completely alone. A fully fledged Billy No Mates. With nothing to do other than slither into a pit of despair, helped on his slithering way by a few large whiskies. In order to postpone that inevitable result, however, he decided he might as well attempt another jog. One after which - thanks to the absence of all other household members - he wouldn’t be subjected to a lecture on hip, knee and toe replacements. And one which would appease his guilt when he did reach for the whisky bottle on his return.
In his past-its-best vest, faded shorts and tatty trainers, employing the walk/run strategy recommended on his running plan, Mike turned left at the end of Lovelace Lane and headed towards the village half a mile away. Approaching the pub there, timing his walking stint, a flash of something red and shiny caught his eye.
A Mercedes.
With Jay Harrington behind its leather steering wheel.
Wishing he could turn back the clock twenty minutes and revoke his decision to leave the house, Mike ducked behind a large planter crammed with blossoming blooms. Out of the seven billion people on the planet, the last one he wanted to encounter today was Jay. Particularly as he suspected, were he to come face-to-face with the arrogant upstart, he might well be tempted to punch him. Or, at the very least, launch a couple of tomatoes at him. Wisest, therefore, to remain behind the planter until the guy disappeared.
Peering between a couple of geraniums, he watched as Jay leapt out of the car, strutted round to the passenger-side door and yanked it open.
He held his breath as he awaited the exit of the occupant. If it was Melandra, he’d—
Well, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Other than be seriously p’d off.
Because, if Jay had stooped to his wining-and-dining tactics again – or even worse, his spending-the-night-at-Highwater-Hall tactics – then that really would signify the end of Mike’s chances of securing the job.
But it wasn’t Melandra’s chubby mahogany legs that swung out of the car.
It was a pair of long slim golden ones.
Belonging to Claudia.
Mike had no idea how long he remained behind the planter. Were it not for a curious Border Terrier effusively sniffing his feet, it would have been a great while longer. So stunned had the sighting of Jay and Claudia rendered him, that he had to employ an inordinate amount of effort to co-ordinate his limbs and negotiate his way back to Lovelace Lane – all the while, the scene he’d witnessed playing on a loop in his head.
Of Jay and Claudia kissing.
Of Jay and Claudia holding hands.
Of Jay and Claudia disappearing into the pub.
He couldn’t take it in.
Perhaps not surprising given all the other stuff battering his already-battered brain.
It wasn’t until he arrived back at The Laurels and quaffed two large whiskies, that the numbness which had initially suffused him upon seeing the pair, began giving way to a plethora of other emotions - shock reigning supreme. Jay and Claudia were, quite obviously, a couple. Which explained the otherwise inexplicable coincidence of two distinctly different architects having the same ideas: Claudia must have been feeding his through to his rival. Which resulted in Mike’s second most prevalent sentiment: fury. Mainly at himself for failing to notice what had been going on under his nose. So besotted with the girl had he become, that he’d allowed her to well and truly dupe him. Still, however reluctantly, he had to award Jay credit. The man had utilised every resource within his means: wining and dining, and possibly spending the night with Melandra; and exploiting his lover’s fortuitous position of working for his competitor.
None of the above portraying Jay in a particularly favourable light, Mike was aware that he could trot along to Highwater Hall and reveal all to Melandra. Inform her that his fellow professional was a nasty article, who’d played her – and Mike – for fools. However, with Jay possessing more front than Blackpool, plus all the wiliness of a fox, he had no doubt the creep would employ lots of smooth-talking and deftly wheedle his way around any allegations. And, although it didn’t require an IQ of three hundred and twenty to work out what had happened, he had no concrete proof.
It would be his word against Jay’s.
And he really didn’t have the energy for a fight.
He was burned out; energy reserves well and truly depleted; head one big scrambled mess. Never, in his almost-fifty years, had he felt so defeated and washed-up.
Much easier to accept, therefore, that he’d lost the contract; had failed to cling on to his one and only lifeline. And now, like a cataclysmic earthquake, a series of equally traumatic aftershocks would follow: Hylton Architecture would cease to exist; The Laurels would have to be sold; his daughters would need to stop faffing about and seek work; and poor Norma would be unemp—
The doorbell chimed.
Causing him to jump out of his skin.
He contemplated ignoring it. He wasn’t in the mood for Gwen wittering about lost tortoises, or Scary Fiona feigning yet more interest in birds. With his patience stretched to its limits, he doubted his ability to play along. Meaning he’d come right out and order them to stop all the pretence because he didn’t want a ‘surprise’ birthday party. Or any birthday party. Or, indeed, a birthday. He didn’t want to be fifty. Not when it looked like it would be the age at which his life – as well as his body – fell apart.
But the bell chimed again.
And again.
Making his already-jangling nerves jangle a tad faster, and his already-bad mood flick to furious.
Stomping to the door, he wrenched it open, prepared to inform his neighbours of exactly what he thought of all their skulking about.
Only it wasn’t a neighbour on the doorstep.
It was Melandra.
The discovery of Melandra at The Laurels completely whipped the wind from Mike’s sails. With his cognitive synapses in one great tangled knot, several long seconds passed before he could speak.
‘Oh,’ being the first word springing to both mind and mouth.
‘Surprise!’ she squawked, sounding, he noticed, a weeny bit tipsy. ‘I thought you might like a bit of company, what with your wife being away and everything. So, I just called a taxi and… ta-dah! Here I am.’
‘Er, right. Yes. There you are,’ blustered Mike, a million questions beginning to swirl around the cramped available space in his head, like: why was she there? Why was she dressed to the nines in a short sparkly pink dress? And why did she appear to have sloshed on twice as much bubble gum perfume as usual?
‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’
He gulped. Was he? He had no idea. But, by the determined set of her flabby jaw, he suspected it would require more than a simple ‘No’ to send her on her way.
‘Thought we might discuss those plans of yours in a bit more detail. Might help me make up my mind who to give the contract to.’
At this slightly slurred declaration, Mike’s heart rate gathered pace. The contract! Just when he’d written it off, here she was hurling him one final chance to bag it.
But could he summon the energy? Wouldn’t it be easier just to cling to what remained of his shredded self-respect? His alcohol-fuddled brain was mid-ponder, when his eye caught sight of the overgrown laurel bush at the bottom of the drive – next to which any future For Sale would sit, jolting him back to the depressing reality of his situation and the consequences of failing to net the deal. Why should he take a back seat and let Jay help himself to it all? Particularly when the moron had played so underhandedly, having no qualms about stealing Mike’s hard work.
‘Eee, I could murder a drink,’ cackled Melandra.
‘Well, in that case,’ replied Mike, pasting on his widest smile, ‘you’d better come in.’
One hour later and Mike concluded that his decision to invite Melandra into his home did not rank among his best. In fact, with her behaviour growing more lewd and flirtatious with each of the three whiskies she’d already downed, it probably ranked as his all-time worst.
‘You don’t mind if I help myself to another drink, do you?’ she asked, not waiting for a reply as she zigzagged over to the decanter on the sideboard and emptied its remains into her glass.
With Mike’s brain-to-mouth co-ordination struggling to locate the suitable words to suggest she might already have had one too many and should think about zigzagging off home, he jumped as she suddenly plopped down on the sofa next to him.
‘Nice legs,’ she tittered, running a sparkly silver-tipped finger up his bare thigh.
Wishing he’d swapped his running kit for his heaviest winter coat, balaclava hat and thickest gloves, in the absence of any better ideas on how to respond, Mike knocked back the contents of his whisky glass, praying all the while that she’d move.
She didn’t.
‘I think you could do with a shower after all that running,’ she went on, attempting a husky tone that didn’t leave the starting block. ‘In fact, I’m so hot, I wouldn’t mind a shower myself.’
As her frosted lips curled into what she obviously imagined to be a seductive smile, Mike’s heart thundered, his stomach churned and sweat beaded on his forehead. Bloody hell. Was she—?
As she attempted to tug down one of her shoulder straps – before it became stuck on her bingo wing - he concluded she most definitely was.
Coming on to him.
Offering herself on a plate.
Oh God!
His head began spinning faster than a Cycle Energy class. Never before, even when he’d been unwittingly fantasising about Claudia, had he so much as considered being unfaithful to Judith. But now, with life-as-he-and-his-family-knew-it at risk, with Norma facing the dole queue, with his business about to be flushed down the pan, and with a For Sale board potentially being hammered into the ground next to the overgrown laurel bush at the bottom of the drive, should he consider it now in order to win the Highwater Hall contract?
This would be his last chance.
Sleep with the woman and all his troubles could be over.
Employ tactics as unscrupulous as Jay’s – who had possibly already indulged in similar behaviour.
By doing the same, Mike would show his rival that two could play at that game.
That, just because he was nearly fifty, he wasn’t ready for the scrapheap just yet.
By partaking in one little indiscretion he’d still have a business, his family could carry on with their lives, and Norma could keep her job.
But could he do it?
He didn’t have a chance to find out.
Because, at exactly the same moment Melandra’s jowly visage zoomed towards him, a piercing pain shot through his chest.
And everything went black.
Lurching back to consciousness several hours later, a stream of images flickered before Mike’s eyes – of Seamus devouring an orange cake, of Nell Gwynn and her lace-up bodice, of a sweep of shiny long blonde hair, of a gleaming red Mercedes, of a dreadlocked Dane, of a waddle of penguins, and finally, of Melandra’s nut-brown face drawing closer and closer.
As tentacles of panic began snaking around him, he snapped open his eyes.
To find himself in unfamiliar surroundings.
With a familiar – and thankfully not nut-brown – face, staring down at him.
‘Oh, Mike,’ gushed Judith, grabbing his hand. ‘We’ve been so worried about you.’
Mike had been worried about himself, but, as groggy as he felt, he thought he’d save that snippet for later. ‘Where am I?’ he asked instead.
‘Hospital. You’ve had a bit of a turn.’
Among all the seriously ill bodies in hospital, Mike had felt rather embarrassed and a bit of a fraud during the hours he’d spent there. His ‘turn’ had been officially labelled ‘a severe panic attack’, the symptoms of which did - according to the doctor - resemble a heart attack.
‘And your blood pressure is very high,’ she’d added. ‘Before we go down the medication route though, you may want to think about some lifestyle changes you could implement to reduce it.’
Mike could think of plenty of lifestyle changes he could implement to reduce it. The first being to fess up to Judith and reveal all about the poor state of the business, and how he’d lost the Highwater Hall contract.
Which he did when back at The Laurels, after bringing a swift end to Victoria and Seamus’s interrogations by slipping them a twenty-pound note, along with instructions to toddle off to the pub.
Judith’s initial reaction to his news had followed a predictable script.
‘The business? In trouble?’ she’d echoed faintly. ‘But I don’t understand. I thought you were doing so well. Surely, if you win the contract for Highwater Hall—’
Mike had cut her off there, launching into the entire Highwater fiasco – including his recent sighting of Claudia and Jay.
‘Why the sneaky—’
‘Whatever noun you’re about to apply, I can assure you I will already have used it,’ he interjected.
She gave one of her spectacular shudders and shook her Fanta-coloured bob. ‘Disgusting behaviour. Absolutely despicable. I think you should tell Melandra.’
‘I can’t. I don’t have any proof. It would be my word against theirs and I don’t have the energy for a battle.’
‘No, you’re right,’ she conceded. ‘The most important thing is your health. I feel terrible that you’ve been under all this pressure and haven’t felt able to tell me. And I’ve been so wrapped up in WI stuff that I failed to notice. Well, no more. There are going to be some serious changes around here. Starting with the house. If it’s a financial burden, we’ll sell it. There are lots of cheaper places – like our little semi. Which, as I recall, we were perfectly happy in for years. And I’ll find a job. I’ve actually been thinking about trying floristry for a while. What do you think?’
Relief seeping through him, Mike grinned at her. ‘I think,’ he replied, taking hold of her hand, ‘that I love you just as much now as I did when I married you.’
She giggled. ‘Well, that’s good because, at one point, I thought you might be developing a bit of a thing for Claudia.’
Mike gulped, blood pressure creeping up a notch. His obsession for Claudia was the only thing he hadn’t admitted to. Nor did he want to. Thankfully, though, he didn’t have to, because Judith ploughed on.
‘You know, I always had a bit of a funny feeling about that girl.’
His forehead pleated. ‘You did?’
She nodded. ‘I could never quite put my finger on it, but something always held me back whenever I intended inviting her to your birthday dinner.’
Mike groaned. ‘Oh God. The birthday dinner. I’d completely forgotten about it.’