Same Time Next Week

Chapter 22

Mel awoke with a snort at the kitchen table. She’d slept face down on her arm which was now numb. There was an empty bottle of wine beside her which she couldn’t remember drinking, at least not past the second glass which she had downed in one. Her throat was parched and her head was thumping. For one blessed moment, she believed that Steve was upstairs sleeping by himself in disgust at her passing out, before that illusion was shattered by the battering ram of the truth that he wasn’t home and her spirits plunged downwards as if tied to The Big One in Blackpool on its descent.

How stupid to get pissed and in this state, she said to herself, the inner voice sounding as disapproving as Steve’s mother’s. What good had that done her? She pulled her phone towards her, let the lens try and identify the creased mess of her face to allow her permission to use it. No calls, no texts, no WhatsApps received.

She wasn’t sure if it was the excess of alcohol or the no communication from Steve that made the contents of her stomach begin to slosh and rise and she only just made it to the downstairs loo in time.

Should she ring the hospitals in Doncaster? It was more likely he’d be there than in another woman’s bed. This was Steve. Steve went up ladders and painted things, he didn’t cock other women. What about his parents? No, she dismissed that immediately, she’d worry them daft if she told them she couldn’t get hold of him.

She went back into the kitchen and filled a glass with very cold tap water which she pressed to the front of her head before she gulped at it and used the second half of the glass to wash down two ibuprofen. Then she sat back down at the table, picked up the phone again and groaned when her eyes registered the time. She was late for work. Sod it, she hadn’t had a day off sick in years, she was overdue a virus. She rang her manager at the bank, sounding even more crap than she felt. Heather, her boss was only thirty-two but damned good at her job and kind. She told Mel to get back to bed and Mel felt so wretched she didn’t even feel guilty about lying to her. Then again she really did feel crap, although not because she’d caught a bug but because her husband had gone AWOL and Saran Sykes’s husband had turned up and said they were partners-in-bonk.

She sat with her head in her hands until the painkillers kicked in and gave her space to think. She wished she could have phoned a mate, but there was no one in her contacts on whom she could put all that. Her sister was the person she knew best but they weren’t close. There was Joss – but she couldn’t have a mini reunion with her after thirty-odd years and then just drop that in her lap.

Reunion .

The word gave her the first stepping stone to take on the path to sorting out whatever was going on. She needed to trace Saran Sykes and see what she had to say for herself, as her husband had traced Steve. She sent a prayer upwards, odd as it was, to ask that Steve might be lying in hospital with a light sort of concussion, his phone in a drawer beside him with a flat battery, and this had all been a terrible mix-up. She’d be laughing about it by tonight. A story to share over a dinner table with friends one day. Please.

Erin took a call from the estate agent first thing that morning. The couple who came around yesterday had put in an offer – the asking price. They wanted to move quickly because they were buying it for their daughter to rent from them, so there was no chain.

‘You’re joking,’ said Erin. Mind you, looking at the flat yesterday through a prospective buyer’s eyes, she shouldn’t have been surprised. It was pristine, impressive and extra-spacious now that a lot of furniture had gone. Wherever she moved to, she’d buy new, start again from the beginning. She had the money to do it and, as Alex had said the previous night, no one could take it with them, so she should enjoy it, make up for some lost time and be kind to herself.

She could have sat there for much longer, drinking with him in the pub. He told her he was a barrister and she tried not to think about him in a cloak and a wig, being very dominant in a courtroom because she didn’t want to spark into life any of those sorts of feelings. Anyway, she wasn’t even a quarter-healed from what had happened to her and she wasn’t so stupid that she didn’t know a grief club was not the ideal place to hook up with someone. All those vulnerable souls. They all needed to mend first, put the work into themselves before they started looking outwards.

She’d done a lot of thinking since she got home last night and it had made her realise she had overdue things to say to Bon. And maybe she’d take the opportunity to administer a little push at his back, as maybe someone should have pushed Father Paul and the housekeeper.

Mel had a shower and washed her hair, then put on some make-up but there was nothing she could do about her eyes, the windows to her soul. They were dull, flat, dead, the colour of mould, devoid of the slightest sparkle they usually held, and no patting at the puffs underneath them would fix them. She looked like shit as well as felt like it.

She picked up her car keys. It hadn’t taken long to work out where she could find Saran Sykes because she was a beautician with her own salon, Saran for Beauty: imaginative, as well as a tart. Mel had no idea if she’d be at her business or not today, but it was a starting point. If she wasn’t then she’d go to her home, as Companies House had a registered address of 4, Swan Gardens, Whitebrooke. She knew the area; the old grounds of a former grammar school which had been turned into a sprawling, yet at the same time prestigious housing estate. She and Steve had gone to nosey at a property there in Drake Avenue last year. She tried to think back if that had been his idea. Had it been going on then? Did he want to be nearer to his lover?

The salon was in the middle of a row of shops not far away from where Mel supposed Saran lived. She pulled up outside it. She was shaking, because there was an easily recognisable Saran Sykes framed in the front window taking money from a customer at a counter. She looked like Ted Lasso’s blonde boss, with her Marilyn Monroe hair and big flash of smile.

Mel forced herself out of the car, feeling conscious of each step she took. She might have practised what she would say in the drive over but now the words crumbled to dust in her mouth as her hand touched the door, pushed it open.

Saran smiled at her, just as she’d been smiling when she was standing with Steve in the photo. Mel almost smiled back, it was just natural to reciprocate politely.

‘Hello, can I help you?’ Saran said. The cheek of her. Mel wondered why Saran hadn’t recognised her. Surely she’d have looked her up to see whose back she was stabbing, whose husband she was fucking. Or maybe she was one of those people who didn’t give a toss.

Here you go, deliver the line, Mel.

‘I’m looking for my husband. I believe you know where he is.’

Perfectly done, Mrs English.

Mel expected a lowering of eyes, a blush, but the blatant cow was just standing there, her brow creasing as much as the Botox would allow.

‘We… haven’t got any men… in here,’ Saran returned, sounding slightly confused, wary, as if she might suspect Mel was loop the frigging loop.

‘Steve English. I believe you know him…’ – pause for effect – ‘… know him well. ’ She added a tail onto the ‘l’ so it sounded like a lick.

Yep, that worked. Saran’s demeanour changed, the smile started closing up.

‘I… know Steve from school.’

She was messing with Mel.

‘Where is he then?’ she demanded, her voice rising now. Other customers and staff in pink tunics were looking over. Good. Let them all hear what a piece of trash Saran bloody Sykes was. Mel prepared to deliver her coup de grace. ‘Your husband turned up at my house last night to tell me you were screwing.’

Well, the lanky trollop wasn’t expecting that from the way her eyes widened.

Saran came to the other side of the counter at speed. Mel thought she was going to either grab her arm and try and chuck her out or slap her but she did neither.

‘Come in here,’ she said and marched past the two women having their nails done at stations and opened a door.

Mel followed her in, ready to hear the sordid lot of what she had to say for herself.

Erin walked into the repair shop and smiled at Adam, who waved as he was walking about while chatting on the phone to someone, about electrics presumably. ‘Do that and you’ll blow your bloody head off,’ he was saying.

Erin grinned to herself, they were such a good bunch here. And there, ahead, was the lovely Sky, who looked like a wisp of cloud: delicate and fair. Pale, actually; she didn’t have a lot of colour in her skin at the best of times but she looked wan today.

‘Hello, Sky,’ Erin greeted her warmly.

‘Hello, Mrs van—’ she pulled up her words and Erin supposed that she’d heard, then.

‘Erin,’ she said. ‘Please, after all this time you are very welcome to call me just Erin.’

‘Okay,’ said Sky with a nod.

‘Is he in?’ Erin pointed to the office.

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you.’

Erin knocked and entered. Bon was on the phone but waved her in.

‘Next week is fine. I’ll be around,’ he was saying to someone, wrapping up a call. ‘Yes Mrs Tan— okay… Gwyn… cash or bank transfer totally fine… yes… you can arrange your own courier or use ours… okay… we’ll see you then… bye… bye… bye.’

He put the phone down.

‘Mrs Tankersley’s desk is almost ready for collection,’ he explained.

‘I think she wants you to call her Gwyn,’ said Erin with a cheeky smirk.

‘I find it odd, calling customers by their first names.’ He came over, gave her a kiss. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m very good, actually. I’ve had an offer on the apartment.’

‘Already?’

‘Dream offer. Asking price, no chain.’

Bon raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s great. If you’re ready to leave it. Don’t rush anything, though, if you don’t want to, bokkie. ’

She needed to tell him the truth.

‘Have you got time for a very early lunch?’

‘For you, of course. There’s a new diner five minutes away. Sky said it’s good in there.’

‘My treat,’ she said. He pulled a face that said he disagreed, but they’d fight over that when they were there.

The room had a massage table in it and smelt of ylang ylang. As Mel moved into Saran’s wake, she wasn’t getting any whiff of Chloe. Appropriately enough, she was getting Poison, though.

‘What’s this all about?’ asked Saran, when the door was closed. No smile on her fishy lips now.

‘As if you don’t know,’ said Mel, trying to keep some sort of a lid on it. ‘Your husband said it was all because of the school reunion. I saw the photos of you together on Facebook—’

Saran held up a hand, long, slim, with perfectly manicured talons.

‘Can I just stop you there, sweetheart.’

Mel was struggling now. How bloody dare she. Sweetheart. The patronising cow. ‘Don’t you call—’

‘My husband is currently on an oil rig about a hundred miles north-east of Aberdeen. He’s not due home until next week, so whoever turned up last night at your house isn’t anything to do with me.’

She was lying, thought Mel. That’s why she’d brought her into this private room, to save her embarrassment. Saran pulled a pink phone out of her pocket and began scrolling with flat, splayed fingers and those stupid nails. She then turned it around and held it up to Mel’s face.

‘This is my husband. Is this the man you saw?’ Saran’s tone was confident it wasn’t.

The man in the photo was bald with a grey clipped goatee, arms like bags of walnuts. He couldn’t have been more different to the cuckolded husband if he’d tried.

Mel’s jaw dropped. She scrabbled her thoughts back to the night before. Had the man actually said who he was? No, he hadn’t, she’d just presumed… She felt sick. She sank down onto the chair behind her before she fell. Humiliation piled on top of everything else in her head.

‘No, it’s not him,’ she said. ‘Oh god, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m going mad. He said it was because of the school reunion.’

Saran pulled another chair up and sat on it and Mel felt warm hands close around one of hers.

‘Look, love, that school reunion… people had had a lot to drink.’

‘He’s not answering his phone,’ said Mel. Saran’s unexpected sympathy had burst a dam wall inside her. ‘I don’t know where he is.’ Tears sprang to her eyes, she couldn’t have stopped them if she’d tried and she didn’t have the energy to try.

‘Oh fuck,’ said Saran with a sigh of resignation. She pulled a clutch of tissues from a box on a small table and pressed them into Mel’s hand. ‘Look, I don’t know for definite, but… I did hear something and I hope it’s wrong. I’ve been where you are, sweetheart and I wish someone had told me, however much it hurt. The name you might want to follow up on is Chloe Cardinale. As was, I don’t know what she is now.’

‘Chloe?’ The perfume.

‘She was there that night. She was a couple of years below us at school so I don’t know that much about her. But I saw them with each other…’

The way Saran said that was telling.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Mel, blowing her nose.

‘Do you want to sit in here with a coffee for a bit?’ said Saran. ‘You’re okay, we’re all girls together in here. We’ve been through some shite between us.’

‘No, I’ll go,’ said Mel. ‘I’ve caused enough trouble.’

Saran saw her out. Mel kept her head down as she did the walk of shame through the salon with Saran’s arm warm around her shoulder.

‘Good luck, love,’ Saran said at the door.

Mel couldn’t get away fast enough.

Chloe.