Chapter Twenty-nine
Sylvie wove through the hall, the bright light of the school a sudden shock after the dark outside. She smiled as she walked past the primary colours of the gym bars folded against the wall – they did love those bars – her feet clacking loudly across the wood of the floor when she heard voices.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you the other day. You’re still a damn fine woman, despite all the years passing. Rather like a fine wine.’
‘Why could you not believe it? Did you not think Richard and I would last? That he wouldn’t be willing to marry me?’ The language, although combative, had a distinct coquettish tone.
‘I had hoped you wouldn’t be willing to marry him. He always had very good taste – there’s nothing as attractive as a capable woman, Marion, and you are very capable. I suppose had he not, someone else would have snapped you up, so I should be grateful that he kept you in our circle.’
‘Well, exactly. Had I not married him, I wouldn’t be here having this conversation with you, would I?
’ Marion’s giggle, her most simpering one, bounced off the walls of the small cloakroom, the echo making it even louder, and more irritating than usual.
‘Although hardly in your circle, I haven’t seen you for years and we’re not exactly a regular feature on your Christmas-card list.’
‘Well, I would love to make you a regular feature.’
Oh, gross. Sylvie hurried past. She had heard that Marion was a little predatory but from the second-hand snippets Alex had gleefully shared with her she had thought she adored her husband and was faithful.
However, seeing as she had spent all day bitching about Marion’s snap judgements maybe she shouldn’t make them either.
Just because someone was having some kind of assignation amongst the children’s coat pegs, didn’t mean she was automatically unfaithful. Anything could be happening.
As she came back she could still hear them, and it appeared from the change in tone of Marion and her friend, that anything actually was.
‘So where is your husband, leaving you alone at the mercy of all the wolves?’
‘You’re hardly a wolf, Hector, and he’s working very hard at the moment. If you must know he’ll be back Friday night. We’re thinking of having a weekend break, Venice maybe.’
‘Venice, can he not do better? I would whisk you off for more than a couple of days, you only have to say the word.’
‘As flattering as that is, I think not. I really must get back – these sorts of events don’t run themselves.’
‘I’m not stopping you.’
Marion tinkled her laugh, but this time Sylvie wondered if she could detect a more nervous element than flirtatious this time.
‘Actually, you are. If you just moved your arm then I could get past. If I didn’t run off with you at the age of nineteen I’m hardly likely to now.
’ Sylvie really wanted to carry on walking, and whilst there was no sound of real panic in Marion’s tone, girl code dictated that she step in and make sure.
Bracing herself and taking a deep breath she walked through into the cloakroom to see Marion hemmed in against the pegs and Hector grinning with his arm outstretched against the wall, slightly blocking her in.
There wasn’t a feel of menace, and Marion didn’t look particularly relieved to see her, so Sylvie wondered if she had misread the situation and there was all manner of subtext that she was not privy to or able to interpret.
‘Hi, Marion, thought I heard you. I was wondering if you needed any help with anything whilst I’ve got a minute?’
‘No, no. I think it’s…’ She didn’t get to finish her sentence before Hector interrupted her.
‘Ah, you must be the flexible redhead Alex has got the hots for. Haha, I can see why.’ Hector looked her up and down thoroughly and practically rubbed his hands together.
Marion’s face lit up as she turned to the man that Sylvie had mistakenly thought was pestering her with far too much glee for a woman being subjected to unwanted advances; indeed, she looked like that cat who got the cream.
‘I was trying to tell her the exact same thing today, but she wouldn’t listen. You should see the sparks fly between them.’
‘Why? Is she pretending not to be interested? Oldest trick in the book when a woman wants to snare a man. Ha!’
‘Ha! Ha? I’m sorry, but you’ve never met me.
How can you decide what’s true for me or not?
’ It wasn’t in Sylvie’s nature to be so aggressive before an introduction had been made, but she had had it with all these assumptions about her friendship.
And the use of the word flexible was just downright sleazy.
Who the hell did this overweight, pink-faced buffoon think he was?
Friend of Alex or not, no one was speaking to her like that!
‘Oh, OK darling. You’re one of those. You want to take a page out of Marion’s book, she knows how to be a woman. Alex never said you had a temper to match your hair. I assume from your outburst that has to be your natural colour.’
‘Wow. You are really rude.’
‘And you’re a liar.’ The words were sudden, forceful, dripping with white, male, upper-class privilege as they were drawled by the man in front of her.
‘What, how dare…’
‘You’re a liar because you’re a woman and all women are liars. Known fact.’
‘Now, come on, Hector, surely you’ve grown out of that attitude by now. It was outdated in the nineties.’
‘A truth is a truth regardless of fashion, Marion love, and all women are liars.’
‘I don’t even know where to start with that. Alex said that you were slightly old-school in your views but he didn’t say you were positively Neanderthal. Come on, Marion, let’s get back to the field before the fireworks start.’
‘Oh, they seem to be starting now, and right here.’ Marion clapped her hands.
‘So, Alex told you about me, did he? He certainly told us all about you. Absolutely besotted, and you, madam, may think you feel the same at the moment when everything is lovely, fresh and new, but trust me, when he gets bored of playing happy bloody families – and he will – when he gets bored and heads back to Africa to do what it is he does, then that’s your relationship down the tubes.
No woman wants a man who’s putting himself in danger all the time.
Every woman says she wants a hero, but as I made my point earlier, women lie and to themselves more than anyone else.
The realities of living with a hero, well, that doesn’t tie in with the suburban dream, that involves roughing it, going without the feather-bloody-duvet and the Egyptian cotton, eating whatever you can find, locusts, rats if you’re lucky, not having a meltdown because Deliveroo won’t be here for another half an hour… ’
‘We don’t have Deliveroo in Cornwall, darling…’
‘Not the point, Marion, as well you know. You, young lady, need to leave Alex alone or accept that he will ultimately break your heart and leave you. If you tell yourself any different, you’re a liar, and if you think he’s going to stay because you’ve got some kind of magical redhead power between the sheets then guess what, you’re a fool as well as a liar! ’
‘I don’t how many times I have to say this, but I am not in the slightest bit interested in Alex. And even less interested in your opinions. Marion, I’m heading back to the field. Hector, I’d like to say it was a pleasure to meet you, but then I would very definitely be a liar.’
Sylvie turned on her heel and stalked out of the cloakroom, furious that she had got drawn into this, hating everything that odious entitled man had brayed and knowing that when it came to her response – that she wasn’t at all interested in anything other than friendship with Alex McKenzie – in that instance and that instance only, Hector wasn’t too far from the mark.