Kitabı oxu: «Strictly Love»

Chapter Two

‘Mark, you have to take the girls in for me.’

Mark had been shaving on Monday morning when the doorbell rang, and he found Sam and the kids at the front door.

‘But I'll be late for work,’ Mark protested. Why the hell did Sam always do this to him?

‘And so will I. My boss has called an urgent meeting and I have to get up to town.’ Sam worked for an American-based cosmetic-surgery company called Smile, Please!. It was a far cry from her humble beginnings as a dental nurse, but presumably the pay and perks were what she'd been after all along. The downside, as far as Mark was concerned, was that as he worked locally, she felt the school run was now his God-given duty.

‘Besides,’ as she frequently told him, ‘you owe me. I stayed at home all those years with the kids. Now it's my turn.’

Quite why it being ‘my turn’ meant Mark had to drop everything every time Sam asked him to, he hadn't yet worked out, but knowing she could get arsy about access if he made too much fuss, he went along with it.

‘Remind me again why Gemma needs a lift?’ Mark asked. ‘I used to cycle to school at her age.’ Gemma, at thirteen, was more than capable of getting to school under her own steam. Her school was at the other end of town from Beth's, which meant a round trip of half an hour. There was no way he was going to make it to work on time.

‘We're not in the Dark Ages now, Dad,’ muttered Gemma from underneath her dark spiky fringe.

Sam gave him a withering look.

‘Gemma's right,’ she said. ‘You do live in the past. Things are different now. It's not safe for kids to cycle. Or walk. There are all sorts of weirdos about. She just wouldn't be safe on her own.’

And it's nothing to do with you worrying that Gemma can't be trusted to actually go to school, is it? Mark thought to himself. Sam would never admit it, but though Gemma had never actually bunked off school to their knowledge, she was probably the most likely candidate to. Taking her in every day meant Sam knew Gemma had actually got there. Mark blamed the influence of Gemma's new best friend Shelly. Shelly was the reason Gemma had adopted her goth-like stance, eschewing all other colours in favour of black, and listening to bloody miserable music, which Mark had discovered was known as ‘emo’, whatever that was.

Sam had been quite frantic about it for a time, claiming that all kids who were into emo either committed suicide young or self-harmed. So far there was no evidence of either, but Gemma was displaying a singular reluctance to go to school. And while Mark was all in favour of his daughter getting a decent education, there were days when he hoped Sam would finally trust Gemma to make it to school on her own. The thought of Sam going to prison for Gemma's non-compliance in matters educational was one of the few things that had made him smile in recent months.

Sam dashed off in a flurry of self-importance while Mark went to finish shaving and ring Diana, his wonderfully efficient area manager, to say he'd be late. Then he bundled the kids in the car and drove as quickly as possible to Gemma's school.

He watched Gemma going in (if she did bunk off, he didn't want Sam accusing him of negligence), shoulders hunched, head down, bag slung loosely over her shoulder, presenting a glowering presence, and wondered with dismay what had happened to his cute little girl. Gemma was definitely not cute now, with her punky hairstyle, dyed a different colour every week – Mark frequently pointed out to her that what she thought was groundbreaking was in fact only the style his girlfriends had adopted twenty years previously, but he was always silenced with a, ‘Whatever, Dad. It's just different now. You wouldn't understand.’

No, of course not. To Gemma, he'd never been young.

Once Gemma had been dispatched it was on to school with Beth. An entirely different proposition. Though she was ten, Beth was still cuddly enough to remind him what he enjoyed about fatherhood, not yet too embarrassed to kiss him goodbye. He felt vaguely guilty about comparing his children, but it was restful to be with Beth, whose sunny disposition made a nice contrast to Gemma's spikiness.

Then he drove like a maniac to the surgery. Despite the phone call to Diana, Mark still felt stressed. He hated being late and he hoped that anyone waiting wouldn't be too grumpy – some of his patients had a tendency to think that, as their dentist, his sole function in life was to be ready and waiting for them at all times. The fact that he might have an existence, a family, a life even, outside the narrow confines of his surgery seemed to be beyond them.

Mark squeezed his ageing Volvo into the one remaining parking space outside the surgery and got out to the distinctive wail of the alarm going off. That was all he needed.

He ran into the surgery and found Maya standing looking helpless, while three patients sat around looking pained.

‘I'm so sorry,’ she said. ‘I was here first and there were patients waiting so I opened the door, but I had forgotten about the alarm and I don't know the code.’

Mark keyed in the right number and thankfully the alarm fell silent. It wasn't Maya's fault, she'd only started working at the practice two weeks ago, and as a newly qualified dentist it shouldn't be her job to make sure the surgery was open on time. That's why they had a practice manageress. Talking of which –

‘Where the bloody hell is Kerry?’ asked Mark.

Maya shrugged her shoulders.

‘I was the first one here,’ she said.

There was no sign of either of the nurses who were supposed to be working with them today. Mark sighed. It was going to be one of those days.

He apologised to the bemused patients sitting in the waiting room, answered the phone to Lorna's (nurse number one's) mum, whose defiant explanation that ‘Lorna had a stomach ache, innit’ didn't fool him for a second, and called in the first of his patients.

By the time he'd seen the second, Kerry had swanned in breezily. ‘Sorry I'm late, the trains were bad.’

‘But you drive,’ replied Mark.

‘Oh, not today, I was out last night.’ She leered lasciviously and bent down over the desk to reveal a rather lacy thong peeping out of a somewhat less than sexy behind. It was more than a man could take first thing in the morning.

‘I think that's what you call a whale tail,’ whispered Maya, who had come out to get her next patient.

Mark snorted, before insisting that Kerry went and nursed for Maya, who needed the help more than he did. While he was phoning Diana, who unfortunately today was working at another surgery, in order to get her to find some cover for them, Sasha (nurse number two) walked in. Sasha, their latest recruit, seemed to be the only Eastern European in the country who didn't understand the value of hard work. Mark considered admonishing her, but, mindful that there were still patients in the waiting room, and aware that she probably wouldn't understand him anyway, he decided that, like much of his life, there really was No Point.

He looked down at his day roster to see what else lay in store for him, and groaned out loud. Jasmine Symonds – a so-called celebrity who was famous for shagging on some god-awful reality TV show, and, if the rumours were true, was the new face of Smile, Please! – was coming in. It was one more indication that someone somewhere didn't like him. Not only had Jasmine and her ghastly mother Kayla been his patients for years, but despite her newfound fame she wouldn't go to any other dentist. Trust him to have the misfortune to have Jasmine as his most loyal patient …

Katie Caldwell was standing at the school gates and watching her ten-year-old son, George, walk mournfully away from her. It cut her heart to the quick to watch his misery and be unable to help. But what could she do when any questions about what was upsetting him were just met with a shrug? George had been in a foul mood this morning, still sore about the fact that he'd spent the previous day on the subs bench – again. He and Charlie had both been peculiarly reticent about why George, the team's best striker, seemed to spend more time off the pitch than on it, but Katie had the deepest suspicion that there was something Charlie wasn't telling her.

It was probably nothing, but Katie knew if she did ask Charlie about it, he would just do that annoying trick of touching his nose and saying ‘A Caldwell never blabs’ – a phrase no doubt passed on to him by his mother. Was it rather pathetic, she won dered, to have been married for ten years and still be frightened of your mother-in-law?

She sighed, and kissed her younger son, Aidan, goodbye. At least she had no worries on that score. Aidan was a happy-go-lucky child who rarely cried and seemed to shrug off life's slings and arrows with an insouciance she envied, and which she longed for her older, more sensitive son to have too.

‘Charlie been winding them up at football again?’ Katie turned away from waving Aidan goodbye to see the tall shadow of Mandy Allwick, school gossip extraordinaire, framed in the early-morning sunshine. That was all she needed.

‘What do you mean?’ Katie squinted up at Mandy, who, as usual, looked perfectly (if a little tartily) manicured and well turned out for first thing in the morning. With her tight leather miniskirt and crop top (revealing as it did a ridiculously well-toned stomach for someone with three children), her high heels, painted nails and even more painted face, a casual observer might have fancied she was on the pull. Though the choice among the stay-at-home dads was hardly wonderful. Still, tarty or not, Mandy always had the knack of making Katie feel wrong-footed.

‘Oh, you know Charlie,’ Mandy laughed heartily. ‘He's always giving that poncy coach a mouthful. And quite right too. That guy goes on and on about being fair to all the kids when it's obvious that your George is one of the best players. And your Charlie is only sticking up for George.’

‘How exactly is Charlie sticking up for George?’ Katie had a sinking feeling in her stomach. What had Charlie done now? Katie had given up going to football when Molly arrived, using the excuse that it was too cold to be out with a baby, but really it was because she couldn't stand the embarrassment anymore of listening to Charlie's roars of disappointment from the touchline when George missed a shot at goal, or succumbed to a tackle. George always looked embarrassed at this, and Katie felt for him, but being unwilling to undermine his father's authority in front of him, she never said anything. And, in the end, she just stopped going.

Still, in all other aspects of their life, she couldn't complain. If it was inevitable that their early feelings of lustful desire had settled down into something more sensible and solid, she knew Charlie loved her, and she loved him. They were comfortable together. Despite the stress of being dragged over to his parents' once a month and having to endure Marilyn's withering scorn as to why Charlie still hadn't made it to the top of his firm of accountants: ‘His father was at the top in his thirties, though, of course, not everyone can be as talented as him.’ But other than that, she was happy enough.

Of late, though, Katie had been getting the feeling that Charlie perhaps wasn't so happy. He hadn't said anything, but she wondered if he was getting twitchy about his fortieth birthday later in the year. He seemed a bit down about it. Or maybe it was that combined with the vasectomy he'd insisted on having after Molly was born. He'd certainly changed lately. He could be moody and difficult. Making a spectacle of himself on the touchline was probably just a symptom of a wider malaise.

‘Only doing what any dad should,’ said Mandy. ‘Shouting for George, yelling at the opposition. It's what I always do.’

I bet you do, thought Katie silently.

‘It's that arse Bill who's at fault,’ Mandy continued as they made their way out of the school grounds.

‘How so?’ asked Katie, thinking, poor bloody Bill, someone has to stand up to the hecklers.

‘Oh, you know what he's like,’ said Mandy, tossing her long fair mane back. ‘He goes on and on about not being too com petitive and not putting pressure on our kids. But the way we all see it, it's a competitive world, innit? They‘ve got to learn sometime.’

Have they? thought Katie. Do they have to learn this way?

‘So why was George put on the subs bench?’ Katie asked, but deep down she knew what the answer would be.

‘Bill said your Charlie was putting the other players off, and George was taken off as a punishment.’

Katie frowned. It didn't seem at all fair to George to make him suffer for Charlie's bad behaviour. But then it wasn't the first time Bill had warned Charlie off.

Charlie would be bound to shrug it off if she raised the subject. Maybe it was time she started going to football again to see for herself.

A squawk from the buggy indicated that Molly was getting tetchy, so Katie made her excuses and was slowly pushing her way home when she had a better idea. Sod going to football. Who wanted to get their feet cold? What Charlie needed was cheering up. And that was her job. So that's what she'd do. She'd start tonight by cooking him a nice meal. Who knew where it might lead …

Emily arrived into work late. She'd spent the night at Callum's, despite her best intentions. But weekends on her own in Thurfield were so lonely. She could have gone to see Katie, but she felt she'd imposed on Katie's friendship too much of late. Besides, despite acknowledging to herself the meanness of the thought, Emily couldn't help feeling a twinge of jealousy when she spent time in Katie's perfect house with her perfect family. It only highlighted the complete and utter mess her own life had become.

The trouble was, Emily thought moodily, she was always so busy at work, and her weekday social life revolved around London, so at the weekend there was nothing for her to do. Or, rather, there was plenty. If she didn't work such long hours, she might have made some friends here other then Katie. Then she could spend her weekends with friends on long walks and cycle rides on the Downs, or going to the cinema or out for a meal. Normal stuff. Like other people did.

Instead of which she was practically chained to her desk, and when she wasn't, she was out late schmoozing people she was coming to despise, or partying like there was no tomorrow with so-called friends with whom she had increasingly little in common.

This wasn't how she'd planned things, back when she'd started law school in Cardiff, all those years ago. Then she'd been full of naïve optimism about how she was going to take on cases like her dad's (languishing at home a semi-invalid thanks to the incompetence of the firm he'd given most of his life to). She felt ashamed that she'd ended up at Mire & Innit – a small media law firm which specialised in defending the low-level famous, in cases which, in the main, were pretty indefensible. Her boss Mel had promised her the earth at her interview seven years ago.

‘This is a small firm,’ she'd purred silkily, ‘but we are going places, and for the right person the rewards are high.’

The rewards had certainly been high financially. Emily was earning far more than in her previous job, but the mortgage on the cottage was correspondingly high too. And the promised promotion to senior associate seemed as elusive as ever, while Mel continued to pile on the work. One thing she'd failed to mention at interview was that, being a small firm, they were constantly short-staffed. Great in one way, as it had given Emily opportunities she would never have had elsewhere, but not so good in terms of having any kind of decent life outside the workplace.

Emily sighed. It had all seemed so glamorous when she'd first come to London. Now it just seemed tawdry to be raking through the muck of zedlebrity lives.

Callum, too, had seemed the height of glamour when she first met him – the gorgeous public school boy with the golden tongue had bowled her over from the start, and though she'd always known he was incredibly bad for her, now he was like a bad habit she couldn't quite shake. When Callum deigned to let her, she was allowed into his world, in small bite-sized pieces. He had perfected the knack of just keeping her interested. She hated herself for giving in to him.

Take this weekend, for instance. She had resolutely ignored his calls all day Friday, cried off a party that Ffion was going to, claiming a headache, and crashed out in front of the TV with a pizza and a bottle of wine.

But come Saturday, after a desultory morning spent catching up on household chores, and a dull afternoon alone trailing round the shops in Crawley, Emily had let herself into the flat to find three messages from Callum on the answerphone. When she switched on her mobile (which she had purposely left behind), she discovered he'd inundated her with messages.

‘Come on, babe,’ the last message had urged her, ‘what else do you have to do tonight but come out clubbing with me?’

What else indeed? In the end, she'd given in and driven up to his flat in town, where they had made up over a bottle of wine, before dancing the night away at a local grungy club that Callum and his less salubrious friends liked to frequent.

‘I promise to be good,’ Callum had said as they left the flat. He'd looked so solemn and schoolboyish when he'd said it, Emily couldn't help but laugh.

‘You better had be,’ she'd said. And then he'd kissed her, and she'd forgotten why she'd been so cross with him in the dizzying intoxication she always felt when he was near.

Callum had been as good as his word, in that he hadn't taken any drugs in her presence, which wasn't to say that he hadn't taken any at all, but it was enough for her to maintain the fiction that all was right with the world.

They had got up late on Sunday, gone for a pub lunch, and though Emily had known she should really have headed back home on Sunday evening, Callum's urgent plea of, ‘Stay, babe,’ coupled with the thought of another long, lonely evening, was enough to keep her from going back. Maybe that was why she couldn't quite let Callum out of her life. She knew he was bad for her, but he was pure escapism. Maybe she needed that right now. Perhaps it was worth it to avoid the pain of thinking about Dad, though it never felt worth it when the downside was being late for work.

Emily's nerves were jangling as she walked through the door. Mel didn't tolerate slackers on her team, as she put it.

Luckily, Mel was late too this morning, which allowed Emily enough time to get herself a latte and calm down before she started work. She sat down to a pile of paperwork and opened her emails, to find there were still hundreds she hadn't responded to from last week, including one from an ex soap star whose efforts to revive her career by applying for the next series of Love Shack looked doomed since she'd got into a racism row with another would-be contestant. Emily groaned loudly. She could feel another late one coming on. It was too bad they were so short-staffed and the secretary she had shared with her colleague had left, but at least working long hours kept her from thinking too much about everything. It was another form of escapism, she supposed, but not quite as satisfactory as shagging an unsuitable boyfriend.

‘So that tooth we root-treated last time is still giving you gyp?’ Mark asked once Jasmine was ensconced on his dental chair. Her crop top was hitched halfway over her stomach and her hipster jeans sagged below it. She had less of a muffin top and more of a meringue mountain … God, it amazed him that someone so foul-mouthed, foully dressed and generally appalling as Jasmine could be deemed worthy of being in the public eye. Once upon a time people actually did something worthwhile to be famous. Not any more.

‘Too right it is,’ whined Jasmine. ‘It's bloody painful all the time. Those antibiotics were useless.’

‘You do realise that if I can't sort it out this time, I shall have to take the tooth out,’ Mark said.

‘No way!’ Jasmine was horrified.

‘I'm sorry,’ said Mark, a little nonplussed. ‘I did warn you.’

‘You can't mess with my teeth,’ shrieked Jasmine. ‘I've got a contract which says my teeth are all me own.’

‘She's got a contract,’ growled Jasmine's mother from the sofa. Kayla followed Jasmine everywhere and, Rottweiler-like, was always on hand to defend her daughter's interests.

‘Well, if you want a second opinion …’ This was Mark's get-out clause for all his difficult patients. Sadly, Jasmine had never yet taken him up on the offer, and she wasn't about to now.

‘Oh go on then,’ she said sulkily.

Mark felt his way round Jasmine's mouth. Despite her brilliant white smile, her teeth were shot to pieces. The dazzling grin covered a multitude of sins to all except her dentist. The rate Jasmine was carrying on, it wouldn't be too long before he provided her with dentures. He prodded around for a while. Jasmine responded when he poked the molar two doors down, but the tooth she was moaning about didn't evince a single response. Which meant it was as dead as a doornail.

‘I'm really sorry,’ he said. ‘Your tooth's died. I'm going to have to pull it out.’

‘You can't!’ Jasmine shrieked.

‘What about her contract?’ Kayla demanded. ‘You must be able to do something.’

‘I'm touched by your faith in me,’ said Mark, knowing that sarcasm was completely wasted on these two, ‘but even I can't work miracles.’

Jasmine winced dramatically as he gave her the strongest injection he could. Her pain threshold was notoriously low, and this was a back tooth which would take a fair amount of work to get out. Mark toyed with asking Sasha for the right instruments, but as she leaned back against the sink, looking bored and playing with her nails in between taking text messages (even though he had asked her hundreds of times not to), he figured that in the time it would take to explain what he needed, he could have got it all himself. One day, God would take pity on him and send him a decent nurse.

‘I can't lose a tooth,’ Jasmine wailed. She was clearly not going to take this lying down. ‘What about my contract?’

‘I'm very sorry,’ he said. ‘But the tooth has got to come out. I'll make you a bridging unit, which I'll attach to the adjacent teeth. No one will ever know the difference.’

‘Are you sure?’ Jasmine eyed him suspiciously. ‘What if someone finds out?’

‘No one will find out,’ said Mark. ‘Your records are completely confidential.’

‘You sure about that?’ the Rottweiler jumped in, looking uncertain.

‘Yes,’ said Mark. ‘Now, I have to do something about this tooth. I can't leave it like this.’

Eventually, Jasmine agreed. Luckily, the tooth came out relatively easily, and Mark took some impressions for her crown.

‘What if someone sees the gap?’ Jasmine demanded as she got down from the chair.

‘It's pretty unlikely,’ said Mark, ‘it's a back tooth, no one is likely to be looking. You could always try not to get photographed for a bit.’

Which was as unlikely as him getting back with Sam, he realised. Jasmine was always splashed over one tabloid or another.

‘You'd better be right,’ Jasmine said, ‘or there will be trouble.’

‘I'll bear it in mind,’ Mark replied, before showing Jasmine and Kayla out to the desk, where Kerry was chatting animatedly to Tony, Jasmine's third-division footballer boyfriend. Jasmine shot Kerry a dirty look, clicked her fingers at Tony, and swept out imperiously, leaving Kayla to pay. Mark made a mental note to remind Kerry that it wasn't done to flirt with the clientele, before calling his next patient.

Great. It was Mrs O'Leary, or Granny O'Leary as the girls had christened her: an ancient crone and toothless wonder who steadfastly clung to the ill-fitting dentures that her original butcher of a dentist had given her eons ago.

Mark reflected that he must have done something really bad in a previous life to deserve Jasmine and Granny O'Leary on the same day. But he couldn't for the life of him think what.