Chapter Four

Running late, having come straight from the surgery, David abandoned the car on double yellow lines and sprinted for the school. He hadn’t bargained on the school run being so stressful in a supposedly sleepy location. It was mayhem. Mothers driving four-by-fours like Formula One racing Ferraris. He could have sworn one came around the corner on two wheels spitting sparks. It would be easier to walk through the woods in future, he decided. At least then he wouldn’t have the hassle of parking.

Raking a hand through his hair, he walked more calmly into the playground, knowing that Jake wouldn’t be pleased to see him there, even on his first day. The kid had made it obvious he couldn’t bear to be in his company for more than two minutes. David didn’t blame him.

Swallowing hard, he tried not to look too obviously like a fish out of water, though he could see from the furtive glances and hushed whispers in the playground that that was exactly what he looked like. What he was: a single father, new to the village, and probably soon to be labelled not very sociable. He doubted he’d be swapping small talk at the village shop anytime soon. If there was one thing he was determined to avoid it was fuelling neighbourhood gossip. He’d done enough of that to last a lifetime, making Michelle’s and Jake’s lives miserable into the bargain. Sighing, David pulled up his collar against the biting wind, and hoped that Jake might at least acknowledge him when he came out of school. Not likely, he realised, after the disastrous start this morning.

‘And-ee?’ Nita’s wheedling tone alerted Andrea to the question before it was asked.

‘No,’ Andrea replied adamantly, weary after an afternoon that started organising the grand total of two computers for the afternoon skills lesson, and ended in a double lesson of art. She’d grabbed Steph, the PE instructor, as she’d passed by the door and asked her to keep an eye on her class while she located the CD player for tomorrow’s oracy session. With Nita’s help, she’d found it, finally, and now her feet were killing her. The new boots had been a bad idea.

Grabbing another minute while she could, she plopped down in a chair in the school office to prise off one heel-blistering boot. The art lesson had gone well, though. The mural depicting seasons of the year had been an inspired idea, if Andrea did say so herself. The kids had thought it was cool anyhow, knuckling down to produce templates of bees and birds, foxes, hedgehogs, bugs and spiders against a backdrop of fluffy white cloud and seasonal foliage. It would make an amazing mural for the playground wall beyond the ‘magic garden’, given she did ever manage to turn it into anything other than a patch of weed.

‘Pretty please?’

‘All right, Nita.’ Andrea sighed, resigned to the task of removal man. ‘I’ll see if I can get Sally to help out and save your bacon, but make sure you bat the beguiling eyes at some of the male members of staff next time desks need moving, hey?’

‘I was going to. My eyelashes were poised, honestly.’ Nita fluttered demonstratively. ‘But then my mother rang.’

‘Ah.’ Andrea got the gist. Nita’s mother could talk the hind leg off a donkey. Andrea had been in the office the last time she’d rung, watching amused as Nita plopped the phone down on the desk – her mother’s tones still drifting therefrom – and leisurely wheeled her wheelchair over to the filing cabinet for a file.

‘And I do try to tell her I’m at work, but there’s just no pause between words. She’s like, “Now-I-know-you’re-busy-sweetie, but …” and off she goes.’ Nita threw her hands in the air in despair. ‘What can I do?’

Andrea laughed, despite her sore feet.

‘She’s telephoned to remind me my cousin’s coming over this afternoon. I won’t be there, I tell her. Whyevernot? she says. I’m going to be working, I say. Sheesh, she says, you’re only on work experience, Nita. What are they running there? A sweatshop? She’ll stop at nothing to match me up with a suitable young man, I swear.’

‘I’m sure she means well,’ Andrea sympathised, with a tolerant smile. ‘I’d better go and find Sally and ask Steph if she wouldn’t mind dismissing my class.’

‘Sorry, Andrea. I didn’t mean to bang on. It’s just that you’re such a good listener and I don’t have anyone else, what with two so-good-they’re-golden brothers and a father who popped his clogs rather than risk saying boo to the goose that laid them.’

‘There’s nothing else for it, I’m going to have to get me a toyboy.’ Sally sighed, contemplating the three desks they’d been volunteered to haul across the playground to the temporary Terrapin classroom.

Andrea blinked, astonished. She was all for Sally skipping the self-analysis and going straight for the bulk purchase of impractical raunchy lingerie stage, but wasn’t she being just a teeny bit quick off the mark?

‘Well, why shouldn’t I?’ Sally had obviously noted Andrea’s bemused expression. ‘I’m not ready to cast aside my plunge bra and man-trapper shoes for tan tights and fluffy slippers yet, you know?’

‘No reason.’ Andrea smiled, doubting Sally would be caught dead in tan tights and slippers, as she positioned herself to grab hold of one end of a desk.

‘Precisely.’ Sally positioned herself at the other end. ‘If he can have tender young flesh, then so can I. I don’t need commitment, not any more. It’s too painful. I need a man in his prime. A lean, keen sex machine, with rabbit inclinations in the bedroom.’

‘Sally!’ Andrea gawped at her. ‘You’re not going to become one of those panther people, are you?’

Sally laughed. ‘Cougars, honey. You make them sound like Pan’s People unleashed. And why not? Younger men aren’t the domain of the Sharon Stones of this world, you know. I’m not nearly as near to my prime as she is anyway. If she can, I can.’

Andrea didn’t doubt it. At just thirty-seven and looking a lot younger in Andrea’s estimation, Sally could probably out-cougar most women. ‘But what would you actually do with a toyboy?’ she mused.

Sally arched an eyebrow suggestively. ‘Um, now, let me think …’

‘I meant outside the bedroom, Sally. You’re bound to get bored when you find his conversation is limited to football and bloke jokes.’

‘Who cares?’ Sally said as they negotiated their way down the corridor. ‘Do I mind if his vocabulary’s small as long as his—’

‘Ahem!’ Andrea coughed loudly as a stray pupil straggled past.

‘—attention span isn’t.’ Sally smirked.

Andrea rolled her eyes despairingly. ‘Bad girl.’

‘I’m not getting any younger, though, am I, Andrea?’ Sally went on more seriously as the two women, plus desk, progressed precariously down the school steps. ‘Another relationship would be nice, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon, is it? In any case, even if I was ready for one, I’m not sure I want to settle for a less than perfect love again. You know, I don’t think Nick ever really—Oh no!’

‘What?’ Andrea asked, alarmed as Sally stopped abruptly and plonked the desk down in the junior playground.

‘Nothing. I, um … Hot flush, obviously.’ Sally flapped a hand in front of her face. ‘I think I’ll just go and get a drink of water.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Andrea asked, concerned. Sally was looking most definitely peaky.

‘No, I’m fine. You stay. Looks like we’ve a stranger in our midst.’ Sally nodded quickly behind her as she hurried back to the school.

Andrea glanced in the direction Sally had nodded. Oh, no, it was him, Mr Obnoxious himself. An intimidating, aggressive man, if ever she saw one. Was he, though? Andrea was often too quick to jump to conclusions. It shouldn’t really be any of her business, but then, the man’s child obviously now attended the junior part of the school, which made it her business, even though she worked in the infant school. She might well have blundered in on no more than a family argument this morning, though. Children could drive you to metaphorical murder, Andrea was well aware of that, and the last thing she wanted to do was make waves if it was nothing more. But still, there was no doubt in Andrea’s mind that this man was bad-tempered. Not that you’d guess it to look at him now, standing alone and obviously feeling awkward amidst the majority of women in the playground. And inviting all eyes, she couldn’t help but notice.

‘I tell you what,’ a young mum close by said, coiffing her bob and nudging the mum next to her, ‘I wouldn’t throw him out of bed.’

Andrea shook her head as she watched the group of women gossiping excitedly and glancing towards him. Honestly, what was it about moody sorts that had women’s hearts and eyelashes all aflutter? Yes, he was handsome, all buttoned up and broody in his dark overcoat and four o’clock shadow but, as Andrea could attest to, he had about as much charisma as Jack Nicholson, frozen to death in The Shining.

What luck that she had a man whose attractions were more than skin-deep. At least, she hoped she had. Andrea couldn’t get Jonathan’s half-hearted smile this morning out of her head. She couldn’t blame him if he was having second thoughts. Would any man in his right mind want to share his lover with a mad mother, two teenagers and a toddler? A woman who didn’t have the time to take on board his insecurities?

Or was it more that she didn’t have the inclination to?

Confused, and somehow feeling a little exposed, Andrea headed back towards the school, aware of her neighbour in her peripheral vision, tugging up his collar, looking every inch like Heathcliff in a bad mood.

‘So does he have a name, our Ben Affleck lookalike?’ she overheard one eager mother ask another as she walked past.

‘That’s Doctor Adams,’ another mother supplied importantly. ‘He’s the new general practitioner at the health centre,’ she gushed on, enthusiastically imparting what was obviously the most exciting thing to hit Hibberton since Sincerely ABBA played the village hall.

‘Is he now?’ Eager mum sounded delighted. ‘Well, I’d say he’d know which bits go where in the baby making department, wouldn’t you?’

The local GP! Hell! She’d have to move surgeries. No matter how qualified he was vis-à-vis which bits go where in the baby making department, he was absolutely not getting a glimpse of hers. Andrea hurried on, making a mental note to check whether she was on his list as she did – and to check out young Jake’s records in the office tomorrow. The boy seemed to be in the sole custody of his father. Why, Andrea didn’t know. She couldn’t help but wonder, though.

The bitter custody battle she’d had with Ryan and Sophie’s father came to mind. The lies he’d told, attempting to rubbish her as a parent. Not because he’d wanted his children. Far from it, he’d been an uncaring, uncompromising man, who simply couldn’t bear to lose. Was Doctor Adams of a similar ilk, she pondered, possibly using his good standing as a doctor to sway the courts?

‘Excuse me, Miss …?’ a male voice said behind her, almost giving her a heart attack.

Zipping on her professional face, Andrea turned slowly around. ‘Kelly,’ she supplied. ‘Yes?’ She offered him a short smile, determined to be courteous, despite their awkward earlier meeting.

‘David Adams,’ he introduced himself, finally offering her his hand. ‘I wanted to apologise for this morning. I was a little distracted, I’m afraid. Bad start to the day.’

‘Oh, right.’ Andrea nodded, noting the slight thaw in his gaze.

‘Please extend my apologies to your, er …’ he hesitated, apparently distracted again as the junior bell rang, ‘… grandmother,’ he finished, looking back at Andrea.

‘Mother,’ Andrea corrected him dryly. And that kind of blatant flattery, Doctor Adams, will get you nowhere, particularly with Dee, she thought, unimpressed.

Andrea yawned as she hurried from school to the Happy Hours nursery, where Chloe had howled and clutched at her skirt when she’d left her there this morning. And now, thanks to desk removal duty, she was late collecting her, again.

Damn. She tried to blend with the walls as she slipped inside. No dice. The nursery nurse greeted her with a scowl and a ready-coated charge. Andrea sighed as she trailed out, a bandaged Igglepiggle in one hand and a jiggling toddler attached to the other. A toddler whose expression had switched fast from hopeful to petulant now Andrea had said no to fast food for dinner.

‘Want vlanilla.’ Chloe dragged her feet, scuffing the toes of her Timberland toddler boots, which had cost Andrea an arm and a leg.

‘We can’t, darling. Ronald’s …’ Andrea thought fast as to feasible reasons why McDonald’s wasn’t on the menu. ‘… poorly.’

Chloe knitted her little brow thoughtfully. ‘Like Igglepiggle?’

‘Just like Igglepiggle, sweetie.’ Andrea crouched down to rub the bandage where once was a head.

Obviously gauging her mood, Chloe decided on a trade-off rather than a tantrum. ‘Chips, then,’ she said, glancing wide-eyed from under her eyelashes.

Andrea looked into eyes crystal clear with the innocence of childhood and wondered how anyone could possibly resist. ‘Chips it is.’ She smiled resignedly.

‘Wiv ketchup?’

‘Yes, with ketch … Ooh!’ Andrea stopped outside her drive. ‘Bloody hell!’ She gawped at the soft top BMW blocking it. What was he trying to do? Force home the fact that he was totally rude?

She was going to have to have a few words with the man-of-few-words, David Adams, she decided, her fuse fizzling as she turned on her heel, stepped off the kerb, and straight into the man himself.

‘Whoops,’ he said, catching hold of her forearms as she all but barrelled into him. ‘Sorry about the car,’ he added immediately. ‘There’s a water leak. Workmen are due out. I’ll move it as soon as I can.’

‘Thank you. That would be most kind,’ Andrea said, her cheeks heating up at the thought of what she had been about to impart. ‘Right, well, I’d better, um …’ Unsure what else to say, her concerns for his son being the only thing she felt inclined to discuss with the man, though preferably not in the street, Andrea waved a hand behind her.

‘Right.’ He nodded and managed a smile. Nice smile, actually. Yes, and one no doubt practised on many a susceptible female.

‘Good night, Mr Adams,’ she said curtly.

‘And to you, Miss Kelly,’ he said as Andrea turned abruptly away.

Well, that was just plain unfair. Sally couldn’t help feeling miffed as she watched David Adams, who Nita had been desperate to give her the goss on when she’d gone back to the office, practically embracing Andrea. And what on earth had Andrea been doing gazing into his eyes? Checking for contact lenses?

Sally took a step closer to the window. As close as she dared in the Intrigue purple and noir raunchy lingerie she’d bought as a last ditch attempt at seducing her husband. Hah! That had worked. He hadn’t even bothered to come home that night, obviously preferring the slut’s seduction technique. She’d been thinking about taking the underwear back again, until her eyes fell upon the good doctor this afternoon. He who was now a new resident in the village, it seemed. And actually better looking than Nick with his dark hair and strong profile. Yes, Doctor Adams definitely had what it took in the genes department.

She ran her hands over the tight-fitting silken attire she tried on again for size, almost feeling David’s hands trailing in their wake. Her heart might be broken, but her spirit wasn’t. If anything, Sally was more determined than ever. As a teenager, her hormones flying all over the place, hadn’t she swallowed back the hurt and told herself she was worth loving, even though her father – the one man who should have loved her enough to be part of her life – couldn’t be bothered? Hadn’t she been resolute in her efforts to make sure Nick became part of her life?

No, she wouldn’t allow her husband’s pathetic affairs with younger women to corrode her confidence, not now. Nick wasn’t the only fish in the sea, was he? There were other men out there, David Adams for one.

She wasn’t exactly ugly, was she? And her figure, despite the odd bump, was still good. Wasn’t it? Sally’s eyes flickered to her full breasts, which looked reasonably presentable, uplifted in all the right places.

Yes, David Adams might just have made an opportune appearance and Sally was sure he would like what he saw, assuming he could prise his eyes away from Andrea. Sally watched on, feeling more than a bit peeved now, as she noted him watching Andrea walk into her house. Having a good look, too, judging by the curious tilt of his head.

At least three repeated bloody hells from the mouth of her babe later, Andrea let herself in through the front door, where a cacophony of music assaulted her ears. Ryan was blasting ear-splitting indie from his bedroom, while Sophie was in pop mode. Despairing at her own children’s adept ability to drive her to distraction, Andrea debated again David Adams and the obvious argument he’d had with his son that morning. Had it been just that, an argument? One of many possibly, which was, after all, perfectly normal when kids reached the age where they challenged a parent’s authority?

Worried about how she should tackle it, whether she should, Andrea headed to the kitchen, where Dee, being more mature in her tastes, was blasting out ‘Die Another Day’, along with Madonna on Radio Two. ‘I’ve so much more to do,’ she sang, cavorting across the kitchen, dripping colander in hand.

‘Hi, Mum,’ Andrea said, pleased that Ryan had remembered to pick up his grandmother after college.

‘Potatoes are peeled,’ Dee said, dripping back again. ‘And the washing’s pegged out.’

Andrea deposited Chloe in front of her Burger Bar, fully equipped with chip fryer to encourage a healthy diet and a microphone, through which Chloe was able to demonstrate the new words she’d learned today. She then strolled across to glance in the saucepan, where she found the potatoes were indeed peeled, bar one or two, or ten. Ah, well, there were probably vitamins therein.

The washing was pegged out, she noticed through the window. Unfortunately, it didn’t appear to be washed, but that didn’t qualify as the end of the world either. Andrea smiled, despite her exhaustion, because Dee looked tickled pink to be doing what she’d been doing all her life, albeit in rather a hit-and-miss fashion.

‘Good day at the drop-in centre?’ Andrea enquired, seating herself at her own rescued kitchen table, which had been lovingly restored, but which wasn’t quite so lovingly maintained unfortunately, bearing many a telltale scar of family at war at mealtimes.

‘Marvellous.’ Dee reached for the tenderiser and decimated the steak. ‘Madge Riley stopped complaining and cheered everyone up.’

‘Oh? How’s that?’ Andrea tugged off her boots before she went lame, then padded across her kitchen, which, with its homey smells, magnets adorning the fridge and hand paintings pinned haphazardly to walls, could never aspire to Sally’s beautifully organised rustic simplicity, but which Andrea felt was truly the heart of her home.

‘Curled up her toes, miserable old cow. Dead as a dodo.’

‘Mum.’

‘And that nice Walter Stevens asked me to have sex with him.’

Andrea cringed. ‘Mum.’

‘Liven the place up a bit though, wouldn’t it?’ Dee chuckled, delighted with her wit, and walloped the steaks under the grill.

Delighted, though, wasn’t how Andrea would describe her little darlings’ faces when presented with the steaks.

‘Want chips!’ Chloe squealed, close to convulsion at the sight of bloody meat and two veg adorning her plate. Ryan curled a lip and headed for the fridge in search of bread and cheese, while Dee, oblivious to all, chewed, and chewed. So determined was she to digest, Andrea worried she might swallow her teeth.

‘Sophie,’ Andrea called again, ‘your di—’

‘—dead cow’s on the table,’ Ryan finished predictably.

‘Thank you, Ryan.’ Andrea sighed, awaiting Sophie’s inevitable response as she sloped into the kitchen. Prompted once again by her own children’s undoubtedly wearing behaviour, her mind wandered to David Adams. If she mentioned anything at the school, she could be making a terrible mistake. And if she didn’t? She’d have to, she decided. At least then, the staff would be alerted to a possible problem.

‘Ugh, that is soooo disgusting,’ Sophie obliged. ‘I’d rather starve to death.’

‘Won’t take long, will it, beanpole?’ Ryan quipped.

‘Ryan, enough!’ Andrea warned. ‘And Sophie, eat something, now please, or you stay home tonight.’

‘God! That is so typical! Treat me like a child, why don’t you?’ Sophie clanged her chair out and plopped herself moodily down by way of response.

‘I can’t imagine why.’ Andrea eyed her sulky fifteen-year-old daughter wearily. ‘Don’t worry about it, Mum. She won’t eat fresh air lately without counting the calorie—’ Andrea stopped, finding Dee looking not at all worried as she speared Sophie’s steak from her plate.

Oh, the joys of mother/daughterhood. Andrea shook her head and went in search of curl fries for Chloe, hoping to convince her to eat a bit of ‘magic tree’ broccoli alongside them.

‘Catchya later,’ Sophie called coming down the stairs as Andrea presented Chloe with fries and broccoli, the latter cunningly disguised with lots of ketchup.

‘Uh-uh. I just said, Sophie, you don’t eat, you don’t go out,’ Andrea reminded her, watching despairingly as her far-too-cute toddler licked a green spear clean of sauce and then discarded it for another.

‘I am eating. Later. Hannah’s mum’s doing lasagne.’

‘Make sure you do. And make sure to be back by ten, Sophie. No arguments.’

‘Okey-dokey,’ Sophie replied cheerily.

Pardon? Andrea glanced curiously over her shoulder, and then did a double take as Sophie flashed past the kitchen door.

‘Sophie!’ Andrea skidded after her. Okey-dokey, indeed. ‘Come back here!’

‘Pants,’ Sophie muttered, turning at the open front door to roll over-made-up eyes. ‘What now? I’m late.’

‘You have two choices, Sophie – you are either late, or you stay home, because you are not going out in those.’

Sophie bent to examine leopard print legs, which were topped with the wisp of denim she called shorts. ‘What’s wrong with them? They’re leggings.’

‘Yeah, but it helps if you’ve got legs-in them, chopstick,’ Ryan said wittily, poking his head around the lounge door.

‘Oh, ha-di-ha-ha. Very funny pigeon-chest.’ Sophie gave him a ladylike sit-on-it sign. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and fantasise about being a man.’

Ryan returned the gesture. ‘I am a man, metal-mouth,’ he informed her, now making fun of her braces, to Andrea’s utter despair. ‘This is why I don’t have to wear gel-padded bras and pretend I’ve got boobs.’

‘Ryan, be quiet!’ Andrea snapped, wondering when her little darlings had turned into absolute monsters.

‘Yeah, shut your mouth, muppet.’ Sophie smirked, triumphant. ‘Mum, I have to go.’ She jiggled impatiently. ‘I’ll be late.’

‘Sophie, get in, and get dressed, please. And, Ryan, one more word and you’re grounded!’

‘Oh, M-u-m, I’ve got nothing else to wear.’ Sophie flounced past, wearing as close to nothing as was possible whilst passing as fully dressed.

Andrea eyed the swatch of cloth adorning her posterior despairingly. ‘What about wearing the frilled hem skirt instead of the shorts?’ she suggested, the skirt at least having enough material to decently cover her daughter’s bum cheeks, ergo not making her stick out like a Belisha beacon in the town centre, which is where, Andrea suspected, Sophie would be doing her ‘studying’ with Hannah tonight.

‘No way. That’ll look totally uncool,’ Sophie spluttered over her shoulder as she flounced on upstairs. ‘Does your fashion sense die when you hit forty?’

‘Thirty-eight, actually.’ Andrea sighed, feeling a bit feeble and wondering whether her fashion sense had in fact died because, try as she might, she just could not understand her son’s wish to go out with the top half of his derrière on show, and her daughter her bottom half.