The Second Wife aka Wives Behaving Badly

seem to understand that I didn’t want a wife. I wanted her. Not someone who stockpiles jam and checks the dinner menus. But when it came to a decision, I think she preferred it. Gisela has got used to being a professional wife.’

‘I think you’re right.’

Marcus’s rightness, however, was of no help to him. What can she possibly gain with Roger? The dullness of such an existence… and I’m the one who loved her, not Roger.’

With regret, I noted the past tense. ‘It’s not dull, Marcus,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s different.’

Barry had stopped prowling, and waved at Kyoto RIP. ‘I’ll take that one.’ He pushed his face close to Marcus’s. ‘Now, you are sure I won’t be throwing my money away?’

Marcus hadn’t even blinked. ‘Nothing is certain.’

So that was how Shiftaka had come to grace the walls at Paradox.

‘Minty,’ Barry had finally finished what he’d had to say, ‘do you want to go ahead?’

I pulled my notes towards me. ‘O?. Remember last year we discussed an idea for a programme on middle age? It didn’t work. But this will. Three-part series on being a parent. Baby Love. The format? Each section to be an hour, featuring expert talking heads and personal experiences of parents. The programmes will ask: what are the stresses and strains of becoming a parent? Can you ever prepare for it? How does it affect a man and a woman physically and emotionally? What sort of impact do children have on marriages, friendships? How can it affect you if you become a step-parent to older children? How do you cope if you feel you’re a failure as a parent? How do you manage as a lone parent?’

Good question. How do you manage as a lone parent?

Chris raised an eyebrow. Then he cleared his throat and made a note.

I continued: ‘The trick will be to handle the material in a fresh, bold manner, and not be afraid to tackle the difficult aspects of being a parent. The programmes have to be honest and say things that most people only think. Children do change you. You don’t always love them. Parents do fail. It is lonely.’

‘Any up-side?’ asked Chris.

‘Oh, yes,’ I replied. ‘Plenty.’ I thought of my beautiful sons and felt my spirit lift. ‘But I’ll leave that for the parents to describe. They’ll do it best.’ I picked up the treatment I had prepared and handed it to Barry. ‘We want it fast, colourful, daring, and I think BBC1 should be the target.’

Chris frowned. Barry gazed thoughtfully at Kyoto RIP.

‘Minty, thanks,’ Barry said. ‘Not quite convinced, but I’ll think about it. We’ll talk.’

‘Think massive audience,’ I urged. ‘Trust me.’

Chris came into my office as I was shifting my papers into order. He closed the door and leant against it. ‘I wanted to chew the cud about a few things, Minty.’

‘Sure.’ I clicked off my computer screen. As I did so, I noticed that my wedding ring was much looser and a vein running down my hand stood out in relief. Not a good sign. Film stars had hand lifts for less.

‘You heard we got the Carlton deal for the documentary on the Pope?’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Should boost the quarterly figures.’

‘Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? If so, can we do it tomorrow? I have to get home.’

Chris levered himself away from the door, and perched against my desk. Suddenly my small office was very cramped. The hazel eyes gleamed. You’ve had a tough year, Minty.’

His kindness was unexpected, and I was still having trouble with kindness. It tended to reduce me. ‘Yes. But I’m coming to terms with it and making my way.’

I needn’t have wasted my energy: Chris’s kindness was merely a vehicle for other considerations.

‘Minty, it might be better if you were working for a bigger organization, which would have more slack for someone in your predicament. A very real predicament.’

There was no point in getting angry. If I was to survive at Paradox until such time as I wished to leave on my own terms, I could not be angry. ‘Are you suggesting this or telling me?’

He smiled gently, and I could not decide whether it was genuine or not. ‘Friend to friend, in this business it doesn’t help to have additional pressures. A company as tight as Paradox needs to know it’s functioning optimally with no unnecessary drag. You need to know, when a problem arises, that there’s no problem in dealing with it, if you see what I mean.’

‘Sweet of you, Chris,’ I murmured.

In the old days, I would have deployed sex – which Nathan fell for. I would have opened my eyes, looked up from beneath the lids, and have made sure my cleavage was in the correct line of sight. I might have said, ‘How nice of you to take an interest,’ which would have introduced a faint chime of promise, sufficient to push Chris off the track. I’m not saying that I’ve come to despise such tactics, or would never use them again, only that sex took time and the boys would be waiting for me.

Instead I placed the last of my notes in my bag and fastened it. ‘Chris. Perhaps it would be better not to pursue this conversation. If you’re trying to suggest that, as a working mother, I’m a liability, it could get you into trouble.’

No fool, he backed off at once. ‘I was only thinking of you,’ he said.

On the way home, I passed Paige’s house. The front garden was ultra-smart because the gardener had recently completed the autumn spring-clean. ‘You can’t call it a spring clean,’ I had pointed out to Paige, when I phoned her the previous day.

‘I can call it what I like,’ was her reply.

‘Has Martin been to see you?’

Paige bristled. ‘I wish you wouldn’t interfere.’

‘And?’

‘He’s here at the weekend. But I’m not taking him back, Minty. As I told you, I’m far too busy with the children to be married.’

The scene when I got through the door of number seven was much as I had pictured it. Eve had collapsed into a chair in the kitchen and a small riot was going on in the boys’ bedroom. One of Eve’s hands lay on the table, so white and thin that it alarmed me.

First, I tackled her. ‘Look,’ I said to the slumped figure, ‘this is no good. It’s been going on for months, and you haven’t got properly better. You need to go home and see your family.’

She raised her face from her hands and I was star-tied by the light in her eyes. ‘Go back?’ She gulped a lungful of air – as if she was already breathing in the scents of river and mountains, of her home.

That decided it. ‘You must go home for two weeks, see your family, rest, then come back.’

‘I get coach.’ Eve hauled herself to her feet, and her smile was pure joy. ‘I telephone. Now.’

‘No, it’s a two-day journey both ways. You must fly.’

‘The moneys.’

A stack of quick-fire calculations snapped through my brain. Eve needed a break. She needed her mother. Four days in a coach was not a rest. I needed Eve well and strong, as she herself wished to be. ‘I’ll pay your air fare, and you must go as soon as we can arrange it.’

As I went upstairs, preparing for riot duty, the rest of the calculation slotted into place. What with the hit my finances had taken with the loan to Poppy, Eve’s air fare equalled a reduction in the Christmas-present list. It definitely put paid to the haircut, and the cost of her replacement would, no doubt, see off any strictly unnecessary seasonal frivolity. But that, I supposed, was what ‘unnecessary’ meant. You could do without it.

It was the day before Christmas Eve, the kind of day that paraded a weak sun as a joke. I eased the car into the parking slot and got out. It was very cold and I zipped up my fleece, powder blue, then turned up the collar. I could smell frosted leaf mould and the faintest whiff of frying fat coming from a van selling snacks parked further up.

I was relishing the moment of freedom, and allowing my mind to drift, before I took up the slack in the reins and pulled them tight. Moments such as these kept me sane.

I was contemplating getting back into the warm car when a smart silver coupe drew up and parked in the space beside mine. One of the passenger doors flung open and Lucas tumbled out. ‘Mum!’

He was followed closely by Felix. ‘Mum!’

Both were clutching picture books with an illustration of a dinosaur on the front. I knew this because Felix