Taptaptap.
It was the soundtrack to their mornings.
Taptaptap. Pause. Taptaptap. Sip of tea. Taptaptap.
Sue was tempted to march across the kitchen and grab the pencil out of Stu’s hand and snap it in two. Everything he did was irritating her lately. She needed a project. So she said as much.
Stu surprised her by offering a suggestion. ‘Why don’t you help out Linda Hooper? She’s always looking for someone to help her.’
Flo whooped a laugh. ‘Down the village hall? I’d go mad, Stu. I’ve never seen more people make a bigger fuss over fresh J-cloths and cleaning liquids in my life.’ Linda Hooper was also one of the ‘golf widows’ and would’ve tried to rope her into coffee time.
Stuart’s eyebrows went up. ‘Cleaning liquids?’
‘Oh, you remember, Stu. As a ‘cost cutting measure’ Linda wanted us to start measuring out the bleach we were using to clean the hall after puppy training class. I brought in three enormous bottles of the stuff to get her to stop. But did it? Not a chance.’
Stuart clucked and gave her a loving smile. ‘Not everyone’s as fortunate as us, darling. Able to solve problems with money.’
‘Precisely,’ snipped Flo, popping on her Akubra, brought back from Australia when she was young and interesting. ‘Which is exactly why I must get to work.’ She gave him a quick kiss on the head, Captain George a long, deep hug then waved her goodbye over her shoulder as she walked out the door. She’d use the car ride to come up with a project much better than working with Linda Hooper. Surely to god there was something that would capture her imagination.
Chapter Nine
‘That’s right. Only a few more seconds. You can do it. I believe in you.’
Kath let Fola’s rich voice flood though her like a healing tonic as she forced herself to do three more burpees to the dying strains of Roxanne. She’d never realised just how many times Sting said that bloody woman’s name. Burpees, it turned out, had a way of punctuating the obvious. A bit like her husband. What on earth had possessed him today? Saying a bungee jump in South Africa might be a cheap way for her to get a face lift. The man wouldn’t let up. She’d half a mind to tell folk about his haemorrhoids tomorrow. As if she’d dare. Mind you … ratings were slipping and the advertisers would love it.
She pulled herself up for the final jump and clap and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
‘Crikey, Fola! Why didn’t you say I looked like the back end of a donkey!’
‘What?’
Fola’s smooth forehead crinkled, genuinely confused. Perhaps they didn’t liken things to the end of a donkey in Nigeria.
‘No. No, Katherine.’ Her trainer gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Everything he did was reassuring, the way he said her name as if it was a flower, the gentle way he guided her through her workouts, but his touch … finally she understood what it meant to have sparks and glitter bombs and confetti flickering through her system. Yes, she’d felt something when she’d fallen for Kev, too, but this … this felt more real. Less hungry.
Yes, that was it. When she’d met Kev, she was hungry. For fame, for validation, for attention. And he’d showered it upon her. Until, one day, all of that amazing, doting, glorious attention had turned into micromanagement. Which was where they were now. Publicly micromanaging one another. Gaining, then conceding, fractional bits of kudos in the form of ratings pops, magazine mentions (god bless Woman’s Weekly, because she was always ahead on the magazine front), glitterati photos in any paper really (which worked better for Kev than for her as they had a softer touch with men’s aesthetics and laser-sharp talons when it came to a miniscule weight gain or eye crinkle or, God forbid, an annoyed glance at her husband as they left yet another party early because ‘someone’ had overindulged. It had made her a master of the jolly flow of excuses as Kev stumbled towards the car. (Oh, we had an early morning call was all. You know how it is. The alarm clock’s king in our happy home!)
They were beyond being grand. Desperate was what they had become. Desperate to stay on air while they frantically resisted the inevitable. Being replaced by the next young thing.
Fola took both of her shoulders in his large, rather gorgeous hands and gently turned her so that they were both facing the wall mirror. He was a good foot taller than her. Broad shouldered (all muscles of course), lean. Athletic, really. Quite unlike her short, stout husband who used to twirl her round the dance floor as if she were made of air.
‘Look at you,’ Fola said. ‘Do you not see what I see?’
Her eyes met and his and fizz pop! Good heavens. Her va-jay-jay was obviously not as crippled by menopause as she thought it was. She looked back at herself, tilted her head to the side and tried to make an effort. Honestly? All she saw was a woman desperately trying not to launch herself at her personal trainer’s knees and thank him, endlessly, for making her
