‘Stacy,’ Kath gestured for the producer – a permanently exhausted single mother of twins – to close the door behind her. ‘Can I let you in on a little something?’
Twenty minutes later Kath sat back in the sofa as they hit their first commercial break.
‘Happy?’ Kev asked, that sparkling white smile of his stuck in a Joker-like leer.
‘Very,’ Kath replied, terrified at what she’d just done, but strangely calm as well. ‘I think the audience are really going to love seeing His and Hers Hols. Especially,’ she added, ‘The day when you go bungee jumping. It’s bound to be a ratings bonanza.’
She looked up into the control booth and saw Stacy grinning away, giving her a big thumbs up.
Girl power, when properly harnessed, was something to be reckoned with.
Chapter Seventeen
Flo applauded. ‘Good on you, girl. About time you showed him what you’re made of.’ She whirled round triumphantly to Stu. ‘What do you think of that, then, love?’
Stuart looked up from his morning paper. ‘Sorry, pet. What was that?’
Frustration rattled through her. Of all of the golden opportunities to get Stu to light a blooming firecracker under his retiree bum …
‘Kath!’ she snipped.
‘Who?’
‘Kath! Her off the telly.’ Flo pointed at the screen. They’d just cut to some poor weather girl being buffeted by the North Winds. She was up in the Shetlands no doubt, poor thing. It always blew a gale this time of year in the Shetlands. A sudden, bone-deep urge to go to the Shetlands, stand on the beach and see how she stood up against the elements swept through Flo with such force she shuddered. It felt exhilarating. Perhaps that’s why the weather girls did it. Subjected themselves to the not altogether dignified on-air reportage. It made them feel alive.
Stuart glanced up at her. She must’ve been glowering because he raised his hands up in the surrender position. ‘Sorry, love. I was away with my puzzles. Lost to the land of Sudoku.’
He gave her a smile and touched a hand to his temple, his white hair still a bit damp, strands aligned in the exacting rows the comb had drawn through it. What was left of it anyway. Stu’s features had softened. Not the tiny, endless, folds of wrinkles his mother’s face had shriveled into when she hit her nineties. But they were soft enough to make cheekbones she’d once likened to Cary Grant’s appear just that little bit more vulnerable rather than virile.
Flo felt a flicker of something she hadn’t in a while.
Compassion.
He was such a good man, her Stu. Proper old-fashioned. He was an excellent father. A great provider. He’d literally flown her around the world and they had the home decor to prove it. Rugs from Marrakech. Carved wooden giraffes from Vietnam. A bloody great onyx chess set from Mexico City they’d never got round to playing. She put hors d’oeuvres on it sometimes. At the holidays. If the kiddies spilt on it, it didn’t matter much as one quick wipe with a J-cloth cleared it away and the chances of them ever using it were increasingly slender.
All of that stuff. Stuff acquired to prove they’d once led an exhilarating life.
Her compassion flicked back to irritation as she swallowed back a recurring and unwelcome thought: a nervous, growing dread that their high-flying lifestyle had been a mask for weaknesses in their relationship. Should she have married him at all? Had he really been her soulmate? Ever so quickly their global shopping list had shifted from silk quilts in Shanghai, leather jackets in Bombay and tall, awkward-to-handle didgeridoos from Australia to over-the-counter antibiotics in Bangkok, pool cleaner from Jo’burg (for Portugal), nappies from America (first for her children and then her children’s children). If she was still flying, would she be buying adult diapers next? Would they ever take a trip to Australia outside the regulation alternate years programme? (Jamie came to the villa every other year with the children to ‘give his wife a break.’ From what exactly? The tedium of marriage? Come to think of it, her Jennifer always took a week off – usually somewhere on the continent – with her gal pals from back in uni. Loved it. Said she never felt more human than when she was away with the girls. Flo, being of a certain age and not having that close mother-daughter relationship she knew so many others shared with their offspring, had never been invited.)
Oh lord. Flo flicked off the telly. She didn’t want to be old.
‘She’s already earnt forty-five thousand pounds towards a charity cycle ride she’s doing.’
Stu made one of those interested noises that meant if she were to ask him about this later he would have zero memory of the conversation.
Flo couldn’t help herself seeing this pointless conversation through. ‘She’s putting her money where her mouth is, Stu. She’s actually doing the ride along with the group.’
‘Group?’
‘Volunteers. Charity raisers. Whatever. People who ride their bicycles along Hadrian’s wall for charity. The point being, Stu, she’s doing it on her own. Without her husband.’
‘Oh, that’s nice.’ Stu was back in position, pencil tapping along the little squares of the puzzler. Taptaptap.
‘Yes,’ Flo said, perhaps a bit insistently. ‘It is nice. She’s doing it for her brother – the one who died after all that time in the military. She’s asking for folk to join her if they like. Kev’s off to South Africa to do some daft thing with meerkats.’
‘Oh?’
Taptaptap.
Had he even heard her? She’d just said that Kath of the utterly inseparable Kath and Kev was going on a cycle ride across the blinking country without her ever-present husband. For a
