The New Mrs D Read online

  Dear Facebook, today I was so hot. Oops, bloody mobile phone typos! I was s-h-o-t.

  ‘Mrs Dando . . .’

  As I lay there with my eyes screwed shut, waiting to feel a gun in my ribs, (please God let it be a gun in his pocket), hearing him huffing like a muddy, wet contestant on Total Wipeout, his voice took on a calmer, more sinister tone.

  ‘I not kill you. You kill yourself.’

  I froze. Oh my God, he was going to make me shoot me.

  I heard him take another deep breath and cough. ‘Mrs Dando,’ he said finally. ‘You drive with the moped on the other side!’

  ‘I didn’t mean . . . I wasn’t . . . oh!’ Ah. Right . . . I rolled back over to face him, but again, could see nothing but blackness. So, I wasn’t going to be bumped off for stealing the island’s only pencil. Or for assault with a supersized bag of mini croissants.

  Twisting the monstrous headgear off and easing myself upright, I was met by four nonplussed faces caked in, well . . . cake.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, smoothing my hair in an attempt to recover some composure. ‘Well, er . . . why didn’t you just say so?’

  Chapter Five

  Discovered my superpower isn’t making a cool ‘KSSHHH KSHHH’ noise when I walk.

  Unrelated: Now have 40 smartphone photos of the inside of my pocket.

  Pulling over to catch my breath, drink some more juice and update Facebook, I gazed through olive groves to the distant horizon where real life, work, bills and complicated relationships awaited my return. Still a little shaken from the moped chase, I realised that for that whole brief, albeit zany window, I hadn’t thought of David once. Closing my eyes, I breathed in the sweet and savoury aroma of lemons and olives and thought of myself zipping through the island’s sleepy, cobbled streets on the wrong side of the road. Despite a slight prickle of embarrassment, a wry smile spread across my face. It was so wonderfully liberating taking to the road alone, I understood now. I opened my eyes, taking in the astonishing view, and made friends with the glinting Aegean once again.

  There is a moment in every relaxation tape I’ve listened to when Mr Making-Me-Sleepy-Voice-Man tells me to imagine my calm place to begin. That place for me was usually here in Greece, sitting with my toes dipped in the warm, almost silken waters as the scorching, summer sun nipped at my shoulders. I was already beginning to relax again . . . Until I remembered I was about to face my husband’s best friend.

  It seemed so long ago now that David had first introduced Chris and me, two months into our relationship, and as time passed and we saw Chris time and again, it became clear that we had a lot in common. We had the same sense of humour, came from similar backgrounds and liked all of the same things. It seemed I had passed the ‘meet the best friend test’ with flying colours.

  Then, one night, right in the middle of a conversation we were having alone at a party, everything changed. We were both more than a little inebriated; laughing until we cried as we always did, when he stopped, touched my hand and said, ‘You know, David is my oldest friend. I wouldn’t want to see him hurt.’

  ‘Hah,’ I laughed. ‘I’m not going to hurt him.’ Noticing his serious expression, I changed my light-hearted tone to a more serious one. ‘I like him a lot.’

  He grasped his pint glass with both hands and stared solemnly into the beer. ‘Me too,’ he said.

  ‘Are you saying I’ve got a rival for his affections?’ I asked, only half joking.

  ‘I’m saying let’s change the subject,’ he replied, looking so uncharacteristically serious that it felt almost like a reproach. I was puzzled, but put it down to the drink and did as he’d asked. After that night, we never really talked that much again. Shortly after, I’d tried to recall the conversation leading up to his unexpected sharpness − maybe I’d said something stupid and he’d gotten the wrong end of the stick? Maybe he’d told me a secret about David that he wasn’t supposed to reveal? But I couldn’t remember what had occurred. When I mentioned it to David, he just shrugged it off.

  ‘Oh, Chris is just funny sometimes,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not hiding something?’ I asked.

  ‘Apart from that time he went to prison for me, no,’ he joked.

  Six months later, Chris had headed out to Greece for a new life and I hadn’t thought about it again until now.

  There was only a short uphill drive remaining, but now the pain in my heart was beginning to dull, replaced by nervousness.

  I was going to have to face Chris and his painting class alone . . . and shoeless. I imagined him quizzing me.

  ‘Teenagers threw your flip-flops away?’

  ‘Yup. Flipping flip-flop flingers.’

  Choosing one of the smaller, less touristy islands had been David’s idea; not just to meet up with Chris again, but to explore these little-known corners of the earth, filled with undiscovered treasures, coupled with a list of new experiences we’d planned like conspiring children. In truth, it was a life experience I’d planned to have 23 years earlier – right before discovering I was expecting Sal.

  Michael, Sal’s father, was a college mate I barely knew. At 19, without even having had time to wave goodbye to a higher education, we had chosen to ‘do the right thing’ and get married. By 21, when most of our friends were leaving university to dry out and get respectable jobs, I was already a mother of two with a husband. But at least I wasn’t alone on that road.

  It was 15 years before I really got to know the person I’d married, when a collection of love letters – stumbled upon while tidying the loft – revealed he’d had a mistress for six of those years.

  Michael was now married to Caroline, but I’d never told the girls their dad and new stepmum were a perfect match – of lying, cheating, conspiring lowlifes. I’d even accepted Facebook friend requests from both of them to keep the ‘happy, extended family’ dream alive.

  Caroline would like to add you as a friend.

  Bloody fiend more like.

  For me, reading the words ‘Caroline likes this’, with the jolly little Facebook thumbs up beside it under my holiday snaps, was tantamount to winning first prize in a glamorous grannie competition. When Sal and Mark announced their engagement and Caroline had updated her status to say ‘Ooh, can hardly believe I could be a grandma soon’ it burned my heart like ice.

  ‘My children. My grandchildren,’ I felt like screaming out, but swallowed the words. All that mattered to me was Sal and Beth’s happiness. And they adored her.

  Smother − who had made sure she too was friends with Caroline on Facebook − had written her congratulations to Sal, Mark and Caroline underneath the post. She had always maintained a friendly relationship with Caroline, although she knew why my marriage to Michael had collapsed.

  ‘Well, she hasn’t done anything to me really, has she? And she’s so good with the girls. I like the way she fixed Beth’s hair for her party last summer. You know you were never any good at that kind of thing. She came and did mine too, for my reading group social. That reminds me, I must send her some flowers to say thanks.’

  Blinking at the memory, I recalled too, the only person who had been available to decorate a new flat before someone moved in recently. A person who had never painted a wall in her life, had very little money, but wanted to try and make everything nice for her mother; an old woman who was forced to move from the house she’d lived in for twenty years into something smaller and easier to manage. A person who had showed her mother all the newly decorated rooms, grinning from ear to ear while feeling shattered − but more than a little proud − at what she’d achieved. It took two seconds for her to feel slapped in the face.

  ‘Well, this will do for now, Bernice. At least I’ll be able to pay someone to do it properly once I’m settled in.’

  Discarding the juice carton to the back of the moped basket, along with thoughts of Smother, I pressed on, even remembering at the last minute to move back to the right hand side of the road. Before long, I turned into a
quiet lane that stopped before large, black iron gates with a sign that read:

  Chris Paynton. Art Classes. Please ring the goat bell.

  Hmm . . . did I need a goat right now? My stomach gurgled as I removed my helmet and glugged down more orange juice, praying it wouldn’t be making a reappearance anytime soon. It would be a good day; I’d had many a fine moment ribbing Chris about being an artist called Paynton. Once I’d explained away the absence of my husband – his best friend – I was sure we would just fall back into the old routine. I rang the bell.

  Sure he’ll be pleased to see you. Because you just sent his lifelong friend packing – the person he’d asked you not to hurt. For the first time, I faltered. What was I thinking, coming here after all that had happened?

  As I considered turning back, six heads, alerted by the dingly-dong of the goat bell, popped up from a leafy patio area above. Well, I’m here now.

  ‘I’m looking for Chris Paynton,’ I called.

  ‘Hold on!’ The voice came from just in front of me, making me jump.

  ‘Hello?’ I said, holding on to the gatepost for support as the day’s heat and yesterday’s wine had a foam party in my belly. Inside the gate was a small white car with an ample, khaki-shorts-clad bottom sticking out of its back door.

  ‘Just . . . getting . . . some . . . oh, wait . . .’ the bottom grumbled. Finally, Chris, owner of said ample bottom, emerged, holding a large box of brushes and cloths and clutching two large rolls of paper under each arm. What I hadn’t reckoned for was how much more attractive he would look carrying a few extra Mediterranean diet pounds, newly greyed hair and a suntan.

  ‘Bernice!’ he said, walking towards me happily. All I could think of was how much his clear, blue eyes resembled the placid deepest depths of the Grecian sea. And how happy he looked. A stab of envy and a longing for his carefree life in the sun overwhelmed me. How well it suited him.

  ‘Oh, er . . .’ I smiled and smoothed my wind-blown hair back down.

  Chris dropped the paper rolls on the ground, laid down the box and stood twisting the barrel on the bike-lock that was holding the gate closed. For a second he stopped as he spotted my bare feet.

  ‘Well, you got here at last,’ he said, getting back to opening the lock. ‘Congratulations on your wedding! Where’s the blushing groom?’ He glanced behind me, then back at my feet.

  My stomach lurched. ‘He, erm, isn’t coming,’ I said.

  Finding the right combination at last, the lock gave way and he opened the gate, beckoning me onto his property. He looked puzzled.

  ‘Sorry about the locked gate – it keeps the damned goats out.’ He stared a third time at my bare toes, then at the moped, as if mulling over the situation in an attempt to understand his friend’s absence, while I fought an inward battle with the unexpected pain − seeing him made me think of David. ‘There was no fence when I moved here,’ he continued. ‘And the bloody things took over and ate everything in sight.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, still holding a forced smile whilst racking my brains for an ‘Oops, I kind of lost David’ excuse. ‘Perhaps if you got rid of the goat bell they’d stop coming round so much?’

  He laughed and beckoned me in, onto the crisp, gravelly driveway. Which was when another, much more immediate pain hit me. Owww! The gravel was boiling hot! I hobbled in, gritting my teeth and trying my utmost to look normal.

  ‘They don’t wear shoes in England anymore then?’ he asked.

  ‘They do. Such boring, conventional people in England, don’t you miss them?’ Knowing my sense of humour was still intact soothed me somewhat. David hadn’t taken everything.

  ‘Conventional, yes. Sadomasochistic − maybe not so much. How’s this heat on your soles?’

  ‘Honestly?’ I was now hopping from one foot to the other, trying hard to keep from crying out as they burned. ‘I think I’m already onto a new layer of skin.’

  ‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘I have water and shoes. So, where is David? Hung over or something?’

  Helping him with the rolls of paper, I followed him up the pathway towards the group waiting on the patio. My feet hurt, but not as much as my brain, which was still scrambling for a story. Why hadn’t I thought of one before I got here?

  ‘You haven’t heard from him then?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Not at all,’ he said, concern in his eyes.

  ‘Well, okay,’ I said, taking a very deep breath. This was it. ‘Yes we got married as planned, and it was a beautiful day. But, it’s just me here today. It’s just me on the entire honeymoon now, actually.’

  ‘I don’t . . . ?’ he started.

  I didn’t want to stop for breath or questions, which I hoped wouldn’t make me sound heartless. He was the first person I’d told, and it felt very, very painful speaking about it.

  ‘Do you mind if we leave it at that just for now? I know you two are good friends so it might not be appropriate for us to discuss it. I’ll let him explain, his way. I’d just like to take your painting class, Chris, if you’ll still have me?’ I could feel tears welling up in my eyes and I rubbed them away quickly. ‘Just let me get through this day,’ I thought.

  As he stood, looking for all the world like he was wondering what to say next, I saw sympathy behind his kind eyes and felt myself blushing. How I hated the blushing thing − the embarrassment of being a fair-skinned English Rose. It was all so awkward. I shouldn’t have come.

  ‘Right, understood,’ he said at last. ‘And yes, of course you can take my class.’

  There was no time for me to wonder what he thought of me right then, I just wanted to get on with things. He stole another glance at my bare feet and winced.

  ‘Look, I have an old pair of sandals belonging to a friend that you can borrow.’

  I hadn’t meant to make David being gone and my missing shoes sound connected, but it seemed I had, as if there had been a row on the way here and I’d flung my shoes at him. ‘Go away, and take my shoes with you, you bastard!’ This unspoken explanation was going to have to suffice for now. It was way better than admitting I’d smacked a random old codger with a flip-flop on the way here.

  As we continued up the winding path, to my enormous relief he didn’t ask any more questions about David. He paused and nodded toward the imposing white washed villa, with its sea-facing balcony. ‘This is my summer home, Villa Miranda,’ he explained. ‘Downstairs there at the front is a little apartment, but it isn’t being used at the moment.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, amazed. It was also huge. ‘Such a colourful array of flowers, too.’

  ‘Yes, I planted them all myself. I’ll just grab those shoes for you. They’re a size six, I think. Is that okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a five but they’ll do fine, thank you. She won’t mind will she?’

  ‘Who?’ he said.

  ‘Your friend.’

  ‘Oh no, she’s long gone,’ he answered, matter-of-factly. As he turned to fetch the shoes, I peered around the extensive villa grounds, waving a hello to the watching, smiling faces under the pergola and sighed. Despite the unwelcome reminder of David that Chris had unwittingly brought me, it was good to see him again after all these years, now all silver-haired and tanned, with his Grecian villa, all this land and so much taste and sophistication . . .

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, reappearing from the outhouse with a grotesque pair of wooden clogs. ‘This is all there was. Could have sworn there were some sandals in there. I could lend you some of my shoes?’ With the poker-hot floor still searing through my soles, a pair of fig leaves would have done right now. However, glancing at his feet, which were at least a size eleven, I decided against the Binnie-the-Clown look, smiled and went for Binnie-the-Clog-Dancer.

  ‘Guess you’ve been to Holland recently?’ I said, holding out my hands for the shoes.

  ‘Not me, my friend,’ he replied, brushing off a few cobwebs. ‘And not recently.’

  ‘Great!’ I laughed. ‘Loud, ugly and fusty shoes.’
>
  The rest of the class were still waiting and, as I made my way over, all eyes on me, Chris introduced us.

  ‘Everyone,’ CLOP. CLOP. ‘This is my good friend, Bernice.’ CLOP CLOP CLOP.

  ‘Everyone’ was smiling at me, (and the clogs), yet a weird apprehension – bringing about a fresh desire to vomit – took over. ‘I’m Bernice and, oops . . . this is my orange juice.’ For the first time it began to sink in that I was going to do all these new things alone. There was very little I’d done alone socially in my entire adult life and nothing, as it happened, that I’d done before wearing silly, wooden clogs. Perhaps a yodel would be appropriate?

  As Chris turned, at last, to the task of setting up his materials, a petite, elderly lady with grey hair held neatly in a tight bun waved a sheet of paper in my face. She reminded me of Mrs Pepperpot, a tiny character from some much-loved books of my childhood. Staring down at the clogs, which were the most uncomfortable chunks of wood I’d ever worn (out of a list of none), she said, ‘We all hae stickers,’ in a thick Glaswegian accent. ‘How are ye spelling Bernice?’ ‘GRETA’ was emblazoned on her own sticker.

  My relief that any difficult conversations with Chris were over for now was overtaken by a moment of confusion, as it took a few seconds for my brain to decipher Greta’s question. Not because of her Scottish accent, but because trains whizz through Glasgow’s underground system slower than she spoke. ‘Er . . . B.I.N.N.I.E.,’ I spelled out. ‘Most people call me Binnie.’

  David called me Binnie. Up until I’d met him, I had been Bernice. Why had I forgotten that?

  Beaming an enormous, toothy smile, Greta said, ‘Och, that’s whit we cry they fellaes that tak wir bins awa in Glesga, eh Hughie?’ Chuckling at her own joke – which was just as well because it took a few seconds for me to make out what she was saying – she nudged the little old man beside her who was transfixed by my clogs. He regarded my face over tiny, round glasses before winking.