Chances

The pause that ensued really should have been long enough for Candy to check in with Michelle and note a glower which said, Don’t go there. But she didn’t. She was picking petals from her wine.

‘I miss the company but I don’t miss him,’ Vita announced brightly, a mantra she’d trained herself to deliver. ‘It’s a bugger about the business – but neither of us can afford to buy the other out.’

‘You wouldn’t sell to him, would you?’

‘I’d rather have That Shop to myself. But I can’t afford it.’

‘How’s his day job?’

Vita shrugged. ‘I don’t know how much marketing consultants are wanted – or worth – in a recession.’

‘Here’s to you,’ said Candy, ‘not him.’ She chinked her glass against Vita’s.

‘And you.’

‘May a gallant knight ride by soon and sweep you off your feet.’

‘No, thanks,’ said Vita.

‘A bit of rough, then?’

Vita laughed. ‘I think I should be on my own for a while, actually.’

‘Yay! Girl power and women’s lib and all that.’

Candy always had the other two giggling.

‘It’s warm, isn’t it. I can’t believe there’s going to be a heatwave – when we’ve just raided the piggy bank to go to Florida this summer,’ said Michelle.

‘I’m going to have a staycation,’ said Vita, ‘here in my garden.’

‘Gathering pears and churning chutney?’ said Candy.

‘How delightfully Thomas Hardy,’ said Michelle.

‘Oh shit! The spring rolls!’ Vita darted back into the kitchen to rescue them.

‘Don’t tell her,’ Michelle said to Candy.

‘Don’t tell her about what?’ Candy said to Michelle.

‘About Tim,’ Michelle said to Candy as if she was dense.

‘Don’t tell me what about Tim?’ Vita said to both of them, standing there with a plate of spring rolls so over-cooked they looked like cigarillos.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Candy. ‘I do love busy-lizzies.’

‘They’re called Impatiens,’ said Michelle.

‘Stop changing the subject,’ said Vita, hiding growing unease behind a larky tone.

‘Actually – you know what? It’s no bad thing for her to hear,’ Candy said to Michelle who turned her head and stared stubbornly at the old fence that looked as though it was staggering along at the back of the garden.

‘Candy?’ Vita gestured that she’d be ransoming nibbles for information.

‘I had lunch at the Nags Head the other day,’ Candy said. ‘I hadn’t been in there for ages – anyway, the landlady greeted me like a long-lost friend. She asked after all of us – you especially. Well, you know how she likes a gossip.’

‘And she said –?’ Vita was fixing her best carefree smile to her face.

‘Oh, she just said that Tim often goes in there. Gets plastered.’

‘That’s nothing new.’

Candy was in her stride. ‘Yes, but here’s the funny part. He tends to go in there with this girl and invariably they get drunk, have flaming rows and one or other storms off.’ *

Who is she? Who is she?

‘Anyway, last week they go in there, the pair of them,’ Candy continued, ‘they drink, they row – she flounces out the back door, he storms out the front then half an hour later, he reappears with a totally different girl! The sleaze! A couple of hours pass – then he’s suddenly ushering her out of the front door before Suzie comes in again through the back door and—’

‘Suzie?’

Candy stared aghast at her burnt spring roll as if looking directly at her faux pas. Michelle glanced at Vita, noted the goosebumps on her arms.

‘Suzie?’ Vita said again.

Candy shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

Vita gave herself a moment. ‘No,’ she said brightly, ‘not a bit. You’re right. He’s a sleaze. It’s just hard hearing she’s still on the scene. I wish he was with someone completely different.’

‘It hardly sounds like he’s gone on to forge a good relationship though, does it?’ Michelle said in a tone of voice Vita had heard her use to great effect with her children – when downplaying a fall or a bump, so they wouldn’t be alarmed. So they would feel better.

‘I’d pity her, if I was you,’ Candy said. ‘She’s now lumbered with all that you shifted.’ She touched Vita’s knee. ‘Promise you’ll think of Tim even less now – and think even less of him because of what I’ve told you?’ Candy said. ‘Me and my stupid big gob?’

‘Don’t call yourself Big Gob,’ Vita said softly. It’s what the bullies had called Candy at school. A beautiful Ugandan refugee who’d arrived in their small Hertfordshire town twenty years ago.

Vita didn’t want more details. She didn’t want to be reminded of her past or how different her present was from the future she’d taken for granted. So she encouraged Candy to run off on tangents about films she’d never get to see and frocks she still couldn’t fit into. And she gave Michelle a nod every now and then to say, I’m fine, stop worrying about me.

Vita Whitbury, way past midnight, all on her own. Not that it seems that way, with the riot of Tim thoughts filling her head. Infidelity, lies, deceit. She tried to rationalize that Tim’s life was the same but the cast around him had changed. And though his life sounded lairy, uncouth, unsavoury and diametrically opposed to all Vita hoped for in her own, a niggle remained to taunt her. Suzie was still on the scene. Of all the people – why had it to be her?

Vita wonders, Why do I still feel I could have done more to inspire him not to stray? Why do I still feel it’s a failing, an inadequacy, on my part?

And she wonders, How does his happiness graph look these days?

And she wonders, Where has my self-esteem gone?

And how am I to get it back?

She reaches to the bedside table and takes her pad of Post-its and a pen.