Natalie Fox - Man Trouble

Her eyes were misty as she hurriedly slicked on another coat of red lipstick. She’d nervously drawn on her lips so much that there was hardly any colour left. As she’d got ready the past had flooded her, bringing with it the despair of her loss yet again. She’d loved dressing up for him when they were lovers. It had all been a ritual, everything done for his pleasure and approval. He’d adored her femininity, laughed at her feisty temper when aroused, hungered for her kisses. Now he despised her so openly that she dreaded facing him again, and yet here she was, checking and rechecking her appearance, and what for? More painful put-downs?

The last thing she did before turning away from the mirror was to harden her heart against him, pride adding to the steely determination. She looked the way she did for self-preservation, not his approval.

‘Why dinner, Mel? I’m sure we could have done all this in my office some time.’ Chin up, she settled into the passenger seat of his black BMW and he pulled away from the kerb. It was pouring with rain, with a biting wind to add to the misery of the winter night.

‘I don’t have some time, Jade. You’re not the only poor fish in the sea of troubled waters these days.’

‘How very poetic,’ Jade muttered. Then she drew in her breath as almost immediately they pulled up outside a restaurant they both knew very well from the past. This was a bit below the belt and she felt the blow as if it had been physically thrown. ‘Was it worth it?’ she snapped. ‘We could have walked around the corner.’

‘You, in those ridiculous heels?’ he said, opening his door and getting out.

He’d never disapproved of them before, she thought miserably, and supposed his woman wore designer trainers.

Jade made no further comment on his choice of venue as he put a steadying arm around her shoulders and they hurried into the crowded restaurant. She made no comment as the waiter ushered them to the same window seat they used to occupy, obviously requested by Mel to make her feel bad. She did comment on the change of view, however, to hide her floundering emotions and the deadly beat of her aching heart.

‘Didn’t that used to be a pizza house across the road?’ She hoped she sounded light and casually interested instead of desperately unhappy, which she was. This was his revenge, bringing her here to stir up old memories.

‘Looks like a Thai restaurant now,’ Mel said, leaning forward to peer through the window. ‘I’ve not been back since we split up,’ he added, so matter-of-factly that Jade knew none of this meant anything to him any more.

But why should it? He’d found love elsewhere and four years had passed anyway. She gazed miserably at the menu. Naturally it had changed over the years but there was nothing on it to bring her appetite back. She ordered fish and he followed suit and then she got down to business immediately, ignoring the twisting inside her as women gazed at the back of Mel’s head, probably wondering what a gorgeous man like him was doing out with a little nobody like her.

As Mel spoke Jade listened and drew herself out of her self-pity, raising her chin and squaring her shoulders as one of a group of businessmen across the room gave her a very interested look. It was as if Mel suddenly had psychic powers. He turned and caught the man looking and then gave her a withering look.

‘You haven’t changed, have you?’ he said pityingly.

‘Is that a serious question?’ she demanded tightly.

‘Rhetorical.’

‘Abysmal, Mel, like your thinking. I wasn’t flirting. If you must know I was sitting here feeling very sorry for myself and wondering how far I had sunk in these last years to end up dining with you, and then that good-looking young man gave me an encouraging look and I responded because he made me feel attractive and alive and not the total waste of time you obviously think I am.’

He said nothing for a while, just twirled his water glass in his fingers as he studied it with equal intensity. When he did finally speak his words made her uncomfortable in her seat.

‘After all these years I still want to punch the jaw of any man who looks at you.’

She recovered quickly. ‘I doubt that. You’d rather punch my jaw, as you symbolically did by thinking I was two-timing you four years ago. You haven’t changed either, Mel,’ she finished contemptuously.

The waiter brought them wine and Mel studied her across the table as she sipped hers. ‘I think we’d better keep to business before we upset each other any more,’ he suggested at last.

‘Honesty upsets you, does it?’ Jade couldn’t resist taunting.

‘Stop it, Jade,’ he warned. ‘It isn’t funny and it isn’t sensible if I’m going to be involved in your daily business.’

He was right, of course. She remembered his warning: ‘Don’t argue’. She might as well have her tongue stitched to the roof of her mouth and be done with it.

‘You were saying something about putting in a new head of the art department,’ she started, determined to get all this over and done with so that she could go home and curl up in misery on the sofa for the rest of the night.

‘Yes, I have someone very talented who would fit the bill.’

Jade braced herself. ‘Mel, I know you said I wasn’t to argue, so don’t take this as arguing, take it as a statement of fact. My problems aren’t with the art department. The staff I have are very talented. I’ve fallen down in other departments and that is where I need your advice.’

‘You need a new art director,’ he insisted.

Jade held her palms up to him. ‘I’m not arguing, honest, but I have enough talent to promote someone within my own staff without bringing in someone from outside.’

He glowered at her. ‘If that isn’t arguing, I don’t know what is.’

Jade sighed. ‘You can’t expect me to lie down and take it all without giving an opinion.’

He’d obviously expected exactly that. His eyes narrowed, daring her to say another word.

‘OK.’ She sighed again and drew in a last defiant breath. ‘If you must you must, but I can’t afford to take a risk with some fresh-faced kid just out of art school who thinks he’s going to change the face of advertising with a working model of a Lamborghini made out of cornflake packets!’

To her astonishment he burst out laughing and his amusement cut right through her till she almost winced with pain. Their affair might have been short and explosive but they had lived and loved and laughed so very much and how she had missed him, so very, very much.

He refilled their wineglasses, still shaking his head. Jade watched him with stinging eyes and a heart that felt as if it was pounding its last beats. What a waste, what a loss, what a fool she had been not to force him to listen that night.

‘It’s a she, not a he,’ he said after putting the wine bottle back into the ice bucket.

The waiter brought their main course and Jade waited till he’d gone before asking, ‘Who is a she, not a he?’

‘Your new art director.’

A chill went down Jade’s spine. Knowing his tabloid reputation with the opposite sex, she was sure to have had an intimate relationship with him at one time. She might be his she! No, his fiancĂe certainly wouldn’t need to earn her own living.

“The boys aren’t going to like that!’ Jade exclaimed. All her art staff were men because the few women they had tried couldn’t keep up the pace.

“That sounds sexist.’

Jade shrugged and gave a small smile. ‘I suppose it does but I’m not sexist. Give me a girl who can stand the pace and won’t get pregnant and I’ll take her on.’

‘That is definitely sexism,’ Mel insisted.