Anne Billson - Suckers

The fourth call was from Duncan. I was pleased to hear him until I realized he wasn't calling to apologize for his bad manners after all. He wanted a sympathetic ear, and he didn't care who it belonged to. 'I missed her,' he said. 'I didn't get back in time, and she'd already left. She didn't even leave a note.'

'What did you expect?' I asked, and tried to jog his memory. 'You spent the night with another woman.'

He moaned. 'Don't I know it. Dora, I feel dreadful . Where did we go? Where's the car?'

Thanks, I thought. Thanks a lot . 'Our happy hour turned into a lost weekend. You drove the car into a wall.'

There was a shocked pause before he said, 'Jeez, I was wondering about the bruises. We didn't kill anyone, did we? How's the car?'

'The car 's just fine,' I said, 'just a few small dents.' I told him where I'd parked it. Nice of him to ask after me . I could hear him smothering a sigh. He knew I was being terse, but couldn't work out why, unless maybe I was having my period. Whenever members of the opposite sex failed to respond to Duncan's boyish charm, he always concluded it was their time of the month. But it wasn't mine, not yet.

'I didn't get breathalysed or anything?'

'No.'

'Thanks, Dora.' There was an awkward pause. 'I guess I'd better go and rescue the car. Before it gets clamped.'

'Why don't you do that,' I said, and hung up.

Duncan's call left me in a rotten mood. For about the billionth time I made up my mind never to talk to him again. Let him worry about Lulu all he liked. See if I cared.

I spent the rest of the day trying to work. I typed out some lists and vox pop quotations for Jack, and concocted some readership survey results for Flirt . I looked upon these things as conceptual art. They may have been made up, but they seemed no less accurate than any other form of market research. I prided myself on my knowledge of human nature, and my attitude was that I was the market. I told everyone my readership profiles were composite portraits, compiled from data gleaned from hundreds upon hundreds of telephone interviews — interviews which were constantly having to be updated in order to reflect the minutest fluctuations in the state of the economy. No one ever queried an invoice; they just coughed up.

At about eight o'clock, as I was making last-minute corrections to Jack's research, Duncan called again. In my frail condition I found myself talking to him before remembering, too late, I'd decided not to.

'She's still not back.'

'So? The night is young.'

'She hasn't even called.'

'She won't have had time. You know what it's like.'

'I'm really worried.'

'Duncan, I've got to rush, I'm going out. I'll call you in the morning.' Feeling deliciously hard-hearted, I hung up on him and set off for the tree-lined crescent where Jack and Alicia lived.

'How's Roxy these days?' I asked.

Jack glared at me. 'Fine.'

Alicia was knitting an unidentifiable garment on large wooden needles, somehow managing not to stab Abigail, who was gurgling and wriggling on her lap. The needles ceased clicking as she looked up. 'I didn't know you knew Roxy.'

'We went to the same school,' I lied. 'She was a real bully. She used to beat the crap out of me.'

Alicia returned to her knitting. 'Ooh, what a cow,' she said, rather absent-mindedly. I didn't pursue the matter. My initial question had been a test, to find out if she knew her husband was being unfaithful. From her reaction I concluded not, but I held my tongue. I enjoyed making Jack feel uncomfortable, but I wasn't about to ruin his marriage.

'Let's have a look at these papers,' he said pointedly. 'Want a drink?' I asked for a gin and tonic, and he stayed where he was, sifting through the typed sheets. After a few seconds, Alicia dutifully gathered up her knitting, hefted the baby on to one arm and struggled to her feet.

'I'll have one too,' Jack said without looking up.

I couldn't bear it. 'Stay where you are,' I said to Alicia. 'I'll do it, save you getting up.' She beamed and sat down again in a tangle of baby and wool.

Jack and Alicia kept their liquor in an Art Deco cocktail cabinet. I wondered how much cocaine had been chopped up on the mirrored shelf over the years. Not a lot recently; apart from the occasional joint, Alicia was now completely illegal-substance-free, and was trying to make Jack follow suit, though I suspected he and Roxy sometimes depleted the office Biro collection after hours.

I thought about how much Alicia annoyed me, all the more so because she was settling for less than she deserved. Once upon a time she had earned herself a first-class degree, had written articles for a couple of heavyweight literary reviews, had seemed poised for some sort of brilliant career.

According to Duncan, she had always been surrounded by so many admirers he'd considered himself favoured when she finally agreed to go out with him.

Then she married Jack, and everything changed. He had taken her on a Grand Tour — France, Italy, Greece, Spain — before bringing her home to install her as a baby-maker. Things hadn't gone quite as planned — Jack, of course, blamed Alicia for the delay — but now they were back on course. He was saying they wanted a two-year gap between babies.

They weren't short of money, but had never got round to hiring a nanny, so Alicia was left holding the baby while Jack went out on the town; it was an arrangement which suited him down to the ground. Alicia's reward was a gold American Express and frequent weekends in a remote part of Dorset, where they'd just bought a cottage. I was angling for an invite, though wary of ending up stuck in the middle of nowhere having to listen to Jack's monologues.

I handed Alicia her gin and tonic. She adjusted Abigail's position so the baby's head wasn't lolling, and turned her concerned maternal gaze on to me. 'Is everything all right between Lulu and Duncan?'

'As far as I know. Why do you ask?'

She paused, and had the grace to look embarrassed. 'Lu said she thought there was another woman.'

The blood rushed to my head, but then I realized she couldn't have been talking about me. News didn't travel that fast. 'She hasn't mentioned anything to me.'

'I can't believe Duncan would be so stupid,' said Jack, so smugly that I wanted to hit him. 'Lulu's a corker.'

There was another uncomfortable silence. 'There's some problem with tax, I think,' I said, damaged brain working overtime. 'He's been having a lot of meetings with his accountant. Maybe that's it.'

'Maybe,' said Alicia, but she didn't look convinced. I thought I saw her raise an eyebrow in my direction, but I may have been mistaken.

Five minutes after getting home, I had yet another call from Duncan. It was the same old stuff — no Lu, no fun, no future. By the time I'd summoned sufficient resolution to terminate the one-sided conversation, my mood, which had been jiffed up by the gin, had plummeted back into the pits. There was only one thing to do in the circumstances. It was a foolproof method of cheering myself up. I dialled Patricia Rice's number.

At the twenty-fifth ring — just as I was about to give up and go to bed — she answered. I heard a little gasp, as though she were anticipating some fresh new hell, then realized it had not been a gasp but a yawn. I had probably got her out of bed. She was just the sort of person who would be turning in before eleven o'clock.

'Hi there,' I said in what I hoped was a Californian accent. 'Am I talking to Patty? Patty Rice?' I'd decided to give her some more of the weird hippy subcult.

Immediately she was on her guard. 'Who is that?'

'You don't know us,' I said, 'but we sure as hell know you. We were kind of wondering if you'd gotten our latest letter.'