Jill Mansell - Sheer Mischief

It was downright depressing, on the other hand, if everyone else forgot it too.

But she had dug herself into a hole from which, it now seemed, there was no face-saving escape, because her birthday was tomorrow and to mention it casually in passing at this late stage would be too humiliating for words. The trouble was, Janey thought with a pang of regret, she hadn’t bothered earlier because she’d stupidly assumed everyone else would remember.

She was still in the bath when the telephone rang. Seconds later, Alan opened the bathroom door. ‘Phone, sweetheart. It’s Maxine.’

Superstition told Janey that if she climbed out of the water and went to answer it, Maxine wouldn’t have remembered her birthday. If she stayed where she was, on the other hand, it might suddenly click.

‘Ask her what she wants.’ Slowly and deliberately she began to soap her shoulders. ‘Take a message, or say I’ll call back.’

He reappeared after a couple of minutes. ‘She asked if you could babysit tomorrow evening. Guy had already said she could take a couple of days off and she and Bruno have arranged to go up to London,’ he recited. ‘But now Guy has to be somewhere tomorrow night, so he wonders if you wouldn’t mind doing the honours. He says he’ll definitely be home by midnight.’

So much for superstition. Wearily, Janey nodded. ‘OK. I’ll call her back in a minute.’

‘No need.’ He sounded pleased with himself. ‘I’ve already told her you’ll do it. She says can you be there by seven-thirty.’

Janey stared at him. ‘Well, thanks.’

‘What?’ Alan looked surprised. ‘I knew you’d say yes. All I did was say it for you. Why, have you made other plans?’

‘No.’ She closed her eyes. ‘No other plans.’

‘There you are then,’ he chided, tickling the soles of her feet. ‘Stroppy.’

Janey forced herself to smile. It was only a birthday after all. Not such a big deal.

‘How about you? Are you doing anything tomorrow night?’

‘Ah well, I was planning a quiet romantic evening at home with my gorgeous wife.’ He rolled his eyes in soulful fashion. ‘Just the two of us ...’

‘You could always come and help me babysit.’

.. but since you won’t be here,’ Alan concluded cheerfully, ‘I may as well meet the lads for a drink at the surf club.’

Janey, curled up on the sofa with a can of lager and a packet of Maltesers, was so engrossed in the book she was reading she didn’t even hear the car pull up outside. When Guy opened the sitting-room door she jumped a mile, scattering Maltesers in all directions.

‘Sorry.’ He grinned and bent to help her pick them up. ‘So which is scariest, me or the book?’

‘You said you’d be back at midnight.’ Still breathless, Janey glanced up at the clock. ‘It’s only half past nine. Oh no,’ she said accusingly, ‘you haven’t walked out on her again. Tell me you didn’t dump her at the hotel ...’

When Charlotte had phoned Guy the night before and begged him to partner her at the firm’s annual dinner, he had made strenuous efforts to get out of it. But Charlotte had been truly desperate. Everyone else was taking someone, she explained, evidently frantic, and she’d been let down at the last minute by her own partner who’d thoughtlessly contracted salmonella poisoning. ‘Oh please Guy, I can’t possibly go on my own,’ she had wailed down the phone at him. ‘It’s not as if I’m asking you to sleep with me; I know it’s over between us, but just this one last favour? Pleeease?’

He hadn’t had the heart to refuse. But fate – for the first time in what seemed like years –

appeared to be on his side. Within minutes of arriving at the hotel, Charlotte had disappeared to the loo. Finally emerging half an hour later, pale and obviously unwell, she clung to Guy’s arm and groaned pitifully, ‘Oh God, I think I’m going to haveto go home. Tonight of all nights, as well. Bloody chicken biryani. Sodding salmonella.’

Guy, hiding his relief, had said goodbye to all the people he hadn’t even had time to be introduced to, helped Charlotte out to the car and driven her home. Mortified at the prospect of throwing up in front of him, she had vehemently refused his offer to stay for a while and make sure she was all right. Food poisoning was a singularly unglamorous illness and all she wanted was to be left alone.

‘Oh poor Charlotte!’ Janey tried hard not to laugh at the expression on Guy’s face. ‘She doesn’t have much luck, does she?’

‘Every cloud,’ he replied with an unrepentant grin. ‘I didn’t even have to give her a goodnight kiss.’

Janey looked at her watch; it was still only twenty to ten. Now that Guy was here, she supposed she could go home too. But Alan wouldn’t be there, and the prospect of sitting alone in the flat on her birthday was infinitely depressing.

Sensing her hesitation, Guy said, ‘Do you have to get back straight away?’

‘Well, no.’

‘Good. I’ll open a bottle.’

When he had finished pouring the wine, he picked up the paperback Janey had been so wrapped up in. ‘Hmm, so I was right. No wonder you nearly jumped out of your skin, reading horror stories like this.’

She laughed. ‘I found it buried under a pile of comics in your downstairs loo. You should give it a try; it’s actually very well written. I was really enjoying it.’

‘As if Mimi didn’t have enough fans.’ With a shudder he dropped the book into her open handbag. ‘Take it home with you. She always sends me a copy of her latest best-seller, though God knows why. The covers alone are enough to give me a headache.’

‘You’re such a chauvinist,’ said Janey cheerfully. ‘I like them.’

‘You shouldn’t need them.’ Guy’s expression was severe. ‘Alan’s back; you’ve got your own happy ending now.’

Janey fiddled with a loose thread on the sleeve of her pastel pink cotton sweater. ‘Mmm.’

Guy decided to chance it. Very casually he said, ‘Although I suppose it can’t be easy. Two years is a long time. Getting used to living together again must take a while.’

She hadn’t breathed so much as a word to anyone about the difficulties they’d been having.

She’d barely been able to admit them to herself, Janey realized. But there were only so many excuses you could make on someone else’s behalf. Alan was charming, funny and affectionate.

But the flipside was beginning to get to her. Despite having been back for over a month now, he had made no real effort to find work. The amounts of money he borrowed from her in order to

‘tide him over’ were only small, but with no way of repaying them they soon mounted up. Janey, watching her own bank balance dwindle, was at the same time having to spend twice as much as usual on groceries, whilst Alan appeared to spend his money buying drinks for all his old friends down at the surf club.

‘No, it isn’t easy.’ Janey attempted to sound matter of fact about it. There was no way in the world she would admit the true extent of her problems to Guy, but she was tired of pretending everything was perfect.

‘I expect it’s me,’ she went on, taking fast, jerky sips of wine. ‘When you’ve lived alone for a while you become selfish. It’s always the silly things, isn’t it? Like suddenly having to make sure there’s food in the house; remembering not to use all the hot water; the toilet seat always being up when you want it down.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Guy raised an eyebrow. ‘I share my home with Maxine. She might not leave the toilet seat up, but she drives me insane. You can’t move in that bathroom for cans of industrial-strength hair spray. At the last count there were eleven different bottles of shampoo up there, and she leaves great blobs of hair mousse all over the carpet.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘It’s like walking through a field of puffball mushrooms.’