Jill Mansell - Mixed doubles

Pru and Phil Kasteliz lived in a modern detached house on the outskirts of Bath, on one of those exclusive keeping-up-with the-Joneses type of estates bristling with carriage lamps and bay trees.

Anyone whose car was more than two years old was regarded with suspicion. If your curtains weren’t swagged and tailed and your windows not cleaned every week you were riffraff. If the grass on your front lawn exceeded an inch and a half in length ... well, you were scum. Any small children, needless to say, were expected to show consideration for their neighbours and play quietly. And tidily. But preferably not at all.

It was that kind of estate.

‘What if he’s there?’ Dulcie peered ahead as they swung into Acacia Close. Loads of roads were called that, she really must find out what it meant. She wouldn’t know an acacia if it leapt up and bit her on the bum.

‘He won’t be. It’s Wednesday, everyone’s back at work. Anyway,’ Liza rounded the corner and nodded at the empty drive, ‘see? His car’s gone.’

‘I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing.’ Dulcie was already racked with guilt. It was all right for her, she wanted a divorce. Pru didn’t. ‘What if you got it wrong? It could have been an innocent meeting with a client.’

‘In a rubber skirt?’ Liza wasn’t having any of that. Her tone was dismissive. ‘And with her foot buried in his crotch? Come off it, the woman was a scrubber. If anyone was the client, it was Phil.’

When they rang the bell and the gold and white front door was pulled open, Liza got something of a shock to come face to face with the rubber-skirted scrubber herself.

Chapter 4

Upstairs, Pru didn’t hear the doorbell. She was bent double with the hair dryer going full blast, putting the necessary lift into her straight conker-brown hair. Luckily it was thick and there was plenty of it; with a bit of tweaking and a lot of hairspray (maximum hold, what else?) the illusion would be complete. Her ears wouldn’t peep out, they wouldn’t even be glimpsed. There would not be the slightest tell-tale sign that they stuck out like jug handles at all.

Pru hated it that Phil’s pet name for her was Toby.

‘Well, I can hardly call you jugs, can I?’ he had quipped, eyeing her 32A breasts. Playfully he had tweaked her awful ears. ‘Come on, Pru, where’s your sense of humour! Would you prefer Dumbo?’

Pru would have preferred it if he’d stopped making perpetual fun of her ears. It was hard to have a sense of humour about something that had blighted your life since you were eleven when a group of boys in your class had asked how far you could fly.

She had tried sleeping with a scarf tied round her head, praying nightly that by morning she would wake up with miraculously flattened ears. She had even been so driven to desperation one Friday night that she had gone along with one of Dulcie’s brilliant suggestions.

This had involved superglue. ‘It’s what Clark Gable did,’ Dulcie had exclaimed, thrilled by her own cleverness. ‘It’ll be like instant plastic surgery, only pain free!’

As the doctor had later drily remarked, maybe they should have practised first with UHU. They had ended up in the casualty department of Bath Royal United with Dulcie’s right hand glued to Pru’s left ear, Dulcie’s left hand glued to a great deal of Pru’s hair and Pru in floods of humiliated tears.

Dulcie’s jokes that they were Siamese twins about to be separated didn’t help. Three hours of serious solvent abuse and intricate work with a scalpel later, they were allowed home.

‘Don’t do it again,’ warned the young male doctor, attempting to keep a straight face.

‘Oh well,’ Dulcie shrugged, ‘it was worth a try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

Pru, who had left most of her hair behind on the floor of the casualty department, was forced to endure the next six months with her ears on show while she sported the ultimate haircut from hell.

She jumped as the bedroom door swung open and Liza and Dulcie came in.

‘Hi!’ Pru switched off the hair dryer, delighted to see them. ‘What are you two doing here? Hang on a sec, I’ve just about finished.’

‘Pru, what’s that woman doing downstairs?’ demanded Liza.

‘You mean Blanche? Hoovering, I think.’ Pru reached for the Elnett and sprayed vigorously, checking her reflection in the dressing table mirror. There, magic. No ears.

But Liza, behind her, was looking grim. Pru swivelled round.

‘Why, what’s the matter? Don’t tell me you caught her pocketing the silver spoons?’

‘She’s ... your cleaner?’ Dulcie sounded dazed. Pru looked shamefaced.

‘I know. Mad, isn’t it? Here’s me, no job, at home all day .. . and I’ve got someone coming in to do the housework. Honestly, it was Phil’s idea. He got it into his head just before Christmas that everyone who’s anyone has to have a lady-who-does. I told him it was stupid, we didn’t need a cleaner, but you know what Phil’s like. As far as he’s concerned it’s another status symbol, like a Gucci belt.’ She paused, frowning. ‘Is everything okay? She wasn’t really nicking spoons, was she?’

Liza barely knew where to start. She’d never realised Phil could sink this low.

Dulcie, needing something to occupy her hands and determined to leave Liza to do the dirty work, began investigating the make-up on Pru’s pretty dressing table. As she undid the top of a pink Chanel lipstick the sound of the Hoover being switched on drifted up from downstairs.

‘This Blanche person. How did you find her?’ Liza realised she was prevaricating.

Dulcie closely examined a Lancôme mascara.

‘From an agency. She was highly recommended.’ Beginning to look flustered, Pru said, ‘She lives half a mile away, on the Everton estate. She’s divorced with two grown-up sons. I know she doesn’t look it, but she’s nearly forty ... Oh, for heaven’s sake, what’s wrong? What are you going to tell me, that she’s a mass murderer?’

Estee Lauder translucent powder and a swansdown puff. Nice. Dulcie picked up Pru’s bottle of Youth Dew and gave herself an experimental squirt.

‘Pru, I’m sorry. This isn’t easy.’

Get on with it, thought Dulcie.

‘The thing is ... the thing is ...’

This was Liza for you. All mouth and no trousers. Dulcie, who was leaning into the mirror trying out a smoky Clinique eyeshadow, said, ‘What Liza’s trying to tell you is that Phil’s the one who’s got himself a lady-who-does. Except we aren’t talking vacuum cleaners and I don’t think you can call her a lady.’

‘That isn’t fair,’ Pru sounded almost. angry. ‘Blanche is a hard worker. Just because her clothes are a bit ... well, a bit skimpy—’

‘I’m not talking about her clothes,’ said Liza.

‘And she isn’t only a hard worker,’ Dulcie put in, ‘she’s fast, too.’

Liza took the plunge.

‘Look, I saw them. Having lunch together on New Year’s Day.’

Pru’s face was white. ‘No you didn’t. Phil was working. He told me.’

‘I saw them. And I heard them. He’s having an affair with her.’ Liza shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.

I wish it wasn’t true, but it is.’

Dulcie thought she might buy herself one of these Clinique eyeshadows. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the expression on Pru’s face. Downstairs the Hoover was switched off.

Moments later there was a tap on the bedroom door.

‘All done, Pru. I’m off.’

Pru rose slowly to her feet and went to the door. Liza and Dulcie exchanged alarmed glances.

Liza swallowed. Dulcie held her breath.

‘Blimey, are you all right, love? You’re as white as a sheet.’

‘I’m fine, Blanche. I’ll come down with you. You’ll want your money.’