Jill Mansell - Mixed doubles

‘Are you ready to order?’ She forced herself to sound polite, loathing the way Imelda was gazing around the tiny café, as if she expected a mouse to run over her feet any minute.

Imelda waved a manicured hand dismissively in the direction of the menu.

‘Nothing for me thanks, darling. We only dropped by to see how you are. Everyone back at the club’s simply dying of curiosity. When they heard you’d actually got yourself a job’ — here Imelda adopted a mocking, EastEnders-type accent – ‘in a caff, like, they thought it must be some kind of April Fool.’

Smiling thinly, Dulcie turned her attention to Liam, who was basking in the surreptitious attention of the other customers. He had had his hair streaked again, and his tracksuit top was unzipped to show off, through his T-shirt, the chiselled outline of his tautly muscled torso. Liam was intensely proud of his six-pack.

Dulcie was ashamed of herself for having once fallen for that awful pseudo charm. You prat, she thought wearily. What did I ever see in you?

‘I’ll have a coffee,’ said Liam, ‘black, and a green salad.’

‘Please,’ said Dulcie.

‘And no free-range caterpillars.’ Imelda shrieked with laughter and squeezed Liam’s knee. The smell of Obsession was suffocating but Liam didn’t seem to notice. Maybe, thought Dulcie, he’s been injected with the antidote.

‘Go on then, I’ll have a glass of mineral water,’ Imelda said generously. She watched Dulcie write it down. ‘With a slice of fresh lime. Got all that? Sure you can manage?’

‘I’m going to spit in her water,’ seethed Dulcie when she was safely back in the kitchen.

‘You are not!’ Rufus looked up, startled. ‘What are you talking about? Whose water?’

When Dulcie had finished telling him, he said, ‘Do you want me to serve them?’

‘What, and let them think they’ve got to me? No thanks.’

Table four needed clearing and the floor beneath it was strewn with coleslaw and bits of chewed-up, spat-out radish. Silently cursing the two small children who had left the mess, Dulcie crawled under the table on all fours with her dustpan and brush.

It wasn’t dignified and she knew her bottom was sticking out at a less than flattering angle, but she still had to exert every ounce of self-control when she heard Imelda behind her murmur to Liam, ‘Darling, if this is what wholefood cafés doto you, remind me never to work in one.’

Dulcie carried on grimly sweeping up debris. When she heard Rufus’s voice, saying breezily,

‘Everything okay here?’ and Liam replying, ‘Fine thanks, couldn’t be better,’ she knew Rufus had come out of the kitchen to keep an eye on the situation. He was making sure she was okay.

When Rufus had gone and she had finished clearing up the mess, she rose creakily to her feet.

By this time, Imelda had thought up another jibe.

‘Well, well. Now we know why you’re working here,’ she declared with a smirk. ‘Who’d want anyone as boring and ordinary as Liam when they could have a hunk like your new boss?’

Having to listen to their sarcastic remarks about her had been bad enough, but Dulcie had gritted her teeth and willed herself not to react.

Making fun of Rufus, though, was too much.

‘I think it would be nice if you apologised for that.’ Glancing down at the contents of her dustpan, Dulcie now found herself wishing the children could have made a bit more mess.

Liam was smirking like a sixth-former.

‘What, apologise for calling your boss a hunk?’ Imelda’s eyes widened in mock amazement.

‘Darling, why so sensitive? Don’t tell me you really are having a thing with him. You can’t seriously be serious,’ she affected horror, ‘about a man who wears weave-your-own sandals and a Fair Isle tank top.’

Dulcie spun round and marched into the kitchen. She was back in less than three seconds with a thirteen-pint stock pot and a ladle.

The café went quiet.

‘This,’ said Dulcie, conversationally, clutching the stock pot to her chest and dipping the ladle in,

‘is ratatouille.’

‘Oh Christ,’ muttered Liam, his fork clattering on to his salad plate. His chair scraped back like chalk on a blackboard.

‘Dulcie, it was a joke,’ Imelda protested lightly. ‘Come on, where’s your sense of humour?’

‘I don’t have one any more. I lost it along with my brain when I got involved with him.’

To indicate who she meant, Dulcie flicked a ladleful of ratatouille at Liam. It went splat against his chest and slid down inside his tracksuit top.

Imelda screamed and tried to dodge behind Liam but Dulcie was too quick for her. Splat went the second ladleful against the pink Lycra dress.

‘Terrific shot,’ someone murmured admiringly on table six. ‘She’s mad,’ shrieked Imelda,

‘someone stop her!’

‘Come on, we’re out of here.’ Liam grabbed her by the arm and yanked her towards the door.

‘Dulcie, where are you going?’ shouted Rufus from the kitchen doorway, but she was already outside.

The gleaming red Lamborghini was parked across the entrance to Rufus’s garage. For all Liam’s obsession with exercise, he never parked his car an inch further away from his destination than was humanly possible.

Imelda was still struggling into her seat when Dulcie launched the contents of the stock pot through the open passenger door.

A tidal wave of garlicky ratatouille shot everywhere, drenching the inside of the car. It looked, Dulcie realised, pleased with the effect, like John Travolta’s famous accident in Pulp Fiction.

And oh, how Liam loved his precious Lamborghini. Almost as much, Dulcie thought happily, as he loved himself.

‘My car!’ howled Liam, clawing lumps of courgette and tomato out of his hair. ‘My fucking car.

You bitch!’

‘Never mind your car,’ Imelda screamed, ‘what about my dress?’ Her voice rose another octave.

‘It’s a Galliano!’

‘You’re blocking a garage,’ said Dulcie. She pointed to the No Parking sign Rufus had pinned up only last week. ‘I’d move if I were you. Before you get clamped.’

‘Sorry about the ratatouille,’ she told Rufus, dumping the empty stock pot in the sink and running the taps.

‘Lucky it wasn’t hot.’

Dulcie pushed her sleeves up and began scrubbing the pot clean.

‘I wish it bloody had been.’

She was white-faced and shaking. Rufus’s heart went out to her; he knew how awful she must be feeling. When his wife had left him for the bank manager he would have given anything to have flung a pot of ratatouille in their faces. He just hadn’t had the nerve.

When he saw the tears sliding down Dulcie’s face, Rufus didn’t hesitate. Crossing the kitchen, he put his arms around her, as he had dreamed of doing for so long.

‘There, there.’ He patted Dulcie’s heaving back as if she were a child. ‘Don’t let them upset you.

You deserve better than him.’

As he murmured the soothing words, Rufus wondered if they were a mistake. A naturally modest man, it felt odd to be telling Dulcie she deserved someone better when what he really meant was: someone like me.

On the other hand, when was he likely to get another opportunity like this? Dulcie was a woman in distress, in desperate need of comfort, and he wanted nothing more than to be the one providing it.

His heart raced. Maybe, thought Rufus, this is fate .. . ‘Whmmph,’ gasped Dulcie as his mouth fastened eagerly and unexpectedly on hers. She tried to pull away but it was a real sink plunger of a kiss. Rufus was giving it his all.

‘Oh, Dulcie,’ he breathed, when he at last came up for air.

He clutched her joyfully to his Fair Isle chest. ‘Forget Liam!