Jill Mansell - Mixed doubles

‘Okay.’ He reached past her, picked up a copy of last month’s PC Answers, and flipped through a few pages until he found what he was looking for. ‘There you go. The new Hewlett Packard Laserjet. What a machine ... six hundred dpi output, no less—’

‘A computer!’ wailed Dulcie. ‘I’m not getting you a bloody computer.’

‘It isn’t a computer,’ Patrick explained patiently. ‘It’s a printer.’

’Whatever, it’s still a crap present.’

‘Sorry, but you did ask what I wanted.’ He looked resigned, then gave her hand a squeeze.

‘Never mind. Just shirts then.’

‘No, no. I’ll get you the printer.’ She could do that much for Patrick. He would have something to keep him company during the long, lonely evenings after she had left.

It was his money anyway.

Dulcie just thought how ironic it was that her parting gift to him would be a computer-type thing, when they were what had effectively destroyed her marriage in the first place.

Still, at least the present-buying problem was solved. ‘What shall we do then,’ she persisted, ‘on your birthday?’ Patrick was trying hard to concentrate on the flickering VDU.

‘You choose, sweetheart. We could go out to dinner if you like.’

They always went out to dinner on Patrick’s birthdays. It wasn’t going to win awards for most riveting suggestion of the year. Dulcie wished he’d say, just once, ‘How about a torrid weekend away, making love under the moonlight in Marrakesh?’

Wherever Marrakesh was when it was at home. She hadn’t a clue, but it certainly sounded torrid.

She remembered a discussion she had heard the other day on Talk Radio, about men hitting forty.

‘Do you think you’ll have a mid-life crisis?’

Patrick was used to Dulcie’s startling about-turns in the middle of conversations. He drained his coffee and handed her the empty mug.

‘I haven’t got time for a mid-life crisis.’

‘You never know.’ She looked wistful. ‘You might suddenly realise that all you’ve done is work yourself stupid while life passes you by.’

Smiling, he glanced at his watch.

‘If I don’t get a move on I’m likely to have a mid-morning crisis. These figures have to be faxed to Manchester by twelve.

Thanks for the coffee, sweetheart.’ He ruffled Dulcie’s spiky dark hair. ‘See you later, hmm?’

A party, Dulcie decided. That was what she would do. Hold a spectacular surprise fortieth birthday party, to show Patrick she still cared about him and to launch him painlessly into single middle-agehood.

It would ease her own guilt and be fun into the bargain, she thought happily.

And then a week or so later, when all the excitement had died down and the timing was right, she would leave.

‘A party?’ Bibi Ross sounded amused. ‘Darling, it’s a lovely idea, but we couldn’t come. Too complicated for words.’

‘But it’s a surprise for Patrick,’ Dulcie protested. ‘You’re his mother. You have to be there.’

‘Impossible,’ Bibi replied flatly. ‘How can I bring James to a—’

‘Don’t bring James.’ Dulcie had already thought of this. ‘Tell him you’re ill. Tell him you’re going to an old girls’ school reunion ...’

Bibi visibly winced at the words ‘old girl’. She shook her head.

‘I can’t do that. Anyway, we’re already busy that night. James has invited some terribly important client and his wife round for dinner. He really has,’ Bibi insisted when Dulcie gave her a look. Rummaging in her bag, she pulled out a diary. ‘See, I’ve written it down. Friday the twenty-eighth. Dennis and Meg Haversham, seven thirty.’

It was true. Dulcie gave in with good grace.

‘Well, it’s a shame. You’re going to miss a terrific party.’

‘Never mind, can’t be helped.’ With some relief, Bibi snapped the diary shut. ‘Anyway, you know me. Never a great one for birthdays.’

Bibi had more reason than most not to be a great one forbirthdays. Dulcie adored her mother-in-law but the past two years had been a definite strain.

Complicated wasn’t the word for it. To maintain the degree of deception Bibi had landed them with you needed your wits permanently about you. Not to mention a degree in maths.

At the age of nineteen, Bibi – christened Barbara – had met and married George Ross. At twenty, she gave birth to Patrick.

When she was forty-five, George had died of a heart attack on the golf course. Distraught, Bibi had mourned him for three years. When finally she rejoined the outside world, she vowed never again to love anyone as much as she had loved George. The pain was too great. She couldn’t bear to risk losing anyone like that again.

Bowled over by her astonishing looks, many tried, but Bibi stuck to her guns. Until she met James Elliott, and realised what she had been missing all these years.

This was when the awful subterfuge had begun.

Bibi had always taken pretty good care of herself but her chief ally was her genes. Her mother had been the same. Some people can’t help it, they just look older than they are. It isn’t their fault.

Bibi, going to the other extreme, looked a lot younger than her years. She always had. At forty, people refused to believe she could be the mother of a strapping twenty-year-old son. At fifty, in a police line-up (heaven forbid) she could have passed for thirty-five.

At fifty-eight she met James Elliott and was astounded by the strength of her feelings for him.

When, on their third date, he mentioned in passing that he was forty-three, Bibi had been stunned. James’ neatly trimmed beard had fooled her; she had put him at fifty.

And she liked him so much. Really liked him. The prospect of losing him was unbearable.

Panicking, she told James she was forty-six.

The repercussions of her spur-of-the-moment fib had been endless. No longer could Bibi relate the story of the day her father had come home from the war. Memories of her teenage years were hastily rejigged. Her entire past had needed to be unceremoniously hauled forward a decade-anda-bit.

And since owning up to a thirty-seven-year-old son was out of the question – ‘What, you mean you had him when you were nine?’ – Bibi had been forced to lop a few years off his age too.

Patrick hadn’t been thrilled.

‘Is this a joke?’ he had demanded. ‘Ma, you’re mad. It’ll never work.’

But Bibi wasn’t joking. She was desperate.

‘It will, it will. He doesn’t suspect a thing. Anyway, you only have to be twenty-nine. I’ve already told James I had you at seventeen.’

Only the fact that his mother was so obviously happy again for the first time in years persuaded Patrick to go along with the ludicrous charade.

‘It won’t last,’ he had warned her. ‘You’ll be caught out sooner or later.’

Bibi hugged him.

‘Not if we’re clever I won’t.’

And, miraculously, she hadn’t been caught out. Everyone played their part, all Bibi’s friends kept her shameful secret to themselves and Bibi kept her passport and driving licence locked securely out of sight. She and James were a couple, happier together than any other couple she knew. From time to time, referring to the three-year age gap between them, he lovingly called her his older woman. From time to time as well, he asked Bibi to marry him.

If she could have done so without him finding out how old she really was, Bibi would have been up that aisle like a shot. As it was, she insisted she preferred living in sin.

‘For God’s sake, tell him,’ an exasperated Patrick had urged just before Christmas. ‘He’ll understand. After all this time, how can your age matter? It’s you he loves, not your date of birth.’

But Bibi flatly refused to even consider telling James the truth. She couldn’t take that risk. There was too much to lose. Besides, some ages sounded worse than others. James teased her enough about being forty-eight.