The Trouble with Single Women Read online

  ‘Mind your own business,’ he replied lightly.

  He had made coffee and listened to Fee’s description of Rita’s actions since their first meeting. As she spoke, Fee realized that it was she, not Rita, who appeared to be the prime candidate for neurosis.

  Will extended his hand and began to count on his fingers. ‘One, the woman gave you a kettle she didn’t want. Two, she kept a promise to Veronica by returning her address book in person. Three, she’s kindly invited you out for a drink because she thinks you might be a little lonely. Four, she does you a favour by taking care of your door keys. And, five, you mistakenly believe that she may have stolen an old pile of photographs for God knows what reason. Fee, please.’ He smiled wearily. ‘Let’s both get some sleep. And if it makes you feel any better, have the locks changed.’

  ‘It’s not what she does,’ Fee persisted. ‘It’s a feeling she gives off . . . it’s as if she’s got an appetite she can’t satisfy. As if she’s trying to take me over. Live my life for me . . . I don’t know—’

  ‘You say she’s got a boyfriend who’s abroad?’ Will asked. Fee nodded her head in agreement.

  ‘She’s got friends that you’re about to meet?’ he asked again. She nodded.

  ‘She’s got a good job at the hospital and her own place?’ Will persisted.

  ‘Two places, one in the country,’ Fee corrected glumly.

  ‘So what Rita Mason’s crime comes down to is that she imagines she is twenty-five and dresses like a 1950s Hollywood starlet. Hardly spine-chilling stuff, is it?’

  ‘You don’t know her,’ Fee answered, disgruntled.

  Will got up and patted her on the head. ‘The truth is, Fee, neither do you. You’ve let your imagination take over. Far be it for me to warn you – but there is a danger in believing that every older single woman is a psychopath in the making . . .’

  He was enjoying himself immensely.

  ‘Rita Mason is just trying to be friendly. And – let’s face it – in a few years’ time when you’re the only single woman on the block, and everyone else is à deux and with kids, you may be glad of the company—’ he teased.

  ‘Oh, bullshit,’ Fee replied, cross with herself that Will’s words had struck a nerve.

  Les Haslem made himself a cup of tea and walked into the garden. The house was dead without Veronica. Empty, pointless, dead.

  Over recent weeks, Les had begun to develop his own theory about his wife’s condition. It came from knowing her and loving her for so many years. Veronica would get better but only when she had something or someone to get better for.

  Once upon a time, she would have got better for him. But not now. He wasn’t enough. He felt sad about that. But he was a practical man. If Les couldn’t work out what would put Veronica right, nobody could.

  All he had to do was think. If he thought hard enough, Les was sure it would come to him.

  An hour later, Fee found him in the garden, sitting in the dark.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Where’s Veronica?’

  Les stood up, then pulled over a chair for Fee to sit on. ‘She’s not here,’ he said unnecessarily.

  ‘I know,’ she answered gently. ‘That’s why I’m asking. I called in to see how she was and found the whole place in darkness. I only came round the back because your next-door neighbour told me you were here.’

  Fee couldn’t see her brother-in-law’s face very clearly, but his voice registered his distress. ‘Veronica’s in hospital. I mean a . . . special hospital,’ he reported. ‘The doctor said it was best. She’s under sedation. She’s got so wound up thinking about what’s going to happen next, she’s exhausted. She locked the gasman down in the basement, did you know? Gave the poor bastard a bloody awful scare—’

  ‘In hospital? Where? Can I visit her?’ Fee asked, then before Les could give an answer, she added, ‘What do you think about us going away on holiday? Veronica and me? Just for a week or so? I know you’re busy and can’t get away and all that . . . So she and I could go?’

  It occurred to Fee that she was asking Les if she could take his wife away, as if Veronica belonged to him. Something about Les made her slip into thinking that way. ‘Perhaps I should ask Veronica?’

  ‘No,’ Les answered sharply. ‘Don’t ask her anything. It just adds to it all, you know. Besides, she’s never been away on her own, not once in all the time we’ve been married.’

  ‘I don’t mean on her own, I meant with me,’ Fee corrected patiently. But she knew that’s how Les saw it.

  ‘To tell the truth, Fee, I’ve been thinking of taking her away myself. She’d mentioned Italy but I was talking to a fellow the other day who’d just had a lovely little holiday in a nice hotel in Jersey. I think Veronica would like Jersey, don’t you? Plenty of golf and all that . . .?’

  ‘But Veronica doesn’t play golf,’ Fee replied.

  ‘No,’ Les answered. ‘But I do.’

  Later that evening, as she drove into her street, Fee Travers was annoyed to see that someone had stolen her parking space. Well, it wasn’t hers exactly, it was just a space on the street – but she regarded it as hers.

  As she walked towards the flat, a man, perhaps in his early forties, emerged from the offending car. He wore well-cut stone-coloured slacks and a blue shirt. He was lightly tanned and had features that Fee, once upon a time, would have found a distraction. Features she still found a distraction.

  ‘You’re in my space,’ she blurted out ungraciously, to cover her embarrassment at being caught looking.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he apologized with charm. ‘I hadn’t realized. Here, let me move, I’ll—’

  ‘No, no,’ Fee interrupted. ‘You stay where you are. You’ve got every right. I’m just a creature of habit.’

  Well, she’d certainly managed to make herself sound fascinating, Fee told herself drily, a creature of habit . . .

  She turned into her garden. ‘Do you live here too?’ the man asked. He was by her side now, much taller, slim, athletic. He had his shirt-sleeves rolled up, a detail of dress that Fee had always found seductive. The man fancied himself, Fee decided, but then he had cause too.

  He offered his hand. She noted automatically that he wasn’t wearing a ring. ‘Hello, my name’s Edward Spannier, Ted to my friends. I moved in a couple of days ago. It’s only temporary. I’m having a house done up around the corner and I couldn’t stand the mess. So I’m here for a few months. And you . . .?’

  ‘Fiona . . . Fee . . . Travers. I’m in Flat 3—’ She experienced an odd sensation that at first she couldn’t identify – then she recognized exactly what it was.

  She was flirting. Not, of course, with any serious intent, all that was in the past. This was just practice.

  ‘Flat 3 is opposite mine,’ Edward Spannier was saying, holding very steady eye contact. ‘Why don’t you come in for a drink some time? I’m still getting sorted, so I hope you don’t mind a bit of a mess . . .?’

  Fee smiled in reply. Experience told her that whatever else Edward Spannier might be, he was most definitely a bastard. Already, she could feel the pull.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘HAVE YOU ever thought of using a bit of colour?’ It was seven on Thursday night and Rita Mason had arrived half an hour early.

  She was wearing white boots that ended at the knee; a black and white Op-Art shift and white plastic hoop ear-rings. If the wardrobe came from the 1960s, the eye make-up remained a tribute to Ancient Egypt.

  Fee was dressed simply in black slacks and a cream twinset and Rita Mason was making it clear she did not approve.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘why don’t we brighten you up a bit?’

  She walked around the back of the sofa and suddenly pulled Fee’s hair up into a pony tail. She pulled so hard it hurt.

  ‘Ow!’ Fee struggled slightly.

  Rita ignored her reaction.

  She took some hairclips out of her own hair – concreted into place with quantities of lacquer – and pi
nned Fee’s hair into a pleat. Then she plunged into her bag again and produced a bright-red chiffon scarf which she tied around Fee’s neck.

  Fee attempted to remove the scarf. ‘I don’t think it’s quite—’ she began. Then discovered that Rita Mason’s fingers were not to be prised away so easily.

  ‘Come with me, young lady,’ Rita directed and Fee found herself frogmarched into the bedroom. Her bedroom.

  ‘Look,’ Rita commanded, pointing at Fee’s full-length mirror. ‘See what a bit of colour can do? Wait here, I’ll get my lipstick then you can try it on—’

  She walked out of the room and, for a couple of seconds, Fee actually did as she was told. Then she came to.

  What a nerve.

  Fee took off the scarf, folding it as she followed Rita Mason back into the sitting room. She returned it along with the hairgrips.

  ‘We’ve got to leave,’ Fee said firmly, shaking her hair free again. She was cross with herself that she had heeded Will’s advice. He had suggested that she stick by her original arrangements with Rita and then avoid making any future dates.

  ‘Let her down easily,’ he had suggested.

  ‘So, where are we off to?’ she asked impatiently, hunting for her. car keys.

  ‘You’ll never guess,’ Rita giggled, reapplying pale-apricot lipstick.

  Fee’s heart sank.

  ‘Welcome, welcome, welcome, ladies,’ said the man in the centre of a ring of chairs. He was in his late fifties. He had white, wavy hair, worn slightly long. He was of average height and dressed in a white suit with a pink shirt and white snakeskin loafers. A pink and blue cravat completed the ensemble. His fingers were decorated with two heavy American college rings. He was elaborately dressed but surprisingly uncamp in his mannerisms.

  He also smelt of sandalwood, a lot of sandalwood.

  ‘He’s Gwynfor, Gwynfor Pryce,’ Rita hissed in Fee’s ear. ‘He used to be a piano tuner until he discovered his gift. Go on, sit down, he’ll be starting soon.’

  Earlier, she had directed Fee to a part of South London that was unfamiliar to her. They had stopped in an ordinary suburban street except that, two-thirds of the way down, an ugly modern concrete building had filled the gap where several houses had once been.

  ‘The Church of the Eternal Spirit’ read a large sign outside. Inside, Rita led Fee to a hall furnished in pine with deep purple curtains at several windows. The hall had none of the regalia of most churches, no altar, pulpit, stained glass or pews. Instead, on two walls there were vast murals depicting an army of what Fee realized were faintly recognizable, deceased celebrities, dressed in identical choirboy smocks, marching determinedly across several clouds.

  ‘Aaah, Rita,’ Gwynfor smiled, extending both arms, in the same theatrical fashion as the stars on the wall to his left. ‘You’re looking lovelier than ever. And this would be . . .?’

  He took one of Fee’s hands in his. It was large and warm and moist and strangely comforting.

  ‘Her name is Fiona . . . Fee,’ Rita said.

  Gwynfor shut his eyes and inhaled deeply. ‘Ferrous Fiona—’ his voice rumbled in a rich, Welsh accent, as he closed his eyes.

  ‘A woman made of iron—’

  Fee refused to allow herself to feel any better.

  Over the following ten minutes, a dozen or so women arrived and took seats in a semi-circle around Gwynfor. He greeted each in a highly personalized way. Fee was surprised that the women were so varied in age and appearance. Some were very expensively dressed; others were in business suits; a few were casually clothed by C&A and M&S and BHS. Rita introduced Hayley and Isobel, her mother, both very large women. Hayley wore a voluminous black smock but it was the quantities of gold that caught the eye, enough to stock a modest pawnbroker.

  Her mother was even more extravagantly festooned. Gold hung around her neck and from several holes in her ears as well as on each finger.

  ‘All right, Reet?’ said Hayley by way of a greeting to Rita Mason. Hayley’s top lip was decorated with beads of perspiration. She spoke as if she had difficulty drawing breath. Rita nodded in acknowledgement.

  ‘Welcome, welcome, ladies,’ Gwynfor intoned again. He stood in the middle of the circle, his hands outstretched, and spun around gently a couple of times.

  ‘Mary, Alexia, Isobel, Catherine, Hayley, Rita, Ivy, Priscilla, Jay,’ he continued until he had identified every woman present, ‘And our newcomer—’

  Fee realized that Gwynfor had already forgotten her name. ‘Iron . . . iron . . . Irene—’ he beamed at Fee.

  Gwynfor took a seat next to the woman he’d called Beryl and, without instruction, the women linked hands.

  ‘You on your own too, love?’ Isobel whispered to Fee. ‘I don’t know where Rita finds you all. Lost a loved one? Well, feel at home here. We’re all on our tods. Matter of fact, Ivy and Doris never had anyone in the first place. Enjoy yourself.’

  Fee watched while Gwynfor began to breathe more deeply and rhythmically. She didn’t want to be in the room; she didn’t want to be part of a half-baked seance. How on earth had she allowed Rita to inveigle her into spending an evening here? Only one activity was likely to be more depressing than searching for a soul mate in the here and now and that was attempting to dredge one up from the dead.

  ‘Don’t you worry, pet.’ Isobel had misunderstood the frown on Fee’s race. ‘No matter how low when you arrive, Gwynfor sends you away a Somebody.’

  It took several minutes for the man’s talent to begin to manifest itself.

  ‘Is James there?’ asked Ivy, a tremulous woman in a baby-blue top and floral skirt.

  ‘Ivy’s got a bit of a thing going with James the First,’ Isobel whispered to Fee. ‘He treats her ever so well. Says really lovely things sometimes. Know anything about him, do you . . .?’

  Fee raised an eyebrow to indicate that a conversation might upset Gwynfor Pryce.

  ‘Oh, he’s well gone now,’ Isobel replied. ‘Once he’s under, he can’t hear a thing, he’s like a—’

  ‘Ivy, Ivy, Ivy.’ Gwynfor Pryce was speaking in a strange falsetto and dribbling slightly. ‘Are you there, my small child?’

  Fee watched as Ivy blushed, the flush spreading down her neck and across her chest.

  ‘Oh, James,’ she sighed.

  Twenty-five minutes later, Gwynfor Pryce was still going strong, his repertoire of male accents by no means exhausted. James the First had held a lengthy conversation with Ivy, in which he expressed more concern than passion. Just as well, Fee thought drily, considering his homosexual inclinations.

  Isobel had had a bit of a barney, as she put it, with Harry, her common-law husband, about his final words. Harry, it transpired, had died of a heart attack two years earlier, watering the garden on a Saturday evening.

  Isobel had been bitterly resentful that as the ambulance men had lifted Harry on to his stretcher, he’d whispered, ‘Don’t forget the busy Lizzies.’

  Harry via Gwynfor spent several minutes persuading her that what he’d actually said was, ‘Don’t forget – stay busy, Izzie.’ Isobel was unconvinced.

  ‘He was a lying toad when he was alive, and he hasn’t changed since,’ she whispered to Fee cheerfully.

  Late in the seance, Rita grew impatient.

  ‘What about Fee, Gwynfor? Is there anyone there for Fee?’

  Fee shook her head, embarrassed, like a child attempting to back out of a party game.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, I’m hearing something,’ Gwynfor Pryce began in his own voice, then what emerged from his mouth was a discomfortingly female sound.

  ‘Irene,’ the sound said. ‘It’s Elizabeth. I have much to tell you. I’m hearing a . . .’

  At which point, Hayley – satiated earlier by a brief communication with Buddy Holly – suddenly pitched forward on her hands and knees, causing the room to reverberate.

  She lay on the floor, a duvet of flesh, twisting and contorted, fighting for breath.

  ‘It’s God’s orgasm,’ Beryl pronounced
incongruously while the others rushed to help. Isobel reached her daughter first. She plucked an inhaler out of Hayley’s voluminous bag.

  ‘Asthma,’ she explained. ‘Gets it chronic. Especially if she’s excited.’

  Gwynfor Pryce looked pleased with himself. ‘Just a channel, that’s all I am,’ he announced to nobody in particular.

  ‘Just a channel. That will be five pounds as usual, ladies, please.’ ‘I knew you’d love it,’ Rita Mason announced to Fee half an hour later. ‘We’ll make a regular thing of it, shall we? And you seemed to get on ever so well with the others—’

  They were sitting in a pub in which most were significantly under thirty. Rita had giggled and flirted her way to the bar, squeezing past male bodies, unashamedly using her mammary glands as a battering ram.

  A few men had been too stupefied to move; others had backed away in embarrassment. Rita had returned to the table with a gin and tonic for Fee and a Bacardi and Coke for herself, apparently convinced that all eyes were upon her for the most flattering of reasons.

  ‘I’ve always found men attracted to me,’ she confided in Fee. ‘And it’s not because I’m easy. God, no.’

  Fee sat silent. She was half impressed, half appalled by Rita Mason’s capacity for viewing life as she wished to see it.

  ‘Do you know what I like about you, Fee?’ Rita asked rhetorically. ‘You’re so similar to me. We could be sisters—’

  ‘No,’ Fee began, then realized there was little point.

  She hadn’t wanted to come to the pub but somehow she was here. She hadn’t expected to see Rita Mason ever again, but she had. She certainly didn’t wish to accept her gifts, but the kettle and the blouse were still in the flat.

  What was even more bizarre was that while Rita seemed determined to hijack more and more of Fee’s time, she had yet to show any interest in Fee as a person. No questions about her life, her relationships, her work.

  ‘Who do you think Elizabeth was?’ Rita asked chattily. ‘Do you know any dead Elizabeths?’

  Fee shook her head. ‘Only Elizabeth the First, perhaps she fancied an old maids’ reunion?’ Fee suggested facetiously. Then she took a sip of her drink, to brace herself.