The Love Potion: A Love…Maybe Valentine eShort

MARNIE RICHES

The Love Potion Part of the Love…Maybe Eshort Collection: The Vengeful One

Copyright

Avon

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2015

Copyright © Marnie Riches 2015

Marnie Riches asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © February 2015 ISBN: 9780008135065

Version: 2015–01–23

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

The Love Potion

Keep Reading

About the Author

About the Publisher

The Love Potion

The card featuring a lovelorn teddy and hand-scrawled limerick had promised, if not a day of heady romance, then at least fond attentiveness outside working hours. He had propped it on his pillow so that it was three inches from her face when she opened her eyes. A red paper blur. Same routine every year. As Valentine’s Days went, based on experience, she anticipated that it would be, at best, satisfactory.

Thunderous little feet approaching represented a threat. ‘Ooh! A letter for Dillon, Mummy!’ The glee in his voice betrayed his six-year-old’s violent intentions.

Claire sat up in bed hastily, snatching the lover’s missive to safety before it could be crushed and magic-markered to death.

‘No, darling. It’s for me,’ she said, prizing the card from its red envelope. ‘From Daddy. Isn’t that nice?’

Dillon was impressed by the grey teddy bear clutching a bunch of roses. So was she. At least the teddy had the wherewithal to buy roses. But she mustn’t complain.

She read the limerick in silence, its author watching intently for a reaction from the other side of the bedroom. He still wanted to do her in a field of flowers, to while away the hours. She apparently still inspired him to be her sexy beast and to rhyme sexy beast with sodding Bexleyheath, as if it were even possible to think a sexy thought in Bexleyheath, let alone be a beast. Buffoon. She arranged her face into a convincing smile and set the card on the bedside cabinet. Picked up the first coffee he had made her since her birthday in August. Sipped it and nodded encouragingly.

‘Thanks, Dave. That’s lovely.’

Her partner grinned at her. Pulled his work shirt over his perfectly toned abs. Winked.

‘Knew you’d like it, babe.’ Winked again.

The smell of his aftershave was strong today. He was wearing his best pure silk boxers, which she had bought him as a Valentine’s gift two years ago. She could see the outline of his sizeable manhood beneath the silk, pointing mournfully down at his left thigh. Considered wistfully that it was a long time since she had seen it not ensconced in underpants. Certainly not in a tumescent state. Apart from that time three weeks before Christmas, when she had finally caught him masturbating in the downstairs toilet. Dave said he ‘wasn’t a very sexual person’. But he seemed to be a very sexual person in the downstairs toilet. Perhaps he had a penchant for the particular bouquet of the limescale remover. The libido was a complex thing.

Trouble was, the Daves of this world were hard come to come by for the Claires, and this particular Claire knew it. She drank her coffee slowly and mused on the imbalance of their match. Where she was mousy, unadventurous and fond of routine, he was gloriously handsome, gregarious and enjoyed some reflected limelight as a self-employed Physiotherapist for Lesser Stars of the Sporting World. In the seven years that they had been together, Claire wondered how she had managed to cling onto this golden-haired eye candy, feeling certain that the pull of her nicely turned wrists and her extensive pharmacological knowledge should have waned as soon as the candles were snuffed out at the dinner party that had occasioned their meeting. Dave’s only shortcomings, on paper, were his simple-minded obsessions with rugby, Formula 1 and crisps. Hers, however, were many and varied, she was sure.

‘Meet you in Santorini’s at 8pm,’ Dave said, traversing the bedroom and giving her a peck on the ear. He ruffled Dillon’s blonde thatch, swinging him upside down over a broad shoulder until the boy squealed in despairing delight. Smacked his tiny, pyjama-clad bottom. Blew raspberries on his hip. Together, they went downstairs, leaving Mum to have her ‘lie-in’ until a decadent 7.30am.

Claire stretched out in her Dalmatian-spotted fleece onesie, farted and reminded herself how lucky she was to have this set-up. A beautiful son. A doting father. A reliable partner. All living under an adequate roof that Dave had bought. And today was a day to celebrate that.

Dave’s voice resounded from the hall. ‘You be good for the babysitter, champ. Right?’

‘Yes, Daddy. Love you.’

‘Nice card, Claire!’ Dave shouted up the stairs. ‘Ta. See you!’ He had evidently found the card she had left for him by the kettle.

At that stage, Claire assessed that the click of the front door heralded 50 per cent of all the Valentine’s Day romance she could reasonably expect as having been delivered in full. But Santorini’s was on the cards, and tonight, of all nights, no matter how tired she was feeling after a long shift in the pharmacy, and no matter how beleaguered Dave’s libido had recently been, what with the legal action over the third-division footballer’s dodgy discs, she would surely enjoy that perfect manly physique for all she was worth. Dave’s body and the things he very occasionally did with it made up almost entirely for his tedious conversation and limited taste in footwear and potato-based snacks.

*

It was true to say that Claire was not thoroughly concentrating on matters when her assistant, Belinda, began to talk at her, brandishing her mobile phone at the side of Claire’s head.

‘So, I registers on Tinder, right?’ Belinda said. ‘Is you listening, or what?’

Claire emerged from her reverie and locked the controlled drugs cabinet. In her hand, she clutched the customer’s methadone.

‘I’m listening. I’m listening,’ she reassured the assistant. ‘Let me just serve this man.’

Belinda gasped and waved the phone in front of Claire’s face like a WTF-girlfriend-wake-up-call on a particularly incendiary episode of Jerry Springer. ‘No, Claire, right. You has so got to listen to this.’ She nodded towards the ageing junkie who sat on the plastic chair, urinating through his jogging bottoms with a look of pure satisfaction on his weather-beaten face. ‘He can bloody wait, innit?’

Suppressing a yawn, half visualising herself in Santorini’s, negotiating an elasticated stretch of mozzarella while Dave kissed her hand in the flickering candlelight, she finally focussed on Belinda.

‘Spit it out, Bel.’

Belinda scratched at her tight, greasy bun of hair and sniffed conspiratorially. ‘I don’t want you to get an anapletipical shock or nuffin, right?’ She grabbed Claire’s arm. Bade her sit in the back amongst the shelves of antibiotics. Searched her boss’s face under the harsh, fluorescent light.

‘Tell me!’ Claire could feel a rash itching its way up her throat. Fingered her pharmacist’s name badge.

‘Soz, right.’ Belinda showed her the picture on the phone. ‘I was on Tinder, yeah? That’s this dating website, where you meet mans you wanna bone. Right? And I’m swiping to the left on these mingers. And there’s your man, innit? Wiv his belly out. Looking for spanking and all sorts from young blonde girls. Says he ain’t married, which I know ain’t true.’

Holding her breath, Claire snatched the phone from the girl’s bitten-nailed hand and looked down at a topless Dave. Abs clenched. Grinning that charming piranha grin.

‘We aren’t married,’ she whispered.

Was it him? It was as though a picture-perfect world had suddenly appeared to her in negative. Everything seemed familiar enough but wasn’t quite right. Including this photo. Dave was not entirely recognisable. Perhaps this was someone who just looked like her Dave.

But no. Claire forced herself to read his description. He had listed himself as working in the sports/health industry. And there, to dispel any shadow cast by doubt, was his discreet tattoo beneath his left pectoral. The red rose of England Rugby. Made slightly wonky over time by the rippling rectus abdominis that he had developed since subjecting himself to the tattooist’s needle as a scrawny lad.

Suddenly, all those impromptu physio conferences and late evening appointments and unaccounted-for withdrawals from their joint bank account, which he had kept quiet about and which she had explained away in her own head as Dave working hard for their little family … suddenly, they had taken on another, far more sinister form. They were sweaty, clandestine liaisons with cheap women, who thought they were starting something real with an impressive-looking man who rubbed shoulders with Lesser Stars of the Sporting World. A respectable man, who drove a nice Vauxhall and liked only three flavours of crisps.

Hadn’t there even been a buzzing mobile phone one night, when Dave’s own phone sat, silent and motionless, on the arm of the sofa? Not her phone! And if not hers, then, whose? Now, it was self-evident. More than shock. More than hurt. More than anger, Claire couldn’t believe she had been such a fool. She had wilfully ignored the signals. Her lips prickled cold. Fear clutched her in an unrelenting grip. Dave didn’t love her, despite his rhyming protestations. And his libidinal excitement clearly extended beyond the confines of the downstairs toilet.

She would be alone with Dillon. A single parent. How would she ever cope?

Incrementally, over the years, she reflected, Dave had divested her of any real responsibility in their relationship, leaving her with the domestic chores, childrearing and her job. Only within this brightly lit room – a small-town pharmacy with its 1960’s polished composite flooring, decked out with an array of sanitary items, lunch options and combs, alongside its workaday medication – did Claire have any real dominion. And now, she was about to lose a lover-cum-guardian whom she had never actively sought but who nevertheless had placed himself at the centre of her small universe, complete with his overworked abdominal muscles and strong hands.

It was the worst Valentine’s Day ever.

‘I’ve messed up,’ Claire said. ‘It’s all my fault. I’ve pushed him away.’

Belinda patted Claire’s arm and shook her head vigorously. ‘Mate, that bastard is stepping out on you wiv all kind of skanks on Tinder. You got to kick him to the kerb.’ She toyed with the red, swollen piercing in her nose. ‘Personally, I’d chop his dick off with a rusty spoon.’

Her assistant’s advice was interrupted as the junkie rose from his plastic makeshift commode and approached the counter. He brought with him a smell of ripe stilton. Slammed a filthy hand down between the till and the glued-down pen-on-a-chain. Met Claire’s bloodshot eyes with a surprisingly direct and alert gaze.

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