The Start of Something Wonderful

With abundant hugs and vats of wine, our gaggle of five have cried, advised, sympathised, and propped one another up through divorce, cancer, and single parenthood, so what’s a mere midlife career crisis and a broken heart in the grand scheme of things?

‘Darling!’ squeals Wendy, jumping up and wrapping me in an Eternity-fragranced hug. ‘We’ve missed you. How are you? You look … fantastic.’

‘I don’t,’ I snort, pulling at my fluorescent-yellow sash, suddenly conscious of my bare, rain-washed face and baggy, unflattering clothes.

‘Come and sit down,’ she says, patting a space on the banquette between her and Céline.

‘Chérie!’ says, Céline, kissing me four times, as is customary in her native Paris. She is French 1960s’ Vogue personified: translucent skin, sculpted cheekbones, and a natural, wide-mouthed smile (something we see little of nowadays).

‘Well, how’s it going?’ asks Wendy eagerly, extricating my arms from my dripping-wet anorak.

‘Fab,’ I say with forced gaiety. They both look at me searchingly. ‘Well, no, actually … awful.’

I feel someone tug my hastily tied, damp ponytail. I spin round, and there, brandishing a bottle of Sauvignon, is Rachel.

‘Hey, how’s our aspiring actress?’ she says, stooping down to kiss me, her silky, chestnut hair tickling my cheek. ‘Let’s take a look at you,’ she says, sloshing wine into my glass, as she studies me with her perfectly made-up eyes.

‘You look more relaxed than when we last met, not long after you and Ni …’

‘Ahem! To new beginnings!’ Wendy says quickly, raising her glass.

‘New beginnings!’ we chorus, happy to be together once more.

‘You’re missing all the fun, you know,’ says Wendy sarcastically. ‘The new first class service means the darlings can now eat whatever they want when they want; one minute you’re serving Chicken Chasseur to 5B, then 1E is asking you for boiled eggs and toast, whilst the group at the bar are crying out for crème de menthe frappé and canapés. Gaah!’

I pretend to wince, but the way I feel right now, I’d gladly serve a Jumbo-load of raucous, drunk, demanding passengers single-handedly every day until I’m sixty-five, if it meant having my old life back.

‘Now, who’s for some houmous and warm pitta bread?’ says Wendy, heading for the bar.

Turning to Céline, I ask dutifully, ‘How’s Mike?’

‘On a ten-day Sydney/Melbourne,’ she says, letting out a wistful sigh. ‘But he’s coming straight from the airport to stay at the flat for two days when he gets back,’ she adds quickly, face lighting up.

I shoot her a knowing glance over the rim of my glass.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she says in that to-die-for accent of hers.

‘Like what?’

‘That you-are-wasting-your-time look.’

I open my mouth to speak, but close it again and swirl my wine around my glass, eyes down.

‘He’s leaving after Christmas … next year,’ she says, voice falling away.

‘Why not this year, Céline? How many more Christmases must you wait?’

‘The twins have their final exams this year and it’s his wife’s parents’ Golden Wedding next June. So, I must be patient.’ She smiles weakly, fixing my gaze from under the eyebrow-brushing fringe of her sleek, ebony bob.

Mike is a classic case of how a uniform with four gold bands and a peaked cap can transform a balding, paunchy, unsexy, middle-aged man into a fairly attractive, dapper specimen – hardly Mr Darcy material, but a darn sight more pleasing on the eye than off-duty Mike, believe me, with his high-waisted trousers and Concorde novelty socks.

‘It’s just that I know how important a husband and children are to you, and I worry that by the time he leaves – if he leaves – it will be too late.’

‘C’est la vie.’ She shrugs. ‘Nothing in life is guaranteed … rien du tout. You were with a single man and …’ She bites her lip and turns away. She squeezes my hand, shakes her head, and says softly, ‘I am so sorry …’

‘Hey, it’s not your fault,’ I say, resting my head on her shoulder. ‘It’s probably for the best,’ I continue over-cheerily, fighting back the tears.

Faye comes over from the far end of the table, perches on the edge of the banquette, swivels round to face me, and says warmly, ‘Darling, it’s so good to see you.’ She brushes aside my wet fringe and plants a warm kiss on my forehead.

‘How’s Tariq?’ I enquire, anxious for news of my beloved godson.

‘He’s started school and loves it,’ she says, beaming, as she always does at the mention of his name.

I can hardly believe it’s only six years ago that we sat here, in this very spot, by the fireplace, toasting Faye’s new, glamorous life in Dubai …

‘You’ve only known him a few months, Faye,’ we’d said with a mixture of excitement and consternation. ‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’

‘I know it’s a gamble. But it feels right.’ She’d smiled, stroking her little bump, the huge rock on her finger catching the light from the fire. ‘And now Junior’s on the way, I just know it’s fate. I’ve waited a long time for my dashing prince to come along, and I’m lucky he found me in the nick of time, before I’m faded and forty-five, and my biological clock comes to a grinding halt.’

‘Ooh, it’s like Lawrence of Arabia and Love Actually all rolled into one,’ I’d said, swooning back into the sofa.

The ‘fairy tale’ began one New Year’s Eve in the Gulf …

Determined not to spend yet another Hogmanay in pj’s and a comfy cardie, getting slowly sozzled, whilst watching repeats of Only Fools and Horses – either that, or at some dire party, being groped at midnight by a total stranger with rubber legs and beery breath – we requested the same trip, packed our sparkly frocks, and headed off to the sun.

So there we were, dressed to kill, huddled around the buffet table by the swimming pool, retching and spluttering into our napkins like a bunch of ladettes, having discovered the grey stuff we’d just devoured was in fact lambs’ brains, when out popped a tall, swarthy, linen-suited stranger from behind the swan ice sculpture.

‘Ladies, ladies, ladies! This is a great delicacy in my country,’ he’d said with mock indignation and a mischievous grin.

We didn’t move or speak for several seconds, so mesmerised were we by this smouldering vision of exotic gorgeousness – think Antonio Banderas.

‘Sahir,’ he’d said in a low voice, bowing slightly, then delicately kissing our hands in turn. His long-lashed, melted-chocolate eyes held your gaze, making you feel like you were the only woman at the party – correction – on the planet. ‘I am the owner of the hotel.’ Signalling the waiter, he then called authoritatively, ‘Champagne for the ladies!’

Up until that moment I had never believed in love at first sight, but as the strains of Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello’ floated across the shimmering pool, you could almost hear Cupid’s arrow whistle past and hit its targets, as surely as if Oberon himself had squeezed some magic potion in their eyes.

Backlit by the orangey-red, evening sunlight, Faye positively dazzled. The sequins in her dress and the diamond combs in her golden hair glittered and sparkled, and Sahir fell hopelessly under her spell. He propelled her to the dance floor, and that was it: the start of a glamorous, heart-fluttering, pulse-quickening Mills-&-Boon-style love affair.

Faye begged and shamelessly bribed crew scheduling with home baking and fresh produce from her mum’s allotment, swapping her rostered flights for Dubai night-stops. She’d be met at the airport by a chauffeured, air-conditioned Mercedes, wined and dined at the best hotels, and showered with expensive jewellery. We lived our romantic fantasies through Faye.

Funny, isn’t it, how a girl’s overwhelming desire to be scooped up by a dark, brooding Mr Darcy in breeches and a white, floppy shirt, may cause her to misplace her common sense and ignore the sirens screaming in her ears; because, you see, for all his good looks and charm, this Arabian knight turned out to be a villain in disguise.

Whilst eager to embrace her new culture, Faye struggled with the language, the loneliness, the heat, and the homesickness.

‘Strife and sacrifice are good,’ her new husband had told her coldly. ‘This teaches discipline and humility.’

‘But I never see you. If you’re not at the hotel, you’re either “on business” in Abu Dhabi or Bahrain. Then when you are at home, you’re tired and irritable and don’t have time for me and Tariq,’ she’d cried, painfully aware that she sounded like the archetypal nagging wife.

‘My mother and sisters, they help with the boy. What is wrong with you?’ Sahir sniped at her. ‘You are spoiled and ungrateful.’

She loathed the way he always referred to Tariq as ‘the boy’, like some fusty, Dickensian father, and she hated the way his mother and older sisters took over the childcare and the running of the house, jabbering and whispering to one another, as if she were invisible.

‘Why can’t it just be the three of us, Sahir?’ she’d once said to him tentatively.

‘In my country we look after the family. Will you see them thrown out onto the street?’ he’d yelled.

‘I don’t mean …’

‘Enough! I will hear no more of this,’ he said, gripping her arm and shaking her, those same eyes that once made her heart melt, now angry and cold.

What had happened to the bubbly, self-assured, fun-loving, golden girl? Where had she gone? Faye realised she was totally miscast in the role of the subservient, dutiful wife and daughter-in-law. There was only one thing for it: to flee her gilded cage, taking her baby chick with her.

The story of their clandestine escape in the dead of night could have been plucked straight from the pages of an edge-of-the-seat John Grisham thriller.

‘Tariq is my son and he belongs here. I have contacts in high places in London. Remember this.’

Her ex-husband’s threats regularly terrorise her mind during those drifting moments before sleep seizes control – usually in some crew hotel thousands of miles away from home.

I hope with all my heart that this time my gut instinct is wrong, but although Faye has been granted custody, I have an uneasy feeling we haven’t seen the last of Sahir.

Nevertheless, despite a string of seriously disastrous relationships between us, we all remain silly, romantic fools, firm in the belief that Mr Right may yet appear – ETA as yet unknown. It’s not as if we’re expecting some Greek god to come along, but even one of the Grecian-2000 variety would do very nicely, thank you.

That is all but Rachel; she called off the search some fifteen years ago, when she married her childhood sweetheart, Dave, who is a policeman. They keep our belief in love and romance alive. Yet behind that happy, smiley exterior lurks a deep sadness, a grief, which she hides very well; we all know it’s there, lying just beneath the surface, and so we are careful never to speak of it. But sometimes when she thinks no one is looking, a shadow flickers across her face, and you may momentarily catch a glimpse of the anxious, heartbroken Rachel, and then she is gone, as the mask is raised once more.

The town hall clock is chiming twelve by the time we totter out onto the pavement and giggle our nighty-nights and must-do-this-more-oftens. I jam on my cycle helmet and pedal hard, head bent forward against the needle-sharp rain.

An aeroplane drones overhead, its tail-light blinking in between the squally clouds. I find myself gazing wistfully at it. My mood darkens in that instant.

Where is Nigel right now? In mid-air, or sleeping in a king-size bed in some far-off, exotic land, a nubile, twenty-something by his side? It doesn’t bear thinking about. Does he ever spare a thought for me? What would he make of my new life?

‘Minnie,’ he used to say (Minnie – as in Mouse – was his pet name for me on account of my stick-thin legs and big feet), ‘it’s too late for all that showbiz malarkey. Stay home with me and let’s make a family.’

Why did he only ever say those things after several beers or glasses of red? Had he really wanted children? Or had he been testing me, playing with my emotions? I’ll never know now. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I have a serious, uncomplicated relationship? Is that too much to ask?

An enormous articulated lorry thunders past, drenching me in filthy spray. From somewhere deep inside me, an animal-like scream bursts out, piercing the cold night air.

Come on now. Pull yourself together. YOU ARE A LIBERATED, INDEPENDENT, STRONG WOMAN WITH A GOAL. YOU ARE A LIBERATED, INDEPENDENT, STRONG WOMAN WITH … waterlogged shoes and dripping hair plastered over your eyes.

I feel anything but independent or strong, and my goal now feels a world away. Have I been pitifully naive? No matter, as it’s a little late in the day for doubt and uncertainty. Like it or not, I am now travelling down a one-way street, and the big question is, does it lead to a deadend?

CHAPTER TWO

Diamonds Are a Girl’s Worst Enemy

May

THE BLACK, GAPING ABYSS YAWNS before her, the sharp smell of fuel burning her nostrils. She inhales deeply as she is swallowed up. Her eyes are blinded by the flickering, white lights, her ears deafened by the roar of engines above. She should never have got mixed up in this assignment. Not only was it dangerous, but doomed to failure. She should have walked away from the situation while she still had the chance and suffered the consequences. But there’s no turning back now, so she focuses on the sliver of daylight in the distance. Not much further …

Huffing and puffing, she is spewed out of the tunnel onto the relative calm of the road. She looks up. Terminal Two Departures. She glances at her watch. 0730. Just enough time to make contact, hand over the diamonds, and return to base. Mission accomplished.

No, sadly, I am not on the set of the latest Lynda La Plante thriller; on the contrary, I am starring in my very own drama, entitled Payback Time. And my crime? Smugness – displaying sheer, unadulterated smugness. You know how it is: you dare to pat yourself on the back for a job well done, and next minute, a giant Monty Python foot appears from above and squishes you into the ground. That will teach you for being so damned pleased with yourself!

Determined to win over Miss Cutler, who is on the verge of firing me on account of my poor sales record, I scrambled together an emergency marketing strategy, which happened to involve a bearded Scotsman and a one-thousand-five-hundred-pound diamond necklace …

‘I’m looking for something a teensy-weensy bit special,’ the unsuspecting browser had informed me as he entered the shop. ‘It’s my wife’s fiftieth tomorrow, and she’s feeling …’ he looked around cautiously, checking he wouldn’t be overheard ‘… the change,’ he mouthed exaggeratedly. ‘I’d like something with a wee bit of sparkle to cheer her up.’

‘I see,’ I whispered back discreetly. Here was my chance! Opening one of the cabinets, I said, ‘How about this pastel gem-set bracelet? Notice how it shimmers with all the colours of the rainbow.’ I tilted it back and forth, so the stones’ reflection danced tantalisingly around the walls, like a kaleidoscope.

‘I was thinking of something a bit simpler,’ he said.

‘Aah,’ I nodded, undeterred. ‘Well, in that case, how about this nine-carat gold pendant, hand-crafted in Italy?’

‘Erm …’

‘Or this eighteen-carat belcher-bar necklace? Its extra length means it can be worn as a belt, a choker, or a layered necklace,’ I gushed, whilst demonstrating its many uses, just like I’d seen those shopping channel presenters do. ‘Layered jewellery is featured on all the major catwalks this season, so your wife would be up to the minute with the latest fashion.’ He bit his lip.

I could feel Miss Cutler’s x-ray eyes burning through my head from behind the two-way mirror in the back office.

Please, God, let me make a sale.

‘Let me see now …’ I said, brain racing, eyes darting wildly about. ‘Aha, I know the very thing!’ I launched into the window, swiping a fourteen-karat, white gold, diamond choker from the black velvet display stand. ‘What woman wouldn’t feel a million dollars wearing this?’ I glanced at the clock – 5.26 p.m. – just four minutes to closing time; four minutes to save myself from the dole queue.

‘… and … and Princess Diana wore the exact same style of choker when she took to the dance floor with John Travolta at The White House in the mid-Eighties,’ I added quickly.

He toyed with his beard.

‘A high point in her short life,’ I whispered sombrely.

‘It’s a wee bit more than I intended spending …’ he said pensively, as he peered at the price tag.

‘Reaching fifty is quite a milestone,’ I replied, in a kind of cool, throwaway tone, shamelessly swaying the dazzling diamonds in front of his eyes, like a hypnotist’s pendulum, hope hovering.

He glanced at his watch: 5.28. Beads of perspiration glistened on his forehead.

‘I’m catching a flight to Edinburgh in the morning, and I suppose a box of Milk Tray from WHSmith’s wouldn’t go down very well.’ He sighed, fishing out his wallet, resigned.

‘Absolutely not,’ I squeaked, snatching his credit card before he had time to change his mind. I snapped shut the leather presentation case. Placing it carefully under the counter, I coolly sashayed over to the cash desk, struggling to quash my overwhelming desire to do a Highland fling right there, on the shop floor.

Transaction completed, I carefully gift-wrapped the box, not forgetting the curly-wurly ribbon effect with the scissors, which I did with a dramatic flourish.

‘Thank you, miss. You’ve been very helpful. I cannae wait to see Morag’s face the morrow when I get hame.’

‘I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. Have a good flight back. Ooops! You dropped this,’ I said, handing him his air ticket and opening the door.

He kissed my hand as he exited. Yesssssssss!

In buoyant mood, I waltzed around the floor with the vacuum cleaner, singing to myself as I went. Saved from the humiliation of begging for an overdraft increase – again. From now on Miss Cutler would realise I was an asset to the shop and would be devastated when I inevitably had to give up my retail career for that of a West End star.

Then all at once Henry Hoover died. I spun round, and there stood Cruella, her head shaking.

‘Ah-hem! What is this, Emily?’ she asked coldly, holding up one of the presentation cases.

‘A jewellery box.’ I shrugged.

‘That is where you are wrong, Emily. This is no ordinary jewellery box,’ she snarled, face blazing, the veins in her swan-like neck pulsating madly. I stared at her, puzzled.

‘This is a jewellery box that contains …’ she said, milking every moment of her Wicked-Witch-of-The-West performance ‘… a very valuable item belonging to your customer!’

Opening the box, she dangled the choker in front of my eyes. OH-MY-GOD. I felt the colour drain from my face as my insides plummeted ten floors. I dropped the nozzle, realising with sinking horror that I had wrapped up the wrong box and sold nice, Scottish businessman one-thousand-five-hundred-pounds’ worth of diddlysquat.

‘Maybe we can trace him through his credit card? Or perhaps I could go to Heathrow tomorrow and try to …’

My voice fell away, as judging by Miss Cutler’s beetroot colouring, she was about to spontaneously combust.

So, that is how I come to be loitering around the airline check-in desks minus a ticket, a fifteen-hundred-pound diamond choker clasped tightly in my mitts.

The terminal is already abuzz with suited and booted businessmen on their way to Brussels or Belfast for a hard day’s wheeling and dealing.

I scan the concourse, looking for a tall, wiry, bearded Scotsman, clutching a boarding pass for Edinburgh and a beautifully wrapped box.

Couples cling to one another, off on romantic breaks to Vienna or Athens … Hang on a minute! My gaze rewinds to the Vienna check-in queue. Eyes narrowing, I move in for a closer look. It can’t possibly be. He’s ten and a half thousand miles away … and yet … I’d recognise that sunburnt, bald patch anywhere. (As a first class galley slave, you can spend a lot of time gazing at the back of pilots’ heads, patiently waiting, steaming-hot tea burning your hands, while they finish prattling on to air traffic control and punching buttons on the automatic pilot thingy.)

It is him, I swear. And who’s that woman he’s got his arm wrapped around? It’s not Beverley, his wife. She looks young enough to be one of his daughters, but she definitely isn’t. I know this because I once served his family in first class when he took them on a working trip to Houston at Christmas.

Swiping my shades from my pocket and pulling my cycle helmet down over my eyes, I venture nearer and take up position behind a pillar.

‘Vienna? Two passengers?’ says the check-in girl, switching on her Stepford-Wife smile. Taking their tickets, she taps furiously on the computer.

‘Any chance of an upgrade?’

Oh, yes, that’s our Mikey all right. The cheapskate, asking for an upgrade on his twenty-pound concessionary ticket. Bloody typical.

I’m tempted to walk right up to the desk and say, ‘Hey, Mike, what happened? Céline told me you were in Sydney.’ I’d love to see him try and wriggle out of that one. Talk about leading a double life – no, a triple life. How does he manage it?

‘Would all remaining passengers travelling to Edinburgh on BE2102, please proceed to gate five, where this flight is now closing. That’s all remaining passengers …’

Oh, Lord! In all the drama I’ve completely forgotten about finding Mr Beardy Man – Mr Soon-To-Be-Divorced Beardy Man if I don’t get my act together pronto.

Zipping my way in between trolleys and wheelie suitcases, I race towards the security gate. Standing on tiptoes, I spy him in the distance, collecting his coat, shoes, and a small gift bag from the conveyor belt.

‘Boarding pass,’ grunts the security man.

‘Please let me through. I need to give this to that gentleman down there – it’s really important,’ I beg, waving the box in the direction of the long line of travellers, waiting to be prodded and processed.

‘If you don’t have a boarding card, then this is as far as you go,’ he says firmly, darting me a scathing glare.

‘Please. I can’t explain now, but if I don’t get this to him …’

‘Stand aside,’ he growls, as a queue of red-eyed travellers starts to form behind me, brandishing their boarding passes, impatient to proceed.

There’s nothing else for it – filling up my lungs to maximum capacity, I push out my diaphragm and emit a rip-roaring, show-stopping ‘WAIT!’

It’s like someone has momentarily pressed the freeze-frame switch. All eyes swerve in my direction – all eyes but those of the one person whose attention I so desperately desire. He is now trundling along to gate five, blissfully unaware of the brewing storm about to hit north and south of the border.

Back on the road, my mind is buzzing with the thought of what I’m going to say to Miss Cutler, and more importantly, do I tell Céline that Mike is not in Oz, but on a romantic, Viennese mini break with … with … another mistress?

It’s just like one of those letters you find on the Cosmopolitan problem page:

Dear Irma,

One of my best friends has been dating a married man for ten years. He keeps promising her he’s going to leave. I saw him at the airport today, canoodling with another woman, who was not his wife. He’d told my friend he couldn’t see her as he was going away on business. Do I tell her and risk ruining our friendship, or do I turn a blind eye?

Yours,

Anonymous.

Do I really need an agony aunt to advise me what to do, when the answer is spelt out before me in ten-foot, flashing, neon letters? TELL HER.