‘Too intense,’ Rick had admitted eventually, when he’d started to make excuses not to see her.
‘Didn’t know we were married,’ had been Phil’s response when she’d discovered another woman’s lingerie at the foot of his bed and dissolved into tears.
Scott, of whom she had once held such high hopes, had always been kind, even when he told her sadly, he couldn’t offer ‘that level of commitment’.
It had still broken her.
She didn’t want to think about all the men from her various dating sites who hadn’t even pretended to want anything more than sex. What was it about her? Was she too dull for meaningful conversation or a theatre trip? Too needy for someone to love her back? She’d tried being cool and aloof. They left even faster then …
After dinner, she put on a family drama because she knew her mother would like it, aware of the vague thump of Nate’s music upstairs, suddenly wishing she was in the pub with him instead. Nate would be easy to talk to – she wouldn’t have to choose her words, hopping across the subjects as if watching out for mines.
Her mother nodded as the credits went up.
‘That’s the trouble today. Everybody expects too much.’
Sherie kept her voice level and kind. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
Her mother gave that little sniff that always sent Sherie’s nerves jangling. ‘No, well, you didn’t then. You accepted your lot in those days.’
Sherie had found before that if she made her mother a large enough gin, the truth would seep out.
‘Do you ever wish it had been different?’ she asked. ‘That you’d pursued your career – been a legal secretary like you wanted to, instead of having us and staying at home? Or gone back to it later, when we were at school?’
He mother didn’t look at her. ‘No point wishing. We didn’t want latchkey children. We wanted to give you and Alison the best possible start.’ Her voice had taken on that slight drone as if reciting. ‘But I did have a brain,’ she said suddenly, in a different tone.
Sherie leant forward, almost dislodging Marquis who gave a small chirp of indignation. ‘Of course you did – you do. You’re a very intelligent woman. And it’s not too late, Mum. You’re only seventy-five – it’s nothing these days – you could do an open university degree–’
‘Poorh!’ Her mother’s lips vibrated with disdain.
‘Or take up painting, or join a writing class – you like keeping your diary. You could expand it – write a memoir.’
Even as she suggested it, Sherie wondered what would go in into such a tome. An endless account of serving cups of tea and listening silently to a catalogue of bigotry and Brexit bile?
For a tiny moment, her mother looked sad. Then she sniffed again. ‘I’m fine as I am, thank you very much.’
She looked across at her daughter. ‘I know you’re unhappy because Alison has the children and you haven’t, but it was your own choice. You wanted the big job.’ There was a note of triumph in her voice as she took back the upper hand and delivered the customary coup de grace. ‘And so you missed your chance.’
‘It was too good to miss.’
Roz, sick to her stomach as she let herself into the huge seafront villa on the cliffs at North Foreland – the most expensive stretch of coastline in the area – remembered the first time her colleague had explained where she got her apparently endless money from.
Melody, tall, dark and smiling had looked Roz directly in the eyes when she’d finally plucked up the courage to ask. They did a similar job at Turner Contemporary, the iconic gallery in Margate, and Roz was pretty sure, knowing her own salary, that she couldn’t be funding her lifestyle from there.
Sure, Melody had a five-year-old who spent half the week with her dad and not a cash-draining teenager who was there full-time, and she’d been at the gallery longer so worked four days, whereas Roz rarely did more than three. But even so, working it out pro rata, Roz still couldn’t see how Melody did it.
She’d noticed the clothes and the shoes and the handbags straightway and assumed her workmate had an inheritance stashed away or a generous boyfriend, but as the months went on, it appeared neither was likely.
Melody’s parents lived in a council flat, she told Roz cheerily, and her last boyfriend was a waster she’d dumped when she caught him going through her purse.
‘You’ll be all right one day then,’ she’d said, when Roz – loosened up by the leftover wine she’d had, clearing up after a preview – had confided that she had a difficult relationship with her well-off parents and had always tried desperately hard to avoid asking them for anything – even when Amy was a baby.
‘There’s nobody to leave me anything,’ said Melody. ‘What relatives I’ve got left have got bugger all!’
So when she came in, proudly dangling the keys to her new car, and was heard announcing the booking she’d just made for ten days in Lanzarote, Roz couldn’t contain her curiosity – or desperation – any longer. Melody had to be in debt – she must have a fistful of credit cards maxed out. But as Roz knew to her cost, this could only last so long. She told herself it was concern that drove her to check out the younger woman’s finances.
‘Melody,’ she began cautiously, ‘I know it’s none of my business …’
Melody had listened in silence, given Roz a long appraising look, during which Roz had felt herself squirm, and had then broken into a wide grin. ‘I’ll tell you after work,’ she’d said. ‘Can’t discuss it here.’
They’d gone their separate ways for the rest of the day – Melody to help set up the Foyle Room for a corporate event and Roz to sit on a chair in the South Gallery upstairs, to make sure nobody was taking snaps of My Dead Dog – a gigantic plaster cast of a flattened Alsatian – or pinching the artistically scattered ‘ashes’ of said deceased hound that were mingled with the array of withered flowers, which one particular visitor – probably off his meds again – had been attempting to do on a daily basis.
By the time the two women were sitting in the Lighthouse Bar at the end of Margate’s Harbour Arm, with large glasses of rosé, Roz was in a lather of curiosity and fear. She’d decided it had to be some sort of fraud – shoplifting wouldn’t fund a new car – not unless she was stealing by the sackful and had a very good client base on eBay – and the only prostitute Roz had met in Margate was a sad, downtrodden woman who was barely paying the rent.
‘It’s totally the easiest, best way I’ve ever found of making money,’ said Melody, clearly enjoying keeping Roz in suspense a little longer. ‘I get to dress up, drink champagne, do a bit of play-acting – you know I like my am dram like you do – and I work from home, hours to suit me. I’m providing a service and I’m coining it in.’
‘You’re doing escort work?’ Roz could hear the disapproving note in her voice, despite her best efforts to sound neutral.
‘Nope!’ Melody grinned. ‘It involves men for sure – but I’m not sleeping with them.’
Roz waited.
‘I thrash ’em!’ Melody giggled joyously. ‘Oh, Roz your face. I’m a domme!’
Roz gawped.
‘You know, high black leather boots, fishnets, whip … Or sometimes tweed suit and sensible brogues if they’re having a strict teacher fantasy. I’ve got a plimsoll I use for a couple