Desperately Seeking - By Evelyn Cosgrave Page 0,74

at my party, apart from Pringles and maybe a dip. It’ll be another ten years before I’m up to the whole dinner-party thing. Well done, by the way, Kate. Everything’s surprisingly excellent.’

‘Actually,’ I had to admit, ‘I didn’t do this entirely by myself. Mike helped me.’

‘Mike helped you?’ my sisters chorused.

‘Yes. It wasn’t a secret or anything – I wasn’t trying to pretend I’d done it all myself. I was just waiting for the right moment to tell you.’

‘I thought I recognized something about this meal,’ Jean said. ‘The basil and the chicken and everything. He was always trying out new things on me but eventually I had to ban him from cooking. I was going to get way too fat. I’m bad enough as it is.’

‘You’re not fat. You look great. In fact, I think you’ve lost weight.’

‘I haven’t,’ she said, straight away. ‘I’ve put it on. But I’m dressing better and that makes the difference. In fact, I should have let Mike cook for me – he’d probably have kept me thin. It’s all this drinking and eating junk that’s doing the damage. But what the hell? You only live once.’

‘So Mike came over?’ Marion asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well, I wanted to make a bit of an effort for Iris, and I’m not great in the kitchen. Mike didn’t mind – he enjoyed it. At least, he said he did. Shouldn’t I have asked him? Was it very cheeky of me?’

‘Hold your horses,’ said Jean. ‘That’s what he’s there for. He’s always had a soft spot for you, anyway. Why wouldn’t he help you?’

Suddenly Iris cut in. ‘Mike is your ex-husband,’ she said matter-of-factly, but she was looking at Jean with a degree of expectation.

There was silence for a while. Somehow, none of us had thought of Mike in that way. An ex-husband was such an alien thing, such a grown-up thing, certainly not part of our lives.

Then Jean spoke. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not my ex-husband. He’s my present husband, and a very excellent husband he is too, although I did leave him last May. I’m sure Lucy’s told you the details. He’s one of the best men I’ve ever known and I went and walked out on him.’

‘Does that mean you regret it?’ asked Iris, again matter-of-factly.

‘No,’ answered Jean, without a hint of hesitation. ‘After marrying him in the first place, leaving him was the best thing I ever did. I don’t know about marriage. I’m not sure about the for-as-long-as-we-both-shall-live bit. I mean, I’m sure there are people who are lucky enough to find exactly the right person for them, then live happily ever after, but it’s got to be rare. For most people, you get married because (a) you’re way too young and you got carried away and maybe you’re pregnant, although that doesn’t seem to matter any more, or (b) you’re way too old and you’re desperate and it seems like the whole fucking world is married and having disgusting wailing babies, or (c) you’re simple-minded enough to believe you can make it happen by sheer strength of will. You alone can turn something ordinary and banal and boring into the marriage of the century, the marriage of the fucking millennium.’

It was clear that Jean was drunk. Very drunk indeed.

‘Weren’t you happy in your marriage, then?’ asked Iris, not in the least put off by Jean’s tone.

‘It wasn’t that,’ said Jean, pulling herself up in her seat. ‘I was happy in my marriage. I just wasn’t happy in myself. Maybe if I met Mike for the first time now, or in a year’s time, I’d fall in love with him and we’d get married and it would last for ever. But that’s not going to happen. I’m a different person, and mainly he’s a different person. It’s much more a case of he shouldn’t have married me than I shouldn’t have married him. I should have married some guy who was already married to his job and played golf and did scuba-diving and went on business trips and did every fucking thing he could to get away from me. That would have been perfect. Or I should never have married at all. But Mike really wanted a marriage. He wanted it to be like it should be. He wanted sharing and equality and romance and evenings in by the fire and evenings out in nice restaurants, and I just wanted, I just wanted… to… behave as if I wasn’t married. I don’t mean I