THE HUSBAND HUNTERS (20 page)

I met Rach later that evening at her house. We had decided to borrow her mum’s car, so Paul wouldn’t recognise my mini. I had to laugh when Rach opened the front door. She was dressed top to toe in black; a full length black coat, with black boots and black gloves. She really did look like she was going to rob a bank. She patted her black handbag as we walked down the drive.

‘Hope you’ve got your mask,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ I said, opening the passenger door of her mum’s car and climbing in.

We drove towards Paul’s house and parked at the end of his road. Paul lived in a row of pretty mews cottages. I could see the lights twinkling in his cottage window, and felt a stab of regret. That could have been me in his living room, drawing those curtains every night, with the pretty window box hanging outside. Instead I was reduced to lurking outside his house, wearing a latex mask like a robber. This is what my love life had come to. It was so depressing.

‘It looks like he’s home from work and hasn’t gone to the gym,’ said Rach, settling down in the front seat and opening a packet of crisps.

‘Have you told any of the girls that we are doing it tonight?’ I asked Rach.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Tash and Kaz have gone to the cinema, and Soph’s got some work to do. Tash asked us to go to the cinema with them, but I said I was helping you dye your hair.’

An hour passed, and there was still no sign of any movement from Paul’s house.

‘Perhaps there isn’t any other woman in his life, and he’s sat watching Top Gear or something really boring,’ said Rach, rubbing her hands together to try and warm them up.

Just then we saw a police car come past. They looked sideways at us as they passed by, but carried on. Unfortunately Paul lived on a main road, not some quiet cul de sac. But if we didn’t park on the main road, then we wouldn’t be able to see him.

‘We’d better put our masks on, just in case,’ said Rach, grabbing hers out of her bag. I took mine out of my pocket, and we both put them on over our heads. I turned to Rach and I had to laugh. She looked so different. We had wigs to put on over the masks too. Rach’s was long and dark, and mine was a blond bob. It seemed so weird to be talking to Rach when she didn’t look like her at all.

‘Oh my God, there’s Paul’s car,’ I said suddenly, seeing a familiar silver Porsche coming up the road. ‘He must have left the light on this morning.’ I was so glad we had put the masks on in time. He pulled into the side road by the cottages, and a few minutes later, he went through his front gate and put his key in the front lock.

My heart lurched when I saw him. He was wearing a dark suit and looked incredibly handsome. I could have kicked myself when I thought how I’d given him up because of my hot headed lust over Kevin. I would have given anything to be holed up with Paul in his little cottage at this moment instead of freezing to death behind my latex mask.

‘Now he’s probably watching Top Gear on his own,’ I said gloomily, an hour later, when we were still sat in the car. Rach and I had fallen silent. It was nearly 10pm and we were no further forward.

Then I saw some flashing blue lights in the rear view mirror. I twisted round in my seat. It was the police car that had driven past a couple of hours earlier.

I wrenched the wig off my head and tried to pull my latex mask off. But my face had got hot and sweaty with panic, and I couldn’t get it past my forehead. As the policeman knocked on my window, I froze. The mask was stuck on the top of my head like some sort of freaky two-faced hat. But I was like a rabbit stuck in the headlights - I didn’t know what to do next. I opened the door and the policeman bent down and looked in the car.

He looked at me, then at the mask on top of my head as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. It looked like I had two faces, one on top of another. He blinked, as if he was seeing double.

‘What on earth is that on your head?,’ he asked. I gave it another hard yank, and luckily it came off in my hand. God we had some explaining to do here, and I didn’t know where to start.

‘I’ll come to that later,’ said the policeman, looking at the extra face in my hand. ‘We’ve driven past here a few times and you two have been sat here for at least three hours. What’s going on?’

There was only one thing for it, we had to be completely honest. So I told him the whole sorry story about being stood up by Paul.

‘So I wanted to find out if he had another woman on the go, to see if that was the reason,’ I finished lamely.

‘And what about the masks?’ added the officer. ‘Where do they come into it? You look up to no good in those - very suspicious in fact.’

‘We didn’t want Paul to recognise us, as it would be embarrassing,’ I explained. ‘So we had these masks made as a disguise.’

‘You do want to find out what he’s been up to pretty badly, don’t you, ‘ said the officer, slightly pityingly. ‘Well your story does sound plausible, unfortunately for you,’ he added, looking at me. ‘So we’ll be on our way. But we are driving past here in an hour’s time, and I don’t want to see your car still parked here.’

He paused, and then took my mask in his hand. ‘These are pretty good. But I know your faces now - all of them - so don’t be planning to rob any jewellery stores in the next few weeks,’ he said, shutting the car door and walking off.

‘That was so lucky,’ I said, turning to Rach. ‘But so embarrassing. We will be the laughing stock of the station when he goes back and reports what he’s seen.’

‘I know,’ said Rach, starting to laugh. ‘I couldn’t believe it when you got your mask stuck on the top of your head. If it hadn’t been so serious, I would have wet myself laughing at you.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, interrupting her. ‘Isn’t that Soph’s car?’ There was a silver polo turning into the side street where Paul had parked his car an hour earlier.

‘No, it can’t be, it must be a car like hers,’ said Rach, rubbing at the windscreen. It had steamed up with all our laughter. ‘Soph’s working tonight, and anyway, why would she be parking by Paul’s house?’

A few seconds later, Soph walked around the side of the houses, and we watched in shocked silence as she pushed open the gate to Paul’s cottage and knocked on the door. He opened it and she walked inside.

I looked at Rach in disbelief. ‘What the hell is she doing in Paul’s house?,’ I said. ‘This is like some awful dream.’

‘Do you think she is pleading your case?’ asked Rach, anxiously. ‘Explaining that he is the man for you and to give it another go.’

‘I don’t know, perhaps she is,’ I said. ‘What other explanation would there be? She wouldn’t want me to know if she was going to talk to him.’

The minutes ticked by agonisingly slow. Then his light went on upstairs.

‘I don’t think they would be discussing me in his bedroom,’ I said grimly. The awful truth was beginning to dawn. Somehow Soph had met up with Paul and had started seeing him behind my back.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Rach. ‘How could she have done this? Where could she have possibly have met him.’

Then something clicked in my brain. ‘The school reunion,’ I said suddenly, turning to Rach. ‘I knew she was being cagey about that. She’s met him at the reunion - no wonder she didn’t want to tell us about anyone she had met there.

Paul had just stood me up a few days before that - she was hardly going to confess that she’d fallen for him only a few days later.’

‘She can’t have met him there,’ said Rach, puzzled. ‘He’s a few years older than her - he wasn’t in her school year.

‘Her school reunion was over a five year period,’ I reminded her. ‘We only talked about boys that had been in her year, but there were another four school years there that evening. He’s lived in the area all his life - there’s no reason why he wouldn’t have gone to that school.’

I stared at Paul’s bedroom window, imagining him and Soph writhing around naked on his bed. I felt sick. There must be some other explanation, surely she wouldn’t do this to me? Perhaps they had recently met, and they were just friends, and he was showing her some old school pictures upstairs.

An hour later, Soph came out of the front door. Paul was stood in the doorway, with just a towel round his waist, and he pulled Soph towards him for a lingering kiss before she went down the path. She turned to give him a little wave before opening the gate.

‘She must have thought she was safe to see him tonight,’ I said to Rach, dully. ‘I told her we were planning on spying on him later in the week. She never knew we had brought it forward. I bet she’s told him what we were planning and they’ve had a good laugh about it together.’ I had felt horribly let down by Paul when he had stood me up that night, but it felt nothing to the betrayal by Soph. I felt as though she had punched me in the stomach.

We watched as her car came out of the side road. She drove right past us, but she never even looked at our car.

‘She had the look of love plastered all over her face,’ I said bitterly to Rach. ‘She never even saw us.’ Rach didn’t know what to say. We had never imagined such an awful scenario when we had set out that evening. I had thought I might see a woman in Paul’s house, but I never imagined it would be my own friend.

‘She’s got some explaining to do,’ said Rach, grimly, as we drove home. ‘And it had better be good.’

I didn’t know how to tell the other girls, but Rach and I decided that we needed to tell them, to try and work out what to do. The following evening, Kaz and Tash arrived at my flat. Rach had rung them to ask them to come over, but she hadn’t told them what it was about.

‘I can’t believe it,’ gasped Tash, when we told them about Soph. ‘Are you sure it was her?’

‘Absolutely positive,’ I said. ‘She was snogging the face off him on his doorstep.’

‘She needs to get round here now,’ said Kaz. ‘We need to tackle her about it. This has to be sorted out.’

Kaz rang Soph’s mobile. ‘She’s coming round now,’ she said grimly. ‘I told her that you needed your red dress back that she borrowed, and she’s coming round to drop it off.’

Ten minutes later the doorbell rang. My stomach started to churn at the thought of facing Soph. She came bounding up the stairs swinging a bag.

‘Here’s the dress Bee,’ she said, putting the bag on my sofa. She looked around at all our faces. ‘What's up?’ she said, ‘you all look worried.’

I didn’t know what to say, so Tash took charge.

‘We know about you and Paul,’ she said, bluntly. The colour drained from Soph’s face. She went completely white and she sat down with a bump on the arm of my sofa.

‘How did you find out?’ she asked quietly.

‘Bee and Rach saw you go into Paul’s house last night,’ said Kaz.

‘I thought you weren’t going to be stalking him until later on this week,’ protested Soph.

‘Hang on a minute. That’s not the point,’ said Tash, interrupting. ‘What’s going on with you and Paul?’

‘I met him at the school reunion, and we hit it off,’ admitted Soph. ‘I didn’t want to tell any of you because of him standing Bee up.’ I winced at that one. How could Paul not have preferred Soph to me, with her porcelain features, silky hair, and young twenty-something body. I wanted to curl up and die with the embarrassment and shame of it all. How Paul must be laughing at me.

‘I’m really sorry Bee,’ she said, looking at me beseechingly. ‘But I like him, and he likes me too. I think he could be The One.’

I felt a sharp pain, like a knife was being driven through my heart. Paul was meant to be my The One, not Soph’s. Surely this couldn’t be happening to me.

‘None of us can quite believe what you’ve done to Bee,’ said Tash, accusingly. ‘We are meant to be helping find each other husbands, not stealing them from one another.’

Soph’s lip started to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and she stood up and stumbled out the room. A few seconds later we heard my front door bang.

‘Well good riddance,’ said Rach, hotly. ‘We can’t have traitors like that in our midst.’ Tash and Kaz nodded, and I was too numb to speak.

‘Get her a stiff drink,’ ordered Kaz, looking at me. ‘She looks like she needs one.’ Tash went to the cupboard, and poured me a large glass of red wine.

‘I need one for the shock too,’ she said, grabbing another couple of glasses from the kitchen.

‘What on earth are we going to do now?’ asked Kaz, leaning over and taking a gulp of my wine.

‘One thing’s for certain,’ said Tash, grimly. ‘As from tonight, Soph is out of the club.’

****************************

CHAPTER TEN

It was the day of Rach’s appointment at the fertility clinic. She should have been desperately excited, but the situation with Soph last night had been so awful, that neither of us was feeling particularly upbeat. I’d taken the day off work to go with her, but instead of talking babies on the way, Rach and I kept discussing what Soph had done.