After the One by Cass Lester (novels for students .txt) 📗

appointments. Four dozen snazzy gift bags stood stacked neatly on the kitchen table. Charley cast her eye over them critically. They looked good. She took a quick photo and sent it to Angie.

Taking advantage of the fact that Charley was going to be out for most of the day, Pam had invited her four closest friends for lunch.

‘You’re welcome to join us, if you’re free at lunchtime,’ she told Charley. ‘They’d love to meet you.’

‘That’s very sweet of you, but I haven’t given myself the luxury of a lunch break!’ said Charley, instantly pitching Pam into full motherly mode, and sending her directly to the fridge.

‘Shall I make something to take with you?’ she asked, scanning the now laden shelves.

‘No, honestly, I’ll be fine. I’ll grab a sarnie or something.’

‘Well, mind you do,’ said Pam earnestly, and Charley laughed.

To be honest, Charley didn’t have a full day of meetings, but she didn’t want Pam knowing that. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to meet Pam’s friends, it was just that if she’d joined them for lunch she would have felt weird… like a guest in her own home.

‘Wish me luck,’ she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder, scooping up her box of samples and heading out of the kitchen.

‘You know I do,’ Pam called out to her retreating back.

In the kitchen, beginning to prepare lunch, Pam wanted someone to wish her luck, too. She knew Zee was on her side and wasn’t going to try to pressure her into going back to Geoff, but she wasn’t at all sure her other friends would think the same way. It was such a huge thing to do – to end a marriage after forty years – even if your husband was having an affair. Was she overreacting? She paused, the knife she was about to crush the garlic with idle in her hand, and stared out of the window. The persistent, niggling feeling simply would not go away. After all, Zee had put up with Theo’s infidelity, and perhaps her friends might think she should do the same. Maybe she should? No, she told herself, she had too much pride for that. Levelling the knife flat over the garlic on the chopping board, in a swift, intensely satisfying movement she brought her clenched fist down on the blade and smashed the clove flat.

‘Welcome to my new home!’

Pam flung open the front door and then stepped back, with an extravagant gesture, to let her friends into Charley’s flat.

They came laden with flowers, chocolates and wine… and full of concern. As they bundled into the hall, their warm hugs, slightly tighter and longer than usual, spoke volumes. Pam had feared they might not want to come; after all they and their husbands were her and Geoff’s joint friends. She’d left Geoff so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that she hadn’t had time to think about the fallout, how it would impact on their friends and family, spreading like the circles from a stone kicked carelessly into a calm pond.

The four of them clustered round Charley’s small kitchen table, plates and glasses and elbows all jostling for space while Pam tipped the mushroom risotto into a serving dish at the cooker. She couldn’t shake off a curious sense of ‘playing house’ in Charley’s flat. It was the same feeling she’d used to have in holiday cottages when the boys were small, when she’d been cooking a meal she’d cooked a hundred times, but in unfamiliar pots and pans, and dishing it up on crockery she’d never seen before in her life. She brought the dish to the table and started ladling out the risotto.

‘Nice plates,’ said Toni, eagerly taking hers.

‘They’re lovely, aren’t they,’ agreed Pam, then joked, ‘But then I would say that. We gave them to Charley and Josh as their wedding present – and I have impeccable taste!’

They all laughed.

One of the benefits of being an older woman is having a licence to be candid. It comes with the bus-pass. Pam and her friends had given up tiptoeing around elephants in rooms years ago, and definitely weren’t afraid of calling a spade a spade, a mistress a selfish cow, and an adulterous husband an absolute effing bastard.

‘He’s behaved appallingly,’ announced Rachel, ‘disgracefully.’

‘Which is why I’m not going to go back to him,’ said Pam firmly.

There was a pause while her friends each decided how to respond. Whilst they all agreed Geoff was in the wrong, it didn’t mean there was consensus on what Pam should do now, perhaps because they were of a generation which didn’t divorce readily. But just as likely it was because, pragmatically, they all knew the chance of Pam remarrying at their age was pretty slim, and her future prospects might include a lonely old age.

‘Isn’t it a bit early to decide anything?’ ventured Toni.

Mona nodded. ‘I know you’re furious with him, Pam…’

‘We all are,’ Rachel assured her.

Mona continued, ‘But you’re acting in the heat of the moment. A forty-year marriage is not something to give up lightly.’

‘Perhaps Geoff should have thought of that!’ countered Pam.

‘And a husband isn’t something to give up lightly…’ said Rachel.

‘Well, I’m giving mine up!’ retorted Pam, with defiant cheerfulness.

‘But he’s your husband. Are you just going to hand him over to this other woman without a fight?’ asked Toni.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re just going to give in and walk away? After everything you’ve been through together?’ persisted Toni.

‘Yes,’ repeated Pam. ‘Even after all that. He’s made me feel… stupid and foolish, and worthless. He doesn’t want me, and now I find I don’t want him. Simple as that.’

‘Why not just have a trial separation?’ suggested Mona.

‘What for?’ asked Pam. ‘I’ve decided to leave him. There’s nothing to “trial”.’

‘No-one’s saying you shouldn’t leave him,’ said Toni. ‘All we’re saying is don’t decide in the heat of the moment without thinking things through.’

‘Yes, there’s a lot to consider. What about the house?’ Rachel pointed out. Pam merely shrugged. ‘That house is your home,’ insisted Rachel. ‘I think you