Miranda's Big Mistake - Jill Mansell [157]
`How's Bruce getting on in the shop?' Chloe was eager to know. Bruce hadn't been able to disguise his glee when she had rung him straight after the birth.
`So you're telling me you won't be back this afternoon? This is too much, Chloe. It's the final straw. I'm sorry, bu you're fired.'
`Okay.' Shrugging happily, Chloe had smiled at Fenn `Fine by me.'
`Bruce?' said Miranda. `Oh, he's got a new assistant, called Petunia. Apparently she' s twenty-three stone and looks like a bulldog chewing a wasp.'
`Heavens.' Chloe was alarmed. `Poor Bruce.'
`Oh no, don't feel sorry for him. She's just what he wanted. Someone so ugly that no man's ever going to want to have sex with her,' Miranda explained. `That way, she's never going to get pregnant.'
Tom came up to them and gave Miranda's shoulder an affectionate pat.
`We're ready to go. You look after-yourself, sweetheart.'
`And you look after Florence. If she'll let you.' Miranda rolled her eyes at this - it was a pretty daunting prospect - but if anyone could pull it off, it was Tom. Since getting together, the change in Florence had been heartwarming.
`Behave yourself now,' Florence ordered from the back seat. She cackled with laughter as Mattie, with a ladylike hiccup, gracefully deposited a mouthful of curdled milk on the shoulder of Miranda's black jersey. `No getting up to mischief.' Florence waggled her eyebrows friskily as she spoke. `Not unless you know I'd approve.'
`It's been so long, I can't remember what mischief is.' Miranda said it jokily, but it was horribly close to the mark. Everyone, it seemed, had a rip-roaring sex life these days except her. Even Chloe, for heaven's sake, who had last week been given the go-ahead from her unsuspecting GP to `resume relations with her husband'.
If she wished.
Chloe had certainly wished. And, she had later shyly confided to Miranda, it had all gone Very Well Indeed. Furthermore, having only ever slept with one other manbefore, she now realised that contrary to what Greg had always told her, he wasn't brilliant in bed at all. In fact, compared with Fenn, he'd been completely average
'Send me postcards,' Miranda blurted out to Florence, banishing the troublesome memory from her mind. It wasn't that she wanted to have sex with Fenn - good grief, no! - but Chloe's verdict had come as a bit of a bombshell, all the same. If Greg was only average, well…
I must get out more, thought Miranda. I'm missing out on goodness knows what.
The trouble was, the only person she really wanted to get out more with had gone off with someone else and was no longer about.
`Are we ready?' said Tom, as Chloe leaned through the open window to give Florence a kiss goodbye.
`Got my hip-flask.' Florence patted her coat pocket with satisfaction. `That and a passport's all I need.'
`You should behave yourself too,' Miranda said, when it was her turn at the window.
`Are we allowed to get married?'
`Only to each other.'
`Me, marry some pervy vicar? Hah, you must be joking.' Florence exchanged a look of mock horror with Tom. But beneath the folds of Florence' s dashing black cape, Miranda realised, there was some serious hand-holding going on.
Honestly, what were they like?
`If they had acne, they'd pass as a couple of teenagers,' she said when the taxi had disappeared around the corner.
`Except teenagers can't afford to cruise the Caribbean,' Chloe pointed out. `Oops, Mattie's just thrown up on your shoulder again. D'you want to give her to me?'
`Come in for a bit,' Miranda urged, feeling suddenly lonely. A whole month alone in an otherwise empty house loomed ahead. What if she went a bit mad and started talking to herself?
But Chloe was still holding her arms out, ready to take Mattie back.
`We can't. We're driving up to my mother's for the day.' Sensing Miranda's disappointment, she said, `It's a big family party. Oh, but you could come along too if you like.'
Miranda shuddered and shook-her head, recalling the last time she and Chloe's mother had met, outside Adrian's house in Milligan Road.
`It's okay, I'm fine. Loads to do, really.'