she could reasonably expect as having been delivered in full. But Santorini’s was on the cards, and tonight, of all nights, no matter how tired she was feeling after a long shift in the pharmacy, and no matter how beleaguered Dave’s libido had recently been, what with the legal action over the third-division footballer’s dodgy discs, she would surely enjoy that perfect manly physique for all she was worth. Dave’s body and the things he very occasionally did with it made up almost entirely for his tedious conversation and limited taste in footwear and potato-based snacks.
*
It was true to say that Claire was not thoroughly concentrating on matters when her assistant, Belinda, began to talk at her, brandishing her mobile phone at the side of Claire’s head.
‘So, I registers on Tinder, right?’ Belinda said. ‘Is you listening, or what?’
Claire emerged from her reverie and locked the controlled drugs cabinet. In her hand, she clutched the customer’s methadone.
‘I’m listening. I’m listening,’ she reassured the assistant. ‘Let me just serve this man.’
Belinda gasped and waved the phone in front of Claire’s face like a WTF-girlfriend-wake-up-call on a particularly incendiary episode of Jerry Springer. ‘No, Claire, right. You has so got to listen to this.’ She nodded towards the ageing junkie who sat on the plastic chair, urinating through his jogging bottoms with a look of pure satisfaction on his weather-beaten face. ‘He can bloody wait, innit?’
Suppressing a yawn, half visualising herself in Santorini’s, negotiating an elasticated stretch of mozzarella while Dave kissed her hand in the flickering candlelight, she finally focussed on Belinda.
‘Spit it out, Bel.’
Belinda scratched at her tight, greasy bun of hair and sniffed conspiratorially. ‘I don’t want you to get an anapletipical shock or nuffin, right?’ She grabbed Claire’s arm. Bade her sit in the back amongst the shelves of antibiotics. Searched her boss’s face under the harsh, fluorescent light.
‘Tell me!’ Claire could feel a rash itching its way up her throat. Fingered her pharmacist’s name badge.
‘Soz, right.’ Belinda showed her the picture on the phone. ‘I was on Tinder, yeah? That’s this dating website, where you meet mans you wanna bone. Right? And I’m swiping to the left on these mingers. And there’s your man, innit? Wiv his belly out. Looking for spanking and all sorts from young blonde girls. Says he ain’t married, which I know ain’t true.’
Holding her breath, Claire snatched the phone from the girl’s bitten-nailed hand and looked down at a topless Dave. Abs clenched. Grinning that charming piranha grin.
‘We aren’t married,’ she whispered.
Was it him? It was as though a picture-perfect world had suddenly appeared to her in negative. Everything seemed familiar enough but wasn’t quite right. Including this photo. Dave was not entirely recognisable. Perhaps this was someone who just looked like her Dave.
But no. Claire forced herself to read his description. He had listed himself as working in the sports/health industry. And there, to dispel any shadow cast by doubt, was his discreet tattoo beneath his left pectoral. The red rose of England Rugby. Made slightly wonky over time by the rippling rectus abdominis that he had developed since subjecting himself to the tattooist’s needle as a scrawny lad.
Suddenly, all those impromptu physio conferences and late evening appointments and unaccounted-for withdrawals from their joint bank account, which he had kept quiet about and which she had explained away in her own head as Dave working hard for their little family … suddenly, they had taken on another, far more sinister form. They were sweaty, clandestine liaisons with cheap women, who thought they were starting something real with an impressive-looking man who rubbed shoulders with Lesser Stars of the Sporting World. A respectable man, who drove a nice Vauxhall and liked only three flavours of crisps.
Hadn’t there even been a buzzing mobile phone one night, when Dave’s own phone sat, silent and motionless, on the arm of the sofa? Not her phone! And if not hers, then, whose? Now, it was self-evident. More than shock. More than hurt. More than anger, Claire couldn’t believe she had been such a fool. She had wilfully ignored the signals. Her lips prickled cold. Fear clutched her in an unrelenting grip. Dave didn’t love her, despite his rhyming protestations. And his libidinal excitement clearly extended beyond the confines of the downstairs toilet.
She would be alone with Dillon. A single parent. How would she ever cope?
Incrementally, over the years, she reflected, Dave had divested her of any real responsibility in their relationship, leaving her with the domestic chores, childrearing and her job. Only within this brightly lit room – a small-town pharmacy with its 1960’s polished composite flooring, decked out with an array of sanitary items, lunch options and combs, alongside its workaday medication – did Claire have any real dominion. And now, she was about to lose a lover-cum-guardian whom she had never actively sought but who nevertheless had placed himself at the centre of her small universe, complete with his overworked abdominal muscles and strong hands.
It was the worst Valentine’s Day ever.
‘I’ve messed up,’ Claire said. ‘It’s all my fault. I’ve pushed him away.’
Belinda patted Claire’s arm and shook her head vigorously. ‘Mate, that bastard is stepping out on you wiv all kind of skanks on Tinder. You got to kick him to the kerb.’ She toyed with the red, swollen piercing in her nose. ‘Personally, I’d chop his dick off with a rusty spoon.’
Her assistant’s advice was interrupted as the junkie rose from his plastic makeshift commode and approached the counter. He brought with him a smell of ripe stilton. Slammed a filthy hand down between the till and the glued-down pen-on-a-chain. Met Claire’s bloodshot eyes with a surprisingly direct and alert gaze.
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