Send Me A Lover Read online

  Send Me a Lover

  A Novel

  by Carol Mason

  Copyright 2008 by Carol Mason. All rights reserved.

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Hodder & Stoughton. A Hachette Livre UK Company.

  Kindle Edition: February 2012

  Cover design by Streetlight Graphics.

  LICENSE NOTES

  All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DISCLAIMER

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are a work of fiction or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Table of Contents

  Other Novels by Carol Mason

  One

  Eight Months Later

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  One Year Later

  About the Author

  Other Novels by Carol Mason

  The Secrets of Married Women

  The Love Market

  Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.

  —From a headstone in Ireland

  One

  It’s a steady face, this Roger’s; craggy like a seaman’s. The eyes have softly-changing colour depths, like bottomless wells of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, and they rarely leave my face, only when they need to, when the waitress brings the wine, or he orders pizza for us. There’s something easygoing, too, in the way he listens to me, with his chin resting on his upturned hand. Yep, this Roger looks like a man who could take anything on board.

  Even me.

  He hasn’t exactly dressed to impress. Which is good, because these days, I couldn’t care less about clothes. In the navy windbreaker over grey crewneck sweater and jeans, which somehow go with the salt and pepper hair, you could mistake him for a soccer coach.

  ‘You know, you’re my first proper date, since my husband….’

  He nods before I finish. I get the feeling that this Roger knows a lot of things without my having to tell him.

  ‘Well, second date,’ he corrects me, and there is a twinkle of entertainment in his eyes.

  He’s referring to last week. It was his idea to do pot luck at the Vancouver Film Festival. We walked into the only show that wasn’t sold out. The movie turned out to be about a young widow whose grief manifested itself in a kinky fixation on her neighbour. She’d spy on him making love to his wife, then wee on their rhododendron to mark her territory. When we came out, I needed one of us to laugh about it, but neither of us did. I thought for sure I’d seen the last of him as he stood there, on the curb, fog circling his head, and he said, ‘Well, goodnight Angela. It’s been…. different,’ and he offered me a handshake.

  ‘Pizza?’ he said, when he rang me this morning, out of the blue. ‘Safer this time.’

  ‘Actually you’re not technically the first man I’ve gone out with since Jonathan.’ I take a glug of thin red wine that comes in a yellow jug with a red rooster on the handle. ‘There has actually been one far worse than you.’ I feel the need to be funny. I don’t do widowed very well.

  ‘Worse? Than me?’ His eyes twinkle again. ‘Tell me about this freak of nature.’ Maybe he’s trying extra hard to be light too because he doesn’t do widows very well either.

  I twiddle with my wine glass stem, the familiar tightness back in my chest. ‘Well, I met him in Stanley Park while I was power-walking the seawall. Then the next day I was in Safeway and he was right beside me at the checkout. It was weird. Fluky… He seemed nice really. Not shy. Not pushy.’

  Not overly horny. Because sex is going to be a difficult obstacle for me to circumnavigate.

  I knot my fingers in my lap, go for my wedding ring to play with, but realise, with a strange, flat and recently accepting feeling, that it’s not there. ‘Anyway, well, we went to Milestones for dinner, and right off the bat he made it known that he wanted to be a father before he was forty.’

  ‘You gotta love an honest guy!’ When he smiles he has holes up near his cheekbones—dimples, really—only dimples is too cute a description for his weathered, life-beaten face.

  ‘Oh, it gets worse! There we were sharing a piece of banana cream pie, and then he suddenly changes the subject, looks at me very seriously, and says, “There’s something I have to tell you about my family.” And then he tells me his brother’s a dwarf!’

  His brownish, nondescript eyebrows shoot up; he needs nondescript eyebrows on that descriptive face. The mellow, Harvey’s Bristol eyes flare and twinkle. ‘You’re kidding?’ Good God!’ He appears highly entertained. ‘What did you say to that?’ He sits back, slides down the seat a bit, puts his hands in his jeans’ pockets, eyes never leaving my face. He is looking at me as though he has never met anyone quite as unexpectedly entertaining.

  ‘Well, I said, Oh boy, did I really have to know that on a first date!’

  He laughs now: a staggeringly loud belly laugh that turns heads at the next table. ‘You didn’t say that!’

  ‘I did.’ I’m smiling too now. ‘It really pissed him off actually. He said, You are clearly a person with a lot of issues. Then he said he’d bet I believed that blacks should sit at the back of the bus. Then he got up and walked out.’

  His head shoots back this time and he roars. He finds it so funny that he slaps his hand on the table a few times as he laughs. I am amused by him. The couple at the next table look at us again.

  He’s nice. He’s a fun guy. My old client, Denise, who set us up, said he was. He’s got it all going on. Everything the Second Time Around Club would consider a catch. Attractive. Decent. Divorced. No children. No dwarves. A prominent City Planner and university lecturer. A PhD in his field. He has nice hands. They’re craggy, and steady and sure, just like his face. He’d be a boyfriend a girl could take anywhere.

  Boyfriend?

  ‘Did he at least pay the bill?’ he asks me.

  ‘Hm? What?’ I am staring at his hands and seeing Jonathan’s.

  ‘The bill?’ He studies the small change in me. ‘Did he pay?’

  ‘Erm…Actually, no. He didn’t.’

  ‘So I take it you didn’t get an invitation to his family’s for dinner?’

  I drag my attention back to his face. ‘One hasn’t been forthcoming so far, no.’

  ‘My brother’s seven feet tall,’ he says.

  ‘Is he?’ I process this. ‘My Gosh, that’s massive!’

  ‘Not really. I don’t have a brother. Only one very normal-sized sister in Manitoba, with size nine feet. She’s married to a podiatrist.’

  He sees my sceptical look.

  ‘No, I swear, she really does have big feet. And she is married to a podiatrist. But the two have absolutely no connection. Unfortunately.’

  I place a hand over my smile. He holds my eyes. His face is covered with affectionate kindness. Th
e expression, the gaze, lingers.

  He would be a keeper.

  ‘What does it feel like?’ this Roger asks me now, after the bit of ice-breaking humour has evaporated into the pizzeria smells of bologna charring in a wood-burning oven, calamari roasting on the grill.

  ‘What does what feel like?’

  ‘Dating again.’ His eyes scrutinise my face.

  A startling crash of glass comes from the kitchen. Every head turns, except his. There’s something about that word ‘dating’ that doesn’t sit right. Echoes of Jonathan ride in the air, as though he’s watching me with a mix of frustration, good will, jealousy and regret.

  ‘I suppose, a bit like being unfaithful.’ It’s an honest answer and I decide that’s just what I have to be with him: honest. Denise will have told him it’s been eighteen months. He’s bound to think I’m a freak.

  ‘How do you know? Were you ever unfaithful?’

  ‘No. Were you?’ This change of direction into serious talk blindsides me.

  ‘No, but I probably would have been if I’d stayed married. Or one of us would have been.’ He shrugs, looks at his fingers that are resting on the base of his wine glass. ‘We didn’t enjoy each other any more. I started to doubt whether we ever had.’

  I meet him in the eyes. ‘I’m sorry… I’m not sure I’m ready to compare baggage, Roger.’ I don’t have the heart to have divorce laid beside widowhood as though they’re somehow equal, because they’re not. If you get divorced you can at least tell yourself, well he obviously wasn’t the right one; better fish in the sea... A picture of Jonathan arrives in my mind’s eye. One of my favourites: that devilishly good-humoured, slightly teasing expression that would appear whenever something I’d said had just amused him and reaffirmed why it was that he loved me. I don’t think there’ll ever be any other fish. No matter how many oceans I might swim. And that’s when it hits me that I’m not ready for this.

  ‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘And the very last thing I want to talk about on a first date is my ex-marriage.’ His eyes drop to my pizza lying almost untouched. ‘You’ve a tiny appetite.’

  ‘Not really… Anyway, what’s wrong with that?’ I don’t intend to sound slightly annoyed but I can tell that’s how he reads me. The chip on the shoulder that came with sudden widowhood. I lost over a stone when Jonathan died. Lost my curves. My boobs went from a C-cup to a smallish B. No matter how I’ve tried, the weight has not gone back on. I don’t feel womanly any more. Padded bras make me feel a bit like I’ve been given false teeth after a lifetime of having a good set of real ones.

  He blanches. Something in his unflappably nice face falters for a moment. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry. It was actually some pathetic attempt at a compliment.’ His fingers go to the base of his glass again, too quickly, and he spills some wine.

  ‘Sorry,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not very good with compliments.’ I watch him mop away at the cloth with his napkin feeling slightly sorry for him and helpless to remedy this. How could I possibly go out with someone called Roger anyway? It’s a geezer’s name. The thing is, I’ve just quickly asked myself if I could kiss him, and the answer is yes. My scalp suddenly feels sore in my ponytail. I tug on the elastic band, wishing I could pull it out, set my hair free, and rake my fingers through it.

  ‘Doesn’t it feel weird to you? Being set up?’ I throw this at him recognising that I’m saying something that’s possibly inflammatory again, but unable to stop myself. Why am I doing this? My eyes dart around the room, looking for a means of escape.

  He rests his chin on his upturned hand again. ‘Weird? No. Not at all. I kind of like it. I’m actually quite curious about this person that a good friend of mine thinks I have a lot in common with. After a year of going on dates only to find I never want to see the women again in my life, I quite welcome a bit of divine intervention from a friend.’ He studies me closely. ‘How about you? How do you feel?’

  I tug on the end of my ponytail like a belligerent teenager. ‘Socially challenged. Can’t find a man myself so I need the help of others who are better at it than I am.’

  He smiles. He’s not rising to my bait. Perhaps I have to try harder to put him off. Maybe if I pick my nose, or hawk up phlegm. No. I have a feeling he’d still look at me with this face that tells me he’s ripe for taking on a head-case girlfriend like me.

  Girlfriend.

  Why is he interested in a thirty-two-year-old widow anyway? What’s wrong with him?

  ‘My problem is,’ he says, his eyes swiftly dropping to his wine glass that he twiddles with again. ‘I’m not very good with dating. I never was at twenty-two and I’m not much better at forty-two. Small talk… tiptoeing around things. I get impatient for something substantial. It’s a failing of mine.’ Then, of all the things, he reaches in his pocket, pulls out a small comb and runs it through his dishevelled salt and pepper hair.

  There. See. He’s completely off his rails.

  Plus, he’s too old.

  Does he think I should be grateful that he likes me? His eyes, and the way he looks at me, his entire comfortable-with-me, understanding being—maybe he thinks it’s all more than any girl in my shoes could hope for. Only I don’t do grateful very well. I certainly never did with Jonathan.

  Jonathan.

  He visits me again with a sharp, bleak smack to my senses.

  I grab a pint glass of water and gulp it down. In the background, romantic Italian music plays underneath the din of voices in this packed-out pizzeria. ‘Tell me about your children,’ I say, grabbing a passing, safe question in my head.

  ‘I can’t. I don’t have any.’ A twinkle of humour returns to his eyes.

  ‘Oh.’ I lay the back of my hand quickly on my hot cheek. There’s a fire-exit beside the toilets. I could make on I’m going to the loo and flee.

  ‘Do you have any pets?’ he asks me, and reads my blank expression. ‘Dogs? Cats? Parakeets? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to get the small-talk over with fast.’

  A sped-up film track flashes across my mind now. Goodnight kisses. Hands roving over bodies for the first time. First time having to do a number two in their bathroom. First person you call when you have something good to tell, or something bad. There are potential-to-be-the-man-who-ends-up-replacing-the-only-man-I-have-ever-loved moments coming out of this, and I am scared shitless. Sweat pours out of my hands, down my back, the soles of my feet. I know what this is. A panic attack. I thought I’d stopped having them. I thought I had turned a corner.

  ‘Have you ever thought that maybe some people aren’t meant to try so hard to find somebody to love them, Roger? Maybe they’re just meant to be alone.’ Like me. Alone sounds damned fine.

  He just studies me for a moment or two, as though he is analysing me, then he holds up his hands. ‘That’s a pretty negative way of looking at things, Angela. I like to believe that there’s somebody totally right for us out there. And that we eventually find them, even if we don’t find them the first time.’

  It suddenly reminds me of something Jonathan once said. Strange how I’m remembering it now… We were larking around, talking about death in the way you do when you assume you’re going to live to a ripe old age. We were in bed. We had made love. Satisfying and warm, and often extremely horny, as was our style. Particularly after we’d fought, which we did, often. He was explosive. I am. Or was, when I had someone to press my buttons.

  ‘If I died, I would want you to marry again,’ he said to me, his finger absently massaging those two dimples at the base of my spine.

  ‘I’d never marry again if you died,’ I told him, still feeling a white heat for him. The thought of kissing someone else was actually quite yucky.

  He ran his hand, appreciatively, over the curve of my well-exercised rear. ‘You would, you know. I’d see to it that you did.’

  I propped both elbows on his chest and looked at him, his dark, sharp eyes, the slightly receding hairline that he hated you to make fun of. ‘Oh? An
d how would you do that then Mr. Hotshot Lawyer Who Thinks He Knows Everything?’

  He ran a finger along my collarbones, looking deep and distracted—lawyerly: the look that was very Jonathan. That look that I very often only had to catch sight of to want to screw him really badly. ‘I’d send somebody for you,’ he said.

  I thought about this for a moment. ‘Send someone? What, like a lover or a second great love? A carbon copy of you, right? Because you think you’re so damned perfect for me, don’t you?’ I couldn’t take him seriously because I couldn’t ever see either of our lives ending.

  He scowled. ‘God no. Nobody like me. I’m thinking Elephant Man with a big heart.’

  I play-punched him. ‘Would he at least be good in bed?’

  ‘Terrible.’ He kissed the hollow of my throat, flicked the tip of his tongue across the indentation there. ‘Completely hopeless, with the tiniest dick you’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Thanks. He sounds like a real treat.’

  ‘No, seriously, I’d send you somebody… somebody totally right for you. Somebody better for you than I’ve been Ange. Honestly, once I got up there, I’d make it my entire reason for being. That is, if you can have a reason for being once you’re dead.’

  That was Jonathan: my high-achieving husband. Even in the afterlife he’d have to have a mission, some accomplishment to strive for. ‘You think I’m joking but I’m really quite serious.’

  Insane as it sounded, I could tell he was. ‘I’ll hold you to it,’ I told him, and then he flipped me onto my back and rolled on top of me.

  ‘But don’t think I’m going anywhere any time soon, Angela Chapman,’ he sank his fingers into my bum cheeks. ‘I’m not planning on leaving you just yet.’

  But you did, Jonathan, didn’t you?

  ~ * * * ~

  The din of music and voices and chinking dishes comes back to me now, and the memory slips away, leaving a dull feeling in me, as though Jonathan has just been here and has left me, but left me temporarily. Maybe just to step aside and watch me now with this Roger, and to say, What are you doing here Ange? With him? When you’ve got me?