EPISODE FORTY-ONE

The smell of grilled bacon wafted tantalisingly through the house. Betty sighed, looking at her watch. It was only 9.30.She reached for her goody-goody mid-morning snack, thinly-spread cream cheese between two slabs of Ryvita.
‘Hungry?’ said Nigel, making her start at she took her first bite.
Betty nodded guiltily, almost choking on the dry biscuits. Nigel grinned from the doorway. He had a habit of sneaking up on her like this and it always made her nervous.
‘It’s the smell of bacon that does it,’ she mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs.
‘Jackie’s treating me to a cooked breakfast this morning. Later than usual, I’m afraid.’
Betty was irritated by the boastful way he said it, making it obvious that he and Jackie had been having fun and games in bed.  She felt jealous. It was a long time since her Ron had felt amorous.  Always too tired.
‘Don’t forget you’ve got a tender to get out this morning,’ she reminded him, pleased to see his smile fade. ‘Deadline’s twelve o’clock.’
‘I’ll deliver it in person.’
‘You’ve got to re-write the proposal first. All ten pages.’
Nigel tutted loudly.
‘Breakfast is on the table, darling,’ sang Jackie sugar-sweetly from the kitchen.
‘Coming!’ Nigel called back. He smiled and winked at Betty. ‘I’d better go and eat it. Keep her happy. I won’t be long.’
Betty gave her Ryvita a resentful crunch and switched on the computer.
‘Here we are, darling,’ said Jackie as Nigel came into the kitchen. ‘Don’t let it get cold.’
Nigel sat at the table and stared approvingly at his full English breakfast, then frowned as he surveyed the rest of the table.
‘Something wrong, darling?’
‘There doesn’t appear to be any brown sauce.’
‘Oh, I forgot to buy any. There’s tomato.’
‘Tomato’s not the same. I like brown sauce with my breakfast. I told you to make out a proper shopping list.’
‘I thought I’d remember. When I got to the shop, it must have slipped my mind.’
Nigel squeezed a liberal blob of ketchup onto his plate. ‘Oh, well – it’ll have to do. But you must try and organise yourself, Jackie. Instead of just buying bits and pieces as and when we need it. If you can’t remember things, write them down.  It’s always been my golden rule.
Jackie slid into her seat opposite Nigel, and avoided looking at him. They ate in silence for a while. But the angry clatter of Jackie’s cutlery indicated that something was wrong.
‘Something the matter?’ asked Nigel, sensing the change in his fiancée’s mood.
‘Brown sauce!’ she hissed. ‘Who cares a damn about brown sauce?’
Nigel chuckled, attempting to lighten the situation. ‘Well, I do for one.’
‘It’s unfair of you to criticise like that.  You know how worried I am about the girls...’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
As she watched him greedily gobbling his food, something tightened inside her. ‘It’s got to do with the fact that perhaps I should go back home.,’ she snapped.
‘Perhaps you should, if that’s how you feel.’
His remark, she observed, didn’t put him off his stride as far as eating was concerned. Somehow his enjoyment of the breakfast made her angrier. She was about to fire another shot across his bow when the doorbell rang.
‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Nigel. ‘I’d forgotten, my hair’s being trimmed this morning. ’He scraped the knife around his plate hurriedly, and shovelled an enormous forkful of food into his mouth. He swallowed noisily and swilled it down with a gulp of tea.
‘Can you let Mike in for me? While I give my hair a quick wash.’
Jackie frowned. ‘Yes, but...’
‘It’s a simple enough request,’ Nigel said as he left the room.
Sighing, Jackie followed Nigel into the hall. She dreaded meeting the hairdresser following all that business about his daughter’s abortion. It was not the sort of confrontation she felt able to cope with, especially this morning, after Nigel’s petty comments about the brown sauce.

*

Malcolm sat at his desk, staring at the screen saver on his PC monitor. His chosen image was of a subjective camera viewpoint weaving in and out of a maze. How fitting this image seemed now as he waited for the revenge he knew was winging its way towards him like a bird of prey.
God! What an idiot he’d been. To fall for a stunt like that. He went over and over the previous night’s events. He couldn’t get over the way he’d been set up. The way Savita answered the door to her flat, wearing that sexy negligee, and giving him the eye. Nicky was already lying in the double bed, duvet tucked up around her.  He remembered thinking at the time, how peculiar this was, as if the girl was shy of showing any nakedness.  It was only much later, when the disastrous event played back in his mind, that he realized Nicky was probably fully dressed.
How could he have fallen for such an obvious trap?  He had let his stupid fantasies overshadow his reason. Savita had been so transparently acting out the part of a siren, luring him to his doom.
‘We’ve already started without you, Malcolm,’ she whispered sexily as she joined Nicky in bed. ‘Why don’t you get undressed and see what fun we can have?’
What an idiot! He couldn’t believe he’d fallen for it. Undressing hurriedly, he saw the cruel amusement in Savita’s eyes as she watched him. But he was too dumb to comprehend it at the time. As he walked, naked and proud towards the bed, that’s when the young man dressed in black sprang through the doorway. Flash of the camera. Then he was gone. And Malcolm felt like bursting into tears. How could he have been such a twenty-two carat wally?
To distract himself from more worrying thoughts of revenge and retribution, he opened up his emails, telling himself that maybe the two girls would just demand that he treat them a bit better in future. Neither of them had shown up for work this morning, so he had no idea what their demands would be.
He had about fifty emails. There were several with attachments, but the one that leapt out at him had as its subject “our insurance policy”. He frowned. Even though they were an insurance company, there was something peculiar about the wording. He opened it up. It contained one sentence. It said:
“Unattractive, maybe. But an excellent likeness. Open it up, Malcolm.”
Hands shaking, Malcolm clicked the mouse on the paper-clip icon. The colour photograph hit him like a ramrod in the guts. A full frontal of him, leering at the two girls in the background of the shot. And it was so obvious what his intentions were as he stood there. Naked. Naked and proud.

IN EPISODE FORTY-TWO

Mike loses a customer and Malcolm fears for his future.


Episode Forty-Two  Homepage