Laura let go of the tree. Caught unawares, Freddy was almost toppled by its weight and let it fall. It missed the intruder by inches, causing him to yell angrily: “Jesus Christ, Laura! What the bloody hell are you trying to do? Kill me?”
Laura faced him as she had never done before, with steady eyes and a steely composure.
“Now there’s a thought.”
The man was clearly not expecting this new version of Laura, and she appeared to be enjoying his discomfort. Freddy was intrigued by this unexpected turn of events but trying hard to feign indifference, and Sunshine was wondering how it was that, if Laura actually knew the bored van man, she had asked him to come to Padua when he was so horrid. And she certainly wasn’t going to make him the lovely cup of tea. Laura finally broke up the tense tableau.
“What do you want, Vince?” she sighed. “You’d better come through to the kitchen.”
As he followed her out of the hall he was unable to resist giving Freddy the once-over, and Freddy returned his gaze with a hard stare. In the kitchen Laura didn’t offer him anything other than a brief opportunity to explain his presence.
“Don’t I even get a cup of tea?” he asked in a wheedling tone she’d heard him use so frequently in the bedroom when they were first married and it wasn’t tea he had wanted. She shuddered at the thought. No doubt Selina from Servicing was horribly familiar with it too by now. She almost felt sorry for her.
“Vince, why are you here? What is it that you want?”
He flashed her a smile; intending seductive but executing sleazy.
“I want us to be friends.”
Laura laughed out loud.
“I do,” he continued, desperation beginning to whet the very edges of his words.
“What about Selina?”
He sat down and buried his head in his hands. It was so hammy that Laura was tempted to offer him the mustard.
“We broke up. I could never love her the way I loved you.”
“Lucky her. She left you, didn’t she?”
Vince wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
“Look, Laura, I never stopped loving you.”
“What, even while you were servicing Selina?”
Vince stood up and tried to take her hand.
“It was just a physical thing. Just sex. I never stopped thinking about you, missing you, and wanting you back.”
Laura shook her head in weary disbelief.
“So isn’t it strange that you never thought to contact me before now? Not a birthday card, a Christmas card, a phone call. Tell me, Vince, why is that? Why now? Nothing to do with this big house that I happen to have inherited, I suppose?”
Vince sat back down, trying to marshal a coherent argument. Laura had always been too clever for him, even when she was just a girl. He had loved her then, in his own way, even though he knew that, really, she was out of his league, with her posh education and nice manners. Back then, though, he could still find ways to impress her. Perhaps if their baby had lived, or they had managed to conceive again, things might have been different. He would have liked a son to play football with, or a little girl to take horse riding, but it wasn’t to be, and in the end, their fruitless efforts to become parents became another of the things that drove them apart. Over the years, as Laura grew up, she became more of a match for him, and so less of a match in the marital sense. She noticed his faults and he, in turn, exaggerated them to annoy her. It was his only defense. At least Selina hadn’t minded his elbows on the table or the toilet seat left up. Well, not at first.
Laura was still waiting calmly for his response. Her composure infuriated him and the mask of civility finally fell from his face, revealing the ugly truth.
“I heard about your date with Graham. You always were a frigid bitch,” he spat at her.
Before he came, he had promised himself that he would not lose his temper. He would show Miss Snooty Pants that he was as good as her. But as usual, she rattled him, just by being herself. By being better than him.
Laura had finally had enough. She picked up the nearest thing to hand—an open carton of milk, which as luck would have it was on the turn—and hurled the contents at Vince’s sneering face. She missed, but hit him squarely on the chest, splashing the rancid liquid all over his designer polo shirt and staining the dark suede of his expensive jacket. Laura was just looking round for further ammunition when the kitchen door opened. It was Freddy.
“Is everything okay?”
She rather reluctantly replaced the bottle of washing-up liquid on the draining board with a resounding thump.
“Yes, everything’s fine. Vince is just leaving, aren’t you?”
Vince barged past Freddy into the hall, where Sunshine was hovering uncertainly. He turned to Laura in order to deliver his final insult with appropriate aplomb.
“I hope you’ll be very happy in your big house with your little retard friend and your toy boy.”
Sunshine, no longer the child in the playground, answered him with admirable aplomb.
“I’m not the retard, I’m dancing drome.”
Freddy continued with rather more menace.
“And nobody talks to my girls like that, so sod off and don’t come back.”