The Right Man by Nigel Planer

Author:Nigel Planer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-07-12T16:22:19+00:00

‘I just didn’t think it was going anywhere. I woke up one morning and thought — I’m not in love with him any more, so what’s the point?’ Maureen Beauley slammed the door of her bright-red VW golf, and started it up with the keys which she’d casually left in the ignition. ‘He never really loved me properly, I mean, he was a great guy and everything, sweet, but he didn’t know how to really cherish a woman.

Why do women always tell me their stuff? What is it about me? Or do they tell anyone and everyone, and I’m one of the few who actually listens to it? As she changed gear aggressively, the tight skirt of her green business suit slid up the lining slip a couple of inches to reveal the top of a stocking and a quarter-inch triangle of white thigh. 1 clocked it in a blink of my eye without letting my neck muscles move an iota. She noticed that I’d noticed nevertheless.

‘Yes, I see,’ I said. ‘I understand. Do you think he even knew what loving you properly would be, or did he just not care?’ I could have said, ‘Wwwooooaaa! Stockings! Nice!’ or words to that effect, but I’m not made like that, and anyway we were supposed to be looking for a flat for my mother. It seemed inappropriate.

‘I just want to be loved by a man above all else. To know that I come first. I think most women do. And I was earning more than him anyway, so …’ She jumped a light and hung a left without indicating. Someone hooted at us. I gripped the seat-belt holder; she was driving much too fast. ‘What did you think of that last one?’ she asked.

‘Too many stairs.’

‘Yes, and it needed a lot of work. I think they’d come down, though, if you wanted to make an offer.’

I sifted through the estate agent’s details. All with small glossy photos pasted on the front. All virtually identical, rather like a casting directory.

‘And what about your son? You said you had a son,’ I asked.

‘Oh, he comes first. Always. I love him more than anything. Here we are.

We pulled up outside a terrace of houses with double front doors. Cottages built originally for the river-dock workers at Hammersmith. Most have kitchen extensions now and a small yard out the back. After fumbling with her huge assortment of keys, she opened the door and we entered the ground-floor flat, which had piles of junk mail in its narrow front corridor. This one was unoccupied, a recent conversion. The builders had tried to stretch a two-bedroomed self-contained granny flat out of what must once have been a living room and pantry, so the rooms were tiny and wedge-shaped and smelled of emulsion paint still. Most of the doors, when swung open, missed the opposite walls by only an inch or so, making one have to step back and round before entering, like a lovers’ gate.

Maureen Beauley and

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