Free As It Is On Telly by Jill Marshall Page B

plans. He’s like the king of plans. The Prime Minister of Plan City. The Pope of Planning in Popedom …’
    ‘Okay, I get it,’ said Bunty.
    ‘Good,’ replied Charlotte, checking out her spots in the back of her iPod. ‘Cos I couldn’t think of anyone else who’s, like, really important. Oh. What about the Arch Angel of Canterwotsit?’ It was a clearly a rhetorical question, as she was already feeding her earphones back through her curtains of hair.
    ‘Bishop. Archbishop of Canterbury.’ Bunty frowned at her daughter. She’d managed to turn the head of the Anglican Church into a character from Heroes . What exactly did they teach them at school these days?
    Anyway, she’d got distracted. Plans. That’s what she’d been thinking about. Graham’s plans. To be fair, Charlotte had a point. Graham did have plans – of the one-year, five-year and retirement variety. He pored over maps for hours prior to any journey or holiday, and took great delight in proving the AA Route Planner wrong, as if they’d ever listen or care. Plans for Christmas, Easter, Halloween, music lessons, any other extracurricular activities had all been beaten into strictly even shapes on the gigantic white-board of Graham’s mind.
    But that’s all they ever were. Strategies for the future. Nothing about now. About spontaneity. About suddenly deciding without warning to go out on a Saturday night without his wife or his child. ‘So where are you going tonight?’ she asked after Graham had retreated back behind his newspaper.
    The paper lowered, a quick flick that just allowed him to make pacifying eye contact before re-entering his shroud of lies. ‘Actually, it’s tomorrow as well. The team’s playing away tomorrow – Coventry – so me and the lads are going up to give them a bit of support.’
    It would all sound quite reasonable coming from someone else, but Bunty spotted the obvious flaw. ‘What team? What ‘lads’?’
    ‘Um, Chelsea? They’re in the semis for the cup final, you know.’
    Clever, thought Bunty. Get me on the one thing you know I can’t answer you back on. Sport – men’s sport particularly – did not even enter her consciousness as entertainment. Tennis was necessary for her social standing; the gym was a means to an end – her rear end, to be exact, to stay in any kind of shape to be admired by drainage men and Kiwis. But sport as something requiring spectators? Pointless. Pointless and expensive, which was the one reason she was surprised Graham had introduced this into his routine.
    ‘Right, so you’re going to drive up and stay over in Coventry, at say two hundred pounds, and then pay forty quid for a ticket to go and see – What is it you usually call them? – ‘eleven talentless pricks kick a sheep’s bladder around?’’ Bunty pulled the newspaper down. ‘And what ‘lads’?’
    Graham sighed, but at least had the decency to look a little shifty. ‘Ryan from the office has hired a mini-bus and we’ve all chipped in a bit. We’re staying at his auntie’s in Solihull, and Ryan’s mate has a season ticket and he can’t go so it won’t cost me anything. And as for the talentless prick thing, well, I did think that, I’ll admit. But then I started doing the financial planning for a league player and I changed my mind. Very savvy, half of these footballers. Look at Beckham.’ He shook out his newspaper again. ‘Happy now?’
    No, she wasn’t bloody happy, not happy at all. It had all come out a bit too easily. Well planned . An AA charted route through the land of lies. But even more than that, she couldn’t now announce that she was going out. The date with Ben was off. It was only when she slipped into the kitchen to do some furtive texting via Priscilla that the irony of her behaviour hit her. Well, she decided, hitting the send button, she’d been driven to it. It wouldn’t have crossed her mind to have an affair if Graham hadn’t beaten her to it.
    She watched him with