Free Lifesaver by Louise Voss Page B

for a chat.’
    ‘I don’t suppose I could have his home number?’ Maybe Max would answer the phone, I thought longingly. But I’d pushed too far.
    ‘Oh no,’ Pamela said, in a more shocked tone than I felt strictly necessary. ‘We never give out staff telephone numbers. Now, let’s see..’ She flipped through the pages of a large desk diary, liberally smeared with dried clay thumbprints. ‘Adam, Adam, Adam.’ She said his name so tenderly that I almost laughed out loud. If this woman wasn’t in love with Adam Ferris, I’d eat that lump of plasticine on the table next to me.
    ‘Yes. He will be here doing some course preparation next Wednesday. Give him a ring on this number. I’ll tell him to expect your call, shall I?’
    She waited, pen poised above the rectangle of diary space. For a moment, I couldn’t think what she was waiting for. ‘Could I have your name please?’
    Panic. Name. I couldn’t say Anna Sozi, obviously…‘Anna Valentine,’ I said, giving my stage name, unable to prevent a deep blush spreading across my chest and up into my face. Some actress I was! But I’d be better prepared next time. I’d make up an address and give my mobile number and—
    Wait a second, I thought. Next time? For the first time I realized that I was actually giving serious consideration to the possibility of enrolling on one of Adam’s courses. No matter that it was ninety miles from my house. That I was only doing it because I wanted to meet the tutor’s four year old son. That I couldn’t tell my husband otherwise he’d think I’d gone off my head. That I’d therefore have to lie about where I was going every Tuesday for weeks on end…
    All I could think about was how excited Auntie Lil would be when I told her that I’d actually done it.

Chapter 7
    Getting home again took a lot longer. There must have been an accident on the motorway, because the London-bound traffic suddenly slowed to a five-mile an hour crawl, and I found myself stuck behind a Volvo estate with two bored children strapped into the rear-facing seats in the boot, making hideous faces at me out of the back window. It was remarkably difficult not to keep catching their eyes, since they were directly in my line of vision, so I tried to switch off, letting thoughts trail through my mind: what Max looked like; how Vicky would cope with another child; whether I’d ever get a job; whether I wanted a job; if Ken and I would ever have sex again…/span>
    As I looked to my left—the children were now pointing at me and squealing with laughter—I noticed a road sign to village whose name sounded familiar. I couldn’t work out why for ages, until eventually I remembered that when we were first together, Ken had taken me to a hotel there.
    He’d still been with Michelle then, his first wife. Michelle was his PA from his first Marketing Director job at Range Records. She was younger than him by six years: twenty two to his twenty eight. She’d wooed him and flattered him, even though for two years—by his own admission - he had treated her like dirt, dating other women but keeping her hanging on. Then something had changed. I still wasn’t sure what; maybe she’d just worn him down. She was American, and didn’t take no for an answer - whilst being sensible enough to realize that ultimatums would cut no ice with Ken. He didn’t like to be pressured.
    They ended up getting married. She’d managed to persuade Ken that she would make the perfect wife for a career man such as himself; but within six months he said he realized it had been a mistake. She’d given up work the second he’d proposed, and seemed to do nothing but play tennis, spend his money, and try to organise his life the way she’d organised his appointment book when she worked for him. It was she who’d first got him into his tennis obsession—he probably only learned because he hated anyone being better than him at anything.
    Michelle was there the first time Ken and I