Free Other People's Husbands by Judy Astley

didn’t involve her knickers – more the fast removal of same so he could wallop her bum with whatever implement of choice he’d dreamed up as suitable for that day. Was this something he couldn’t get at home? Or something he’d got at home so much that his wife had decided enough was enough, she’d be quite glad not to have to take painkillers before she dared to sit down, thank you, and had called a halt. Sara liked Stuart and his slightly pervy devotion. He was several years younger than Conrad, yet shuffled round like somebody seriously ancient. He wore a random job lot of corduroy in all weathers, muddy-coloured and shiny, and he trailed pieces of grubby string from his pocket like an elderly Just William. His hands were ingrained with a mixture of earth from the allotment and car oil from years of endlessly teaching how to change a cylinder-head gasket to women who still believed that Car Maintenance classes were a pretty good bet for meeting a dream man.
    Cass and Pandora called him Scary Stuart and laughed about his attachment to their mother, but how much harm could it do that he liked to supply her with boxes of his allotment-grown vegetables and have her company for a quick drink during the odd lunchtime while he told her about his fantasy plans? He wouldn’t take any payment for his crops, which, she said, was ridiculous, as a similar delivery from any of the many organic companies would have cost a bomb. A year ago, when he’d started this but wouldn’t take any cash, she’d offered him a signed print of Conrad’s. He’d refused and said apologetically, ‘Actually, I’m not much of a picture man,’ which had, Conrad glee-fully decided, been the clincher in working out whether it was Conrad or Sara he was keen on. Perhaps Mrs Scary Stuart gave him a hard time. Maybe she preferred her vegetables pre-scrubbed, pre-packaged and microwave-ready.
    Sara carried the box into the house and had a look through the contents. Purple sprouting broccoli, carrots, early-season potatoes, a bag of rocket, a posy of violets. She quickly arranged the flowers in a small jug and put it on the kitchen worktop. When the glazier had been, and after she got back later that afternoon, she’d put the jug on the ledge where much of the broken glass had landed when she’d thrown the mustard jar. That should keep the glass safe from further damage. After all, it would be deeply dis-respectful and heartless to throw heavy missiles in the direction of an offering from an admirer.
    Cassandra drove more slowly than usual, feeling reluctant to get to the college and possibly find that Paul was leaning on the door of the lecture hall, looking for an instant explanation of what, exactly, she thought she was playing at. In a lay-by, switching her phone on for the first time since leaving the flat the afternoon before, she found – as she’d expected – that her inbox was completely filled with increasingly grumpy messages from Paul. She could track his thought processes through the tone of his words as they gradually changed with his realization that she wasn’t merely out, she had actually gone. She’d done the unthinkable and abandoned him. Girls didn’t do that to Paul Millington. He was one of those prize boys, the ultimate trophy date. When she’d first met him and he’d got her to admit she liked him, he’d joked, ‘And hey, what’s not to like? I’m rich, pretty and the shag from heaven.’ Except, of course, he hadn’t been joking.
    â€˜Where u babe – got food’ was the first missed text, timed just after eight the previous night. No prizes for guessing what he’d been doing before that. The only debatable point was which bar he’d been doing it in. Union bar or the Lion? Possibly both – that was the trouble with being a rich student – his drinking wasn’t curtailed by his bank balance. She