Mistress by Agreement

She was conscious of a screaming toddler to the left of her who had just flung orange juice all over its mother, and two teenagers in the corner who were giggling at a magazine they had propped between them.

Something as momentous as their breaking up shouldn’t happen in such mundane surroundings surely? she thought dazedly.

He looked at her one last time but he didn’t speak again, merely giving her a curt nod and turning away, walking with calm, measured steps out of the restaurant and out of her life. And she let him go.

‘You’ve done what?’

Rosalie winced at the pitch of Beth’s voice. ‘I’ve split with Kingsley,’ she repeated flatly. ‘It’s over.’

It was Sunday afternoon and she was sitting in Beth’s garden engulfed in the perfume of roses, honeysuckle and a hundred and one other scents from the profuse blooms adorning every nook and cranny, not to mention the flowerbeds. It was hot, it was very hot and a storm was imminent, but in spite of the weather Beth had cooked a big Sunday roast with all the trimmings, which Rosalie had ploughed through as best she could, considering every mouthful felt as though it would choke her. She hadn’t slept a wink all night and had been prowling the flat at four in the morning crying her eyes out.

‘But he adored you, anyone could see that,’ Beth said agitatedly. ‘Don’t tell me another woman hooked him? I don’t believe it.’

‘You don’t have to, it didn’t happen like that,’ Rosalie said carefully. ‘We just felt it wasn’t right, that’s all.’

‘We?’ Beth looked at Rosalie’s puffy eyes. ‘The rotten, two-timing rat.’

‘Beth, I promise you, Kingsley didn’t do anything wrong,’ Rosalie protested. ‘There’s no other woman, believe me.’ Not yet anyway. ‘It was just getting a bit…serious, that’s all.’

‘Oh, Lee.’ Beth’s voice dropped in horror. ‘You didn’t.’

‘Didn’t what?’ Rosalie said uncomfortably.

‘Freeze him out? Not Kingsley. Not the most gorgeous man you’re ever likely to meet.’ There was a slight pause, and then Beth said, ‘You did, didn’t you? And you’re regretting it already.’

For the first time Rosalie could understand why Beth’s children had been eager to escape the nest as soon as they could. There was something terribly annoying about someone who was always right.

‘I’m not regretting it, not really,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s for the best in the long run. He wanted more than I could give.’

‘Sex without any commitment? Typical man. Is that it?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘You to move in with him? Bad mistake. You lose your independence and he keeps his. I can see—’

‘Beth.’ She was trying very hard to be patient. ‘He wanted to—’ She stopped. She didn’t know how to put this. ‘He was talking marriage,’ she said at last.

‘No…’ It was a long drawn-out gasp. ‘And you said no? Lee, are you mad?’

Perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea to come here today, but she couldn’t have faced any of her friends feeling the way she did, and staying brooding in the flat just hadn’t been an option.

‘Probably.’ She didn’t smile. ‘Very probably. He thinks I am, anyway. It wasn’t an…amicable parting.’ Her voice had quivered on the last words.

‘Oh, baby.’ Beth did what she did best and turned mother earth, springing up and kneeling down beside Rosalie’s chair and hugging her tight.

It started an avalanche of tears that shocked them both and caused George, who had just wandered out from his study for a few moments, to beat a hasty retreat back indoors.

Over several glasses of Beth’s iced lemonade liberally laced with lime and crushed raspberries, Rosalie told Beth the whole story throughout the sticky afternoon, discussing her fears and doubts for the second time in as many days but this time with someone who had no axe to grind. They were no nearer a solution when the heat of the day had gone and evening shadows spangled the slanting sunlight, and Rosalie couldn’t honestly say she felt better for discussing the whole sorry mess, but, nevertheless, she was glad she had come to see her aunt. It had been hard to talk about Miles and exactly what had happened in their marriage, but strangely not as hard as she’d expected, perhaps because telling Kingsley had broken some mental barrier that had been in place before.

‘I always loathed him, but then you know that,’ Beth said of Miles. ‘In all the time you were with him we hardly saw anything of you. It was all his friends, his interests, wasn’t it?’

‘I guess so.’ Rosalie nodded. In that way Miles had been like her father, although her father’s motive had sprung from a misguided, warped jealousy born of love, and Miles’s had been pure selfishness. ‘I didn’t notice it at first as all our friends were mutual.’

‘Kingsley isn’t like him, Lee. You do know that, don’t you?’ Beth said earnestly as they made their goodbyes in the cool of the evening. ‘He wouldn’t use force or be violent. I know it.’

She nodded. ‘I know it too, it’s not that. But…’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I think I’m too scared by marriage to ever want to take a chance again, and then other times over the last twenty-four hour

s I’m almost picking up the phone to try and contact him and tell him I need him. How’s that for inconsistency?’