The Birds and the Bees Read Free

It’s the least she can do after this,’ and she pointed upwards at her pink cloud of hair. Stevie gave none of her usual protests and just said a weary, ‘Thank you.’ Then Catherine tipped the mix down the sink. She was impressed. Stevie had actually managed to make it thinner than water.
    ‘Danny wanted to start calling Matt Daddy,’ said Stevie. ‘It was a good job I told him to wait until after the wedding.’
    ‘Look, Stevie, you need to talk to Matthew and find out what is going on. Will he ring you, to say he’s arrived in wherever he’s supposed to be–Inverness?’
    ‘Aberdeen. Maybe. He hasn’t been away before for any length of time so I don’t know what the usual sequence of events would be,’ Stevie shrugged. She didn’t know if he would ring or not. She didn’t know anything any more.
    ‘Of course he’ll ring,’ said Catherine heartily. Every man was innocent until proven guilty. Except Mick, who should have been hung, drawn and quartered and his knackers cut off before he’d even got to trial. Although she shouldn’t think ill of the dead.
    ‘What if it’s true? What do I do?’ said Stevie, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. She’d panicked last time and it had made her lose her grip, sent her into such a downward spiral of emotional quicksand that she thought she was destined to drown in it. Until Matthew held out his hand and offered her the lifeline of his love.
    And what about Danny? This was the only dad he’d ever known. He would lose two men in his life who had gone for the title and then bogged off before the crown was on their heads. What sort of damage would that do to his little heart? She was going through partners faster than Henry VIII, and look how his kids turned out. At that thought, Stevie caved into the huge pressure of tears and Catherine, her future chief bridesmaid, came over to give her a big hug, because that was easier than trying to work out what the hell to say to give any comfort.
    ‘I don’t know what you’ll do, love. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, eh? Look, pass me the phone. I’ll ring Eddie and tell him I’m staying with you tonight.’
    ‘No, I’m okay,’ said Stevie, pulling away and wiping madly at her eyes. ‘I need to think straight, and I can do that better on my own. I’ll just cry if you’re here and I really don’t want to do that. I’ll be fine. You go–you’ve got three hundred kids and a zoo to sort out.’
    ‘Cheeky!’ said Catherine, smiling softly.
    ‘Lucky you, though,’ said Stevie.
    ‘I can’t leave you,’ said Catherine. ‘Come home with me. You and Danny.’
    ‘Honestly, I’d rather be alone.’
    ‘Well, look,’ said Catherine, when she was fullyconvinced that Stevie really did want that and wasn’t being her usual overly independent self, ‘I’ll go and sort out this cake for Danny and I’ll be round first thing in the morning.’ She pre-empted the little protest that she saw coming, ‘And no, it isn’t a problem, before you start. My daughter owes me big time.’
    After extracting another fifty affirmations that Stevie would ring her immediately if she felt out of her depth and wanted to change her mind about coming over, Catherine went on her way back to her huge brood to tackle an urgent hair repair and an emergency baking project. Making a cake for her godson was the least she could do after breaking the vow she had made to herself: never to let another dickhead break his mother’s heart.
     
    The phone rang about ten minutes after Catherine had gone; it showed ‘number withheld’ on the caller display unit. Knowing instinctively who it would be, Stevie’s hand came out to pick it up. Then, realizing she couldn’t trust herself to act ‘normal’, she overrode the compulsion to speak to him, collapse into uncontrolled tears and beg him to come home. Instead, she let the answerphone handle it. It was, as she knew it would be, Matthew, her gorgeous tall fiancé with