The Birds and the Bees Read Free Page B

asked Eddie.
    ‘Just the once,’ said Catherine. ‘I must admit I’d been curious when Stevie started talking about her and I was dying to see her and check her out. Then we bumped into her in town one day.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘She seemed nice and friendly enough. A little too nice, if you know what I mean.’
    ‘How “too nice”?’ asked Eddie, offering her a bite of his Jaffa Cake.
    ‘Well, when she spotted Stevie she came rushing over as if she’d been a long-lost relative she hadn’t seen for twenty years. It crossed my mind that it was a bit over the top, but then, given all that she had been going through and how kind Matthew and Stevie had been to her, maybe she really was that pleased to see her. That’s what I thought at the time, anyway.’
    ‘What’s she look like?’
    ‘Tall, slim, long dark hair, big brown eyes. Very, very pretty.’ Catherine suddenly realized that she wouldn’t have liked a vulnerable Jo MacLean anywhere near Eddie, had the roles been reversed. What’s more, for all the gushing she had done over Stevie, Catherine hadn’t noticed a lot of warmth in Jo MacLean’s eyes.
    ‘It’s a flaming weird business,’ said Eddie, having a long gulp of tea. ‘I reckon he’s having a mid-life crisis and he’ll be back.’
    Catherine looked over at him and smiled. Brad Pitt he wasn’t, but she loved the bones of her big, eighteen-stone husband with the Worzel Gummidge hairdo. Never once had she thought he would be unfaithful to her, but after the shocker of today, she wondered if anyone really knew their partners as well as they thought they did. Her own nice cosy world felt a little rocked too.
    Eddie saw that look in her eye and laughed. ‘Oy, you! Don’t be tarring us all with the same brush,’ he warned with a twinkle in his soft, hazel eyes.
    ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Catherine unconvincingly.
    ‘Yes, you do, you lying little bugger.’ He tweaked her nose.
    ‘Well, I think I’ll have you electronically tagged just to be on the safe side,’ said Catherine, but it only sounded like half a joke.
    ‘It’s more likely you’d leave me,’ said Eddie. ‘I’m hardly chuffing Hugh Grant, am I?’
    ‘I don’t like chuffing Hugh Grant,’ Catherine told him. ‘Well, I do to watch, but I wouldn’t want to snog him.’
    ‘I wouldn’t leave you, babe,’ said Eddie, tilting her face up towards his and giving her a kiss on her lips that still made something deep within her tingle. He smelt of soap and Fahrenheit aftershave and home.
    ‘Ugh, gross,’ said the cake-baking Goth in the background.
    ‘Mind your own business, Morticia,’ commanded Eddie over his shoulder, before turning back to his wife. ‘And you, drink your tea and try to stop worrying about things you can do nothing about.’
    That was easier said than done because Catherine felt that she had let her friend down in a terrible way. It was impossible for this to have happened. NO ONE got through Catherine’s hair-trigger defence system for Stevie. She would never let the woman she was closer to than her own sisters go through all that crap again. Or so she had promised herself.
    ‘Well, all I can say is, that’s men for you!’ said seventeen-year-old Kate with a heavy sigh of experience. She drifted from the room like a dramatic black plume of smoke, leaving Eddie and Catherine crippled from the effort of keeping in a bout of laughter that, at that moment, was so very well-needed.

Chapter 3
    When Adam left Stevie’s house he got into his very nice car and took a minute to study the medium-sized detached house of his love rival. Boring, neat enough outside but nothing spectacular, how he’d always imagined Matthew Finch to be from the way Jo had described him. That was, until he’d seen a framed photo on the dresser (next to another ridiculous Midnight Moon book) of the frumpy (most likely bottle) blonde, lumpy girlfriend snuggling up to a clean-shaven Prince Charming type: dark hair, dark