The Wish List by Jane Costello Page B

and only misdemeanour.’
    Cally’s little boy was the result of the briefest of liaisons (four hours from start to finish) that she had with a guy called Pete, whom she met in a bar nearly three years ago when she
and I were on a night out in Manchester.
    He was tall but otherwise unremarkable, with blond hair, a faint Mancunian accent and, presumably, a soft spot for redheads with generous curves. Cally last set eyes on him the same night she
met him. She has no idea where he is, and he has no idea that Zachary exists.
    ‘Let me ask an indelicate question,’ Cally continues. ‘Did you
feel
like you’d had sex?
Down there
, I mean. You know . . . gynaecologically
speaking.’
    For a reformed nymphomaniac, Cally can be surprisingly coy.
    I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. I was asking myself the same on the way to the station and . . . sometimes I convinced myself I couldn’t feel anything . . . other times I
definitely could.’
    ‘Do you know who this person is?’
    ‘The man I slept with? No idea. His name was Mike. No – Matt.’
    Marianne, clearly, does not have a clue about all this. As far as my sister’s concerned, I got in a taxi immediately after she did; there’s no way I’m prepared to discuss this
with her. It was bad enough when I was half cut and convinced I was right.
    ‘You didn’t get his number?’ Cally asks.
    ‘No – and there’s no way I’d contact him anyway.’
    ‘So knocking at his door is out of the question?’
    ‘I’m not turning up on his doorstep, like a double-glazing salesman, to say, “Why, hello again. Could you possibly disclose whether you and I exchanged bodily fluids at the
weekend?”’
    ‘Then all you can do is try to relax – and get yourself checked out.’
    ‘The incubation period for HIV is three months, chlamydia is three weeks and gonorrhoea a month. So, basically, I’ll be in purgatory for the foreseeable future.’
    She sighs. ‘Emma – I need to run. I was due to be in a monthly forecast meeting with my boss three minutes ago. But do me a favour and stay off those websites, won’t
you?’
    I head back into the office, unable to focus on anything except how utterly rubbish
being reckless
is, when I bump into Perry on the stairs.
    ‘Just the gal! I’ve got a brilliant idea I want you to work up. You’ll love it. It’s about a bunch of kids and a dog who travel round in an old van trying to solve spooky
mysteries. What do you think?’

Chapter 14
    I’m opening the door to Asha that night when I spot somebody coming out of Rita’s old flat with a clipboard. Stacey mentioned she’d heard a survey was being
done today. I watch the man, who’s in his fifties and balding, head to his Micra and get in, and I feel a shudder of resentment. To me, that apartment will always be Rita’s, and I feel
inexplicably apprehensive about her replacement.
    I close the door and go to the kitchen, where Asha has flicked on the kettle. ‘How are you?’ she asks.
    ‘Apart from itchy?’
    ‘You could be imagining it,’ she offers. ‘Don’t give yourself too much of a hard time, Emma. Nobody can blame you for wanting a bit of action with the opposite sex. I was
single for over a year before I met Toby and I was nearly climbing the walls.’
    We both pause, taking in her last sentence and the fact that Asha clearly doesn’t consider herself ‘single’ any longer, despite the circumstances.
    ‘Do you think he’ll leave his wife?’ I ask tentatively.
    ‘We’ve discussed it, but I’m trying not to even think about that at the moment,’ Asha says, lowering her head, ‘as certain as I am that I’m a symptom, rather
than a cause, of the marriage breakdown.’
    Toby and his wife married after she accidentally fell pregnant at university only four months after they’d met
.
From what Asha’s told me, it was a match made in hell at the
beginning and hasn’t improved much since.
    ‘I still feel
terrible
about this situation, though,’