The Birds and the Bees Read online

  Five-foot-tall Milly Johnson is a half-Barnsley, half-Glaswegian writer of novels, greetings cards, poetry and shopping lists featuring gin and buns. When not writing she is either listening to Chris Isaak on a continuous loop, reading, talking, reminiscing about the good old days of wrestling, scoffing Yorkshire Puddings, planning to go to the gym, learning Italian or getting up the council’s nose about a Dodworth Road Pedestrian Crossing. She is also a founder member of BULLY OFF, a movement dedicated to stopping bullying in the workplace.

  She lives with her two sons and Hernan Crespo (the cat) across the road from her mam and dad in the middle of Barnsley, South Yorkshire. She is currently single and no one is in the least surprised.

  Her website is www.millyjohnson.com and available to visit totally free of charge and queues.

  The Birds and the Bees is her second novel.

  Also by Milly Johnson

  The Yorkshire Pudding Club

  First published in Great Britain by Pocket Books, 2008

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Milly Johnson, 2008

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  The right of Milly Johnson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  Africa House

  64–78 Kingsway

  London WC2B 6AH

  www.simonsays.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-10: 1-84739-482-5

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84739-482-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is dedicated to two Flowers of Scotland who are gone now and sadly, I will never see their likes again–my darling beloved great-aunts Elizabeth ‘Lizzie’ Lindie and Helen ‘Nelly’ Cunningham.

  Thank you for the love, the laughs and the Jaffa Cakes

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  The Birds and the Bees: As well as being the gentle way of explaining how creatures of nature ‘do business with one another’, The Birds and the Bees (Eun S’na Sheillein) is also a Scottish country dance originating from the hamlet of Bonniebride (Buinne-Bhrìghde) in the former county of Duffshire, famed locally for the large apiary and aviary that once existed there. It is an energetic reel in which couples complete a series of many cast-offs and changes of partner. It is considered extremely fortuitous to dance this at weddings, due to its connections with an ancient ritual dedicated to Creide, faery goddess of women who ruled over love magick and the search for the perfect mate.

  The Sassenach’s Guide to the Wonders of Gaelic, by Maggie Knockater.

  Chapter 1

  Making a cake for Danny’s school raffle was always going to be a messy business, given Stevie’s predilection for taste-testing the gloopy, raw mixture at one-minute intervals. Not to mention her impatience in waiting for the blades to stop whisking before she lifted them up, which resulted in her splattering herself and the kitchen with chocolate cream. Then, as usual, the bag of flour split and sent up a white nuclear cloud to descend over all flat surfaces. She really must get a proper flour container, she said to herself for the six-hundredth time, knowing, deep down, that she never would.

  With the cake rising nicely in the oven, she was just in the process of licking out the bowl and the big spoon when the doorbell rang. However, there was no need to panic and rush to clean herself up, Stevie decided, as it could only be her friend Catherine bringing Danny home after a post-school romp with her mob and the family mongrels. So she answered the door garnished with flour and enough cocoa on her face to pass an audition for the part of main slapstick stooge in a Christmas Panto.

  The trouble was that it wasn’t Catherine. It was, in fact, a big rough-looking man, approximately the size of Edinburgh Castle, with a long auburn ponytail, a wild red beard, a tribal-looking scar on his left cheek and Blutoesque tattooed arms which he used to push gently past Stevie in order to barge straight into her front room like the proverbial bull looking for her best crockery.

  ‘Whurrrissseee?’ came a broad Scottish burr that belonged on someone with their face painted half-blue and half-white, wearing a battle kilt and swinging an axe.

  ‘Excuse me, do you mind!’ said Stevie, torn between calling the police and reaching for some wet wipes. Tough decision but the wet wipes won on embarrassment points.

  ‘Whurrr’s Finch?’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Adam MacLean, Joanna MacLean’s man.’

  So this was the mythical creature Stevie had heard so much about then. This loud, hard intruder standing on her sheepskin rug was him. She gave his big muscular frame a quick once-over. And there she was, thinking Jo had been exaggerating when describing the control-freak nutter she was married to. No wonder Matthew was so sympathetic to her at work. Well, Stevie wasn’t going to be scared of him too and cower in a corner of her own home waiting for him to stick his whisky-fuelled boot in, like Jo did.

  In the same second, Adam MacLean had affirmed that this woman was, in fact, the greedy, lazy, rarely sober, slob thing that Jo had reported her to be. That’s why the kitchen behind her resembled Beirut on a bad day and why she herself looked as if she had been hit at close range by a chocolate bomb. On a binge, most likely. That’s what these women who sat at home did all day–eat cakes, drink sherry and watch Trisha. And read all those stupid Midnight Moon crappy romance books that seemed to be littered around the room, he noted. No wonder Jo had been so sympathetic to the poor bloke at work, about to be married to that.<
br />
  Stevie pulled herself up to her full height of five foot two.

  ‘Matthew is on business in Aberdeen.’

  ‘I think you’ll find he’s no’,’ said Adam grimly. ‘He’s in bloody Magalluf with ma Jo!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Stevie. Crikey, Matthew had said that the Scot was a possessive, unhinged psycho with the part of his head empty that should have had a brain in it, but she hadn’t realized to what degree. Poor Jo.

  ‘I thought you might say that,’ said Adam, reaching in his back pocket to bring out a crumpled piece of paper, which he stuck under Stevie’s nose. She pulled back, reclaiming some of her personal space, unfolded it impatiently and looked straight at a confirmation letter of bookings, hotel, flight numbers, today’s date and names: Sunshine Holidays, Hotel Flora, Magalluf, Mr Matthew Finch and Ms Joanna MacLean, 25 April for 7 days. It had their address in the top corner: 15 Blossom Lane, Dodmoor. She would have slumped to the chair had the doorbell not rung again.

  ‘Excuse me, it’s my son,’ said Stevie in a half-daze. She opened the door to find her best friend there, holding the hand of her small bespectacled boy. The half-daze expanded into a full daze as she noticed that Catherine’s normally auburn hair was now bright pink, like candyfloss. The only things that were missing were the stick, the plastic bag and a fair in the background.

  I’m going mad, thought Stevie, blinking twice, but no–the hair was still pink.

  Adam, seeing the guest there on the doorstep, was unsurprised. He noticed the cheap trollop hair. That she had friends who went out looking like that further confirmed his low opinion of the woman in whose house he was standing. And the boy was too old to be Finch’s if they had only been together a couple of years. Boy, she sure got around, didn’t she?

  ‘Hi, what a day, I’ve brought Dan—’ Catherine looked at her friend’s pale and chocolate-splodged face then spotted the man beyond her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Stevie. ‘Just got…something…to do.’

  Catherine did a quick assessment of the situation and bobbed down to the little fair-haired boy.

  ‘Danny, let’s go for a bun and some orange juice to the café round the corner for half an hour. Mummy’s just sorting something out.’

  ‘Cool!’ said Danny with a face-splitting grin. That was the cherry on the perfect-day cake for him.

  Catherine then turned to Stevie. ‘Go on, it’s fine. I’ll see you in a bit.’

  ‘Thanks, Cath,’ said Stevie, gulping back a big ball of emotion that she couldn’t quite put a name to.

  As Stevie came slowly back into the room, Adam said with a subdued cough, ‘I’m sorry, I never thought about your wee wan being here.’

  Stevie answered him with a glare loaded with loathing as she dropped to the sofa. Adam continued to tower over her like the Cairngorms as he continued, ‘I found that note this morning when she’d gone. To a health farm in Wales, so she said. That explained the bikini but didnae explain why she’d taken her passporrrt.’

  It was all too big to take in. Stevie hoped it was her brain playing tricks on her–early menopause or something–or that the raw eggs in the cake-mix had caused a rogue hallucination. Something which had become more of a possibility when she saw the state of Catherine’s hair.

  One part of her head was telling her that Matthew wouldn’t ever do anything like that. He’d known how hurt she was by what had happened to her in the past and had sworn that he would never put her through pain like that. Matthew was thoughtful and considerate. Matthew was the sort of man who befriended his work colleague, Jo MacLean, a woman desperately trying to muster the courage to leave her brute of a husband because he made her so unhappy–and you couldn’t fake those sorts of tears! She and Jo had been shopping together. She had even cooked Jo tea. And bought her a birthday present. Matthew wouldn’t have brought her home if there had been anything going on–NO! There was no question but that she trusted both of them implicitly. Jo had become a friend in her own right now. Jo was sweet and uncomplicated, and she was lovely to Danny. She had even been allowed to see the dress that was hanging up in the spare room. She and Jo had talked for hours and Jo would be a wedding guest when Stevie put it on and married Matthew in exactly thirty-nine days’ time.

  However, the other part of her brain governed the eyes, and those were reading over and over again the brutal evidence on the paper that she was still holding limply in her trembling hands.

  ‘You could have made this up yourself on a computer!’ Stevie blurted out.

  ‘Aye,’ said Adam MacLean, clicking his fingers in an ‘I am undone’ way. ‘Do you know, I have so much spare time I often do things like this. I really must stop it, it’s becoming a dreadful habit.’

  Okay, so she believed it wasn’t a fake. Then again, she knew Jo and she knew Matthew and she didn’t know this blaze-haired thug. Then again, Matthew had bought three pairs of shorts last week. For the honeymoon, he’d said. Then again, this was Matthew! Her head felt like a John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg Wimbledon final, batting arguments back and forth over a net of reason. Advantage, deuce, advantage, deuce…

  A light bulb went on in Stevie’s head.

  ‘I’ll ring him!’

  ‘You think he’s going tae answer, do ya?’ said the big Scot with a mocking laugh. Ignoring him, Stevie picked up the house phone and rang the short-dial for Matthew’s number. She waited, heard the dialling tone, and a second later a muffled version of the song, ‘Goodbye-ee’ started playing nearby. Stevie put the phone down, opened a drawer and retrieved the mobile tinkling out its mocking ringtone.

  ‘Cocky bstarrr’,’ said Adam with a low but nasty growl.

  ‘It’s from Oh What a Lovely War,’ explained Stevie. ‘It’s his favourite musical.’

  Those details didn’t help either of them. In fact, they made Adam want to not only smack Finch in the teeth but knock them all out as well and replant them in his skull.

  ‘Well anyway,’ Adam said, the fire of his fury now dropping to still hot but more quietly burning embers, ‘I thought you had the right tae know.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me,’ said Stevie numbly, which sounded a bit odd–but what did one say in these circumstances? What was the correct protocol after being informed that one’s fiancé was knocking off someone else’s wife in the middle of Majorca? Especially when still in a state of denial, despite all the hard evidence. Bravely, her mind was still manically sifting through the information available, looking for the loophole that would enable her to say, ‘Ah ha, you’ve got it all wrong,’ because it was there, she was sure of it. Matthew wouldn’t, he just wouldn’t do this. She knew him inside out. She knew that he wouldn’t, couldn’t be that cruel.

  Adam stroked his red beard like a small facial pet. ‘Right, I’ll go then.’

  ‘Yes, I think you should rather,’ said Stevie, and almost blindly showed him out without further comment. Then she shut the door hard on him and stood behind it, fighting the urge to slither down it and become an emotional mess on the floor.

  She went to the dresser where they kept their passports, hardly daring to open it in case Matthew’s wasn’t there. Of course it’s there, don’t be stupid, Stevie, she reprimanded herself, and opened the drawer with one swift, sure movement–but she couldn’t find it. Yet it was always there with her own, the pages of his around hers, as if they were spooning. Maybe he moved it. Maybe he threw it away because it was out of date. Maybe he needed to take it with him as a form of ID. Her head tried its best to rationalize the passport’s absence, but it couldn’t compete with the mighty guns of the information on the booking form.

  And then smoke started billowing out of the kitchen and set off the alarm, and it felt like all hell had been let loose in her head.

  Danny came home to find all the downstairs windows open in the hope of clearing the acrid smell of burnt baking, and his mum covered in even more flour, frenetically stirring up an anaemic and lumpy mixture in a bowl. S
tevie forced herself into jolly mode as he ran in to greet her. She grabbed him and picked him up and kissed him and asked him all the right questions: Did he have a nice time? Did he mind his manners? Did he throw the ball for Chico and Boot, like he was going to? Catherine noticed how desperately she seemed to bury her head into his hair and how tightly she cuddled him.

  ‘Is that my cake?’ asked the little boy with a much-wrinkled nose as he looked over his mum’s shoulder at the still-smoking charcoal lumps in the cake-tin.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Stevie, sniffing back the tears that his baby smell had brought rushing up her ducts. ‘I’m making yours now; it’s going to be very special.’

  ‘Go upstairs, love, and get your pyjamas on,’ said Catherine, sending him away with a light pat on his bottom. Then, when she was sure he was out of earshot, she said, ‘So who the hell was that?’

  ‘Adam MacLean.’

  ‘Ada…As in that Jo’s husband? What did he want?’

  ‘I’ll never get this cake done. I’ve only got one egg left.’

  ‘Sod the cake, Stevie,’ said Catherine to her friend, who looked as grey as the horrible stuff in the bowl. ‘Look, go and put the kettle on and I’ll tuck Danny up and read him a quick story. Then we’ll talk.’

  ‘I haven’t said good night to him.’

  ‘One night won’t kill either of you. He’s bushed, anyway. He’s been bouncing about since he came back from school and I bet he won’t even notice. I’ll be back in ten minutes max,’ and with that Catherine rushed upstairs, leaving Stevie feeling far more of a helpless child than her four year old currently slipping into his ‘Incredibles’ pyjamas and about to clean his teeth with Strawberry Sparkle toothpaste.

  She had not brewed the tea by the time Catherine returned. She was still stirring the limp liquid in the bowl, her head scrabbling for a solution to the cake problem because she couldn’t let Danny down. She had promised him a wonderful cake to take into class and she always kept her promises. Double always for her son.