Always Mr. Wrong by Joanne Rawson

 
    Always Mr.
Wrong
     
    Tonight was all about me, Clare Darby, moving
on. Well, actually, it was all about my best friend Jess’s cheese
and wine party. Her Ladies Circle was raising money for sick
children. Or was it animals? I’m not sure which. To be honest I
hadn’t taken much notice when Jess invited me. All I could think
about was how, although it had been eight months since my divorce,
it had been over a year since I’d got myself dressed up, gone out
and engaged in adult conversation.
    For weeks now I had been feeling restless. I
couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I had a good job as a midwife
at St. Andrews teaching hospital. Twice a week I went to the gym
with my girlfriends to Tums and Bums. Afterwards, sweaty and
knackered, we would indulge in a couple of glasses of wine and
gossip at the bar next door. My finances were in order; I had a
wonderful home, a perfect daughter, and a caring family. So what in
the world was wrong with me?
    Then two weeks ago, even though it was the
middle of October, my seven-year-old daughter, Olivia, pondered
over her Christmas letter to Santa. For a seven-year-old, she is
very methodical, a chromosome she has inherited from her father.
Unfortunately, her father’s meticulous discipline ceased when it
came to fidelity. Before she wrote her letter she made two lists,
presents she desperately wanted and presents she would like, but
not imperative. Finally, lists cross-checked and narrowed down to
one main present and a handful of smaller ones, she asked what I
really wanted for Christmas. She would like to add it to her
letter.
    “You never ask Santa for anything, Mummy.
What would you really like most?”
    The answer shone as bright as the star of
Bethlehem. I was almost positive as I contemplated my answer the
Angel Gabrielle manifested in front of my dining room window,
telling me to go forth, and seek, but how could I tell my
seven-year-old that what Mummy really wanted was a man. More
importantly...to get laid?
    It all came to a head just before Christmas
last year when Phil, my then husband, a Detective Inspector for the
North London Metropolitan Police, came home unusually early one
Friday night. As he went straight upstairs, I should have known as
I stood in the kitchen and heard him moving around in our bedroom
and then appeared a while later with a suitcase in his hand, it
wasn’t full of dirty laundry for the laundrette. I’d been
suspicious for months that his relationship with his partner, the
stunning Detective Sargent Maria Stephanopoulos, was more than
professional. A typical Greek goddess, all olive skin, flowing dark
hair, legs up to her armpits and tits so perky that every man, even
the criminals, couldn’t take their eyes off them. To be honest,
when I think back, the last seven years of our eight-year marriage
had been like skating on a lake of thin ice, even before Maria. How
many times had Phil assured me after each affair it was purely a
fling, it would never happen again. I’d lost count of how many
lonely sleepless nights I’d lain in bed wondering when the pressure
of the three people in our marriage would be too much, and the lake
would finally crack.
    So it came as no big surprise to find divorce
top of Phil’s Christmas list that year.
    * * * *
    I’d been so up for tonight. As I got myself
ready, I’d lashed on another layer of mascara that, if the TV ads
were correct, I would have men mesmerized as soon as I walked into
the room. My two nights a week at Tums and Bums had rid me of the
spare tire I had been lugging around with me for the last seven
years after having Olivia. Juggling Atkins, the F Plan diet and the
cabbage diet—one diet never seemed to have enough food—had proved
to be worth all the pain and hunger as I slipped into my
figure-hugging cocktail dress that hadn’t seen any excitement since
my twenty-eighth birthday eight years ago. Come to think of it,
neither had I.
    Despite all my efforts there wasn’t a chance
in