The Ex-Wives by Deborah Moggach

welcomes her in. He shows no sign of leaving, nor does he show her the child she’s supposed to be looking after. Finally she asks him,
Where’s the baby?
He smiles and replies:
L’enfant, c’est moi
. That’s Buffy for you.’
    Celeste had sat down on the Eames chair. She was listening intently. What an odd little thing she was, with that direct gaze! Penny was starting to enjoy this. Colin never asked about Buffy. He was either too painfully jealous of her past, or else totally uninterested. She hoped it was the former, of course, but she had her suspicions. It was nice to talk to such an eager listener. She missed the rambling, chatty conversations of her previous life.
    She settled into the sofa, remembering the first time she had met Buffy. It had been on that flight from L.A. She had been interviewing a particularly moronic film starlet and was feeling homesick for England. Californians, she had decided, all had irony bypasses. Then along came this big, twinkly man who had made her laugh.
    â€˜He’s older than me,’ she said. ‘Our first date was going to the opticians to get a new prescription for his glasses.’ She remembered the dinner afterwards,followed by the invitation to try out his Rest Assured Support Mattress – such an unusual seduction line that she had gone along with it. The experience had been quite erotic actually, in a cosy sort of way. ‘I thought older meant wiser, ho ho. Just because he’d seen the original production of
French Without Tears
. Probably
been
in it, for all I know. He moved in a different world to me, that was part of the attraction I suppose. He had a Past.’
    â€˜What sort of past?’
    â€˜The usual sort. In other words, lots of mess. He lived in the most indescribable pigsty, till I came along. The first time I got into bed with him, I found a whole piece of toast in it.’
    â€˜In the bed?’
    She nodded. ‘With marmalade on it. The lazy slob. Terribly unfit – all that smoking and drinking, he comes from the generation when everybody did, only he kept on at it. He once acted out Erich Von Stroheim being the butler in that Greta Garbo film,
As You Desire Me,
you ever seen it?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜I hadn’t, then. Well, he was showing me how Erich Thingy did it, with hardly any movements – just a flick of the wrist, a flicker of the eyes. And afterwards he was panting away as if he’d run in the Olympics.’
    â€˜Did you love him?’
    Penny paused. ‘I suppose so.’ She smiled. ‘Women like him because he’s interested in the same sort of things they are. Gossiping. Sitting around talking about people.’ Buffy had said that his ideal life would be to live in a brothel as a sort of mascot, like Toulouse Lautrec but bigger, watching the girls dressing up and hearing them nattering about their clients. Or else to be a salesman in the Harvey Nichols lingerie department. He loved making up scenarios for himself.
    Her mother had adored him. She still did. Her mother thought Penny was mad, leaving him, but then she didn’t have to live with him did she? Hauling him out of the boozer at four in the afternoon, making excuses on the phone to furious producers, having his horrible dog tripping her up and weeing on the carpet.
    â€˜He had this revolting little dog which looked like a hairpiece – an incontinent hairpiece. He was a terrible driver too. Weaving all over the road. When it was dusk he’d start flashing his lights at the other drivers, the belligerent bugger, and then he’d find he hadn’t put his own lights on in the first place. Typical Buffy. Or he’d try to flash them and squirt his own windscreen instead.’
    â€˜You left him because he was a bad driver?’
    â€˜No, no. I left him because I fell in love with Colin.’
    â€˜What happened?’
    Penny looked at her. She was leaning forward, her face pale