Some Like it Hot

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Published 2011

  by Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle,

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  Email: poolbeg@poolbeg.com

  © Amanda Brobyn 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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  Copyright for typesetting, layout, design

  © Poolbeg Press Ltd.

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

  ISBN 978-1-84223-489-1

  eISBN 978-1-84223-533-1

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Typeset by Patricia Hope in Sabon 11/14.5

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY'

  www.poolbeg.com

  About the Author

  Liverpool-born Amanda Brobyn lives in Northern Ireland with her husband and two young children.

  Amanda started out as a scriptwriter before moving on to become a successful novelist. In December 2010, she graduated with an MA in Film & Television Production, Management & Policy from the University of Ulster. Some Like It Hot has already been written as a television series and the pilot episode is currently being circulated to production companies in the UK and Ireland.

  Amanda’s debut novel, Crystal Balls, was also published by Poolbeg.

  Acknowledgements

  A huge thank-you firstly to the wonderfully talented Cathy Kelly for reading Some Like It Hot and for being so effortlessly virtuous. Thanks a million, Cathy.

  Thanks to my first-draft readers, my European travelling companion BBC journalist Maggie Taggart, and Karen Walsh who has been my best friend for more years than I care to admit!

  To the entire team at Poolbeg Press who I drive crazy with my endless requests and hare-brain ideas – thank you! To Gaye Shortland, my wonderful editor who always seems to know best, much to my annoyance!

  Thank you so much to Richard Crawford who worked with me on this piece as a television series. Let’s hope it makes it on to the box soon, Richard.

  Thanks to my mum Annie, Barbara and Val who were the original inspiration behind the book. It was they who formed ‘The Curry Club’ and their regular gatherings provided the premise for the plot. Cheers, ladies!

  Thanks to my own friends who have also played ‘The Curry Club’ game with me, providing with me with material and insight: Romilly Moore, Sue Begley, Karen Brobyn (sister-in-law), Claire Noble, Vivienne Walsh and Agnes Fee. Thanks for the drunken nights and for giving us a spicy side order of your own private lives!

  Thanks to Cyril and Doris, my in-laws, for cheering me on and for editing my website!

  Thanks to my mum and dad for being so amazing that it brings a lump to my throat and to my sister Jo Valentine who I would literally walk over hot coals for. I love you so much, Jo. Thanks to my niece, Annabel Star Valentine, who lost sleep over trying to come up with a new title for what was formerly The Curry Club – I will remember your offer of Princesses, Annabel. Thank you.

  Lastly, because you simply are the best, to Stephen, my husband. This year has been extremely difficult for us, but life is all about the future and I can’t wait to spend mine with you, always, and our breathtakingly beautiful children, Josh and Harriet. ‘Wow’ is all I can say, the rest I can only feel, and sometimes it hurts because I love you all so very much.

  Finally, thanks to life for bringing us into it and for giving us the skill and determination to dodge the fireballs and to develop a layer of heat resistance. As human beings, we’re a pretty amazing species, capable of so much in the face of adversity and yet incapable of allowing the full magnitude of ourselves to be released, to be freed and to simply be what we are meant to be.

  For my incredible parents, Annie and Martin. This one’s for you.

  Contents

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  The room looked cloned from a magazine illustration. Glossy and dense, it reeked of money. It was perfection, just like its owner.

  Jude sat elegantly at the head of the table like a ship’s figurehead, her delicate bone structure reminiscent of a wooden carving of a Greek goddess set for sail, head held high at the stern of a ship, watching the waves and praying deep into the ocean for the gods of the sea to make a safe passage.

  At least that is how she looked until she unwrapped the tightly folded piece of paper. She looked a lot paler after she had read its contents. She read the note again and looked up nervously, her green eyes uncertain for once.

  “Come on, Jude! What does it say?” Sophie’s curiosity got the better of her. Patience was not a virtue of Sophie’s. In fact, virtue was not a word in Sophie’s world – period.

  Jude put the paper face down on the glass table. Her hands wobbled noticeably. “It says . . .” She paused to collect herself. “Forgive me for the language but it says ‘Your husband is shagging someone around this table. Take a close look at who your friends are.’”

  A loud gasp escaped from Helena’s open mouth.

  “No way!” Sophie cried. “Not one of us! It couldn’t possibly be true.” Her face contorted with repugnance. “Never mind not one of us, I should have said not one of them! I’ve seen your husbands and you can keep them!” She giggled lighheartedly but you could cut the air with a knife such was the tension.

  Jude picked up the paper and passed it around. She could say nothing more.

  As usual the question was typed in Arial and font size twelve. It could have been from any one of the women – there was nothing distinctive about it. It was the same-sized slip of paper they used every week and was folded in the way stated in the club’s constitution. But it certainly wasn’t the slip she had put in, which meant that if the statement were true it might well be her husband it was referring to.

  Jude began to cast her mind over Clive’s behaviour of late until she caught herself. They were happily married. He adored her and she him and they had been childhood sweethearts, well, more like teenage really as they met during university. Clive was in the final year of his Law degree and she was a fresher studying a BA in Interior Design. It was love at first sight for her and lust at first sight for him. Nothing had changed.

  “But it has to be true,” Roni snapped, scanning the group suspiciously. “Why put it in otherwise? Everyone knows the rules of the Curry Club – you put in a question for discussion . . .” she paused
for dramatic effect, “or a statement which you know to be true.” Her emphasis on the know was such that she captured everybody’s attention. For once.

  Kath shook her head and tried to digest the contents. She turned the slip of paper every which way possible in an attempt to find a clue as to its owner – even though that was against the rules – but the paper looked like every other that had been pulled from the Curry Club dish, a clone of all the other slips which had been drawn out since the club began.

  But none before had matched the destructiveness of today’s statement.

  Jude sipped thoughtfully from a long-stemmed champagne flute, leaving no mark on its paper-thin curved lip as she set it back down in regal style.

  In contrast Kath took a long greedy gulp of red wine, drinking it like she had stumbled across a vineyard in the middle of the desert.

  “You know, ladies, this statement has been put to the Club so we must follow the rules and discuss it.” Jude looked somewhat confused. “Although it does seem to be a rather paradoxical statement . . .”

  “Speak English, woman!” Kath interrupted.

  Kath was a fitness freak with an in-depth knowledge of human anatomy but her vocabulary was severely limited, unless of course there was any reference to alcohol where she suddenly turned into an all-round genius and general know-all regardless of word-length, language or pronunciation. And she was right every time. If there was a language of love, then there was a language of drink and Kath knew everything there was to know about it. She spoke it universally.

  “Sorry, Kath, it means perplexing, a little bewildering.”

  Kath downed the entire contents of her glass as she took in the English-language lesson while the others watched in amazement. For a health fanatic she certainly did appear to drink excessively but it seemed that she was the only person not to notice it.

  “You mean it’s absolute bollocks, Jude,” she said. “Someone is talking out of their arse.”

  A collective nodding of heads followed. Kath had a point. Though, on the other hand, there was one person around the table who knew differently – at least she thought she did. She wouldn’t have been prepared to cause such a stir if she hadn’t her facts right. Would she?

  “Okay, here goes.” Sophie sat up bold and confident, her bronzed skin revealing a little too much breast. She caught Roni glancing down at her ampleness and out of badness crossed her arms under her breasts, hoisting them further north. “I know we’re not supposed to guess . . . but, having said that, I can’t help but wonder about the use of the word shagging.”

  A disgusted tut came from Roni’s direction.

  “I use the word shagging and perhaps one more of you at a push,” Sophie went on, “but there are clearly more ladylike individuals around this table who wouldn’t use that word if their lives depended on it.” She smiled kindly at Jude, clearly offering her the compliment. “Plus, unless whoever he is and one of us were actually caught in action, then the claim is not only without evidence but it is quite possibly a knee-jerk reaction to something which may be entirely innocent.”

  “You’re not allowed to narrow it down, Sophie. And the use of the word shagging might just be to disguise the owner’s identity,” Helena applied logically.

  Kath clasped her empty wineglass tightly. The multicoloured beads on her wrist jangled in tune to those layered around her neck as she threw her fiery red hair back from her gypsy-green eyes. Like Kath herself, her hair had a mind of its own and it too was unpredictable.

  “Let’s stop guessing, it goes against everything we want this club to be about. Anonymity. Pure and simple.” Kath refilled her glass, oblivious to the other empty glasses surrounding her.

  An affronted Jude leapt from her seat, taking up her role as perfect hostess by topping up the ladies’ glasses. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry, ladies, the distraction seemed to take my manners with it.”

  “Well, I think the wording on the slip counts me out,” Helena said, preening.

  “In what sense?” said Sophie.

  “Well, I don’t have a husband so at least I know Nathan’s not shagging any of you!” Helena chuckled in apparent relief.

  “Perhaps not but is he shagging you?” Sophie was quick off the mark. “I’ve only ever seen him ruffle your hair like some sort of family pet.”

  Helena cast Sophie an unforgiving dagger but she knew the words rang true. Nathan was so immersed in his work that he had no time for passion. His passion was wrapped up with self-absorbed paper and secured tightly with a bow of rope. A rope which Sophie secretly hoped he would use to hang himself with. The bloke was nothing but a loser, and she was still convinced he was gay. She should know. She worked with enough of them. Also, she knew Helena well. They’d been friends since their schooldays and she also knew how much better she could do than stay with that loser. Nathan was a loser with a capital L.

  “I think we need to stay on the subject, Sophie,” said Jude, “until we have reached a conclusion, although I’m not sure what more I can add apart from a gut feeling that someone has made a mistake on this one.”

  Roni glanced down at her diamond-studded Rolex. Its mother-of-pearl face glistened in the candlelit room. “Well, someone here seems to think they have sufficient evidence to bring it up,” she preached to the room, excited by the tension and determined to add to it. Anything to brighten up her dull existence. “So I suggest you be vigilant, ladies, and watch your husbands like hawks.”

  There was a bitter tone attached to Roni’s statement and both Jude and Sophie noticed it.

  “That’s all very well, Veronica.” Sophie was enjoying herself immensely. Herself and Roni rarely saw eye to eye. “And good advice . . . but while they’re watching their husbands . . . who will be watching yours?”

  Sophie preened herself in the mirror opposite, partly for vanity and partly because she couldn’t stand the snobbery and poker-like mannerisms of Roni and she knew only too well that her own beautiful exterior turned Roni a shade of shamrock green. She made it her business to provoke Roni at every opportunity. “You know, Roni, it might be that it’s your Peter shagging one of us.”

  An immediate silence cocooned the room, trapping it with a fierce tension fuelled by curiosity and cynicism.

  Sometimes, Sophie Kane could be such a bitch.

  Darren stood before the wrought-iron gates of The Tudors and pressed the intercom once more. He waited patiently, watching as smoke from the exhaust of his clapped-out Fiesta danced around like a mini-typhoon, swirling in fast-moving circles before dispersing into a climax of nothingness. The engine rolled and chugged, gasping for breath. The tin machine was on its last legs but it was all he could afford, for now anyway. He had his hopes, he always did even as a child, but for him it was all about achievement and civic contribution – materialism was way down the list. This house was certainly out of his league but he didn’t care. Money meant nothing to him, it was a means to an end.

  “Hello?” a hoarse voice emitted through the intercom.

  Darren leant forward to speak into it. He hated those damned things. What use was a stunning house if it was hidden from view? In his mind he compared it to a fine wine, too fine for opening. Pointless.

  But that was how Veronica Smyth liked her life to be. Hidden from view and shared when it suited.

  “Good morning, Mrs Smyth. I believe you are expecting me?”

  He stood back from the speaker, observing the mansion-sized house. It was the size of his old campus block at university. His eyes scanned its Tudor-styled facade, taking in its decorative half-timbering and its distinct mediaeval flavour. He counted the number of window frames, some small and square, others tall and narrow but plenty of them and none matching the other. There was nothing symmetrical about this house. It was busy, uncoordinated and beamed to within an inch of its life.

  Darren smiled as he felt an immediate attachment to its mismatched exterior with its unusual charm and its dare-to-be-different air in Cheshir
e’s millionaires’ row.

  Roni peered through the bedroom curtains, catching sight of the new arrival. She pressed the remote-controlled key-fob and watched as the heavy gates opened with an incongruous action, almost feather-weight. She closed them shut once the red rusty heap had crossed the threshold. No-one else need bother her today. She was a busy woman.

  She stared at the clock on the white antique bedside table: she had overslept. Damn Kath and that last cocktail, but the problem was that you simply couldn’t say no to her. She was a party waiting to happen, that girl, and in a strange sort of way Roni envied that about her. She was vivacious and yet serious in equal doses, whereas Roni was just serious. Or stuck-up, some might say. She knew for sure that was exactly the opinion of Sophie Kane – then again Sophie was a blonde, tanned bimbo like all hairdressers. What the hell did she know about class?

  A flustered, hungover Roni, who had dressed in the first top and leisure-pants that had come to hand, swung open the front door. At five-foot-two she was a midget compared with Darren. Her eyes met with his chest which was covered in a tight-fitting T-shirt and her head travelled north as she took in the youthfulness of his toned physique, stopping at his face which was smiling broadly. His body was more mature than his teenage face which was boyishly handsome with a post-adolescent clearing of acne, barely there yet still noticeable from close proximity.

  Her anxiety and thumping head were instantaneously erased from memory and she felt herself infected by his young charm and compelling grin. She continued to stare at him, smiling uncharacteristically for this time in the morning. Smiling uncharactistically.

  By now most of her housework would usually be done and the home would be under her complete control, hoovered, polished and mopped to precision. Not this morning however. Her domestic habits often bewildered Peter who could never understand why his wife refused to bring in a daily help. Money was in abundance but for some unknown reason Roni insisted that no-one could clean as well as she could. She had graduated in ‘domesticology’ she told him. But the truth was that Roni was opposed to having strangers in her home. She was a prisoner in her own premises, hiding behind those electric gates and, perversely, it suited her down to the ground. She kept in what was hers and shut out the rest of the world.