GOTCHA
By Janice Day
‘Isn’t there supposed to be an apostrophe in Hallowe’en?’ I said, as we gazed up at the banner in the Church Hall.
‘Oh dear,’ said Cathy, the Vicar’s wife. ‘Shall I go and check?’
‘Where?’ said Julie, the tart.
‘In the dictionary,’ said Cathy, and set off for The Vicarage.
Julie sniggered as she wobbled down the ladder in her high heels. She was the youngest and prettiest of us, but not very bright. In fact, she was quite a few sandwiches short of a lunchbox.
‘Silly old goat,’ she said, ‘I meant “Where in the word!”’
‘”Where in the word?”’ I said, sarcastically. ‘Ooh, let’s see, between the “H” and the “Alloween?” What would that be short for? “Hairy Arse Loween?”’
Julie’s eyes goggled at me. I knew exactly what she was thinking. She’d be wondering what had come over the boss’s wife. Prissy Debbie saying “hairy arse?” Whatever next? She’d have frowned if her latest bout of Botox would let her. I could tell she wanted to. The perfect pink cheeks were quivering with the effort.
I decided to put her out of her misery and smiled broadly. At least, I tried to, stretching my mouth right across my face. It worked. She took the clue to mean it was a joke. Good. I wasn’t ready to tell her exactly what I thought of her. Not yet.
‘Debbie!’ she tinkled, ‘Language!’
I say “tinkled” because that’s what Julie did. She had that Marilyn Monroe way of laughing. When Julie laughed, people half expected her to sprout wings and fly around the room like the fairy in Peter Pan.
I know I’m mixing my metaphors but I’m upset. I’ve got a right.
Julie didn’t know that of course, and why would she? She was much more interested in the fact that she’d broken a nail putting up the banner. So off she went to find her bag.
A wave of jealousy engulfed me as I watched my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s dental nurse - soon-to-be-ex-dental nurse if I had anything to do with it - wiggling those pert little butt-cheeks as she tottered up the hall. The thought of that stupid cow in Steve’s arms was suddenly excruciating. It was like a blow in the solar plexus. My knees gave way and I slumped into a chair at the side of the dusty hall.
Even through my pain I made a mental note to do something about the dust, as I watched the specks sparkling in the shaft of late afternoon sun that slanted down from the high gothic windows of the ancient hall. But that was me. Meticulous and hard-working. Prissy Debbie the Dentist’s wife.
Up until yesterday that was just fine. My life was idyllic. I moved to the village with my handsome husband Steve about ten years ago. He was a private dentist, which was a luxury in a small village like Aston, and the extra bonus of his charm and good looks guaranteed his success. It wasn’t long before patients from the surrounding villages started queuing to join his client list.
I gave up a good job as a corporate event organiser to follow Steve’s dream and move out to this tiny village in Oxfordshire, but I never regretted it. I loved the challenge of turning the large, ramshackle cottage into a cosy nest. I took to country life like a duck to water. I even got a horse and joined the bridge circle. Running the local Young Farmer’s Association was a doddle for me and I got stuck in with the vicar’s unworldly wife Cathy to organise the events that moved the sleepy village gently around the country calendar.
I discovered baking. Loved it. The Aga glowed at the centre of my world. I cooked, ran the house and enjoyed great sex with my gorgeous hunk of a husband. It was all wonderful.
When the children came along – a boy and a girl, of course - life was just about perfect. Hunky-bloody-dory.
Until yesterday, when I caught Steve shagging his dental nurse.
When I say ‘caught’, of course, I don’t mean I nabbed them. They had no idea I was there. But I was, just for a second, and that second was quite long enough, thank you very much.
The sight of Steve’s arse bobbing up and down between that bitch’s long legs - still in high heels of course – will stay with me for ever. I will need many sessions of hypnotherapy to wipe that sight out; I’ll tell you that for nothing.
And what a cliché. Long legs, high heels, big boobs busting out of her tight shiny-white overall. And blonde of course. Did I forget to mention that she was blonde?
Just like me in fact. Same height, same build, same hair. But twenty years younger. That’s what hurt. Cut like a knife. Why is it that men get better and better looking while women sag and droop and fade until they get completely past their sell-by?
With a sharp pain I wondered if it was actually nothing to do with my age. Maybe I had become ‘Mumsy.’ Ouch. I couldn’t stay with that thought for long…
It was like this. I popped into the surgery to show Steve and Julie their costumes for the Halloween party. I had managed to pick up the last four in the shop. Seems like everyone in the village was making an effort for this party. The shop assistant told me she had more ‘Aston’ addresses in her register than ever before.
I was dead excited about the party. We all were. There’s nothing like a fancy dress party when people make an effort. So I’d got one each for all of us, Steve, Julie, Cathy and me. The Vicar wasn’t going to dress up; the church committee wouldn’t let him. ‘Gravitas’ said the Warden, and the Reverend was forced to listen.
‘We can’t have the Vicar making a monkey of hisself,’ said the Warden. He had a point I suppose, but I knew we’d all be grateful when he retired. He was a nice old bloke, but a bit of a dinosaur.
So I only had to get four costumes and it was easy. I knew Steve’s measurements by heart, obviously, and the other two women were exactly the same height and build as I was, though our age range spanned nearly forty years. Julie was twenty-one. I was thirty-eight and Cathy was nigh on sixty. In our costumes, who would know? For one night I could be a Gorgeous Ghost, a Well-Wicked Witch or Vampyra the Sexy Vamp.
As Steve was going to be Dracula, the obvious choice for me would have been Vampyra, but I wanted Steve’s opinion. Of course I did.
I took the costumes straight to the surgery. I knew he and Julie were working late; they often caught up with their paperwork after-hours. What a mug I was to believe that. And then I saw them. I ran home and cried myself stupid, claiming a migraine when he finally turned up for his supper. I almost poured it over his head.
When I gave the ladies their costumes the next day I nearly threw Julie’s Vampyra right at her. I’d decided to make them a pair: my husband and his mistress, Dracula and Vampyra. It was only fitting wasn’t it?
I was going to go as the ghost. Why not? I might as well be one.
My happy world had collapsed. I loved Steve, but had no illusions about him. I knew he was a player before he met me, but I’d honestly believed his promises that he had settled down. I knew he was vain and proud too, and he wasn’t even a good father, being too busy running the boy scouts troop and the cricket team to spend time with his own family.
I could forgive him all that, but this was harder. Playing away from home? Well, maybe I could have let that go. I mean, I wouldn’t know about it would I? But under my nose? Right next to our home? The kids could have walked in on them!
He was going to have to pay; and I wasn’t talking about money. That could come later. First I wanted to hit him where I knew it would hurt him most. I wanted to humiliate him, as he had humiliated me.
Everyone still thought he was a pillar of the community. Only last week, the Vicar had asked him to think about joining the Parish Council as Church Warden, a great honour amongst the local community. Steve boasted to me that he was bound to be voted in by the rest of the Parish Council. It was a dead cert, he said.
I wondered what they would think if they knew what Steve was up to in the dental surgery all those long autumn evenings when he was “too busy with the paperwork” to come home to his wife and kids.
I knew he would deny it with his last breath and that they’d believe him. He could charm the legs off a table if he wanted. He’d say I was imagining things, that I was neurotic. Worse, he’d say I was a woman of a certain age. My God! Early menopause!
Heads would nod. People would be kind to me. Cathy would probably come round with a casserole. I couldn’t bear it. If only I’d made a big noise when I’d caught them. Who would believe me now?
I made myself a cuppa and put my mind to the problem, staring into the middle-distance while the old brain ticked and whirred. Then I got it. There was a way I could expose him publicly that even he couldn’t wriggle out of.
It was the costumes that gave me the idea. As it stood at the moment, Steve was Dracula, I was the Ghost, Cathy was the Witch, and Julie was Vampyra.
I went back to the shop and bought matching masks and wigs, so that each woman’s identity was completely hidden. My plan was absolutely dependent on that and for once luck was on my side. We were all three of us five feet five and slim with big knockers. You could only tell us apart if you knew which costume each was wearing.
When the church clock struck ten, I pulled Julie and Cathy into the ladies loo, where I persuaded them to switch costumes.
‘I’ll bet our husbands won’t even notice,’ said Cathy. She thought it was a great idea, but Julie looked worried.
‘I haven’t got a husband,’ she said.
‘Never mind, sweetie,’ laughed Cathy. ‘You might have one of ours by the end of the evening!’
I clenched my teeth against the sudden stab of pain at Cathy’s innocent joke, but I was determined to go through with the plan. I wanted to hear Steve whispering sweet nothings into Julie’s ear and see his face when he found out whom he was really talking to. He wouldn’t be able to pretend he thought it was me. After all, I thought bitterly, he thinks I’m a ghost.
I was so excited by my plan I laughed with the others. Giggling like schoolgirls, we swapped outfits, pushed each other’s hair up in the wigs and put on the masks. It would be impossible to tell us apart, if we kept our mouths shut.
At ten fifteen sharp, right on cue, my mobile rang. I’d asked my babysitter to ring and give a status report on the children. I thanked her, but pretended to Julie it was an urgent message from her mum, asking her to go home right away. It worked. The daft cow didn’t stop to wonder why her mum had phoned me and not her. She rushed off, while Cathy clucked and made sympathetic noises.
Cathy and I emerged from the loo in our new costumes and split up. Cathy spotted the vicar and went towards him. I stood at one end of the food table, waiting for Steve to make his move.
It went like a dream. He thought it was Julie and couldn’t resist coming over. He took his beautiful Vampyra by the arm and whispered something in her ear.
Watching gleefully from the other end of the table, I saw Cathy’s shocked face emerge from behind her mask, and was delighted to see her tip a large bowl of trifle over Steve’s head.
From Cathy’s violent reaction, I guessed that Steve must have made an obscene proposition, and certainly not what you’d normally say to the vicar’s wife at the Church Halloween party.
He looked so ridiculous with his mouth gaping and the fruit trifle sliding down his handsome face, my revenge was as sweet as the jelly and custard dripping off his faithless chin. And what made it even better, what put the cherry on the trifle with perfect timing, was the fact that Julie had come back for her bag and seen the whole thing.
Too stupid to understand what had really happened she guessed, like everybody else, that Steve had been trying it on with the vicar’s wife. Well she wasn’t having that, was she? She ran straight up with her contribution - a cheesecake right in the kisser – and got herself in the frame at the exact moment the photographer’s flash went off.
Of course, I had the editor of the Parish Magazine standing by with his camera. I told you, I used to be an event organiser: and this was an event the village would remember for many years to come…
‘Mmm,’ I mused, with a bittersweet smile: ‘I don’t think Steve will want to stay in the village after this. After all, it looks as if the position of Church Warden might just go to someone else…’
THE END
