Chapter 18

Next day being Saturday, Susan convened a coffee morning of the ‘support Carol’ club. Jessica, Kathy, Cloë, Karen and Freya all made time to attend. Carol was not invited.

“Ladies, yesterday I had dinner with Tom and Ann Forshaw. Let me summarise the situation. After all Carol’s hard work to get John back, Liam destroyed it all at the midsummer party.

“John now thinks Carol has found someone else, a previous lover. I learned that John was only here for a week before being sent abroad again on some secret mission. Seems to be for three or four months. He cannot be contacted.

“London have sent Tracy Rushton take Tom’s place while Tom does John’s job. Tracy is a friend of John’s, probably with benefits, whom he knows from London. She is looking after the house and is furnishing it for him while he is away.

“Tom and Ann reckon Tracy shares his bed here, but Tom thinks Tracy is not into settling down with John or anyone else.

“We don’t know how serious Tracy is; we don’t know how long it will be before John gets in contact again. We know Carol is depressed and pessimistic about John. So I have a plan.

“Tracy is all alone here. She’s a London girl and here for a few months. I suggest we adopt her. She is not a scheming man stealer, she befriended John when he was exiled in London, so she’s probably a nice friendly person.

“We look after her, we keep off the subject of John unless she brings it up. If she’s only talked to John, she will think that Carol has found someone else and we can remedy that. We may even find out if she’s serious about John, but only if she brings the matter up.”

“And?” said Jessica suspiciously. “Carol?”

“Carol is also in our group so they will meet. From this we may find out exactly how Tracy ticks, what she hopes for. She will get to know Carol which may give her food for thought.”

“You mean we take her out for drinks, clubbing, parties?” asked Karen.

“Yes.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Jessica, and the others nodded with wry smiles: Jessica was a sucker for clubbing and parties, in fact she was a sucker for any activity where she could meet men, with whom she had a reputation as another kind of sucker.

“We could start tonight,” Kathy said. “We were all meeting at the Griffin anyway, then we were going to Karen and Ryan’s for a bit of dancing.”

Susan lost no time, and with Jessica in tow, was ringing John’s doorbell by lunchtime.

“Hello,” said Jessica when Tracy opened the door. “You remember me? I came looking for John.”

“Yes,” replied a puzzled Tracy, “but I told you he was away for a long while. Was there something else?”

“Hi, Tracy, I’m Susan. Like Jessica here, John and I go way back. It’s you we’ve come to see. We reckon you’re going to be here for months, and you won’t have any friends up here. So we wondered if you’d like to come out with us tonight? Meet some more friends. We were meeting at the Griffin, you know it?”

Tracy nodded.

“Then we were all going on to a hotel run by two friends of ours that has a dance on Saturday evenings till late. D’you fancy that idea?”

“That’s very kind,” Tracy said with a grin. “I was wondering what to do with myself at weekends, and going back to London every time is a no-no. Yes I’d love to!”

“Seven thirty then,” said Susan. “You’ll really like our friends and we’ll have a good time. If you walk to the pub, we’ll give you a lift to the Hotel and bring you back afterwards.”

On the way back from Tracy’s, Susan had a thought. “We must try to avoid talk about John and Carol, Jess. We don’t want to frighten her off right at the beginning. Is Carol coming tonight?”

“No, it’s Lee’s birthday party, she’s going to that.”

“That’s good.”

“I’ll warn the others off.” Jessica said. “They’ll want to talk about John and what he got up to in London, it wouldn’t be natural not to.”

“As long as we try to keep off the topic of Carol.”

“We can but try.”

Of course they failed.