‘Oh oh, problem,’ I wailed. ‘I’ve forgotten to bring any shoes. I’ve only got my flatties I’ve been wearing for school all day.’
‘There’s a pair of grey suede high heels somewhere. You could probably just squeeze into them. They’re really too big for me.’ She looked round as if they were about to appear by magic. ‘Damn, where did I put them at the end of last winter? I know, go and have a look down in the bottom, spare bedroom. There’s a big wardrobe down there where I put all the stuff I know I shan’t wear any more. They’re in an L.K. Bennett box. Go and have a root round while I have a quick shower.’
This spare bedroom, unlike the rest of the house, had not been decorated since Grace and Dan had moved in five years ago, and I realised with a slight pang that this was the room Grace would have been waiting to paint in a soft pink or blue, for the baby that had never arrived. It had an air of abandonment about it, the walls still wearing the dated wallpaper chosen by the previous owners many years before.
I pulled the left-hand mirrored wardrobe door back on its runners and stared in confusion. Instead of the no longer needed clothes waiting patiently, at Grace’s whim, for their disposal to charity shops that I’d expected, I found a bank of shelves jam- packed with just about all the things needed to fuel what was obviously an addiction. Pornography, vodka, a whole hydroponics system of cannabis plants, even heroin I could probably have coped with, but row upon row of fluffy bunnies, tiny bootees, and little designer outfits in white, blue and pink was just something else. Dismayed, I hurriedly shut the wardrobe door, feeling as guilty as if I’d been reading Grace’s private diary, and pulled the right-hand door open to continue my search for the elusive shoes. Right at the back, hidden by long coats and other abandoned footwear, was the distinctive white, L.K. Bennett shoebox. Grabbing it, I composed my features, and with a cheery, ‘found them, let’s hope they fit,’ made my way back to Grace’s bedroom where she was just emerging from the shower.
Although a little tight, the shoes were a perfect match for the dress and twenty minutes later we were both ready for the off. Grace looked fabulous. The extra time spent in the gym and pounding the local pavements had certainly paid off. She was slim, toned and, in contrast to her tarty outfit of the previous evening, was stylishly dressed in cream and chocolate brown. Her chestnut hair fell silkily to her collar and she had spent an inordinate amount of time outlining and defining her brown eyes so that they appeared huge. Although she hadn’t said anything, I knew her efforts had been largely directed at showing Amanda Goodners just how stunning she could look when not dressed as a Hitler lookalike.
It had been twenty years since our final days at Midhope Grammar and, while the original early Victorian building was essentially the same, two new glass and concrete extensions had been added, creating updated accommodation for the two thousand or so co-ed comprehensive school students who were now educated here.
‘I hope there’s going to be people here we’ll know,’ I whispered to Grace as we made our way down what had once been known as ‘G’ corridor, following a group of women ahead who seemed to know where they were going.
‘There’d better be. I can’t see me spending all evening making small talk with Amanda, discussing whether she’s had much action down by the canal lately.’
‘Shh,’ I giggled, as Amanda herself came into view standing, with some of those who’d been prefects when she was head girl, at the entrance to what I presumed was still the Great Hall, welcoming people and handing out name tags.
‘Trust Amanda to be so bloody efficient. Far more fun to see if we can guess who people are twenty years on,’ grumbled Grace.
Amanda turned towards us, giving Grace a particularly hard, almost searching, stare. What was she looking at? Then she relaxed and said breezily, ‘Hello, you two. Good to see you again.’
‘Does she mean after twenty years? Or after seeing us groping her husband in the dark?’ Grace said in my ear, as we walked towards a makeshift bar being tended by more of Amanda’s cronies.
‘Shh,’ I giggled again. ‘Please don’t make me laugh. I don’t want to be reunited with all this lot while snorting like a mentally defective hyena.’
‘Grace, Hattie. Over here! We’ve got a bottle!’ An excited shout accompanied by a prolonged bout of bottle waving from a table in the centre of the hall had heads turning in every direction, craning to see what the noise was all about.
‘Oh, my God, they’re all there,’ laughed Grace incredulously as we made our way forward to where Sarah Armitage was waving her arms, beckoning us over to join them.
‘Amanda said she hoped you were both coming,’ said Sarah excitedly. ‘We’ve saved seats for you. Come on, sit down, have a drink. Tell us everything. You both look fantastic!’
Around the table were eight of our former classmates: girls with whom we’d shared so much in our formative, adolescent years, but with whom, other than with fairly irregular Christmas cards, we’d not really kept in touch. There had been the occasional twenty-first birthday celebration, a couple of engagement parties, and we’d both been invited to Sarah’s wedding – she was the first of us to marry, getting hitched to the boy from the Boys’ Grammar who she’d met when she was just fourteen. But as the years had gone by, and several of the gang had moved away from the area, Grace and I had lost touch with the rest of them.
The whole ‘games shed affair’ contingent was out in force as Grace and I joined Sarah, Clare Hargreaves, Sally Wise, and Rebecca Martin. The other four at the table were friends who, had it not been for netball practice, would probably have been with us in the games shed and condemned along with us to a week’s exclusion from school.
‘So, are you still married to Alan, Sarah?’ Grace and I asked simultaneously as we poured wine and settled down as well as we could on the grey plastic chairs which didn’t seem to have altered since our young bottoms had sat on them nearly a quarter of a century before. I bet if I’d looked hard enough I’d have found the one with ‘I love George Michael’ carved with a bent compass onto its underneath – the result of half an hour’s boredom while Mr ‘Mad’ McGregor, the maths teacher we’d inherited from North of the Border, worked himself up into a right Scottish lather, shouting that we, the bottom maths group girls, would ‘niver in this werrld parrs yi exams. Y’arr awl second clarrs citizens – gid fer nethins.’
‘Am I still married to that little twerp?’ Sarah asked in mock horror. ‘You have to be joking. We got married far too young. I put up with three years of his fumbling in bed. Towards the end, I knew I could not put up with it any longer. Foreplay, to Alan, was cleaning his teeth and folding his Y-fronts ready for the next day. After I’d very nicely suggested we might be a little more adventurous – you have to realise we’d had no experience apart from what we’d had with each other – he then spent the next few months twiddling my right nipple – only ever my right one, as if he were tuning into Radio Luxembourg, before diving on as usual. One Saturday night, he’d twiddled away, this way and that for at least ten minutes, so I said, very politely, that I didn’t think that that particular combination was going to open the safe, got out of bed, packed a case and went back home to my mum.’
The rest of the table, obviously having heard this tale before, egged Sarah on to tell us more as Grace and I, hysterical with laughter, shook our heads and wiped our eyes in disbelief.
‘Talk about “Shitty Shitty Bang Bang!” It really was dreadful. Thank goodness we didn’t have any children, or I might still be with him, gazing at the ceiling of a Saturday night, planning what we were having for tea the next day while he got on with his ritual twirling,’ Sarah laughed. ‘Instead, I made up for lost time, had a whale of a time with men who did know what they were doing, and finally met Richard who I married nearly eight years ago. Not only is he brilliant in the sack, I also happen to love him very much indeed.’
‘So where did you meet him?’ I asked.
Sarah guffawed. ‘He came to do my electrics – and stayed to do my plumb
ing!’
‘Any children now?’ asked Grace, once the alcohol-fuelled laughter had died down. An innocent enough question, but only I knew the answer she was looking for. She always felt happier with those who, like herself, hadn’t, for whatever reason, produced any offspring. I just think it made her feel better about herself if there were others in the same boat.
‘Four,’ Sarah laughed, unaware that, where Grace was concerned, this was the worst possible response. Pulling a face of anguish, she continued, ‘Can you imagine? We went into overdrive somewhat and had one after another. Mind you, I wouldn’t swap them for the world, even though I’ve ended up the size I am.’ She patted her large bottom ruefully. ‘And,’ she said emphatically, ‘I shall encourage all my four to sleep around a bit before they settle down with one person. A bit of experience counts for everything.’
I needed to steer the conversation away from babies and children, but once Sarah had set the ball rolling as it were, everyone else seemed to leap in with tales of their own.
‘Well, I don’t know how you manage with four,’ said Rebecca Martin who, out of all in this particular group, had probably aged the least. ‘I have my work cut out with two.’
She’d always been a real Alpha female, into all sports at school and, by the look of her now, still obviously working out. I remembered seeing an article about her in the ‘Midhope Examiner’ – ‘Local business woman sets new Iron-woman record’ – and feeling exhausted just reading about how she’d swum, cycled and run what seemed, to me, a ridiculous amount of miles in an impossibly small amount of time, in order to achieve this goal.
‘What’s your business, Rebecca?’ I now asked her. ‘I saw the bit in the paper about your being a “local business woman”.’
‘The “Iron-woman” article, you mean? I’ve actually set up a new business since then. I sold out on the one I had, designing knitwear.’
‘Knitwear?’ laughed Grace. ‘I didn’t even know you could knit!’
‘Ah, you see, all that hanging about sports grounds and travelling to and from competitions meant I needed something to do to alleviate the boredom while I was waiting, so I took up knitting. And then I began designing sweaters, and soon I had a whole load of outworkers around the country making up my designs by hand. They used to sell for a fortune. I actually had some selling in Harvey Nicks in Leeds.’
‘So, why give it up?’ I asked curiously.
‘Fashion changes all the time. And I got bored with it. You know me. I always needed a new challenge, even when we were at school. Still do. Problem is, I get bored with husbands too. They begin to irritate me after a while, so I ditch them.’
‘How many have you had?’ I asked, beginning to feel very staid, as a one-man woman, in the light of Grace’s, Sarah’s, and now Rebecca’s marriages.
‘The third moved out about a year ago. Trouble is, I keep on having to pay them out, and so I’m constantly working every hour God sends. This new business I’m just getting up and running takes me all over the country. I only made it tonight by the skin of my teeth.’ Rebecca sighed and knocked back what remained of her wine.
‘So, how do you manage? With the kids, I mean. How old are they?’ Grace asked.
‘Isobel is eight and Frances seven. They both belong to my first husband, but unfortunately he’s gone back to live in America. I say unfortunately, only because it would take some of the childcare worries off me if he were around. Apart from that, I really couldn’t wait to see the back of him.’
‘Sounds like you need a wife,’ Clare Hargreaves said sympathetically.
‘Well, I certainly don’t need another husband. I’ve had a whole stream of au pairs and live-in nannies, but they’re either too soft, too homesick, or too randy.’
‘Too randy?’
‘Yep. Had a new girl from Croatia. First evening with us, we took her along to a neighbour’s barbecue. She was a quiet little thing from a tiny catholic village, and when she disappeared I was afraid the whole thing was a bit too much for her. When I eventually found her she was on her knees in the back bedroom.’ When I asked the kids if they’d seen her, Frances said she was on her knees in the back bedroom.
‘Praying?’ Clare asked.
‘Giving blow jobs to our neighbour’s son, home from university, and all his mates.’
‘Was she charging them?’ I asked, fascinated.
‘No, enjoying herself I gather. Must be a traditional Croatian method of introducing yourself,’ Rebecca laughed.
‘You mean a hand job as opposed to a handshake?’ Sarah chortled.
‘Anyway, I decided we needed a bit of discipline after that. The girls were playing up and, because I’d been watching a programme about that “zero tolerance” police chief guy up in the north-east, I said to Helga – our new girl from Germany – that she wasn’t to tolerate any bad behaviour. The next morning, Isobel decides she’s not going to eat the porridge that I’d made – she wants Weetabix instead. Whereupon Helga, still dressed in a huge furry dressing gown and what must have been size eleven slippers, descends upon poor Isobel like some Germanic devil, slapping spoonfuls of porridge into her dish and shouting, in her best broken English, “zero tolerance, zero tolerance” with every spoonful. I fully expected to hear the music from “The Valkyries” as she whirled around, sloshing porridge all over my kitchen. I tell you, they’re all mad. It’s them that need looking after.’
I knew Grace was beginning to feel sorry for these two little girls. ‘So, how do you manage now?’ I asked.
‘Got a lovely Nanny-Granny. She’s sixty, loves the girls and doesn’t stand any nonsense from them. She plays games like “Guggenheim” with them and the cupboard is always full of home-made cakes. She bullies me and makes me eat my broccoli, and tells me what she thinks of any men I bring home. We call her Mrs Doubtfire, even to her face, and she loves it.’
‘And do you?’ Grace asked.
‘Do I what? Call her Mrs Doubtfire?’ Rebecca seemed puzzled.
‘No. Do you still have time for men?’
‘Absolutely. But you can forget any idea about marriage. I mean, why buy the whole pig when you just fancy a sausage!’
The time simply flew by as we caught up with twenty years of births, marriages, occupations, adulterous affairs, places we’d travelled to and deaths. Apart from Sarah who, with four young children, didn’t have the time or inclination to hold down a full-time job, the majority of women around our table were professional, university graduates who, like myself, juggled the commitments of family and work either through the desire to ‘have it all’ or through the necessity of paying off the mortgage each month.
Every so often, one of us would go up to the makeshift bar for more wine and be waylaid by more faces from our past. I spent a good ten minutes chatting to someone who’d grabbed me in a bear hug and explained that though she’d never married I wasn’t to think she was gay. Unable to ascertain who the hell she was – her name tag had twisted round after the constant hugging of old schoolmates – never mind her sexual orientation, I made my way back to our table.
‘Don’t look now, Grace,’ I said, as she immediately turned right round in the direction from where I’d just come, ‘but who is that at the bar, the one with the bright orange top. She just accosted me.’
‘Dunno,’ said Grace, ‘unless it’s Barbara Richmond.’
‘It is,’ Sarah confirmed. ‘She’s head of the Flying Squad in Midhope. Goes round smashing down doors and arresting people. She’s been having an affair with my cousin Rose for years.’
‘Girls, girls, can I have your attention?’ Amanda was up on the stage surrounded by her former prefects, smiling and tapping on her glass for quiet.
‘She’s still so beautiful, isn’t she?’ Rebecca Martin whispered. ‘I idolised her when I was thirteen. Had the biggest crush ever on her.’
‘Even you?’ I asked, in surprise. I knew how Grace and I had felt about her, but didn’t realise the adoration we felt was widespread.
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‘And me,’ admitted Sarah. ‘I used to love assemblies, even when we had to sing forty-nine verses of “Fight the Good Fight”, just so I could see how she’d done her hair, or try and catch her eye so that I could smile at her.’
‘Beautiful,’ Clare agreed, sighing, ‘but very, very ruthless. Amanda always knew what she wanted and she certainly made sure she got it. She had Old Ma Seddon wrapped round her little finger. I don’t think we’d ever have been excluded from school for that week if Amanda hadn’t persuaded Miss Seddon to do so.’
I turned to face the stage and Amanda. She was wearing a very tight, ruched red dress which clung in all the right places. Her full mouth, also crimson, was a work of art and her hair, usually a sleek, blonde curtain, was pinned up in a tousled pile on top of her head. She breathed charm and allure from every pore and I felt defeated. How could I blame John for still wanting her after all this time; the women in the room from hanging on to her every word; my husband for falling under her spell? Between them she and her husband held all the cards as to whether I was going to end up in a back to back in Wigton – Midhope’s notorious sink area – sharing my kitchen and the rest of my life with my mother-in-law; toiling away day after day until I could get my state pension, Nick having to pay his mother back the money he’d borrowed from her out of his meagre job-seeker’s allowance. I felt quite panicky and gulped back a huge slug of wine in order to make me feel better.
‘Steady on,’ said Grace, slapping me on the back. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Fine,’ I said, coughing as the too-big mouthful of wine tried to find somewhere to go.
‘... so let’s raise our glasses and show our appreciation for Midhope Girls’ Grammar School in the time-honoured way. Miss Rhodes, over to you.’ Amanda raised her glass, we all stood, raised our own glasses and dutifully shouted, ‘Midhope Girls’ Grammar School’ as the familiar, introductory notes of the school song rang out from the ancient piano situated on the left of the foot of the stage.
‘Fuck me, not the fucking school song,’ Sarah Armitage whispered in a too loud aside to the rest of our table. ‘I never knew the words when we actually were at school. I certainly can’t remember them now. And that can’t be Ratty Rhodes Amanda’s managed to exhume. I thought she’d croaked when we were in the sixth form.’
Goodness, Grace and Me Page 13