‘But it’s up to you, surely?’ Elinor said.
‘I agree,’ I butted in. ‘Hence a mowie wowie cigarette. Pure gear, no nicotine, so no nasties.’
I proceeded with constructing the rollie, while Linda explained to Elinor about her weekly ‘medicinal’ visits. I was impressed that I hadn’t lost the knack after all these years. At uni, Ursula and I were crowned the spliff-rolling queens. I could do it one-handed while drinking a beer, gaining the respect of all the boys in our student house. I crumbled the dried flower heads into the flat doubled-up papers stuck together, the smell already pungent.
‘I haven’t had one of those for years,’ Elinor admitted in her cultured accent as I sat back down.
‘What?’ I almost screeched. ‘You’ve smoked weed?’
‘Darling, I worked in the fashion industry for thirty years. I’ve also done cocaine and speed, but that was to keep my weight down and not for fun. That was just the cherry on top, also handy when you have to put on two washes and make dinner at the same time.’ I stared at her, then burst out laughing.
‘You worked in fashion?’ Linda asked, more interested in that than Elinor’s chemically enhanced past.
I twisted the end of the joint and popped it between my lips. I lit the tip and waited for it to burn before inhaling the contents. I wasn’t used to smoking any more and winced as the smoke scorched the back of my throat. I took two tokes and handed it to Linda.
‘Have you ever smoked fags?’ I asked, blowing the smoke away from her face.
‘Yes, a long time ago, but I gave up when the kids were little.’
‘OK, only have a few drags because I don’t know how you’re going to react.’ She dutifully obeyed, passing it to Elinor.
‘Oh, I don’t know if I should,’ she blustered, waving the wafting smoke out of her eyes.
‘Think of your arthritis!’ I cajoled. ‘Have a few puffs then tell us about your date.’ I stood up and switched the cooker extractor fan on. My head felt like it was filled with hot air and I had to sit back down again pretty sharpish. I’d forgotten how strong pure grass joints were. Elinor inhaled the smoke, dabbing the ash in the saucer. The kitchen stank and I spotted the posh candle on the windowsill and got up to light it. The head rush was insane and I had to steady myself on the edge of the table.
‘Are you OK?’ Linda asked me. ‘My head feels a bit funny – in a good way, though. I don’t think I had better have any more.’
‘See how you get on after ten minutes,’ I said, wobbling over to the candle.
‘Do you want this?’ Elinor offered me the joint as I sat back down.
‘Thanks. I can’t believe I’m smoking weed with my posh next-door neighbour,’ I laughed, taking two more drags. The joint was dwindling quite fast; I’d obviously not packed it tightly enough. The florets had still been a bit springy so it was hard to crush them small enough.
‘I’m not posh, darling,’ she said sounding like Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous. ‘I was born in Croydon.’ Giggles rippled out of us as we kept repeating ‘I’m not posh!’ in a cut-glass accent.
‘Will we feel normal soon?’ Linda asked. ‘I think I might be a bit stoned. Oops.’
‘It wears off quicker when you smoke it, so we should be OK by the time Nick gets home.’ Who was I kidding? I watched time stretch out before me like an endless pair of tights with no indication of normality resuming in the next half-hour.
‘I want to know about Elinor’s date before we pass out,’ Linda said, smiling.
‘What date?’ I suddenly found I couldn’t remember what I had been saying moments, minutes, hours ago, and something mithered me at the base of my throat, that familiar panicky paranoid feeling. I tried to squash it down by sipping wine.
‘The date I went on earlier this evening,’ Elinor said patiently. ‘Remember, I bumped into you outside.’
‘Oh, yes, the date. I can’t imagine you going on dates,’ I foolishly gabbled. Talking now felt like dropping off a cliff at the end of each sentence. I should be taking notes to keep up to speed with what was leaving my mouth.
‘Why? Because I’m older?’ Elinor asked. ‘I’m not dead yet. I’m only sixty-seven. I’d still like some romance while all my parts work!’
‘Does Nick actually have any food here?’ I asked, eyeing the barren kitchen. ‘Is anyone else hungry?’
‘Ravenous,’ Linda deadpanned. ‘Look in the breadbin. There might be something.’ I toasted three stale bagels, slathering them with fake butter from the fridge and brought my offering back to the table. Linda whipped out her good hand and snatched one, still hot from the toaster, and greedily bit into it.
‘It tastes so delishous!’ she said, her words muffled by the buttery carb-fest. ‘Elinor – the date.’
‘What date?’ she asked, looking genuinely startled, a bagel in her hand.
‘The date you went on earlier,’ I remembered, triumphant that I could salvage some information.
‘Oh, yes, silly me,’ she laughed. ‘So, yes, well, I hadn’t been on one for about three months… I was sick of everyone being so old-fashioned.’
‘Like how?’ I asked.
‘A lot of the single men out there my age have recently lost their wives or are just divorced and can’t be on their own. Most of them are completely incompetent. They’re just desperate for someone to look after them.’
‘But that would be me if John died,’ Linda lamented. ‘For all my moaning about how he fusses, I would be lost without him.’
‘Is John your husband?’ Elinor asked.
Linda nodded.
‘Ah, OK. What was I saying?’
‘The date!’ Linda cried, laughing now. Nick’s weed was strong.
‘Ah, yes, well, he was good-looking in his photo, for a start, said he was sixty-eight, had a nice trimmed beard, liked outdoors, weekends away, being independent – he had been on his own for a while, so there were no red flags.’
‘But…’ I interjected.
‘Yes, a huge but. Actually a huge beard: it walked into the room before he did.’ Mid-chew I inhaled to laugh at the thought of a runaway beard peering round a corner and spat out a chunk of bagel across the kitchen. It ricocheted across the floor towards the sink.
‘You’re so classy, Ali,’ Linda commented, and started giggling.
‘He looked like bloody Captain Birdseye!’ Elinor yelped, dramatically throwing her hands up in the air. ‘He was all beard and no face, and do you know why?’ We both shook our heads. ‘Because he wasn’t a day under eight-five! He was wearing the beard as a blimmin’ disguise, just these two eye-holes peering out from all the white fuzz.’
We dissolved into hysterics, as Elinor squinted and waggled her hands around her face imitating the woolly camouflage.
‘Would you like to try my fish fingers, me hearties?’ she mugged in a West Country accent. Linda placed her good arm over her broken shoulder, holding it safely as she shook with mirth.
‘Oh, you have to stop. I might do myself some more mischief.’
‘Joking aside, I was so disappointed. It’s left me feeling so despondent, like this is it, alone now until I die, never to have sex again…’
‘I think the reason you find it hard is because you don’t need anyone,’ Linda deduced. ‘You have everything here, in the Mews. You have companionship, a social life, your family visit, neighbours who help when something goes wrong – it’s all on a plate. A man would have to fit into all that and be worth it for you to give it up or let him join in.’
‘What’s going on here?’ Nick said suddenly from behind us. I hadn’t heard the key in the door. ‘Have you been smoking weed?’ he snapped in an accusatory tone, clearly taking in all the evidence laid out before him. Ashtray: check; half-shredded cannabis stalk: check; charred remnants of a rollie: check; the pungent smell of a teenager’s bedroom: check; three stoned and red-faced ladies: check, check, CHECK!
Mini Amanda’s voice echoed in my ear: Always start with the truth. You
can’t go wrong with that.
‘Yes,’ I admitted shamefully, totally aware how this contravened his wishes.
‘Mum! What did I say?’ he cried, clearly exasperated. ‘What if something had happened?’
‘It did happen!’ Linda replied. ‘We had a bloody good time; my shoulder is less painful and I feel relaxed for the first time in a week. Ali was doing me a favour.’
‘But you’ve invited an extra person!’ he raged. ‘Sorry, I can’t remember your name,’ he directed at Elinor, quietening his approach as he realised it’s hard to rail against someone when you yourself are severely lacking in basic social niceties.
‘Elinor, dear. Don’t worry, I have trouble remembering it myself,’ she smiled at him and it kindled the evil fire of merriment burning my chest as I tensed to halt more giggles escaping.
‘So yet one more person knows about all this!’ He waved his hands in the air like he was batting away the drugs.
‘Elinor isn’t just a person!’ Linda cried.
I exploded into raucous laughter, provoking Linda and Elinor’s sniggers at the same time.
‘What is she, then? A duck?’ he huffed. That was like a red rag to a bull. Elinor struggled to breathe in between stifled giggles and Linda cradled her shoulder as she shook up and down.
‘Oh, what’s the fucking point? You’re all wasted. I’m going to watch telly.’ He stormed out of the kitchen and left us to it.
Once I’d calmed down, I went to find Nick in the living room where he was staring at the news. Even the living room was stark, and not in a contrived designer way but in an ‘I am a clueless bloke’ kind of way. The L-shaped grey sofa was stylish, but there were no cushions and it looked as if it only served as a seating area upon which to watch dry documentaries about splitting the atom, and the ten o’clock news.
‘Look, Nick, I’m sorry. Your mum hasn’t done anything wrong. I suggested it to her. We didn’t use tobacco, I bought filters, and she only had two puffs.’
‘It doesn’t matter about that; I could smell it outside in the road – Norman will be all over it. You invited Elinor round too. Now everyone will know and then the shit will hit the fan.’
‘She won’t say a word. Your mum had a nice evening and it helped her.’
He pulled his eyes from a war-torn landscape and gazed at me. I suddenly felt really self-conscious.
‘Ali…’
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you for letting her come on the vlog. I know it meant the world to her.’
‘That’s OK, no worries. I’m really sorry.’
He nodded and returned to Syria as I backed out of the living room. He was a total enigma, impossible to read.
31
Hattie
It was still light when I left Nick’s with Elinor, so I could clearly see the person crouching on our doorstep checking their phone, her head bent over scrolling aimlessly.
‘Who’s that?’ Elinor hissed in my ear. ‘She looks like a homeless person.’
‘Hattie?’ I called out across the Mews, hoping she was a figment of my stoned imagination, but her Pantone-grey clothes betrayed her. Her head snapped up and she glared at me Medusa-like. I could almost feel my blood turn to stone.
‘Oooh, that’s not good,’ Elinor helpfully pointed out.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, my tongue thick in my mouth, furry and oversized now that dehydration had hit me hard. Dread thumped me like a sledgehammer, propelled by paranoia – she must have come bearing bad tidings about Alice.
‘I know you’ve been having an affair with Jim,’ Hattie growled, her face curled into the sort of scowl reserved for bare-knuckle fighting or bitch slapping.
‘What?’ Elinor and I ground to a halt outside our front door.
‘I’ll let us in,’ Elinor said calmly. ‘Let’s not make a scene.’
Hattie budged out of the way and I hung back, convinced she was going to try to punch me the second Elinor turned her back. Why did I have to be banjaxed out of my head?
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Elinor said. ‘Are you going to be OK?’
‘I hope so.’ I kissed her cheek in the hallway and slotted my key into the lock on the second attempt, praying Hattie didn’t have a knife, or anything worse, with which to attack me. I was genuinely terrified to let her into my house.
‘So, what’s this all about?’ I asked, finally facing her in the living room, the coffee table a feeble barricade between us. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, and defiantly stared me down until I snatched my eyes away, my heart trying to bolt out of my chest.
‘I know you and Jim had a week away together recently.’
My head shook involuntarily.
‘You did. He went to his mum’s when she had that operation and I rang the hospital to send flowers and they said there was no one staying there of that name. I’ve gradually been piecing it together over the last month once the credit card bills came in, and found evidence on a card that he forgets I know about, a place down in Epsom, some spa hotel.’
‘What the fuck has that got to do with me? I was working in Birmingham. You know how stressed I was about recouping all the money lost from Alice. I had no childcare and my neighbours had to step in. If you think I would be turning down jobs for a quick shag with Jim, you’re mental.’
She temporarily looked like she believed me, then ploughed on with a double-jeopardy accusation.
‘It supposedly didn’t stop you last time.’
‘Well, I could say the same to you, Hattie.’ Handbags at dawn.
‘I didn’t know everything about you,’ she said lamely. ‘Only what Jim told me. He said you were over.’
I arched my eyebrows; I had just been the incumbent fiancée. We’d never had this chat, just a screaming tirade down the phone when I’d had a secret fling with Jim after Dad died four years ago while I was living with Amanda. Jim had had second thoughts about our split and I was broken in two with grief. He was missing Grace and fleetingly enticed me with false promises. I’d since realised he and Hattie were most likely navigating a rough patch, and knowing what I knew now, she was probably nagging him about a baby the way I had. Instead of working through it, he sought solace in my bed (or rather in the back of his car). He’d managed to convince her she was imagining it and had consequently asked her to marry him to distract her from pursuing the truth. Well, that was how I had interpreted it. No wonder she was on high alert.
Mini Amanda fired up in my ear without me even summoning her. There’s no point rehashing the past; it can’t change anything and can only hurt. Stay in the present.
The temptation to lash out with old allegations was so overpowering I had to tense my core to hold it in, my tongue weighted down with ancient vitriol. Be a grown-up, I told myself. Don’t be a cunt…
‘Look, Hattie, I swear on Grace’s life that I did not have a week away with Jim. I can show you hotel receipts, the pictures from the shoot, my invoice. There’s no way Jim and I think of each other like that any more, I can assure you.’ I wondered who he was shagging, though. All the signs were there – he had been so cagey about his time away, even with me.
She sagged against the banisters. The facts had beaten the bravado out of her.
‘Does he know you’re here?’
‘No. We just had a massive row, a real belter. He’s at home with Grace and the dog.’
‘Maybe you should go back.’
She sighed and shrugged.
‘Would you like a drink first?’ I surprised myself by suggesting, spotting an open bottle of red pushed up against the bread bin.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Cheers.’ We ironically clinked glasses at the breakfast bar in an alternate universe.
‘What really makes you think he’s having a fling?’ I had to concentrate very hard in order to keep hold of the conversation, the tail end of the weed still trying to overturn me.
‘Well, it’s cooled off now if he was, but before he went away there
were late nights, not coming home on time, and when he did he was drunk and passed out on the sofa. He took his laptop to work with him and locked his phone in his office.’
I breathed in deeply through my nose and blew out loudly through my mouth, familiar territory feeding my hunch.
‘You out of anyone know the signs.’
‘Did it coincide with anything?’
It was Hattie’s turn to blow out her breath. ‘Kind of. We were arguing loads, still are… I didn’t want a dog…’
I nodded, interpreting the code. ‘What will you do?’
She ran her hands through her hair, almost tearing at it. ‘I don’t know. I can’t go back there tonight. I can’t face another row.’ Her phone started ringing. She switched it to silent.
‘You can stay in Grace’s bed if you want.’
‘Really? Are you sure?’
I nodded. Two refugees who’d survived Jim’s ego. She wasn’t going to stab me in my sleep now.
As I lay in bed, the weed dragging at my eyelids, I thought Jim must be mad to contemplate divorce again. Something didn’t add up. He would have to pay out loads of cash, something he was allergic to. That week away might have been something else entirely…
*
The hammering woke me up. I blindly felt around for my phone; I must have left it downstairs.
‘What are you doing here?’ I panicked when I opened the door, a retreating Elinor mouthing ‘sorry’ over Jim’s shoulder.
‘I’ve been texting and ringing all morning. I have an emergency and can’t have Grace.’ It was nine in the morning. I let them in, at the last minute spotting Hattie’s silver Converse at the bottom of the stairs. Fuckshitbollocks.
‘Can I have some juice, Mummy?’
I nodded, the trainers flashing like a warning beacon in my periphery; I prayed detective Grace wouldn’t spot them.
‘What are Hattie’s trainers doing there?’ she said in a loud voice.
‘They’re mine,’ I shot back.
‘No they’re not. You don’t have any.’
Jim glanced down and then back at me. He looked like he hadn’t slept.
‘Hattie!’ he yelled up the stairs. ‘I know you’re here.’
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