by Carmen Reid
Various giggles, bangs on the ceiling and shouts were testament to that. ‘You don’t have to rush off, do you?’ Sue asked. ‘Stay and have a cup of tea with me and some of our biscuits.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Mummy’s here!’ Nettie shouted up to the top of the stairs, but when something between a screech and a laugh came in reply, biscuit clutched in hand, she went up to investigate.
‘Of course I’m sure,’ Sue assured Jo. ‘I haven’t had a conversation with anyone over 11 all day. Be nice to hear some news from the real world.’
‘No, no, you’re in the real world,’ was Jo’s answer. ‘The rest of us just disappear off to our offices to play complicated games all day.’
Once they were in the glamorous red and wooden kitchen, Jo pulled up a chair at the table and asked: ‘So what delicious, nutritious supper did you give them tonight? Go on, make me feel jealous and inadequate.’
‘Shut up Jo, I am not a perfect mother and you are not a shit one,’ Sue replied as she returned to the table with mugs and a carton of milk. ‘The girls had pasta with tuna and lots of vegetables, then fruit and yoghurt. They ate loads.’
‘Bet it was fresh tuna and not out of a tin,’ Jo couldn’t resist saying.
‘Yes, it was fresh tuna and here’s a wooden spoon. Feel free to beat yourself up with it.’
That made Jo smile.
‘My children like your cooking better than anyone else’s,’ Jo added. ‘Including mine, and my mum’s and their dad’s.’
‘Your children just know how to wind you up. But you know if you’re struggling with the cooking, you could borrow my kiddie-friendly cookbook. . .’
‘Sue!’ Jo broke in, ‘If you’re about to praise the collected works of she-who-cooks-with-tinned-soup and has pictures of her children in lace collars on the back, you can go and stick your head in your Smeg.’
‘All right, all right, no need to get huffy,’ was Sue’s response. ‘Anyway, the Smeg’s ovens are electric – fan-assisted.’
‘Sorry, I’m sorry.’ Jo felt properly told off. ‘I’m still in newsroom mode, it takes a considerable effort not to use the f-word six times a minute until I’ve been out of there for at least two hours.’
‘Busy day?’ Sue asked, pouring tea.
‘Very busy,’ Jo said. She took off her jacket to reveal a crushed and slightly smelly white shirt.
‘Are you doing anything on this whooping cough story?’ Sue wanted to know and when Jo nodded, she went on, ‘It’s terrible, there are more cases every day, the children are very ill. It’s frightening.’
‘No word of anyone at the school?’ Jo checked.
Sue, who did school runs, the PTA, ferried girls to extra-curricular ballet, karate, violin, Kumon maths, indoor snowboarding, knew all the other children in her children’s classes and planned themed birthday parties, was Jo’s way of keeping informed about all that was happening at their children’s school.
‘No.’ Sue shook her head. ‘But you’ll have to get Nettie a vaccination of some sort,’ she reminded her.
Jo nodded.
There was nothing about Mel and Nettie’s health, development or care that Jo hadn’t discussed with Sue, whom she considered a font of both knowledge and reassurance.
The two had met at one of those National Childbirth Trust coffee and toddler mornings when Mel was 18 months old and Jo was new to London and struggling with motherhood and part-time work.
Sue’s youngest daughter, Maisie, was the same age as Mel, but she also had two older children, Astrid and Cara, and when the women first met, Sue had a three days a week job she was on the verge of quitting. The subject of managing careers, young children, marriages, housekeeping, elderly parents and everything else going on in their lives had fuelled many a round the kitchen table conversation throughout their friendship.
For the time being, Sue was still off work and at home full-time. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ she’d confessed in tears to Jo when she’d finally handed in her notice, ‘I feel like I’m really letting the side down, letting myself down. But I want to be with my children. I want to be the person at the school gates, hearing the news. I’m jealous of my nanny. And my father is ill, I have to spend time with him . . . And the state of my house stresses me out completely. There’s not a single room that is tidy or calm. Every day we run out of something totally basic – toilet paper, tea bags, bread, milk. I can’t live like this any more. I’m a mother of three. I have to have bread in the house . . . I’m going to go insane!’
‘How are you, darling?’ Jo asked Sue now as her friend finally took a seat and picked up her mug of tea.
‘I’m fine, I’m good,’ was Sue’s reply. ‘You look tired though.’
‘No, no. . . fine, fine . . . surviving.’ But Jo stifled the yawn that the question seemed to have provoked. ‘Older mothers?’ she asked Sue. ‘What’s the career mum take on them? You know, the IVF-at-55-brigade. I got an email from one of our columnists who wanted to “gauge feelings”.’
‘IVF babies at 55?’ Sue repeated and Jo nodded. ‘A bloody marvellous idea,’ was Sue’s verdict.
‘Really!’ Jo smiled. ‘I can’t help thinking if I’m this shattered at 35, I’d need a team of round-the-clock nannies to help me cope with children at 55.’
‘No, no,’ Sue insisted. ‘It’s obviously the only way ahead. You have your ovaries removed at peak fertility, let’s say 19, and put in the deep freeze, you can then live the life of a free, independent adventurer for all of your twenties and thirties. You can get really serious about your career and your long-term partner commitments in your late thirties and forties. Then mid-fifties – obviously, you do yoga and aerobics all your adult life, so you’re fit as a bunny – you’ve climbed to the top of the career tree, you can afford to scale work right back and you’re finally ready for a baby, when you have all the time in the world to look after it. So, defrost the ovaries and bingo, perfect. I’m telling you, it’s the future.’
‘Maybe you should have a column,’ Jo teased. ‘Have you ever thought about that?’
‘Two words, Jo: too busy.’
‘Oh hell, we’re all too busy. I don’t know how you always manage to be so calm whenever I come round.’
‘Ah well, there’s a slight difference between your job and mine,’ Sue reminded her. ‘If I balls up a baking recipe I won’t have one news editor, two lawyers and a swarm of angry readers after me.’
Jo laughed at this.
Chapter Eight
A law lecturer, who attacked the Madame Tussauds’ Posh and Becks nativity scene said yesterday he had been ‘fighting a war against crap’.
Daily Mirror
Wednesday: 9.45 p.m.
Once her girls were in bed, Jo made herself a cup of tea and used her trusty, bashed-at-the-edges laptop to log onto the internet.
Yes, yes, yes . . . obviously she could be chucking some soup together to see her through the busy end of the week ahead, or making small inroads into the laundry landslide, or even unpacking some of the last removals boxes cunningly disguised with a tablecloth in her bedroom. But she was too tired, she couldn’t face it. Whereas the lure of just a little preliminary research into Quintet, a teensy scout-about of the top ten results from a Google search . . . she couldn’t resist that.
She typed in ‘Quintet’, then the manufacturer’s name ‘Wolff-Meyer’ and began her search.
Financial reports, NHS sites, doctor comments all came up, so she began a methodical trawl through everything that sounded interesting, in the hope of finding some clues.
When her home phone on the desk began to ring, she didn’t take her eyes from the screen as she picked up: ‘Jo Randall,’ she said automatically.
‘No, it’s not your newsdesk, work slave. It’s me.’
‘Hey you, I was just thinking about you.’ Jo was pleased to hear Bella’s voice on the other end of the line, ‘I’m on the internet. . .’
‘Aha,’ Bella interrupted. ‘Wor
king or doing Mummy porn?’
‘Mummy porn?’
‘You know, on the Mini Boden website planning fantasy child outfits?’
‘Oh ha ha,’ Jo replied. ‘No, I’m working. I’m deep in the Reuters finance newswire trying to make sense of rows and rows of figures.’
‘Looking into anything interesting?’ Bella asked.
‘Oh you know me, just the little cottage industry that is global pharmaceuticals.’
‘Hope you’ve got a good lawyer then,’ Bella warned. ‘They are very, very litigious. Who are you investigating?’
‘Wolff-Meyer, the Quintet manufacturers.’
‘Well, well.’
‘Know much about them?’
‘Might do.’
‘Come on then, tell me something interesting,’ Jo wheedled.
‘Would you like to know how much money they made last year on vaccinations alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘A cool £900 million.’
Jo whistled.
‘They have big money big, big money. And they have big investors: British high street banks, the major pensions companies, probably the government too. No one wants these guys to fail.’
‘No one wants any vaccination scare stories to send share prices tumbling then?’
‘No! No, definitely not.’
‘Not even the government.’
‘Especially not the government.’
‘Oh good, nothing I like better than a challenge.’ Jo was scribbling herself some notes. ‘Medicine has been great business ever since the days of the witch doctor,’ she added.
‘I suppose so . . . Jo?’ Bella ventured.
‘Yes?’
‘There’s more marble in their London headquarters than in the Vatican.’
‘And how would you happen to know that, Bella?’
‘Well. . . there’s something I didn’t tell you the last time we spoke about Quintet.’
‘Yes?’
‘It will probably interest you just a little bit too much to know that I updated all the virus checkers in their London office four months ago and I now hold a regular maintenance contract with them.’
‘No!’ was Jo’s response, her heartbeat revving up as she felt an internal ‘yeeees!’ There had to be some way this amazing stroke of luck could be put to good use.
‘So you’re in cahoots with them. I might have guessed,’ Jo teased.
‘I hardly think a computer contract. . .’ Bella began.
‘I’m going to have to take you out for a series of stiff cocktails, my friend,’ Jo said. ‘And talk to you about Messrs Wolff and Meyer. See if three margaritas later, you can come up with something interesting for me that you didn’t even know you knew.’
‘I don’t think so, Jo, just put me down as one of the company’s techies. I’m sure there’s not that much I can help you with.’
‘We’ll see. I’m deep in research. I will let you know if there are areas requiring further investigation.’
‘The weather forecast for Sunday is great,’ Bella informed her, ‘which is why I’m phoning, by the way. I thought you and the girls – and maybe, you know, your boyfriend – ‘ big tease at the word, ‘could join us for a barbecue at the allotment?’
‘The allotment,’ Jo snorted, ducking the boyfriend dig. ‘Are you going to make us weeds for our lunch?’
‘Probably.’
Bella with an allotment. It still made her snigger. Bella had somehow imagined herself spending the weekends digging, weeding, growing lovely organic deli food and picnicking with the boys in the fresh air. Yeah right, maybe if Bella had had a personality transplant that might have been possible.
Instead, her allotment was riddled with weeds, overgrown lawn and catastrophic under-production of fruit and vegetables. When the tuts and complaints from her allotment neighbours grew too strong, she hired a gardener for a slash and burn repair session.
Bella had high-heeled wellies, a designer trug and cute little gardening implements from the Conran shop, but Jo had absolutely no recollection of ever having seen Bella on her hands and knees attempting one tiny little bit of work in said allotment.
Mainly Bella held noisy barbecues there and Jo suspected this was because she didn’t want her immaculate home garden to get too messed up.
Don pottered about the allotment a little, admittedly, with a hoe and a pair of clippers. But mainly he sat in his deckchair with a bedraggled fisherman’s hat on his head and read the foot-high stack of newspapers at his side. Occasionally, his sons Markie and Murdo poked him so vigorously that he had to get up and join in a game of kickabout, badminton, swing ball, whatever wild and vigorous activity they were pursuing that day.
‘Allotment 12.30-ish?’ Jo suggested. ‘Me and my daughters only,’ she made it clear. ‘We’ll bring potato salad and pudding as long as you get the posh burgers sorted out.’
‘OK. Deal.’
‘How’s your week going anyway?’ Jo asked.
‘Oh same old, same old. People I’m working with have turned into total pains in the arse, so I’m stressed out and in a bad mood all the time, Don’s going away for a few days on some sort of ideas-creating, brainstorming jolly in Dublin. More like a brain-damaging session in Dublin. Even if they come up with any good ideas, they’ll all get too pissed to remember them.
Murdo has started to wet his bed again, which means I’m blaming myself for . . . well, everything . . . You know, life. All lovely.’
‘Finished ranting now?’
‘Yes, feel much better. You?’
‘I’m fine.’ Jo left it at the short answer.
‘Oh good. I’ll look forward to hearing all about it on Sunday.’
‘Or maybe speaking about it before then?’
‘Yeah, well. . . we’ll see.’
Not long after she’d hung up the phone, her mobile bleeped with a text. Fancy a fck? it asked. Followed by a smiley face.
Oh please.
Too bsy cll me, she typed back. Just seconds later the phone rang and his sexy voice was in her ear.
‘Are you sure?’ he was saying, ‘I’m getting out early tonight, it’s quiet.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jo told him, ‘I’m still working. . . Tell me about your day anyway.’
‘Hot and sweaty, but delicious. That’s all you need to know about my day and about me.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘And you?’ he asked.
‘Me? Oh the usual, trying to save the free world from the evil clutches of . . . insert your own personal nemesis into this space,’ she joked.
‘Nice one,’ he said. ‘Why can’t I come round?’
‘I’m too busy. I’ve got to do the washing, unpack things . . . it’s Mel’s birthday tomorrow, I have to wrap her presents and bake a cake. . . ’ She had a feeling she’d let something out of the bag now. ‘Can you wrap a kitten?’ he asked.
‘Oh please shut up about the kitten. I haven’t got her a kitten. I’m the worst parent in the world.’
‘You are, but not because of the kitten,’ he answered. ‘You’re the worst parent in the world if you don’t let the professional chef you know come over and bake the birthday cake.’
‘Oh . . .’ Yes, he was going to be hard to resist now.
‘I’m very good at cakes,’ he wheedled. ‘I’ve probably spent more time baking than you’ve . . .’
‘Spent shagging?’ she answered for him. ‘Although not counting the past few weeks.’
‘No. . . ’ he lingered over the word, managing to load it with meaning.
‘OK, OK,’ her resistance was over. ‘Come and bake the cake. Please.’
‘OK, I will come over for some late night baking, I’m not promising anything else . . .’
‘No?’
‘No . . . but you have to go and check your cupboards for the following ingredients . . .’
Marcus arrived not long after 10.30 and as soon as he was in the house, she was kissing him, licking his soft salty skin and telling
him that they should go to bed immediately and never mind the cake.
But he’d come with a rucksack full of ingredients and he wasn’t going to be distracted.
‘Will you get off?’ he insisted. ‘Jo, leave me alone!’ He took her hands off his shoulders, then out of his pockets.
‘Baking,’ he reminded her. ‘Focus. Baking is a serious science,’ he added, ‘I hope you’ve got scales that work in your crap kitchen.’
‘Crap kitchen?’ She felt mildly insulted by this, even though the cramped dark pine, grey granite arrangement fitted at expense by the previous owner didn’t really appeal to her much.
He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, while she watched with her arms tight around his waist and her head hooked over his shoulder. She let him lead her round the room like this as he went into cupboards and the fridge to round up the ingredients he hadn’t brought with him.
‘So we’re doing sponge,’ he said. ‘Let me see the size of your baking tins.’
‘Why does that sound so rude?’ she said and kissed his neck.
‘Because you’re a filthy old lady.’
‘Am not!’
‘Are so!’
She showed him her tin collection and he almost seemed impressed. But then cake baking was a favourite rainy Sunday activity she liked to practise with her daughters.
‘But it’s to be a dress, you know, sponge layers stacked up,’ she explained, ‘so Barbie can be plunged in all the way up to her monstrous chest.’
‘Got you, got you.’ He was looking at the tins, tucking his hair behind his ears, frowning a little, working out how much cake batter would be needed, and she couldn’t resist curling into him again and licking his neck. ‘Get off!’ he told her again. ‘We aren’t going to get anywhere like this.’
‘Couldn’t you bake naked?’ she asked him. ‘No, naked apart from an apron, maybe? I have this butcher’s one. Very macho.’
‘You are a filthy old woman,’ he repeated, but then got hold of the hem of his T-shirt and pulled the top off over his head and threw it onto a kitchen chair.
‘How about topless baking, will that keep you happy? Obviously if a health inspector turns up at the door I’m in big trouble.’ He picked up a bag of flour and began to shake it carefully into the scales.