Wonder Women

by Fiore, Rosie

  ‘I bet you were the coolest kid in town,’ she said. ‘I on the other hand …’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Holly was always the cool one in our family. I was just … ordinary, you know. The good girl. I went to university and all that, but then I got married, had kids … somehow I thought one day I’d wake up and know what my purpose was. That it would all make sense. But now all the signs show that my life … is what it is.’

  ‘Is it so bad?’

  ‘No … No, of course it isn’t. It’s just Paul – he’s never here, and when he is here, he isn’t, if you know what I mean. And the kids are great, but they’re going to need me less and less, and then where will I be? I’ll be my mum, that’s who I’ll be. A boring beige woman who’s never had a day’s excitement or mystery in her life.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘No, I do. She was the dullest woman ever. Seriously.’

  ‘No, I mean about you. You’re not dull. You’re warm and lovely and compassionate. Maybe you haven’t found your thing yet, but you will. I know you will.’

  Miranda smiled, but then the corners of her mouth turned down, like Imi’s did when she was about to howl, and she shook her head. ‘Don’t be nice to me, unless you want me to cry all over you. Sorry, I’m an emotional mess at the moment. I just wasn’t ready … to be an orphan.’

  The word ‘orphan’ seemed to tip her over the edge, and the tears started to flow. Lee leaned closer and put his arm around her shoulder, and she turned her face into his neck and cried like a child. She was straining awkwardly, so he stood and so did she, so he could hug her properly. She was much shorter than Jo, and although she felt soft, her bones were light and small, like a bird.

  He knew it would happen a moment before it did. She turned her wet face up to his. Her mouth found his and she was kissing him hungrily, and he was kissing her back. For a moment, just a moment, he responded instinctively to the warmth and physical contact, but then the thought came roaring into his head like a foghorn: THIS. IS. WRONG. In that first instant, it wasn’t the moral transgression that struck him, but the wrongness of the person in his arms. She wasn’t tall and lithe. Her lips didn’t have that soft springiness he knew so well. Her hands on his shoulders were soft and small, not strong and capable. She wasn’t Jo.

  He released her and stepped back quickly. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Miranda, you’re a lovely person, but this is just the worst – wrongest – thing I’ve ever done. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry too. So sorry,’ she said, and he could see she was actually trembling. ‘That was a moment of total madness. Please forgive me.’

  ‘Nothing to forgive, but – look, sorry, I have to go.’

  He loaded the kids into their car seats while Miranda stood by the door. She gave a small wave as he drove away. He knew it would be a long time before he spoke to her again.

  He got home and carefully carried the sleeping kids in one by one. He tipped them both into the big bed, and gently changed Imi’s nappy. She barely stirred. He sat on a chair in the dark bedroom and watched them sleep for an hour. What had he done? What had he risked? He had gambled everything he had, all the treasures of his marriage, his family and his home, on a stupid kiss to make his ego feel better. He could have lost everything. He still might, depending on Jo’s reaction when he told her. Not telling her was not an option. He knew she was out at meetings all day, and it was still mid-afternoon in New York, so speaking to her immediately wasn’t a possibility. Besides, he needed to think, to process what had happened and what it said about him, and make some changes. Some big changes.

  31

  HOLLY NOW

  Eleven rain hats. How could any woman need eleven rain hats? Holly thought with exasperation. She had begun going through her mum’s things. In Judith’s tidy wardrobe she had a jacket or coat for every season – a calf-length woollen winter coat, a light spring mac, a mustard-coloured hip-length jacket for the autumn and so on. In the right-hand pocket of each, Holly found a plastic rain hat, of the type old ladies wear to preserve their ‘hairdo’, tightly rolled with an elastic band around it. There was also one in each of Judith’s handbags. A total of eleven. Surely, thought Holly, it just didn’t rain that much? And it wasn’t as if Judith didn’t have an umbrella. She had seven of varying types in different locations. She couldn’t have got wet since about 1970.

  It was no surprise that Judith’s affairs were in perfect order – she had made David the executor of her will and he found all the paperwork he needed in a neat folder in her desk. The estate was to be split equally between the three children, with a generous bequest to the church. David, Miranda and Holly had agreed to sell the Ealing house and split the proceeds, and they had also decided to give a bequest to the hospice and the Macmillan nurses who had made such a difference to Judith’s last days. Judith had been prudent with her money and the house was completely paid off, so each of them would be getting a substantial sum once it was sold. Holly hadn’t thought about this at all, and it came as quite a shock. From being an itinerant, living half in her mum’s house and camping in her barely furnished flat in East Finchley, she would soon become a woman of means, with enough money to put down a big deposit on her own home.

  She and Miranda threw themselves into clearing the house. There was thirty years’ worth of stuff – not junk, but the thousands of things any family accumulates and never gets around to giving away. They started out sorting items one by one, but as they seemed barely to be making a dent in the mammoth task, they decided to go through the house, take the things they wanted to keep and call a charity that did house-clearances to deal with the rest of it. They both wanted surprisingly little – Miranda because she already had a complete household of her own, and Holly because very little of the stuff was to her taste, and it all seemed tainted with the sadness of her mum’s loss. David came and took a few paintings and the old football flags from his boyhood bedroom. He had no intention of helping with the actual clearing, but he was more than happy to pay for the clearance people.

  The day the van came, Holly and Miranda both came to the house, but they found it very upsetting to watch the history of their childhoods being carried out of the door and chucked into a skip. Holly went and spoke to the foreman. She came back to Miranda. ‘He says it’ll take them all of today and some of tomorrow. He’s happy to carry on without us.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s okay to leave them?’

  ‘What do you think they’re going to do? Steal something? We’re trying to get rid of the stuff.’

  ‘I suppose … I just feel bad, letting them empty Mum’s house like this.’

  ‘Me too. But she doesn’t know it’s happening, and there’s no point in us upsetting ourselves over it. Tell you what – let’s go for coffee on the Broadway. Maybe even get a bit of breakfast. We’ll come back in an hour or so and see how they’re doing.’

  As they walked down the road, Holly thought how her relationship with Miranda had changed. Miranda had always been the big sister, the sensible one, and very bossy. But through Judith’s illness, Holly had become the practical one who had made all the decisions. Miranda had not been very much use at all. Over the last few months, Holly had got used to telling her what to do, and on the whole, Miranda took her advice. Even though it was all over, she still looked very anxious and sad.

  They found a little patisserie and Holly ordered them cappuccinos, and even though Miranda said she wasn’t hungry, she got them each a pain au chocolat. She knew about Miranda’s sweet tooth, and sure enough, once the pastry was put in front of her, she bit into it with relish. ‘Oh, if I could live on naughty baked goodies, I would,’ she said, brushing crumbs from her lips.

  ‘Well, now you’re a woman of means, you can,’ said Holly. ‘You could hire your own pastry chef.’

  Miranda shook her head. ‘No, I’ll need that money, sadly. I can’t blow it on frivolities.’

  ‘What for? Are you and Paul planning to buy somewher
e bigger?’

  ‘Er, no,’ said Miranda. And it was clear she was trying to decide whether or not to say something. Holly resisted the urge to bombard her with questions. She sipped at her coffee and waited.

  ‘The thing is …’ Miranda said, ‘well, I suppose I have to tell you sometime. Paul and I are having a trial separation.’

  ‘What?’ said Holly, forgetting her manners. That was the last thing she had expected Miranda to say.

  ‘He came back from his business trip to Japan, and I said to him I thought we had problems, and that maybe we needed to see a counsellor. He said he thought there were no problems and he was perfectly happy. So I packed his bags and threw him out. Now he realises I’m serious.’

  Holly had to stop her mouth from falling open with shock. She couldn’t imagine a more unlikely scenario.

  ‘Losing Mum, and … some other things … well, it made me think,’ said Miranda. ‘I don’t want to live my life as a single parent when I’m not one, feeling like my husband doesn’t even see me, and he just takes me for granted. I don’t know what I want, but I know I want more than this.’

  ‘And so …?’

  ‘Paul’s living in a bedsit near us, and we’re seeing a counsellor. I don’t know if it’s too little too late, but I’ll see.’

  Holly couldn’t help noticing that Miranda had said ‘I’ll see’, not ‘we’ll see’. It seemed as if she was making a decision just for herself for the first time in a long time.

  Miranda wasn’t the only one who needed to make some big decisions. Since the night after Judith’s death, Holly had spent every night in her flat in East Finchley. She had started to gather more household goods, and it almost looked like a home now, if rather a minimalist one. She loved the sunlit space, and it felt to her like the first proper home she had had in more than a decade. It was her own space, and she liked to be there, quietly and alone, doing her own thing and having the time to figure out exactly what she wanted from life, and what her future might look like.

  She tried to throw herself back into work as soon as she could, but she found much had changed at Jungletown. Now things were being run from the premises in Angel, it was an altogether more corporate company. The lines between her responsibilities and those of Gary, the buyer in the main office, weren’t always clear, and they had to liaise – and sometimes argue – over everything. The thing was, Jungletown had given her a lifeline at what had been a terrible time for her. It had got her designing again when her confidence was at an all-time low. She’d loved the process of developing the look and feel of the range and getting the first shop up and running, and she was immensely grateful to Jo for cutting her so much slack when her mum was ill. She felt terribly guilty that her heart just wasn’t in it any more. She worked as hard as she could, but she kept dreaming of the dresses she would be designing and making if she had the time. She even bought fabric and did some late-night sewing, even though it felt as if she was cheating on Jungletown. She felt so bad about it that she didn’t even tell anyone. She knew that the time was coming when she would have to make some big decisions about her future – she needed to decide what she wanted to do and where she wanted to live. She still wasn’t entirely convinced that England was the right place for her. Then something happened that complicated the picture even further.

  You don’t expect to be on the loo when you receive a life-altering phone call. The caller ID said ‘unknown’, which meant it was more than likely someone ringing from abroad. She didn’t feel like having to return an international call, so she answered it.

  ‘Ah, Ms Evans,’ said a male voice, and she knew with those three words that it was Detective Tshabalala, the detective from the South African fraud squad. Her heart sank.

  ‘Detective Tshabalala. Haven’t heard from you in a while,’ she said, trying to be polite. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got any news for you.’

  ‘I am calling because I have news for you, Ms Evans,’ he said, and she could hear he sounded mightily pleased with himself. ‘We have Mr Vermaak in custody.’

  ‘You do? Oh my God. Are you sure it’s him? Where did you find him?’

  ‘Well,’ said Detective Tshabalala, sounding a little less self-important, ‘he actually found us. He walked into the station and said “I’m Damon Vermaak, and I’m here to hand myself in.”’

  ‘Wow,’ said Holly. Funnily enough, she could imagine Damon doing it. He was probably beautifully dressed and very suave. He would have made it look like he was James Bond. ‘So where had he been? What happened to him?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to give you that information, Ms Evans,’ said Detective Tshabalala. ‘You see, there will be a trial. And you will certainly be called as a witness, at the very least. We’re still taking Mr Vermaak’s statement. He is cooperating fully, but I wanted you to know that this thing isn’t over. So stay where we can find you.’

  Holly didn’t like the sound of ‘witness, at the very least’. She had assumed that the fact she had been allowed to leave the country meant she was in the clear. But who knew what Damon was saying? Was he lying in order to implicate her in the whole mess? She hated to admit it, but he was more than capable of that, and worse. Whatever happened, it looked as if she would be going back to South Africa, and maybe sooner rather than later.

  There was no point in stressing about it, so she tried to keep her mind busy with work, and with her clandestine, late-night dress designing. But then she was ‘outed’, as it were, because Mel asked her to design and make a dress for Serena. Serena, who, it turned out, was a super-talented singer–songwriter, had got her first paying gig at a little wine bar in West Hampstead and wanted something special to wear. She had only just had her sixteenth birthday, so ironically she could play but not drink there, and none of her school friends could come to the gig. She wanted to look ‘sophisticated and classy, in a retro kind of way’, Mel told Holly. It was just the kind of inspiration she had been waiting for. She did a few sketches – she’d seen Serena in what Mel called her ‘early Madonna’ outfits before, so she drew an outfit along those lines, then tried something more like a classical pianist’s concert attire – a slim, sleeveless column dress with a low back. But Serena fell in love with the design Holly loved best too: a 1940s dress with three-quarter sleeves, a big collar and full skirt. She made it in a beautiful dusty blue, and they found perfect pointy court shoes in a charity shop to go with it. With Serena’s curvy figure, and her dark hair set in old-fashioned waves, she looked like a movie star.

  Holly went along to the gig with Mel, who looked as if she might explode with nerves and pride. Jo was in New York, but had sent flowers for Serena. Serena’s dad Bruce was there too, a stringy, wrinkled individual with a long grey ponytail and a heavy metal band T-shirt. Mel had also invited a friend of hers called Hamish, who she said was a novelist. He was a big, soft bear of a man. Mel had used the term ‘friend’, but Holly noticed that when the lights went down for Serena to play, Hamish took Mel’s hand and didn’t let it go. She liked the way he looked at Mel with such tenderness, and the fact that he clearly adored Serena. The last member of their party was Fraser.

  Despite the awfulness of their last encounter, Holly had felt that Fraser deserved an apology, although probably not a detailed explanation. The week after Judith’s funeral, she took a deep breath and dialled his number. He didn’t answer, unsurprisingly, so she left a message.

  ‘Hi there. Look, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you deleted this message without listening to it, but I just wanted to let you know that my mum died. And I also wanted to say sorry … for the other morning.’ She laughed a little. ‘I think between us, we’ve pretty much had every embarrassing, awful encounter in the book. You and Daniel … me and Lindsay … There’s nothing I can say to make it better. I just wanted to say, well, sorry again. And if you wanted to talk to me ever again, I’d … well, I’d like that.’

  He rang back within the minute. ‘What do you mean, you and Lindsay?’

 
‘What? I mean, hi, Fraser. And … what?’

  ‘In your message, you said you had an encounter with Lindsay. What did you mean?’

  ‘You know … when I came to your flat. The day you were late.’

  ‘You were there? And you saw Lindsay? She never said.’

  ‘She didn’t?’

  ‘I assumed you got my messages saying we were delayed, and you went home. When you didn’t take my calls, I thought you were pissed off that I let you down. I thought it was an overreaction, and I found it a bit odd. That’s why I came to your flat.’

  ‘I didn’t get your messages that day. I got to your flat and Lindsay let me in. I thought it was you opening the door, so I might have said something rather … saucy as I came upstairs. It was very awkward. Anyway, that’s when she told me how you’re still together.’

  ‘She what?’

  ‘She said she was trying to help you overcome your serial infidelity, but that you were still very much together and still sleeping together.’

  ‘Did she?’ said Fraser, and she’d never heard him sound so livid. ‘Did she indeed? Listen, Holly, please excuse me, but I’m going to need to ring you back in a little while, if you don’t mind.’ And he hung up.

  It was a couple of hours before he rang back. ‘This is going to sound stupid,’ he said. ‘It’s taken me so long to ring you back, because I know that whatever I say, it’s just going to sound like I’m feeding you another line. What Lindsay said was absolutely, totally not true, and it was vindictive in the extreme to say it. I’ve yelled at her, and she’s totally unrepentant. I had this mad idea that I could make her ring you herself and say she was lying, but she’s refused point-blank to do that. I’m sorry, Holly. I didn’t want to mix you up in the crazy crap from my marriage. It’s the last thing I wanted.’

  ‘To be fair,’ she said carefully, ‘you did catch me in bed with someone else.’