‘It’s fine! I don’t feel weird about it.’
‘It must be hard being over thirty and single, especially in London,’ Nancy continues.
I pick up my glass of wine and take a large sip, before excusing myself and going to the loo.
‘Gilly has plenty of time to meet someone,’ I overhear Nick say as I’m walking down the hallway, back towards the kitchen, ‘and after what Ed did, she’s bound to want to be careful.’
I stand behind the door.
‘What you don’t understand Nicholas . . .’
‘Keep your voice down,’ he warns her.
‘. . . is that it’s hard for women. Our biological clocks keep on ticking. If she leaves it too late . . .’
I rush upstairs. In the safety of Nick’s study I sit down at his desk and breathe deeply. Don’t let her get to you, Gilly. Sometimes I could murder him for marrying someone like Nancy.
When Nick first met her he couldn’t wait to introduce Dad and me to this wonderful, pretty, courageous woman, ‘who’s somehow fallen for me,’ he’d said laughing. It had been a whirlwind romance, Nick proposing after only two months. Before we met her, he warned us not to ask too much about Nancy’s family. She had left behind an alcoholic father and a useless mother who lived off benefits, to make a better life for herself in London, he’d said proudly, but she doesn’t like being reminded about it. They met at work. Nancy had been PA to one of the partners in Nick’s law firm. I wasn’t sure if I liked her, but I did admire her back then, as did my father. It was easy to see how Nick had fallen for Nancy too, with her long fair hair, wide mouth and deep blue eyes the colour of denim. She was pretty. I remember thinking she’d be the kind of woman every little girl dreams of turning into when she grows up.
I overhear Nancy and Nick continuing to bicker downstairs. If anything they are an advertisement for why not to marry, but I wouldn’t be without their children. I love walking with the girls in the park at weekends and buying them ice creams. I smile, remembering Nick playing with them and calling, ‘Last one to me has to eat Brussels sprouts for tea!’
I glance across to Nick’s laptop. I wonder if I’ve had any response to my Monday to Friday advert? While I’m here? I press a few keys.
‘Welcome, Gilly!’ the site tells me.
‘No need to welcome me,’ I mutter, waiting for my Monday to Friday password to be accepted.
I stare at the screen. Am I imagining it?
I must shriek because next thing I know, Nick is in the room, taking me into his arms. ‘I’m sorry, Gilly. Nancy can be so thoughtless.’
‘No!’ I pull away from him. ‘It’s fine. She’s right,’ I admit, ‘my clock is ticking . . . But look, Nicky!’
Your house has had 55 VISITORS and 10 ENQUIRIES.
‘Shh!’ he says, though he smiles at my excitement.
One of the girls starts to cry.
‘There there, darling,’ Nick says to Matilda, who’s sitting up in bed tearful at being woken up. He hands her the Cinderella flask. ‘Ten enquiries,’ he whispers, ‘that’s great!’
‘Auntie Gilly!’ Tilda cries and I press a finger to my lips, but nevertheless approach her bed to kiss her goodnight again. She has a soft round face and smells of sleep.
‘Where’s Ruskin?’ she asks. Tilda tells me she is going to marry him. ‘He’s in nod-nod land,’ I whisper.
Hannah continues sleeping, sprawled diagonally across her mattress. Three years older, she loves playing the piano and cycling, though recently I’ve noticed how subdued she’s been. Lately all she’s wanted to do is watch television.
Both are pretty, with long honey-coloured hair, often braided into French plaits, and their limbs so beautifully formed. They are perfect to me in every way.
‘By the way, Mum called this morning,’ Nick tells me quietly, outside their bedroom.
‘Good. I’ve been worried about her.’ Our mother lives in Perth with Patrick, a wine merchant. She moved to Australia after Hannah was born. Nick was quite happy to see her go because he’s never forgiven her. I felt differently, though I found it hard to say that I didn’t want her to leave. Dad didn’t seem surprised; he had known about Patrick some time before us.
‘How was she?’ I ask.
‘Good. Happy,’ he replies simply. He looks at his watch. ‘Sorry, Gilly,’ he says, heading back to his study. ‘Work’s awful at the moment, the company’s letting so many people go and if I don’t finish this case . . .’
‘Nick, you’re tired. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’ I gently suggest, as I hear Nancy clearing up the supper downstairs.
He nods, exhausted. ‘You’re right. I’ll be down in one sec,’ he promises.
Alone, I join Nancy back in the kitchen, grabbing a drying-up cloth.
Lying in bed, unable to sleep, I think about Mum. Sometimes I miss her and wish things had turned out differently. Occasionally I find myself asking what would have happened if Dad could have forgiven her all those years ago when she had turned up on our doorstep. Or what might have been if I had decided to live with Mum, not Dad, when they divorced.
I think about tonight. When I was helping Nancy clear up the supper, she apologized if she had been insensitive, saying that at the end of the day all she wants is for me to be happy. ‘Me too,’ I’d said, thanking her. ‘But, Nance, this time it’s got to be right. I can’t get hurt again.’
Like a horse and jockey in a showjumping contest, Nancy and I were doing so well until we collapsed at the last fence. Nancy said I mustn’t forget the problems Mum had with Megan. ‘I was reading the stats on women of a certain age, and the risk of having a child that’s . . .’
‘Nancy, I’d keep it!’ And on that note I left.
I pick up the silver-framed photograph of Megan by my bedside. She had a round soft face similar to Matilda’s, glowing skin and great big eyes that smiled. Nick doesn’t like talking about her. He has chosen to shut off that part of his life, like closing a half-finished book and never going back. Yet I think of her often, especially at night.
Slowly I drift off to sleep.
6
December 1984
Nick and I are watching Eastenders with our babysitter Lisa, bowls of spaghetti on our laps. Normally we’re not allowed to watch it. Dad took Mum to the hospital this morning. I heard this groan, followed by, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening!’ I rushed out onto the landing to see what was going on. Nicholas didn’t wake up.
‘Mum?’ I called out, scared.
‘Back to your room!’ Dad instructed. Seconds later he was at my bedside, reassuring me that Lisa would be coming over any moment to look after Nick and me and take us to school. ‘Everything’s going to be fine,’ he said. I could tell that he was excited. When they left, I shut my eyes and dreamed about having a baby sister. I wanted to plait her hair and paint her nails.
I look over to Lisa, long legs curled up on the sofa. She’s nineteen and has golden-coloured hair, dead straight like a Roman road. Each night I pray for hair like hers, but in the morning I’m the same old Gilly with grey eyes which sometimes look dark blue. Mum tells me I’m lucky to have dark hair and magic eyes that change colour according to what I’m wearing. ‘You’re like a chameleon,’ she says and then goes on to tell me I should never want to be anyone else, but be proud of who I am and walk to the beat of my own drum, whatever that means.
Lisa often babysits Nick and me. When we were much younger (we’re nearly eight now) Mum and Dad used to go on ‘date nights’. I would sit on Mum’s bed and watch her get ready for the evening, powdering her nose and putting on lipstick. I used to go through her jewellery box and put on her high heels. They took it in turns to choose where to go. Mum likes weird food, called sushi. Dad eats curries. Mum loves ballet; Dad tells us he can’t stand watching men in tights dance. ‘Don’t ever marry someone like your mother!’ Dad advised my brother one evening after salsa dancing. ‘She’s now threatening flying lessons. I think she wants to kill me!’
Sinc
e Mum has been pregnant they don’t go on their dates. I think Dad is secretly happy to stay at home. He likes having a bath when he gets back from the office. He pours himself a glass of something, I think it’s whisky, and takes it upstairs and locks the bathroom door.
Before Mum was pregnant, Mum and Dad argued all the time. There was a lot of shouting. One time he told her she was too old to have another child and she threw her glass of wine at him. He said something about not wanting to have a baby with problems. Nick and I often shared bedrooms after their fights.
Mum is old. She’s forty-two. She married Dad when she was twenty-seven.
She and Dad have told us the story many times as to how we are miracle twins. I look over to my brother, watching the TV. I don’t like the way Mum cuts our hair. We both have horrible fringes.
Seven years after they married they still had no children so they decided to adopt.
The week that they were due to sign the adoption papers she found out she was pregnant with twins. ‘My seven years of bad luck had come to an end,’ Mum told us.
After Nick and I were born Mum was too busy looking after us even to think about having another baby.
‘You’re pregnant?’ Dad had said in the kitchen. Mum had summoned Nick and me into the room to hear the news too.
Dad poured himself a gin, drank it in one go. ‘Nick, Gilly, I need to talk to your mother alone,’ he said. We left the room, sloped upstairs, but remained seated on the top step, holding our breath.
‘Please be happy,’ we overheard Mum say.
‘You promised me we were being careful, Beth. What do you expect me to do? Jump up and down with joy?’
‘But, Will, when the baby comes you’ll change, I know you will.’
‘We agreed to stop at two.’
‘I’m bored! The children are at school and . . .’
‘Of all the underhand, selfish things you could have done . . .’
I asked my brother what ‘underhand’ meant. Nick whispered, ‘It’s not nice, Gilly. Naughty, I think.’
‘I need this,’ Mum went on.
‘This isn’t just about you!’
‘Will! Wait!’
The front door slammed. We bolted down the bedroom landing and into Nick’s room. We heard the engine revving. I looked out of the window, down at Dad’s car driving off into the night. ‘Do you want to sleep with me tonight?’ Nick asked hopefully. ‘You can have the top bunk?’
With child number three, Mum hasn’t been feeling so well. She’s been going to bed in the afternoons and often asks Lisa to come over at weekends to play with us. Lisa likes coming round because she fancies my dad. Sometimes Dad takes us on the double-decker bus to the Natural History Museum or to Madame Tussauds and we have a pizza afterwards, with lots of pepperoni.
Lisa clears the plates away. I stare at the telephone. All day long I had this funny feeling in my tummy that my headmistress, Mrs Ward, would call me into her office to tell me that Mum had died because she was so old.
A key turns in the door. Nick and I look at one another. Lisa puts on some lipstick and squirts something smelly onto her wrist.
Dad enters in his thick chunky jumper and scarf and sits down next to me. ‘I’m so sorry, Nicky.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’ve got two bossy sisters now.’
‘It’s a girl!’ I cry out, grabbing Dad’s arm and hugging it.
‘Yes, and she’s beautiful and healthy, and your mother sends you both the biggest kiss.’ His jumper smells of hospitals and washing powder.
‘What are you going to call her?’ Lisa asks, flicking a hand through her hair.
‘Megan,’ he says, ‘we’re going to call her Megan, after my mother.’
7
Ruskin and I rush through the gates of Ravenscourt Park and into an oasis of calm. Richard was right. Who needs the countryside when I have this on my doorstep? Sometimes it’s dangerous to think the grass is greener on the other side.
I walk past the café, customers buying an early morning coffee, their dogs tied up at the gates. I follow the path that leads me into the open field and head for my circle of friends, who congregate in the distance, near to the entrance of the garden centre. There’s Walter, holding Spike the Airedale tightly on a lead because Spike’s too amorous when it comes to the other dogs, especially Hardy, the miniature schnauzer. Spike has to wear a muzzle now because he’s got into the bad habit of having spats with dogs outside of our pack. There’s Mari, my boss and the boss of this group too. I can hear her giving Walter a grilling, saying Spike’s muzzle is on upside down. ‘The straps are over his eyes for God’s sake!’ she shouts.
Today she’s wearing a stylish denim apron over her clothes. She doesn’t like getting filth and muddy pawmarks on her outfits. With the strength of an ox she hurls her chewed-up blue ball across the field for her Basil to retrieve. Basil has the speed of an Olympic medallist. By the time he’s at the shop he’s so tired that he and Ruskin sleep most of the day.
Since meeting Mari four years ago under the grand oak tree, like a magnet she’s drawn Walter, Samantha, Brigitte, Ariel and me to this meeting ground. Sam is my age, and married with three children. Brigitte, half-French, is a food critic. Ariel, the youngest of our group, twenty-six, has a partner called Graham and like me has worked in a thousand different jobs, but his real passion is music. He’s currently teaching contemporary music at a school in Hammersmith. He cycles to the park most days with Pugsy, his black pug, perched in the front basket. Walter is retired and in his seventies. He used to be a window cleaner.
As I approach the circle, we say hello and exchange news. Walter seems low today. ‘I’m feeling out of sorts,’ he confides to us all. ‘My new TV isn’t working. I have to kick it to get it going. It was expensive too.’
‘That’s not right,’ we all tell him.
‘Scandalous!’ Brigitte exclaims.
‘You need to go into the shop and speak direct to the manager,’ Ariel advises.
He’s dressed in skinny jeans and a white T-shirt, and I also notice he’s changed his hair colour again. It’s now short and blond, which accentuates his brown eyes. Ariel has one of those faces that can get away with a different image each month; I tell him with pride he’s as versatile as Madonna.
I then mention my thirteen enquiries from prospective Monday to Fridayers. I had an extra three this morning.
‘So you’re not moving?’ asks Sam, who’s been away and needs to catch up on the news. Even in the summer she looks pale because her skin is so fair.
‘I’m staying put.’
‘Thank the fucking lord,’ Ariel says. ‘Pugsy would have missed you,’ he adds, gesturing to an oblivious Pugsy sniffing something ominous in the grass.
‘Oh good, we didn’t want you to go,’ says Sam, who has vibrant red hair, an infectious laugh and a figure that inspires me to go to the gym more. She’s on a diet of looking after her family and working part-time as a secretary in an architect’s firm. Sam owns Hardy, the miniature schnauzer whom Spike the Airedale has taken a fancy to.
‘I’d have missed your pretty face,’ says Walter. He has never been married but loves to flirt and since giving up window cleaning (the ladder got too heavy for him) he’s now the resident dog walker in Hammersmith. At the moment he’s not only looking after Spike but also a rescue dog called Gusto. He’s rarely seen without his khaki rucksack on his back filled with every kind of dog accessory.
‘I always thought it a dreadful idea to leave,’ Brigitte adds with a heavy French accent.
Mari, hating to be left out, says, ‘Me too. You can’t live off a view.’ I don’t remind her that previously she’d thought it was a great idea, just as long as I didn’t leave her until she’d found a replacement.
‘So what’s this about thirteen enquiries?’ Sam asks. ‘Who are they all from?’
I tell them about my interview with Roy Haddock that night and they laugh.
‘I once knew a Mr Trout,’ muses Walter.
‘
Roy,’ Mari repeats. ‘I’m not sure about the name. He sounds like a big fat man . . .’
‘With a beer belly,’ Sam finishes.
‘Don’t be such snobs,’ someone says.
We turn to see before us a man wearing combats, T-shirt and a navy hat, dragging a Scottie dog on its lead. There’s something familiar about him. I know! He’s the man I saw the other day. He’s tall, scruffy, hasn’t shaved properly and looks about my age. In fact he looks as if he’s just crawled out of bed, but his blue eyes are bright with curiosity. ‘Sorry, have I interrupted something?’ He surveys our group. ‘Is this the official doggy hour?’ He smiles and there is something appealing about his confidence. I can also tell Ariel is checking him out. ‘Cute,’ he whispers to me. ‘Ask him if he’s single, Gilly – go on, you need a bit of action.’
I stand on his foot. He yelps.
Guy glances at both of us. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks Ariel, who is still hopping up and down in pretend agony.
‘Yes, yes, he’s fine,’ I say, ignoring Ariel’s scowl.
Anyway, I tell Guy briefly about my plan to find a lodger, apologizing to Mari, who’s heard it all before.
‘The trouble with lodgers is you end up going out every night of the week just to avoid them,’ he says.
‘Well, the good thing is he’s a Monday to Friday man,’ I inform him.
‘Monday to Friday? So what does he get up to at the weekend?’
‘He buggers off,’ Mari states, lighting up a menthol cigarette.
We don’t introduce ourselves, but instead point out our dogs. That’s Brigitte’s dog Mousse, Hardy is Sam’s, there’s Basil named after Mari’s favourite herb that she grows on her terrace. She adds that her tomatoes have been fabulous this year. That’s Ruskin. And Pugsy’s over there.
As I watch us all sussing out this man in his hat, I liken our circle to the school playground. We’re never quite sure how we feel about newcomers. We become cosy, then all of a sudden along comes someone we haven’t met before who unsettles the balance.
Monday to Friday Man Page 4