by Judy Astley
‘Oh surely not . . .’ Ceci murmured automatically, bored with the ritual comforting that had been going on for weeks among all those mothers who had doubts.
‘Mum, Mum! It was really hard!’ Polly came shrieking out of the main doors and hurtled down the steps. Jenny hugged Polly, relieved that she did not look too concerned by the difficulty of the exam. How worried should anyone of ten have to be?
On the way home, Polly wheedled for chocolate eclairs and a banana milk shake, taking full advantage of Jenny’s sympathetic mood.
‘Well, I’ll buy some eclairs, but I think I’d really like to go home and see what they’re doing to the house. Apparently it’s an ad for breakfast cereal.’
‘Perhaps I can be in it,’ Polly said eagerly, pulling down the vanity mirror in the car and making actressy faces into it. ‘I’d really love to, more than anything!’
Jenny was touched by the child’s shiny-eyed enthusiasm. ‘OK, let’s forget the cakes and go and see what’s happening.’
Since that morning, the population of trucks and vans had increased as Laura Benstone’s drive now also overflowed with vehicles. How many people does it take to photograph one Christmas gift catalogue, Jenny wondered, quickly telling her brain not even to think about it as she started adding up the stylists, props people, designers, directors and multitude of hangers-on that could well be leaning against Laura’s limed-oak kitchen units at any one moment, fingers artistically curled round coffee mugs.
The scene in Jenny’s own house bordered more on the chaotic than the creative. Somewhere offstage, probably in the conservatory, there was shouting. Hugo strode about in the hall crossly, his expensively cut hair was up on end from frantic runnings-through with the fingers, exposing thinning patches of scalp, his mobile phone poking rudely from the waistband of his jeans. A greeny-pale, ginger-haired girl of about Polly’s age was sitting on the stairs looking tearful, and being inadequately comforted by her worried-looking mother, who listlessly patted her child on the shoulder and whispered unheeded encouragement to her.
‘Everything all right?’ Jenny called brightly to no-one in particular as she hung up her jacket, well aware that everything was obviously far from all right and hoping someone would tell her what was going on. Ominous bucket-clankings came from the kitchen and Polly dashed in to have a look.
‘Ugh puke! Someone threw up!’ she yelled, backing out again.
‘Sorry about that. Don’t worry, Belinda’s mopping.’ Hugo smiled wanly at Jenny, who wanted to get past him into her kitchen. With practised skill he blocked the doorway and treated her to one of his less convincing smiles. ‘Spot of trouble with our little star,’ he hissed viciously, glaring towards the unhappy child on the stairs. ‘It seems milk products don’t agree with her terribly well.’
The child’s mother, sensing criticism, glared back. ‘That much milk wouldn’t agree with anyone. My Gemma may be sensitive, but she is a professional. You should have got all you needed in less than five takes.’
‘If she could have done all I needed in less than five then obviously I would have done,’ Hugo snarled back. ‘Now I’m stuck with the set, the product, the crew and no actor. What am I supposed to do now?’ He bellowed into the kitchen, ‘Kev! Call Castakid would you? Get me another brat!’
Polly slid out of the kitchen doorway, and smiled winsomely up at Hugo. ‘You’ve got me, if you want me. I’m not allergic to anything, and I could live on breakfast cereals,’ she purred, willing him to see her as a perfect solution. Hugo looked Polly up and down with hostile speculation and her smile widened into her version of a cute-kid grin. Hugo made a speedy executive decision.
‘Get the Carmens out, Belinda!’ he yelled into the kitchen. ‘I’ve found us another little star!’
‘Wait a minute,’ Polly said, turning suddenly business-like, possibly at the thought of having her hair curled. ‘How much do I get paid?’
Chapter Eleven
‘A hundred pounds! You’re getting a hundred pounds just for gobbling down a bit of breakfast!’ Daisy was appalled and trembling with envy. By the time she got home from school (late because of gym club, she claimed) the house looked boringly like home again. Daisy would have liked to give Hugo Hamilton the opportunity to see and discover her; perhaps he’d have been captivated by her excellent high cheekbones and long, slender legs. Instead, she was faced with Polly swanning around the kitchen being maddeningly big-time. Daisy stamped about crossly, chucking her school bag onto the rocking chair and kicking at the books that came tumbling out.
‘Well I deserved it,’ Polly retorted, tossing her head carelessly so that her unfamiliar mane of tubular curls bounced. ‘After all, everyone I know will see me on television, looking like this!’ she made a mock-mortified face and ran her fingers through the curls, secretly enjoying the springy texture and glancing sideways into the mirror to see if she really did resemble the tousled temptress she imagined herself to be. She pouted at her reflection and gathered the curls up onto the top of her head. If she started a career now as a child model and actress, she’d be well used to it by the time she was old enough for the real stuff. How impressed they’d be when she turned up for sessions and stripped off to pose with no fuss about anything but hiding a slightly bored yawn . . .
‘You know you look like bloody Shirley Temple!’ Daisy said rudely. ‘I wish I’d been here. They’d have had to use me then.’
‘Oh no they wouldn’t have, you’re much too old. And spotty.’ Polly made a sensible dash for the door and escaped just as Daisy was taking aim with a heavy maths textbook.
Jenny was vaguely listening to all this from the depths of the fridge as she searched for something to give them all for supper, and felt rather proud of Polly. The ginger child’s mother, outraged that Polly had so easily taken over her daughter’s job, had complained that her darling Gemma had been picked out of 200 at the initial audition and had trailed into town for three recalls before the final decision had been made. Perhaps Polly, who had got it right for the exasperated Hugo in just two takes, really was a natural. Gemma’s mother had confided that Gemma paid all her own school fees out of her modelling and acting earnings, thus financing herself at a well-known stage school which would otherwise have been beyond the family’s means.
As she slowly grated some cheese, Jenny wondered how much it would cost to have a basic portfolio of photos done so that Polly could be enrolled at Castakid and join the family workforce. At Daisy’s age she had been starting a Saturday job, sweeping up in a hairdressing salon. She would never make the children pay for their own schooling, of course, but it would help if Polly’s constant demands for dancing lessons and Megadrive games could be met from some of her own efforts. It might teach at least one of their greedy, all-consuming children the value of money.
Daisy was sulking up in her bedroom. She had had a dreadful day. Emma and Sophie had a secret and had been exchanging sly giggly grins. She’d tried to interest them in her forthcoming trip to the police station, and confided, in a bid for attention, her dread of being trailed along with a full set of parents to the depths of the Interview Room where she would have to come up with a promise to be law-abiding for ever and ever. The glamour-value of her crime, however, had now diminished, and whatever it was that Emma had done at the weekend, and that Sophie knew Emma had done, overshadowed poor Daisy. Daisy blamed her parents. She shouldn’t still be grounded. She was getting left out of things and would need to be more extreme to get people to notice her. Her parents would only have themselves to blame if she turned to more serious crime.
She gazed miserably out of her window and up the Close towards the Mathiesons’ house. Someone was in their attic, Paul probably, she thought. Carol had once mentioned that he had an office up there. She’d said it in a grand sort of way, as if Paul was so much in demand he had to have work-premises wherever he was. Daisy thought he didn’t look much as if he was working, more as if he, too, was gazing out of the window. Knowing Carol, Daisy thought
, poor old Paul was probably grounded as well.
Absentmindedly stir-frying vegetables, Jenny looked around the kitchen to see if there was any damage. The peach-and-cream-dragged paint on the skirting was very scratched, but she couldn’t honestly remember whether or not it had been like that for years. That was one of the pluses of fancy paint finishes, they did very usefully blur imperfect textures and unevenness – rather as expensive foundation was supposed to do for skin. Ben shuffled into the kitchen, shoving the door open heavily so that it crashed against the wall next to it.
‘Ben, please take care, there’s a dent in the wall where you keep banging that door. The paint keeps flaking off around it.’
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled and grinned at Jenny, pushing his hair away from his forehead and revealing eyes that, unusually, for him, had a lively twinkle.
‘What’s got into you Ben? And who were you phoning?’ Daisy, back in the kitchen and ever-suspicious, caught sight of his expression on her way to the cutlery drawer in the dresser.
‘How did you know I was?’ Ben taunted her, grin widening involuntarily.
‘Heard the one in here go ping, that’s how. And Polly is singing The Good Ship Lollipop in the loo, so it couldn’t be her.’
Ben’s smile was now accompanied by the kind of light blush that would have been becoming in a small child. Daisy slammed knives and forks on to the table, which made them spin wildly, so that they settled facing all the wrong way. The blush was the same kind Emma had had all day. So was the smirk.
Jenny smiled broadly at the vegetables as she stir-fried them, thinking hey-ho another cheery supper of stimulating conversation and repartee coming up. She had read in a magazine somewhere that the act of arranging your face into a smile stimulated happy-triggers in the brain, so that you really did feel better. She tried it out, waiting to feel good and for the sound of background hostilities to fade to insignificance.
‘What are you grinning like that for?’ Ben asked, catching sight of her manic face.
‘Yeah, you look like someone’s told you a joke you don’t really get,’ Daisy added, looking at Jenny as if she suspected her of major craziness. ‘Oh and by the way, there was this note, it fell off the top of the fridge when Ben wafted into the kitchen.’
Jenny handed over the stir-frying to Daisy and looked at the tatty scrap of paper. Man phoned, called Robbins, says is Friday at 2 OK for extra flute lesson, told him probably yes, ’cos he said he’d been before. Oh and he said could his friend come at 1.30. Love Belinda. She read it twice more, as if the note would suddenly reveal David Robbins’s phone number so she could ring him back and say no, he certainly couldn’t come and neither could his friend. Whatever did they think she was? She knew exactly what they thought she was. A feeling of panic flickered in her stomach. She could say no when the men arrived, or she could relax and earn herself an unexpected hundred pounds for a few minutes’ effort. On balance she’d much rather, she thought, as she drained the rice, and wondered about mint-flavoured condoms, earn it like Polly, for eating breakfast cereal.
Alan tried hard to pretend he had asked for Serena to be sent to join him as an essential part of her training, just as the trip to Bournemouth had been. He could feel how near she was, just the other side of the wall. He put his hand flat against the gently flowered wallpaper, next to the antiqued brass light switch. The hotel was the sort that described itself as ‘country house’ in style, which meant that the room dividing was of the thin, block-board sort, making little more than expensively frilled and flounced cubicles out of stately old bedchambers. Serena could be just inches away, perhaps lying on her bed, shoes off, skirt rumpled, flicking through one of those raunchy magazines for women, the sort they had to put on the top shelf. Or perhaps she was doing the Financial Times crossword. She was fearfully clever, really knew her stuff, much more so than Alan, he had to admit. Because of this he wondered, an hour later, when he was pouring her a very large vodka and tonic in his room, if she’d seen right through his look of concern as he casually called her in to go over a couple of worrying points in the client’s list of tax claims.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got it all laid out on the desk in here.’ Alan smiled apologetically at her, ushering her, like a fly towards a web, into his room. ‘So I hope you don’t mind . . .’ Serena was giving him an oddly amused look, as if thinking it was typical of men of his age to think a girl would only normally go into a man’s hotel room in order to make immoral use of the bed. As if in defiance, she sat pertly on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs and allowing her skirt, which had buttons all the way down the front, only half of which were fastened, to fall away each side.
‘Sorry there’s no lemon,’ he said, clumsily tumbling ice into Serena’s drink.
‘No problem,’ she said, her voice now coming from right next to him, suddenly, not from the bed. She stood by the desk, her eyes roving confidently over the columns of figures in front of her. Alan took a large, loud sip of his drink and slid his trembling hand along her arm to her shoulder, wondering in which direction he should go next. ‘He should have waited till March to buy the car, that was mistake number one.’ Serena pointed a clean, square-cut nail half-way down the page, insultingly oblivious to Alan’s touch. He had, literally, made no impact. She probably thought he was leaning on her while he looked at the figures. His hand ached to move to the soft warm place at the back of her neck, to untie the velvet bow that held her hair back. He dared himself to reach for the end of the ribbon, and then the phone rang.
Someone was with him. Jenny sensed it before he spoke, something in the hesitation and the way he breathed – shakily. ‘Hi, Alan? Are you all right?’ she asked, wishing she hadn’t phoned. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, wasn’t that how the old saying went? What about the things you suspect, but don’t know for sure? Jenny thought they were the things, perhaps, self-inflicted though they might be, that hurt you most of all. Alan chatted suddenly, about the journey, about the hotel and its shortcomings, gabbling in a jocular way that was unlike him. ‘And it’s three quid for a shot of mini-bar vodka!’ he heard himself exclaiming, and then wished he hadn’t with Serena there next to him, probably thinking now that her stingy boss grudged her a drink.
Jenny heard a soft laugh, the chink of ice, lots of it, not just one drink’s worth and knew for sure that Serena was with him. She had to ask. ‘Who have you got there with you?’ she said as casually as she could manage.
‘Oh, just a colleague, going over some of tomorrow’s work, you know how it is,’ Alan said, ‘all go.’
If it had been a male colleague, he’d have mentioned him by name.
It was dead, definitely dead, stiffening even – one of its front paws was sticking out, making it look as if the cat had keeled over in mid-prod at a mouse. Paul was tempted to go into the house and tell Carol that this time he had, really had, found a corpse, make her come out and look. He didn’t think she’d find it very funny. Someone would have to go round and tell the Collins family, though. He thought it should be Carol, really, women having the gentle touch when it came to things like that. Polly might be there, and be terribly upset. It was probably her cat. Carol came out on to the patio at that moment, to water the hanging baskets she had been planting for the summer. Just now they were naked mounds of green polythene, cut-up bin liner, stabbed with holes and stuffed with seedlings of lobelia, begonias, primulas and a riskily early geranium or two.
‘A riot of colour, they’ll be by June,’ Carol declared, stepping back slightly as she poured water, so it wouldn’t spill on her beige suede shoes.
‘The Collins’s cat is dead,’ Paul said, failing to admire Carol’s efforts. ‘It’s down there, under the lilac. Old age by the look of it, there’s no sign of a fight.’ He pointed vaguely down the garden, as if showing Carol where she could find it. Not looking up, she continued ministering to her plants, trying not to recall Jenny in that shop, showing her fancy underwear. She frowned. ‘Nasty great ginger thing. Do you
know I caught him spraying, spraying, mind you, our dianthus. The Mrs Sinkins, I think it was. I didn’t think cats did that, once they’d been neutered.’
‘One of us will have to go and tell them,’ Paul hinted.
‘Yes. They can come and collect it. After all, it might have had a disease,’ Carol said, wrinkling her nose. ‘How dead is it, exactly?’ She wondered how dead it would have to be before Ming and Mong started showing an unhealthy interest, perhaps even dragging the smelly thing up to the house and attempting to force it through the cat-flap, like they had with the run-over pigeon last summer. She shuddered. She’d also seen how far an untidy fox could scatter a dead rabbit. ‘Better get them to remove it now, Paul, then it won’t attract vermin in the night.’
It was an order, no doubt about it. Was there ever doubt, Paul wondered, obediently trotting through the house on his way to break the sad news to the Collins family. He didn’t want to take the dead cat with him, they’d all be having supper, and the last thing they’d want to see would be a Sainsbury’s bag containing their beloved pet being dumped on their back door step.
Jenny was playing her flute when Paul arrived. She looked very graceful, he thought, with her long eyelashes shadowing her cheek as she concentrated intently on the rippling music. He tapped lightly, reluctant to disturb her and she saw him hesitantly pushing his head sideways around the conservatory door. She felt cross with him for his apologetic interruption, his awkward self-effacing posture as he slid his torso into the room, making a grotesque attempt at being inconspicuous. Having just achieved escape from her worries, deep into the music, she was abruptly dragged back into hearing the washing-up squabbles in the kitchen again as the children messily cleared up.