by Julia Crouch
They took their leave and walked off down the clattery school corridor with its tang of school dinners and plimsolls.
Outside in the playground, the home lunch children were just being brought back to school by their parents. Rose could feel the ripple Polly caused as they crossed the playground. Even before she was famous, she had managed to turn heads, with her ingrained glamour and angular swagger. Now, more than a decade after her most recent album, people would still do a double-take. Even with her hair so neatly combed, and her clothing tuned down, Polly still had a distinctive look that was hard to obscure.
In an attempt to defuse the spell that she knew Polly could cast – and the trouble that generally resulted – Rose introduced her to a couple of people as ‘my old friend Polly, whose kids are starting at the school’. But it was pretty pointless. As Polly held out her hand for shaking, Rose couldn’t help feeling as if she was introducing the Queen.
‘I thought I was going to have to start signing autographs,’ Polly said as they walked back across the field.
When they got back, Polly went up to the Annexe to lie down.
‘Can you get the boys, please, Rose? I’m wiped out,’ Polly said, as she set off.
‘Of course,’ Rose said. Nico was nine, and she reckoned that pretty soon, with their strength in numbers, Anna could have her dream and the children could make their own way home. There were no roads to cross, and most of the journey was across the fields.
She hadn’t let Anna know during her stories of when she was a girl, but the reason Rose’s parents had forbidden her to take the short-cut under the pier on her way to school back in Brighton was that it was a notorious gathering-place for all sorts of undesirables. Rose had disobeyed her parents and, on one occasion, a man grabbed her. He had something purple and hard sticking out of his trousers, which he put her hand over, moving it up and down. She had squeezed it really hard, and dug her nails in, which had made him swear and loosen his grip, allowing her to beat him off with her satchel and run away. But she couldn’t get the stink off her hand, no matter how hard she washed it. For weeks afterwards, she suffered nightmares where he followed her home, climbing in through her window and sticking that stinking thing at her with his smelly hand over her face.
After that, at least for a while, she tried her best to be a Good Girl, to obey her parents. But her efforts always seemed to backfire, and she invariably found herself thundering up the stairs of the guesthouse in an effort to lock herself inside the bathroom before her father caught her. In the end, she had just stopped trying – the outcome always seemed to be the same, whether she was good or bad.
In any case, this was why she wouldn’t let Anna wander on her own. But now that Anna had two wild and unruly guardsmen, she supposed she would be safe. Another advantage, Rose thought, of Polly, Nico and Yannis staying for a while.
Thinking about this, Rose went up to the school a little later to pick up the children. She brought them back, listening to Nico and Yannis’s excited chatter about their first day at Anna’s school.
‘It’s your school now,’ Anna said to them, swinging her schoolbag round and round over her shoulder.
When they got back, Rose gave each of them a glass of milk and a slice of cake. Then she turfed them all out into the back garden, where they started to build a den in the overgrown patch at the very end. Rose smiled to herself, thinking how much this would please Gareth.
At six-thirty, Rose sent Nico up to the Annexe to fetch Polly for supper. A while later, he came back, alone.
‘She’s in bed and sort of sleeping. She says go on without her.’
‘I’ll put a plate out for you to take up for her,’ Rose said.
‘Nah, don’t waste it,’ Nico said. ‘She said she’s not hungry.’
As far as Rose knew, Polly hadn’t eaten a thing all day. She was really going to have to keep an eye on her.
At seven, Gareth came in from the studio and they all sat down to supper without Polly. The boys tucked into their lasagne like hungry animals, taking second helpings and licking their plates clean.
They had spent their first day at school as rather glamorous exotica: their accented English and olive skins were a novelty at the village school.
‘Me and Yannis decided we wanted to run round the playground, so we did, and soon everyone in the school was charging round after us,’ Nico said.
‘The whole school!’ Anna hammered it home for Gareth.
‘Like a crocodile,’ Yannis said, and Anna and the boys beamed at one another. Anna had spent the day basking in the reflected glory of being associated with the boys, and Rose saw that she liked it. A lot.
‘Like a bunch of idiots,’ Nico added. Then the laughter died down and he yawned and shivered. ‘I’m cold,’ he said.
‘Ah, you’re not used to our nights yet. It can get pretty chilly,’ said Rose. ‘Now, finish up, and we’ll get you to bed. It’s really late.’
‘At home, we stay up as long as we like,’ Nico said.
‘Well, we do things differently here,’ said Gareth. ‘And while you’re with us, you’ll do them like we do.’
‘And you must be exhausted anyway, after your journey and going straight to school and all that,’ Rose said.
‘Come on Anna banana,’ Gareth said, taking her and Flossie up for their bath.
Rose found blankets and wrapped them round the boys. She walked them up the garden towards the Annexe. The sky was clear now, and the air still. A touch of frost was biting into the air and the stars were like tiny stabs in backlit silk.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing up. ‘The Plough, see?’
‘We’ve got that back home,’ Nico said. ‘We see it from our terrace every night. But it’s over there.’ And, with an astronomical rationale all of his own, he pointed further south.
She bundled them both up the Annexe stairs to the darkened room above, and they tiptoed past Polly, who lay huddled asleep on the big bed. Rose took them into the bathroom, and switched on the light. Polly had taken a shower, Rose noticed. The floor was covered in water, there were damp towels bundled in a corner, and talcum powder covered the surfaces.
‘Where are your toothbrushes?’ Rose asked the boys.
They both shrugged.
‘Well, your toilet bags then?’
‘Toilet bag? Ewww,’ Yannis giggled.
‘Your washbags, I mean.’
Both boys looked blank. So Rose made them use their fingers with the toothpaste she had put out before they had arrived. Tomorrow she would buy them warmer clothes and toothbrushes. And pyjamas, because it turned out that they didn’t have any of them, either.
She tucked them into the bunk beds in the little bedroom – which, she noted, was very small indeed once there were two boys in it. There was also a faint whiff of damp, which she had never noticed before.
She went to turn the light out, looking back to smile at the two brown faces peering out from identical striped duvets.
‘Rose?’ Yannis said from his nest, in a small voice.
‘Yes, Yannis?’
‘Do you know any stories?’ he said. ‘Not scary ones, though.’
‘Let me see now,’ said Rose, curling up on the end of his bed. She could hear Nico sigh and turn noisily to face the wall. ‘It won’t be long, Nico, just to get Yannis settled.’
‘Whatever,’ Nico said.
‘Do you want to hear how me and your mum met?’
‘All right,’ Yannis said.
‘Well, it was a very rainy day by the seaside where we lived, and we were at school – our primary school, which was just near the beach.’
‘Ours is too, back home,’ Yannis said.
‘Yours opened right onto the beach, didn’t it? So at lunchtime you played out there. Well, ours was in the middle of a big town and there were a few roads between the school and the beach, so it was quite different, and the weather was very chilly and rainy that day, so everyone felt a little mean and cold. Not like in Karpathos,
where the sun shines almost every day.
‘Anyway, we were all sitting down at our desks, when the teacher said there was a new girl, and in walked your mum. She was thin as a stick, and tiny, and her hair was like a frightened black cat sitting on her head.’
Nico let out a snort of laughter from the bed above.
‘She was soaking wet, and looked like a little ferret, staring out with her beady eyes. And she was wearing what looked like a purple tutu, stripy pink and black tights and big silver boots that made her feet look like a hooligan’s. Everyone in the class laughed.’
‘No one laughed at me today,’ Yannis said.
‘No. They’re nice at your new school. Back then, everyone laughed at your mum, except me. I stood up and said, “Can she come and sit by me, Miss?” And I looked after her. I took her hand and said, “We’re going to be best friends”. And we were.’
Nico had turned round now, and he hung his head down from the top bunk, listening.
‘That afternoon, I took her back to my house after school. We stopped off at her little flat on the way to let her mum know, but her mum was sleeping on the sofa, so we left her a note. Did you ever meet your granny?’
‘I did, when I was a baby,’ Nico said. ‘But I don’t remember her.’
‘Well, she was very beautiful. She was a model and her photo was in a lot of magazines when she was younger. But by the time she had your mum she wasn’t all that well, and she wasn’t able to look after her properly. So we went back to my house and we had tea, and Polly told me all about her life. She and her mum had just moved down to Brighton from London, and they had spent some time in Italy before that, and Morocco. But they stayed in Brighton when they got there, because her mum was too tired to move anywhere else. Which was lucky for me and Polly.
‘So if we weren’t at school together, we were round each other’s houses. My house was a sort of hotel, and we’d play in the empty bedrooms.’
‘Can we go there, to that house?’ Yannis asked.
‘Oh, it was sold a long time ago,’ Rose said. ‘Still, we’ve got this house now. And I hope you two and Anna will grow up to be as great friends as me and Polly.
‘Now then, it’s time to call it a day,’ she said, tucking them both in again and smoothing their duvets down. ‘There’ll be plenty more evenings for stories.’
‘I can’t sleep, Rose,’ Yannis said, his lip trembling.
‘Oh dear, Yannis, come here.’ Rose lay down on the bed next to him. She knew that Flossie would be wanting a feed soon, but she couldn’t let this poor little boy lie here in the dark on his own. She held him close and hummed and stroked his head, sure she could still smell wild oregano in his hair. In a matter of minutes, he was asleep, a tiny smile traced across his lips.
Rose got up. ‘Is it OK if I go, Nico?’ she whispered.
‘He’s asleep?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then go, Rose. I’ll be fine.’ He reached over, and rubbed her shoulder.
Like a little old man, she thought as she made her way back through the main room, past Polly’s bed.
‘Liar,’ Polly muttered from her bed.
‘What?’ Rose said, startled.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Polly mumbled, half under her breath as she turned and huddled back down under the duvet. Then she sighed and softly started to snore.
Eleven
The next morning there was a deep frost. Pale gold sunlight was just beginning to soften the crunch underfoot as Rose, Flossie, Simon and Trooper crossed the field towards The Lodge on the way back from the school run.
‘So, I hear she caused quite a stir yesterday,’ Simon said, swinging the lunchbox he had forgotten to leave with Liam.
‘What?’ Rose said, following a swift as it swept across the sky. Surely it was too early for swifts?
‘Ms Novak. She was all the gossip at the school gate.’
‘Oh, yes. Well, it makes a change from you, I suppose,’ she said, arching an eyebrow.
More often than not, Simon was the only father on the school run. What with that, and his being tall, blond and not in bad nick for a dad, most of the other mothers had their eye on him for one reason or another. He had a reputation for being a bit of a flirt, but Rose put it down to him being an open and friendly sort whose good nature was misinterpreted by the claustrophobic school community of mothers who had very little else to turn their minds – or eyes – to.
For example, the fact that Simon and Rose often left the school gates together had not gone unnoticed, nor that he had regularly been seen going into her house. Rose thought the whole thing with the gossip was ridiculous. The Lodge was on the way home for him, and he had often admitted that he was all about procrastination in his morning writing schedule. It quite annoyed her sometimes, the meaningful looks directed at her outside the school. Some of those people had very small lives.
Trooper bounded up with a drool-soaked stick and Simon threw it again for him. It arced up through the air, landing at the far side of the field.
‘I haven’t seen her since yesterday, when we met up with Janet,’ Rose said.
‘So you had the boys all evening?’
‘Oh, I don’t mind that. They’re rather charming in their way. I’m getting quite fond of them. In fact, I’m thinking that it might be more practical at the moment if I move them down to the main house – at least until Polly’s well enough to pull her weight.’
‘From what I heard, she looked quite well enough,’ Simon laughed.
‘It’s all a front. She knows how to pull off a performance,’ Rose said.
They reached the entrance to Rose’s garden.
‘Got time for a spot of coffee?’ Simon asked.
‘Oh, go on, then,’ she said, holding the gate open for him.
Rose was glad Simon was coming in. He brought something of the outside world to the house – he was always going up to London for meetings with agents, editors and journalists – people who wanted his work and his wisdom. She enjoyed his talk of Soho House and the Groucho. It made her nostalgic for a life she supposed she had left behind when she moved out of London. In reality, she had rarely ventured further west than London Bridge when she lived in Hackney. But the fact that Simon managed all that urban, cultural life while still living out in the sticks reminded her of the possibilities of this place she and Gareth had chosen as their home. When Flossie got to school age, who knew what Rose might manage for herself?
Rose was surprised to see Polly in the kitchen, sitting in the armchair, with Manky the cat in her lap and a mug of coffee in her hand. She was wearing a different nightdress from the day before, but this one was just as revealing – an ankle-length skin-tight red tee with a low, curved neckline that barely contained the skinny little nipples that jutted from her chest. Her eyes were ringed and smudged with a mixture of sleep and yesterday’s make-up.
Rose looked at Simon, who reddened. He was one of those fair-skinned people who are quick to blush. ‘Polly, Simon. Simon, Polly.’ While she was glad to see Polly up, she was a little irritated that her morning coffee with Simon was being gatecrashed.
Polly lifted her free hand from the cat and held it out. Simon, rather surprisingly, bent and kissed it. Once again, Polly was having regality bestowed upon her. Rose moved over to the other side of the room, unwound Flossie from the sling and lay her in her morning sun spot on her lambskin.
‘I see you’ve reacquainted yourself with Manky,’ she said to Polly.
‘What?’ Polly said.
‘Manky. Surely you remember Manky? He was yours first of all.’
‘The cat? My God, I never even thought – how old is he?’
‘About thirteen now. Getting on a bit. Christos got him for you, remember? When you came out of hospital. Poor old Manky. I’ve got to take him to the vet later on – he’s got something wrong with his teeth.’
Polly looked down at the cat who, having just spied Trooper, leaped off her lap, digging his claws into her legs.
‘Oh my God,’ Polly said in a small voice.
‘And I took him on when you went to Greece, remember?’
‘Yes.’ Polly buried her face in her hands. They all stood there for a couple of beats, Simon turning redder by the second.
‘I’m sorry,’ Polly said suddenly, putting her hands down onto her thighs, shrugging her shoulders and smiling up at them both. Then she got up. ‘Look at the state of me,’ she said, holding her hands up like Shirley Bassey. ‘I wasn’t expecting company. Anyone want coffee?’ And she moved to the coffee machine.
‘Yes, please,’ Simon said.