Happy Families

by Janey Fraser

  ‘I’m sure your mother didn’t mean that, dear.’

  ‘Yes she did!’ Daisy had now united with her brother to strengthen the opposition. Her manoeuvres could teach the UN a thing or two. ‘She always lets us eat in front of the television so she can get some p and q.’ Daisy put on her bossy look. ‘That’s “p” spelt with one letter. Not like the other one that’s spelt “p” and then “e” and then another “e” …’

  There was a gasp from the woman with the irritating little-girl voice.

  ‘That’s quite enough!’ butted in Rob with the false jovial voice he adopted when pretending that this kind of behaviour was a mere blip in the otherwise serene radar of family life. ‘Why don’t you eat up this delicious lunch that Aunty Pamela has prepared?’

  Pamela? Prepared this? Bobbie almost snorted. Hadn’t Rob seen the team working their socks off in the kitchen? If she had as much help as Pamela had had over the years, she could have brought up a perfect family too! Instead, she had to work. Not her old lucrative PR work, which didn’t fit in with school hours or holidays, but as a telephone market researcher, earning peanuts by making cold calls about anything from nappy rash cream to holidays. That reminded her. She still had to finish her quota by tomorrow night.

  ‘It’s disgusting!’ Bobbie’s attention was brought back to her daughter, who was poking the salmon suspiciously. ‘I don’t want it.’

  Rob was going red. ‘Daisy, that’s very rude.’

  ‘I can’t help it. It tastes funny. And it’s the same colour as Mummy’s hair.’

  Too late, she heard the fatal words coming out of her mouth. ‘If you don’t eat it up, you can’t have any pudding.’

  ‘Quite right,’ muttered one of the other guests, shooting daggers in their direction.

  Pamela nodded tightly. Her hands were clenched under the table, Bobbie noticed. ‘The key to good parenting is to be consistent.’ She glanced across approvingly at her two perfect daughters who were sitting, straight-backed, on the other side of the table.

  Andy put an arm around his wife. Interesting! Pamela was visibly stiffening at his touch. ‘Did I tell you’, he said with a proud edge to his voice, ‘that my wife has volunteered to run a Perfect Parents’ class at the girls’ school?’

  ‘A parenting class?’ squeaked the woman with the little-girl voice. ‘I’ve heard about those! You can get free vouchers, can’t you? My niece did it. Before her breakdown.’

  Pamela nodded like a modest prefect accepting an honour. ‘The PTA asked if I would be a volunteer. I’ve done a day’s training, of course.’

  ‘Not that she needed it!’ Andy cut in. ‘Pamela is a natural.’

  Everyone nodded their heads although Bobbie couldn’t help seething silently. Anyone could be a natural if they had kids who did what they were told. Just look at Mel, who was clearing the plates without being asked.

  ‘In our day, parents didn’t need help like this,’ boomed a man in a pink shirt. His eyes fell on Jack’s empty place. ‘But today’s generation gets away with anything.’

  As he spoke, there was the sound of loud voices from the room next door. Loud American cartoon voices. ‘The DVD player,’ said Pamela, appalled. ‘Someone’s switched it on.’

  Suddenly, Bobbie realised that Daisy’s place was empty. And Jack’s! She’d been too busy admiring her nieces’ exemplary behaviour to notice her own two slipping off. ‘COME BACK YOU TWO! THIS INSTANT!’ A table of appalled-looking faces turned their gaze at her as though in one. Had she been yelling again? It was so easy to do it out of habit.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, pushing her chair back and running into the den next door. It was a room designed for the girls and their friends, Pamela had explained airily when she’d had it decorated – no doubt at huge expense – by an interior-design company from Knightsbridge. A room where they could relax on black leather sofas and listen to that incredibly complex silver high-tech system on the wall. The one with the wires that Jack was fiddling with right now.

  ‘Stop! You might electrocute yourself. Come back to the table!’

  Her son made a face. ‘But I want to see what happens next!’

  ‘Jack! I said leave those wires alone.’

  ‘I can’t. They won’t go back properly.’

  Desperately, Bobbie picked up a handful of spaghetti cables and shoved them behind the screen. ‘Stay there,’ she willed. The picture flickered and then went out altogether. Great. Now they’d bust the entertainment system.

  ‘LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE, MUM!’

  ‘Shhh.’ Bobbie put a finger to her mouth. ‘Don’t say anything. Just come back to your seats. Everyone’s waiting for you. It’s SO embarrassing.’

  Daisy folded her arms. At this rate, her daughter would have to be Prime Minister when she grew up. Or a teacher. ‘Only if we can have pudding.’

  ‘OK.’ Instantly, Bobbie knew she shouldn’t have given in. ‘I mean no.’

  ‘Then we’ll tell them you broke the television. It’s new. Mel said it cost thousands.’

  ‘ALL RIGHT. YOU CAN HAVE PUDDING THEN!’

  There was a gleam of triumph in Daisy’s eyes. ‘Come on, Jack.’

  Everyone, apart from Andy, glared at them as they trooped back into the dining room. ‘We’ve been talking,’ her husband began, with an edge to his voice.

  I bet you have, she almost said. She could just imagine how the tongues had been wagging during their absence.

  ‘Why don’t you join Pamela’s class?’ Rob glanced across at his sister as if for affirmation. ‘You might pick up some useful tips.’

  Bobbie could hardly believe it! ‘Are you saying I’m not a good-enough parent?’

  Pamela smiled smugly. ‘We all need help, darling, from time to time.’ She threw a disdainful look at Jack, who was picking his nose. ‘Don’t you think?’

  Talk about patronising! ‘Why’, said Bobbie through gritted teeth, ‘doesn’t Rob sign up?’

  Her husband shook his head as though she’d just suggested something really, really stupid. ‘I work! How would I have the time?’

  ‘I work too,’ she retorted indignantly.

  ‘Yes, but only from home.’ Pamela’s voice was silky smooth: serene again, without that tension Bobbie had noticed earlier. If it weren’t for the fact that her sister-in-law was teetotal, she might have suspected she’d just knocked back a gin or two. ‘Why not give it a go, Bobbie? Mel will babysit, won’t you, darling?’

  The two of them were treating her like a kid! If the children weren’t here, she’d say something. But Daisy was looking at her with a please-don’t-argue-with-Dad-again look.

  ‘OK,’ she said, gulping down half a glass of wine. It was like being dumped on the naughty step. On the other hand, it would be an evening off from the kids. And it might give her some tips before Mum arrived with Dr Know.

  But she wouldn’t tell anyone. Not even her best friend Sarah. After all, parenting classes were for parents who couldn’t cope, weren’t they? And no one, least of all her, wanted to admit to that.

  Even if it was all too true.

  There was a gran from Inverness,

  Who told her daughter she knew best.

  She came to stay –

  But lasted one day,

  Before being expelled as a pest.

  Chapter 3

  VANESSA

  VANESSA WAS SO upset by the scene in the supermarket that she had to force herself to concentrate on the road. That poor mother in the supermarket! She really had her hands full with that little monkey, thought Vanessa as she drove slowly back along the busy high street and into the part of town that wasn’t quite as chic as the rest of Corrywood. There was a parking space right outside. For a second, she just sat there, gazing up with a quiet sense of pleasure and pride at the yellow awning with VANESSA written across it in clear black loopy letters.

  Then she swung her legs out of her little car – a present to herself for her forty-fifth – and made her way into the shop. It was t
eeming with keen-looking customers, brows furrowed, all skimming through her rails with one eye over their shoulder, in case someone else should discover a bargain before them. Just the way she liked it!

  At the back, near the racks of shoes and hats and handbags and costume jewellery – including that rather striking feathered peacock brooch that someone had brought in – there was a small group of children playing ‘dressing up’ with the box of clothes and shoes that she put out specially for them. If the kids were amused, she reasoned, their mothers were more likely to relax and buy something.

  ‘Everything all right, Kim?’

  Her assistant nodded. ‘We sold the Norman Hartnell this morning,’ she whispered excitedly. ‘For the full price!’

  Really? When Vanessa had discovered the incredibly glamorous cream sequinned satin evening dress in a pile that had been handed in by an extremely elegant regular (pushing eighty if she was a day), she had been astounded. But then again, nothing in this business ought to surprise her any more.

  The shop had been a brainwave some years ago when she’d been addicted to Trinny and Susannah. Vanessa hadn’t always agreed with their tastes, but they had proved that one woman’s style could be another woman’s disaster, and vice versa. At the time, she’d been a cleaner: a job she’d loved. Nothing like the satisfaction of shiny sinks, shiny floors and the smell of polish – not to mention the perks.

  Vanessa had been amazed by the number of cast-offs that her generous, well-heeled clients pressed on her. ‘Have this,’ they would say when she’d finished cleaning their houses for them. ‘Please! I don’t wear it any more.’

  And then she’d gawp at the Zandra Rhodes silk top or Armani evening dress which had been casually dumped into her arms almost as a tip (for she was good at her job and everyone knew it) and wonder how it was that anyone could have the money to buy such a gorgeous outfit and then only wear it once or twice or not at all. ‘Where there’s muck, there’s brass,’ her own mother used to say. But what could she do with these beauties? After all, it wasn’t as though she had the kind of life where she could wear these clothes herself.

  So she’d hoarded them up and taken out one of those business start-up loans which, together with her savings, had been just enough to start a small second-hand designer clothes agency in the old hardware shop that was going cheap because of its short lease.

  Initially, some of the women of Corrywood had been a bit sniffy about wearing other people’s cast-offs or, indeed, being seen at the wrong end of the high street. But word got around that these weren’t just any old hand-me-downs. They were all designer names in fantastic condition. Vanessa was very fussy about that. And before long, her little business really took off.

  Vanessa glanced down at the pink leggings she was wearing right now. A bit bright maybe but she still had the legs to wear them, so why not? She’d accepted them from a rather beautiful but aloof regular, who used to be a famous model some years ago. Vanessa always worked on a 50:50 commission rate. Her customers would wait, awkwardly, while she sorted through the bags they brought in, and then tell them if she was willing to give them hanging space. Only when they sold did she pay out. That way, she didn’t have to buy stock. It was brilliant.

  Part of her felt rather empowered as these women waited to see if she wanted their stuff or not. Another part of her felt sorry for them. It was amazing how many women really seemed to need the money nowadays although they tried not to show it. Even aloof customers like Pamela Gooding, who had pocketed that twenty-pound note the other day with surprising alacrity.

  She was one of the locals who didn’t want to be seen in a second-hand shop. So Vanessa would pick up her clothes from her house and then drop off her ‘earnings’. Pamela had never actually invited her in, but Vanessa had snatched a quick glimpse from the imposing glossy black front door. The hall alone was bigger than her own two-bedroom maisonette.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy! Look at my shoes!’

  Vanessa couldn’t help laughing at the sweet little girl shuffling along proudly towards her very pretty plump blonde mother who was jostling bosoms with a line of intent size fourteeners. They must have sold quite a few of the larger sizes that morning: the rail was looking distinctly sparse.

  She frowned. ‘Do we have any more new stock?’

  Kim nodded half-heartedly. ‘In the back room. Want me to go through them?’

  ‘No thanks. I’ll do it.’ Vanessa ran her eye over the new window display which Kim had cobbled together that morning. Her assistant simply didn’t get it when it came to colours. The bright red handbag looked positively garish next to the yellow dress! And as for the black boots, she’d already told Kim that they needed to go back to their original owner. If stuff didn’t sell in eight weeks max, it had to be returned. Black boots were winter stock. They’d had their chance.

  You had to be pretty ruthless in this trade, Vanessa reminded herself as she sorted through the various carrier bags in the back room, holding each item up to judge it for ‘Corrywood appeal’. This Karen Millen dress was rather nice, although it had a stain on the sleeve. And this white Reiss jacket was brand new. Vanessa shook her head with disbelief. Still, didn’t everyone have clothes like this? Outfits which had seemed like a good idea at the time but which ended up at the back of the wardrobe for one reason or other?

  She spent the next hour deliciously distracting herself from that unsettling experience in the supermarket this morning while Kim handled the front end of the shop. By the time she finished, Vanessa had a small but prestigious pile of Yes’s and a rather large pile of No’s. If only, she thought as she finally locked up the shop and drove home with the bottle of Bombay Sapphire from the supermarket clinking in the boot, she could be so successful in her own personal life.

  Had someone told Vanessa, years ago, that she’d lose touch with her only child, she would have laughed in their face and told them that nothing – nothing – would come between Brigid and her. Nor would she have believed them if they’d told her that ‘her’ Harry, whom she’d wed on her twenty-first birthday, was already married to someone else. But life was a strange thing.

  Now, as Vanessa began to lay the table, putting pretty tea candles out to make up for the fact that she hadn’t actually cooked dinner herself (one of the joys of living alone was that you no longer felt guilty about that sort of thing), her mind went back over the past in a way that she normally didn’t allow herself to do.

  She hadn’t found out about the first wife until the woman had turned up at the house seven years later, furiously waving a wedding certificate. On closer inspection, it was horribly obvious that Harry – whom she’d fallen for, hook, line and sinker, at the local ballroom dancing class – was indeed legally tied to this angry Irish redhead, spitting and swearing on her doorstep.

  Brigid had just turned three, then. ‘I don’t want to lose you,’ Harry had spluttered just before she’d thrown him out, declaring that she never, ever wanted to see him again. Only later did Vanessa wonder if she’d been too hasty. She had loved Harry, with his mop of black hair, bright blue eyes and clever way with words, not to mention numbers. Really loved him. And he had loved her. She was certain of that. But he’d lied and Vanessa had seen her own father do that once too often. Never would she allow another man to ruin her life. Not now. Nor in the future.

  Privately, Vanessa blamed herself for being such a poor judge of character. She might have been young when she’d married Harry but she should have been savvy enough to have seen through him. Hadn’t she had enough practice when growing up in her east London estate?

  Still, if there was one thing her mother had taught her, it was how to survive. So Vanessa had picked herself up, moved out of London to a town where rents were cheaper and taken on cleaning jobs to fit in with nursery hours. At first, Brigid (named after Harry’s mother at his insistence) had been a doll of a little girl with big round blue eyes and her father’s mop of black hair. But it soon became apparent that she had also inherited his t
emper. Was it because she didn’t have a father figure in her life?

  But when Vanessa tried to get in touch with Harry so he could resume, rather late in the day, his parental responsibilities, she drew a blank. Letters came back to her marked Return to Sender. And his boss at the accountancy firm where she’d assumed he still worked, said he thought Harry had taken a job abroad but wasn’t sure.

  By the time Brigid was fourteen, with her heavy eyeliner and dreadlocks, she not only refused to go to school, she also refused to tell Vanessa where she was going in the evenings. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she would yell.

  ‘It is if you’re living under my roof,’ Vanessa would shout back.

  ‘Not for much longer!’

  Then Brigid had stormed out, leaving Vanessa to worry herself sick all evening until she finally returned in the small hours. This pattern went on for two years until one evening, Brigid had come in, white-faced, with a pregnancy kit in her hand.

  She didn’t want to think about the next bit. It was too painful. In fact, she shouldn’t have allowed herself to have gone as far as this. Besides, there wasn’t time. Vanessa felt a delicious shiver go through her. If she wasn’t mistaken, tonight might just be the night! Then she began to tremble. Was she really, finally ready for this? It wasn’t just the sex. Any fool could do that. It was the other thing.

  Maybe, Vanessa told herself, putting the final touches to the table before getting herself dressed, this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Perhaps she ought to ring and cancel.

  ‘Coward,’ whispered a voice in her head.

  That did it. ‘I might have made some wrong decisions but I’m not afraid of anything,’ she said out loud, almost as if to convince herself. Besides, she had other things to think about tonight.

  There was a young girl called Jo,

  Whose favourite word was ‘no’.

  She yelled and she cried

  And she went all boss-eyed,

  Till her brother stamped hard on her toe.