“Bummer.”
Grace smiles. “You said it Iris. Bummer.”
“Are you hurting yourself here?”
Jake has finished his milk and wriggles off Grace’s lap, crawls over to the large tub of toys in the corner of the kitchen. He hoists himself up to a standing position by holding onto the sides of the tub and rummages through it. He discards the things left over from when his sisters were young – the plastic kitchen, the shopping trolley and the dolls – until he finds what he is looking for, towards the bottom of the tub. Small toy cars. He fishes around until he has a pile of them stacked up and then starts to line them up on the floor, bumper to bumper. “Vroom,” he says. “Vroom, vroom.”
Grace and Iris watch Jake for a while in silence.
“No,” Grace says, finally. “I’m not hurting myself here.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because it’s too full on here to be lonely. And too many of you for any one person to be under the microscope. And there’s Jake. I never knew I liked babies so much till I met him.”
“If you like him so much you can change his nappy. He’s doing a poo. I can tell because he’s doing that thing he does of going quiet and hiding around the back of the toy box there, so he can do it in peace.”
“OK, I’ll do it if you fetch me the wipes and a clean nappy.”
“Deal.”
It takes Grace longer than Rachel to change a nappy but she’s much faster now than she was at first. Iris takes the smelly package away and dumps it unceremoniously in the bin.
“You know that thing you said about us not being under the microsope? That’s not quite right. You want to try being the one that everyone thinks either wants to be a boy or wants to kiss girls but no one likes to ask.”
“Do you want someone to ask?”
“Not really. Well, maybe. Perhaps.”
“Do you think you might be gay? Or a boy?”
“I think…I think , what it is, is that I just like to play football. I don’t like wearing skirts because I don’t like flashing my pants when I play. I get my hair cut short so it doesn’t get in my eyes. I hang about with boys because they like playing football too. I don’t think I want to be a boy but I’d like to be left alone to play football like I was a boy. And I don’t fancy any of the girls in my class – I don’t much like any of them even, all that BFF best friends nonsense, but I don’t fancy any of the boys either. Not yet anyway.” Iris pauses. “That was an awfully long speech for me. Am I making sense?”
“Perfect sense to me,” says Grace. “But then again, you are talking to the girl who keeps a razor blade hidden away in her knicker drawer.”
“You really should think about taking up football, Grace. Sheesh – is that the time. You brought Mum and Dad’s alarm clock downstairs to give him milk before he went off and now they’re going to be late.”
*
Gareth’s morning is not going well. After the pandemonium of everyone sleeping in and arriving at work later than usual, he is now trying to draft an email to Cassandra Taylor, excusing himself from being her lawyer. He’s been at it for almost an hour and has written several versions, none of which he has been convinced by.
I regret I am about to be heavily engaged on another matter which will not leave sufficient time for me to give Perfect the attention it deserves. Accordingly I will be referring your work to Louise Wallace, one of my partners, who is an excellent corporate lawyer and will take good care of you. There will of course be no charge for any time I have spent to date.
I regret that I have concluded that this area of work is outside my specialism and that you would be better represented by Louise Wallace.
I regret that it appears I fancy you and that gives me a conflict of interest on any number of levels.
I regret that if next time I see Adrian Matthews he tells me that he managed to get you into bed I am liable to beat him to death with my squash racket – no, his squash racket, mine is a good one – and it is better I ditch you as a client than become a murderer.
He is staring glumly at his screen when Celia sashays in, carrying a large gift box. He jumps up guiltily, hurriedly clicks on to another screen so that she can’t see what he’s written.
“Seems like you were good yesterday…” Celia grins.
Gareth blushes. He has not blushed for years, since first meeting Rachel in fact.
“What do you mean?” he asks, defensively. “I was just doing my job.”
Celia looks at him a little puzzled. “And doing it well it seems. This has just been delivered by courier.”
She hands him the box with its distinctive Perfect branding and acres of black ribbon. He puts it to one side, looks pointedly at his screen until Celia leaves in a huff, put out that she did not get to see what’s inside.
When he’s sure Celia’s gone he opens the box. Inside are the two shirts Cassandra had given him yesterday and a handwritten note, black ink on thick cream card, subtly embossed with the Perfect branding.
You forgot these. I put the Marks and Spencer rag you had on before in the trash, where it belonged. You should never wear anything else but Perfect shirts. You look great in them.
Sorry that I overstepped the mark. Too much Peroni, not enough food. Very unprofessional of me and I put you in a difficult position. Please don’t shove me off to another lawyer. This project needs someone who understands the Rhondda. I promise not to try and make out with you again.
Cassandra
Just reading her name makes his chest feel tight. He thinks about what he should do now, but not for long. He texts her.
Thanks again for the shirts. OK, understood, no blood, no foul. All as before. Strictly professional exchanges from now.
A little while later he gets an email from her advising that she is coming to Wales on Monday to visit the potential site for the factory and attaching a number of documents she requires Gareth to review before then. He stares at his screen for a while, his fingertips pressed together. This is a great transaction for him to be instructed on – high profile work, lucrative, and of particular personal interest to him. No one else at the firm could do as good a job as he would on this deal. But then no one else at the firm has kissed the client outside a pub in London either.
Suddenly he jumps up and grabs his jacket.
“I’m popping out Celia,” he shouts. “Got some shopping I need to do.”
Celia barely lifts her eyes from her screen. She is ignoring him.
He could drive up to the City Centre or catch the little train that runs between Cardiff Bay and Queen Street but he decides to walk instead. With no time for a run this morning, the exercise will do him good. Within twenty-five minutes he is in John Lewis.
Gareth is good at shopping and not just his quarterly visit to Costco with his mother. He likes to buy Rachel and the girls lovely presents for their birthdays and Christmas and he knows his way around John Lewis very well. He bounds up the escalator to the first floor. He spots the Perfect branding and makes his way over.
“Could you tell me please which is your most popular ladies’ shirt?”
“It depends, Sir,” the shop assistant replies. He’s young, twenty at most, wearing black trousers, a very fitted Perfect shirt and a black waistcoat. “They’re all popular.”
“Could you tell me which one you sell the most of?”
The shop assistant thinks for a while and then pulls out a shirt from one of the piles on display.
“This one, Sir.”
It’s a classic ladies’ shirt, with single cuffs and mother of pearl buttons.
“No, not that one. Is there one with a wider collar and double cuffs?”
The shop assistant rifles through the displays for a short while.
“Do you mean this style Sir?”
The way he calls Gareth “Sir” makes Gareth feel like a schoolteacher. Or maybe it’s because the shop assistant looks young enough to still be in school. The shirt he is holding out has
the wide collar and double cuffs that Gareth had in mind and is cut lower at the front. It’s the style of shirt that Cassandra had been wearing last night.
“That’s the one. Excellent. I’ll have two please – one white and one…” Gareth looks at the various colours on display “that colour.”
“That’s aquamarine, Sir. What size, Sir?”
“12.”
“Would you like me to gift wrap them sir?”
“Yes please. Plenty of ribbon. And actually while you’re at it I’ll have one of the other style, the single cuff. In that purple colour. Size 10.”
“The lilac. Also gift wrapped, Sir?”
“Yes please, separate boxes.”
“I figured as much, with them being different sizes,” the shop assistant says, tapping the side of his nose.
Gareth doesn’t bother to explain.
Celia is still sulking when Gareth gets back to the office. As he walks up to her, she keeps her eyes fixed on her screen, exactly as he had done when he wanted to signal to her to leave his room. Celia and he have barely had a disagreement in all the time she has worked for him. Probably because on the odd occasion he has received a case of wine from a client he has always opened it and split the contents with her.
He slides the box containing the size 10 shirt across the desk to her.
“There you go Celia. Every client knows that a lawyer is only ever as good as his PA. And if the client doesn’t know it, the lawyer should.”
She tries to hide a smile but does not attempt to open the box.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Yes, of course, in my own time,” she says.. That’s him told.
Later on when he gets home and gives Rachel her own box she is delighted.
“I was only kidding about the freebies!”
“I didn’t ask for them. They arrived this morning by courier. Two for you and two for me. Look.”
He shows her the shirts from Cassandra that had arrived that morning. The handwritten note is now safely locked away in his desk drawer at work, hidden under his tax returns.
“Who sent them?”
“What do you mean, who sent them? The client, of course.”
“I know that silly. Who at the client.”
“”I’m not sure. Rupert, I think, who’s head of PR and marketing.”
“I just wondered how they knew my size.”
“I don’t know, maybe they rang Celia.”
“Really? Clients don’t normally ring their lawyer’s secretary to find out the dress size of their lawyer’s wife.”
“Well maybe clients in the business of making shirts do. It must be second nature. Also Rupert is in touch with his feminine side, if you get my drift.”
“Well, whatever, they are beautiful. I love them,” she says, already trying the white one on. “This style is amazing. Look! It makes my boobs look great but still totally professional. If you know what I mean.”
Gareth knows exactly what she means.
“Looks great on you, love.”
Rachel grins. “Try yours on!”
“Later I will. I’m going to squeeze a quick run in now. Missed out this morning.”
“Don’t go running! There’s some wine left over from Book Club. Let’s go sit out in the garden and finish it off together.”
“I won’t be long.”
“You’re really taking this running seriously, aren’t you? I’m going to have to watch you. Getting all fit and slim – you’ll be fighting off those eager to please young solicitors with a stick.”
“Celia will do that for me I’m sure.”
Rachel reaches up and kisses him on the lips quickly. “Talking of shirts, where’s the one you put to soak last night?”
“Um, in the kitchen sink, where I left it, I should imagine.”
“No, it isn’t. I put a whites wash on this morning before I left and I thought I may as well put that one in too while I was at it but I couldn’t find it.”
“Maybe Mrs Morris moved it.”
“It was first thing this morning, Mrs Morris hadn’t been.”
“Then I haven’t got a clue. Not that that’s anything new. I never know where anything is in this house.”
Gareth runs longer than usual and far harder, pushing himself till his heart pounds. He is running so as not to think about this time last night, when he was being kissed by Cassandra Taylor. And kissing her back. So as not to think about how many lies he has already told today and how each lie he tells – each small lie – leads to more lies to cover the earlier lies. So as not to think about the white Perfect shirt, stained not with coffee but with guilt, that he quickly stuffed into his sports bag last night before going upstairs to have what Rachel had described as the best sex they’d had in a while.
Chapter 15
Eloise refuses to get out of bed the next morning.
“I’m not going in today, Dad,” she grunts from under the duvet. Her failure to show up in the kitchen for breakfast has forced Gareth to take the unusual step of climbing the spiral staircase up to her room. Her bedroom door has a panty liner stuck to it on which Eloise has written “Keep Out” in red felt tip pen. The red ink has bled into the panty liner as Eloise fully intended it to. It doesn’t deter her father.
“School isn’t optional Eloise. You don’t get to say if you are going in or not.”
Eloise grunts at him “Go away. I’m still sleeping.”
“Evidently you’re not. Now get out of bed.”
Eloise emerges slowly from under her duvet and props herself up on her pillows.
“Leave it out, Dad! I’ve got just one lesson in English on The Grapes of Wrath, which I’ve already read anyway because you and Mum forced me to last summer when I made the stupid mistake of complaining I was bored in the long holidays. I’ve finished my AS exams. Just because you were such a good boy at school and never missed a day in your life doesn’t mean I’ve got to be like that too. Anyway, Grace has been invited over to Jenny’s later for more erudite discussion about boring books and I am going to walk her over there.”
“What does your mother say?”
“She didn’t actually say anything because I haven’t seen her yet this morning. On account of the fact that I was sleeping till you waded in here in your size tens. But I texted her and she texted me back to say she was fine with it. That I’m growing up and need to get used to planning my own time ready for university.”
“That’s if you manage to actually get into university, what with all this lounging around in bed.”
“It’s not even 8am, Dad. Fine! I’ll get up now. But I am NOT going into school today.” She flings the duvet back angrily and jumps out of bed, scowling at Gareth. “Happy now, dictator!”
She is wearing a pair of pink spotted cotton pyjamas that she has had for years, too short now in the leg and arm. Her hair which she usually has crimped up high has flopped around her face. Gareth feels a deep longing for the way he used to handle her tantrums when she was five which was to pin her down and blow raspberries in her ear, making her squirm and laugh.
“You can stay home on condition that you make tea tonight for everyone. And that does not mean ringing for a takeaway.”
“Fine!”
“And there’s one more condition.”
“What now?”
“Come give your old dad a kiss.”
*
Grace watches as Eloise crimps her hair back into its upright position.
“How long does that take you every day?”
“It used to take ages, like an hour, but I can do it in fifteen minutes now.”
“That’s quite a lot of effort every day?”
“It is, but why on earth would anyone want flat hair?”
“My hair is flat.”
Eloise pauses slightly. “It is. And that’s fine, honestly. Pay no attention to me. I should have said, I like my hair crimped but that’s a personal choice. Everyone else is free to have flat hair. Even
if it looks…”
“Flat?”
“Precisely.”
Once Eloise has finished crimping her hair and loading herself up with eyeliner and silver jewellery, she and Grace set out on the short walk to Jenny and Alastair’s house. They cut through the streets of tall Edwardian and Victorian red brick houses and through Penarth town centre.
“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” Grace says to Eloise. “All these little shops – butchers and bakers and greengrocers and gift shops. A proper high street.”
“Penarth is so boring Grace! It’s got no place for edgy, urban young people like us to go. Honestly! You talk just like my parents sometimes – shop local, preserve community, blah blah.” Eloise punches Grace lightly on the arm to show she is only kidding.
“Ow!” says Grace. “That hurt!’
Eloise looks mortified. “I’m sorry! So sorry! Did I hit you where…”
“Where what?”
“Nothing.”
“Where I cut, you mean?”
Eloise looks at Grace through her fringe. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“It’s just we are sharing a bedroom. It’s pretty impossible to miss the state of your arms. I was leaving talking to you about it until you’d settled in a bit more.”
“You’re OK. Iris beat you to it anyway.”
“Iris did?”
“Yes, you’re a nosy lot you Maddoxes.”
“Do you want to talk about it some more?”
“Have I got any choice? I’m pretty sure that’s why Jenny has invited me round. I think she plans on using Theo’s loneliness in The Goldfinch as a theme to lead me onto a discussion about self-abuse.”
“Fuck! I skipped school and got landed with making tea tonight, all for a therapy session with our local librarian!”
“Don’t be mean Eloise. Jenny is cool. And she’s nice. You all are. And I’m ready to talk about it. A bit. I think deep down I wanted you all to find out what I’ve been doing, stopped being so careful to hide my arms like I do from my mother. I think not being so secretive is me starting to face up to my problem.”
“Do you want to skip going to Jenny’s and go drink cider in the park? I know an off licence that will probably serve us. I find the best kind of therapy is talking about these things when you are off your face.”
Thicker Than Water Page 14