He took a spoon and plunged it into the soft, custardy depths, lifting out a jelly-bottomed spoonful. It made a slurping, sucking noise as he did so and Susan flicked him a look of exasperation as though he had broken wind.
‘I might have had a season, if I had been old enough,’ she said mournfully, trying to stop the proceedings degenerating into rudeness, ‘such elegance, such gaiety.’
‘Would you care for a trifle of trifle, Mother?’ Ian said, holding out the spoon to her and trying to stop laughing.
Susan shuddered and reached for the cheeseboard.
‘Not for me, all that cream is terribly unhealthy,’ she said.
‘What do you think cheese is made of?’ Ian said.
I think he must have been a bit pissed. Normally he never answered his mother back.
Susan ignored him, took a chunk of Stilton and spitefully sliced the nose off the Brie.
I went back to the kitchen to make the coffee.
It was nearly two forty-five and Susan would want to go home after watching the repeat broadcast of the Queen’s speech. Why she needed to watch it twice on successive days I had no idea. Perhaps to reassure herself that the foundations of the Empire were still out there somewhere. And we weren’t allowed to set Sky+. She seemed to think that to record the Queen and watch her at a time more convenient to us was disrespectful.
Her little blue suitcase was in the hall by the front door, her taxi had been pre-booked weeks ago. The Sound of Music was on at three forty. Ian had marked it for her in the Radio Times with a red pen.
I took the coffee tray through and left mother and son grazing through the tangerines and chocolate truffles and bickering about the latest political scandal that had dominated the newspapers over Christmas.
‘The man’s a damn disgrace,’ I heard Ian say in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘Got a perfectly pretty wife and sees fit to mess about with a lap dancer.’
‘Such a shame,’ Susan murmured, ‘he always seemed so charming on the BBC. Do you remember that programme he used to do about wildfowl? Feathered Friends. Pity he took up shooting. I never quite felt the same about him after that. Lovely thick hair though; I like a good head of hair in a man.’
I went to start clearing up the kitchen. It was quite possible my brain was going to explode with boredom. Still, not long now and we would have done our duty and be free to enjoy the rest of Christmas on our own.
Susan’s barbed comments about the possibility of us getting married next year would stop.
The taxi was on time and Susan and her little blue suitcase were bundled into it so she could get home in time to watch The Sound of Music.
‘I’m just going to clear up the kitchen and put the dishwasher on,’ I said as we waved her off.
‘Oh, can’t you leave it for now? We can do it together later,’ Ian said.
A likely story.
‘It’s OK, it won’t take long.’
Ian came and put his hands on my waist, rocking slightly, and kissed me. He tasted of whisky and smelled of a rather gorgeous aftershave I had bought for him.
He rested his forehead on mine and chuckled. ‘We could, you know, have a little, you know, nap?’
This was code for sex. I was up for it although I thought it unlikely as we’d already had sex this month. But perhaps we could spend the rest of the day in bed, drinking our champagne as the winter light faded.
Then Ian looked past me and through the door to the kitchen beyond. I looked too; it was one dirty plate away from being a pigsty. It was all very well saying leave it but I was going to have to do it at some point.
I’m sure Ian believed kitchens really did look like the ones in his Lovell Kitchens brochure. Clean, polished worktops, an elegant vase of yellow roses and maybe a pristine child doing its homework on the breakfast bar. In the background an improbably young and thin mother smiling as she took a freshly baked loaf out of the spotless oven. My kitchen on the other hand was a scene of some devastation and every surface was covered in used pans and food spills. I think Ian realised the extent of the problem and the moment passed. He let go of me.
‘Well OK, get cleared up if you want to. Then come and sit with me. We can cuddle up and find something to fall asleep in front of.’
I watched Ian totter over to the sofa and flop down among the cushions with a theatrical sigh. He took the TV remote and fired the buttons at the screen, squinting with concentration. After a moment I heard Julie Andrews burst into song. By the time she got to the bit about the lark learning to pray, Ian was snoring.
CHAPTER 10
Wallflowers – courage in adversity
I didn’t hang about after I left Susan’s house. A couple of phone calls and I found Trudy. Lovell Kitchens had gone into receivership after Ian died and all the staff had been made redundant. Some of them went to work for the opposition in the form of the usual DIY giant superstores and Trudy was employed by one of them; Ram Builders. They were a booming company owned by a local Sikh family with a predilection for the colour orange and the slogan ‘Do It Your Way’.
I tracked her down early one Monday morning out on the shop floor stacking tins of paint in aisle 15. I stood watching her for a moment, marvelling that this short, sullen creature in orange dungarees reminiscent of Guantanamo Bay internees had brought about such a seismic shift in my life.
After a few minutes she looked up from her task, a tin of Herring Gull Grey in each hand.
‘Yes? What?’ she said, the finer points of customer service still notably absent.
‘Trudy,’ I said, walking towards her.
She blinked with recognition and held a tin of paint in front of her to ward me off.
‘Touch me and I’ll have security on you.’
‘How are you?’ I said.
She narrowed her eyes at me, sensing some trickery.
‘I just came to see how you are getting on. A bit different from your last job, isn’t it?’
‘What do you want?’ she said.
‘I want a chat.’
‘Sod off. I’m working. I’ve got a mortgage to pay, you know.’
‘Lucky you, I’m homeless and broke,’ I said.
‘Not my fault. You should have looked after him a bit better. It takes two you know?’
‘Having trouble paying your bills, Trudy? Is that why you are trying to blackmail Ian’s mother?’
Her eyes swivelled away. ‘Dunno what you’re—’
‘Yes, you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about, Ian’s personal possessions. His passport, his birth certificate. I assume the pair of you were going to do a flit to Spain or something.’
‘None of your business.’ Trudy flicked a glance at the CCTV camera overhead and resumed stacking paint cans.
‘But you thought you could get some cash out of his mother, didn’t you? For his baby photographs. How low are you?’
Trudy fixed me with her curranty eyes and blew out her cheeks.
‘Five grand’s nothing to her, the old cow. I knew you wouldn’t cough up but she will. All that pissing about and pretending she was going to put the phone down. She’d do anything to get his stuff back.’
‘She’s devastated, Trudy. Her only son has died. How do you think she feels?’
Trudy shrugged and didn’t reply.
‘You do realise trying to extort money out of people is a criminal offence?’
Trudy flipped me the finger and went to get more paint from her trolley.
Realising it was now back in the land of the living so to speak, my phone rattled with several texts and then rang. It was the annoying tune my sister had chosen as her call tone; the theme music to Monty Python. I turned away and answered it while Trudy clumsily stacked tins of paint with a vicious expression on her face. It was a good job she hadn’t found work as an egg packer.
‘Lottie? Where are you?’ Jenny said, strident and annoyed. ‘I said I was going to have a lie in. Then I find you gone and there’s no milk for coffee and nothing for breakfast th
at I can see. It’s not my fault—’
I cut her off still squawking and fiddled around with my phone, pretending to check the time before I put it in my pocket.
Trudy went to walk past me. I stood my ground.
‘Why don’t you just give those things back? Susan’s been made distraught by Ian’s death.’
‘So have I! No one gives a flying fuck about me though, do they? I don’t count. You get all the glory, you and his bloody mother. What do I have to show for it? Sweet F.A. And he loved me. He loved me more than the pair of you stuck together.’
I gave a short incredulous laugh. ‘Glory? What glory? Me, homeless but first of all having to face off to all his creditors who called at the house? Susan, burying her only son? Seeing the family business collapse? Where’s the glory in that?’
‘I’ve got nothing to show for it.’
‘So you blackmail his mother? Five grand in exchange for his passport and his baby photograph album?’
‘She can afford it,’ Trudy said stubbornly.
‘That’s not the point. Ringing her up, pestering her, asking for money or telling her you would burn Ian’s stuff. What would Ian have thought of that? What does your fiancé think? What was his name? Ken? Does he know what you are up to?’
She sneered. ‘Ken’s cool with it. I’ve told him Ian was sexually harassing me. He was angry, quite keen to make a claim and then, well—’
‘You really are the pits. How far is five thousand going to get you, anyway? What about when that runs out? Are you intending to drip-feed Susan bits of Ian’s life when you come across them? A hundred pounds for the return of a pair of his socks? Twenty quid for a handkerchief?’
Trudy put down the last of the paint tins and turned to face me.
‘Oh, shut it, Lady Muck in the big house. Sneering. Swanning it over the rest of us at the work party. Looking down your nose at us. Well I had one over on you, didn’t I? Boss’s bit of stuff in your fancy shoes. I know things. Maybe things you wouldn’t want to come out.’
I looked at her, really looked into her eyes. They were muddy, nondescript just like the rest of her. I saw a flicker of panic underneath the bravado. My initial impulse of punching her in the mouth faded.
‘Trudy, this isn’t going to get you anywhere. Give it a rest if you know what’s good for you.’
Her expression faltered. ‘I’m just saying. That’s all.’
‘Yes, fine, you say it if it makes you feel better.’ I pulled my phone out. ‘By the way, I’ve just recorded our conversation on my mobile. So I think we’ll call it quits, shall we?’
There was a pause while her eyes swivelled from my mobile and back to me again.
‘You tricky cow!’ she shouted.
Further along the aisle I noticed an elderly couple, dithering between Frosted Sage and Meadow Green emulsion, move pointedly away.
‘That’s rich coming from you. I think we’re even now. Unless you want Ken and the police to hear all about it.’
‘That’s blackmail!’ she hissed, indignant.
I rolled my eyes at her.
‘Big wow. You don’t say?’
She shrank under the brim of her orange baseball cap and aimed a kick at a couple of rawlplugs on the floor.
I waved the mobile at her. ‘I’ve got indisputable proof. It can and will be used in evidence against you in the highest court of the land. How do you think life inside will suit you, Trudy Stroud?’ I think I got a bit CSI Taunton there. ‘This has to stop. I’ll be back here to collect all of Ian’s things the day after tomorrow. Don’t go off sick or mess me about. If you do I’ll be going to your boss, then the police, and then I’ll be contacting Ken. I don’t know what load of old bollocks you’ve told him but I’m more than happy to put him straight. And the same applies if you phone Susan again. Understand?’
She narrowed her eyes at me. ‘Are you threatening me?’
I narrowed my eyes back at her and licked my lips. It was like Gunfight at the OK Corral. I swear my trigger finger was itching.
‘Damn right I’m threatening you. I’ve got contacts.’ I had a sudden memory of the huge men from RCL standing on my doorstep when they came to repossess Ian’s car. I remembered my script. ‘And I know other people who won’t be as polite as me and Susan are, if you get my meaning.’
She didn’t answer, but turned and pushed the empty trolley away towards the swing doors and the stockrooms beyond them. I think she was trying to appear defiant but the set of her shoulders under the orange polo shirt was hunched and rather pathetic.
I returned to the car park, heart pounding, threading my way through arguing couples and crying children. Everyone seemed dissatisfied and harassed. The myriad delights of DIY as pictured in Ram’s TV adverts were notably absent.
No couples stood laughing with delight at the range of wallpapers and not a single pneumatic blonde was wiggling around in a short skirt looking for a glass hammer or a long weight and giggling when the joke was explained.
I stabbed at the keys of my mobile. It turned out I had been bluffing and worse than that I had been incompetent. The volume control was turned down and I hadn’t recorded anything except the fluff inside my pocket.
It was a miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory day. And it got worse.
I got home to find Jenny standing on the bottom rung of the stepladder, dabbing half-heartedly at the window reveal in the sitting room. She turned as I came in and nearly fell off. There wasn’t much paint on her brush and there was a tell-tale gin and tonic flush to her chest and a distinct slick of suntan oil on her cheeks. My guess was that she had sprinted to get in position when she heard my car pull into the drive.
‘Did you remember the milk?’
‘Yes, will six pints be enough, do you think?’ I said, bad tempered.
She turned back and daubed some more. ‘You’ve had a visitor.’
‘Who?’ I didn’t like visitors.
Jenny shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She turned up at about ten thirty, woke me up – um, I mean she disturbed me, and said she had some stuff to do in Exeter and she would come back at two o’clock.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘Looked about fourteen, blonde, driving a huge SUV thing.’
‘SUV? Honestly, you’ve only lived in Texas for five minutes. Do you have to speak American too?’
‘Sport Utility Vehicle.’
‘4x4. That’ll be Jess, she owns this place. It was her idea to let me stay here.’
‘I wonder what she wants?’
I looked at my watch. ‘We’ll know soon enough. I hope she’s not evicting me.’
Jenny gave a trilling laugh and then, realising I wasn’t joking, turned it into a high-pitched cough and investigated the paint pot again.
‘I’ll make some lunch,’ I said.
‘I’m starving,’ she said, favouring me with an exhausted expression that spoke of many hours up the stepladder, not ten minutes. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I went to see Trudy.’
Jenny gave an appreciative gasp of horror.
‘What happened?’
‘I gave her a piece of my mind and said I would go to the police if she didn’t bring Ian’s stuff in to work on Wednesday. I’ll have to go and get it.’
‘Wow well done! D’you think she’ll take any notice?’
‘I threatened her with the heavy mob. And I said I had recorded our conversation on my mobile phone.’
Jenny looked at me with admiration. ‘Good for you!’
‘Well I recorded the inside of my pocket. The only thing you can hear is when she shouted at me and called me a tricky cow. I don’t think that stacks up as evidence, do you?’
‘Ah but Trudy doesn’t know that, does she? Just look knowing and inscrutable like the woman does on Silent Witness when she’s trying to get someone to confess.’
‘How do you do that, then?’ I asked.
‘Well, how about this?’ Jenny pulled a face, her chin lowere
d and eyes narrowed.
‘You don’t look knowing or inscrutable, you look constipated.’
‘Well this, then?’ she tried again, chin up and the corners of her mouth turned down.
I burst out laughing. ‘You look like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.’
We practised looking knowing and inscrutable for a while, asking each other what about this, and frowning. Or this, and pursing up our mouths and looking out of the corners of our eyes.
I went out and mowed the grass. Bryn had been as good as his word and given the mower a once over. He had done whatever was necessary and now it obediently striped up and down the lawn in a very pleasing fashion. I had to keep stopping and looking behind me to admire the effect.
When I’d filled up the green waste bin and made lunch we did a bit more painting. A short time later Jess arrived, country girl personified in a sweet floral tea dress and snowy white gym shoes. She had a huge bouquet of flowers and a Little Red Riding Hood wicker basket over one arm. She ran to give me a hug, and when introduced to my sister hugged her too.
We went into the kitchen and I made tea while she arranged the flowers and unpacked the treats and dainties she had brought with her in the basket. It felt like I was receiving a Red Cross parcel. Jenny exclaimed with delight over the chocolate truffle cake and deep-dish apple pie Jess had baked and wrapped in a red gingham cloth.
We sat around the kitchen table with tea and goodies. Jess said all the flattering things that could be said about my decorating and cleaning. She was amazed, so pleased, etc. But all the time I noticed that she was giving me nervous little glances, so I wasn’t surprised when she came out with what was troubling her.
‘I got some news,’ she said.
I didn’t like the sound of that.
‘Oooh, are you expecting?’ Jenny trilled.
Jess fidgeted in her chair and rolled her eyes. ‘Get out of here! No!’
Jenny wasn’t giving up. ‘Going on holiday?’
‘Um no, I—’
‘Discovered a hairdresser Lottie can go to? I mean look at her!’
‘Jenny, will you just let Jess speak?’
My sister twittered and made zipping motions across her mouth.
The Summer of Second Chances Page 12