by Claire Sandy
Marie propped herself up on one forearm, shaded her eyes and watched the progress of the tiny white boat chugging across the bay. ‘That skipper did have safety certificates and everything, didn’t he?’
‘Yup. And he’s been out of jail for ages now. Lie down and enjoy the blessed peace before they get back.’
Flat out again, Marie felt the sun kiss her here, there and everywhere like an attentive lover. Like Robert after a few beers. Lying here together, murmuring, the way they chatted late at night in bed, it was as if her husband was inside her head. I love you, she thought soppily.
‘Listen, love, could you take it easy with the whole cake thing while we’re on holiday? It’s meant to be family time.’
The soppy mood fetched its coat and left. ‘You’ve been cooking, too!’ she tutted. With four attempts at the sausage roll before declaring himself satisfied, Robert was just as guilty as she was of this new crime. Marie had tasted the rejects and would have been perfectly happy with them; Robert was both harder on himself and a more gifted cook.
‘True. But my cooking’s for a reason. It’s to consolidate my position at work.’
‘I’m cooking for a reason, too.’
‘Yeah, but what is it? A mission? Are you Trying to Have It All? Or are you locked in battle with your nemesis?’
It was all of those things, and none of them. Unable to do justice to the way she felt when it was just her and Mary making merry in the kitchen, Marie dodged the question with some stealthy flattery. ‘While we’re on the subject, your sausage roll was outstanding.’
‘I’m sure there’s a rude joke in there somewhere, but I’m too relaxed to winkle it out.’
‘Tell me again what Magda said about your rosemary rolls.’
‘No, don’t be silly. Oh, OK, if I must. She said she’d never had better, even in a swanky restaurant.’
‘And tell me again what Caroline’s face did.’
‘It did a spot-on impression of a bulldog chewing a wasp.’
‘You’re not really worried about, you know . . .’ Marie faltered. She didn’t even like to say the words. ‘About losing your job, are you?’
‘No no no no no,’ said Robert, as if perfecting how to say ‘no’ unconvincingly.
When, wondered Marie, had Robert lost his career mojo? Once upon a time he’d have seen off a whipper-snapper like Caroline with one hand tied behind his back. She felt as if she’d missed vital episodes of a favourite serial. Had she not been listening, or had Robert not been talking? Neither possibility pleased her. ‘Is the new cutlery still selling strongly?’
‘Selling like hot cakes, if you’ll pardon the topical pun.’
‘Fab.’ She reached out her hand to him. The moment was right to ask how he was really feeling. ‘Darling—’
And with that they both sat up quickly, as would anybody who’d just had an ice lolly slapped on their bare stomach.
‘We’re back!’ shrieked the twins.
As a Residents’ Association-meeting virgin, Marie hadn’t grasped that it was actually an opportunity to nose unashamedly around a neighbour’s house. All her post-holiday blues fell away as she took in Erika’s sitting room, like a forensics expert at a crime scene. A smorgasbord of shag-pile, squashy leather and oversized mirrors, it was a plush room devoted to pleasure, dotted with velvet cushions and cashmere throws and bare-shouldered studio shots of the femme fatale lady of the house.
‘A cake!’ Erika cried. She had only one volume. ‘You sweetheart!’
Like a pampered pet, the Doboz Torte had travelled triumphantly across the Close in a new plastic cake-carrier. Erika produced a pretty cake stand and set it in the middle of the spread laid out on the dining table, her chiffon leopard-skin sleeves trailing in the Hula Hoops.
‘I think not!’ A shrill voice cut in, and Holistic Hattie (as Marie privately called her) was between them, reaching for the cake. ‘The feng shui in this space is way out, Erika. The food should be on your right as you enter.’
‘Really?’ Erika looked just like somebody who couldn’t give a toss.
‘And, sadly, your buffet doesn’t offer the five elements.’ Hattie, her hair bursting from her head in electrified curls, snatched up the Doboz Torte, and Marie had to stop herself grabbing it back as if it was a tug-of-love child. Hattie, pint-sized and rotund, free of make-up and wearing plain grey sweats, was a stark counterpoint to their glamorous hostess. ‘Do you even know what the five elements are?’ she asked, more in sadness than in anger.
Materialising to filch a breadstick, Rose guessed. ‘Um, ice cream, potatoes, cheese, Mars Bars and salsa?’
‘Metal,’ said Hattie. ‘Water. Wood. Fire. Earth.’
Not a tempting menu. ‘Mmm,’ said Marie. ‘Wood sandwiches. Lovely.’
Hattie laughed. ‘Sorry, I do barge in, don’t I? I just want everything to be harmonious.’
‘Here.’ Erika thrust a glass at her. ‘Have a lovely glass of chilled harmony.’
Marie clinked drinks with Hattie. ‘To booze – the sixth element. And by far the best.’
Looking askance at the alcohol, Hattie asked earnestly, ‘Erika, have you any room-temperature tap water?’
‘Sweetheart, the day I answer yes to that question is the day you have my permission to shoot me.’ The doorbell rang and Erika wafted off on shoes high enough to double as stilts.
Small talk with Hattie was easy, so long as you asked questions about feng shui, aromatherapy, reiki or any number of worthy topics Marie knew nothing about. Halfway through a long discourse on why yams are good for your spleen, Marie was rescued by Mrs Gnome.
This was not her real name. The Dunwoodys had rechristened their next-door neighbour for the battalion of garden ornaments on her front lawn. There was a fishing gnome, a sunbathing gnome, a ballet-dancing gnome; for all Marie knew, there was a psychopath gnome lurking behind a trellis. Mrs Gnome was small, white-haired, twinkly-eyed; standard-issue cute old lady.
‘Load of frigging rubbish, all this Residents’ Association bullshit,’ she said, by way of hello. ‘Nobody never gets nothing done. Every sodding meeting I ask for a new Slow Down sign for the end of the road, and what do I get? Bugger all!’
Hattie’s brow furrowed. ‘I did petition the council on your behalf, and—’
‘They won’t listen to you, you nutter,’ said Mrs Gnome. ‘Oh look, here come our new poofs.’
‘Keep your voice down, please,’ begged Hattie, but Graham and Johann, newly moved into the Close, had heard.
‘That’s OK, we are your new poofs, I guess.’ Graham, tall and tanned in all sorts of denim, seemed more amused than affronted by Mrs Gnome’s rudeness. ‘You must be the old bat I’ve heard so much about.’
Mrs Gnome guffawed. ‘Good one,’ she cawed, before moving off to scare and humiliate other guests.
Graham, who had lived in Caraway Close for four weeks, was able to introduce Marie to people she’d passed in the street for years. The room filled up, the atmosphere swelled, and Graham summed up Marie’s feelings exactly by saying, ‘This would be a perfectly nice party if we didn’t know it’ll turn into a deadly boring meeting at some point.’
Tasked with finding salty snacks for the insatiable Mrs Gnome (‘Nothing that’ll stick in me dentures’), Marie noticed that, although the buffet was going down a storm with residents, her Doboz Torte still stood on its raised stand, virginal and untouched. One side drooping, as prophesied by Mary, the torte was just another cake to the Residents’ Association, but for Marie it represented hours of toil, memories of unrisen sponge flung in the bin, buttercream in her hair at midnight, a pagan dance of joy when the caramel had behaved. It was a frontier, a new skill set, a milestone in her relationship with St Mary of the Cake Tins.
Trying to look at it through a stranger’s eyes (and ignoring Mrs Gnome’s shouts of ‘Oi! Stupid! Where’s me nuts?’), Marie saw a different cake altogether. She saw a lopsided dollop, its windmill blades tilting unevenly on brownish icing the colour of
. . . She didn’t want to pin down what the icing reminded her of.
‘Wow,’ said Graham at her side. ‘What a cake!’
Her heart suddenly weighing nothing, Marie beamed up at him, to see that his gaze skidded over the Doboz Torte’s poor wonky head and took in the front door.
‘Lucy! Tod! Chloe!’ Erika was greeting late arrivals. ‘And you’ve brought a cake! How marvellous!’
Bringing her cake to the table, Lucy was mobbed by salivating residents oohing and aahing. It was a modest effort, more petite than Marie’s, and a blazing pristine white in comparison to her – ahem – brownish effort.
‘I just hope it tastes OK,’ said Lucy, placing it carefully on the table.
On top of impeccably smooth white fondant, Lucy had iced a map of Caraway Close. Marie saw her house, outlined in electric blue, and wished she was back in it, ignoring the Residents’ Association, hunkered down with BBC iPlayer and a bag of Doritos as big as her head.
‘That is amazing,’ she said with sincerity and a kind of ache that she’d never, ever achieve such perfection, even if she kidnapped Mary Berry and tied her up in the cellar. The cake was not only technically flawless, it was witty and imaginative to boot. ‘Well done, Lucy.’
‘Oh, you know, I try.’ Lucy tucked fronds of sunshine-coloured hair behind her ears.
At Marie’s shoulder a grating voice, like a possessed squirrel, wheezed, ‘That’s the last time I send you for nibbles, you dozy mare.’ Mrs Gnome glanced down at the cake and her voice changed. ‘Aw, look!’ she cooed, pointing at the cake. ‘Me ’ouse! She’s done me ’ouse in icing!’
Chloe had been got at: she was in black, naturally, but in the sort of black that would pass muster with Lucy. Tidy jeans. A pressed T. Her eyeliner was toned down, more Audrey Hepburn than Courtney Love. She and Tod, flanking Lucy, were perfect accessories for the accomplished home-maker: the pretty young girl with shiny hair; the distinguished man in an impeccable suit and flashing smile. There was something presidential in the way they stood, as if posing for an official photograph.
Slinking away, Marie caught Chloe’s eye and winked. The girl looked thoroughly uncomfortable, pulling her sleeves down over her knuckles, shoulders up around ears that were naked of their usual line of silver studs.
Chloe smiled back tightly, her expression taut.
‘Oh, you’ve made a cake, too.’ Lucy, looking aghast and biting her lip, caught Marie mid-slink. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. Erika never said. I didn’t mean to muscle in.’
‘I did say,’ said Erika, looking not at Lucy but at two of the four reflections of herself offered by her sitting-room walls. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘It doesn’t matter a bit,’ said Marie, her smile reminiscent of Chloe’s. ‘Always room for more cake!’
‘I suppose.’ Lucy wrinkled her nose.
Not a natural nose-wrinkler, Marie wondered if she should take it up.
‘Chairs!’ yelled Erika incongruously, and the regulars set about creating a semicircle of stools and armchairs and dining chairs around the mantelpiece (and a whopping photograph of Erika looking into the middle distance, in such soft focus that she appeared to have no nostrils). The seats soon filled up, and Marie had to take Iris on her lap. A few chairs along, Erika landed briefly on Tod’s lap with a girlish ‘Oops!’, before squeezing his knee and moving on to a spare seat. Tod caught Marie’s eye and pulled a discreet face of alarm.
Coughing to cover her titter, Marie accepted the lozenge that Hattie, on her right, spirited out of a pocket.
‘I think your chakras may be closed,’ she mused.
‘Wouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ agreed Marie. She shook her head quellingly at Tod, who was inching his chair away from Erika, just for Marie’s benefit. Loose and funny and approachable, the man was nothing like his wife.
The minutes, ironically, took hours. Erika took the floor, delighted when Angus crouched, filming, on the edge of the semicircle. This promised to be an interesting set-piece for the summer home movie. Presenting her best profile to the camera involved much twirling, and much leopard-skin chiffon hitting Tod in the face.
‘The crazed sex attacker reported by one of our senior members,’ Erika gestured to Mrs Gnome, assiduously reading a copy of heat, ‘turned out to be a badger. And Hattie scored a triumph with the council, who have finally replaced our vandalised street sign.’
There was a round of applause for Hattie, who blushed to the roots of her hair. Nobody had relished living in Carawank Close.
‘I’m very disappointed that there are no takers for the early-morning running club.’ Erika lifted her chin to glare at her audience, who all shuffled and mumbled and looked at their feet.
Marie examined her fingernails; only Mary could get her up early.
‘Umm, one last thing – what was it?’ Erika held her glasses midway between her eyes and her notes. ‘Ah yes. Could we please stop leaving rubbish in the right-of-way?’ More mumbling. More shuffling. The horseshoe-shaped alley that backed onto all their gardens was a tempting place to dump unwanted paraphernalia. Marie thought of the twins’ old trike, which had been in the alley so long it was covered in ivy.
‘And before any hands go up, I insist that we do not debate yet again whether or not the bottle-recycling station at the corner of the Close is a good idea. It’s here and it’s staying, and I for one will be throwing all my empty Moëts into it. That’s all from me. Here’s a word from one of our younger members.’
Chloe stood up and took Erika’s place with much less self-assurance than the hostess. ‘Um,’ she began, managing a smile for Angus’s camera just as he switched it off. ‘Er . . . I’m . . . kind of raising money?’ Chloe’s inflection turned her statements into questions. ‘For PeTA? So if I could babysit? Or wash cars? Or . . . um . . . I don’t know – anything? That’d be great?’
‘Bless her,’ whispered Hattie, and Marie silently seconded that.
After a brief interjection from Mrs Gnome, along the lines of Don’t any of you bastards park across my drive or I’ll come at you with a machete, the meeting was over. Chit-chat broke out as chairs were replaced, cheeks kissed and Erika extravagantly thanked.
Where once Lucy’s cake had stood there was now just a mound of sweet rubble. As Marie contemplated the two large slices of Doboz Torte left on the stand, Tod reached over and scooped them both onto a paper plate. ‘This,’ he said, ‘looks delicious.’ Raising his eyebrows at Marie, he shovelled a forkful into his mouth. He had a symmetrical, pleasing face that smiled easily and often, the skin smooth with a golden tinge. ‘Yum!’
‘Really?’ goggled Marie.
‘Lucy,’ called Tod, ‘taste this, darling.’ And he forked another chocolatey blob at his wife.
Obediently she opened her mouth. ‘Oh yes!’ she said approvingly, widening her eyes.
‘It’s bloody gorgeous,’ enthused Tod.
He’d saved Marie from a flashback to a sixth-form disco; tonight, thanks to Tod, she was no wallflower. ‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’ Marie was dismissive, unaccustomed to praise for her food. ‘It’s a bit too crumbly.’ It was a typically British self-deprecating comment, so Marie was surprised when Lucy took her up on it.
‘Maybe a touch,’ she said gravely, screwing up her eyes as she savoured the cake. ‘Hmm. Yes.’ Zealously she went on, ‘Make sure you don’t over-beat.’ She made a circular motion with one fist. ‘Let the mixer do the work. Overbeating can dry out a cake before it even goes in the oven.’ She smiled, happy to help.
‘I’ll do that,’ smiled Marie. Unhappy to be helped. Typical Delia fan, she thought. Giving advice before it’s asked for.
Lights came on all over the Close as residents dispersed back to their homes. Marie could see Robert in their kitchen window, raising a mug to her. She could also see Prinny behind him, standing on the kitchen table, wolfing down whatever Robert had just left unattended. She hoped to God he’d taped the first episode of the new Great British Bake Off series, or he’d be wearing that mug
he’d so jauntily lifted. ‘Come on, kids,’ she muttered, speeding up in anticipation of an hour with Mary.
‘Angus,’ said Iris to her brother as they made their way down Erika’s crazy paving. ‘Just make Chloe your girlfriend, will you? We want to be bridesmaids.’
‘Shut up,’ said Angus.
‘She’s really pretty,’ said Rose.
‘She’s not my type.’ Angus was adamant.
Marie swung the cake-carrier to catch Angus square on his non-existent boy-arse. ‘Ssh!’ she hissed.
On the far side of Erika’s picket fence, the Grays had reached their front door, with Chloe falling behind and plenty near enough to hear what had just been said. The girl kept her head down and hurried indoors after her parents.
The tiny glass pot, expensive enough to contain unicorn droppings, was full of the latest must-have anti-ageing cream. Regarding her naked, pink, scrubbed-looking face in the unflattering en-suite mirror, Marie wondered if the scented goop would actually do anything. The actress ‘spokesperson’ for the brand was ten years Marie’s senior, yet looked ten years younger. Did she even use this stuff? Marie suspected she’d be better off borrowing the woman’s plastic surgeon and hiring some digital genius to Photoshop the Dunwoody holiday snaps.
Even after ruthless editing, there were only three photographs of their Cornwall fortnight in which Marie looked human, never mind ‘youthful’, ‘vibrant’ or ‘glowing’, as promised by the jar.
It was just one little jar against a tidal wave of genes. Marie’s nana had been officially old by fifty, with flat shoes, a tight perm, comfy cardis and a firm belief that there was no such thing as a lesbian. Recalling her nana’s wrinkles, Marie doubted that she could stave off her own lines with goo.
Rubbing the costly stuff into her cheeks, she wandered out to the bedroom, where Robert lay reading a motorbike magazine. Never one to sleep naked, he was in a Sesame Street T-shirt and a pair of pyjama bottoms so old they were eligible to vote. ‘If you saw me in the street,’ she asked him, ‘how old would you think I was?’
‘Twelve,’ said Robert, without looking up.