by Claire Sandy
Joe chose a violent scene obviously. We never got round to me which is just as well cos Joe would have been shocked. Theres no way he’d know Cary Grant. Remember we talked about it (OK OK emailed about it)? Ages ago? It’s called ‘Notorious’.
Cary Grant is rescuing Ingrid Bergman (big bird, hot, Swedish I think) from a house full of nazi baddies. He picks her up and carries her cos they’ve drugged her. None of the nazis want to make the first move, cos there are members of the public about and he’s walking past them with Ingrid in his arms. She’s terrified so he says to her ‘Keep your eyes on mine. Keep looking at me’. And he keeps going and the tension is frigging unbearable but they stare into each other’s eyes the whole time and Cary rescues her right from under the bad guys’ noses and they drive away.
Big letters – T H E E N D.
Maybe you had to be there . . .
Remember you said it’ll be cool by the time school starts again?
You’ve never been wronger.
Running away feels like a good idea. Maybe I could run to Scotland? The Clones don’t do running (heels too high) so they wouldn’t follow me there.
laters
Angus
P.S. Do you know Mary Berry? Some old woman, right? I think she’s started a cult and my Mum’s joined it.
P.P.S. What is your favourite scene from a movie?
NOVEMBER
Fireworks Night
Bonfire Cake
Dear Granny Gaynor,
How are you? I am fine. We are looking forward to the fireworks and we made a guy using an old dress Mummy doesn’t wear any more. Well only for parties and weddings. We stuffed it with paper and put extra in the bum.
In a way its nearly christmas so if youre sitting there crying because you don’t know what to buy me I can help! I desperately need a Barbie Dream House. Seriously. I could die if I don’t get one and Mum keeps saying that we need to do our belts up tighter which means something about not buying your daughters IMPORTANT THINGS.
When will you visit us? Please come soon and show us your ghost costume. Daddy told us all about your new job haunting houses.
lots of love
Iris xoxoxoxox
With appointments backing up, Marie didn’t really have the time to inch through reception holding Jonas Handler’s arm as he took the baby-steps of old age. Passing her next patient poring over Victoria Beckham’s lack of cellulite in OK!, Marie mouthed Sorry as she stepped over a baby on the rug.
‘Here we go,’ she said encouragingly. Jonas’s arm felt like a bundle of twigs through his sleeve. He smelled of soap; Marie knew he made an effort for his trips to the surgery and hoped it wasn’t the highlight of his month. She hoped there was a kind face and a soft voice waiting at home, but she suspected there wasn’t. ‘Nearly there.’
She was a woman of urges. Very often these urges involved digging out Dirty Dancing, or jumping her husband as he put away the leaf-blower, but today she had an urge to tell this old chap that he was valued, and to tell the bored young mum tapping away on her phone to cherish these years when her child was a tot. She had an urge to go further, to tell Jonas that he was their favourite patient, and to warn the mum that before she knew it, the dimpled cutie-pie at her feet would be keeping secrets and that their shared vocabulary would have atrophied.
She fought these urges, though, because she was a dentist, not a therapist.
Hesitating at the step, Jonas steadied himself and set off, solo, down the high street. Marie glanced over the road.
Up and running for almost two months, Perfect You didn’t look like Marie’s idea of a dental practice. On a gigantic flat screen in the window, film stars and TV personalities smiled toothily on an endless loop, their dazzling airbrushed images interspersed with a long menu of the procedures offered.
Inside (she’d sent Lynda to snoop) was a reception area that aped a boutique hotel, with plush purple sofas and a curved chrome desk. The receptionist who opened up each morning wore a white overall – if a mundane word like ‘overall’ could do justice to such a short, tight, low-cut outfit. With a face full of slap, and teeth so whitened she could guide ships safely home to port, the poor girl was a porn caricature of a dental receptionist.
Nothing about Perfect You suggested it was a place where trained professionals carried out medical procedures. The head honcho had yet to be glimpsed, although Marie saw his convertible parked outside most days. She wondered what kind of person starts a rival business bang opposite the competition, before glancing at her own cheerful but low-budget sign and wondering if he took Smile! seriously enough for it to qualify as competition. So far there’d been little impact on her turnover, but Marie was shrewd enough to realise that Perfect You’s cosmetic-led approach held enormous appeal for young adults weaned on modern media, who watched their celebrity heroes and heroines alter their features as casually as they changed their underwear. It was only a matter of time before her takings were affected, and Marie, with her habit of meeting trouble halfway, had begun to make small changes in the family’s expenditure.
Any cost-cutting had to be discreet. Robert was already engulfed in career confusion: if he spotted financial storm clouds, it might affect the decisions he was already struggling with. As long as she could, Marie would protect her husband’s poignant need to be all-powerful Papa Bear and, if push came to shove, she’d sell her car.
Her beloved, beaten-up car.
And when Robert asked why?
Some bridges could be crossed when she came to them.
Waving at Jonas as he reached the crossing, then turning back to her own domain, to the very specific sound of a gyrating toddler falling into a handbag and the resultant fuss, Marie wondered how Jonas might fare in the clinic across the road. And would they charge for steaming baby-sick off the velvet sofa?
Robert had various vague plans in his head for the far-off distant time when he finally retired. Maybe he would take the safari he’d fantasised about since his first Tarzan film, or possibly he’d take up scuba-diving. One thing was for sure: he would find out who invented open-plan offices, track him down and slowly torture him to death by forcing him to listen to an endless loop of other people’s inconsequential phone conversations.
Robert missed his old office. It had been a happy little hutch: just him, a desk, a chair and a stash of Crunchies. He’d been able to close the door on office babble, to snatch a snooze or have a damned good phone row with Marie. Now he was on show all day, in an arctic tundra dotted with white desks and white chairs and the odd triffid-like pot plant. Thus exposed, he sat up straight, kept personal phone calls to a minimum and couldn’t so much as finger the wrapper of a Fun Size without noses twitching all around him and a chorus of ‘Ooh, can I have one?’
If he was back in the hutch (he remembered how it smelled – Mr Sheen and central heating), he wouldn’t have to listen to Caroline and Magda’s conversation about their recent night out. Magda, perched on Caroline’s desk, swinging a booted foot, was pulling apart a muffin in that way some women did, tearing little nuggets between manicured fingers. Robert scarfed down muffins whole, and wanted to yell at Magda Eat it! Just bloody eat the bloody thing!
It was his home-made muffin, however, so he didn’t yell. He simply tried to bask in the sunny warmth of his boss enjoying his muffin. (He’d been surprised to find a Paul Hollywood recipe for muffins; surprised and, yes, a little disappointed – that such a bluff, straight-talking northern bloke had used his beefy hands to bake blueberry muffins.) Hard to bask, though, when you’re trying to create a complex spreadsheet, and two women are cackling about waiters’ arses just two feet from your desk.
‘And the size of his pepper mill!’ groaned Caroline.
Magda, who would never groan in front of her serfs, tore another clod of muffin and included Robert with a casual, ‘Where do you go when you go out, Robert? Do you have any hot tips for us?’
Taking in Caroline’s thwarted look – she hated sharing Magda –
Robert leaned back casually, slid down rather too far on his glossy chair, then sat up hastily while pretending that was what he’d meant to do all along and said, ‘Staying in is the new going out, Magda.’
He could almost hear Marie’s shout of HORSE SHIT!
‘Really?’ Magda swung her body towards him.
‘Oh yeah.’ Now that he had Magda’s attention, Robert had no idea what to do with it; like Prinny that time he’d stolen a sanitary towel. ‘We entertain a lot.’ That wasn’t a lie, if Mrs Gnome popping in for a toasted sandwich counted as entertaining. ‘Very casual, very laid-back.’ He remembered Mrs Gnome farting as she left. ‘Just chillin’.’ Thank God Marie was miles away; she would never let him live down that dropped ‘g’.
‘Lovely,’ said Magda approvingly. ‘Good honest family fun, yeah?’
‘Exactly that,’ said Robert serenely.
‘When’s the next glittering occasion?’
‘Um . . .’ Robert panicked slightly. ‘Oh, yes, that would be our famous Fireworks Night party.’ It was famous, he told his outraged conscience: if you were Robert or Marie or one of the kids, it was famous. ‘It’s a hell of a night.’ Yes, that was true, it was hellish. Baked potatoes with hard centres; Marie neurotically screaming for him to DEAR GOD! GET BACK! as he approached the fireworks with a match; Prinny fright-pooing extravagantly at each bang. ‘Technicolour rockets against a velvet sky.’ Maybe he was having a stroke, he thought. He literally couldn’t stop. ‘The happy laughter of children. And, of course, banging tunes.’ Banging tunes. He’d never said that before in his life and had hoped he’d reach his death before ever saying it. ‘Everyone’s invited.’
‘Aw, thanks!’ Caroline perked up, as the evil are wont to do when their innocent victims walk slap-bang into a trap. ‘I’ll be there. How about you, Magda?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ Magda crinkled her eyes and stood up to squeeze Robert’s shoulder. She aimed the muffin-wrapper at the bin and shouted, ‘Let’s do some work, people, per-lease!’ to nobody in particular.
Staring at the spreadsheet, seeing past it – seeing the face of his wife when he plucked up the courage to tell her – Robert talked himself down. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he told himself. ‘Marie will be fine about it.’
‘Are you mad? Have you gone mad? You have. You’ve gone mad, you . . . madman.’
Marie was not fine about it.
‘What were you on? Magda? Bloody Magda with her Manolos and her high-maintenance hair? In our garden where the fence has half-fallen down and the swingball’s been on its side since September?’ Marie wished vehemently that they were at home and not at the school parents’ evening. She wanted to shout and slam doors, but being in the queue for the headmaster’s office meant she had to content herself with a hushed growl. Later, she promised herself, she would twat him with a tea towel or throw a Yakult at him. ‘Dear God,’ she hissed, ‘we’ll have to repaper the downstairs loo!’
Another couple emerged from Mr Cassidy’s inner sanctum and Robert, Marie and the girls shuffled forward a pace or two. Marie slumped against the wall, seeing her lovely relaxed and shambolic Fireworks Night morph into a very different beast, one requiring catering, planning, extensive hoovering and a dog-nappy.
‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ said Iris, sucking the cuff of her cardigan. ‘We’ll help.’
‘I won’t,’ said Rose.
‘We should . . . um, invite other people too,’ said Robert.
‘I kind of implied it was a big deal.’
‘Lied your stupid head off, you mean,’ said Marie, repeating ‘Implied!’ in a bitter undertone. She took in Robert’s bowed head, the studious way he examined a flyer for after-school bouncercise and knew he was waiting for the storm to blow over. She could already feel her umbrage deflating; it was showy but short-lived. It had been a stroke of genius to tell her at parents’ evening; it’s hard to murder your husband in front of your children’s teachers. Plus he had the advantage that her head was already spinning from their brood’s polarised reports.
The twins were, according to their teachers, ‘mature’, ‘capable’, ‘confident’. Marie sensed that the maths tutor wanted to add and bloody scary. In short, the girls were doing fine, hitting their marks, integrating well with their classmates and laying the foundations for the day when they would rule the known world.
Angus, however, had his elders and betters scratching their heads. His grades were down, but not dramatically. He was a little quieter in class – ‘Although,’ his form master said, ‘with Angus that’s hard to gauge.’ All of them noticed a change in the boy; none could put their finger on it.
‘Aha!’ Robert waved, looking past Marie. ‘Two possibles for the party!’
Her lips mewing to form a no, Marie rearranged them to form a ‘Hi!’ as Tod and Lucy, arm-in-arm like well-dressed Siamese twins, joined them.
‘You look lovely,’ said Lucy.
Aware that she didn’t look lovely, having rushed straight from the clinic with her hair in disarray and livid red marks from her goggles across her nose, Marie said, ‘Thanks, so do you,’ which was the only possible riposte. Besides, it was true. Lucy’s pale face glowed, the end of her nose a dainty pink, her eyes sparkling. She seemed genuinely excited to be in an over-lit school corridor that smelled faintly of Brussels sprouts on a sleety November evening.
‘We’re hearing great things about our Chloe,’ said Lucy happily.
‘Well, darling, to be fair, it’s not all great.’ Tod pulled a wry face.
‘It never is,’ said Robert sympathetically. He was never drawn into parental boasting/criticising; they is what they is was his take on his three. ‘But, listen, are you two free on Fireworks Night? We’re having a get-together.’
‘Have we anything sorted out for Bonfire Night, darling?’ Tod looked down at his wife, so much smaller than him, as if she’d been designed to make him look dominant and sexy. And it was working.
‘Um . . . nothing – nope.’ Lucy smiled. ‘We’ll be there!’ Then, with the inevitability of night following day, she asked, ‘Can I bring anything?’
‘No,’ said Marie a little too fast, tempering it with: ‘You’re a guest, I’m going to spoil you, not put you to work!’
‘Well, I might make a little something, just in case!’
As the talk turned back to the teachers, Marie tuned out, wondering if Robert ever listened to her. Perhaps he just heard a distant quacking when she opened her mouth. Or perhaps it all came out in Flemish and he’d disabled his subtitle option. Because by now he really should know that, if you lined up all the people in the world whom she didn’t want to invite to the party – including Hitler and Robert’s mother – Lucy would still be right at the very back.
Probably holding a cake. Just in case.
At a lull in conversation, Lucy said, over-brightly, ‘How do you tell your girls apart?’
‘Everybody asks that,’ said Rose.
‘Don’t be rude, darling,’ said Marie, silently cheering her daughter for outing Lucy as a tedious small-talker. ‘It’s not that hard . . . You see, Iris has— Angus!’ Marie broke off as her son ambled past. Should she kiss him? Best not to, she thought, as he dragged himself over to them. His face displayed that horrible anxiety that children suffer from when their family are on school property, as if his mum and dad were bombs stuffed with embarrassing anecdotes that could go off at any moment.
‘Hi. Hi, Mrs Gray, Mr Gray.’
‘Tuck your shirt in,’ said Marie, suddenly seeing him through the Grays’ eyes.
‘Mu-um,’ grumbled Angus, doing as he was told.
‘What’s this?’ Marie peered at a graze on Angus’s forehead, proprietarily sweeping aside his curls as she’d been doing since he first grew them. ‘When did that happen?’
‘It’s nothing.’ Angus shook his hair, like a horse refusing a bridle. ‘P.E. I fell.’
A girl his age swept up behind him, her one-sided ponytail bobbing, and stuck her arm throu
gh his. ‘Is this Mummy and Daddy? Aren’t you going to introduce us?’
The colour that flooded Angus’s face was hard to describe. On a Farrow & Ball chart it might be ‘Cheeks of a Devonshire Virgin’. ‘Well . . .’
‘I’m Lauren,’ said the girl, her confidence as high as her hemline. She lifted her chin and smiled at each one in turn. ‘Should be interesting hearing what Mr C has to say about Angus here.’ She chucked his cheek as he hung his head.
Awww, said Lucy’s expression. She winked at Marie, who smiled, but didn’t share the sentiment. A thought ricocheted back and forth between her antennae and Robert’s: Is this the unwanted admirer who texted all through the summer?
‘He’ll say,’ Lauren put on a gruff voice, imitating the headmaster, ‘Angus Dunwoody is a young man who gets what he wants. Who won’t take no for an answer.’
‘Will he?’ asked Robert, surprised.
‘Oh yeah. Just ask the girls in his year. A right ladykiller, your son,’ said Lauren, wiggling so that Angus, wedged against her, wiggled too as he stared at the floor, head hanging like an exhausted tortoise.
‘Ladykiller?’ Marie reappraised her son rapidly. Angus’s private life was just that. He and this Lauren had a history she knew nothing about. She hoped he hadn’t led the girl on, or taken advantage . . . Marie immediately chastised herself for even suspecting her boy of such behaviour.
‘You bet!’ laughed Lauren, planting a kiss on Angus’s blazing cheek.
‘Ooh!’ said Iris, thrilled beyond measure.
‘In school?’ boggled Rose, mirroring her mother’s thought exactly.
Lauren disentangled herself and bade them all the kind of full and polite goodbye that Angus could never manage.