by Claire Sandy
‘Tod doesn’t do New Year.’ Lucy was weighing flour, stooping to check the digital readout. ‘And Chloe is off out somewhere – you know teenagers.’
‘I do.’ The remark triggered surprise – belated surprise: how come she hadn’t noticed this earlier? – that Angus wasn’t off out somewhere. He was with his embarrassing dad and his annoying sisters at Jo’s party. With the briefest of emotional detours for a rapid Wish I was there, Marie wondered why her own teenager hadn’t been invited to run wild with his own kind, half-blind on WKD.
An assembly line of sorts was soon purring. Things cooled as other things were whipped while yet more things were baking. A chihuahua yawned; Daft Punk chugged on; Marie’s fear receded, but couldn’t fade completely: she’d witnessed Lynda’s verbal take-down of the wedding singer who didn’t know ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ and was in no doubt about her fate if croquembouche number two failed.
‘You’ll laugh,’ said Lucy, dipping and piping, dipping and piping, as comfortable with an icing bag as a seasoned midwife with a tricky C-section, ‘but sometimes, when I’m panicking about something, I think to myself What would Delia do?’
Flabber-efficiently-gasted, Marie’s concrete ideas about her neighbour crumbled a little more. ‘Only ten minutes to twelve,’ she reported, stirring the caramel, with cold water to hand. This would be the first New Year’s Eve since meeting Robert that she wouldn’t kiss him at midnight. After so many accumulated New Year kisses, it shouldn’t really matter.
But it did matter.
‘What’s Tod got against New Year?’ she asked, scrutinising her caramel. Was it amber yet?
‘Sentimental tosh, he says.’ Lucy smiled indulgently. ‘I’m the same,’ she said. ‘Yes. I am. The same. I am.’
‘Got it, Yoda.’
Lucy laughed. Another chip of concrete fell to the (spotless) floor.
With a concise lesson from Lucy and a no-nonsense ‘You can do it’, Marie piped a neat queue of choux balls. ‘Awlright!’ said Marie. ‘If I had a smidgen less personal dignity, I’d high-five you, Lu.’
Lu. Had she just nicknamed her nemesis?
Big Ben kicked off on the radio. ‘The bongs!’ shouted Marie. It was rude to ignore the turn of the year altogether. Swiping a bottle of unchilled champagne from the wine rack, she barked ‘Lucy! Prinny! What’s your name . . . um, Cookie! Outside!’
As they hit the front garden, a conga line snaked out of the Gnomes’ house, hooting and high-kicking, headed for the central green.
‘Ten!’ shouted the conga line. ‘Nine!’
Marie had always wanted to shake a bottle of ’poo and then crack it open, à la Grand Prix winners, and now was her opportunity. Lucy pulled a face, but seemed game about being drenched in alcohol. Cookie sheltered under a dead rose bush. Marie guzzled, then passed the bottle to Lucy. ‘Happy New Year!’ she shouted over the roars of ‘Eight! Seven!’
‘Ooh, cripes.’ Lucy was in full Mallory Towers mode as her lips met possibly the first bottle-neck of her life.
A front door crashed open. Graham and Johann’s supper guests invaded the green. ‘Six! Five!’ Prada eyewear and ironic jeans mingled with elasticated waistbands as fireworks burst over the Close, making rainbows in Prinny’s sudden and extravagant wee.
A text arrived on Marie’s phone. Robert had evidently been at Jo’s infamous Hogmanay punch.
HAPPY NEW YEAR bESTest wif in world LOVE YOU hatlips! X CWn%
The children made more sense, with a Happy midniht Mummyxxx from the girls, and Angus’s I AM NEVER COMING TO JO’S PARTy AGAIN AND I NEVER WANT TO SEE DAD AGAIN HE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF HIMSELF HAPPY NEW YEAR X.
‘Happy New Year, Delia!’ Marie waved the bottle, swept away by bonhomie.
‘And Mary!’ laughed Lucy, sparkling with the spirit of the moment, her beam a goofy eye-crinkler that utterly lacked the elegance of her usual composure. ‘And us!’ She grabbed the bottle and drank too fast, bending double to cough in the New Year as Mrs Gnome screeched, ‘Three! Two! One! HAPPY NEW YEAR YOU SHOWER OF BASTARDS!’
‘Join us!’ called Johann, his hair an asymmetric wonder, even when drunk.
‘Nope. Sorry!’ Lucy straightened up. ‘We have work to do.’
One hour into a new year, Marie realised she wasn’t fretting. She had faith that the croquembouche they were glueing carefully and slowly together, in the slightly fetishy cone supplied by Lucy, would work out.
Lack of fear freed up her mind for enjoyment of the timeless satisfaction of creativity. She felt generous; she felt plugged in; she felt useful and happy.
She realised something else, castigating herself for taking so long about it. There had been neither a call nor a text for Lucy at midnight. Not so much as a shout across the Close. Marie watched her reach into the cavernous cone, and wondered about that for a while. The small discordant note sounded by the smashed plate back on Bonfire Night chimed louder in the calm.
They’d promised themselves it would be done by two. As the hands of the retro clock inched towards three, they repromised that three was the deadline. The two women, like First World War tommies in a trench, were worn out from battle, but grimly determined to see it through to the end.
Without Lucy’s encouragement – or was it more of a command? – Marie would never have attempted spun sugar. Now here she was spinning a gleaming spider’s web, as Lucy stood at her elbow, her instructions composed and concise.
Upstairs the party-goers snored, having arrived home in a whirlwind of slammed minicab doors and a snatch of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Later today, at the wedding, she’d ask Robert about the lipstick stain on his collar, but his hangover would be punishment enough without recourse to cold-shouldering. The Gnomes’ party had deteriorated into a marvellous brawl, which Marie was, unfortunately, too busy to enjoy. Graham and Johann’s house was dark, like every other one in the cul-de-sac, except for the Dunwoody hive of activity.
‘Lovely, lovely,’ murmured Lucy, intent on Marie’s sugary sorcery. ‘Keep a steady hand. That’s it.’
After a stuttering start, Marie and Lucy had found common ground. Acres of it. They made each other laugh. Marie could never have guessed, when she’d woken up that morning, that by the time she saw her bed again (and, dear God, how she longed to see her bed again) she would know her arch-enemy to be generous, kind, fun.
Perhaps it was the bonding properties of a shared goal, or the enchantment of the first dawn of the New Year, but Marie and Lucy leapfrogged a couple of stages in the getting-to-know-you process. Neighbours for years, they’d never considered each other friendship material until tonight; if anything, they’d been anti-magnetic, repelling each other.
When Marie was less tired – in, say, six months’ time – she might force herself to reappraise that and face an awkward, humiliating fact. Was the antipathy between them a fabrication? Did I, thought Marie, guilt battling exhaustion for the upper hand, wilfully misconstrue Lucy all this time?
The woman squeezing her arm and saying ‘Well done!’ was transparently happy to help, with no airs or graces, no claims to superiority. Their wires had been crossed, thought Marie, and now they’re uncrossed.
‘Stand back,’ said Lucy, wiping her hands on a tea towel, shoulders drooping with fatigue, ‘and take a look at what you’ve achieved.’
It towered, that croquembouche. It stood tall and proud, a gleaming white-and-gold colossus that would grace any feast, would delight Lynda and Barrington, and would fill many tummies and spread the wedding love.
For the first time in a long time, New Year’s Eve hadn’t involved loud music, poor-quality dancing and an inkling that Marie would pay for the drunken merriment in the morning. Instead, she’d revisited a mistake made long ago – one she’d doggedly stuck with, viewing all evidence through the prism of her own prejudice.
The turn of the year had brought a revelation: Lucy. She was a revelation so total and so welcome that it boded well for the coming twelve months. Fizzing without recourse to champa
gne, Marie chose to see Lucy’s rehabilitation – from fiend to friend in one mighty bound – as an omen. No need, she told herself, to be frightened of the future. You never know what’s around the corner. It may all work out tickety-boo.
‘Thank you.’ The two words were memorably inadequate.
‘I enjoyed myself.’ Lucy shook her head, as if to ward off praise or gratitude.
Marie took Lucy by the shoulders, noticing how narrow they were, how tiny she was. ‘I mean it. Thank you, Lu.’
‘Thank you,’ said Lucy. ‘For rescuing me from yet another deadly-dull New Year.’
From the corner came the small, wet snap of a chihuahua yawn.
THANK YOU
Dear Boss Lady,
I’ve saved this card until last, because I’m still wondering how to thank you properly for the amazing croquembouche. My family is still talking about it, and I can still taste the delicious lemony cream. I said to Barrington, ‘Marie probably spent at least an hour making that’.
Did you enjoy the day? You looked as if you did, right up to the moment you fell into the fountain. I said to Barrington, ‘I hope I’m that relaxed about strangers seeing my knickers when I’m Marie’s age’. As you know, that champagne was twenty pounds a bottle (inc. discount for bulk), so I’m glad you liked the taste of it so much.
Were you as surprised as me when Aileen stood up to make a speech? I have to admit I was a little peeved, but I just bit down on Barrington’s hand and got through it. I didn’t mind the whole bit about marriage being a fairytale told by Satan, but my aunties are still getting over the (rather long) section about how awful sex is and how, if Barrington and I have any sense, we’ll take up a hobby instead. By the end, though, when she said I was like the horrible big sister she’d never had, there was a tear in my eye.
I said to Barrington, ‘Marie and Robert’s marriage is an inspiration’ – and after he’d remembered who you were, he agreed. When he and I are past it, I want to be just like you and Robert, still together, still in love. All in all, a huge THANK YOU from me and my husband (can’t get used to calling him that!) for the amazing cake, which truly made our day.
And just from me, another thank you. For being more than a boss lady when my mum passed away. You understood and gave me space and then, when I needed it, you held me close.
I said to Barrington, ‘Marie is my other mother’.
L xxx
FEBRUARY
St Valentine’s Day
Heart-Shaped Cake
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
13.02.14
07.52
SUBJECT: Cupid is dead
HAPPY ALMOST VALENTINE’S DAY SOULMATE!
OK come down from the ceiling. I know you hate mush. Even you have to admit it’s weard that I have to spend the official most romantic day of the year with The Goth Girl Across The Road. Thanks Mum for roping me and her in to helping with some stupid party. If you were here I’d give you hmm let’s see obviously not roses or you’d shoot me in the balls but maybe one small daisy? Would that be alowed?
School’s rough. Surprise surprise! Wish I could fake another illness but you’re right (as usual) it’s too risky. One teacher is kind of suspicious and asked me if everything’s cool. I said yeah.
Things sound freaking CRAP at your place. Jump on a train and come here. Mum would LOVE you. She’d give you cake and talk to you about spots and periods and all the other things you gals chat about. Dad would make you taste quiche and ask if it was too salty or too herby or too eggy. And the twins would go full-on apeshit to meet my girl friend.
Stop having a fit and re-read that sentence. The two words are not joined up. ‘girl’ and ‘friend’. Totally different thing.
laters
Angus
P.S. Found spelling mistake in your last email. Your first! Ha! You can NEVER lord it over me agen!
On tiptoe at the door’s glass porthole, the twins spied on the school secretary.
Mrs Ardizzone was famously formidable, a throwback to the days when children were irritants. She scorned the right-on approach of modern teachers who referred to their charges as ‘students’ and were aware of their ‘needs’. To Mrs Ardizzone, they were all ‘kids’ and their most pressing ‘need’ was to be told off, on the hour, every hour.
‘Her bosoms!’ whispered Iris.
‘I know!’ whispered Rose.
A sturdy 40GG, Mrs Ardizzone’s breasts were encased in a bulletproof bra beneath one of her myriad itchy twin-sets. The breasts hypnotised the twins, who found it hard it concentrate around them.
‘The plan!’ hissed Iris. They were on borrowed time: it had been risky to ask to go to the loo together, and they mustn’t arouse suspicion by taking too long. They both thought of the exercise book crammed with pencilled scribbles, diagrams, drawings and stickers of kittens. The Plan, it said on the cover, each letter felt-tipped with a different pattern. Keep Out Or Else!!!
Dipping beneath the porthole, her eyes sweeping the long hall, Rose whispered, the words ripped from her, ‘I’m scared, Iris.’
Until Rose said so, Iris had been scared, too. But now the twin seesaw creaked into action: Rose shed her fear in order to buoy up her sister. ‘If we just stick to the plan, it’ll be fine. Don’t be scared, Rosie-Posie. You’ve already done something almost as scary.’
True. Pity she couldn’t boast to Mum about yesterday’s triumph, thought Rose. She’d displayed Dench-level acting skills by faking a convincing tummy ache when the other secretary had been on duty. That lady, known for her kindness, always kept suffering students by her side, rather than imprisoning them in the sickroom. Emitting the odd groan from a hard plastic chair, Rose had watched the secretary go about her business, her nut-brown eyes taking in the labels on each file drawer until, information gleaned, she’d declared, ‘I feel a lot better now, Miss,’ and had trotted back to class.
‘Ready?’ Iris’s steady gaze locked onto Rose’s and they both nodded. They were more than the sum of their parts. They were two to the power of twin. They pounded on the door. ‘Mrs Ardizzone! Mrs Ardizzone!’
‘Keep it down!’ A menopause on legs, Mrs Ardizzone tugged open the door. ‘Noisy articles! What d’you want?’
‘There’s a boy!’ shouted Iris. In Mrs A’s world, boys were like velociraptors. Iris paused for a vital beat before the killer detail. ‘In your roses!’
The small corner of the school grounds dedicated to roses was off-limits, verboten. If Mrs Ardizzone could have got away with electrified wire, she would have installed it. She loved roses the way other people loved other people. ‘What?’ she shrieked, making the girls jump: they’d unleashed a Valkyrie.
‘I’ll show you.’ Iris ran ahead, adrenaline pumping, knowing that her twin had already slipped through the door before it swung shut.
After propping the door slightly open (it locked automatically; pupils were buzzed in by office staff), Rose made straight for a tall grey filing cabinet and pulled out the middle drawer. As she flicked through the clacking folders, the relevant one seemed to jump into her fingers. With a sibilant Yesss! – just like her dad’s when some muffin-baking went to plan – Rose pulled it out and laid it flat across the shoulders of its hanging brethren. Scanning the form within, she scribbled on her palm, glancing neurotically at the door all the while. A seasoned what if-er – just like her mum – she tried to subdue thoughts of the repercussions if an adult walked in.
As she was replacing the file, it hooked itself onto another. Rose tussled, sweat breaking on her brow beneath her impeccably brushed fringe. ‘Get in,’ she begged and the file complied. Slipping out of the room like a ghost, she was halfway down the corridor when Mrs Ardizzone clattered back into the building, Iris close behind.
‘Next time,’ she was saying darkly. ‘Next time I’ll get ’im.’ She turned to her apple-cheeked companion. ‘Want a Werther’s Original, dear?’
‘Ooh, yes please, Mrs Ardizzon
e!’ simpered Iris.
‘That’s taking things a little too far,’ winced Lucy.
‘I don’t regret a minute of it.’ Nowadays Marie felt at home in Lucy’s kitchen, but it had taken a while. So much gloss, so much Smeg, Bulthaup and other hard-to-pronounce, bordering-on-comical brand names. She’d coached herself and practised hard until she could fearlessly put down a mug on the Corian, and these days she appreciated the steam rotisserie, the hissing adjustable breakfast-bar stools, the swan-necked tap that spewed boiling water.
‘What happened? No! Don’t tell me!’ Lucy’s small hands, glittering with rings, flew to her face with an idiosyncratic movement that always made Marie smile: sometimes she shocked Lucy just for that silent-film reaction.
‘I can’t be the first woman to have a rude dream about MasterChef.’ Marie sipped her coffee; it truly did taste better out of bone china. ‘Ooh, the things they did to me!’ She relished Lucy’s No, no, no. ‘John smeared me in mango, and Gregg took me right there in the MasterChef kitchen, among the makings of a paella. The man’s an animal.’ She was laughing now, too. ‘When he came, he shouted It’s a taste explosion!’
‘Please stop.’ Lucy’s eyes were squeezed tight. ‘What would Mary Berry say?’
‘Oh, she’s probably had them both.’ Marie enjoyed Lucy’s peal of appalled laughter. It was the real deal, not the polite noise Lucy generally made. She was so carefully polite, so genteel and inoffensive that at times she could seem like a constructed thing rather than the flesh-and-blood, interesting woman she truly was. For so long Marie hadn’t looked beyond Lucy’s facade, blinkered by prejudice and – she could admit it now – envy. Daily she gave thanks that she’d finally broken through; the Close was a better place with a chum across the road. ‘I can just see Mary, John and Gregg in a hot tub with Delia.’
‘No.’ Lucy held up a stern forefinger. ‘Delia’s a good girl.’