by Claire Sandy
‘She’s a bore,’ said Marie. ‘She probably stands a safe distance away, shouting You can catch verrucas in hot tubs, you know! and Put Gregg down, Mary, you don’t know where he’s been.’
‘But we do know where he’s been.’ Lucy refilled Marie’s cup, adding a tiny pastel macaroon to the saucer. ‘In the paella. With you.’
Marie shuddered. ‘Where’s the gang?’ she asked, noting the quiet, churchy ambience of the house. ‘All out?’ She looked through to the sitting room, an inviting place of deep cushions and dense rugs.
‘Yup. We’ll eat later. And then maybe a movie.’
Lucy would, Marie knew, make popcorn, and serve it in striped tubs she’d tracked down online. And Chloe would curl her lip. There was probably an inoffensive way to report Chloe’s outburst about Lucy’s over-styling of family life, but Marie hadn’t hit on it yet.
‘Ah!’ Lucy jumped down from her stool as if she’d just remembered something. ‘You may as well take this.’ She reached into a spotless cupboard – did nobody in this house leave fingerprints? – and retrieved a magnificent Dundee cake. ‘Made it last night. Delia’s recipe, of course.’ Marie was drooling so hard she had to clamp her lips together. Although nobody – nobody – could challenge Queen Mary’s crown, she had to admit that Delia’s creations were special. ‘When I die, bury me in that,’ she said. ‘Why are we getting it? I mean, thank you and everything, but there’s only a couple of slices missing so far.’
‘It’s you or the bin.’ Lucy’s eyes flickered over Marie before she carried on. ‘Truth is, most of my baking is thrown away.’
Marie sat up straight. This was shocking stuff. She could understand murder (under the right circumstances) and accepted that there must always be war, but throwing away home-made foodstuffs? ‘Come OFF it!’ she hollered, in the vulgar tone of voice that usually only escaped her lips during the voting segment of the Eurovision Song Contest.
‘Really.’ Lucy shrugged. ‘Tod doesn’t care for cake.’
He ate my cake, thought Marie, not smug, just puzzled. And a tiny bit smug.
‘He watches his weight, you see.’
‘That’s good, though.’ Marie valiantly attempted to half-fill her friend’s metaphorical glass. ‘It’s you who gets to see him in the nuddy, after all.’
‘True.’ Before New Year, Lucy’s combined blush/giggle would have made Marie want to put her head through the nearest Smeg appliance, but now it charmed her. ‘And of course Chloe’s a typical girl – always on a fad diet.’
She ate my cake, thought Marie again, not at all smug, even more puzzled. ‘But what about you? If they don’t want any, surely there’s more left for you?’ To Marie, who had to fight off husband and children like feral cats for the last slice, this could be construed as a positive.
‘I have to be careful.’ Lucy patted her midriff, flat beneath a plain T-shirt that was so simple it just had to be designer. ‘I don’t want to balloon.’
Marie winced. She detested the self-hating talk, promoted in every glossy, that referred to ‘ballooning’ (often ‘overnight’) or ‘piling on the pounds’. ‘You won’t balloon,’ she used the word with distaste, ‘by having the odd slice of gateau. Women have to eat, you know. Only LA A-listers can survive on coconut water and Botox. Besides’ – time to point out the obvious – ‘you’re a skinny minnie, Lu. If they cut me up, they could make two of you.’ Marie felt her own warm, gently tubby midriff. ‘Hmm. Possibly two and a half.’
‘Obviously Tod doesn’t say anything about me.’ Lucy smiled at the idea of her gallant husband being so crass. ‘But he does, now and then, mutter about women getting to a certain age and letting themselves go.’
‘Good luck to them!’ Marie saluted these heroines with her coffee. ‘They’re living it large, cramming themselves with jammy doughnuts, instead of sweating to death in a spinning class.’ Marie had a sudden unwelcome thought. ‘Has he said that about me?’ She wasn’t sure what a ‘certain age’ meant, and suspected she’d been letting herself go since she could walk.
‘God, no, he loves you.’ Lucy fiddled with a macaroon. ‘But he does, occasionally . . .’
‘What? Go on.’ Marie was avid.
‘He’s a bit mean about lovely Hattie.’ Lucy said it all in a rush, then winced. ‘About her . . . well . . . her bottom and that.’
‘Hattie does carry a lot of junk in her trunk,’ mused Marie. ‘And I speak as one with enough junk in my own trunk for a lucrative car-boot sale. I suspect,’ she said sagely, ‘that Hattie wouldn’t give a hoot what Tod thinks of her.’ She went further. ‘It’s not really his business what a grown woman wants to eat, is it?’
‘No,’ said Lucy uncertainly, replacing the macaroon among its compatriots.
Getting to know Lucy, with the speed and gusto of compatible women, Marie had chatted about pretty much everything with her, from Simon Cowell to gingham and religion, but they’d never touched on Tod’s domination of her. It was too fundamental, too big, to broach. Many of the character traits she’d mistakenly attributed to Lucy were the direct result of Lucy’s desire to please her husband: she hadn’t been showing off, she’d been meeting Tod’s astronomically high standards. Lucy’s immaculate grooming, the glossy sheen of their home, her tight rein on Chloe were all orchestrated in order to reflect well on the man of the house.
Thank Gawd, thought Marie, for my own silly husband, who loves my podgy bits and wouldn’t dream – or dare – to comment on how much I do or don’t eat.
As if on cue, her own silly husband rapped on the window. ‘Your timer’s going off!’ he mouthed, his unwashed hair and stubbly face incongruous above the set-square lines of the evergreens in Lucy’s windowbox. ‘TI-MER!’ he repeated, as if Marie might have become senile since leaving the house.
‘Come with me,’ said Marie, clambering off the stool. ‘Let’s have coffee, take two, at mine.’ Now that she had a pal on tap, she liked to abuse the privilege.
And so did the pal. ‘Great idea.’ Lucy threw their cups into the dishwasher – unthinkable to leave a stained cup at large – and they left the house together.
Meandering around the curve, instead of crossing straight over the green, Lucy said in a small, confiding voice, ‘Chloe’s in therapy. Did she tell you?’
‘Nope.’ Marie’s heart swelled a little, to make room for this. ‘Why? She’s so loved. Ah.’ She stopped short, embarrassed by her own insensitivity. ‘Her mum, right?’
‘I think so.’ Lucy, a rookie at sharing, proceeded slowly, carefully, as if walking over a spot where broken glass has been dropped. ‘They never see each other. The most recent photo we have of her is . . .’ Lucy shrugged. ‘I don’t even know. I send pictures regularly to her last address, but for all we know she’s moved on. She’s a bit of a gypsy, apparently.’ As somebody whose children were densely woven into the fabric of every day, Chloe’s mother’s behaviour was incomprehensible to Marie. She wondered if therapy was the secret to which Chloe had alluded on Bonfire Night, but quickly rubbished that theory; Chloe’s generation were more matter-of-fact about these matters than their elders. The secret, whatever it was, was still just that. ‘She has you,’ said Marie emphatically, taking Lucy’s arm, feeling how fragile it was in her robust grip. ‘It can’t have been easy marrying into the Grays – a daddy’s girl and her daddy – but you’re on Chloe’s side, and if she doesn’t know it now, she’ll realise it soon.’ Pointless to whitewash over the uneasiness between Lucy and Chloe. Their disconnect was too obvious to ignore.
‘I don’t want to replace her mum. She has a mum.’ Lucy had clearly had this conversation with herself many times. ‘And one day they might repair their bond. I just want to have some kind of relationship with her.’ They were at Marie’s doorstep and they both stalled, looking at each other. ‘I don’t,’ said Lucy as if it was news, ‘have any children of my own, after all.’
‘No.’ Although Marie had friends who exulted in this fact, she knew that for Lucy this small truth
was a sadness, an enduring emotional wound that would never quite heal over. ‘But you’re a good mum . . . stepmum – whatever we end up calling it – to that girl. You never lose patience. You’re always there. Chloe’ll come round. When she’s older and can see the bigger picture.’
‘I don’t know.’ It sounded as if Lucy did know, but what she knew wasn’t good. She folded her arms and looked back over the Close, as if the stylish tidy, empty house was her stepdaughter. ‘She barely talks to me. If I could have an insight into her mind for just one minute . . . perhaps I’d know how to approach her. Everything,’ she finished, ‘I do is wrong.’
‘Welcome to the club.’ Marie blew out her lips in a horsey expression of defeat. ‘Angus can go days without speaking to me or Robert. If I breathe, I embarrass him. All my advice is redundant. He seems to believe that if I touch him, he’ll break out in boils. And as for a kiss . . .’ She tapered off, remembering small Angus arms about her neck every morning at the school gates. ‘A kiss would spark the Apocalypse. So, you see, you’re doing better than you think. It’s not that you’re a stepmum; it’s that Chloe’s a teenager.’ She pushed the front door. ‘And luckily that’s curable. Turning twenty puts an end to it.’
Lucy stayed on the wrong side of the step, despite the brisk nip in the air, and despite Marie holding the door wide.
‘If Tod and I had a child of our own . . .’ she said, and Marie could tell these words had never before been put together like this out loud. She stayed perfectly still, allowing Lucy to finish. ‘If we had,’ she repeated, ‘maybe things would be different.’
‘Maybe,’ agreed Marie gently. ‘I didn’t realise you’d tried, Lu.’
Outside, in the cold, her pretty nose a raw red, Lucy said, ‘We tried and tried. It’s not in my story. That’s how my therapist puts it.’ She tried an anaemic smile. ‘My fault, obviously. As Tod has Chloe.’
‘Come in.’ Time to break the moment, thought Marie, hating the vocabulary Lucy had lapsed into, and eager to sit her down somewhere warm. ‘It’s not about fault. I bet Tod doesn’t use that word. It’s nobody’s fault. He married you for you, and he was damned lucky to get you.’ She stopped, not trusting herself to say the right thing, pulsing with empathy, needing to help, but uncertain how to go about it. ‘I’m glad you told me,’ she said at last as they stared at each other in the hall.
‘So am I.’ Lucy coughed, shook herself like a wet dog and altered the mood. ‘That timer,’ she cocked her head, ‘is still going.’
A tinny peep-peep escaped from the kitchen.
‘Robert!’ barked Marie, striding in and stabbing the gizmo clinging to the oven door. ‘You could have switched it off.’
‘I suppose,’ said Robert, at the kitchen table poring over scandals in one of the grubbier Sunday papers. ‘But where’s the fun in that?’
The comparison between chez Gray and chez Dunwoody was stark. The bin was so full that a secondary bin had sprung up beside it – a sad plastic carrier bag slumped against the wall, full of milk cartons, chewed-to-death gum and used teabags. Perhaps the empty dog-food tub now stuck to Prinny’s head had once been in it, too.
‘If you weren’t here so often, I’d say It’s not always like this,’ said Marie, clearing a place on the worktop by pushing aside comics, dolls, headphones, DVDs and a Smurf key ring. ‘But you are, so you know this is actually pretty tidy, considering.’
‘Robert,’ said Lucy, sitting beside him (having first moved a Dandy annual and a framed, defaced photo of Marie and Robert’s wedding day). ‘This is a strange question. But I have to ask or it’ll be too late to bring it up, and I’ll never know.’
‘I’m intrigued.’ Robert tore his attention away from a four-page story highlighting the rapport between footballers and lap-dancers.
‘What is it,’ said Lucy, ‘that you do?’
‘Haven’t I ever said?’ Marie spoke over her husband. She considered all Robert’s conversations to be her conversations. ‘Really?’
‘Nope.’ Lucy, chin on her hand, leaned in to hear all.
‘I’m a silverware buyer,’ said Robert.
‘Which means . . . ?’ prompted Lucy.
‘It means I seek out the best possible silver products at the best possible price, so the man or woman on the street can stroll into Campbell & Carle and buy silver photo frames, silver knives, silver forks, silver spoons, silver rattles, silver—’
‘Pens,’ interjected Marie, opening the oven.
‘Pens,’ said Robert, with all the scorn of a man who’s made this clear many, many times, ‘are dealt with by the pen buyer. As I was saying . . .’ He held up his hand and ticked off the list on his fingers. ‘Silver salt-and-pepper sets. Silver napkin rings. Silver ice buckets. Silver . . .’ He slowed. He exhaled showily. ‘Bloody hell, Lucy, I’m boring myself. God knows how you feel.’
‘I’m fascinated,’ said Lucy with sincerity.
‘Then, after ensuring I’ve made as much profit as possible for my bosses, while meekly accepting that in the current financial meltdown I can’t expect a rise, I come home,’ said Robert. ‘I kiss my wife, I roll my eyes at my children, I trip over the dog and I make something like this.’ He reached over for a plate. ‘This is Paul Hollywood’s marzipan and apricot twist,’ he said, happier now. ‘And it tastes like heaven might, if it was a comestible.’
‘It does!’ agreed Lucy, after her customary one bite. ‘Chewy. Crammed with fruit. Rather like Stollen, but lighter.’
The smile cranked up a notch. Robert was accustomed to the kids’ simpler critiques of ‘Yeah, lovely, shut up, Dad’.
Looking past him, Lucy said with a dewy sigh, ‘Oh, look! Your wife’s baked you a heart-shaped cake for Valentine’s Day tomorrow! You’re a lucky, lucky man, Robert.’
‘Darling!’ Robert was moved.
‘Is it Valentine’s Day tomorrow?’ Marie froze with surprise as the last of four heart-shaped sponges fell from its tin onto the cooling rack. ‘Oh, shit!’
Robert rolled up his newspaper and left the room.
‘Say cheese!’ said the photographer from the local paper.
‘Cheese!’ said everybody, huddled under the HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY, SMILE! banner, except Aileen who shouted, ‘Willies!’
Aileen was drunk. Not falling-over drunk, but slurring drunk. Shouting ‘Willies!’ in a room peppered with children and old-age pensioners drunk.
‘I’ve never seen her like this before,’ murmured Marie, disconcerted, as she and Lynda handed out paper plates and nibbly bits, and plucked rogue Wotsits from the Quavers bowl. She looked around for her son: tonight these activities were in his job description. Chloe, keen to earn her modest fee, was hanging up coats, wiping spills, shyly making conversation. Sternly ordered to pull together with his co-waiter, Angus had lapsed into sullen silence and eyes-on-the-ground introversion, which had ruined any chance of teamwork.
‘Aileen’s on a mission to get smashed,’ Lynda whispered back, directing a mother and child to the toilet. ‘She never usually drinks, because she has to stay sharp for that inevitable moment when a rogue pervert undresses her with his eyes.’ Tonight a pervert would have to mentally extract her from a skin-tight emerald-green dress, which – along with the glittery eyeshadow and heels sharp enough to take out an eye – outglammed her associates, both of whom were tidy and groomed rather than va-va-voomed.
‘Keep an eye on her.’ A pointless request: like asking Lynda to keep an eye on a buffalo stampede or a tidal wave. ‘Jonas!’ Marie greeted him, waving over the throng. ‘Come in!’ She spirited up an empty chair, and Jonas, so stooped by his years on Earth that he was barely taller than a nine-year-old he passed, made his slow progress towards her. ‘Do you remember,’ she said, bending to his ear, ‘you were the first customer through the door ten years ago?’
‘Was I?’ Jonas’s jittery voice was chalky, the accent local, but dressed up. ‘Doesn’t feel that long ago.’
He had been sprightly then. No stains on his tie in t
hose days. ‘It certainly doesn’t,’ agreed Marie. ‘It feels like half an hour.’
‘Ho-ho-ho,’ said Jonas, enunciating his laugh – his way, Marie suspected, of papering over the fact that he hadn’t quite caught what she’d said. ‘Nice turnout,’ he went on.
‘Everybody’s here!’ laughed Marie. When Lynda had suggested a party, Marie was dubious. The expense. The fuss. What if nobody came?
Lynda, itching to take up the graph paper and highlighters lying idle since the wedding of the decade, had insisted. ‘This place is part of the community. You’ll see. It’ll be just the boost we need.’ They never discussed Perfect You’s poaching of their custom; they didn’t need to. The evidence was there in black-and-white in the appointments book.
‘Angus! More wine over here,’ Marie called to her son over the Kylie compilation that had incited some of the guests to their feet. Extraordinary, she thought, what some people will do after half a glass of sparkling wine and a vol-au-vent. She was grateful for their lack of inhibition: a party’s not a party until the dodgy dancing kicks off.
‘Look at these!’ A middle-aged woman, jigging epileptically to ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’, bared her teeth at Marie. Tapping them, she shouted, ‘That’s you, that is!’
‘If it wasn’t for that brace you put on my Chantelle, she’d be goofy,’ said a small, intense man who seemed to have forgotten the day that Aileen locked him in a cupboard for ‘having erotic thoughts’ about her.
‘It was my pleasure,’ said Marie. And it was her pleasure. She loved saving, straightening, replacing teeth and didn’t care that dentists weren’t heroes; that no romcom ever featured a dentist in the lead; that there are no famous dentists. She found her job both challenging and rewarding. And when her patients smiled at her and thanked her, she could see the fruits of her labour right there in their mouths.
‘Shall I put the candles on the cake?’ In a white apron over her customary black, Chloe looked cute, like one of the dressed-up dolls Marie constantly found underfoot in the twins’ room. She was a good worker, enthusiastic and full of initiative, overshadowing her colleague, who skulked on the fringes of the chattering crowd, carefully avoiding any eye contact that might lead to him having to do something.