by Claire Sandy
‘Good idea.’ Marie was grasped by another long-time patron, her hand pumped and back slapped. Out of the corner of her eye, as she said, ‘Of course I remember your root canal!’ she saw the clinic door open and deliver Klay to the fray.
No need to wonder what the hell he was doing here; Aileen galloped to the door, gushing, ‘You got my invitation!’ Taking him coquettishly by the arm – a move that owed more to ju-jitsu than romance – she steered him through the party. Klay was politely confused. Aileen glowed, her green dress blazing as she dragged him past Lynda, who was leading a small, anti-Kylie splinter group in a spontaneous hokey-cokey. The sight of her beautiful receptionist shaking it all about with a gaggle of old-age pensioners made Marie’s chest swell.
‘Who made this magnificent cake?’ Mrs Aiken touched Marie’s elbow.
‘Me!’ With Mary Berry’s help. Marie, flush with bakey pride, assumed that her mentor wouldn’t mind being left off the credits. Mary had decades of compliments in the bank, whereas she was new to this.
‘No!’
The gasp was music to her ears, as was Mrs Aiken’s broad smile. Marie had seen her patient through the misery of losing eight teeth during her chemotherapy. Mrs Aiken had seemed to shrink, all her juice extracted, and Marie remembered how Lynda had always sent the woman home in a taxi after each long session in the chair. The cancer had slunk away, whupped by modern medicine, and the implants in Mrs Aiken’s mouth matched her original teeth so closely that nobody would know this chatty, vivacious woman had ever had a day’s illness.
‘It’s so big!’ said Mrs Aiken.
‘I don’t seem able to make small cakes,’ laughed Marie. She hadn’t realised just how tall four heart-shaped sponges with filling between each layer would stand.
‘And so professional-looking.’
That, Marie suspected, was kindness triumphing over honesty. The icing was smoother than she’d ever achieved before, but it was far from ‘professional’. She had accepted that her creations would always betray their homely origins. She would never be Lucy.
A tut at her shoulder made her turn. Aileen’s face was folded into an expression of disgust. ‘He’s teetotal!’ she spat. ‘He doesn’t feckin’ drink!’
‘Who? Klay?’ Marie saw him on the far side of the room. Hard to miss, in a blingy leather blouson that must have cost as much as her first flat, he was throwing back his head in a theatrical laugh. Aileen had invited the fox into the hen house: Klay was obviously touting for work. ‘So what?’
‘It’s wrecked me Valentine’s Day!’ One of Aileen’s coiled Princess Leia plaits was working itself undone. ‘I was going to get him sozzled and force a date out of him.’ She burped. ‘Pardon me.’ She burped again. ‘Ooh, I could taste Wotsits then.’
And this is Aileen in seductress mode, thought Marie. She couldn’t help but admire the woman’s gung-ho attitude to the chase. Aileen was no wallflower. She was sure of her charms, despite her deviation from the strict and constricting guidelines for feminine beauty laid down by the media. Stating her needs clearly, with no fear of rejection, on paper she was the kind of self-possessed feminist Marie hoped her daughters would grow into. Shame, then, that she exhibited the sensitivity of a runaway bulldozer. ‘You have to allow Klay a say in all this. You can’t make him go out with you – that’s not fair.’
‘Fair?’ Aileen puffed out her chest. ‘I’m offering him this. Fifteen stone of prime female real estate’ (or, as she pronounced it, eshtate). ‘I’ll give him a glass of punch. That’ll put a tiger in his tank.’ She moved off purposefully, a guided missile in a push-up bra.
Camera phones popped and, as Marie posed good-naturedly with a baby whose full nappy gave him the density of a bowling ball, she realised We didn’t make any punch.
Busting some moves to ‘I Should Be So Lucky’, she remembered the hackneyed advice she’d read on many, many fridge magnets: dance as if nobody’s watching. If only, she thought, nobody was watching. Marie liked to dance, but she was under no illusions about how it looked – ‘as if you’re shaking off a burning boiler suit’ was Robert’s best stab at capturing her style.
Beyond the fascinated onlookers, Chloe nudged Angus and said something behind her hand that made his face crumple with laughter. It was worth being the butt of the joke (the joke possibly was Marie’s butt) to see her son’s carefully maintained battlements crack. She had noticed a slight thaw in Angus’s antipathy towards Chloe, but had refused to read any kind of progress into it. Tonight she revised that refusal. Perhaps Chloe’s winning him over, she thought, watching them as she gyrated. She’d always felt Angus’s attitude was a knee-jerk reaction to the twins’ enthusiasm for a Girl Next Door romance; perhaps he was really looking at Chloe at last.
A knot of people had drifted greedily towards the cake. Lynda found her eye and winked. It was time for the speech.
‘I’ve never really made a speech before,’ began Marie, surprised to find that talking to forty people in a smallish room was as daunting as addressing Wembley Stadium. ‘But here goes.’ She thanked Lynda. She thanked Aileen. She stopped short of thanking her family, in case she sounded like an Oscar winner, but she thanked all the patients who’d come through the door in the past decade. She told them she was grateful, and she told them she loved her job, and she said she was looking forward to the next ten years. And then she really grabbed their attention by saying, ‘And now let’s cut the cake!’
The irony of sharing a heart-shaped cake with her customers on St Valentine’s Day while her husband sat neglected at home wasn’t lost on Marie.
She’d explained it to him as best she could. ‘I wanted the party to be on Smile!’s exact anniversary, and it just didn’t register that it was Valentine’s Day,’ she’d said, wringing her hands, wondering at her own date-blindness. Robert’s wry acceptance hadn’t fooled her. He was disappointed. At a time when his beliefs about himself as a provider – as a man – were being challenged, she had demoted him as a lover. Tight-lipped about changes at Campbell & Carle, he had told her enough to worry her. Along with redundancies at all levels, he and his workmates had been horrified to learn they would have to reapply for their own jobs.
The powers-that-be were underrating her husband. Later, his wife would show him how she really felt. Hanging up with her trenchcoat was a carrier bag from a lingerie shop Marie had never been into before today. A quick dash along the racks before coming in to set up for the party had bagged her the most lurid, trashy, roaring red bra, thong and suspenders in the place.
They were nylon. They were held together with cheap lace more dangerous than a nettle-bed. They were the last thing Marie ever wanted to clamber into (particularly after a long day), but, although he’d never ever admit it – although he insisted he preferred her au naturel – she knew her husband would secretly adore the sleazy undies.
And, she decided, carving a hefty slice, she’d bring him home some cake, too.
‘Ta.’ A fleshy hand, white as a baby’s, reached out and took the cake before Marie could put it to one side. Klay leaned in to whisper, ‘Where can we go for a private word?’
In the kitchenette, door closed against the shindig, he alternated mouthfuls of cake with a proposition. He was sweaty, loose, with an air of mischief very different from his usual focus. He was, Marie realised, a little drunk, thanks no doubt to Aileen’s mysterious punch, mixed for him – and him alone.
‘Look at this figure.’
For a dreadful millisecond Marie thought he was going to pull up his shirt and show off his torso, but no, he’d scribbled a number on a Perfect You compliments slip.
‘What is it?’ Marie’s hostess bonhomie evaporated.
‘It’s what I’m prepared to pay you for your business. The lease. The goodwill. The contents. Lock, stock and barrel.’
The paper crumpled in Marie’s fist. ‘I’m not for sale.’ She made to push past Klay, but he stayed put and, faced with such a bulky hurdle, she had no choice but to hear him out.
‘Don’t be hasty!’ He was smiling, his cherubic mouth wet. ‘Do yourself a favour and at least think about it.’
‘Even if Smile! was for sale – and it isn’t, it is not . . .’ Marie flinched at the naked gluttony in Klay’s eyes at the words for sale. ‘Even if it was, that would be an insultingly low offer. Did you look around you out there?’ She gestured at the closed door, wishing passionately she was on the other side of it. ‘You can’t buy that kind of patient satisfaction.’
‘I don’t have to look out there for your customers.’ Klay trowelled in the last blob of Robert’s cake as if slinging rubbish down a chute. ‘I see them every day at my place.’
The door opened a crack, and a small hand identifiable as Aileen’s by the chipped nail varnish offered up a glass of punch, before the door closed on them once again.
As he raised it to his lips, Marie almost warned him that it was alcoholic. Almost. If he was a big enough boy to barge about, stamping Godzilla-style on other people’s hard-won livelihoods . . . well, he was a big enough boy to withstand the attentions of a randy dental assistant.
‘I can’t sell to you, Klay,’ said Marie. ‘Our ethics are too different.’
‘Ethics don’t pay the bills.’ He drained the glass and put it down with a touch too much force before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘I want my patients to have a lifetime of healthy teeth. I want them to come to me as seldom as possible. I can still make a good living that way, and they have a smile they can be proud of. Not,’ she said with an emphasis possibly lost on the increasingly tiddly Klay, ‘a perfect smile, but a healthy one. Being able to smile happily and freely is a gift that illuminates everybody’s life – the smiler and the . . . er . . . smilee.’ Christ, she thought, I’m coining words. ‘No, no!’ She shushed Klay. ‘It’s still my go. My kind of dentistry is about helping people with good advice and affordable treatment based on their needs, not about . . .’ Marie, flustered by the passion she felt, waved her hands around. ‘It’s not about luring them in with flashy advertising that makes them feel bad about themselves, because they don’t have teeth like Tom-bloody-Cruise.’ She spoke over him again, enjoying this, feeling as if she could take down the government with a teeth-oriented coup. ‘Persuading people to have veneers they don’t need, and implants and all the rest of it, turns them into cash-cows that you can milk for the rest of their lives.’
‘Yes!’ Klay accepted another cup from the mysterious hand. ‘You get it! They’re happy with their fabulous teeth, and I’m happy with my open-top car. Everybody’s happy. It’s good business.’
At the mention of his flashy car, Marie flinched. Her own little runaround was trembling under the executioner’s axe because of Klay. ‘Good business maybe, but bad dentistry.’ She felt she should rein things in before she became some sort of parody – a dentist hell bent on healing the world, one cavity at a time. ‘And what about my staff in this brave new world of yours? They’ve been with me for ten years!’ It struck her how long that was: she’d been higher of buttock, smaller of waist and firmer of chin when she’d met them. ‘I can’t see Lynda or Aileen fitting in with your Hollyoaks set-up.’
‘You’re wearing . . .’ Klay looked to the ceiling for inspiration. Aileen’s punch had scored a direct hit on his vocabulary. ‘Little square leather things – horses wear them . . .’
‘Blinkers.’ Marie’s arms were folded. Her foot was tapping. Robert could have warned Klay to stop, step away, possibly hold a mattress or similar item in front of him, but Klay didn’t know the signs and blundered on.
‘That’s them!’ He pointed and clapped. ‘You’re wearing . . .’ He’d forgotten again.
‘Blinkers!’ shouted Marie. He had got, as the twins put it, right up her goat. ‘I’m wearing blinkers, man, blinkers! Can we please get this over with?’
His confidence undented, Klay continued, ‘This is a sweet deal I’m offering you. Accept it now and walk away with a few grand in your pocket, or I’ll simply wait a year and snap up your empty premises for buttons.’ He raised two slug-shaped eyebrows.
Bundling past the mound of his gut, Marie tugged open the door, startling the eavesdroppers outside. Lynda, Aileen and Angus all coughed and straightened up, looking away and humming. ‘Tell this businessman,’ said Marie imperiously to them, ‘that some businesses are built with love and are not for sale to the highest bidder.’
As ever, in times of distress, Marie made for the cake. Lynda came up close and rubbed her arm. ‘Don’t let him get to you,’ she said in an undertone, as a cork popped. ‘This is your party and you deserve to enjoy it.’
‘But what next?’ said Marie. She rarely showed this face to Lynda – the one with doubt written all over it.
‘We’ll be all right.’ Lynda didn’t seem fazed. ‘We always are, aren’t we?’
‘We are,’ smiled Marie.
‘Mum,’ said Angus, coming up to her. ‘You are sick.’
‘Eh?’ Marie pulled her chin down to her collarbone.
‘He means,’ said Lynda, with a soupçon of superiority at being down with the kids, ‘you’re an impressive lady.’
‘Yeah. That – what she said.’ Angus jerked suddenly and Marie realised that Chloe, sneaking up behind him with a platter of cocktail sausages, had goosed him. She winced, knowing the girl had misjudged, but her wince was redundant. Angus looked amazed. Flattered. And amused. He didn’t look, as she’d expected him to, disgusted. Go, girl, thought Marie. At least one woman’s getting through to my son.
The party was dwindling. Klay had disappeared, and the other revellers weren’t party animals, but people for whom nine o’clock was crazily late to be out. Marie eyed a pyramid of baby-vomit by the fax machine as she let Jonas make his courtly, complex farewells.
‘Excellent spread. Most delicious. That cake reminded me of the tip-top Swiss roll my dear mother used to bake.’
‘My pleasure. No problem. See you soon,’ she smiled as she slowly, regretfully closed the door on him. ‘Safe home.’ She leaned back against it, glad to discard her party face. ‘Leave it, Lynda,’ she said as the woman stooped, bin-bag in hand. ‘The kids and I will take care of it.’
‘You sure?’ Lynda looked around her. ‘Where’s Aileen? Never here when she’s needed.’
The door to the treatment room opened and a large man half-fell out. He had the dazed look of a person locked in a ghost train for a month.
‘So that’s sorted then?’ Aileen followed Klay out, businesslike and precise, despite the lipstick smeared all round her mouth.
‘Shorted?’ Klay gazed around him, evidently unsure who’d spoken, and in what language. Blotchy marks all over his face matched Aileen’s lipstick. He lurched towards the reception desk, stopped dead, swivelled daintily and lumbered a few feet backwards.
‘Next Thursday. You’re picking me up here at six.’ Aileen herded him to the door as if he were a wayward heifer. ‘I wrote the date on your arm. In indelible ink. So, no nonsense about washing it off by accident.’ She opened the door and Klay put on a sudden spurt of speed and, head down, raced through it. ‘Don’t be late, or I’ll tie your tackle in a reef knot!’ she shouted as he pirouetted from lamp post to lamp post. Slamming the door, she turned to the others. ‘I love that man,’ she said.
Refusing the proffered high-five, Marie said, ‘How could you even let him . . . urrgh.’ She shook herself, like Prinny that time Robert accidentally threw a bowl of washing-up water over him. ‘He’s a monster.’
Looking into the middle distance, Aileen said in a husky, emotional voice, ‘My heart is in charge.’ She recovered and added, ‘And me knickers are pretty bossy, too.’
‘How did you get him to say yes?’ Marie didn’t really want to know, but this development had the same macabre allure as a car crash.
Talking over Aileen, Lynda said, ‘He didn’t say yes . . . He said yesh. The man’s blind drunk. Plus he’s probably never before met anybody quite as forceful
as our Aileen.’
‘Irresistible force,’ said Chloe in her little-girl voice, ‘meets immovable object.’
‘Yeah,’ mumbled Angus, looking at her sideways. The only way he ever looked at anything.
‘I’m off,’ said Aileen. ‘Seducing men is exhausting. See youse.’
‘Thanks for all your help, Helen of Troy!’ shouted Lynda as her triumphant co-worker swanned off.
‘Look,’ said Chloe, ‘why don’t you both go home, and Angus and I can finish off here. You’re paying us, after all.’
Ignoring Angus’s shell shock, Marie took Chloe up on her offer, deciding to pop an extra couple of coins in with her fee. As she shrugged on her coat and picked up her carrier bag of lacy contraband, she heard Chloe say, as if the idea had just occurred to her, ‘You know what, Angus, we could go back to mine. Have hot chocolate. Listen to some stuff.’
Angus froze, as if the question held life-or-death implications. Eventually, after more consideration than most people give to buying a house, he said, ‘OK.’
St Valentine is a tyrant.
There are rules attached to his special day. Nobody knows who made them, but they must be obeyed.
All over the country nonplussed men had struggled to choose between a teddy holding a satin heart embroidered with I luv u and one with a heart that said Be my Valentine. Women had honed their acting skills, ready to jump with nymphomaniac joy at a bunch of supermarket flowers.
On Caraway Close a flagging dentist attempted to get herself in the mood for romance, candlelight and memorable hanky-panky, as demanded by the rules.
Changing into the squeaking underwear at the clinic had been a masterstroke. Yes, it had felt peculiar driving home with just her coat over her undies and she already had a rash on her inner thigh, but it meant she could dash in, rugby-tackle her husband, make the beast with two backs, share a slice of cake and then turn over and fall asleep – all before her teenage son put his key in the door. Robert wouldn’t know what had hit him, and St Valentine would be appeased.