The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Good boy,’ I whispered. I could have sworn his lip curled contemptuously back.

  The paddock evidently got the seal of approval and, moments later, they were back. Camilla relieved me of Hector, leading him away to be set free in his new home, but not before she'd put some sort of fly sheet on him. Caro and I followed and leaned on the gate to watch, as Pepper, Phoebe's pony, trotted up inquisitively. The two horses circled each other warily, heads and tails held high, snorting excitedly.

  ‘Gets fed twice a day,’ came a voice from behind us. We swung around to see Camilla's departing back, heading on back to the yard. No sylvan scene-gazing for her. Caro and I scuttled after her. ‘Meadow mix, chaff, and I find a little sugar beet goes a long way if he's tucked up. Obviously he comes in at night.’

  In? Tucked up? Visions of Hector beside me in bed in a purple hoody, hoofs neatly crossed over the duvet, sprang alarmingly to mind.

  ‘What?’ I gaped stupidly as we followed.

  ‘Of course,’ Caro said quickly, eyeing me, then jerking her head meaningfully towards the stables. Happily the moment was lost on Camilla, who'd marched to the cab of her lorry to ferret in the glove compartment. Her fox terriers were still sitting ramrod straight to attention. Were they drugged? No. Bloody terrified, no doubt. Weren't we all?

  ‘Drew up a little agreement.’ She was striding back to me now, a piece of paper in her hand. ‘Makes everything march simpler. One year's loan to you, all shoeing and vet's bills your shout. He's due a tetanus next week, incidentally. Eau, and not to be ridden by anyone other than your daughter. OK?’ She handed me the paper and a pen. I leaned it on my knee and signed dumbly, feeling the same weighty responsibility I imagine King John did when he signed the Magna Carta.

  ‘Get him in at eightish. Quick rub dine and rug him up well, and then put him ite again at seven o'clock in the morning, sharp.’

  Seven? Seven in the morning? Was she mad? I hadn't even opened my eyes. Hadn't got my lippy on. I handed her back the pen and paper in a trance. In a trice she crossed the yard and was vaulting back into her cab. She slammed the door on us, energetically winding down her pre-war window.

  ‘Eau, and when you catch him…’ She started the engine; was revving it up like nobody's business, pumping hard on the gas and yelling at me out of the window as she manhandled the gear stick. Despite possessing a voice that would galvanize the Coldstream Guards, the hiss of air brakes and the roar of an HGV engine ensured that whatever she said was lost in the wind. She performed an efficient three-point turn in the yard, no mean feat when you weigh ten tons, and prepared to head off. But I was keen to hear, to be fully informed.

  ‘What?’ I yelled, running alongside her, cupping my ear as she shunted into first and rumbled through the gateway. She glared down at the urchin running beside her.

  ‘JARST NUTS!’ she bellowed crossly at me. Then she vroom-vroomed out of the gate, in a shower of mud and stones.

  ‘Just nuts to you, dear,’ I muttered, as Caro and I stood and watched her go, roaring off up the lane, needing to get on.

  ‘Pony nuts,’ said Caro faintly. ‘In a bucket. When you catch him.’

  ‘Oh,’ I nodded, equally faintly, back. ‘Right.’

  17

  ‘Rude woman.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Caro agreed wearily. She turned and went to fetch a wheelbarrow, came back and began piling the blankets into it. ‘She can afford to be, I'm afraid,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘It's a measure of the respect she commands in circles round here.’

  ‘Well, not in my circle. And as if I'm going to fanny and fart-arse around a horse like that – worse than having a husband!’

  ‘Oh, much.’ She glanced round, surprised I didn't know.

  ‘An invalid husband, at that. Feed him twice a day, change his clothes… At least I don't have to clean Ant's cock. I am not doing that.’

  ‘She'll check!’ Caro squealed, dropping a rug in horror. ‘I swear, she's going to pop round, Evie. Do spot checks, pick up his feet, look in his ears —’

  ‘Let her. She'll find a dirty but happy horse. And seven o'clock in the morning – dream on.’ I went to let Brenda out of the car.

  ‘Oh.’ Caro stopped her blanket tossing, straightened up and turned to face me, hands on hips. ‘Oh, I get it. I know exactly what's going to happen here. I'm going to have to do it, aren't I? I knew this would happen. You'll still be getting your beauty sleep in town and I'll be the one getting the horse in!’

  ‘No, no, Caro, of course not,’ I soothed, instantly contrite. ‘You are absolutely not going to do that. Here, let me put those away.’ I scuttled across and took the barrow handles from her, but it was piled high and promptly toppled over, spilling its load. ‘Oh Christ.’ I began slinging the rugs back in. They weighed a ton. ‘I intend to do everything,’ I informed her. ‘I just rather object to her giving me a schedule, that's all. I mean, what's wrong with nine o'clock in the morning? Hector might like a lie-in, for heaven's sake. He's a horse of a certain age, after all.’

  ‘Well, the later you leave it, the more poo you have to muck out, you realize that? Added to which— Oh, hello. Look who's here.’

  Jack, Henry and Phoebe were shuffling warily out of the barn that housed the ping-pong table, hands in pockets, glancing about shiftily.

  ‘Has she gone?’ whispered Phoebe.

  ‘Yes, well done, you've missed her.’ Her mother bent to help me with the rugs.

  ‘God, that was close,’ shuddered Jack. ‘We were literally in the middle of a rally and we heard her voice. Phoebs got under the table. You might have warned us, Mum.’

  ‘I deliberately didn't warn you because I was hoping one of you might hop on that pony of hers.’

  ‘What, with her watching? No way.’

  ‘I wondered where you lot were.’ I gave Jack's shoulders an affectionate squeeze. ‘Thanks for the moral support, guys.’

  ‘You didn't need it, you were awesome,’ he assured me.

  ‘I loved it when you said thigh boots,’ giggled Phoebe.

  ‘Well, why on earth would a horse want those?’

  ‘And you should see what her kids wear,’ put in Henry. ‘They've hardly got shoes at all!’

  ‘All right, Henry, that'll do,’ muttered Caro.

  ‘You said so the other day, Mum, on the phone to Lottie. Said she hardly slows the car down when she drops them off for sleepovers, just tosses them out and drives on.’

  ‘She is a bit slapdash with them,’ she admitted to me. ‘Never a toothbrush or clean underwear, just what they stand up in. But then I find the opposite equally irritating: children who come from ultra-hygienic homes with no pets, and who arrive with kidskin slippers and a disposable loo seat cover.’

  ‘There is that,’ I agreed.

  ‘Where's Anna?’ asked Phoebe at my elbow.

  ‘Oh, she's… meeting someone in town.’

  ‘Oh.’ She nodded. I could tell she was disappointed. ‘Is she excited about Hector?’

  ‘Oh, very! I'm sure she'll be here as soon as she can. After school, next week. To ride him.’

  But not today, to meet him; her new pony, I could tell she was thinking. No, no doubt her older, cooler cousin had bigger fish to fry: probably meeting girlfriends in Starbucks, shopping for earrings in Claire's. If only.

  ‘Mum, there's a woman waving at you.’

  We followed Jack's narrowed gaze to a silver BMW, parked just outside the gate, tucked into the verge in the narrow lane, engine purring, looking rather temporary. A fat woman in a tight lilac blouse with very black hair arranged elaborately on top of her head, was waving a bit of paper out of the passenger window, a furious look on her over-powdered face.

  ‘Oh my God,’ muttered Caro. ‘Mrs Goldberg.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The mother of the bride last week. The strictly kosher wedding from hell, when the loos overflowed, the caterers let us down and Tim and I ended up doing the food ourselves.’

  ‘I hulled six hundre
d strawberries,’ put in Henry, grimly. ‘I counted them.’

  ‘I'm not paying this!’ she screeched, venturing forth from her car while her husband sat, staring stonily ahead at the wheel. She was picking her way towards us in a tight white skirt and lilac heels. ‘Not any of it! My Michelle had to spend a penny in the bushes when she was caught short – in her wedding dress!’

  ‘Your Michelle was so pissed she couldn't find her way up to the house where the rest of the guests were using the house loos I'd so graciously provided, when your wedding party thought it would be oh so funny to block the Portaloos with party poppers. And she was sick in my birdbath.’

  ‘And the food was a disgrace.’ She'd reached us now and was trembling with rage, fat and shrill, shaking the bill in Caro's face, her cheeks pink under the powder. ‘An absolute disgrace!’

  ‘Because you insisted on booking your own caterers, who didn't turn up, so my husband and I did the very best we could under the circumstances.’

  ‘The canapés were still frozen!’ she shrieked. ‘Had ice on them! Aunt Nina broke her front teeth and Cousin Shylock choked and had to have the Heimlich manoeuvre from my brother Raymond!’

  ‘Yes, well, Phoebe didn't realize I'd only just taken the vol-au-vents out of the freezer. She passed them round before I could microwave them – since none of your waitresses turned up. I told you, Mrs Goldberg, we did our best.’

  ‘You roasted a pig!’ she squealed, fists clenched, looking rather like one herself. ‘Served it to my guests!’

  ‘Yes, I'm sorry. That was thoughtless. But we were only given two hours' notice and we were under pressure. We roasted a lamb too.’

  ‘A pig! At my daughter's wedding!’

  ‘Because you didn't provide any food! And it was one of my own pigs, actually, a precious Tamworth I'd raised myself, and had slaughtered that week, and was saving for the family, and which actually, the non-Jewish contingent wolfed down with alacrity. There was none left, you know.’

  ‘A pig…’ she muttered faintly, fluttering her lilac eyelashes, swooning and looking as if she might pass out. Suddenly she snapped to, realizing there was a lot of mud about. She shoved the bill in Caro's hand. ‘Well, I'm not paying it,’ she said savagely. ‘You can sing for it. Take me to court for all I care. I'm not paying a penny!’

  And with that she turned on her lilac heel and stalked off.

  ‘Good God. What a nerve,’ I gaped.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Caro wearily, watching her go. ‘Unbelievable nerve. And unbelievably common too.’

  ‘Yes, she looked it.’

  ‘Well, that too, but no, I meant not unusual. That sort of behaviour. And you should see them before the wedding, when they come to look at the venue. All cooing and gushing over the setting and the ducks, couldn't be nicer. Then they go a bit steely when they're organizing the flowers and the food, trying to shave money off, and you think, aye aye, and then the moment something goes wrong they turn ugly. Really ugly. And it's always our fault. Two weeks ago we had a sit-down wedding lunch for a couple of midgets with supposedly a hundred guests, and a hundred and twenty-five showed up. I was expected to find twenty-five chairs from nowhere, and stretch the food like loaves and fishes. Luckily a lot of the guests were midgets too, so I bundled them two to a chair, and of course their appetites weren't enormous, but what do you do?’

  ‘Well, quite,’ I said faintly.

  ‘I think that was our worst one yet.’

  ‘No, the worst one was when someone died on your bed,’ Henry reminded her.

  ‘No!’ I gasped in horror.

  ‘An aged uncle,’ said Caro. ‘Another story.’

  ‘Dad didn't know he was there, right,’ Henry's eyes were huge, ‘and got into bed with him—’

  ‘Alright, Henry!’ She fixed him with a look.

  ‘Good heavens,’ I said somewhat inadequately. ‘Well, I certainly won't be adding to your workload, Caro. You've clearly got a lot on your plate. Rest assured I will be up here at eight o'clock tonight to put Hector out, and back at seven in the morning to get him in again.’

  She sighed and picked up the barrow handles. ‘Oh, don't worry. I'm here. I can do it this evening.’

  ‘And I always muck Pepper out and feed her, so I could feed Hector, too,’ said Phoebe eagerly, knowing her cousin would be pleased.

  My heart warmed to both of them. ‘You're sweet, both of you. But I'll definitely be here in the morning. If I have a crisis I might call on you, but I'm going to jolly well do my best. Sort this pony lark out.’

  Yes, I would, I thought as I drove home. They had their work cut out, that family – my family, I thought with a lurch – and I hadn't always realized it. Hadn't realized how other people struggled to keep body and soul together and how lucky I was to be cruising. Well, not cruising now, obviously: pretty much in the eye of the storm. But this morning had at least taken my mind off the storm; off what was happening in town. I glanced at my watch. Yes, right now. One o'clock. My stomach tipped. And with it, that familiar sicky feeling that soared up my throat like a high-speed elevator, so that by the time I got back to my house I realized I shouldn't have come home. Should have stayed longer at the farm, taken Caro up on her offer of lunch. Shouldn't have come back here to wait, to stew, to listen for their key in the door, hear their hushed voices in the hallway. I should have gone… well, where? Not into town – I might see them. And they might see me, think: what's she doing – spying? And I couldn't go back to the farm, not now.

  Well, they wouldn't be long, I reasoned. I'd turn on the television. Or read. No, turn the telly on.

  Upstairs in the bedroom, I flicked on the one we never used – Ant couldn't bear it; ‘the dreaded lantern’, he called it – so an illicit pleasure. I'd find a soap opera, like I used to years ago, something frivolous to take my mind off things. Oh, and eat chocolate.

  The television was on only ten minutes, though, and I found I couldn't even eat chocolate on account of my sicky tummy. Instead I sat hunched and watchful at my dressing table, which had a view of the street, so I'd see them coming. I sat there and waited. I looked at the framed photograph of Ant and me on our wedding day; at the one of Anna in her christening robe: the familiar perfume bottles and brushes, the pottery house Anna had made in Year Two. The cross-stitched mat from Year Three. I sat, and I waited.

  I was still sitting there, when, an hour later, at half-past two, my hands clenched and sweaty on my lap, I saw them coming down the street. They were laughing and joking. Anna was swinging her tapestry bag, and Ant was grinning. My heart plummeted. Oh dear God. The key went in the door and I heard their voices in the hall. Not hushed; not quietly relieved that that little ordeal was over, but bubbly, buoyant. I went to the top of the stairs, feeling my way. My legs full of pins and needles from having sat in one position for so long, I was a frail, shadowy figure, like something out of a Hitchcock film: the slightly unhinged woman at the top of the stairs.

  ‘How did it go?’ I managed.

  They broke off their chatter and glanced up.

  ‘Oh, hi, Mum.’ Anna unwound a beaded scarf from her neck. ‘Actually it was fine. They were great.’

  My heart, which, as you know, had already plummeted, slipped through my shoes and tumbled down the stairs. On the landing table beside me was a vase. I nearly seized it and hurled it after my heart.

  ‘Good. Well, that's good.’ I executed a tight smile. ‘Relieved it's over, I expect?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she smiled up at me, eyes shining, ‘it was cool.’

  Ant was watching me anxiously as I slowly descended, hand on the rail in case I fell, knowing he had to temper our daughter's enthusiasm.

  ‘It went much better than we expected,’ he explained.

  ‘Stacey – Anastasia – is really sweet and really good fun and soo pretty, Mum. Really tall, with this long blonde hair – she was spotted by Storm Models in the mall in Sheffield – and she's really clever too. She's here because she's got an interview at Trinity,
and she's only sixteen. I was like – omigod, a year early!’

  I couldn't speak.

  ‘And Bella – that's her mum – God, she's soo nice, just your type. Really sweet, you'll really like her, and she's a writer. You know those historical romance books Granny likes? Bella Edgeworth – that's her!’

  I stared as if I didn't recognize her. Bella Edgeworth? Yes. Yes, I'd vaguely heard of her. Anna was clattering through to the kitchen now, tossing her bag on a chair, running the tap at full pelt so it splashed everywhere, which I hated, reaching for a glass in the cupboard above. I followed dumbly. Ant was slowly taking his jacket off behind me. Anna filled the glass and glugged her drink down noisily.

  ‘Aahh… that's better. God, I'm so thirsty. I was so nervous I had a whole glass of wine!’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and turned to me. ‘She used to work in a bank, Bella, and she started writing one day, under the desk and got the sack. She was really upset 'cos she had no money, and a baby, of course, but actually she said she was quite relieved too, because she hated Stacey being in day care, and so at first she was like – bloody hell! – but then she was like – right, damn it, and she wrote this book. Finished it in six months, sent it off and it was published – and she was like, oh my God! Isn't that an amazing story? Just like J. K. Rowling – well, the single mum bit.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘And now she's written four more,’ she refilled her glass, ‘and they've all been published – abroad too – and Stacey wants to write as well. She's going to read English, which Dad's so pleased about, aren't you, Dad? He went all pink when she told us. At his old college too. How cool is that!’

  ‘And you didn't feel –’ my voice was strained, unnatural. I didn't recognize it. I was aware of Ant in the doorway – ‘a tiny bit jealous? A bit… I don't know, resentful?’ I gave a cracked laugh. ‘This – this strange person, sort of – invading your territory?’

  ‘D'you know what I felt, Mum?’ She put down her glass. Her eyes were huge, candid. ‘I felt – how amazing. I've got a sister. I honestly, honestly didn't feel a twinge of jealousy, and I so thought I would. Thought I'd want to kill her and like – you know – strangle her, right there at the table, with my bare hands.’