The Square

by Rosie Millard

  He lies down and picks up a tiny brick, positions it on a fluted column, considers it, removes it.

  Then he rolls over, pulls out the bra from his pocket, surveys it. Quickly, he puts it on his head. The two conical shells poke up like absurd ears, the lacy strap making it into a sort of Easter bonnet. He hears his mother coming up the stairs. Quickly, he stuffs it back into his pocket.

  Chapter Two Tracey

  Belle grabs the long pole with weights on it at either end and brings it up to her shoulders. She grunts with the effort and peers at herself in the mirror, under the giant radiance of neon lights that flood the gym. It is a basement gym, but the lighting is specially designed to mimic sunshine and rid members of depression brought on by Seasonally Affected Disorder; a possible side effect of exercising in a sun-free basement.

  She takes the pole back down again, switching the position of her wrists as the 20kg weight crashes back down on the floor. After a few seconds, she lifts it up again. She is meant to do thirty such lifts, three times. Well, scrap that idea. I’m not really old enough for a major work out. I’ll just do thirty lifts, once.

  She continues to survey herself. Her spots aren’t looking good, but her hair is fine. Do people do that? Focus only on one thing, like hair? And ignore other things, like spots? She’s glad she doesn’t have other worries. Such as fat ankles, the ones which sort of join up with your calf. What was it that her friend Cathy called them? Cankles? Cathy doesn’t have Cankles. Nobody in the Populars at school has Cankles. Everyone has long hair. A few spots are fine. Short hair and Cankles, however, are not fine.

  She abandons the free weights and moves to a bench below a long horizontal pole fixed with chains to a long stack of metal slabs. This could almost be a medieval torture chamber, thinks Belle. In a dungeon.

  As she pulls the weight down towards her collarbone, she considers her options for the evening. Slight lack of funds issue, but she could probably bleed her father Larry for a tenner. Some of the Populars seem to have self-replenishing wallets; they never lack cash. Cathy says it is because their parents feel ‘so guilty’.

  “For what?” said Belle.

  “Oh, only the divorced ones. For leaving. For being stupid, and breaking everything up,” remarked Cathy, methodically, robotically brushing metre-long tresses. “I have to do this 100 times a day you know.”

  Alternatively, she could stay in. She pictures the evening. Organising her shoes. Practising the piano. “Belle darling, do practise the piano.” She can hear her mother NOW in her silly wheedling voice. Forget the piano. She never practises. Hates Roberta, that silly teacher. Okay, so how about the shoes. Organise her shoes, then a long Facebook session. That’s a better idea.

  She sighs, swings her body off the device, stands up in the effortless motion that belongs to the under-twenties, and trots into the room where a dozen other women, each with their pubic hair waxed into trim little shapes; one, a heart, one a pencil-thin line, one a diamond, are changing, smearing on body lotion and texting on their phones.

  “I’m trying to give up wine,” says one chubby woman to another. “That’s the killer. Red wine.”

  Belle showers, dries, dresses, pulls her hair into a scrunchie, leaves the gym, arranging a coat over her neatly honed body. Although nobody can detect what her shape actually is. This is because Belle, like all the Populars at her exclusive London day school, when not in her uniform, chooses to exist in a thick array of fleecy fabric. Wide terracotta colour trousers with a drawstring tie at the waist. Huge, greyish greeny sweatshirts. Black coats so wide they are tantamount to capes. Furry scarves of mushy blue. Today, she has accessorised this sleeping bag of clothes with flat boots and a hat with earflaps.

  Let Tracey, her mother, wear as little as possible, high heels and tiny micro skirts, bright miniscule tops with weeny spaghetti straps, short sleeved jumpers even in the winter. Tracey likes uncovering. Belle likes covering up. All the Populars do. It is their style. That, and virginity. The Populars are all sworn to chastity.

  Larry, who had matured when promiscuity was a new pill-fuelled concept, had almost choked on his breakfast when he learned about this.

  “My God,” he had said. “Sworn to chastity? I’m glad I’m not growing up in your era. I don’t know how I would have coped!”

  “Larry,” Tracey had said, soothingly. “That’s enough. I think it’s remarkable. Really, I do. It’s a very good thing, Belle, that you and your friends are all so focused.”

  Yeah, right, thinks Belle, that’s the New Mum. The Post-Lottery Win Mum. She knows her mother would never have said such a thing before the Win.

  ‘Focused.’ It’s all part of the private school belief system. That’s the sort of language teachers use. At least her dad hasn’t changed.

  She marches home, swaddled, mummified in fleece. Focused.

  She walks up the road to the Square, past the large council estate on the corner. A young man is practising wheelies in the street on his bike.

  “Oy!” he calls to her.

  “Sexy legs!”

  Belle speeds up, but turns slightly, in spite of herself. Something about him looks familiar. He cycles up behind her under the electric lights of the estate which are always on, no matter what time of day or night.

  It’s Jas, a boy whom she has known since they were both children. They used to have swimming lessons together at the local pool. They were at the same primary school, before the Lottery win.

  About five years ago, Belle can’t really remember when, her parents won the Lottery. God knows how they did. I mean, of course they chose the right numbers but Belle has no idea what formula was used, whether invented numbers or proper things related to their birthdays, she has no idea. It was all like a dream.

  She remembers her former life, before two million pounds entered it, only in vague pictures. Living in a tiny house, wearing uniform from the local primary and having play dates with people like Jas. Jas is no longer a boy. Now he is tall, hooded, accessorised with sports equipment and jewellery.

  “Belle, whassup?”

  “Oh. Hi Jas. Alright?”

  She looks at him. She remembers he used to make her laugh outrageously. There is absolutely no way she could ever introduce him to the Populars, even if she wanted to. Even if the chaste thing didn’t matter. Or her family. He might live around the corner, but it is far away for Belle, now.

  “You are looking soooo good,” says Jas, swinging his legs on his bike.

  She looks at him, envisaging a scene where she might kiss him.

  Her stomach flares up with a strange excitement at the idea. That would horrify her mother. Kissing someone from the estate. She quite likes it. She’ll keep the idea as a weapon.

  “Thanks, Jas,” she says, waving to him and walking on, returning to her enclave of privilege. Jas shrugs, turns on his bike, rears it up, balancing on the back wheel as if it is some form of stallion.

  Belle walks up the steps to her front door. Ting-a-ling. She’s forgotten her keys. Anya, the au pair, opens the door. Romanian, Bulgarian, Croatian? Who knows. All Belle knows is that she is bloody jealous of her cheekbones.

  “Good evening, Belle,” says Anya, who is Polish and proud of her almost perfect English and her superficially perfect manners.

  Belle acknowledges the woman, deposits her bag, cape-coat, hat, gym bag and scarf onto the floor in one grand gesture of entitlement and ascends the stairs. She loves the fact that her mother employs workers for her benefit in the house.

  Anya, falling in behind, automatically picks them up. She knows this is expected of her. It is just one more thing, however, which she will be glad to leave behind. Anya has told nobody but she is intending to go back to her home in Lodz quite soon.

  Belle runs lightly upstairs, heading towards the top of the house. Children in the Square always sleep at the top. Everyone on the Square arranges their homes from roof to cellar in the same way, as if there was a strict pattern guide.

  At the bott
om is a small room either used for laundry, or the au pair. Or, in some cases, both. The rest of the basement is devoted to the kitchen. The kitchen is always vast; a cavernous space which has been ‘knocked through’ from front to back. Knocking through is obligatory. Everyone does it. Nobody wants to repeat the dreadful episode of The Family Who Didn’t Knock-Through, and therefore could not eventually sell up.

  “They were completely stuffed,” Jane would say by way of explanation. “Nobody was interested, apart from a family from Hull who offered way, WAY below the asking price. No knock-through, you see.” To avoid this hideous and shaming fate, everyone knocks-through.

  The paint scheme of each kitchen is doggedly bright, as if the kitchen were a primary school. A small blackboard on the walls, indicating vital elements for the next shopping mission, continues the illusion. These are always foreign and aspirational. Fenugreek. Persimmon. Star anis.

  Belle likes to occasionally adulterate the blackboard with more everyday items such as Elastoplast or Tampax. Once she even put nit lotion down. Tracey always rubs them out as soon as she sees them.

  Opposite the blackboard is the obligatory ‘island’. Every kitchen has one, a marooned stone rectangle surrounded by a cluster of chrome stools. Somewhere on it there will be a single, commanding tap. There might be a recipe book propped up on a lectern, like a religious text.

  Beside the island is a colossal, humming fridge and a vast six-burner appliance capable of feeding an entire church choir, should one drop in. This is known as the ‘range’. It is not used very much. Hot meals still tend to come from the microwave, or local restaurants, whose takeaway menus are pinned to a cork board.

  The entire room glories in laboratory-style cleanliness. There is an entire cupboard devoted to cleaning implements and chemicals. There is a bespoke bottle for the kitchen’s myriad surfaces, each of which has been quarried, quartered, buffed and bullied into a properly gleaming state of submission.

  Kitchens in the Square are a miracle of processed nature. Marble, granite, steel, quartz, slate, with accents of wood and chrome brought together in one glorious assemblage. The kitchens are like a geology lesson.

  At night, the au pairs creep out of their small rooms. They enter these bright, soulless places and erect computers upon the marble islands. They perch on the chrome stools and talk via Skype to their families in languages which to Belle’s English ear sound like falling water. Alone and undisturbed, they explain to their fascinated relations how things are in the Square, a place full of money, nerves and giant, unused ovens.

  After the kitchen, on the next floor up, is the living room. The living room, or as Jane has it, the music room, is the domain of soft furnishing, Indian cushions, large sofas, monochrome wedding photographs, and antique chairs on which nobody sits. There is never a television or games console. There is never a computer. Hence, these rooms are usually deserted. Occasionally drinks parties are held in them. Sometimes a solitary child is forced to enter them, dawdling, for the obligation of meeting grandparents for an obligatory kiss, or music practice.

  Belle goes up to the second floor. This is where her parents sleep. All parents in the Square sleep on the second floor, in ‘master’ bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms and vast beds in which Belle suspects sex never takes place.

  There is a spare room on this floor permanently held in a state of tense readiness for the sake of the relations, whenever they descend, which is hopefully never, and then, at last, the top floor.

  Belle’s domain. Tiny rooms, low ceilings, poky sash windows. The floor where the servants used to live. Except kids aren’t the servants in the Square. They are the masters.

  Belle kicks open the door of her room. It is full of small, winking appliances. Digital clock, scales, monitors, speakers, music systems. An electric guitar. A long electronic keyboard. These items softly glow amid drifts of giant, fleecy clothes in earthy colours. The floor looks as if it has been inundated with a tidal wave of mud.

  “You don’t have a wardrobe. You have a floordrobe,” her father says jovially.

  In the middle of all this winking sludge sits her younger sister. Grace.

  “Get out,” says Belle. “Now.”

  “Aw, why?” whines Grace.

  “Because I say so,” says Belle, with inescapable logic.

  “Well, anyway,” says Grace, flouncing towards the door. “I’ve got news for you.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. No piano lessons. Any More. No more Roberta. Mum says so. Says we are all having to Pull In Our Belts. Tee hee!”

  As she darts out, Belle casually throws a copy of the final edition of Harry Potter at her disappearing form. It misses, cracks onto the door. The spine, already bent in a dozen parallel lines, breaks.

  “Thanks, Mum, for cancelling my piano!” she shouts down the stairs. She’s very pleased about this.

  She hates her piano teacher Roberta. Silly cow, making her play all that, what was it? Hanon. Sounds like knitting.

  She hears a vague response from downstairs.

  “What? What?”

  Tracey is coming up the stairs.

  Her head is entirely obscured by a giant cheeseplant which she is laboriously carting up through the house.

  “Belle, it is normal to say hello to the rest of the family when you come back from the gym. I had no idea you were here until just now.”

  “I said hello to Anya.”

  “Yes, but I am talking about your Family.”

  “I thought Anya was meant to be a member of the Family,” retorts Belle. “Why on earth are you bringing that vile plant up?”

  “Oxygen,” puffs her mother. “I don’t think you have enough oxygen up here.”

  Belle has no response to this.

  “Read about it in The Mail,” manages her mother. “Putting plants in your room helps your brain develop. So I thought you could have a spell with Charlie. He’s been in the garden for far too long.”

  “Charlie?” echoes Belle.

  “Yes,” grunts her mother, heaving pot and plant on a table. Quite a lot of soil falls out of the pot and lands on the carpet.

  “Damn. Gosh, that was heavy. Charlie the Cheeseplant.” She strokes a leaf.

  “Had him in our first flat.”

  Belle isn’t interested in her mother’s memoirs. She’s not interested in having a giant, dusty, soily cheeseplant in her vicinity, either. Now that piano practise has been magically removed from the equation, she is however quite keen to go out. She senses she needs to close down the piano conversation.

  “So, no more Roberta? Ever? Thank God.”

  Tracey holds up a manicured hand. She is always perfectly groomed. Even before the Lottery win, she was beautifully turned out.

  Tracey is part of a beauty product pyramid scheme which relies on people flogging cosmetics door to door. It used to be her sole income. She still does it, from time to time. The positive effect of this is her physical perfection. The negative side is that such a job wholly relies on the market. And people aren’t investing, much, in beauty at the moment.

  “I have arranged a small break with Roberta, Belle. Just until Easter. Then, hopefully, things will have picked up, and we can continue. Will you continue practising, though?”

  “Yeah, yeah. When can I go out?”

  “Tonight? You can’t.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. We have the Residents’ Association meeting tonight and you need to stay in and look after Grace. We have all been waiting for you to get back from the gym.”

  “What? But, Mum!”

  “Too bad.”

  “What about Anya, for God’s sake? She’s meant to be here to look after Grace. That’s the whole reason she’s here! She IS the au pair. I’m just a blood relation.”

  “Anya is coming with us.”

  “What?”

  “Anya is coming with us. Belle, will you stop saying ‘What’? You heard me perfectly well. Anya is coming with us, because she needs to lea
rn how a proper meeting is held. It’s for her Business Studies Course.”

  There is a pause.

  “What?”

  “She says she needs to see the minuting and so on. Frankly, Belle, she’s very switched on. A bit more than you are. Don’t you have any interest in how a meeting is run?”

  Belle rolls her eyes at her mother. She smiles and waves her arms in the air.

  “Oh, Mum,” she says.

  “What, darling?”

  “I can really feel the oxygen surging up here! It’s amazing!”

  “Thank you, Belle. We’ll be back at nine.”

  Belle goes into her room, winds an olive-coloured scarf around her neck and picks up her electric guitar. If her mother wants her to do music, she’ll do music. Her kind of music. Four floors down, and about ten minutes later, the front door slams.

  Chapter Three The Residents’ Association Meeting

  Harriet is standing at the island of her knock-through kitchen, laboriously putting small pieces of smoked salmon onto Philadelphia cheese which has been spread onto tiny circular pancakes. The fish is slippery and flaky. It does not fold out of the plastic wrapper in flat long flaps, but must be forked out in small shavings. This is because it is discount smoked salmon. Harriet’s fingers are covered in fish grease accented by a smear of Philly. They slip on the handle of the fork, making the tines poke into the soft mound of flesh between the first finger and thumb of her other hand.

  “Bugger.”

  She blows a strand of hair out of her mouth and raises her head, lips open, as if she was a turtle surfacing for air.

  “Jay?” she yells, and then continues, not waiting for a reply.

  “Have you got the Cava? Or Prosecco, or whatever it is? I left some in the fridge!”

  Can’t afford Champagne. Can’t afford nice flat pages of proper, decent smoked salmon. Probably having a holiday in a bloody tent this year, thinks Harriet crossly, eating cream cheese out of the white plastic oval with a spoon.