by Jane Fallon
It’s while she’s mooching about in there on about the fifth morning of her stay that she notices a sign by the till: PART-TIME HELP WANTED. She has been looking for a way to make her point to Cleo – the point that she can’t be taken for granted, that is, that she is not just a free home help. Before she really thinks through what she is doing (does she really want to take a job just to get back at her sister? And, if she does, does she really want to put herself up for one where they are almost certainly expecting a sixth-former to apply and will be paying accordingly?) she is halfway up to the counter. Over the past few days she’s reached nodding-acquaintance status with the owner and they’ve exchanged anodyne pleasantries each time she’s bought something– she’s averaging a book every other day so much time does she spend hiding out in her room – so he smiles as he sees her approach.
‘Hi. How are you this morning?’
Abi launches straight in. ‘Look, I know this might sound a bit ridiculous and I’m sure I’m far too old, and I’m only here for a few weeks and you’re probably looking for a permanent Saturday girl or something, but I was wondering about the position … the job …’
‘Oh. Well, let’s see …’ the man says. ‘It’s actually for two days a week, while my regular lady has to look after her grandchildren.’ Oh the irony. ‘She’s sixty-one, so I think you just about qualify on age terms.’ He smiles so Abi knows he’s joking. He’s incredibly self-assured, smooth and flirtatious in that louche 1950s rat-pack way. What he lacks in conventional good looks, he more than makes up for in confidence and attitude. It’s easy to imagine him propping up a bar with a shot of whisky in one hand and a cigarette in the other (yes, Abi does still think smoking is big and clever – she just doesn’t do it herself any more). It’s not really a look that appeals to her, it’s a bit too knowing, a bit too studied, but she imagines he’s used to turning the bored rich ladies of Primrose Hill into quivering messes.
‘Do you have any experience?’
‘Well, I read a lot. I work in a library at home …’
‘That’s a good start.’
‘And I’ve worked in shops before, but years ago, when I was a teenager.’ She waits for him to say something crass like ‘that can’t have been long ago’, because that’s just the kind of comment she imagines he thinks middle-aged women crave, but, to give him credit, he doesn’t.
‘And you’re only here till …’
She feels stupid. She doesn’t know why she’s doing this suddenly. ‘I leave at the beginning of September so I don’t suppose that’s any good. It was a stupid idea, really. Never mind.’
She’s already backing out of the door when he says, ‘That should give Wendy’s daughter time to sort out some proper childcare. Tuesdays and Thursdays. We open at nine thirty, as you know. The shop closes at six and it’s £7.50 an hour. How does that sound?’
To Abi it doesn’t sound too bad, actually. She was expecting minimum wage. She wouldn’t pay herself any more than that.
‘Cash if that’s OK with you. It’s just that it’s easier as you’ll be here for such a short time …’
Abi nods. Has she just taken a job?
‘And you get a discount on books, of course. Twenty per cent.’
That does it. ‘OK,’ she says before she has time to change her mind. She needs to at least give Cleo a bit of notice that things are going to change. ‘I could start next Tuesday. I just have a few things to sort out.’
‘Great.’ He holds out a hand for her to shake. ‘Richard,’ he twinkles.
‘Abi,’ she says in a way that she hopes says, ‘Don’t even think about it. It really is the job I want, not you,’ but she’s not sure she carries it off.
It’s not that she’s not interested in men. She’s had a few relationships since Phoebe’s father, but none of them have lasted that long because someone would have to be pretty special for her to allow them into her daughter’s life. And the flirty chancer has never been her type of choice. Not since Phoebe’s dad has she been attracted to someone who she thought might mess her around. In fact, she’s gone so far the other way that she has ended up in relationships with men who almost bored her to tears in their slow steadiness.
In the end she has come to the conclusion that she’s fine as she is. She doesn’t need a man to feel complete, although a good one would be a nice bonus and occasionally she scares herself by imagining her future when Phoebe has gone off to the bright lights to do great things and she’s shuffling around on her own except for the cat. In fact, that future is now although she doesn’t even have a cat. She’ll have to get one specially. She’s not sure she even likes cats. But she reminds herself that she has to stay true to what she believes in. It’s not about being with anyone, however far removed they are from your ideal bookend. It’s about waiting for the right person to come along and if they don’t then they don’t. Lots of women – and men for that matter – live on their own and are perfectly happy thank you very much. Abi has lots of good friends in her little community. It’s not an issue. Anyway, the point is that Jack the Lads like Richard do nothing for her so don’t go thinking there’s romance on the horizon because there isn’t. It’s the last thing she’s looking for.
Cleo can barely contain her irritation when Abi makes her announcement at dinner (baked monk-fish wrapped in Parma ham with butternut squash and broad beans).
‘I have a go see on Tuesday,’ she says. ‘I told you I had all sorts of appointments over the next couple of weeks.’
‘And I’m telling you I can’t look after the girls on Tuesday. Sorry. Maybe you should have made sure that I was going to be free every day before you made all of those appointments?’ Abi doesn’t want to get into a fight in front of the girls, but she doesn’t want to let Cleo walk all over her either. She hardly thinks she’s being unreasonable.
Tara pulls a disgusted face. ‘I don’t know why we need anybody to look after us. I’m ten. None of my friends have to be babysat.’
‘That’s not true and you know it,’ Jonty pipes up. ‘Plus, even if it was, Megan is only seven. And someone has to ferry you both around. Maybe Elena could do a few more hours until we sort ourselves out?’
‘Oh god. Not Elena,’ Tara says, and shoots Abi a filthy look. ‘She can’t even drive.’ Abi realizes that Tara has said this before and that’s, no doubt, where Megan got it from.
‘She can take you places on the tube,’ Jonty says. ‘And I’m sure she could do with the extra money.’
‘I don’t want them going on the tube,’ Cleo says. ‘Not with anyone.’
‘Well, maybe I could take those days off. It might be fun.’
This isn’t what Abi wanted. ‘Look, forget about it. It was a stupid idea. I’ll tell Richard tomorrow that I can’t do it after all –’
‘No,’ Jonty interrupts. ‘That’s not fair. If you want to go to work, then that’s what you should do. You’re our guest here, after all. You’re not here to be an unpaid babysitter. We should have sorted something out before you came.’ He gives Cleo a look which tells Abi that this is not the first time this subject has come up between them. ‘Cleo and I can work it out between us. She can move some of her engagements and I can move a few meetings and it’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it, Abigail, OK?’
‘Well, I can’t move the go see on Tuesday. I have a really good feeling about this one. They specifically asked to see me. And it’s editorial. Harper’s,’ Cleo says petulantly. Abi knows enough to know that editorial, rather than commercial, is the Holy Grail. Only the most unique models, the elite, the striking one-offs rather than the ten-a-penny pretty-pretty girls, get to do editorial for the top-end fashion magazines.
‘Fine,’ Jonty says. ‘So I’ll take Tuesday off and you can move whatever you’ve got on Thursday. We should be grateful that Abigail’s happy to do the other days. You are, aren’t you?’ he adds as an afterthought. ‘Just until we find someone.’
‘Of course,’ Abi says. ‘And I didn’t mean to cause a p
roblem.’ Now she’s had her little victory she feels a bit mean-spirited. So she’s shown Cleo that she can’t be taken for granted. Big deal. She doesn’t feel any better for it. Actually, though, she is rather looking forward to going out to work. It feels very grown-up and cosmopolitan having a job of her own to go to in the big city.
8
Guilt makes her go into overdrive and she sets out to prove that she is the best all-round sister/aunt/sister-in-law that anyone could wish for. She cheerfully drives the girls around all day and even takes them down to Portobello Road market when they have a spare couple of hours, which is really a treat for herself, but which everyone seems to enjoy. Tara is convinced that wannabe models are spotted in its shabby chic environs all the time, and so does her best runway walk between stalls, while Megan seems to love the vintage-clothes shops almost as much as her aunt does. Real vintage proves to be too expensive but Abi spots an Oxfam shop and steers the girls towards it. Tara stops dead in her tracks like a reluctant mule.
‘You’re not really going to buy clothes from there?’ she says, eyes wide. Megan, who was happily going along with her aunt’s plans, stops too, unsure which way to jump.
‘Why not?’ Abi says brightly. ‘They’ve all been cleaned. What’s the difference?’
Tara pulls a face. ‘Because … they’re, like, other people’s …’
‘You know that dress Jessica Alba was wearing in Heat last week? That was vintage.’
‘So?’
‘That’s what vintage means. Old. Used to belong to someone else.’
Tara colours, annoyed with herself for not knowing such a basic fashion fact. ‘But this is Oxfam.’
‘So it’s cheap vintage, that’s all. Things that belonged to other people, but that weren’t made by Chanel or Gucci.’
Tara’s not having it. Now she’s made her point she’s not backing down. ‘Mum says she won’t give her clothes to Oxfam because she doesn’t want to see some tramp begging outside the tube station wearing her Louboutins. She takes them to the second-hand designer shop and they sell them for her. That way she gets money for them too.’
‘Of course. God forbid she’d just give them away for nothing. And to a charity at that.’
‘Well, I’m not going in there. What if one of my friends walked past? I’d die. I’d literally die.’
‘Well, we can’t have that. Do you mind waiting out here while I go in? Just don’t talk to anyone. Megan, are you coming with me?’
Megan looks nervously between her sister and her aunt. Tara shrugs.
‘Go on if you want to.’
‘We won’t be long,’ Abi says, grabbing Megan’s hand before she can change her mind.
Back at home Abi insists on helping Jonty with dinner. He’s a little reluctant – probably, like her, he’s wondering what on earth they’ll talk about while they shell the peas – but she tells him that now she is going to be out working two days a week she’d like to feel she was contributing to the household in some other way.
They manoeuvre around each other cautiously at first. Abi tells him about her job in the library, which, she realizes as the words are coming out of her mouth, couldn’t sound more dull if it tried.
‘Sounds like fun,’ he says, and Abi tries, and fails, to work out if he’s being sarcastic.
‘It really isn’t. But the hours suit me and I get to read all the books.’
‘I’m serious. Ask anyone who runs their own company and I bet they’d tell you the same thing. The idea of set hours, no disgruntled employees, no hustling for the next contract. It sounds like heaven.’
She can’t decide if he’s patronizing her or not, but she tries not to rise to the bait if indeed there is one. ‘Like I said, it suits me fine. In fact, no. It’s perfect, if I’m being really honest.’
She asks him what his agency, MacMahon Fairchild Advertising and Media, is working on at the moment and he tells her they’ve just started on a new TV campaign for one of their biggest clients. Abi asks who and Jonty just says, ‘Oh, you probably wouldn’t have heard of them,’ passes her a paper bag of very knobbly carrots with the green bits still on them that definitely didn’t come from Lidl, and says, ‘Could you wash those?’
She assumes he’s trying not to show off in the face of hearing about her own lowly position. ‘Try me.’
He laughs. ‘One-hit Comparison dot com.’
‘One-hit what?’ He’s right – she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. She’s not even sure he’s talking English.
‘Comparison.com. They’re a website. You know, where you go and look at the prices of different things and they tell you which one is the best bargain. This one is aimed at housewives. School uniforms, kids’ shoes, tins of beans, nappies. It’ll tell you who has the cheapest of anything at any given moment.’
‘Sounds right up my street.’ She’s a little taken aback. At the very least she’d expected one of MacMahon Fairchild Advertising and Media’s best clients to be a cosmetics range or maybe a car manufacturer. ‘And they’re one of your best clients?’
He nods. ‘Glamorous, eh?’
‘I had no idea those websites made so much money.’
‘Advertising,’ he says, and then adds, ‘I don’t mean them advertising. I mean people paying to advertise on their site. If they’re successful, they can make a fortune – they’ve got a captive audience of millions of housewives looking on there every day. If you were Pampers or Palmolive, wouldn’t you want to tap into that?’
‘And easywhatsit.com is raking it in? I’ve never heard of them.’
‘Ah, but you will have by the time I’ve finished with them – that’s the point. They’ve just got a big investment and they’re spending it all on saturation advertising: TV, radio, billboards, print. You’ll be singing their theme tune in your sleep.’
Abi laughs. ‘And how does it go?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t found anyone to write it yet. We’ve been working on the slogan for the past couple of days. You know, that iconic one line that will pop into your head every time someone says “onehitcomparison.com”.’
‘Like “Beanz means Heinz”? Or “The best a man can get”?’
‘Exactly. It’s earth-shattering stuff.’
The vegetables are all chopped into neat piles. Abi panics a bit about whether or not she’s supposed to include the green bits that came on top of the carrots. It seems like a waste to throw them all away so she hedges her bets and leaves them next to the chopping board. Jonty is carefully stuffing big organic chicken breasts with a mixture of cream cheese and herbs. Thin slices of streaky bacon are laid out like a row of pink coffins to wrap round the outside.
‘Anything else I can do?’
Jonty shakes his head. ‘It’s all under control. You could pour the wine, though.’ Abi looks at her watch. It’s quarter to six, a little before her self-imposed six o’clock watershed, but what the hell. ‘OK.’
She’s hit with a sudden inspiration: ‘“One-hit the one-hit wonder”.’ She looks at him triumphantly.
‘Thought of it already. It’s on the shortlist. How about “your one-stop comparison shop”?’ he says, and Abi says, ‘Not catchy enough. And it makes it sound like it’s for car insurance or something. How about “one hit for cheap shit”.’
When she’s finished laughing at how hilarious she is, she says, ‘How come you have to worry about this, anyway? Don’t you have a team of creatives sitting around on bean bags coming up with the ideas?’
‘Of course. But this is the fun bit. The rest is just admin.’
Abi puts down her wine glass. She’s drinking way too fast. ‘Jonty,’ she says. ‘Why do you come home and cook dinner every night? I mean it’s great that you do and I know Cleo said you got rid of the chef because you love cooking, but isn’t it a bit of a bind having to leave work early every day? Surely Cleo could do it sometimes?’
‘Have you seen her cooking?’
Abi laughs like she’s meant to, but then
she says, ‘Really, though?’
‘Well, it’s true that I like to cook, but that’s not the real reason I got rid of the chef. Cleo hasn’t worked for a few years as you know and I do OK, but, to be honest, it seemed like a ridiculous expense when there are two adults living here who are perfectly capable of rustling something up for themselves. Cleo’ll do her share, I’m sure she will, but she’s so wrapped up in trying to get back out there at the moment that I’m happy to do it all myself for a few weeks till things calm down. She’s giving it a couple of months by the end of which she’ll either have got herself an agent or a major new campaign or she’ll stop trying and become a full-time mum. That’s what she says anyway.’
‘Makes sense, I suppose.’
‘Besides, if I cook the meals myself, I can make sure they’re so laden with calories that even if she just eats a quarter of it it’ll be enough. Have you noticed how little she eats?’
Abi nods.
‘She’s been half starving herself since she decided to try and get back into modelling. So I hide calories. Full-fat cream cheese, butter, olive oil. I wouldn’t eat a whole one of my meals if I were you, or you’ll leave here the size of a house.’