I shut my eyes. ‘Claudia, I am not popping down to B&Q for a DIY enthusiast, nor am I creeping round garden centres looking for a like-minded soil tiller, and neither, my love, is your father going out with a floozie.’
‘Teacher then.’
I swung round aghast. ‘How did you know that?’
‘He told me last Sunday. Said in case I found out from someone else.’
‘And how do you feel about it, my darling?’ I got up and hastened anxiously to the bed. Hurt? Bitter? Murderous? Do you want to squash her peachy little face right into her blackboard? Poke chalk in her eyes? I know I do.
She shrugged. ‘OK, I suppose. I’m glad she doesn’t teach me, though.’ I clutched my mouth at this horrific thought. She screwed up her nose. ‘She’s pretty average too, don’t you think? I had a look at her in the playground. Not vampy and black-knickerish like I expected.’
I shut my eyes again. I didn’t want to think about the colour of her knickers. Although I was sure they were white and came in a pack of three. I sighed. It never ceased to amaze me how much straight-talking children could take, and come back with too. Or was it just my child? My one and only, mature beyond her years.
‘Daddy said you went to see her.’
‘Oh yes?’ My eyes snapped open.
‘Said you were quite …’ She puckered her brow.
‘What?’ I pounced.
‘That word. What the missionaries do to the savages.’
My mind boggled. Missionaries? Savages? Had I tied her up, popped her in a cooking pot and boiled her to death, and let it slip my mind?
‘Civilised.’
‘Oh!’
I waited. ‘Anything else?’
‘Nope.’
I turned back and picked up my mascara. Well, whoopee. One tiny little brownie point from my estranged husband because I’d behaved well. I couldn’t help thinking it was a better ‘tactic’ than shagging DIY shoppers, like Mrs Chandler, though.
‘It was Granny’s idea, wasn’t it?’ she went on, munching her crisps.
‘What?’
‘Granny told me she’d told you to be nice to her.’ She leant forward eagerly. ‘Granny also said there was a curse on all the women in this family, because Great-grandpa left French Granny, and Grandpa left her, and now Daddy’s left you. D’you think that’s true? D’you think it’ll happen to me or d’you think I’ll break it? Break the curse, fair maiden!’ She raised both hands and plunged an imaginary sabre into the duvet.
I slammed down my hairbrush and spun round. ‘Your grandmother talks far too much to a girl of your age! Curse, my eye. You’re to stop going there so much, Claudia!’
Her eyes widened. ‘What, you mean I’m banned? Like Granny said you were banned from seeing French Granny?’ She grinned. ‘History repeating itself, Mum!’
I stared at her for a moment. Then I stood up, snatched up my pashmina and swept it around my shoulders. ‘Don’t be silly, I just said not so much, that’s all.’
It hadn’t escaped my notice that Claudia spent more and more time in my mother’s company. Mum lived only a few roads away from the school and often picked Claudia up, taking her home for a cup of tea and a jam sandwich. When I went to collect her, I’d find Claudia lying on her tummy in front of the gas fire, engrossed in old letters and photograph albums, all of which had been locked away when I was a child. In those days I’d be told that it was none of my business, to go to my room, to be quiet. She was always irritable, like a bad-tempered terrier, always snapping at the heels of childhood. Sit still! Don’t slouch! Get out of my kitchen! Not so with Claudia. How old were you when you got married, Granny? When did you first fall in love? Can I see the pictures? Oh, she’d grumble, sure, but she’d get them out, and talk Claudia through them, too. Was it just a mellowing of age? I wondered. Or was it simply Claudia’s style – chirpy, probing, authoritative – taking life by the scruff of its neck, so unlike my own cowering self at that age? Well, I thought, striding to the door, they could dissect her broken marriage to their hearts’ content, but I didn’t want them delving into mine, and I’d tell Mum that, too; tell her to cut the chat.
‘Claudia, I want you in bed by nine o’clock tonight.’ I swept out to the landing.
She gasped. ‘That is way, way too early!’
‘I disagree.’
‘Who’s baby-sitting?’ She snatched up her crisps and followed.
‘Mac. He’s downstairs in the kitchen, I think.’
‘Not Spiro?’
I turned halfway down the stairs; eyed her beadily. ‘No, Claudia. Not Spiro. Spiro is in the Fox and Ferret having a pie and a pint. He’s twenty-four-years old, married with a child, and you, my darling, are ten.’
‘I know!’ She coloured dramatically. ‘Just asking, OK?’
‘OK. Just telling.’
‘Oh!’
Her exclamation came as we both came barging through the kitchen door together, sniping at each other, arguing loudly, before the extraordinary vision before us stopped us in our tracks. A devastatingly attractive man, tanned, blond, with eyes nearly as blue as Johnny’s and wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt, was sitting at the little scullery table eating a bowl of Frosties.
‘Blimey!’ Claudia added, just for good measure. ‘Adonis!’
He got to his feet in confusion. ‘God, I’m so sorry. My father said you were out and that he was going to baby-sit or something. I had no idea – you must think I’m appalling, sitting here eating your food.’ He smiled an apologetic but faintly winning smile.
‘Good gracious, you must be Lance then,’ I said, recovering, and coolly extending my hand. Would I extend a hand to Alf? I wondered.
He shook it warmly, grin still in place.
‘That’s it. I’m really sorry if I surprised you, but I’ve been travelling for about six hours and my father said you wouldn’t mind.’ He gestured to the bowl.
‘No! No, not at all.’ Heavens. My father? Not Dad? Pop? The old man? And when had any of my other workers ever got up when I’d come into a room? Most of them promptly sat down.
‘We’ve got Coco Pops too,’ piped up Claudia, ‘if you prefer?’ She dashed to the cupboard and flung it open, brandishing the packet, grinning rather too widely.
‘That’ll do, Claudia,’ I said briskly. ‘Go and brush your teeth, please.’
But Claudia didn’t move. And after a moment I realised we were both just sort of staring at Lance. He really was very, very good-looking. Suddenly I came to.
‘Right! Well, I must be off. I take it you’re joining your da– father while he baby-sits for Claudia, so if you could just tell him I’ll be back at about –’
‘Right here, luv,’ said Mac, coming in through the kitchen door behind me, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘Just bin checking the generator down in the cellar, went a bit haywire the ovver day. You’ve met my boy then?’ He nodded at Lance.
‘Yes! Yes, indeed.’ I smiled brightly. ‘And I hope he’s recovered from his journey.’ I frowned. ‘Was it really six hours, Lance? From Billericay?’
‘Oh no,’ he laughed. ‘Florence. I had a couple of days off, you see, and I’ve got a bit of a thing about Botticelli so I went to have a look at those fabulous paintings in the Uffizi gallery again. My God, that guy could wield a brush. Have you seen them?’
‘Oh! Um, yes.’
‘When, Mum?’
‘Oh, years ago, darling, when you were a baby.’
‘But I thought you said you’d never bee–’
‘Now run along, Claudes, there’s a good girl. Half an hour of television and then bed, OK?’ I turned to Mac. ‘You know where I am, don’t you?’
‘Number 32, down the other end. The sequinned busybody.’ He looked at me approvingly. ‘You look smashing, by the way, luv, don’t she, Lance?’
‘I think that’s something of an understatement,’ grinned Lance. ‘Have a good time.’
‘Will do,’ I managed as I scuttled to the door.
I s
hut it gratefully behind me. Phew. Feeling a bit hot in there, for some reason. Bit sort of sweaty-palmed. I tripped thankfully down the steps. Suddenly I stopped, wrapped my shawl dramatically around my shoulders, lifted one eyebrow and growled, ‘I think that’s something of an understatement.’ I giggled, then tried it again as I turned left down the street, poshing up the accent until I resembled the Duke of Devonshire. Really, I mused, if it weren’t for his obvious parentage I would never have guessed his provenance. One tiny clue, though, I thought with a grin, as I skipped along the cobbled street towards the Abbey, my heart feeling lighter and my step quickening by the second: Florence, the lifting of the bottom from the chair and the educated accent were all very fine, but if I wasn’t very much mistaken I was sure I’d caught a glimpse of a gold chain nestling beneath that T-shirt. I’d also spotted a tin of Old Virginia and a packet of Rizlas on the table, too. Still, I reflected as I reached Nanette’s steps, the vast old Abbey towering right above me now, pale and golden in a beautiful evening sky, he might be more interesting than most labourers to have around. He was certainly more decorative.
Moments later Nanette opened the front door and my high spirits took a dive.
‘Darling!’ She stepped back for me to admire. She was dressed in an extraordinary sort of embroidered silk pyjama ensemble; her neck weighed down with heavy silver beads; her feet skippy in floppy gold sandals; her toenails bright red and dazzling. Rude not to comment.
‘Nanette, you look … amazing.’
‘Isn’t it divine? Roger had the whole lot sent across from Hong Kong and I simply had to wear it. It’s desperately see-through, of course, so I’m wearing a thong – Roger’s idea – although he’s devastated he’s not here to see it. Poor bunny, he’s still stuck out there in the Far East, I’m afraid. I can’t wait to get him back and kiss him to bits!’
‘Ah, so he’s not here?’ That was something of a bonus, anyway. Roger was her current amour, a computer salesman: smooth, dark, and very, very softly spoken – a deliberate ploy, as I’d discovered to my cost one day, when I’d leant in close to catch his drift and a hand slipped up my skirt.
‘No, still trying to screw money out of the slit-eyed nips, as Prince Philip would say, but I have got some super people for you to meet, Olivia. Come on, come on through!’
I followed her jangling beads and floppy sandals down her shiny parquet hall and into her ornate, swagged, dragged, beribboned and bowed drawing room. Four people stood in a silent, awkward circle around a glass coffee table, each clutching a glass of pinkish wine and gazing through the table to the carpet. Nanette clapped her hands prettily, as if to break up the bustling chatter.
‘Everyone! Oo-oo! This is Olivia, my very good friend from just along The Crescent, and Olivia, these dear people are Cliff and Yolanda Blair, who are desperately old friends of mine –’
‘No relation!’ piped up Yolanda. ‘But I’m a big fan of Cherie’s!’ She pronounced it like the drink, but it was clearly her habitual opening gambit so I smiled politely.
‘– and Sebastian, who, actually, you might know because he lives in The Crescent.’ Nanette always referred to The Crescent by its name, never ‘the road’. ‘And Malcolm here, who if I was a single girl I’d want to keep all to myself because he’s a complete and utter cutie-pie and makes an absolute fortune at the BMW concession in Luton!’
I wanted to turn and run right now, but we all smiled and I shook hands; first with Yolanda, a broad-beamed lady, who managed to prise her hand from Cliff’s arm for literally two seconds before firmly replacing it, then with Cliff who was tiny and frail and failed to meet my eye, then Malcolm who was very golf-club tie and belted grey slacks, and finally with Sebastian, tall, pale, with watchful slanting eyes and rather too long dark hair, and who, now you come to mention it, I did recognise.
When I’d first moved in here, Nanette had made it her business to bustle straight over with a kettle and a fruit cake. She’d introduced herself as ‘a very merry widow’ and swept around my scullery in a full-length fur coat. I later discovered that Nanette nearly always wore her fur coat, even in a heat wave, and even after the nasty incident in the high street when a militant youth had approached her shouting, ‘And what poor creature had to die just so you could put that on your back!’ To which she’d replied, ‘Er, my mother-in-law’ – yes, even after that little débâcle she kept it firmly round her bony shoulders, and on that, our very first meeting, had sunk down into it in my Lloyd Loom chair and proceeded to give me the lowdown on the entire neighbourhood. This one, Sebastian, was apparently, ‘decidedly odd’. Not only, she’d hissed to me over the Nescafé and the fruit cake, did he pace up and down at his window all day long, waving his arms about, mouthing obscenities at anyone who passed and shaking his head like a mad dog, but he’d also been seen squeezing the grapefruit in Waitrose, wearing his pyjamas. Apparently he refused to answer if anyone spoke to him in the street, and at thirty-six, still lived at home with his mother. I’d already spotted his mother actually: a thin, pinched little woman who hurried everywhere, her head well in advance of her bent waist and her scuttling legs, always hastening back to her house with her shopping, slamming the door behind her and giving very black looks to anyone who caught her eye. They were Irish, apparently, had only been in The Crescent about six months, and according to Nanette, the on dit was that since they were only renting, most people were keen they didn’t stay. In some small way, the son apparently taught at the boys’ school in town, but Nanette reckoned it was just a way of integrating him back into the community. And now here he was, at my left elbow, staring distractedly at a spot somewhere above the top of my head.
‘Now, you’ll have a little drinky, Olivia?’ Nanette fluttered her hand bossily in Malcolm’s direction. ‘Do the honours, Malc, there’s a love. It’s Kir, Olivia – I don’t know if you’ve had that before? And then if you’ll excuse me for just two secs, I’m going to put the finishing touches to the canapés in the kitchen. Don’t fight over her now, will you, boys!’
Well, that surely put the kiss of death on any intelligent conversation. We stood about a bit more in the awkward circle, and somehow, Malcolm and I managed to exchange a few, polite words about the traffic congestion in the city, Sebastian continued to stare above my head, and Yolanda persisted to whisper urgently – and in my view, rudely – in Cliff’s ear. After several minutes of torture I made my excuses and escaped, on the pretext of helping in the kitchen.
‘Nanette!’ I hissed as she squirted some squiggles of pâté out of a tube and on to some tired-looking Ritz biscuits. ‘What the bloody hell’s going on here!’
She paused mid-squiggle, raised heavily made-up eyes. ‘Sorry?’
‘Well, isn’t that the arm-waver in there? Are you trying to set me up with a nutter?’
‘Ah!’ She put the tube down. ‘Yes, Olivia, listen – I was going to warn you about him –’
‘It is him, isn’t it!’
‘Yes it is, but listen, he’s fine, honestly. I had a chat to him in the street the other day and he was wearing perfectly ordinary clothes and I really think he’s absolutely normal!’
‘Oh, come on, you’ve changed your tune! You told me he was certifiable!’
‘Well I know, but I really think that was just a phase or something. After all, we all get depressed, don’t we? And when I saw him in the street I did just feel a tiny bit sorry for him, and anyway,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘Gerald cancelled at the last moment so I just sort of asked him, otherwise you’d have been the odd girl. He’s terribly shy and lonely, Olivia. He just needs bringing out.’
‘Well, not by me!’ I hissed. ‘I might bring out a lunatic!’
‘Ssh, he’ll hear you. Well, OK, Malcolm then? Christ, I gave you a choice! Malcolm’s lovely, known him for years, he used to be in oil with my brother – hair oil, actually – but now he’s with BMW. He’s a complete catch, you know.’
‘Nanette, I do not want to “catch” anyone! I wouldn’t have co
me if I’d known you were matchmaking!’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Olivia. You can’t hunker down like a hermit for ever. You’ve got to live a little. Johnny has to be shown that you’re a very desirable woman!’ And with that she picked up her plate of pâté and marched past me with her canapés into the drawing room.
If drinks were torturous, supper was worse. I made a mental note to tell Imogen and Molly that my foresight had been extraordinary: it was far worse than an evening with Brenda Archdale. Malcolm, beside me, of hair oil and now BMW fame, told me in confidential I-wouldn’t-share-this-with-just-anyone tones, exactly why the sixteen-valve fuel-injected 318IS was a superior machine to the 1SE, and how he could never go back to an eight-valve even though it was more competitively priced. He even hinted that if I played my cards right, he might take me for a test drive.
‘You get sleeker body styling,’ he murmured confidentially, ticking off the points on his fingers, ‘you get alloy wheels, you get sports suspension, and you get all that for less spondulos than any other car in its class. What more could you want?’
‘Very little,’ I agreed. He had the most enormous open pores on his nose.
‘And it does nought to sixty in 9.7 seconds, too.’ He sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows in awe. ‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ He leant forward urgently again. ‘And you see, the mistake you little ladies make is that you think you don’t need something with that much poke, am I right?’
‘Quite possibly,’ I murmured, maniacally smearing cucumber mousse around my plate, longing for oblivion, longing for going-home time.
‘Take you, for instance, tootling off to the shops, taking the kiddies to school – what car do you drive?’
‘Hmm?’ I raised my eyes from the psychedelic pattern I’d created on my plate, and suddenly remembered Johnny’s garage. My tired eyes flashed in their brave old sockets.
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