Love Nest

by Julia Llewellyn

  ‘That’s why I want a baby. At least then I’d have some company.’

  Even though Gemma still hated her for assuming a baby would come so easily, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. ‘I know what you mean. Though… you’re very young, if you don’t mind me saying. Maybe you just need to make a few more friends first.’

  ‘That’s what my sister says, but it’s hard. The girls at work ask me out sometimes, but I just feel weird when I do go out with them because I’m not on the pull like them. And I’m not really a clubs and loud noise and booze and pills person anyway, I like watching Hollyoaks.’ Suddenly she stood up. ‘Anyway, listen, I’ve kept you long enough. Bored you rigid most likely. Thanks for letting me have a look round. It’s… er… it’s lovely.’

  ‘We’ve been very happy living here,’ Gemma said.

  ‘And where are you moving to?’

  ‘To St Albans. Just a bit north of London. Nice family area, you know.’

  ‘Oh.’ A look of yearning in Kylie’s eyes. ‘I think that’s what I’d like too. Anyway.’ She held out a hand. Amazing nails, Gemma noted, in fuchsia pink. ‘Thanks again, it’s so kind of you to take the time.’

  ‘I’ll come out with you. I was going for a swim. Get me fit for having the baby.’

  They travelled down in the lift together, both feeling a bit awkward after this slew of shared confidences. At the door to the building, Kylie said, ‘Sorry, which way is the Tube?’

  Gemma was going in that direction but she didn’t really want to walk together. They’d had their brief moment of intimacy and she didn’t want to prolong it. So she said, ‘Um, turn right, then left, then right again.’

  ‘Oh yes! I’ll find it. Thanks again. ‘Bye.’ A shy hand was raised and Kylie hurried off, pulling her jacket snugly around her round frame. Gemma waited until she was a safe distance ahead and then set off herself. A light rain started to fall.

  Dearest Gwen,

  So lovely to hear all your news. The girls do sound like a handful, though they look terribly sweet. I can’t wait to come and see them. Is Amelia enjoying school? I can’t believe my little goddaughter knows how to read and write already. How quickly time passes.

  I am well, thanks for asking. The sale of the house is still going ahead. Of course I have mixed feelings about this but I do see if Sebby is going to rescue the travel company he invested in and Alfie is going to start pre-prep next term, there is no alternative given how poor state schools are in the area. I haven’t heard any more from Richie – I honestly didn’t expect to though, it was just a one-off thing. Now I’ve started the job hunt in earnest. Sadly an heiress’s life is not an option. Hope to hear from you again soon.

  G xx

  The email pinged off. Grace opened the kitchen cupboard. Ever since the dinner she’d been eating and eating. Dieting had got her nowhere, after all. She’d bought some fresh cream yesterday – maybe she’d have that on a bowl of Frosties. After all, she needed some sustenance before she commenced her daily search of job websites. So far, she’d had no luck at all: virtually nothing seemed available apart from jobs as manual labourers in farms round about, or secretarial positions which demanded knowledge of Excel and XP. Grace was a dab hand at navigating a website, but she had no idea what those things meant.

  She scrolled down the page, wondering what she’d have for lunch, when her eye was caught by something a bit different.

  Gift Shop. Kingsbridge. Assistant needed. Must be available to work Saturdays. Call Carol.

  A gift shop. Well, that was something she could do. Might be fun. All sorts of people coming in and out. Grace could advise them on what birthday presents to buy.

  Yes, she liked the sound of that.

  She picked up the phone and dialled Carol’s number.

  23

  Karen stood in front of the mirror, looping a heavy hoop earring through her left earlobe. Today she was having lunch with Max again and she wanted to look her best.

  After their halting start, lunch had become a regular thing. Two days after they’d bumped into each other in the park, they’d had tabbouleh in a Lebanese café. The following week shawarma in an Iranian restaurant, followed two days later by burgers and fries. The third week, they’d gone macrobiotic Thai.

  In that period Karen had started to make some changes to her life. The weather inspired her. It was only early April, but one perfect spring day was merging into another; in the evenings the air was heavy with the smell of neighbours’ barbecues. When the wind was in the east, the strains of James Blunt and Duffy (no hip hop here, this was St Alban’s) floated over the back fence.

  During her commute, she abandoned her usual routine of reading all the papers on the way in and making to-do lists on the way back. Instead she popped in her iPod speakers, shut her eyes and listened to albums by new bands she’d downloaded the night before. Because suddenly Karen wanted to listen to music again. Once it had been the most important thing in the world to her, after all. She’d spent hours sitting in her bedroom in North Wales, rain lashing on the window-panes, listening to Adam and the Ants, Queen, Duran Duran, the Human League, songs she’d painstakingly taped from the radio on her tiny cassette player. She used to press pause constantly so she could scribble down the lyrics in her notebook. Now of course she could have found them in seconds on the internet – but that wasn’t the point.

  The point was that in those days music had excited her. Why had that stopped? She wanted to recapture that sense of curiosity. She wanted to know what films were playing at the cinema and to have considered opinions on the latest developments in the Middle East. To be like the old Karen, the one Max remembered, who’d had the world at her fingertips.

  After their awkward first few encounters, they now talked and talked, words pouring over each other in their rush to get out. Even before the cancer, she and Phil had never been like that. They discussed how they must get around to having someone look at the leaky shed roof and that they needed to book a holiday, the logistics of getting Eloise to drama club and Bea to her flute lesson, the fact that they ought to invite their new neighbours round for a drink. But they never bounced ideas off each other. They existed. They hadn’t lived.

  It was crazy, really. She shouldn’t be listening to Kasabian when there was so much to do regarding the move. But it would all work out somehow, Karen reasoned.

  With the girls, she was unusually jolly, almost self-consciously so, as if someone was watching her. When Bea came home from school with a letter asking her to create a Japanese geisha costume by Monday, she just rolled her eyes and said, ‘Oh, all right then,’ when normally she would have screamed. When Eloise asked for sweetcorn, a chef’s hat and six fresh tomatoes for the following morning, she didn’t complain, just got in the car and drove to the nearest superstore.

  Karen wasn’t stupid. She knew she was behaving – in all probability – like Grace Porter-Healey nursing a crush on the vicar. But heavens, why not indulge herself a little? Why not enjoy the lost sensation of having something to get up for in the mornings? Of looking forward to whatever the day might bring.

  She studied her reflection again. She’d dug out the high boots from Bertie that she’d bought on a whim but almost never wore because they aggravated her sciatica, and was wearing them over slim-fitting trousers (almost leggings but not quite, as she worried she was too old for them) that showed off her shapely legs.

  A flowery top from Primark that she’d treated herself to the other day when she’d popped in ostensibly to buy some tights for the girls. A handful of chunky necklaces and bracelets from Accessorize that she’d snapped up during a commando-style raid when her train home had been delayed fifteen minutes. Once Karen had spent hours loitering round shops, fingering fabrics, trying things on – now she shopped like a man, in-out and no messing.

  She wondered if Phil would comment on her funked-up appearance. But he barely glanced at her as she walked into the kitchen. As usual, he was eating his breakfast standing up n
ext to the radio so as to catch every word of the Today programme. Normally Karen wanted to scream at him for doing this; today she let it ride.

  *

  Sophie, on the other hand, raised an eyebrow when she entered the office.

  ‘You look gorgeous. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Karen said, pleased to have been noticed, but annoyed that her looking good was deemed worthy of comment.

  ‘I haven’t seen that top before.’

  ‘Haven’t you? It’s ancient.’

  ‘Oh, right. Do you fancy lunch today?’

  ‘Um, I’d love to. But I’m lunching a PR.’

  ‘Oh yeah? You’re always lunching PRs right now.’ Sophie sounded understandably suspicious. Lunch with a PR meant two courses in an upmarket restaurant where, despite all the goodies on the menu, the craziest you could go with your order was a salad and a grilled steak if you didn’t want to be dismissed as Mama Cass. You made desultory conversation and at the end of it all were shown a range of hair products or new lipsticks which you were expected to ooh and aah over as if they were the Turin shroud, before hurrying back to the office with a promise to feature them in the magazine to find two thousand new emails waiting for you.

  Karen was still trying to think how to explain herself when Sophie’s phone rang. Within seconds she was far away. ‘So Natasha had an epidural. I mean, I know, each to her own, but I really don’t see why such a thing should be necessary. I mean, women managed for millions of years before such things were invented… I know, but a natural birth is proven to help bonding with the baby… I am hiring a Tens machine and I think breathing techniques will seriously help.’

  Breathing techniques. Yeah, right.

  *

  They were meeting at a Japanese place about half a mile from the office. Karen had grown fond of venues like that, slightly off the beaten track. Max was sitting at a corner table waiting for her.

  ‘You look amazing,’ he said, also looking surprised, but rather thrilled too.

  ‘Me! What? This? Oh, thanks.’ Karen’s face flamed up as if she’d opened an oven door. She twisted her head to receive Max’s air kisses, except they weren’t air kisses, his lips brushed softly against each cheek. ‘Sad old lady!’ she reprimanded herself, as, heart fluttering, she unfolded her napkin and sat down.

  ‘Now you look much more like the Karen I remember.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well… brighter somehow. Don’t take this the wrong way, but younger.’

  ‘Just had my hair cut,’ she muttered, again both flattered and dismayed. ‘The noodles are great here.’

  ‘Then I’ll try them. And a beer?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘So have you told work yet?’ he asked, once they’d ordered.

  ‘Told them what?’

  ‘That you’re leaving.’

  ‘No.’ Karen cringed. ‘I know I should but Christine’s away on a spa freebie and she’d kill me if I didn’t hand the resignation to her in person.’

  ‘Karen!’

  ‘I know. She’s back next week, I’ll tell her then.’

  ‘You’re going to have to. Because she’s going to make you do your four months’ notice, you know that.’

  ‘I know, I just… I sort of want to pretend this isn’t happening.’

  Max looked at her for a moment, then said, ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘I may not answer.’

  ‘When you said that about New Year’s Eve. Not wanting to stay up until midnight. Did you really mean it?’

  Karen laughed. ‘Max. One day I hope you will have children and you will understand.’

  ‘But my friends with children still go out. Not all the time, admittedly, but… And you’ve got a nanny or whatever, haven’t you, so no babysitting excuses.’

  ‘Phil doesn’t…’ She looked at her newly manicured hands, confused. ‘Phil gets tired and he doesn’t drink any more and he’s very particular about his diet and he needs a lot of sleep, so… It just doesn’t seem worth it. And I do go out… With other mums from the school sometimes. And Sophie and I used to have the odd drink before she got up the duff.’

  ‘How about the cinema?’

  ‘Why was the DVD player invented?’

  Max looked perplexed. Bless him. One day he’d recognize the invention of lovefilm.com as one of the greatest contributions to society since disposable nappies.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just I remember you as such a party girl. So vibrant. And… don’t take it the wrong way, you seem much more yourself now, but the first time I bumped into you in the canteen you did seem so much… more serious.’

  Karen felt a tingling in her sinuses. She looked away.

  ‘Maybe you need to get out a little more?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Have you head of the Vertical Blinds?’

  ‘I… uh…’ She’d heard of them. ‘Isn’t the lead singer a junkie?’

  ‘They’re the ones. I’m going to a gig of theirs on Friday. The lead singer’s just come out of rehab and they’re doing a very exclusive set in Camden. I had to use all my media muscle to wangle tickets. Do you want to come?’

  ‘I’ll…’ Have to check with Phil. But she wasn’t going to say that. She swallowed. ‘Yes, I’d love to go.’

  Max’s pale complexion turned faintly pink.

  ‘Good.’

  Karen knew it was too good to be true. ‘Will your girlfriend be coming?’

  ‘We split up. About a week ago.’

  ‘Oh! I’m sorry.’ She couldn’t remember when she’d last heard such good news.

  ‘Don’t be, it was overdue.’ He gestured at his bowl. ‘Shall we eat?’

  ‘Let’s,’ Karen said with a big smile.

  24

  Carol at All Thinges Nice had been very friendly on the phone and said she’d love Grace to come in for an interview. ‘Though actually I’m closing the shop for a couple of weeks,’ she said in a squeaky posh voice. ‘We’re off on holiday to Antigua. Could you come in a fortnight Friday? Look forward to meeting you.’

  In that fortnight, Grace recommenced a new diet. She decided to go for one she’d read about online, involving only citrus fruits and protein. After two weeks of it, marred by only one lapse involving an entire packet of Rice Krispies she’d stashed for emergencies at the back of a cupboard, she’d lost ten pounds. So she was in high spirits as she drove to Kingsbridge along narrow country lanes. Spring was definitely arriving, the lilac trees would flower soon, the witch hazel was already out, lambs were frolicking in the fields and the sunlight was pale lemon.

  Richie Prescott hadn’t called. But that was all right. Grace kept remembering all the things she hadn’t liked about him: his blotchy complexion, the fact he was her age but appeared at least five years older, the fact he’d been married before. No. She was better off without Richie. She was going to pursue a career in retail.

  All Thinges Nice was on a side street and had a candy pink façade. Its windows were strung with feather-shaded fairy lights and displayed a pile of pink cushions, a pink dressing table topped with a pink mirror and a huge pink bamboo birdcage. Pushing open the door, Grace was assailed by an odour of vanilla, lavender and sandalwood. The caressing tones of Enya tinkled out of speakers. She saw a lace-covered table piled high with magenta silk scarves and fuchsia velvet hats. Grace stared at a rack of birthday cards adorned with glitter and sparkly studs. She glanced at a price sticker. Five pounds? Surely that couldn’t be right. But it was all terribly pretty, terribly feminine. She reached out to stroke a peach silk camisole.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  A tall thin woman with long, blonde hair, in a jewelled tunic and jeans, appeared from behind a carved screen. She looked at Grace dubiously, as if she might steal some scented writing paper.

  ‘I’m Grace Porter-Healey. Here for my interview.’

  Blue eyes scanned her. ‘Oh, Grace! Of course. Hello. I’m Carol.’ She extended a skeletal hand
. ‘It’s so lovely to meet you. Welcome to my little empire.’ She giggled. ‘It’s been going about six months – my youngest started school and I had nothing to do, so Bartie, my husband, put up the cash to start this little business. Not ideal timing, what with the credit crunch and everything, but it’s always been my dream to own a shop.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Grace breathed.

  ‘I’m so glad you like it.’ Carol paused for a second, then said, ‘Now, listen, Grace. I don’t want to disappoint you when you’ve come all this way but unfortunately the role of assistant has actually been filled.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I tried to call. I didn’t get any reply.’

  ‘The answerphone was on,’ Grace said. A stone was lodged in the base of her throat. She was too fat for All Thinges Nice.

  ‘Really? Maybe I dialled the wrong number.’ Carol’s eyes grew bigger by the second. She put her hand on Grace’s arm. ‘But listen, Grace. Not all is lost. There is a job you could do for me. I’d only need you for a week or so but it would be an enormous help. And I’d pay you. Cash in hand. Can’t do the minimum wage I’m afraid, credit crunch and all that, but I could do six pounds an hour.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘It’s this way,’ Carol said. She led Grace through the crammed shop floor and down a narrow dark flight of stairs into a windowless basement, crammed with cardboard boxes.

  ‘We’re putting together eco gift baskets,’ she explained. ‘One bottle of seaweed shower gel, one cake of soap, one flannel. You need to put them all in one of these wicker baskets, on top of some hay, cover them in polythene and tie a lovely ribbon. We’ve got about four hundred to do.’ She winked. ‘I bought a job lot on the internet. With the packaging it’ll be a six hundred per cent mark-up.’