by Claire Sandy
‘Yeah?’ Adam bit his lip, taking a nervous inventory of his parents and deciding they both looked healthy. Never better, in fact; they were busy-busy-busy retirees who whizzed through life on their bikes, forever visiting castles or ‘taking in’ a show.
‘Son, you know we love you. We’re devastated by what’s happened to you and Fern. We’ll do anything we can to help.’
‘Ye-es.’ Adam wondered where this was going.
Mum cut in, her fingers impatient on the remote control. ‘What Dad’s trying to say, dear, is you’ve got to sod off. I want my sewing room back.’
And with that, John Nettles was turned back up.
‘This one’s amazeballs.’ Adam tapped the leaflet. ‘Two terraces!’
‘Yeah, amazeballs,’ murmured Fern, who was folding laundry, waiting for a client, and keeping her eye on a spider in a matchbox who wasn’t expected to last the night. ‘Christ, Adam, the price!’ She’d just noticed the figure at the top of the page.
‘It’s OK, we can afford it.’
‘But we’re not buying it,’ said Fern. ‘You are.’ The stack of estate-agent details dismayed her. As long as Adam was in his parents’ spare room he was on a piece of elastic that kept bouncing him back to Homestead House. Transplanting Adam to one of these chrome and glass bachelor pads would change things yet again, place him further away. She’d had enough of change for a little while. ‘Why not rent for a bit?’
‘Doesn’t make economic sense.’ Adam, who didn’t know the price of a pint of milk, was suddenly a financial expert. ‘Besides, just look at them!’
Flipping through the bland photos of arctic open-plan new builds, Adam wore the expression that Fern reserved for looking at cake. ‘Very swish.’ She managed not to add but they’re not you, because, apparently, they were. ‘When are you getting back into the studio, Adam? What about that deodorant jingle? Did you finish it?’
‘Yeah. No.’ Adam, uninterested, refused to be sidetracked.
‘You’d better reclaim the shed from Tallie. There are recuperating worms all over your speakers.’ Fern checked on the spider in his cotton-wool hospital bed; he seemed comfortable. Or dead. Hard to know with spiders.
‘I might turn a corner of the new pad into a recording space. That set-up out there,’ Adam waved a hand vaguely at the kitchen window, ‘is all a bit awkward. Good enough for the old me, you know?’
Sadly, Fern did know. I prefer the old you, she thought as she went to the fridge.
‘I’m a very wealthy man, Fern. It’s not a sin. I can’t just ignore it. Fact is, I don’t have to make do any more.’ Adam turned the pages of the brochure, as rapt as a monk with a Bible. ‘I feel so liberated, you know? So free.’
Liberated from your family home. Free of your responsibilities. ‘Fancy some soup? Gazpacho. Nice and summery to suit the weather.’ Fern was proud of the gazpacho, which, for once, looked like the picture in the book.
‘Nah.’ Adam was engrossed in the images of glossy flooring and free-standing baths.
‘Tallulah should be ready in a minute.’ Fern was aware of making conversation. With Adam. Weird. ‘I sent her upstairs to wash her hands. She’s drawn all over them. And Ollie’s supposed to be back by now.’ She checked the time on the large railway clock; she’d always wanted one, and when the Roomies money came in she’d stopped wanting one and bid for one on eBay. ‘He’s only got an hour before the evening shift at the White Horse.’
‘Did I tell you?’ Adam looked up, the enthusiasm on his face doing more for it than a face lift ever could. ‘About the band?’
‘What band?’
‘Fern!’ Adam was taken aback at such ignorance. ‘The band. Kinky Mimi.’
‘What about it?’
‘I’ve got the boys back together!’
‘But they’re all in their forties by now.’ Fern pulled a face. ‘Aren’t they too old to qualify as boys, never mind be in a band?’
‘The Rolling Stones do OK.’
‘You laughed your head off at Duran Duran’s comeback tour. You said they looked like Lady Gaga’s nan.’
‘Kinky Mimi aren’t Duran Duran.’
And they’re not the Rolling Stones, either, thought Fern disloyally. ‘Didn’t your drummer move to Ireland?’ Fern reached out and turned off the radio. For the third time that day, the Roomies theme was spilling out of it.
‘Lemmy’s back in the UK, now. Making rabbit hutches.’
‘That’s a thing?’
‘Not really. He’s broke, so he’s up for it. Keith’s not keen, but I’m talking him round.’
‘Keith . . .’ Fern went into a short reverie. Keith had been tall, lean, a golden boy with wild blond hair. ‘When he used to shake his hair during a guitar solo . . .’
‘He’s gone bald.’
‘Oh.’ The reverie fizzled out. Pfft.
‘Plus he’ll need to shift a few pounds.’
‘Hmm. Satin trousers are so unforgiving.’ Fern relented, seeing how Adam’s face fell. ‘Sorry, love.’ They both tensed at that word, as if such easy fondness was forbidden now, a form of adultery. ‘It’s a brilliant idea. You’ll have a giggle.’
‘Giggle? We’re going to be famous, Fern.’
In retrospect, it had been wrong to laugh quite so loudly.
CHAPTER THREE
August: Poisson
‘No, no, honestly, please don’t get up.’ Fern vacuumed around Nora and Evka as they sat on the sofa, offering each other Mr Kipling fondant fancies and criticizing her leggings.
‘We weren’t going to get up.’ Sarcasm sailed over Evka’s choppily boyish haircut. She’d watched Fern dust and polish, her self-confidence almost visible, like a stole she wore around her shoulders. Evka was slender and leaf-like; her fingers tapered, her nose was long, her features wolfish, as if a Slovak woodland creature had morphed into a woman. A woodland creature with an aversion to human clothing; Evka’s peach-coloured camisole was scanty, her nipples protruding like thumbs.
Her seductive, sleepy drawl, as if awakening from a drugged sleep, corroborated Nora’s theories. ‘Yes, Nora, perhaps Adam left Fern because she dresses like cowboy.’
Fern glanced down at her chequered shirt. Now that she came to think of it, it was a little Brokeback Mountain. ‘Adam didn’t leave me,’ she interrupted. ‘It was a mutual decision.’
As they lifted their legs for the Hoover, the two women on the sofa shared a giggle. ‘If she showed bit of boob now and again,’ said Evka, her mouth full of fondant fancy, ‘he might stay. Men like boob, Nora.’
Nora nodded wisely, and once more Fern marvelled. If Fern were to use the word ‘boob’ within a twenty-mile radius of her aunt, Nora would spontaneously combust. When Evka let rip – as she frequently did – with a heavily-accented expletive, Nora simply raised a finger and said fondly, ‘Now, now, missy!’ With Nora, it would seem, you were ‘in’ or you were ‘out’; Evka, despite the slutty outfits and the laziness and the bad language, was ‘in’.
‘I’ll make a start on the bathrooms now, shall I?’ said Fern loudly, unplugging the vacuum cleaner.
‘Yes. Whatever,’ said Evka grandly.
‘You could help, if you like. Or even, gosh, let me think, actually clean the bloody bathrooms. Like I pay you to do.’
‘Language!’ Nora was horrified, her mouth pursed into a perfect hen’s bum.
‘Please, Fern,’ said Evka sadly. ‘Your aunt fucking hates it when you swear.’
‘Poor Evka has tennis elbow,’ said Nora, glaring at Fern as if she was a slave trader.
‘Last week she had housemaid’s knee.’ Fern was curious to hear what next week would bring. The plague? Shingles? ‘Surely she can lift a J-cloth?’
‘Leave Evka alone, Mummy.’ Tallulah appeared from the garden, trailing mud over the carpet Fern had just de-mudded. ‘She helps me feed the patients.’
A cooing and a clucking began from the sofa as both Evka and Nora reached out for Tallulah, brushing back her fringe, tucking i
n her T-shirt, chucking her cheeks.
‘You are so prrritt-ee.’ Evka spun out the word luxuriously in her Slovakian accent. ‘My little Tallulah.’
‘The child needs a good broth inside her.’ Nora looked Fern up and down.
‘She’s full of Pop Tarts,’ said Fern, who remembered Nora’s broths and would never wish them on her own children. ‘Tallulah’s perfectly fine, Nora.’
‘She’s ailing, poor wee abandoned mite.’
‘She’s not ailing, nobody abandoned her, and she’s far from a mite.’ Fern disliked the picture Nora painted of them all huddled in an attic waiting for Adam to come back. ‘She saw her dad just yesterday, didn’t you, love?’
‘Yes. I had two Big Macs. I was sick in his glove compartment.’
‘Clever girl,’ said Nora indulgently.
‘Mum,’ said Tallulah, twirling her dark plait. ‘Will you and Daddy sort out custard of me?’
‘What is custard?’ asked Evka, her heavy-lidded eyes on Fern.
‘It’s a yellowy sauce, a top-notch item. But,’ smiled Fern, reaching to fold Tallulah to her, ‘I think she means custody.’
Tallulah resisted, stepped away. ‘It’s when mummies and daddies ask a judge who gets to keep them.’ The brow was lowered, the lips were thin; Tallulah was scared of the answer.
‘We don’t need to ask any silly old judge,’ said Fern, wondering why she copped all the sticky questions whereas Adam oversaw the Big Mac binges. ‘Mummy and Daddy would never argue about you. Your home is here and always will be. Nothing will change, sweetie.’
Using the special mournful voice she saved for talking about ‘poor Adam’, Nora sighed, ‘When I think of that sad, brave man all alone in a miserable bedsit.’
‘But Daddy’s flat is gorgeous!’ Tallulah’s custard worries were all forgotten. ‘Maybe I’ll live there.’
Such casually thrown daggers came thick and fast some days. The Mumsnet forums Fern cruised late into the night assured her this was just ‘acting out’.
‘Any more tea?’ Evka held up her cup.
‘You’ve got some nerve,’ said Fern.
‘What is nerve?’ asked Evka.
Later, polishing taps while Evka played table tennis in the garden, Fern tried to rub away her frustration along with the limescale. What had possessed Adam to buy a flat in the pretentious riverside development that they’d both cheerfully ridiculed? Day in, day out, walking Boudicca, they’d watched the ark-shaped block rise and rise beside the park. They’d sniggered in unison at the advertising hoardings outside the show home, scoffing at the computer-generated people enjoying computer-generated cappuccinos. Adam had read out the motto: ‘Live at Canbury Tower and nothing will spoil your view.’ Shaking Boudicca’s frisbee in anger at the modernistic monstrosity, he’d shouted ‘That’s because you’ve built in front of all the lovely old houses that have been here for years, you pillocks!’
That had been the original Adam, the one Fern knew as well as she knew herself. The new Adam, the one who revered Lincoln Speed as a lifestyle guru, was a mystery.
At that moment, the new Adam was on his terrace, ignoring his view of the river in favour of reading his blog on www.KinkyMimiTheComeback.com. Dressed all in white, he fitted right into his new habitat.
The sitting room was metres long, its pale floorboards giving way to white carpet in the sunken entertainment area. The recessed lighting had fourteen different settings – ‘candlelight’ to ‘operating theatre’ – and could be controlled from anywhere in the world if only Adam could work out the app.
The bath in his en suite filled in less than a minute. The oven cleaned itself. Adam had landed in the arms of all the twenty-first century had to offer. No dark corners here, no sinister stains on the ceiling that needed his attention. This flat asked nothing of him.
Fern’s face swam suddenly in front of him, wearing the new expression he suspected she’d created just for him. A mish-mash of scorn, disappointment and sadness, it aged her. Sometimes she embellished it with an eye-roll; she’d done a grandiose one when he’d tried to show her the marble samples for his splashback. I deserve marble, he thought, aggrieved.
Lying back on a leather L-shaped sofa the colour of a geisha’s bottom, Adam contemplated his own face peering back at him from his blog. Ol’ Brown Eyes is back! shouted the headline. ‘Doesn’t that make it sound like I’m comparing myself to Sinatra?’
‘Yes!’ Penny paced the room, her heels rapping on the wood before falling silent on the shag pile, only to click-clack again as she continued her circuit. ‘Sinatra’s one of the greats and so are you.’
‘I’m great at cheese and pickle sandwiches, true, but surely . . .’ Penny wheeled round, her thin frame in its sleek black sheath turning like a spoke. ‘When did you have a cheese sandwich, Adam? Come on, champ, we talked about this. Your bod is public property now.’
‘Is it?’ Adam’s voice went high-pitched when he was alarmed; he was alarmed three or four times a day since moving out of Homestead House. ‘Don’t panic. I’m a no-cheese area. I’m sticking to the diet.’ He felt rather than saw the repressive glance. ‘Nutritional manifesto, I mean.’
When Adam had arranged to meet Penny Warnes in Starbucks back in March, he’d been impressed with her vitality, her air of barely suppressed energy. She’d shamed him into pretending that no, he never drank coffee either; that day he’d tasted his first wheatgrass and goji berry smoothie, when she’d marched him across the road to a hipster joint where a beardy chap with a man bun handed him a beaker of slime.
The aim had been to find a manager for the reformed band; I found so much more than that, thought Adam, with fond ruefulness. Penny had been the only woman on the shortlist. She’d torn up her CV in front of him, saying, ‘I’ll be frank with you. I don’t have the qualifications for this. I’ve only ever been a P.A. in the music biz. I’ll tell you why you need me.’ Her red lips mesmeric, Penny was the most groomed woman Adam had ever seen close up. Her hair was a shade of blonde that seemed almost transparent, and her skin sang as if fairies massaged it in the night with tiny magic fingers. ‘You need me because this changed my life.’ She’d reached into one of those massive handbags that women inexplicably love and brought out the CD he’d sent her of Kinky Mimi’s raggedy demos from 1995 – the Bad Old Days, as his son referred to Adam’s youth.
‘That changed your life?’ Adam had wondered briefly what on earth Penny’s life had been like before.
‘You. Changed. My. Life.’ Penny brandished the CD like a weapon. ‘The track called “Beans”! Masterly! Seemingly just a silly ditty about baked beans, but actually a no-holds-barred journey through one man’s mental breakdown. It’s genius!’
When Adam had said, ‘Actually it really is about baked beans,’ Penny hadn’t seemed to hear. She’d repeated, ‘You need me, Adam, because I share your vision. I know this thing can go global. But.’ She’d folded her arms, and Adam had sat back, because he knew from long years of being with Fern that when a woman folds her arms like that something not particularly nice is about to happen. ‘You’ll pay me twice what you’re offering. You’ll give me total control over your image, your material, your social media. I want you, Adam. Not just the music. I want the man.’
This woman made Adam’s absurd dreams sound feasible. He had no option but to offer her the job. ‘You’re a whirlwind! I feel as if my hair is blowing back.’
Shaking his hand, Penny had said, ‘The hair will have to go, by the way.’
Proximity to a whirlwind was exhilarating after decades spent in the gentle weather of life with Fern. He’d never had a bona fide fan before and was happy to let Penny call the shots, even though his new hipster haircut took him by surprise whenever he passed a reflective surface. Ollie approved of the shaved sides and walnut-whip top, an event so unusual that Adam had been struck dumb until they finished their respective BBQ Whoppers.
‘As my name’s on the blog,’ he said to Penny, ‘shouldn’t I write it?’
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br /> ‘God, no!’ Penny pulled a face. ‘This is a tool, Adam. If you want the world to buy you, we can’t let them know the real you.’
‘I see.’ Adam didn’t see; what was so wrong with the real him that the world mustn’t be allowed even a glimpse? Perhaps, he thought sadly, the world didn’t like fart jokes.
Joining him on the sofa, sitting close, Penny fanned out the new publicity shots on the glass coffee table. She’d taken charge of styling, overriding the expensive professional she’d insisted on hiring. ‘Sateen!’ she’d barked. ‘Feathers!’
‘Doesn’t Lemmy look great?’ Penny tapped a burgundy nail on a shot of Lemmy in paisley dungarees, his jowls airbrushed.
‘Keith really didn’t like the hat.’ Adam picked up the photograph, remembering Keith bellowing, I don’t see you for nearly twenty years and in ten minutes flat you’ve got me wearing a purple fedora.
‘You and the guys have to get with the programme. This is your look. Kinky Mimi is retro grunge meets glam soul. You look knockout in that suit.’
Adam tried not to look smug. He’d almost burst into tears when confronted by the cornflower-blue satin three-piece. But the camera doesn’t lie. ‘I have lost a few pounds, haven’t I?’
‘We photoshopped the lumps and bumps.’ Penny flashed him the un-retouched shot and Adam recoiled. He looked as if he was smuggling a family of hamsters in his waistband. ‘Tosh is a bit of a problem.’
Once the wildman bassist, Tosh was now a geography teacher, who seemed to be praying for death as he stared out of the shots in a leopardskin trench.
‘Tosh’ll come round.’ Adam had spent days persuading his old mate to give Kinky Mimi a second chance, and that damn coat had nearly undone all his good work.
‘Does . . .’ Penny paused. It was unusual for her to pause and Adam braced himself. ‘Does Fern know? About me? Have you told her yet?’
‘No.’ Adam put up his hands defensively as she breathed out heavily through her nose. ‘Strictly speaking, you’re not really any of Fern’s business.’
Fern had always pooh-poohed those magazine articles that list ‘Seasonal fashion must-haves!’, with their thumbnails of bags and boots and scarves. Flicking past them, she’d wonder, who has the money to rush out and buy an item of clothing just because they saw it in a magazine?