A Not Quite Perfect Family

by Claire Sandy

  The answer to that question, it would seem, was ‘Fern Carlile’. Gripped by jacket-lust when she saw a tiny picture of a linen kimono in impractical mint green, she’d rushed out and bought it. Just because she wanted a new jacket.

  Accustomed to her new role as the anti-Adam, the keeper of feet on the ground, Fern saw how he’d been seduced by flamboyant, ‘just because’ spending. The novel feeling was fun.

  Her dog walkers didn’t comment on her new designer item. Pongo was a Lycra and leggings devotee, Maggie not the sort of man to get into conversation about ladies’ jackets. When Fern caught up with them, nodding hello to timid newcomer Sabre (German Shepherd/overweight/covered in odd sores – the dog, that is), she looked around for Tinkerbell.

  ‘He’s late.’ Pongo read her mind. ‘Let’s get going.’

  ‘Can’t we wait? Seems a bit harsh.’ Fern examined her kind impulse and decided that yes, of course she’d do the same for Maggie or Sabre. Almost definitely. As she uncrossed her fingers, she saw a figure over the road on the other side. ‘There he is!’

  ‘Wait for me!’ called Tinkerbell, one hand in the air as he watched the traffic trundle past. His face split by his smile, tall untidy Tinkerbell was made for pleasure, his eyes constantly ready to crease in laughter, his pace always just above slow, as if he had all the time in the world to get where he was going. The type of man everybody was happy to see, his bulky presence lifted the dog walkers’ collective mood.

  But especially mine. Fern dissected herself with the cool interest of a scientist in a laboratory studying a particularly dim white mouse. A white mouse who seemed to fancy the pants off a much younger and therefore uninterested white mouse.

  ‘Come on!’ roared Pongo, making Sabre jump.

  As Tinkerbell chose his moment and stepped off the kerb, a sports car gunned past him, forcing man and dog to leap backwards.

  ‘Jerk!’ roared Tinkerbell. The car sounded its horn in response, a boorish two-note tune which made Fern’s ears prick up.

  Jogging to catch up with the dog walkers, Tinkerbell was still fizzing. ‘Did you see that? Talk about a midlife crisis on wheels.’

  Tell me about it, thought Fern, who’d recognized Adam’s number plate.

  ‘Hello beautiful!’ Tinkerbell leaned down to greet Boudicca, who looked up at him with the demented devotion she showed everybody. Then he was on his knees amongst the dogs, ruffling ears, offering his chin for canine kisses.

  ‘Careful, you don’t know where they’ve been.’ This banal politeness was the language of the group; it calmed Fern to have half an hour of daft chatter.

  ‘Oh, but I do.’ Tinkerbell straightened up. There was a lot of him to straighten up. He was tall enough to make Fern feel dainty; another novel feeling, another one she liked. ‘They’ve been sniffing each other’s behinds, remember?’

  So it was their joke. Fern was pleased, then annoyed at feeling pleased, then annoyed at feeling annoyed – this could go on forever.

  As the group moved on, Tinkerbell surveyed Fern. ‘Nice jacket. Nicole Farhi?’

  ‘Yes.’ A man who recognized labels? Is Tinkerbell gay? Fern tried to ignore the disappointment she’d feel if Tinkerbell was what Tallulah called a homosexyman. ‘How’d you know that?’

  ‘I’m a metrosexual.’ Tinkerbell shrugged. ‘You can’t grow up with three sisters without learning a bit about clothes. I can talk credibly for forty-five minutes about skirt lengths.’ He took in Fern’s sudden roguish look. ‘But don’t test me, please.’

  ‘Come on!’ Pongo, some way ahead, could be imperious, just like her little pooch. ‘Let’s do two laps this morning!’

  ‘She’s keen.’ Tinkerbell’s merry eyes turned down, like a child trying to look sad. ‘I had a bit of a night last night.’

  ‘Me too.’ Fern’s ‘bit of a night’ had involved staying up until after eleven to finish a CSI marathon. ‘Feeling rough?’

  ‘There are tiny men in my head, all of them clog-dancing or moving wardrobes or dropping anvils. What I really need is a sausage sandwich.’

  ‘I always really need one of those.’

  ‘My sisters give me a lecture about healthy eating when I suggest anything fried or anything involving carbohydrates.’

  ‘Frying carbohydrates is one of life’s main pleasures.’

  ‘You’re not a my body’s a temple bird, then?’

  Bird? Fern wanted to squawk like a cockatoo. Half of her was in Tallulah-style consternation. The other half was thrilled to be still in the ‘bird’ sector of the Venn diagram; by now she should have graduated into the part labelled Sexually off limits – only useful for housework. ‘I’ve never been able to turn down a sausage.’ Fern closed her eyes briefly. ‘That came out wrong.’

  ‘Did it, though?’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Fern, swatting him.

  Tinkerbell – the dog, not the man – suddenly broke free from the freewheeling pack and hurtled across the grass. ‘Shit,’ said Tinkerbell – the man, not the dog – and set off in pursuit.

  ‘Very flighty chap,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Mmm.’ Nice bum, though. Fern cottoned on; Maggie meant the Cockapoo. ‘Not much more than a pup, really.’

  ‘You know his owner’s a millionaire?’

  Pongo chipped in. ‘Billionaire, more like.’

  ‘Really?’ Fern frowned at the figure in jeans chasing his dog à la Benny Hill. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at him.’

  ‘That’s what billionaires look like nowadays.’ Pongo seemed sure of her facts. ‘Look at Steve Jobsworth,’ she said, not noticing the smile shared by the others. ‘Or that Richard Branston.’

  ‘Always getting himself in a pickle,’ murmured Sabre.

  ‘Take my word for it, that man’s loaded. He sold his internet company for a fortune.’

  ‘He bought and sold domain names.’ Maggie sniffed approvingly. ‘You know, he snapped up, for example, all the wedding-related names, such as weddings.com and gettingmarried.com and what have you, then sold them to companies that were called that but hadn’t bought the domain.’

  ‘Sounds a bit . . .’ Fern was going to say sneaky.com, but Pongo got there before her.

  ‘Clever? The man’s a genius.’

  ‘A genius who just tripped over his own dog,’ said Fern, watching both Tinkerbells roll in the mud. Suddenly her world was riddled with millionaires, like Jackie Collins’ lost suburbia novel.

  ‘Damn!’ Fern tossed down her phone. ‘I rush back for my three o’clock and she cancels at the last minute.’

  ‘So what?’ Evka was pulling on her rucksack after two gruelling hours of tea-drinking. ‘You have cancellation policy, yes? She pays you.’

  ‘She’s been coming to me for years. Poor thing’s got two kids and she’s going through a divorce, so . . .’

  ‘Poor thing sounds just like you.’ Evka dropped her bag with a thud. ‘If you have free hour and you don’t need paying, why not wax me?’

  Before Fern could come up with any of the very good reasons why not, Evka had hopped up onto the adjustable treatment couch. ‘Knicks on or off?’ she asked, workman-like.

  ‘The appointment was for the upper lip, so on.’

  ‘I want rude bits waxed.’ Rood beets.

  ‘OK,’ sighed Fern, who hadn’t expected to see quite so much of her so-called employee. Pottering about, heating the wax, Fern was perfectly at home as the musky smells floated around her and the wavering pan pipes tooted their endless wispy tunes. The room was compact, but designed so carefully that it was perfectly comfortable. She relished the calm, and knew her clients did too.

  The shelves, drawn on the back of an envelope by Fern, had been put together by Adam over one long, very sweary weekend. They housed all the tools of her gentle trade: creams, lotions, tissues, tweezers, plastic gloves, spatulas, cotton-wool balls, pristine fluffy towels, mysterious electrical kit. They were all snug in designated cubby holes, the edges stencilled with a pattern of ferns Adam had added as a surpris
e. ‘Because you’re a Fern.’

  As Evka drawled on – ‘I used to have Brazilian but now I prefer smooth fanny like Barbie’ – Fern recalled how she and Adam had dithered about the tiled floor. They’d compared prices, trawled the internet for sales, until finally driving out to some remote industrial estate to nab a bargain. How times had changed; Adam had bought a property without blinking.

  ‘Ready?’ Fern smiled reassuringly at Evka.

  ‘Ready! I have big plans for much sex at weekend, so make me pretty down there please.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’

  ‘I don’t. I’m going to aaaaargh!’ Evka yowled as hot wax met her softest parts. Made of stern stuff, she kept talking as Fern worked speedily, deftly. ‘I go tomorrow to bowls tournament, and there I find sexual partner.’

  ‘Bowls? As in . . . bowls? Aren’t you a bit young for that?’

  ‘I try out British pastimes, one by one. I already do afternoon tea and car sale boot.’

  ‘I’m not sure you’ll find a sexual partner at a bowls tournament.’

  ‘I find one if I want one. Man I met at car sale boot was filthy beast.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Fern, uncertainly. ‘Don’t tell me you met a man among the Victoria sponges at afternoon tea!’ She’d had more than one afternoon tea, and it was nobody’s idea of an X-rated activity.

  ‘No. But the waitress covered me in cream and we—’

  ‘You’re done!’ Fern snapped off her gloves. ‘You’d better not tell Nora those stories.’

  ‘Why not? Nora is my friend.’ Gingerly pulling on her thong, Evka said, ‘I come to this country for adventure. I say to myself, Evka, I say, you are young, do not waste life doing same stupid thing over and over.’ No drawling now, she sounded urgent, as if it was vital that Fern understood. ‘Do you know what I mean?’ She grabbed Fern’s arm. ‘I make own rules. I do not ask what people think of me. I am heroine of my story. And my story is adventure story!’

  Fern asked, ‘Am I boring, Layla?’

  ‘You? No! Well. Hardly ever. When you go on about Downton I tune out a bit. And when you talk me through the many, many new massage oils on the market I tend to have a little snooze.’ Layla, her sun-kissed shoulders hunched as she leaned in, said, ‘Hold on, you’re being serious.’

  ‘Maybe Adam got bored of me. And this house. And our life.’ Fern looked around the study, a small triangular room off the hall which had been repainted a rich red post-Roomies. It all looked so static – the books, the framed family photos, the cushions she’d made when she was pregnant with Tallie. ‘Our life has been pretty samey for the past few years.’ Possibly Percy Waddingsworthington could talk about Russian literature, or liked to dance naked in the dawn dew. ‘It’s so easy to get bogged down in domesticity, Layla. This house takes a lot of looking after. So do these kids.’

  ‘Every woman feels like that.’

  ‘But I became the Band-Aid holding everything together. I haven’t thought of myself as a lover in a long time.’

  ‘Don’t tell me about your sex life. Jesus, I hate it when people talk about bonking.’

  ‘Don’t panic, you’re safe.’ Sex with Adam had been good, no, great. When it happened. ‘Maybe we turned into friends who shared responsibilities.’

  ‘Listen, chum, you’re not boring. Why would I have come to your house every single Sunday for lunch if you were dull? Trust me, your Yorkshires aren’t that good. I came for the conversation and the mad stories and wondering when you’d get drunk enough to miss your chair and land on the floor.’

  ‘Once I did that!’ Fern defended herself. ‘Once!’ She let out a fluttering sigh. ‘I miss our Sundays.’ She missed their Mondays too, and the rest of their weeks. The Layla on the screen wasn’t substantial enough to grab and hustle off to the nearest wine bar.

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot – you’re at your most boring when you moan about me moving to France.’

  ‘Maybe I should move to France.’ Fern shook her head. ‘Nope. Even just saying it makes me start worrying about Tallulah’s schooling and how many pairs of pants I should pack for Ollie. I am boring. I’m rooted here like that yew tree on our drive.’

  ‘No, you’re a mum.’ Layla took a deep breath, and was silent for so long that Fern wondered if the internet connection had sputtered out. Suddenly she said, with her usual animation, ‘What’s brought on all this navel-gazing?’

  Fern told her about Evka. ‘That girl left behind everything familiar, and now she lives for adventure.’ The word glowed, a gilded pebble in the dust. ‘She has more sex than I have Cadbury’s Mini Rolls, and we both know that’s an unfeasibly high number.’

  ‘You have adventures.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Layla put on a comical ‘thinking face’ and seemed pleased when she came up with ‘That time you rode an elephant in Thailand! I’ve never ridden an elephant.’

  ‘So that’s it? One slightly pissed elephant ride is the sum total of my life’s exploits?’

  ‘You’re talking as if everybody else lives in an episode of 24. The high point of my day is strolling down to the boulangerie by the harbour to buy a baguette.’

  ‘But you adore that boulangerie. The baguette is a mini-adventure, because you were brave enough to uproot yourself and go to live in a land brimming with wine, cheese and nice arses.’

  ‘You’ve summed up my life nicely. But this mad cleaner of yours . . . if she really did run away from home, hungry for experience, then she’s probably running away from some sort of pain.’

  ‘Believe me, Evka’s more likely to cause pain than feel it.’

  It was easy to rationalize her addiction.

  By taking another letter from the dusty box, by reliving the Great Rift of ’93, Fern was reconnecting with the real Adam, the authentic model rather than the bizarre clone currently trundling around town in tight, tight, tight trousers. Only that morning he’d told her over the phone that all she had to do was snap her fingers and he’d install her and the kids in a brand new house. As if we’re dolls to move around. ‘It’s about time,’ he’d said, ‘we sold that dump.’

  It was important to remind herself that no matter what was happening now, they had once shared passion and commitment. And terrible handwriting.

  HOW I KNOW YOU LOVE ME

  You love me, Fern. You know you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t be asking my mates how I am. How do you think I am!!!! I MISS YOU. That’s how I am.

  Also you used to hang about waiting for me after you finished beauty college so we could get the bus together. You hate being cold so that proves something.

  Also you let me nick chips off you. OK so I’d never dare sneak a bite of your saveloy, but all the same.

  You look at me the way girls look at boys when they love them.

  So give in, Fernie, and take me back.

  Please.

  ‘Fish and chips?’ Nora said it again, more slowly, with scandalized emphasis. ‘Fish. And. Chips.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Auntie, fish and chips,’ said Fern. ‘The national dish, beloved by everybody.’

  ‘Actually, Mum, you’re wrong.’ Tearing open the greasy paper, releasing the sacred scents of vinegar and batter, Ollie never missed a chance to correct his elders and betters. ‘Chicken tikka masala is the national dish now.’

  The smell, the clatter of plates, the sourcing of ketchup, the skirmishes over portion size, the pro/con pickled onion debate all delighted Fern and convinced her that she was right to down tools in the kitchen and declare it takeaway night. Her cod was the size of a whale; Adam always used to say ‘Look, it’s Moby Dick!’ Tonight, she said it instead, but it fell flat.

  Tallulah lurked under the table, sharing with Boudicca, and Ollie took his chips up to his room, where Donna sat waiting.

  ‘I bet you Adam’s not eating chips,’ said Nora, with so much acidity she had no need for the vinegar bottle.

  Except she said chipsh. Fern eyeballed the blameless-looking glass of water in f
ront of her aunt, and made a mental note to mark the level on the gin bottle that constituted the Carlile cocktail cupboard.

  Nora asked, ‘I expect you’ve visited his new place by now, dear?’

  You know I haven’t. ‘Haven’t had time.’ I haven’t had an invitation either. No longer able to imagine him in his parents’ godforsaken spare room, Fern felt that Adam had inched a few squares further away on the chessboard of her life.

  ‘How’s the house-hunting, Auntie?’ Fern hoped she’d said it lightly, gaily.

  Apparently not. Nora was on to her. Tipsy or not, her iron curls shuddered with outrage as she spat, ‘I can move out tonight if I’m in the way.’

  ‘No, Auntie, I just—’

  ‘Is that what you want? Should I drag meself all the way up to the loft with these bad legs of mine and pack me bags?’

  Bagsh.

  ‘Auntie, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I hope when you’re old and penniless, your life isn’t a living hell like mine.’

  ‘Please, Auntie, let’s forget I spoke. I’m sorry.’

  Nora’s life didn’t seem that hellish from where Fern stood. It started with a lie-in, ended with an early night, and was crammed with meals brought to her on a tray, all her favourite television programmes, cosy chats with Evka, and the endless fun of telling the only relative with whom she was still on speaking terms how bad she was at everything. Not to mention access to gin.

  Creeping out from under the table, tomato sauce on her chin, Tallulah said, ‘Mummy, please don’t throw Auntie out.’

  ‘Nobody’s throwing anybody out!’ Fern felt tears prickling, as they often had since Midsummer Night. It was a sort of hell to try and try and not get anywhere, to feel misunderstood, to wonder where she’d gone wrong. Unaccustomed to self-pity, Fern pushed it away, but those tears were persistent little buggers.

  ‘Mummy?’ Tallulah peered closer.