by Jane Renshaw
Flora smiled at Jasmine, who was standing at the door looking up at them through her hair.
Jasmine, Ailish’s fifteen-year-old daughter, was an androgynously skinny little thing, looking utterly ridiculous in a black boob tube, tiny red shorts and high clumpy black shoes. Her fake-tanned, stick-thin legs with their bony little knees were those of a child, but her blonde hair fell in shiny sheets on either side of her face, which was plastered in foundation and dominated by huge black caterpillar-like eyebrows she must have spent forever pencilling on.
Without looking at him, Flora knew Neil was staring at the eyebrows.
Jasmine didn’t respond to Flora’s smile.
‘Hello, Jasmine!’ she persevered. ‘You look nice!’
‘Your hair’s amazing,’ said Beckie.
Jasmine, ignoring them both as usual, muttered to Neil: ‘Mum’s in the kitchen?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Neil, deadpan. ‘Is she? I, like, really don’t know, Jasmine? I’ve only just, like, got here?’
‘Dad!’ said Beckie, rolling her eyes at Jasmine, whose mouth might have twitched at the edges before she turned away.
The noise was even worse inside. Leaving them to shut the door behind them, Jasmine clumped her way through the hall ahead of them. The house was a mirror image of their own, with the stairs on the right of the hallway rather than the left. It always unsettled Flora, being here in this skewed, out-of-kilter version of their own home. Ailish had painted the oak panelling a soft dove-grey, and in place of Flora’s beloved scruffy antiques were the ‘pieces’, as Ailish called them, sourced from interiors shops: a too-chunky, clumsily carved cabinet finished in pale pink chalk paint and inexpertly ‘distressed’, which had none of the charm of the genuine antique it was trying to emulate and probably cost five times as much; a tub chair in pink and yellow tweed; a huge mirror with fairy lights strung around it.
The whole house looked like a boutique interiors shop.
In the kitchen, Marianne was standing at the sink shrieking and flicking her hair, and dabbing at her cleavage with a cloth. Katie and Ailish each had one of Mia’s hands and were bopping to the beat, swinging the child’s arms encouragingly, while Mia, standing stock-still, had a ‘this too shall pass’ expression on her face. The two other women in the room Flora didn’t recognise. They were fussing with the candles on the table.
‘Beckie!’ Mia yanked her hands free and came rushing across the room to them.
Flora made herself smile down at her.
It was hard to believe that Mia was related to Ailish. She was a little tomboy with no interest in how she looked, her hair cut in a strange mullet, short at the sides and long at the back. The child cruelty aspect of this haircut featured regularly in Ailish’s Facebook posts. Mia herself was presumably not meant to be aware of this, but, ‘Auntie Ailish hates my hair,’ Mia had told Flora with satisfaction the other day. ‘She wants me to grow out the sides. But I like it. No long bits falling in my face, but long at the back to show I’m a girl.’
How frustrating for Ailish, although possibly it suited her not to press too hard to make Mia over. Mia was naturally pretty and, particularly as she grew up, would be in danger of putting Jasmine well and truly in the shade.
There were studies showing that pretty girls got away with bad behaviour more easily than their more ordinary-looking peers. Flora had read that on the internet, and had immediately thought of sparkling green eyes and an oval face and long raven hair.
‘Floraaaaa!’ Ailish came tottering round the table and gave her a hug. ‘Hiii-yiiii! How are you?’
Ailish always wore heels. In her bare feet she’d have been about five foot nothing. Her hair was streaked blonde and cut in a feathered crop, her eyes carefully made up in purples and greys as if to match the kitchen. In fact, this was possible. She had a small mouth and nose and slightly upward-slanting eyes all close together in the middle of her face. Neil called her the Toxic Chipmunk.
‘How about this weather?!’
This was a dig at Flora’s suggestion, when Ailish had first mooted the idea of a May barbeque, that it was a bit risky.
‘I know!’ Flora beamed back at her. ‘Perfect! We haven’t even brought the umbrellas I had lined up!’
‘I think May often is the best month in Scotland, isn’t it?’
Mia grabbed Beckie’s hand and they ran to the door and out into the sun.
Flora wanted to run after them, to pull Beckie back inside.
Neil thought her reservations about Mia were ridiculous. And they probably were. Mia was no doubt just what she seemed – a funny, rather naughty little girl who had no real malice in her. A girl who loved playing outside and using her imagination, who loved creating all sorts of worlds to run around and get grubby in.
It was ridiculous, to jump to conclusions about Mia being a bad influence on their daughter and being responsible for what Beckie had done to Edith, when Mia didn’t even go to the same school; and neither one of them, as Neil had pointed out, had ever witnessed Mia being unkind to another child. To ban Beckie from seeing her best friend, for no good reason, would probably just make things worse.
Neil was right.
Annoyingly, he usually was.
But Flora couldn’t help worrying about what Mia might do, unsupervised, when there were no adults watching. She was Ailish’s niece, after all – and, let’s face it, she was basically feral.
She set the Tupperware container with her mini-quiches on the worktop. The table was shabby-chic-ed to within an inch of its life, all vintage china and pastel plates and scented candles in moulded green glass holders.
Neil was standing staring around him as if he’d just landed on another planet.
‘Iain and the boys are out there’ – Ailish waved a hand at the open door – ‘burning a range of meats he hunted down last night in Tesco.’ She had a high, little-girl voice. ‘They could probably do with another of the tribe to stand looking at it while it burns to a crisp.’ Giggle.
Men Are So Funny And Hopeless was one of the themes of The Chipmunk Show, as Neil called Ailish’s Facebook posts, and no doubt there’d be some photos up there tonight of Iain grinning hopelessly at a charred burger.
Neil scuttled outside. Not that he’d relish the prospect of two hours with ‘Iain and the boys’, but anything was presumably preferable to this.
And he’d be able to keep an eye on Beckie out there.
‘Take a pew,’ said Ailish.
At least the coffee was always good. Flora glugged it and shovelled up macarons amidst the giggles and shrieks as Ailish held court, relating the latest outrage perpetrated by her ex-sister-in-law, Mia’s mother, who had an important role as the villain ‘She’ on The Chipmunk Show. It seemed She had thrown away the tap shoes and unitard Ailish had bought Mia a fortnight ago, last time Mia had been staying. Mia usually stayed with Ailish and family rather than with her father, Ailish’s hopeless brother, on the weekends on which he was supposed to have her.
And now She was refusing to take Mia to tap dancing classes.
Marianne: ‘Why do people like Her even have children, if they can’t be bothered with them?’
The faces round the table were flushed, bright-eyed, eager. A pack turning on their prey. A mob at a witch’s trial.
It was what Ailish did. What women like her had always done. She’s strange, She’s weird, She’s a freak. Compare and contrast Her with amazing Me.
It was at times like this that she most missed Pam. Her old life. Ruth’s life.
‘I could sort of understand it if Mia was running around going to a load of other activities, if taking her to tap once a week was going to be a problem because She couldn’t fit it into their packed schedule. But the only organised activity She can be bothered taking Mia to is blooming rock climbing!’
Intakes of breath and pained faces.
‘It’s like She really is trying to turn her into Arya Stark. Next Christmas it’ll be a sword called Needle! Stick ’e
m with the pointy end!’
Flora felt a shiver go right down her body, from shoulders to thighs.
No.
No.
This was just Ailish being Ailish.
She had to try to keep a sense of perspective here. What would Pam have said?
Pam would no doubt have agreed with Neil that Mia’s mum was doing a great job, giving Mia a free-range, old-fashioned childhood, letting her play outside with her friends most days after school in their village, not caring if she got muddy or ripped her clothes, and resisting all the pressure there was these days to do so many organised activities that there was no room left for kids to do their own thing and use their imaginations.
And Pam would probably also have agreed that Mia was good for Beckie, who might come back from playing with her with a graze on her hand or a cut on her chin, but bubbling with excitement as she related their latest adventure.
But surely Pam, as a mother, would see the dangers that Neil couldn’t?
Flora was going to have to speak to Neil again. Insist that she really wasn’t happy about Beckie playing with Mia unless they were closely supervised.
‘I – actually, I did a bit of rock climbing myself as a kid,’ admitted Katie, flushing. ‘It’s meant to be good for… for coordination and suppleness…’
‘Well, maybe if it’s properly organised and safe,’ Ailish conceded. ‘On one of those indoor walls or whatever. But the place She takes her is just some Clampit’s farm. Probably not even certified or licensed or anything – it’s just this farmer who’s got a quarry on his land and has decided to make a fast buck by getting a load of kids dangling off it on ropes.’
‘You know,’ said Katie, flushing all the more, ‘I sometimes think we wrap them in cotton wool to an extent that’s – in its way – more of a problem than letting them take some risks.’
Ailish looked at Katie as if she’d just suggested they take their offspring to the nearest motorway and turn them loose on the hard shoulder.
But Katie, for once, wasn’t backing down. ‘Like we did when we were their age – going out playing on our own and getting into scrapes… climbing a drainpipe, or being chased by the parkie, or swimming in a river… Never did us any harm. Quite the opposite.’
‘Maybe you were lucky,’ said Flora, and she couldn’t quite keep the edge from her voice.
Ailish looked at her.
She hastily invented: ‘A boy… in my class at school… this boy, he was drowned in a river. A group of boys were messing around one lunchtime, and he drowned.’
Ailish raised her eyebrows. ‘Were you there?’
Flora could feel her face flushing. Her heart pumping. ‘Not when it happened, but… I was in the playground when the other boys came running back, soaking wet and crying, and… I’ve never liked being in the water since. I think that’s why Beckie doesn’t like swimming – she’s probably picked up my feelings about it.’
Had that been convincing?
Ailish was looking at her oddly.
As the conversation turned to Jasmine and her general wonderfulness, Flora muttered something about checking on how the incineration was going and slipped through the open doors to the garden.
Ailish and Iain’s garden was even bigger than theirs, as they didn’t have an extension on the back of their house. But it wasn’t as nice. Fewer trees and no wild areas – an expanse of perfectly mown grass and a huge area of patio, on which the men had set up the barbeque. There were three large outdoor tables with chairs round them, and one of these had been appropriated by Jasmine and her friends, all with their phones out.
The younger kids were at the end of the garden playing a game involving a lot of rushing around, hysterical laughter and shouting. This was fine, though, as the manicured nature of the garden meant there were no overgrown areas in which they could conceal themselves from adult view. They seemed to be playing harmoniously, but at the first hint of discord Flora would have no qualms about stepping in. She didn’t care how many other parents she offended.
Mia, of course, was doing most of the shouting. Her cousin Thomas seemed to have been cast in the role of an animal of some sort, crawling around on all fours, mouth hanging open.
Thomas was a mouth breather.
He was pretty much airbrushed out of The Chipmunk Show. But Flora liked Thomas a lot. He was a good influence – as easy-going as Beckie but much more cautious, much less adventurous. ‘Mia, don’t!’ he was often heard to exclaim when the three of them were playing together. He could be surprisingly stubborn and forceful if he felt his cousin was going too far. And Mia, equally surprisingly, would always back down when that strict note came into Thomas’s voice.
If Thomas was there, Flora could maybe relax.
The men were clustered around a woman she recognised as a neighbour from a couple of doors down. She was in mid-anecdote, waving a glass of red wine and laughing, and the men were guffawing and striking poses and sucking in their bellies.
She was very attractive, but cleverly attractive, attractive in a way that looked casual and effortless, but which Flora knew was not. Her glossy hair was caught up loosely in a clip at the nape of her neck, and strands of it were coming out, caressing her bare neck and shoulders. She wore a simple khaki sweater with a low, wide neckline, dark skinny jeans and pink trainers.
She reminded Flora a bit of the girls in The Apprentice – the hard, efficient ones, all sleek suits and heels and hair, rather than the poor quirky souls Flora identified with who were obviously just there for the entertainment value. She seemed to remember Ailish saying that this neighbour was an HR consultant, whatever that entailed, always jetting off to London and Birmingham and Belfast. A single career woman with no kids, and therefore suspect in Ailish’s eyes.
She was striking rather than conventionally pretty, with a strong jaw and wide mouth, and had the kind of figure Flora had always envied: slim and leggy but curvaceous. Flora had seen her out jogging in the mornings. She was the kind of woman who regarded her body in the same way as she regarded any other aspect of her life, as something in which she would achieve the highest standard possible within the bounds of a robust cost–benefit analysis.
And what was wrong with that, for God’s sake? It was commendable.
Jasmine take note.
Jasmine was sitting staring expressionlessly at her phone. There was a blank quality to her that Flora always found disturbing – it was more than the usual sullen teenage thing. It was as if the real Jasmine, whoever she was, had shrivelled up and died inside the carapace Ailish had constructed for her.
Princess Jasmine, Ailish called her with the faux-critical humour she specialised in when talking about her daughter. Jasmine, ran the subtext, had the life of a princess thanks to Ailish being a super-mum, and had an aura of royalty about her, a sheen, a polish, a butterfly beauty, for the same reason. Well, that and Ailish’s genes.
Poor Jasmine. A very ordinary girl under relentless pressure to be extraordinary.
Ailish’s main brand.
Stop it. She had to stop this habit of judging she seemed to have fallen into, whether it was Beckie’s friends or the mums at school or her neighbours. It was as if she didn’t want to make friends, as if she didn’t even want Beckie to have any. As if she was determined to see the worst in people so she’d have an excuse to keep them at arm’s length.
Mrs Jenner had asked if there were problems at home.
What she’d meant was: What are you doing that’s messing with Beckie’s head?
She crossed the patio to where Neil was standing with a glass of beer. He was the only man not in Apprentice Woman’s group of swains, preferring instead to examine the contents of the small raised pond.
She sighed. ‘What time is it?’
Neil looked at his watch. ‘Almost 12:30. Hour and a half to go.’
‘Hour and a half to go until what?’ said an amused voice. It was Apprentice Woman, standing raising her eyebrows at them.
‘Oh�
��’ Flora couldn’t think.
‘Till we can escape,’ said Neil.
‘Neil!’
Apprentice Woman looked behind her, to where the other men were gathered now around the barbeque, and whispered, ‘Is there a tunnel or what?’
Neil didn’t lower his voice. ‘Not for want of the kids trying. They’ve excavated about eight inches so far on our side of the wall.’
‘Well, they need to get a bloody move on! So you live next door?’
‘Someone has to.’
‘Neil!’
A grin. ‘Lucky for you I’m not Ailish’s sister or something.’
‘Lucky for you,’ said Neil, on a roll, beaming in smug wonder at his own wit as Apprentice Woman threw back her head and laughed, clutching Flora’s arm for support.
Flora couldn’t help smiling too.
‘Oh God,’ said Apprentice Woman, ‘can you imagine being actually related?’
And they all looked over at the teenagers’ table.
‘I try not to,’ Flora found herself saying. ‘I don’t think Jasmine…’ But no, she couldn’t say that. She didn’t even know this woman. And who was she, anyway, to criticise the way someone else was bringing up their daughter?
‘Oh God, I know! Surely there must be laws she’s breaking? Seriously? I mean, what is she thinking? Putting the poor girl all over Facebook and Instagram practically in a thong, like she’s pimping her own daughter?’
Neil guffawed, spraying beer onto the flagstones.
Apprentice Woman looked behind them again to check there was no one in earshot. ‘Apparently Mia’s mum has started calling Jasmine “Princess Prozzie”.’
Jasmine, it had to be said, did look like a prostitute.