by Claire Sandy
I love you. The thought came clear and cool, like the champagne she was drinking like tap water. Did Mike know she loved him? They said it, of course, but perhaps over the course of a marriage the phrase lost its currency. When they’d first started dating, Evie had often thought it – I love you, Mike Herrera – at random moments. Halfway through a shared bag of chips. In a cinema queue. In the millisecond before he saw her, as he waited outside the Tube.
‘I do believe,’ said Clive, with the muddy diction that his omnipresent cigar produced, ‘I’ve won.’ He laid down his cards.
‘Again?’ Mike’s voice went girlishly high.
‘Your Daddy-waddy won again!’ said Shen to Prunella, who didn’t care.
‘All yours.’ Mike pushed the pile of coins in the middle of the table towards Clive.
‘Put it back in the pot.’ Clive pushed it back.
‘It’s yours,’ said Mike. ‘Take it.’
Maybe, hoped Evie, Clive didn’t hear the edge to Mike’s voice.
‘It’s only a game, mate.’
He’d heard it.
‘A game you won,’ said Mike. ‘Fair’s fair. Mate.’
Clive regarded him thoughtfully, then took the money, smiling to himself as if he’d overheard a joke the others couldn’t catch.
‘I’m bowing out,’ said Mike. ‘Too rich for my blood.’
‘Just you and me, then, Wifey.’ Clive regarded Shen across the table. ‘This should be a walkover.’
‘Careful, Clive.’ Shen pursed her bee-stung lips. ‘Don’t get on the wrong side of me.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Clive, dealing showily. He went on, as if airing a famous quote, ‘You’re a great wife, but you’d make an even greater ex-wife.’
Evie knew that Shen often taunted Clive with that phrase, lampooning his inability to stay wed. His specialist subject on Mastermind would be alimony. Evie had needed a spreadsheet to get her head around the timeline: with three marriages and six children, Clive was a one-man population explosion.
‘By the time my lawyer had finished with you,’ said Shen, ‘you’d be living in a studio flat, with just the one spare pair of tighty-whities.’
‘Shush,’ said Evie. ‘She doesn’t mean it, Clive.’
‘Oh yes, she does!’ roared Clive.
‘That reminds me,’ said Evie, eager to change the subject; Mike had no patience with the Ling-Little exhibitionistic spats. ‘Isn’t your son arriving tomorrow, Clive?’ Evie reached for the unusual name, the champagne rendering her brain slippy and unreliable. ‘Zac, isn’t it?’
‘Zane.’ Clive sighed it out.
‘Can’t wait to meet him.’
‘Let’s see if you still feel that way when you’ve actually met him,’ said Shen.
‘Have I got this right?’ Evie closed her eyes and drew a diagram in the air. ‘He’s your . . . fifth child, and your second-oldest son, yeah?’
‘Congratulations.’ Clive looked at her hard. ‘And for the top prize – which wife is he from?’
As if, thought Evie, Zane was a calf and his mother a prize heifer. ‘Um, ooh, second?’
‘Well done.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘First smell of trouble and the boy goes home.’
Draining her glass, Shen said, ‘I’m pooped.’
‘Must be all that cooking you didn’t do, darling,’ said Clive. ‘And all those cases you didn’t carry.’
‘He’s so funny,’ deadpanned Shen.
All of them sleepy, but too comfortable to move, they sat outside in the balmy night until Evie stretched, saying, ‘That’s me done’, as a church bell – clear as, well, a bell – tolled the late hour. She heaved herself out of the chair and kissed the top of Mike’s head. ‘See you up there, yeah?’
Savouring the house’s peace, she anticipated the joy of her panelled bathroom and its insanely fluffy towels as she padded through the house. With the colours toned down, and the air still, Wellcome Manor felt like a good place, a safe place. Paradise, though? That was a big ask.
The phone in her pocket cheeped needily: Have you told him yet? Are you mine, all mine? xxxx
Every paradise, thought Evie, stilled on the turning of the stair, has its serpent.
DAY 2
Wednesday, 12th August
Hi!
Please rescue me. Surrounded by oaps & kids. House OK. Stupid girl coming later – already can’t stand her. Tell me all about the big party. (Actually don’t!)
Scarlett xxxxxxxxxxxx
Usually first out of bed, the one shouting, ‘Don’t make me come up those stairs!’ and sorting PE gear while excavating mould from sliced white, Evie luxuriated in having the palatial bed to herself.
A happy X-shape, she stretched out her arms and legs, gazing at the rectangle of blue framed in her window. There was no laundry to fold, no packed lunches to cobble together from a dejected Mini Babybel and some elderly ham. Nobody disturbed her haven of high-thread-count Egyptian cotton and the countless small pillows that had bemused Mike. ‘But why so many?’ he’d asked, almost in tears.
She felt fresh and clean and virginal.
This was the perfect opportunity to send a text without Mike’s knowledge.
Some women, she supposed, would feel racy; Evie felt grubby as she rewrote the lines a couple of times before feeling able to send it. The tone had to be right. She mustn’t sound as if she was having second thoughts, but she must make the point that she’d agreed to tell Mike after the holiday.
‘What’s that?’ Evie, yawning, peered into the tumbler of vivid green slosh that Mike held.
Mike opened his mouth, but Shen’s voice came out – or seemed to – as she spoke for him. ‘It’s a kale smoothie. Packed with nutrients and highly delicious.’
‘Is it?’ Evie asked Mike, as she opened one of the fridges and searched for calorific contraband. ‘Delicious, I mean.’
‘Tastes like very old knickers might, if somebody boiled them.’ Mike put down the drink. ‘Sorry, Shen.’
‘I told you, Mike, my conscience won’t let me make you a fry-up.’ Shen curled her lip as if he’d mooted sodomy for breakfast. ‘I won’t do that to your body.’
‘My body won’t mind,’ said Mike. ‘Honest.’
‘I never fry. Besides, I’m on the 5:2 diet.’
Her arms full of white bread, bacon, chocolate spread and butter, Evie said, ‘We’re not on any diet, so . . .’ She slammed a copper frying pan onto the hob; cooking with these beauties would amount to a workout. She appraised Shen suspiciously. ‘Is this one of your fast days?’ Stuff got thrown on fast days, and the little woman had good aim.
‘Nope, but my body is a temple, and nothing like that,’ Shen gestured witheringly at the slagheap of deliciousness on the marble, ‘ever enters it.’
‘My body,’ said Mike, lustily unscrewing the Nutella, ‘is one of those old-fashioned pubs.’
‘I’m bored,’ said Dan, sticking a grotty finger in the Nutella.
‘The Browns will be here soon,’ said Evie, using the jaunty tone that never worked when she used it to say, It’s tidy-your-bedroom day, or I know! Why not start your school project on the Nazis?
‘The kids are girls. One’s Scarlett’s age and one’s Mabel’s, so it’s all right for them, as usual.’
‘It’s not.’ Scarlett snatched the Nutella; it had a short life-expectancy around the Herreras. ‘I’ve never met this Tillie before. And Mabel says the little one’s a wuss.’
‘I want smiles,’ said Evie sternly. ‘I want everybody to get along.’
‘We’ll be nice, Mum, don’t worry.’ Scarlett kissed her mother and Evie forced herself not to touch the warm spot on her cheek. It had been a while since Scarlett had spontaneously kissed her like that.
As bacon sputtered its lovely song, Evie broke with tradition and made a cup of green tea, instead of her usual extra-strong builder’s with two sugars. It seemed appropriate. The glass doors were folded back and, as the cliché says, it brought the garden indoors. It also
brought Elizabetta indoors, slipping in from the dazzling terrace like a nymph, brown feet bare, her bikini three concise triangles of gold. Does she realize, thought Evie, that she’s at the peak of her loveliness? That old quote was right; youth is wasted on the young.
‘Is Fang sleeping?’ Shen asked Elizabetta as the girl bent into the fridge.
‘Yes, madam.’ Elizabetta foraged, her voice muffled by row upon row of worthily dull food items. ‘She is awake all night, so I let her rest. I go check on her now.’
It was too much to ask of a man to ignore a proffered bottom wearing just a gold scrap. Evie caught Mike’s eye and he jumped. ‘I wasn’t,’ he spluttered.
‘S’OK,’ she whispered as the nanny made for the stairs. ‘I stared too.’
‘But I didn’t . . .’ He gave up. ‘She’s distracting,’ he admitted.
‘As long as it stays up here.’ Evie tapped his forehead. ‘And doesn’t travel down here.’ She merely gestured at his shorts, figuring that direct contact with your husband’s equipment in a shared kitchen would be bad taste.
‘I’m too tired even to fantasize,’ laughed Mike.
‘Tired?’ Shen was scornful. ‘How come everybody’s tired these days? Nobody complained of being tired before washing machines and cars and . . . and . . .’ She looked around her. ‘Blenders. Machines to do all the work, yet we compete over who’s the most tired. I’ve done an hour in the gym over in the stable, but you don’t hear me moaning.’
It was news to Evie that there was a gym in the stable, and it wasn’t the sort of news she liked. A big cake in the stable, yes. Or Ryan Gosling whimpering her name. Gym? Not so much.
‘But you, dear girl,’ said Evie, sandwiching rashers between doorsteps of bread, ‘are twenty-nine, and we,’ she gestured to her husband with her sarnie, ‘are forty and forty-one. Those extra years wear you out, I tell you.’
‘Especially,’ said Mike, his mouth full, ‘if you don’t have a nanny.’
But we do have a nanny, Evie almost said. ME.
On his first cigar of the day, Clive sat outside, shaking out the newspaper, whose headline roared: UK TO SWELTER IN HEATWAVE. He, too, was in appalling shorts; perhaps they were contagious. The cut was classier than Mike’s, but the pattern was vomity, and the legs that stuck out of them weren’t half as nice as the tanned, athletic pins of Evie’s husband.
Hovering and making conversation, Evie said, ‘Looking forward to the Browns arriving?’
‘Nope.’ Clive didn’t take his eyes from the newsprint. ‘Don’t know the people.’ Not one for small talk, he ignored topics that didn’t interest him. ‘Besides, somebody else is on his way.’ Clive raised his voice to call, ‘Shen! What time is Zane the Boy Wonder expected?’, his attention still half-claimed by the paper.
‘Any minute now.’ Shen was playing peek-a-boo with Fang, who stared pityingly at such foolishness, her eyes two round dark Os. ‘His mum said to expect him for breakfast.’
‘Mum,’ said Scarlett, emerging into the sunshine with a cereal bowl, ‘that breakfast bar is bigger than our dining table at home.’
‘I know.’ Evie smiled, wondering at the unbreakable bond between teenagers and cereal bowls.
‘And the bedroom,’ said Scarlett, chubby shoulders already blushing in her strappy top after half a day of holiday sunshine, ‘is, like, as big as the ground floor at home.’
‘We get it,’ said Mike, intent on his iPad. ‘Our home is a dump compared to this palace.’ He looked up. ‘D’you know how many people slept on pavements last night? They woke up cold and hungry, feeling lucky if they weren’t assaulted. All day they’ll worry about where they’ll end up tonight. Ask them if they’d like our centrally heated, carpeted family home.’
Mulishly looking down at her food, Scarlett opened her mouth, shut it abruptly and stomped down the terrace steps, taking her Shreddies with her.
‘Seriously?’
Evie recoiled from the venom of Mike’s, ‘Yes, Evelyn, seriously.’
Her full name only appeared at times of great stress; she’d been ‘Evelyn’ when her finger had slipped and she’d bid £8,000 for a vintage saucer on eBay. Evie wondered what was on Mike’s mind, to turn him so shitty so early in the day.
‘Life’s hard,’ said Mike.
‘And then you die,’ laughed Clive.
‘The sooner they learn,’ Mike wasn’t laughing, ‘the better.’
Evie refused to see the world as an assault course of sharp edges and hidden trapdoors; she was grateful that their three youngsters had a home that was warm, both literally and metaphorically.
‘Car!’ shrieked Dan, tearing around the side of the house in Speedos and wellies. ‘Car! Car! Car!’ He sounded as if he’d never seen one before.
‘The Browns,’ chorused Evie and Shen. Evie kept her tone light, but Shen made no bones about how she felt. As they traipsed through the house to the front door, she said, her lowered eyebrows two elegant brushstrokes, ‘Paula’ll be a bag of nerves. As usual. And Jon will look as if he’d rather be somewhere else. As usual.’
‘Let’s make the best of it.’ Evie couldn’t resist adding piously, ‘It was you who invited them.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said Shen, as they stood on the front step and watched the newcomers decant themselves from a low-nosed BMW, which trailed its own bespoke fog of gloom. ‘Like we said, there’s something weird about that family.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Evie, watching Paula and Jon Brown peer up at the massed windows of Wellcome Manor, shoulders set as if facing a firing squad. ‘There’s something sad about that family.’
A cricket set had been unearthed; another noise competed with the poetic sounds of leather and willow.
Not that Paula’s voice was loud. It was, in fact, as mousy as her appearance, but it droned on and on, persistent and fretful.
‘Sorry. I shouldn’t let things get to me. I’m sorry, but . . .’ and she was off again, taking the mug handed to her by Evie, but not raising it to her lips.
‘It’ll be fine.’ Shen was airy, surreptitiously crossing her eyes at Evie, who ignored her; no need to disfigure their stay in this harmonious house with an us-against-them vibe.
‘I’m not complaining about your driving, Jon, honestly I’m not, but you do like going fast, and I did say, around about Bracknell, that you should slow down a little bit, and you said you would, but . . .’
If Paula went missing, Evie could give the police only the sketchiest of descriptions. Medium height, medium weight, nothing-y hair, nervous expression. Sensing that Paula was close to tears, Evie put her hand on the woman’s arm.
‘It will be fine,’ she repeated, more soothingly than Shen’s brush-off. ‘I’ve had one of those on-the-spot fines before and they’re a pain, but all you do is present your licence at a police station and—’
‘That’s just it!’ Paula turned to her husband, who was leaning, arms crossed, head down, against one of the fridges. (A cream Smeg, Evie noted, slightly ashamed at the obsession with fixtures and fittings that Wellcome Manor had sparked.) ‘Please don’t go to the police station, Jon. Please.’
The other adults were confounded by such high emotion about a mundane matter. Scarlett, wandering in barefoot, caught the mood and gawped at the tableau.
‘For God’s sake.’ Jon’s voice was educated, low. Straightening up, he spoke in the gritted-teeth undertone that was compulsory for private tiffs carried out in public. ‘It’s a legal requirement, Paula. The nearest police station is a few miles away, and I’m off to get it over and done with.’
And he was gone, all wiry, blond six-foot-two of him, with no farewell.
‘Oh, well,’ said Paula, smiling grimly, her head wobbling. ‘Oh . . .’ she hesitated, while everybody looked at her, ‘. . . well,’ she repeated.
‘Let me show you around.’ Evie broke the spell, taking Paula’s arm. ‘You missed the welcome hamper.’ She smiled. ‘Moët, foie gras and quails’ eggs, but not one pack
et of Monster Munch.’
The woman smiled vaguely, allowing herself to be shepherded out. ‘Girls . . . ?’ She looked behind her, and little bespectacled Amber, a paper-doll version of an eight-year-old, much smaller than her classmates Mabel and Miles and somehow more flimsy, rushed to enfold herself in her mother’s skirts.
Tillie, older, taller, stayed in position against the pantry door, recreating her father’s pose. She was a grave-faced girl, with Jon’s fine bones and intelligent air, but her clothes suggested a freedom of thought and opinion. She’d bound up her hair in a wispy floral scarf, and the striped dress cinched at the waist with a man’s belt betrayed a love of foraging in charity shops. The skinny calves ending in Doc Martens made Evie smile; she’d worn them herself, about a million years ago.
With an infinitesimal nod, Evie communicated with her own older daughter. Understanding, but not liking, the coded suggestion to ‘play nicely’, Scarlett said, carefully bored, ‘Tillie, isn’t it? Wanna see the pool?’
‘OK.’ Tillie followed her out.
‘Don’t get in!’ shouted Paula.
‘Amber,’ said Mabel confidingly, as if letting her in on a secret, ‘there’s a treehouse!’
‘Really!’ Amber’s pale face lit from within. ‘But . . .’ She looked at her mum. ‘I’m not allowed to climb treeth.’
Butting in, Shen said, ‘It’s low, Paula. They’ll be fine.’
‘Yes,’ said Paula. She was smiling in the way that women smile when sending menfolk off to war: brave, despite the hideous dangers. ‘Off you trot, darling.’
‘No,’ said Amber. ‘I’ll stay with you.’
‘See?’ hissed Shen as the subdued group moved on. ‘Weird.’
Wellcome Manor worked its magic. Even Paula wasn’t immune to the cheering properties of silk and sisal and wet rooms.
‘This room,’ said Shen, looking round appraisingly at the painted floorboards and immense sleigh bed, ‘will do nicely for you and Jon.’
‘It’s far too nice!’ Paula was so aghast at the luxury that Evie felt ashamed for nabbing the second-best room with such haste. ‘We’ll take an attic room.’