by Claire Sandy
Every hand shot up, even the shop assistant’s.
‘Is there a sushi bar?’ asked Miles.
‘Maybe.’ Evie hesitated. This was a truly evil step to take. ‘But I noticed a burger bar . . .’
If the children had been strong enough to carry her shoulder-high out onto the cobbles, they would have done so.
All three of them looked resolutely in different directions.
Tillie looked out of the porthole that served as a window.
Scarlett looked at a mirror hanging on the raw plank wall, which gave her a view of the back of Zane’s head.
Zane looked at the floor.
A tune hissed tinnily from an iPod.
‘I like this track,’ said Scarlett.
‘S’OK,’ said Zane.
When he spoke, his lips were, thought Scarlett, as plump as a bouncy castle. And they promised the same brand of bouncy fun.
Stop it, Scarlett! she told herself. Stop it stop it stop it!
‘What was that whole thing with the tractor?’ asked Tillie. She sounded amused.
‘Something to do.’ Zane shifted, looked her full in the face. The effect was quite something, as if he was lit from within. ‘I mean, this is nowhere, you know. It’s dead here.’
‘Don’t you think it’s beautiful?’ Tillie, still amused, seemed immune to the full wattage of Zane’s allure.
‘Yeah, well, it’s green and everything.’ Zane looked at the floor again. ‘I like cities, though. I like to run with my mates.’
‘Me too,’ said Scarlett.
‘Yeah,’ said Tillie, kicking her foot gently. ‘You too.’
Around the smaller ones, Dan regressed. With nobody to see him (his mum didn’t count), he applied himself whole-heartedly to the swings and the roundabout and the slide, tucked away on the corner of the village green.
Her conscience troubling her – it was a busy creature, these days – Evie reassured herself that she hadn’t asked Miles to lie to his mother, not exactly. She’d said, ‘Shall we keep this from the others, in case they get jealous?’ and Miles had agreed, along with the rest of them. Now they worked off their E-number energy on the playground equipment, and Evie nibbled a liquorice lace and recollected Mike’s halting story back on 7 May 1995. She remembered the date, because later that evening he told her he loved her.
They’d been crossing an untidy London park, the sort that erupts in the midst of streets: a burst of tarnished green.
‘I’m not like you,’ he said, the collar of his leather jacket – a maroon blouson thing, which Evie would soon banish to a charity shop – turned up.
‘How d’you mean?’ Evie studied his face, enjoying the firm grasp of his fingers. Mike wasn’t one of those guys who’d pick up your hand and then go all sissy on you – he maintained a strong grip, as if she was a balloon and might fly away, if he faltered. ‘You weren’t born a woman or something, were you?’ They’d been talking about light, silly things – their favourite Blur tracks, Braveheart versus Sense and Sensibility – and she didn’t realize he’d made a U-turn.
‘You’re so confident. You’re so brave.’
‘Am I?’ That was news to Evie. ‘I chickened out of returning that cardi to Marks and Sparks.’
‘You’re brave in an ordinary way. You just get up and, I dunno, you trust the day ahead. I don’t, you see.’ Mike stopped and looked at her urgently. ‘I don’t trust. Didn’t you notice that about me?’
‘Not really and . . . ow!’ Evie looked down at their entwined hands; her fingers were mangled in his.
‘Sorry.’ Mike released her, but she eased their hands back together.
‘Explain, Mikey.’
How long was it since she’d called him Mikey?
‘You’re normal.’ He ignored the face she pulled. ‘Seriously, you are. You have a mum, a dad, a big brother, two little sisters. There’s milk in the fridge and a Radio Times on the coffee table. You get told off if you get up late, and you moan when it’s your go to wash up. All these things are gifts, Evie. Gifts from the universe, to help you know you belong. Me, I never had a home. I was in a home. It’s completely fucking different.’ He looked at her quickly. He rarely swore in front of her, and Evie guessed why: he feared she’d go off him.
‘Mike,’ she said softly, but he was barging ahead with his story, walking faster, so that she had to scamper on her thick-soled lace-ups to keep pace with him.
‘My mum was sixteen or something, when she had me, and her parents threw her out, and she never said who my dad was, but they think he might have been Irish. Ha!’ His laugh was horribly short and unhappy. ‘Fancy that. I might be Irish, but I might not. I could be Turkish or Scottish, or from Mars. Anyway, I was taken into care when I was a week old, and I was fostered. Just until some lovely smiley couple came and carried me away to their mansion, you know?’
They’d reached an ornamental pond full of shopping trollies, but Mike strode on over the bridge, his audience beside him.
‘Only that didn’t happen. Eight different foster homes. Then the Mitchells took me in. They split up. I went back to the home. Then the Camerons fostered me. He lost his job and got depressed, and sent me back. It kept almost happening for me. So I lived in a big house with ten other children and our care workers. There was no abuse, there were no beatings. But nobody tucked me in. There was a lock on the fridge. The adults had rotas and couldn’t wait to get away at the end of their shifts.’ He halted suddenly and glared at Evie. ‘Want to know when I’m most envious of normal people? When they say they’re like their dad, or they have hair like their mum, or something. I have no idea whether I’m like my family. Because they’re just . . .’ He swallowed, looked up at the sky. ‘They’re not there.’
‘You’re as normal as me,’ said Evie. ‘You’re ten times as kind as me. You’re more thoughtful. You’re . . .’ It felt too soon in their relationship to say how much lovelier he was than any other boy she’d ever been out with. ‘You’re special.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Mike sounded so sad. ‘I don’t want to be. I want to be ordinary. I don’t want this information I’ve got.’
‘What information?’ He’d lost Evie.
‘That the world is unkind,’ he said. ‘That there’s no safety net.’
‘Mum!’ shouted Mabel now. ‘It’s all right if me and Amber tie Miles to the slide, isn’t it?’
‘No, darling, it sort of isn’t.’ Evie emerged from the past and stood up to reclaim her charges. ‘Who’s up for an ice cream on the way home?’
‘And this is your life-line.’ Scarlett traced the lightly etched channel. ‘You’re going to live a long, long time.’
‘Tell him how many children he’s going to have.’ Tillie wasn’t, apparently, reading the book she held; she was keeping an eye on Scarlett and Zane.
‘You know how to do that, don’t you?’ When Zane demurred, Scarlett took his hand in her own. It was dry, warm. He gave off heat, despite his fey physicality. Shoulder-to-shoulder with him on a pile of cushions, she fervently wished her mates could see her. ‘Look. Beneath your little finger, here.’ Their heads were close together. His quiffy black do and her blonde stack. ‘See these upright lines? They’re your children.’
‘O . . . K.’ Zane was dubious.
‘Let’s see. Three. Or maybe four.’
He closed his fingers over hers. She didn’t dare look up. It felt way wilder than all the stuff she’d done with her last boyfriend.
Her only boyfriend.
‘Your nails,’ she said, noticing them, peering closer. They were bitten to the quick, ugly. She held on, as Zane tried to tug his hand away. ‘You’re not as tough as you look, are you, Zane Little? You’re shy.’ She risked a giggle, not sure if the boy was as haughty as his face alleged. ‘You’re a sensitive soul.’
With a tsk, Zane snatched his hand away. Then, gently, he put it back.
‘Cassis,’ mispronounced Dan. ‘And meringue. No. Wait. Lemon sorbet.’
‘I
want chocolate,’ said Mabel. ‘But not horrid chocolate. Nice chocolate.’
‘What’s a pis-tar-shee-o?’ Amber scratched her new hair-band in confusion.
The ice cream was available in endless flavours. Evie explained what stracciatella was. She explained what limoncello was. She didn’t explain what maraschino was; she left it to the hair-netted young woman behind the counter, standing patiently with her scoop, and handed Dan a ten-pound note, saying, ‘Pay up, sweetie, I’ll be outside.’
Oh, the blessed peace. Four children feels like forty children, when you’re the sole adult. Evie looked about her, savouring the village’s super-Englishness: bunting, window boxes and, on a chalkboard in a frame: We serve Devon’s best cream tea.
Even Devon’s worst cream tea would be acceptable to Evie. The tables on the pavement were peppered with tiered cake-stands and pompous-looking teapots. Cream tea endured, unchanging and reliable. It was sweet, in both senses of the word. The eager, lip-smacking cream-tea disciples at each table covered the whole spectrum. Evie saw young people, oldish people and downright doddery people, all diving in, putting first dibs on their favoured sarnie, accusing their companions of hogging the clotted cream.
Seeing a familiar figure among the doilies made Evie squint. It was her. Miss Pritchett was everybody’s favourite teacher at St Agatha’s; renowned for her groovy, yet conservative clothes, today she was bare-shouldered as she dolloped cream and poured tea.
The kids’ll scream! thought Evie, glancing back into the ice-cream emporium to see Dan picking up the change.
Miss Pritchett shaded her eyes against the sun and craned her neck to receive a kiss on the lips from a tall man, who took the seat next to her, scraping it along the pavement to get closer to her.
The children barrelled out, licking and exclaiming.
‘This way.’ Evie twirled them neatly in the other direction. ‘Last one home’s a pair of pants.’
It was easy to overlook Elizabetta. Shen would look up and there she was.
‘How long have you been there?’ Shen rose from her yoga mat on the brick stable floor.
‘A minute, madam,’ said Elizabetta from the doorway. ‘Fang has her nap, and Miles is out with Mrs Herrera. Do you need me?’
‘Go have some fun.’ Shen rolled up her mat, tightly. ‘Jump in the pool or something.’
‘I bake some bread,’ said Elizabetta, slipping away.
A burst of feminine giggles, and two girls fled past the stable door. Hot on their heels was Zane. He looked in, his hooded dark eyes on Shen’s.
‘Is Dad here?’
‘In a gym? Hardly. Are you annoying Tillie and Scarlett?’
‘You’d have to ask them,’ said Zane.
He seemed to have nothing more to say, yet he didn’t move. ‘Have a go on the equipment,’ suggested Shen, flinging a loose tee over her racer-back vest.
‘Can’t be bothered,’ said Zane.
‘Can you be bothered to peel vegetables for dinner?’
‘No.’
‘Shame. Because that’s what you’re doing. Move!’
Zane did as he was told. Over by the pool, Scarlett scanned the horizon for him, before finding his meek figure tailing Shen to the house.
‘Come on!’ shouted Tillie from the water, and Scarlett jumped in, fully clothed.
Fit to burst with her news, Evie scattered the children to the four corners of the property and went in search of her husband. She dashed into the kitchen and stopped short, staring.
A woman she’d never seen before, a stout woman in an apron, was bent over the sink, scrubbing a dish.
‘Oh,’ said Evie, and the woman turned around.
Evie would later blush at the fact that she’d suspected the cleaner of being a ghost. Wellcome Manor was so big and so old that it didn’t seem fantastical to imagine a time-slip in the kitchen, but all the same. This woman, with her Metallica tee-shirt, was flesh-and-blood.
‘Won’t be a minute, love,’ the cleaner said affably. ‘Then you’ll have the place to yourselves again.’
A skinny girl wandered out from the utility room, trailing a Hoover like a wayward pet. Beyond the glass wall, a man in overalls wielded shears.
‘Thank you.’ Evie bobbed back out. ‘You’re doing a great job.’
‘Aw, thanks,’ said the woman.
Spotting her prey mooching along the hall, Evie hustled her husband into the home cinema. Taking him by the shoulders, she said, ‘You’ll never guess what I saw in the village. Not in a million years.’ She paused before saying, ‘Well, go on then: guess!’
‘You said I couldn’t.’
‘I meant – oh, look, just guess.’
‘Um.’ Mike looked properly pained. Evie knew he was looking at the screen over her shoulder and wondering which brand it was. ‘I don’t know, Evie. A murder?’
‘A murder?’ She didn’t stop to contemplate the stupidity of his guess. ‘No, I saw . . .’ She took a deep breath. The implications were huge. ‘I saw Jon kiss Miss Pritchett. Outside a cafe. Proper kiss. Full on the lips. Like lovers.’ It had been tender, sweet, real. And adulterous.
‘Eh?’ Mike looked dubious. ‘Is this like that time you saw Matt Damon in Waitrose?’
‘No, it is not.’ Evie was sick of being reminded of that. Besides, it was more the shelf stacker’s fault than hers: it’s not fair to go around looking that much like Matt Damon. ‘It was Jon. And it was Miss Pritchett.’
‘Blimey.’ Mike scratched his head.
‘No, not blimey.’ Men were so unskilled at gossip. ‘Don’t you see what this means?’ She needed an extreme reaction to validate her own. ‘Jon’s cheating on Paula. With the kids’ teacher. It’s every brand of horrible.’
‘Well, yes. But you said yourself there was something wrong. Maybe Paula knows, and they’re working it out.’
‘The only thing Jon’s working out is his lips.’ Dissatisfied with her wordplay, Evie was travelling too fast to come up with better. ‘I don’t think Paula knows. She probably suspects, though.’ The woman’s anxiety was explicable. ‘It’s terrible.’
‘And none of our business,’ said Mike. ‘The watermill was fascinating, by the way.’
‘More fascinating than the affair going on under our noses, behind our back?’ Evie despaired of him. ‘Doesn’t it matter to you that your child’s teacher is fooling around with a parent?’
‘Maybe she does one dad a term,’ suggested Mike, enjoying Evie’s annoyance. ‘I’ll put my name down on the rota.’ He yawned, rubbed his nose. ‘Do you have any idea just how integral water-power was to the development of rural Britain?’
Before today, Evie had no opinion about watermills; now, as Mike chuntered on about interactive displays and the excellent coffee in the on-site cafe, they were her least-favourite topic of all.
‘Breathlessly, she touches his . . .’ Nope. Maybe ‘her skin glows where his clever fingers had caressed . . .’ God, no. Sounds like a nut allergy.
Lucinda Lash’s muse was being coy. Evie sat back from the laptop, her lips in the grimmest of lines. Here she was, in paradise, with all the space and peace she could desire, her kids being tended by responsible adults, her chores managed by elves, with hot and cold running champagne, and she was suffering a terminal case of writer’s block.
Back home, when she had to squeeze in her writing around the nooks and crannies of her busy days, stories flowed. She could barely keep up with the ‘screams of ecstasy’ and the ‘flurries of naked limbs’.
Deleting the page, Evie tried a different tack. She’d never written in the first person before, avoiding it because it felt too personal. Desperate times called for desperate measures, however: ‘I look beseechingly at him and he knows what I am begging him for.’
Hmm. Not a bad opener. She typed on, slowly at first, then faster, then faster still, until – like her first-person heroine – she peaked and slumped back, exhausted.
Reading back over the racy scene, Evie realized she’d simply
put down, word-for-word, what she and Mike had done last night in the wide, rumpled bed.
Dicing a potato slowly, methodically, was meditative. Evie relished Wellcome Manor’s Japanese knives, their thin, deadly edges so unlike the blunt bastards she wielded at home.
Shen swept in. ‘A potato,’ she said, taking something beige out of the fridge, ‘is basically a hand grenade.’
‘I’m sautéing them,’ said Evie defiantly. ‘In lovely, lovely oil.’
‘On your hips be it,’ said Shen. Peering at a recipe on her iPad, she began to chop green things, and to peel other green things and grind yet another green thing with a pestle. ‘Anything exciting in the village?’
‘Various olde-worlde opportunities to spend money. Lovely houses. Ice cream.’ Evie hesitated. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Shen about Jon and Miss Pritchett. She told Shen more or less everything, but a protective feeling towards Paula held her back. ‘Standard chocolate-box stuff. It’d make you think: God, I could so live here, but if you swapped London for it you’d be on the cooking sherry in a fortnight.’
‘Ha!’ A cloud of cigar smoke announced Clive. ‘True, true.’ He ignored Shen’s flapping, shooing hands as he nicked a sliver of green pepper. ‘Fancy a snifter? I feel the need to open a bottle of something cold, after my hard day’s sunbathing.’
A cork popped. Glasses chinked. This, thought Evie, is Clive’s soundtrack: the theme-tune of the good life.
‘Remember that, Wifey dearest?’ He gestured at Shen’s screensaver, a shot of their little family on a snowy mountaintop, all bobble hats and grins. ‘Klosters. Last Christmas. We almost bought a chalet there.’ Where other people brought home a souvenir tea towel, Clive nabbed real estate. ‘D’you ski, Evie?’
‘God, no,’ said Evie. She was far too accident-prone to attempt winter sports; she’d break her leg simply phoning the travel agent. She leaned over to peer at the snap. ‘Look at you all, up in the clouds,’ she said dreamily. Far above mundane matters; far above poisonous secrets from loved ones.
‘That’s the top of the Rinerhorn,’ said Shen. ‘A really challenging ski run. I loved it.’