by Claire Sandy
‘Of course.’ Scarlett remembered the yearning, taut feel deep in her tum and shifted on her cushion. ‘But nobody will ever, ever convince me there’s any point to sex without love.’
Zane stared. Rather than work out what the stare meant – she’d been working out what people meant ever since she’d turned thirteen, and it wears a girl out – Scarlett looked out of the rough-edged window.
One of them coming from the snooker outbuilding and one from the house, her parents were on a collision course. ‘Oi, Dad!’ yelled Scarlett. ‘I hope you’re going to tell Mum off about getting up so late! She’s not a team player, dontcha know?’
Hands on hips, Mike stood beneath the treehouse and called up to her. ‘Your mum deserves a lie in now and then. Besides, she’s got a brilliant left hook.’ He wanted to leap up the ladder. He wanted to shake Zane and say, ‘Hands off my little girl!’ He did neither of these things and he hoped Evie would notice and be proud of him.
Mabel said, ‘I’ve stopped sulking.’
‘Oh, good, darling,’ said Evie. ‘I’ll alert the media.’
‘Come and do my hair,’ said Mabel. ‘In here.’ She led her mother into the narrow galley that housed the less-photogenic necessities. ‘In the futility room.’
Typical of Mabes – a nester, a snuggler – to find the smallest room.
‘Up or down?’ Evie’s hairdressing skills were limited.
‘A plait all the way around like a crown, with bits hanging down, please.’
Crikey. Evie teased at the tangles gathered at Mabel’s neck. ‘Sorry!’ she said in response to each tetchy ‘Ow!’
‘There’s a swing,’ said Mabel, truly, deeply excited. ‘It swings!’
‘Yes, darling, I suppose it would.’
‘Amber won’t get on it,’ said Mabel, ‘in case she falls off.’
‘We all fall off things,’ said Evie, soothingly. ‘We brush ourselves off and get up again.’
‘Unless we break our heads open, and our brains are all over the floor.’
‘Well, yes,’ agreed Evie, assuming this happy scenario was courtesy of Paula.
The trio of eight-year-old classmates had gelled into a gang, a solid, moving mass of childhood. The Eights was how Evie thought of them, as in Where are The Eights? or Is that strange boinging noise The Eights on the trampoline?
Dan had consciously uncoupled from The Eights. Neither Evie nor Mike dared to mention out loud that their middle child was engrossed in a book. The Greek myths that Evie had unthinkingly plucked from the bookcase and shoved at him, in answer to his ‘I’m bored!’ whine, had captured him utterly.
‘It’s like a film, but in your head,’ was his best stab at describing why he now rarely lifted his eyes from Achilles, or the Minotaur.
‘Nicely put,’ said Evie.
‘Amber still cries all night,’ said Mabel.
‘Bless her.’ Evie began to plait. She didn’t know where she was going with it; she simply set off. Right over middle. Left over middle. ‘She’s not as mature as you are.’ Evie appealed to her daughter’s rampant desire to be a big girl. ‘Jolly her along when she’s upset.’
‘I could do my impressions!’
‘Good idea.’ But please don’t do one now, because you always put me on the spot by asking ‘Who am I?’ and nobody can tell your Lady Gaga from your Prince Charles. ‘There. All done.’
‘It feels a bit funny.’ Mabel put a wary hand up to the lopsided Heidi-do.
‘No, no, it’s great – off you go.’ Evie patted Mabel on the bottom and aimed her at the sun streaming through the door. A small face appeared, a question behind its wire-rimmed glasses. ‘Shall I do your hair too, Amber?’
The girl’s hair was fine; fairy tresses between Evie’s fingers, compared to Mabel’s thick kinks. A thought struck her: ‘Will your mummy be OK with me doing your hair?’
‘Yes.’ Amber stood self-consciously, holding her head very still.
‘How about a nice high ponytail?’
‘Super.’ The slightest of lisps. Thooper.
Bones like a bird, Amber was a slip of a thing and a contrast to Evie’s own brood. She knew Scarlett sometimes kneaded the soft flesh of her tum and scowled at it; leading by example, Evie never commented on her own orange-peel or muffin-top or bingo-wings – Christ, female self-hatred had an extensive vocabulary! – and thus far Scarlett hadn’t succumbed to crash diets or daft gym regimes.
‘Can I wear thith?’ Amber produced the hairband Evie had bought in the village.
‘Of course.’ Evie liked the shy girl poking out from her shell, a timid whelk in a sundress. ‘Don’t you look pretty?’
Drawn by the unmistakable plick-plock of table tennis, Evie followed Amber, who was frolicking – proper, full-on frolicking – across the grass. Her arms folded out of habit, Evie unfolded them, enjoying the sensation of swinging them as she crossed the gardens.
Her own garden was a glorified storage yard for trikes, bikes, a ladder and various empty pots. Nature in London was confined to parks; the one at the end of Evie’s road was a place of almost daily pilgrimage, because of the swings and the slide and the sandpit. Evie never noticed the trees in that park, or bent to sniff a flower. She was too busy wishing Mabel and Dan would hurry up; only in adverts do parents stand adoringly by, while their children cavort. Real parents quickly get over the joys of the park.
The table-tennis match was just ending. Paula had beaten Jon. Rather, she had demolished him.
‘Game, thet and matchbox!’ shouted Amber.
Paula’s atypical jig of triumph ended abruptly. She threw down her bat. ‘That hairband.’ She pulled the Liberty-print accessory from her daughter’s head, knocking Amber’s glasses off and catching the girl in the eye. ‘Who gave it to you?’
Stepping forward, reaching the pair a moment before Jon did, Evie said, ‘I did, Paula. Me. I did.’ She wrenched the woman’s attention from Amber, who was now, predictably, sobbing. ‘It’s just a present. It didn’t mean anything.’ Even as she gabbled her apologies, Evie wondered what on earth she was apologizing for.
Paula wasn’t looking at Evie; she was looking over her shoulder at Jon, and whatever she read in his face changed everything. ‘It’s very pretty.’ She turned the hairband over in her hands. ‘That was kind. Thank you.’ Belatedly she bent to Amber, and her face twisted at her daughter’s distress.
‘Can I keep it?’ asked Amber, snot running into her mouth.
‘Of course!’ Paula, gentle now, replaced the hairband in Amber’s thin hair and hooked her glasses over her ears. She led her child away, Jon tailing them.
The score stood at one game each. Mike and Evie crouched, bats firmly gripped, both determined to win and at least one of them thinking, This is sexy!
Evie liked the bead of sweat in Mike’s exposed clavicle, and his provocative grunt when he hit the ball, almost enough to overlook his shorts. Now damp and clinging, they were somewhat improved. Porn ping-pong, she thought happily as she served for match point. Lucinda could get an entire chapter out of this.
Mike smashed it. There was no hope of her reaching it. He jumped in the air and she considered shouting, now, as he celebrated orgasmically, ‘Oh and by the way I’ve got a job!’
But she didn’t.
The gentle noise of the ping-pong ball was embedded in the house’s soundtrack, but this time it was different. There was no space between the plinks and the plonks; the rhythm was ramped up, like a lovely old waltz reimagined as electro house.
Unable to challenge Clive on status, Mike had turned, inevitably, to table tennis.
It was intense. Much was at stake. And yet Clive still held his cigar fast between his teeth.
Evie knew just how much that would annoy Mike. And now she knew Clive well enough to know that was exactly why he did it. The old guy was showing the (slightly) younger guy he could take him, without even dropping his cigar.
‘Out!’ Clive held up his bat.
‘It touched the edge of the table,�
� said Mike.
‘It didn’t.’ Evie smiled from her seat on the grass.
‘Whose side are you on?’ Mike snapped.
‘The side of justice.’
‘Four-two. My serve.’ Clive served the ball like a grenade.
‘Four-three,’ whooped Mike, returning the serve with a deadly forehand. He crouched, ready for Clive’s next serve, which was unexpectedly dainty and had him diving, hopelessly, for the net.
‘Five-three,’ said Clive, not bothering to crouch. ‘Your serve.’
‘I know,’ said Mike. When the shot whistled past Clive, he did what looked like a rain-dance.
And so it went on. Flash footwork. Aggressive smashes. Clive exuded a smugness so immense that it was probably visible from space, while Mike over-celebrated his every point.
Despairing of their macho posturing in such a paradise, Evie left them to it, suggesting over her shoulder, ‘Why not just whack your willies on the table and measure them, boys?’
‘Tell me again,’ said Shen, slamming the car door more forcefully than was necessary, ‘why we left our idyllic holiday home to come here?’ The gesture she made to encompass the featureless business park was withering.
‘The kids were bored,’ said Evie. ‘And yes, I know, at their age we were never bored, et cetera, et cetera; but even an idyll gets samey after four days.’ The website hadn’t mentioned that the Soft Play Centre was sandwiched between a discount tile-warehouse and a taxidermy-supplies outlet, but then it wouldn’t, would it? ‘Come on, Horrors.’ The Eights teemed from the cars like an unusually cute invading army, Dan bringing up the rear.
‘Are helmets supplied?’ Paula scuttled in their wake.
‘For gawd’s sake, Paula,’ said Shen. ‘The clue’s in the title: soft play. If they manage to hurt themselves in here, I’ll give you a thousand pounds.’
As the children threw themselves off padded platforms onto each other’s heads, Shen plonked down three murky coffees. ‘This tip hasn’t got a bar.’
‘But it does have a crafting area,’ said Evie.
‘And there was me, thinking this was a waste of time.’ If there was such a thing as a sarcasm-ometer, Shen’s face would have blown it up.
Paula, immune to sarcasm, said, ‘Let’s make a comb-holder.’
‘Ooh, yes, let’s.’ Shen scaled even higher peaks of sarkiness. ‘How have I managed all these years without a comb-holder? Hang on, that’s right, because comb-holders aren’t a thing.’
‘I,’ said Evie emphatically, ‘really, really need a comb-holder.’
On the scratched Formica table in front of them were a loom band-bracelet, a peg bag, a crocheted flower brooch, a glittery pipe-cleaner spider, a stone painted to look like an owl and a pile of comb-holders.
The Eights had just been sent back, whining, to the soft play area.
‘Shen,’ said Evie wearily, ‘the kids want to go home.’
‘Tough!’ Shen leaned over two rectangles of felt, sewing them together with embroidery thread. Her knees were up around her ears; it wasn’t easy balancing on child-sized chairs. ‘I need to make one more. Don’t want Mike to feel left out.’
‘You’re ever so good at this,’ said Paula, who only had a cross-eyed crocheted owl in front of her.
‘You’ve found your vocation,’ agreed Evie. ‘You’re the most glamorous crafter known to man.’ She’d been amazed that Shen had allowed herself to be dragged to the craft area, but even more amazed when Shen had fallen into a craft reverie, churning out useless small item after useless small item. ‘If Clive ever goes bust, you can sell bespoke comb-holders.’
‘Shame they only have felt,’ muttered Shen. ‘Cashmere handles better.’
‘Remember when we did stuff like this most days? I miss being a little girl,’ said Evie. Little girls didn’t juggle family needs and personal hopes in their miniature world of drawing and brushing dolls’ hair.
‘Me too,’ said Paula with feeling, struggling to correct her owl’s squint.
‘It’s almost as relaxing as knocking my opponents out at my aikido class.’ Shen’s needle plied in, out, in, out, as she asked with an oh-so-casual air that didn’t fool Evie, ‘So, Paula. You and Jon? What’s your dating story?’
‘Dating story?’ Alarmed, Paula crocheted her owl a second beak.
‘We’ve all got one. Evie here fell for Mike when he kept going to the same cafe as her.’
‘And ordering the same thing as me,’ said Evie, trying not to sound proud of her romantic history. ‘Egg-and-bacon buttie.’
‘Even though,’ said Shen, ‘he doesn’t like eggs. Greater love hath no man, as the saying goes.’
‘Jon and I don’t have a story to rival that,’ said Paula.
‘You must have,’ said Shen. ‘Because that’s one of the dullest stories I’ve ever heard.’ She picked at a knot in her thread, then said, ignoring Miles’s shrieks of ‘I’m sick of this!’ from a padded galleon, ‘With Clive and I, it was love at first sight.’
‘She saw his wallet first.’
‘Evie’s joking,’ said Shen, unaware that Evie was mouthing, ‘No, I’m not,’ behind her back. ‘I met Clive when I was on the bonnet of a Porsche at a car show. Apparently he turned to his friend and said, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry.’
‘Next,’ added Evie, enjoying herself. ‘The girl I’m going to marry next.’
Loftily ignoring her, Shen went on. ‘He chased me, Paula. I made him work for it.’
‘How . . . um . . . nice,’ said Paula, whose owl was looking lumpy.
‘He says I’m the most infuriating woman he’s ever met.’ Shen preened. ‘But he’d never leave me.’
Nobody had suggested otherwise. Evie watched Shen over the plastic tumblers of Ribena, realizing that Shen often insisted that Clive would never leave her.
‘We have a deal, you know?’
‘Not really,’ said Paula.
‘The terms of the deal mean that Clive’s entitled to get in my way and dirty the towels, but he has to bring home the bacon. Which he does. Clive brings home mucho bacon. So I do my job to the same high standard.’
‘I’m all ears,’ said Evie. ‘What is your job?’
‘Looking good. Staying young. Being a trophy.’ Shen threw a comb-holder at Evie when she grimaced. ‘Shut your face, Germaine Greer. So what, if I’m a trophy? There are worse ways to live. I never welch on a deal. Why do you think I have so many clothes? You know, I’m a common-sense person at heart: nobody needs eight pairs of almost identical Manolos. The way I look reflects on Clive, and so I make sure I look chic twenty-four/seven.’
‘Let me get this straight.’ Evie had landed on a different planet. ‘Shopping is your career? You over-spend on fur-trimmed thigh-high boots as a job?’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that, but yeah.’ Shen nodded and the sheen on her jet hair strobed in the remorseless overhead lighting. ‘I love Clive because he’s generous and wise and powerful, and he loves me because . . .’ She thought for a moment. ‘Because I’m twenty-nine,’ she said, with a flash of defiance at Evie.
‘You won’t be twenty-nine forever.’ Evie wondered how, in all their hours of accumulated chat, Shen had never before been so baldly honest. Maybe it was the Wellcome Manor effect. Hell, maybe it was the comb-holders. ‘And he’ll still love you.’
‘Hope so,’ laughed Shen. ‘We’ve had bumps in the road and we got over them. Like you and Mike, back in 2009.’ Shen put a hand on Evie’s arm, her short fingers slim and waxy, like a child’s. ‘I know you’re superstitious about mentioning all that. You got through it by pulling together. By doing your jobs as partners. Isn’t every marriage a deal?’ She turned to Paula, who jumped. ‘Are you madly in lurve, P? Is that the deal with you and Jon?’ She barely gave Paula time to blush before adding, ‘Am I right in thinking that Jon was seventeen and you were twenty-five when you had Tillie?’
Paula’s colour deepened, from pink to ketchup. ‘Oh, well, in a way.’
&
nbsp; ‘He was seventeen in a way?’ Shen kicked Evie under the table, and Evie kicked her back, much harder.
‘Ignore her, Paula,’ said Evie firmly. She was just as curious as Shen, but not as ruthless. ‘Change the subject,’ she said, even though a teenage Jon and an older Paula making a baby was a challenging thought.
‘Yes . . . um . . . well,’ said Paula, as Mabel shouted, ‘I want to live with a different mummy who won’t make me do soft play!’ ‘I did want to say . . . I really did see somebody outside last night.’ She lifted some of her chins. ‘I did.’
Not this again. A gloomy fog of déjà vu washed over Evie.
‘By the swing. Pacing.’
The déjà vu dissolved. ‘That was me!’ Evie was glad to dispel the mystery, even though a realization came hard on the heels of her pleasure. If Paula had seen two figures, she’d have to reveal that the other was Clive. Explaining a moon-light tête-à-tête to the maniacally possessive Shen would be tricky.
‘No, no, it wasn’t,’ said Paula, almost sadly, clinging to her nice comforting Peeping Tom.
‘The pacing ghost was me. Brownie’s honour. Were you ever a Brownie? No? Well, I assure you, a Brownie’s honour is a serious matter. If I’m lying, Brown Owl will hunt me down and take me out.’
‘Truly?’
Relieved that no shadowy ‘other’ had been mentioned, Evie had a bitter taste in her mouth at keeping something from Shen. ‘Why would I lie?’
‘There are many reasons people lie,’ said Paula.
‘Well, yes. But I’m not lying, honest.’
‘Of course you’re not.’ Paula wiped a hand across her features. ‘Listen to me. What am I like? Sorry, Evie.’
‘Stop saying “Sorry”.’ All three women laughed as Paula shaped her mouth to say ‘Sorry’ for saying sorry.
The only other secret Evie had ever kept from Shen was how much she really weighed.
Oh, and Jon’s cheating. She stole a sideways glance at Paula. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said, ‘and distribute all these wonderful comb-holders.’
Somewhere out there, as the smouldering day subsided, a rounders match was in progress; Evie had no idea who was winning and couldn’t find a toss small enough to give about it, too busy feeling relieved that she’d finished cooking and serving roast chicken to six adults and eight children and had lived to tell the tale.