by Maeve Haran
‘She must have been eased into that with K-Y jelly,’ commented Suze enviously. Then added: ‘Her skin’s a bit leathery round the cleavage, though. Big mistake to show that off. First sign of ageing.’
‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ Debora agreed. ‘And equally amazing that Roxy’s so different. She’s a really sweet kid. Fabia’s flat broke, you know,’ she added in a low voice. ‘Just been thrown out of her flat in Primrose Hill. I actually feel quite sorry for her. Always the mistress, never the bride. Even the guy who gave her the fox has dumped her. It turned out to be a kiss-off gift. Hold on to your husbands, girls.’
‘I would if I had one,’ Suze nodded.
‘If Fabia wanted to be provided for in her old age, she should have found her own old rich guy. Speaking of old rich guys,’ Debora looked around the party, ‘where is Cameron?’
Just as she spoke the stage door flew open and Cameron burst into the room. ‘Greetings, everyone! Hope you all enjoyed the show. Right, who’s coming out with me for a Ruby?’
‘What’s he talking about?’ Fabia demanded, angry that he didn’t seem to have even noticed her or his missing wifelet.
‘I rather think,’ Matthew translated, ‘Cameron wants us to go out with him to an Indian restaurant. Ruby is short for Ruby Murray. It’s rhyming slang. Ruby Murray. Curry.’
‘But Cameron,’ Fabia protested, ‘everyone has eaten.’
‘I’ll come,’ Bernie offered loyally.
‘Me too,’ seconded Matthew.
‘But why does he want to go to an Indian restaurant?’ Fabia was still confused at this curious English custom. ‘There is plenty of food here.’
‘Because they still serve alcohol till three in the morning,’ Suze explained.
‘But so does The Glebe,’ protested Fabia, shuddering.
‘Yes, but I bet they don’t serve it with extra hot vindaloo!’
Now that the excitement and tension of the concert were over Stella could concentrate on the high street. She based herself full-time at the pop-up studio and decided it was time to gather Matthew, Suze and Debora together for a serious meeting.
Matthew seemed unusually cheerful, especially for someone who’d been out carousing in curry houses till dawn’s early light. He had recounted how Cameron had persuaded the other guests plus waiters to form a backing group while he belted out a few of his best-known songs to a delighted audience.
It had all been such a resounding success that the owner treated them to several free rounds of Kingfisher lager and offered Cameron a free curry any time he was passing. He would even, he told Cameron delightedly, send him a takeaway down to Brighton for his final gig.
‘I just thought I’d mention,’ Matthew announced casually, ‘that Fabia says she’d like to get involved in saving the high street.’
‘Fabia?’ they all chorused, as stunned as if he’d announced that the Pope had sent a message from the Vatican that he wanted to join them all in Camley for a spot of suburban regeneration.
‘Yes, Fabia,’ Matthew replied huffily. ‘I don’t see why it’s such a surprise. Apparently she started her own campaign in Buenos Aires to save the real tango from being turned into some awful commercial travesty.’
‘Single-handedly, I assume?’ Debora commented, trying not to smile.
‘Or single-footedly?’ suggested Suze. They all giggled.
‘Look, we need all the help we can get,’ Matthew pointed out with irritation. ‘We’ve only got six months to show the council we’re turning the area round.’
‘Matthew’s right,’ Stella conceded. ‘All hands to the pump are obviously welcome.’ She looked at the others. ‘Even hands with long red nails.’ They giggled again.
‘Actually,’ conceded Debora, ‘Fabia’s got more contacts than Jade Jagger. She could bring the whole of Primrose Hill to Camley. She could even make it fashionable!’
‘Yes,’ Suze protested in a rare moment of practicality, ‘but we don’t need Primrose Hill here at the moment. What we need is things for them to see when they get here. The vintage market, the open-air cinema, and anything else to occupy the empty shops. Those all need to be properly organized. The stalls are all taken. Debora, you’re good at this sort of thing, could you look at the other vacant sites and see if you have any ideas?’
‘Hang on,’ Stella insisted, handing round some coffee, ‘surely Debora’s got other things to do; we can’t just co-opt her for Camley. Aren’t you going on tour with Cameron? What if he needs another Deathbed Reviver?’
‘He only does it once. Besides, it’s much more fun here.’
‘More fun in Camley than being on tour with a rock legend?’ Stella asked incredulously.
‘Duncan will have to look after him. Anyway, what about Roxy? She’s the current wife. Time she paid her wifely dues and held the basin for a while.’
‘Fabia is having a bit of trouble with Roxy,’ Matthew confided.
‘You seem to know an awful lot about Fabia,’ Suze pointed out.
‘She came along to the curry house.’
They all sat awestruck, trying to imagine Fabia in her Arctic fox ordering a chicken biryani.
‘She just needed someone with a sympathetic ear,’ Matthew insisted pompously.
‘And you just happened to offer one?’ Suze raised an eyebrow at Stella. Matthew was famously autistic in his lack of empathy for anything non-William Morris based.
‘And exactly what is the trouble Fabia is having?’ Debora asked mock-sympathetically.
‘Roxy wants a divorce. She’s claiming Fabia pushed her into it as if it were an arranged marriage in Bangladesh.’
‘Oh dear. And what does Cameron say?’
‘He seems quite relieved, which is making Fabia absolutely furious with both of them.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ chuckled Debora. ‘So the gravy train’s coming off the rails. Good for Roxy. I didn’t think she was a chip off the old block.’
‘You’ve all got Fabia wrong,’ Matthew insisted earnestly. ‘She got stuck into the chicken curry and even drank a pint. By the end of the evening she was in the kitchen asking for the recipe. Cooking is her hobby, apparently.’
‘Obviously she has hidden shallows,’ quipped Suze.
‘I think you’re all being quite unpleasant,’ Matthew threw in huffily. ‘This is the woman who’s offered to help us.’
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ agreed Suze piously. ‘We should be grateful for any help we can get. I just hope she doesn’t bring the fox coat. A lot of the stallholders are vegan. I think she might get massacred.’
‘I know,’ Stella suggested, ‘why don’t we ask Roxy to tell all her followers about the vintage market. Maybe we could get her to open it. Could you ask her, Debora?’
‘I’m not sure it’s the place of Wife Number One to make requests of Wife Number Three, but I’m sure she’ll do it. Just ask her. I’ll go and chat to my friend the publican. See how he’s getting on with his hot dogs and bunting. Maybe we could get Fabia to offer tango lessons at the King’s Arms. The right kind of non-commercial tango, obviously.’
Debora was joking but Stella jumped on the idea. ‘Absolutely! Matthew, can you ask your new friend if she’d consider it? It would have to be tomorrow or Sunday, so not much warning.’
‘Really, Stella,’ Matthew replied crossly. ‘Fabia’s offering her services as a campaigner, not some rose-in-the-teeth tango dancer.’
‘Have you met Fabia?’ Debora teased him. ‘Given the choice between boring backroom phone-bashing and being in the spotlight, instructing handsome young men in how to hold her, which do you think she’s likely to go for?’
‘I’m not so sure about the handsome,’ Suze admitted. ‘Or the young. Have you seen the clientele in the King’s Arms? Most of them haven’t got their own teeth.’
‘Yes, but we’re getting a new clientele in,’ Stella reminded her. ‘That’s the whole point of the exercise. And afterwards they can eat the landlord’s hot dogs, then everyone’ll be happ
y.’
‘She’ll never do it,’ Matthew predicted. ‘She’s a charming and sophisticated woman of the world, not some suburban dancing teacher.’
Stella looked at Matthew in amazement. Clearly he’d been dazzled by Fabia’s exotic charms.
As it turned out, Matthew was wrong. Fabia declared herself happy to offer an introduction to the tango if it would help their campaign.
‘I will buy myself some new dancing shoes from the Internet,’ she announced. ‘You must have the correct shoes when you tango.’
‘And you can bet your last cent they won’t be low-heeled and unflattering,’ Debora said, and grinned.
At last Stella found that she had a moment to sit at her desk in the back of the pop-up studio and complete the last few brush strokes of the pugs, whose owner had been getting impatient. She was examining her handiwork and feeling really rather pleased. Somehow she had managed to capture a different expression in each of their sad-looking bulgy eyes.
‘Very engaging,’ congratulated a voice behind her. She turned to find Duncan Miller standing by the door. ‘Matthew said I’d find you here.’ He looked around the studio, his eyes fixing on the oil painting of the fox he’d liked so much. For no reason she could discern he began to laugh.
‘It’s not that bad, is it?’ Stella demanded defensively.
‘Not bad at all.’ The laughter seemed to completely convulse him till she thought he might actually choke. ‘Here, have a glass of water.’ She removed her paintbrushes from the jam jar she kept them in, rinsed it out and handed it to him.
‘I’m not that close to death,’ he protested. ‘Besides, those brushes are probably badger and I’ll end up with badger TB and have to be culled.’
‘You certainly do have a colourful imagination for a businessman.’
‘Actually, I was admiring your fox again. The seen-it-all expression is so exactly like Cameron’s when he wants to bamboozle you into thinking he’s right and you’re wrong. May I?’ He lifted the canvas down from the wall and studied it. ‘Look at those eyes! They’re even the same colour as Cam’s. Are you sure he didn’t pose for this?’
Stella laughed. ‘Of course not. It was a wily old dog fox I caught in my garden. He’d just seen off the young contender before mounting a vixen right under my window.’
‘Perfect. It really is Cameron. How much will you take for it?’
‘Well, I don’t really know . . .’
‘Come on, Stella, you’ve got a campaign to run. We might even use it for the new album cover.’
‘Two hundred?’ Stella suggested tentatively.
‘Three!’ suggested Duncan.
‘OK,’ Stella laughed. ‘Three.’
‘No, four,’ he countered, still grinning.
‘I don’t think you’ve got the hang of this,’ Stella protested. ‘I thought the buyer was after the cheapest price.’
‘OK, five! You’re a hard woman to bargain with. Sold to the man in the hedge-fund manager’s suit for five hundred pounds! Now when are you free to show me around your garden?’
‘Would this afternoon about four be OK? Only I’ve promised utterly and completely to deliver these paintings and we’ve got so much to do for the market this weekend. I don’t suppose you want to commission something?’
‘I don’t have any pets. Too much travel. Maybe one day. Though I do like that chap up there.’ He pointed to a particularly engaging fluffy-haired bull with a belligerent stare that belied its cuddly toy appearance. ‘Reminds me of myself. Soft on the outside but rampantly male within.’
‘Are you?’ Stella heard herself ask.
‘Oh, absolutely,’ he replied modestly, tucking the fox under his arm, ‘ask any woman of my acquaintance. They run from the room as soon as I enter for fear of being mercilessly ravished.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘See you at four. You can give me tea in the garden.’
He shut the door and disappeared, whistling, up Camley High Street.
Stella Ainsworth, her conscience upbraided her as soon as he had left, you were flirting! With Duncan Miller!
Fortunately, she didn’t have time for mea culpas. Before she delivered the pugs, Stella wanted to try and get the French bulldog completed as well. The louche lurcher had been dispatched yesterday and the owner loved it.
Stella found herself in the awkward position of opening up a pet-painting studio and hoping for no new customers for a day or two, she had so much on her plate. Better than being bored, she kept reminding herself, which made her think of her mindfulness mantra and how she’d been neglecting it.
Sod mindfulness, she caught herself thinking, and in a somewhat inappropriate addendum, I’m just too busy for it at the moment!
The almost-finished French bulldog in his carpet-protecting socks was standing proudly on her easel when yet another interruption arrived in the form of her granddaughter Izzy, with a smiling Roxy in her wake.
‘Gran! Gran! Roxy says she’d be happy to open your vintage market!’
‘Hi, Stella. And of course I’ll tweet about it too so you get some publicity for it. It’s a really deserving cause. I hate seeing boarded-up shops, it looks so sad and abandoned. Plus, I love shops!’ Roxy caught sight of the portrait Stella had painted of the French bulldog in socks. ‘Oh, isn’t it the cutest thing you’ve ever seen!’ Roxy began snapping away on her phone. ‘Look at this, Izzy, a dog in socks! I’ve never seen that before. Why is it wearing socks?’
‘I know,’ Stella replied, lowering her tone conspiratorially. ‘The owner has white carpets!’
‘That is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen! I’m just going to share that.’ She pressed a button on her phone.
‘Roxy,’ Stella panicked, ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea. The owner might not be happy.’
‘Too late! The cute bulldog’s already out there. If the owner’s your generation, he probably won’t see it anyway, if you don’t mind me putting it like that.’
‘Excuse me!’ Stella glimpsed someone coming into the front of the shop, who couldn’t see them because the easel was half hidden by the stack of tables for the vintage market. Not another bloody interruption! Reminding herself it might be a perfectly reasonable customer wanting their pet painted, she emerged to find an anxious-looking young man whom she instantly recognized, from his years of hanging about their house as an almost-silent teenager, as Hal.
‘Mrs Ainsworth!’ He looked startled, as if he hadn’t expected her. Stella surveyed him not entirely kindly. He didn’t look like a mogul. Far from it. His hair, which had been long and luxuriant when he was going out with Emma, was now short and faintly receding. He wore serious specs and a tee shirt over jeans and Nikes. Thank God he didn’t have one of those bushy hipster beards, though he looked like the kind of man who quite easily might. ‘I was looking for Emma.’
‘Her daughter Isabel is here,’ Stella pointed out firmly.
Izzy was looking at him with considerable interest, as if he might hold the answer to some question she’d been wondering about, which he probably did.
‘Why would Emma be here?’ Stella asked discouragingly.
‘I thought she was going to ask you to look after the baby. We’ve got a bit of a crisis at work.’
‘Have you indeed? Well, as a matter of fact, it isn’t very convenient.’ Stella knew she shouldn’t say what she was about to, and that Emma would kill her, but she couldn’t have him barging in here like this in front of Izzy. ‘As a matter of fact, Hal, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for Emma to be rushing back to work like this.’
‘Isn’t that rather up to Emma?’ Hal replied, a glint of the steel which he must possess to be so successful in his expression. He seemed to notice Roxy suddenly. ‘My God, aren’t you Foxy Roxy? I’m Hal Meadows. My company is called Green Meadows.’ He seemed to expect her to recognize it, so it must be big. ‘We’ve been talking to your agent about getting you involved in some of our ideas.’
‘Small world
, eh? This is my new friend Izzy.’
This seemed to bring starry-eyed Hal back down to earth. He held out his hand very seriously. ‘Hello, Izzy. I’ve heard lots about you.’
‘Have you?’ Izzy enquired, knowing the answer perfectly well. ‘Who from?’
‘Your mum. I’m her boss.’ He seemed to feel he was stepping over some kind of line. ‘I’d better shoot. Can you ask Emma to call me urgently?’
‘About the crisis at work?’ Stella repeated frostily.
‘Yes,’ Hal seemed to have lost some of his belligerence, ‘about the crisis at work.’
He hadn’t been gone five minutes when Emma appeared, looking harassed and carrying Ruby in her car seat.
‘You’ve just missed your boss,’ Stella informed her. ‘Apparently, there’s a crisis at work. I see you’ve still got your bag.’
‘Mum, for God’s sake, don’t start . . .’
‘I’m out of my depth here.’ Roxy could tell there was something going on in the subtext. ‘Why don’t I take Izzy off with me? Leave you both to it. I’ve got my car outside.’
‘Because she’s got to do her maths test papers, that’s why!’ snapped Emma.
‘Fine. We’ll download some. I love those papers. We could race each other and see who does one first.’
‘That’d be great!’ Izzy’s eyes were shining at the unlikely prospect of doing eleven plus maths papers with her divinity.
‘It’s not just the speed you do them . . .’ Emma lectured.
‘You have to do them on your own. I had got that.’
Emma watched their departure sulkily. ‘Izzy talks about nothing but Foxy bloody Roxy. Roxy this. Roxy that.’
‘Stop being small-minded, Emma. It doesn’t suit you. Besides, you should be glad someone’s taking Izzy’s mind off her home life.’ She looked her daughter firmly in the eye. ‘Emma, this has to stop. Hal can’t barge in here in front of Izzy like this. I’m pretty sure she knows something’s going on. I’m happy to have Ruby when you need me to.’ She lifted Ruby from her car seat and nuzzled the soft, warm baby against her neck. ‘But I am not providing an alibi for you to wreck your marriage.’