by Judy Astley
‘And who is this?’ Eddy muttered to Jess, keeping his eye on the vision picking her high-heeled way across the terrace towards them.
‘Paula, lovely to see you!’ The two women kissed briefly and Jess could almost feel Eddy’s hot breath on the back of her neck.
‘Paula, this is Eddy Valera. He lives just along the road. And Clarissa who lives next door to him.’ Clarissa, knowing her time was up, grinned briefly at Paula and strode off towards the bench for some ‘aren’t men bastards’ solidarity with Angie. Paula’s delicately extended, perfectly manicured hand was grabbed in both of Eddy’s and he hauled her back in the direction of the conservatory. ‘Let me get you a drink. I don’t suppose you ever went to any Spidercrunch gigs a few years ago …?’
* * *
‘Dad did all the food,’ Natasha said to Tom. ‘So I suppose we should go and eat some of it.’ She disentangled herself from him and leaned back against the shed door.
‘Sure. I’m starving,’ he agreed, shoving his arms back into his jacket. Natasha fastened the buttons on her shirt and pulled her sweatshirt over her head, then cuddled up close to him again and breathed in the scent of the battered and oily old leather. ‘Whenever I smell leather, whatever happens when I’m old or at university or married or something, I’ll always think of you,’ she said.
He held her tight against him and kissed her hair. ‘And whenever I smell burning sausages on a barbie, I’ll think of you too!’ he teased, opening the shed door and making a run for the food before she could hit him.
‘You’ve got to try one of these,’ Zoe told Emily, handing her a plate from which a steaming fat burger hung out over the side of its bun. ‘Dad’s got a master plan to set up a smart burger chain and make us all mega-rich. They’re at the experimental stage but it smells all right.’
Emily screwed her nose up and looked at it with suspicion, then turned to Matt who was waiting for an opinion. ‘You need to make them a bit smaller, for a start,’ she commented. ‘Or you’ll go broke.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind. We haven’t got round to portion control yet. Just try it. Zoe’s got one of the other sorts, a tomato and herb one.’
‘What’s mine?’
‘See what you think, guess the flavourings.’
Emily nibbled cautiously round the edge of the food. Then Zoe watched as she reached across the table for ketchup. She took the top off the bun and carefully squirted a letter E over the burger’s surface. Then she very slowly arranged two slivers of raw onion in a cross, added four small circles of dill pickle, placing them meticulously in the four arms made by the crossed onion, and replaced the bun lid.
Zoe wished Angie was watching, but Angie was now swapping horror stories about Things Bin-Men Leave on Your Drive with Clarissa and wasn’t interested in her skinny daughter’s meal rituals.
‘It’ll get cold,’ Matt prompted, exchanging a glance with Zoe.
‘OK, OK.’ Emily eventually lifted the burger and bit a neat piece out of it. She chewed it slowly, reminding Zoe of a programme about wine tasters.
‘What do you think?’ Ben joined them, eager to see what the youth market made of his idea.
‘You’re all looking at me! Don’t watch me!’ Emily wailed, showing an unattractive chewed mass of food. She bolted from the garden, running through the conservatory and kitchen towards the downstairs loo.
‘Back to the drawing board Matt, do you think?’ Ben poured himself and Matt generous glasses of wine.
‘Probably, very bloody probably,’ Matt agreed, gloomily.
Ten
Jess’s head was hurting and she didn’t want to hear any more about hamburger flavourings. If Matt couldn’t cope with everyone laughing then it was his problem – she didn’t want to know. Matt was lying on the bed, snug in his blue towelling robe. He’d propped up the big square pillows and was comfortably reclined with his arms wrapped across his chest, reminding Jess of a child snuggled safe beneath a scruffy but treasured security blanket. Jess was taking her time getting ready for bed: the headache made her move slowly. Even brushing her teeth had been a tentative operation for fear of the buzz from the electric toothbrush pushing the pain up another notch of intensity. She opened her underwear drawer and rustled around looking for a forgotten packet of aspirins. ‘I don’t want Anadin Extra because of the caffeine. Any of that and I’ll never get to sleep,’ she murmured.
‘I don’t understand what went wrong with the chilli,’ Matt was saying.
Jess grinned at him. ‘You nearly killed poor Angie. How much did you put in?’
‘Only a couple of tablespoons. It’s what it said in the recipe, two or three tablespoons. If anything it was a bit less.’
Jess finally unearthed a torn-off bit of foil bubble containing a couple of Nurofen and swallowed them down with the last of a large glass of water. Probably she was simply dehydrated – too much wine, too much talking and then too much taking Angie across the road to home and dealing with her panic attack brought on by the unexpectedly savage chilli-flavoured burger. This had involved full-scale gasping, clutching at throat and chest, breathing dramatically into a Sainsbury bag due to lack of recommended brown paper ones and then another glass of wine, on Jess’s part just to be neighbourly and on Angie’s as a calmer. Emily and Luke had ignored their mother’s choking and gasping, becoming immediately absorbed in a TV programme about wolves.
Right now, something occurred to Jess. ‘How was tablespoon written?’
‘Tsp of course. How else?’ He was giving her that look, the one where he was telling her she was quite obviously the idiot of the two of them and not even to consider that he might be.
Jess laughed. ‘Ah well that’s it then. That means teaspoons. You must have put in about four times the amount you were supposed to.’
Matt slumped further down on the bed, folding his arms even tighter and frowning.
‘Jesus I can’t do a fucking thing right. I wasn’t supposed to nick anyone else’s recipe in the first place. The whole idea was to be original. Ben and Micky will think I’m a right case.’
‘Of course you’re not. Anyway don’t tell them, just say you were experimenting.’ Jess lay down next to him, slid her hand under his robe and stroked his warm chest. Matt sighed but still looked miserable so she moved her hand further down and slithered across to nuzzle at his neck. He surely couldn’t, she thought, really care that much: it was a mistake anyone could make.
‘No don’t.’ Matt took hold of her marauding hand and pushed it back at her, like a petulant infant refusing a placatory toy. ‘I’ll probably only do that wrong as well.’
‘You never have before.’ Jess stood up and headed for the bathroom for more water. ‘Come on Matt, stop sulking. Really the burgers didn’t matter. It was funny, everyone coughing and trying to be polite. Didn’t you think so? Just a little bit? Where’s your sense of humour?’
‘I’m saving it for something funny. That OK with you?’
Sarcasm didn’t really merit a reply, Jess considered as she ran water into the glass. She leaned back against the warm towel on the rail and looked at herself in the long mirror. She was wearing her favourite nightwear – a pale purple silk nightdress, quite short, strappy like the kind of summer dresses that only suited slender women under thirty-five. After that, something seemed to go wrong with the upper arms. Perhaps she shouldn’t be wearing this now, not even just for sleeping. Probably she ought to swaddle herself in all-enveloping winceyette, if such a thing still existed. When the children had been young she’d gone for the Laura Ashley dairymaid look in nightwear, only to have Matt grumbling that he couldn’t actually fancy someone who looked as if they were about to run through the fields cooing at the sheep.
Experimentally, Jess waved at herself as if seeing her reflection off on a journey to see what happened to her arms. A woman at the gym had said she had ‘bye-bye arms’ and explained that when she waved at anyone, her upper arms waved all by themselves as well. Not much of Jess’s flesh fl
apped around. She was still reasonably firm in the triceps area. ‘And so I should be,’ she thought, prodding at the skin which she’d prefer to be a bit more dewy-textured, less desiccated. ‘All those hours sweating with the weights at the gym …’
‘If I say I’m sorry, will you come and get into bed with me?’ Matt called. He had his penitent-little-boy voice on. It wasn’t appealing, not in a sexy sense anyway. She thought of her mother and the ‘never say no’ advice. Was it worth risking that it might be true? Or was it perfectly reasonable of her not to have sex if she didn’t fancy it?
‘OK,’ she said, returning to Matt and climbing into bed. ‘That boy, Tom, he seemed to enjoy himself, didn’t he?’ she said. Matt stood up and took off his robe, flinging it in the direction of the door where it collapsed in a heap and did not, as Matt had probably hoped, hang itself neatly on the hook like the hat James Bond always flung into Miss Moneypenny’s office.
‘He didn’t give a toss about the chilli. And he loved the chicken kebabs – he was very complimentary. He’s a polite lad, one to be encouraged. Old George likes him too.’
‘Mmm,’ Jess agreed. ‘He doesn’t actually look as if he often gets a proper meal. I get the feeling he lives on junk food and handouts. He makes me want to take care of him, feed him up a bit.’
‘Like a stray cat?’
‘Probably. Maybe I’m just feeling the lack of Oliver around the house. And Natasha seems happy enough. Though I hope she’s not …’
‘She’s only fifteen, Jess, and not daft.’
‘No, I know. But fifteen’s like eighteen used to be now. There’s no point assuming she’s not even curious about sex. I bet the boy is.’
‘No, I suppose not. At the moment though, I’m the one who’s feeling curious about it. Like am I going to get it? I mean I do hope so …’
He switched off the light and snuggled up to her, feeling his way under the purple nightdress and stroking a finger along her inner thigh. The headache was already fading and Jess wondered about what her mother had left out from the advice: there was an unmentioned (and unmentionable in those days probably) ‘because’ element. ‘Never say no, because your body is like an old television set, everything works fine after a bit of a warm-up session …’
Donald the cat hurtled up the stairs miaowing as if a Rottweiler was chasing him. He raced into the attic bedroom and leapt onto the bed, shaking his rain-soaked fur all over Jess’s face.
‘Ugh! Donald get off!’ She pushed him away and he sat beside the bed looking offended and making a start on washing his wet paws. ‘You’ve made muddy footprints all over the bed,’ she told him, leaning down to stroke his ears. He rubbed his face against her hand, purring happily. Cats have definite smiles sometimes, she thought as she watched him. Sometimes, overcome by the bliss of being petted, Donald even dribbled, though she was under no real illusion that he had come to see her for any other reason than that he considered it was time for her to get up and fill his food bowl. She slid out of bed and pulled on her robe, a white waffle-textured cotton one that was never quite warm enough on chill mornings, and padded out of the room and down the stairs. It was already after nine o’clock. She rarely slept that late, even at weekends. There was no sign of life from the girls’ rooms, but that was perfectly normal for a Saturday morning. Whoever had said that teenagers grow in their sleep was probably right – the girls were already quite tall and, given the choice, would happily linger in bed, Walkmans clamped to their ears till they reached six feet four.
Jess collected the newspaper from the mat by the front door and went back to the kitchen. The rain was making a million tiny rivers intermingle as they trickled down the conservatory windows. As she peered through the glass, Jess could just make out a selection of empty wine bottles on the table outside – the clearing up had been abandoned after everyone in the family had brought in a couple of token items and decided it was getting too cold and dark to bother continuing with it. Her best chopping board was out there too, and a plate with a few slices of tomato being slowly marinaded in rainwater. She wondered what had happened to Paula. After Angie’s choking session and Jess taking her home, Eddy had said he’d get Paula a cab and then led her out into the night.
‘We were lucky it didn’t rain like this last night, weren’t we?’ She made conversation with the cat as she picked out a sachet of his favourite duck-flavoured food from the cupboard. Donald plaited his ecstatic body around her legs, trying to hurry her up.
‘OK, wait a minute sweetie!’ She put the foul-smelling dish on the floor and the cat pushed his face into his breakfast.
‘No magic word? No “thank you”?’ she teased him as she went to switch on the kettle.
‘Are you talking to the cat?’ Zoe stood in the doorway in an oversized striped tee shirt with her long pale legs looking frailly thin, like seedlings that haven’t had enough light.
‘Of course I am!’ Jess told her, getting another mug out of the cupboard for Zoe. ‘Did nobody tell you it’s bad manners not to talk to the people you’re feeding?’
‘Yeah, people,’ Zoe mocked. ‘He’s not people.’
‘I’ve heard you talking to him.’ Jess poured boiling water into her favourite teapot: it was pink and had large bold strawberries painted on it. She always felt it was a good one to use when summer was slow getting started, as if it would encourage the weather to ripen the fruit.
Zoe picked up the newspaper and started rummaging through the various sections in search of something with cartoons. ‘I talk to him when I’m telling him off, making him stop sleeping on my clothes, leaving fur and stuff.’
‘You could try putting them away,’ Jess suggested tentatively. It was too early in the day for the ‘when are you going to tidy your room’ routine.
Zoe ignored her, becoming absorbed in the rock-music pages and an interview with Simplicity whose CD she was currently playing to wear-out point.
‘Er, you’re up early for a Saturday,’ Jess commented.
‘Going shopping with Emily. We want to get out early before all the good stuff goes.’
‘Oh, you’ve come into money have you?’ Jess smiled at her. It would be only fair to let her have a bit extra on top of her allowance, after the Selfridge’s expedition with Natasha.
‘No, but Emily has. She hasn’t spent any, well hardly any, of her whole last term’s allowance and she wants me to help her blow it all on clothes. Don’t suppose much will fit her though.’
‘Oh? Why’s that?’ The tea was ready now but Zoe had sat down at the table and was looking serious. She was also chewing at the skin on the edge of her thumb, a sure sign she had something on her mind. Jess sat down opposite her and poured tea for the two of them. Matthew would just have to wait and have it cold or stewed.
Zoe shrugged and looked shifty. ‘Like she’s so skinny? Didn’t you see, last night?’
‘You’re quite thin yourself,’ Jess prompted.
‘Yeah but I eat, she never does, or if she does she sicks it up again. That’s the difference.’ Zoe stood up and picked up her tea, walking quickly towards the door. ‘I’m going to have a bath and get ready.’ From halfway up the stairs she called down, ‘Tash wants to come too, she’s meeting Claire so she might like some tea as well.’
‘OK, room service on the way,’ Jess called back.
Zoe hadn’t needed to say any more. Both she and Jess knew that. Jess had seen the performance over the hamburger the night before – she should have recognized that classic sign of an eating disorder, the meticulous delaying/avoidance ritual with food when in company. She wondered if Angie knew that Emily wasn’t eating. It was unlikely: anorexics were devious, highly skilled at convincing themselves and those around them that nothing was wrong. Angie might not even notice if Emily had lost weight, even if she hadn’t seen her for a few weeks, for dress-disguise was another starver’s trick. She watched as the cat, full at last, clattered out through the cat flap and huddled on the step, reluctant to go out into the rain.
Animals never starve themselves unless they’re dying, she thought, wondering if that was as near proof as you could get that anorexia was a mental, not a chemical problem.
She poured tea for Natasha and Matthew and walked up the stairs. The bathroom door was closed and from the other side of the door she could hear the water running and a DJ on Zoe’s radio being unnaturally exuberant. Jess tapped lightly on Natasha’s door and went in. The blind was down and in the semi-dark there was a mildly musty scent and a hazardous heap of discarded clothes and shoes on the floor between Jess and the bed.
‘Morning Tash, tea for you.’ She picked her way through the obstacles and approached the bed, then her heart lurched with sudden shock as the naked top halves of not one but two figures reared up from the duvet. There was a weird snapshot moment as her eyes gradually captured the sight and her brain slowly and painfully registered that Natasha had Tom in bed with her.
‘Shit,’ was all Tom said.
Natasha rallied some instant defiance. ‘We weren’t doing anything!’ she protested at a level that neared a shriek.
‘How the hell did you get in?’ Jess slammed the mug of tea down on the little chest of drawers beside the bed before her trembling hands dropped it. She took a step back to distance herself from the two of them, stumbling on a shoe. ‘We double-locked all the doors before we went to bed!’
‘Er … sorry, we, um …’ Tom gave a quick giveaway glance towards the window. Jess followed the look and noticed that Natasha’s normally cluttered desktop was completely clear. All her school files, her unfinished homework, pen tray, stack of paper were piled up under the desk.
‘You climbed in? Like a sneaky thief in the night? How dare you? Natasha is fifteen! I want you to get out right now! Fast! And by the front door! Don’t you ever, ever come back.’ Her voice had risen almost to a scream. She slammed out of the room, shaking, and crashed into Matthew, who was coming down the attic stairs to investigate the noise.