by Echo Freer
She remembered the time when she’d quizzed one of her mother’s boyfriends (who’d introduced himself as an ‘importer and exporter ’), ‘What exactly do you import and export, Dave?’ Laverne had flashed a brash smile that was more warning than affection. ‘Now, now, Little Miss Stickybeak. One day you’ll poke that nose of yours so far into something it’ll get stuck for good and you’ll never get out!’
Mercedes had heeded the warning. Since then she seldom either asked for, or volunteered, information and yet, here she was, confronted by this seriously cute, obviously intelligent guy who was throwing more questions at her than The Riddler. And, unless her instincts had completely deserted her, his interest didn’t seem to have any ulterior motive.
She shrugged to try and hide her discomfort. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of Las Vegas, Monte Carlo, Tokyo, that sort of place.’
Zak nodded and smiled. Interesting! She was getting better by the minute. ‘So, what made you choose here for your work experience?’
‘I didn’t! Anyway, what is this, twenty questions?’ She checked her watch. The old bag from Human Resources had told Mercedes that, as this was just an introductory day, she could leave after lunch. ‘I’m off now anyway. It’s been nice talking to you.’ She began to stand up.
Zak looked anxious. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just curious.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, the Bent definition of the word ‘curious’ being: nosy, snooping, interfering, meddling, spying, snitching, grassing up.
Zak was confused. ‘I’m just interested. It’s no big deal.’
Mercedes sat down again. Despite a lifetime of being told to trust no one, she believed him. She knew it was stupid - she’d only known him about an hour but there was a part of her that really wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Apparently, my dearly beloved headmistress is a client of Boreham’s Bank and, in her infinite wisdom, she thought it would suit me down to the ground to spend two weeks of my life festering in some office.’
Zak chuckled. ‘So, you don’t share my love of the financial world?’
‘About as much as a fish loves cycling.’
‘Ah ha!’ He adopted a French accent. ‘So you are not familiar wiz ze Trout de France cycle race, zen?’
She smiled. He was cute and funny! Shame he was so much older than she was. She felt a twinge of disappointment: she’d given Jenny odds of a hundred to one on pulling Connor the computer technician, based entirely on the age-factor. Given that Zak must also be at least eighteen, was clearly above average in the facial region, had style, brains and a wicked sense of humour, she reckoned her own odds on pulling were at least ten times those she’d offered Jenny. Still, no harm in dreaming, was there? Maybe she’d even take a leaf out of his book and try this curiosity thing.
‘So, what are you going to do at university?’ she asked as they cleared away their dishes.
‘Well, I’ve got a place at LSE to do Monetary Economics; learning about the financial markets, monetary policies, central bank conduct - all that sort of thing. I’m supposed to be starting in September but I’m rethinking the whole thing at the moment. You know, I’m just loving being in here at ground level, in the thick of things, learning the bits that university can’t teach you.’
‘Oh!’ Mercedes would have liked to have asked what LSE was when it was at home, but admitting to ignorance was another taboo in the Bent household. She didn’t want him to think she was stupid.
As they headed towards the lift Zak turned to Mercedes. ‘So, what school is it that has one of the most prestigious banks in the world looking after its funds?’
She groaned. ‘You won’t have heard of it. It’s this dross dump called...’ She put on her most pretentious voice. ‘The Daphne Pincher Academy for Young Ladies.’
‘You’re kidding, right!’ Zak stopped dead in his tracks.
‘No, I’m deadly serious. That’s what it’s called.’
‘No, I mean - I know it! I went to Greenwoods.’ Greenwoods was an old, established public school specialising in the academically, as well as financially, gifted end of the educational spectrum and Mercedes passed the playing fields every time she walked her dogs.
‘Are you having me on?’
‘No, honestly - fund managers’ honour.’ He placed two fingers behind his head like horns and wiggled them absurdly.
Mercedes grinned. ‘So do you live round there?’ Gordon Bennett! What was happening to her? This curiosity thing must be contagious.
‘Do you know St Drogo’s Avenue in Wanstead?’
‘Know it? My brother lives there!’
This was freaky. And Mercedes didn’t like ‘freaky’. Freaky made mincemeat of the odds. She did a quick mental calculation as to the chances of meeting someone who was that fit and lived local to her stuck in a boring bank up West and realised that she had to be talking at least five figures to one. And yet here he was, right in front of her.
‘So, would you like some company on the Tube home tonight?’ he asked.
And here it was again: The F word! Two minutes ago, she’d been offering herself a thousand to one in the Zak stakes and now he was asking to go home with her. Realistically, she should slash the odds to about fifty.
‘Cool,’ she said. After all, sometimes rank outsiders romped home.
‘I’ll meet you outside at five o’clock, then.’
Maybe this work experience thing wasn’t looking so bad after all.
Four
Even better than going home with Zak, was the fact that Mercedes now had about three hours to kill in the West End with nothing but her mother’s bank card for company. As she headed towards Regent Street, she flipped open her mobile to call Jenny. Could the day get any better?
For Mercedes’ last birthday, Laverne had given her the ultimate motherly gift: a joint bank account in both their names. The cash withdrawal limit was five hundred pounds which, until today, had been more than enough for Mercedes. But, she realised, if she was going to give this whole bank thing a go, she was going to need to dress the part. It was a good job that her mother’s signature was so easy to forge.
Laverne had never been the greatest of scholars and, before she had reached Mercedes’ age, she’d been unable to see any good reason why she should waste the most valuable years of her life staring at a blackboard. It had been the mid-seventies, the era of heat waves and big hair and Laverne had spent her time working in her mother Violet’s hairdressing salon, blow-drying and crimping the East Ham mod squad by day, and going up West by night. And it was when she’d been fifteen and up West that she’d met Big Al.
‘You shoulda seen ’im, babes,’ Laverne had once said, in an unprecedented moment of mother- daughter bonding. They had been sunbathing by the side of the family swimming pool and Laverne’s maternal instinct had been lubricated with the help of half a bottle of Malibu. ‘Like a mini John Travolta, ’e was. Struttin’ ’is stuff on that dance floor. There weren’t a gel in that club wouldn’t’ve sold their own grandmother for a kick wiv Alan Bent.’
‘Weren’t you too young to be in a night club?’ Mercedes had been about twelve at the time of the conversation.
‘Nah!’ Her mother had flapped her hand as though the suggestion were ridiculous. ‘Things was different in them days. Anyhows, I looked eighteen. Even your dad didn’t know how old I was till we was practically cashed.’
‘Cashed?’ Some of the more obscure eccentricities of her mother’s language tested even Mercedes’ knowledge of rhyming slang.
‘Cash an’ carried! Married!’ Laverne had poured herself another drink. ‘Bleedin’ ’ell, Merce. I ain’t sure this posh school’s teachin’ you nuffin’.’
Although Big Al had been six years her senior, Laverne had fallen in love with his white three-piece suit and they’d married, with her mother�
��s blessing, as soon as she’d reached sixteen.
‘An’ it weren’t ’cos I ’ad to, neither!’
The twins had been born a year later and, when Violet died, Laverne and her sister Sylvie had inherited the hairdresser’s shop. With Al’s financial backing Laverne had diversified, buying up other salons and adding manicures and massages to her repertoire. Nowadays, she owned eight, from Chigwell to Leytonstone and her salon in Woodford even boasted a flotation tank. Although Sylvie had stayed with the original hairdressers’ business, Laverne hadn’t looked back. The only slight hiccough in her meteoric rise from hairdresser to holistic therapist had been the birth of Mercedes. ‘But then, that’s what mothers-in-law are for, innit?’ she’d said to Molly. ‘Looking after the kids.’
‘Sign here, please.’ The woman in Harvey Nichols pushed the slip of paper across the counter towards Mercedes.
Mercedes wrote ‘L. Bent’ in her mother’s childish handwriting and wondered how, with her lack of education, her mother had never been taken for a ride.
When Zak left the building that afternoon, there was no mistaking Mercedes leaning against the iron railings that surrounded the square opposite the bank. She had her bowling bag on her shoulder and an array of carrier bags around her feet. There wasn’t a man within two hundred metres who didn’t risk life and cervical vertebrae, craning his neck as he walked past.
‘Hi! Shall I take some of those for you?’ Zak picked up all the carriers and began to walk towards Piccadilly and the Tube station.
‘Hey,’ Mercedes called. ‘I’m not totally helpless, you know. You can take a couple - that’s fine. But I bought them and I lugged them round the West End, so I’m quite capable of carrying them as far as the Tube.’
Zak smiled to himself. Gorgeous, independent and spirited! There had to be a catch.
The Underground in July was sweltering and airless but, despite the fact that Mercedes spent much of it wedged under the armpit of a man whose use of deodorants left much to be desired, the journey passed in no time. There was no shortage of subjects for discussion and, instead of changing trains on to the Wanstead branch of the Central Line, Zak travelled to Snaresbrook and walked Mercedes home.
‘Thanks for this,’ she said as they stood outside the elaborate stained glass of her front door. The house was on Honey Drive, a private road that was separated from the main road by a wide grass verge lined with chestnut trees. It was referred to locally as ‘Milk and Honey Drive’ and, when there was the slightest whiff that a house might be coming on the market, it was clipboards at dawn between the local estate agents. The dwellings were large and ostentatious, having at least half an acre of garden with either a swimming pool or a tennis court - or, in the case of the Bent establishment, both.
Zak’s eyes widened in amazement as he looked round the driveway of Mercedes’ house. ‘Jeez! What is this? A photo shoot for What Car? magazine?’
Mercedes’ eyes scanned the forecourt at the front of the house and her heart sank. Her mother’s car was there - a black Cherokee Jeep. Mercedes had never fully understood her mother’s need for a four- wheel drive vehicle; it wasn’t as though they lived on some remote sheep farm in the foothills of the Himalayas and the terrain up to the David Lloyd Centre could hardly be described as treacherous. Laverne, though, claimed that she needed one, so, of course, Laverne got one. Next to the Cherokee was the silver Jaguar XKR belonging to Terry, Laverne’s latest boyfriend.
Of all the men Laverne had brought home since the death of her husband, Terry Tweddle was the most odious. Terry was a market trader, although Mercedes wasn’t sure what it was he traded and what market he frequented; whichever one it was, it must only operate at night as Terry seldom rose before lunchtime. Terry, or Tel to his mates - which did not include Mercedes - wore his shirt open to his navel and moved around in a smog of cigar smoke. Not only that but he carried more gold on him than Securicor. He had gold round his neck, gold on his fingers and, if he stood facing the sun, his teeth could burn the retinas off anyone who came within fifty yards. Mercedes shuddered.
Chubby’s Range Rover was also there although his other car, the unfortunately coloured pea-green Boxster (his third in under a year), was not. The loss adjuster had just agreed that this, like his previous two, was a write-off and the insurance company were giving him serious grief over his plea that obstacles just seemed to be drawn to his vehicles. Trees, bollards, central reservations - you name it, Chubby’s cars had had intimate relations with it.
‘No wonder your family called you Mercedes - they’re obviously pretty obsessed with cars.’
She smiled and took the bags from him. ‘Thanks for walking home with me. I’ll see you Monday.’
‘Hey,’ he said, as Mercedes turned her key in the lock. ‘It’s just a thought, but do you fancy going out tomorrow night?’
Mercedes could hardly believe what she was hearing. It sounded as though he’d just asked her out. But, thrilled as she was, she’d never actually been out with a boy before. Come to think of it, no one in her form had actually been out with a boy yet. Mainly because the old Doberman’s idea of sex education began and ended with the life cycle of a toad and the only males allowed on the premises had passed their sell-by date decades ago. (How Connor the computer technician had even got past the application form stage was a mystery to everyone - although the smart money was on his CV having been upside down, so that she’d thought he was eighty-one years old.)
Mercedes’ family had not exactly presented her with a wealth of opportunities to meet boys, either. Her dad had been an only child and her mother’s only sister, Auntie Sylvie, hadn’t had much joy on the baby front. Mainly, Mercedes suspected, because her husband, Uncle Horace, had spent so much of their marriage away on business. She’d never been able to fathom what sort of business he was in but sometimes he’d been away for years, so it was probably something to do with the oil industry, she’d decided. All in all, there hadn’t been any boys in her life.
But now, here was someone actually asking her out, someone really nice and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. She didn’t want to look like a total novice but she didn’t want to appear too eager either.
‘Great.’ Then she had a stroke of genius. ‘How about making it a foursome?’
Zak chuckled. ‘Do you have anyone in mind or are you trying to tell me you’ve got multiple personality disorder?’
‘I’ve got this mate, Jenny. She’s really cool.’ She made a mental note to talk to Jenny about being cool.
‘Excellent. I’ll speak to my mate Donovan and we’ll pick you up about nine then.’
Nine! Her mother would go ape if she thought Mercedes wasn’t even going to go out until nine o’clock. On second thoughts, her mother probably wouldn’t even notice. Her brothers, on the other hand...
...needn’t know. ‘Nine’s cool.’
‘Wicked! See you tomorrow.’ And he walked across the grass verge with a distinct spring in his step.
Mercedes had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get hold of Jenny all afternoon, so the minute she was through the door, she dropped her bags and took the phone up to her room.
‘Merce!’ Laverne’s voice resounded up the stairs after her. ‘These dogs ain’t been walked yet.’
Mercedes came out of her room and peered over the banister.
‘I’m on the phone. Can’t you or Chubby do them?’
‘Leave it out! I bin workin’ all day. Anyhows, Tel’s round and Chubby’s only just got in.’
Mercedes said nothing. It would never occur to her mother that she had just got in too.
She returned to the phone. ‘Listen, Jen - meet me over the caff on Whipps Cross Road in about twenty minutes. OK?’
The café was situated next to the boating lake and it was Mercedes’ favourite haunt. She would buy a cup of tea and sit by the lake while the
dogs swam after passing rowing boats or played ‘chase the jogger ’. By meeting Jenny there she could kill two birds with one stone, exercise her pets and bring her friend up to speed with the date situation.
By the time Mercedes reached the café, Jenny was already there, leaning across the counter grinning at Jason, the young man who ran it. Jason was the fastest fryer north of the river. He could flip a fried egg with his eyes closed and it would still land sunny-side up.
‘What can I do you for?’ he said, playfully, as he tossed his fish slice in the air, did a quick spin on his heel and caught it again with one hand.
‘Wow, that is so brilliant. How did you learn to do that?’ Jenny oozed, folding her arms and pushing her chest out and trying to make the most of her full 32AA minus loo roll.
‘Two teas please, Jason.’ Mercedes interrupted with some urgency before Jenny could embarrass herself further.
‘What did you do that for?’ Jenny protested as they took their teas outside. ‘I was making real progress.’
‘Don’t even go there, Jen.’
Jenny gave a cursory tut of disappointment before sitting down and shaking her friend’s arm in excitement. ‘Sooo! Tell me all about them! What’re they like? Where’re they taking us?’
It was a pleasant evening and the two girls sat down at one of the picnic tables in front of the café while the dogs ran off into the woods.
Mercedes shrugged. ‘I don’t know the form on yours; all I know is he’s called Donovan.’
‘Donovan! Wow! How exotic,’ Jenny squealed.
‘Anyway, mine’s called Zak and he’s quite fit - and really funny, so the odds on his mate being a total dork are pretty remote.’
‘Wow, Merce! Donovan and Zak! This is so exciting. I can’t wait. I’ve told my mum that I’m staying over at yours tomorrow, so I’ll come home with you straight from school. Now, have you decided what you’re going to wear? I’ll need to borrow something of yours, if that’s OK.’