Queen Bee

by Jane Fallon

  ‘I really need to talk to you. In private,’ Stella says, completely ignoring her, which is downright rude, if you ask me. Ferne, of course, is just happy for the excuse.

  ‘I have to go anyway,’ she says, standing up and gathering her things. ‘Thanks so much for the tea, Laura.’

  She heaves baby Alexei up off the sofa. He’s still sleeping and I’m sad I didn’t get to have a proper cuddle. ‘Any time,’ I say. I need to try to act normal, not give anything away. Although, as usual, Stella is so self-absorbed she probably wouldn’t even notice.

  Ferne gives me a quick hug, waves a low hand at Stella, and she’s out of there. I breathe a sigh of relief. Luckily, Stella’s not interested in my social life. The second Ferne’s footsteps recede she tells me why she’s here.

  ‘So, I opened a bank account …’

  ‘Great. Don’t tell Al. Listen, Stella, I’ve had an idea. You need to set up a PayPal account …’

  Nothing. Crickets. Tumbleweed.

  ‘… that way, you can pay into it from your joint account and, if he asks, tell him you’re buying things for the wedding, or clothes, or whatever you usually buy.’

  She gives me a confused look. ‘But I buy everything I want out of our joint account anyway. That’s one thing Al has never been – so far. Stingy with me.’

  OK, so she doesn’t get what I’m saying. ‘You won’t be buying anything. It’s your way of moving money out of your joint account. Building a nest egg. You definitely won’t be buying anything,’ I say again, just to make the point.

  ‘But won’t he notice?’

  ‘It’ll just say PayPal on the statements. Everyone uses it now, so tell him you set it up to make things easier. Just don’t tell him you’ve bought something huge like a car or he’ll be wondering where it is. Start small.’

  I thought this plan was genius but, seeing her confused face, I wonder if she’s got any hope of handling it without giving herself away. ‘I’ll help you. And you need to start selling stuff.’

  ‘Selling what?’ she says, in a voice that implies I might mean her children. Or fruit and veg on a stall at Chapel Market.

  ‘Anything – jewellery, clothes. Stuff of Al’s that he won’t miss, even. You can sell it on eBay, they pay by PayPal that’s linked to your new bank account. Bingo.’

  Stella sinks down on to the sofa and crosses her slim legs. ‘Laura, I know you mean well, but selling the odd designer dress here and there is not going to set me and the girls up for a new life.’

  ‘It’s going to have to,’ I say, a little too harshly. ‘Because that might be all there is. Oh, and you’re going to need to find a job.’

  This may be too much too soon. Her mouth drops open like a hungry baby crow. I pretend not to notice.

  ‘How do you pay the nanny?’

  ‘In cash,’ she says. ‘She only does the school runs now, and a few odd hours here and there in the afternoons and the holidays.’

  ‘Does she deal with Al at all?’

  Stella shakes her head reluctantly. She can see where this is going. ‘No. He’s always at work …’

  ‘Good. Then you need to get rid of her. Don’t tell him, keep getting the cash out then pay it straight into your new account. Don’t spend it. Can you find a way for the girls not to mention it?’

  She scowls at me. ‘Who’s going to take them to school?’

  ‘You are. Can they keep it to themselves?’

  ‘I’d have to bribe them,’ she says, and I think I’ll tackle that one later. Taylor and Amber are going to have to learn that they can no longer demand whatever they want, whenever they want it.

  ‘Well, just make sure the bribe is small enough to make it worth it.’

  She blinks and a tear rolls down her cheek. ‘My life is over, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ I say gently. ‘Your life as you knew it is over, that’s all. Now you’re going to have to live like the rest of us.’

  I make her go and get her laptop and set her up on eBay and PayPal. I must tell her a hundred times that she needs to start small and to keep this to herself. We begin by transferring a random amount from their joint account to her PayPal. A trial run.

  ‘So, he gets to take a million and I get twenty-seven pounds and ninety-three pence,’ she says petulantly, peering at the screen.

  ‘Just to see if it works,’ I say. ‘And that nothing flags up on the bank statement to say it’s anything to do with you.’

  ‘And what if it does?’

  ‘You say you made a mistake. You were trying to pay for something. Fudge it. He’s hardly going to be suspicious about twenty-seven pounds.’ Then I tell her she needs to go and hunt out some stuff to sell. Their house must be a goldmine.

  ‘Nothing he’ll notice is missing,’ I remind her. ‘Bring it over here if you want and we can do it together.’

  She sighs. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, and Stella,’ I say as she leaves. ‘Can you tell Eva and the others that you were wrong about me?’

  ‘About what?’

  Really?

  ‘About me making a play for Al and being Public Enemy Number One.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That. Of course.’

  I decide to push my luck. ‘And Betsy is coming to stay tomorrow. Maybe you could ask Taylor and Amber to apologize to her? And, you know, if at all possible, tell her her mother isn’t a slut after all.’

  Stella nods. I think I’ve knocked the fight out of her. ‘I’ll try,’ she says, as if it might be beyond her capabilities.

  It’s a start.

  26

  David drops Betsy off on their way back from his family, with a bag full of dirty washing (‘Sorry, I thought I’d kept on top of it’). He looks around at The Close appreciatively as we unpack the car.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’ I’m hit with a memory of us moving in together for the first time. Into a tiny studio not much bigger than this one. We’d decided that we wanted to buy as centrally as we could afford, it didn’t matter how small the flat. We’d been seeing each other for a year by that point, traipsing back and forth between his rented place in Hounslow and mine in Bounds Green. We hired a van and did the move ourselves, both crying with laughter and exhaustion when we realized that, once we both put all our accumulated worldly possessions into the space, there was no way of getting to the bathroom without some serious climbing skills. ‘I’m glad we’ve got two sofas in here,’ he said, collapsing on one of them. ‘I’d hate not to have anything to sit on on the long trek from the bed to the fridge.’ I remember us trying to cook our first dinner with a chest of drawers rammed in front of the sink. It was one of the happiest nights of my life.

  He helps carry the luggage up the stairs, but I don’t invite him in. Betsy is full of stories about things she got up to with her cousins, which thankfully removes the need for any polite conversation between David and myself.

  ‘Anything I need to know?’ I say as he leaves, hugging her goodbye. She runs off into the bedroom with one of her bags and I hear her arranging her toys on the bed.

  ‘No, all fine. Oh, she’s decided she’s a vegetarian …’

  I think of the big shop I did. Betsy’s favourite sausages and chicken nuggets. ‘Oh, for god’s sake, David. You didn’t think to tell me?’

  ‘I just did,’ he says.

  ‘I bought loads of food …’

  He shrugs. ‘She’ll probably change her mind again in a couple of days.’ I’m reminded of how frustrating he always was to argue with. How passive and impossible to rile, calmly restating his point in ever more deliberate tones while I worked myself up into a frustrated frenzy. Sometimes you just want a storm to clear the air.

  ‘Meanwhile, what am I going to give her tonight?’ I know there’s no point, but I put time and effort – and money I can’t afford to squander – into picking things that Betsy would most like to eat. Part-time parenthood does that to you. You want to ensure that the hours spent with you are perfect. Subconsciously or not,
you want your home to be their favourite.

  ‘I could pop to the nearest shop and get something?’ he says, and for some reason that comment irritates me most of all. The calm logic of it. He might as well just say, Why are you getting so worked up when there’s such a simple solution?

  ‘I’ll do it myself,’ I say petulantly.

  I fill the washing machine, then Betsy and I go for a trample in the woods. She holds my hand, which both fills me with joy and lets me know that she missed me, even as she’s babbling on about how brilliant the last few days have been. Her cousins have a basset hound called Henry – a whiffy, cantankerous old thing with rheumy eyes and breath that could strip paint – and most of her stories involve him and the various outfits he allowed her to dress him up in. Of course, I’m fretting that I can’t compete. No dog, no beach, no friendly playmates. I never used to be this anxious a parent. We’re about ten minutes from home when my phone rings. Rahina. I answer immediately. Rahina is not one of those people who call for no reason.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Anything?’

  One of the things that makes her my favourite estate agent of all time (OK, so I have only ever dealt with two, but she wins hands down. She doesn’t talk about a property having character when she actually means there’s a hole in the roof, for a start) is that she never wastes time on inane pleasantries. So I know she won’t be offended when I cut straight to the chase.

  ‘Maybe. It’s a flat …’ she says, and my heart plummets back down with a thud. ‘… But hear me out.’

  I want to say, Don’t bother, but I don’t want to be rude. And, besides, it’s not as if she’s been calling me every day trying to palm me off with unsuitable properties. ‘OK.’

  ‘It’s ground floor and it has a garden. A nice one. And it’s an absolute bargain. You know I wouldn’t bother you with it unless I really thought you should see it. It’s a ten-minute walk to the school. Tops. And it doesn’t need any work. I mean, beyond whatever you might want to do cosmetically.’

  ‘How much?’ I try to keep the disappointed tone from my voice. My heart is set on a house. A tiny house, but a house nonetheless.

  She tells me, and it’s right in the middle of my potential budget. Unlike the property I lost that was edging over the top and needed a complete renovation.

  ‘Can you send me over the details?’

  ‘We don’t even have them yet. It’s only come on this morning and I want you to see it before anyone. Before I even put it on the website. And, if it’s not right, then fine, we’ll keep looking …’

  ‘OK,’ I say. I don’t want her to lose faith in me. I need to stay in the forefront of her mind so that when the perfect place comes up she’ll do the same again. Call me before anyone else even gets a look-in. ‘I could pop down this afternoon?’

  ‘I’ve got the keys,’ she says. ‘Four o’clock OK?’

  Betsy is beside herself. Going to see a potential new home for the two of us seems to be up there with dressing Henry in her ballet outfit in the excitement stakes. She took her whole ballet get-up to Dorset with her, I discovered when I helped her unpack – leotard, elasticated frilly skirt, little wrap-around cardi, tights, shoes. She also took a woolly hat and scarf – despite the temperature being in the high sixties – and only one pair of socks. I assume David left her to her own devices when she was packing. I try to manage her expectations by telling her you have to see lots of places before you find the right one, but her seven-year-old enthusiasm knows no bounds.

  Rahina is waiting for us outside, looking summery in a fitted floral dress. Betsy hugs her fiercely. David and I used to call her the koala baby because of her love of hugging. I found her clinging on to the bemused postman once, after he’d been away on holiday for a fortnight. She’d opened the door and wrapped herself around his leg, and he was standing there with no idea what to do to get her off.

  ‘So,’ Rahina says, once the hellos are over. ‘This is it.’

  It’s a nice-enough-looking building, I’ll give it that. At least it probably was once. Yellow stone. Victorian, I’d guess. Mid terrace. Two storeys. Bay window. Tiny front garden behind a low wall, with just room for the bins. It looks a bit – a lot – unloved. The road is run-down – a betting shop on one corner and an intimidating-looking pub on another – but if it wasn’t, then I probably couldn’t afford to live here. There are two bells by the front door.

  ‘Just be open-minded,’ Rahina says. ‘It’s structurally very sound and the kitchen and bathroom are in really good nick, but the decor’s a bit frightening. I think it’ll put a lot of people off.’

  She says it like a challenge. Like I’d be letting her down if I failed to see through a bit of naff wallpaper. She rattles the key into the lock. ‘It’s a share of the freehold, so the lease is still over nine hundred years …’

  ‘Who’s going to live here that long?’ Betsy says, eyes owlish behind her glasses.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Rahina says with an indulgent smile.

  Behind the front door is a neutral hall with a small table piled up with old mail. Rahina unlocks a door to the left. ‘That one leads to the flat upstairs,’ she says, indicating the other. ‘There’s an elderly couple living there. I say elderly – I think they’re in their seventies, so they could be up there dropping acid and listening to the Grateful Dead, for all we know.’

  We follow her through a tiny vestibule and into a decent-sized living room with the bay at the front. I’m temporarily struck dumb by the vivid purple walls and the sheer amount of stuff crammed into the space. China and ceramic knick-knacks and a row of glassy-eyed dolls. The ceiling is painted black. It’s dark and dingy and reeks of tobacco. I want to cry.

  ‘Does Ozzy Osbourne live here?’

  Betsy, silent for once, reaches for my hand. We clasp our fingers together as if we both think something is coming to get us.

  ‘OK,’ Rahina says authoritatively. ‘Try and imagine it empty and painted white. Look at the space. And the big window.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I say. I wander through to the small kitchen, which has a window and door on to a side return. Rahina follows me in. I try to concentrate on the units and ignore the dark green walls. She’s right. They’re neutral wood, and in pretty good nick. Back through the living room and along the hall there’s the bathroom (‘Put in three years ago. Ignore the walls!’ Rahina barks before I go in.) and then the two bedrooms at the back. The bedrooms resemble a crime scene – I almost tell Betsy to stay back – but in the larger one Rahina takes my arm and steers me to a pair of French doors on to the back garden. It’s tiny and overgrown, with mature climbers growing up the high walls. But the sun is streaming in and bathing the whole thing in light.

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘Exactly,’ Rahina says. ‘It’s west-facing. Safe. Private.’

  She opens the doors and Betsy runs outside. ‘Felix would love this,’ she says.

  ‘Do you want to have another look round now you’ve seen this?’ Rahina says, and, leaving Betsy exploring outside, I agree.

  ‘They hardly ever come up with gardens,’ she tells me as we work our way back to the front room. ‘And all it needs is a lick of paint. To get a house at this price it’d have to be falling down. Literally.’

  It actually needs fumigating, but she’s right. ‘I know. I do. It’s just …’

  ‘You can afford it without crippling yourself,’ she says. ‘And it’s part of someone’s estate, so I don’t think the family’ll be haggling over money. They just want rid of it.’

  ‘They didn’t die in here, did they?’ I say, even though I’m not in the slightest bit superstitious.

  Rahina laughs. ‘In hospital, I think. She was ninety-five.’

  ‘Can I think about it overnight?’ I say.

  She nods. ‘I’ll hold it back till tomorrow afternoon. Just let me know yes or no.’

  ‘I do appreciate this,’ I tell her. And I do. I know she wouldn’t do this for everyone.
/>   ‘I’ll email you over rough dimensions of the rooms in a bit,’ she says. ‘We haven’t even had floor plans done yet.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  ‘That place is scary,’ Betsy says, too loudly, as we leave. Even so, I drive the route to her school on the way home just to double-check how close it is.

  Later, when I’m making beans on toast for Betsy and promising her we’ll pick up some veggie sausages tomorrow, my mobile rings and it’s Angie, sounding breathless. ‘There’s a sealed envelope on his desk addressed to him and marked “Strictly Private and Confidential. To be opened by recipient only”,’ she tells me.

  ‘Ooh!’ I say. ‘No clue what it is?’

  ‘Nothing. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find out tomorrow, after he’s looked at it.’

  ‘Everything OK your end?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, probably wondering why I’m not engaging more. ‘All fine. You?’

  ‘I have Bets here. She’s back from her holiday.’ I give Betsy a big smile and she gives me one back. ‘Auntie Angie,’ I mouth at her.

  ‘Ah!’ Angie says, getting my message. ‘Lovely. You two have a good time. I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘Definitely. Good work. Thanks.’

  I put off thinking about the flat till Betsy is asleep, tucked up on my side of the bed with Bruno in her arms. I try to approach it with my head and not my heart, comparing the measurements Rahina sent me with those of the house I lost. Apart from the kitchen and the second bedroom, there’s actually not a huge amount of difference. The gardens are about the same size. It’s walking distance to school. I know it makes sense; it’s just hard to accept it. I wish Betsy hadn’t seen it as it is. She’ll have nightmares if I tell her we’re going to be living there now.

  By the morning, after going back and forth countless times, I’ve decided I have to be sensible and go for it. I’ll offer lower than the asking price and if they accept – which Rahina thinks they well might, because the family are keen to get hold of any cash from their crazy deceased aunt’s flat and split it sooner rather than later – then it’s fate and I’m meant to live there. I just won’t mention it to Betsy yet. I send Rahina an email before I can change my mind.