Queen Bee

by Jane Fallon

  ‘Still –’

  I interrupt. ‘Still nothing. Who says I want him back anyway? Who says I want to spend my life with a man who thinks being with me is worse than being alone …’

  ‘I didn’t say you should take him back, just make him regret what he’s done. It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘I don’t want him to regret it. I want it not to have happened in the first –’

  Before I can continue with my rant, my phone beeps with a message. I glance down at it. Rahina. ‘Did you get my email?’

  ‘Hold on …’ I say to Stella. What can be so urgent that she’s sent me a text as well as an email? I jab at my phone. Skim-read Rahina’s missive. The words ‘good news’ jump out at me and then ‘accepted’.

  ‘Fuck,’ I say out loud.

  ‘What is it?’

  I read through the email properly. Just to be sure. ‘I’ve had my offer on a flat accepted.’

  ‘You’re buying a flat?’

  ‘Apparently,’ I say. ‘I don’t even like it. I just need a proper home for me and Bets. I should go and deal with this.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure Al won’t leave you stranded. You’ll have time to work out what you can afford.’ It occurs to me that Stella doesn’t have a hope in hell of getting a mortgage. She has no income of her own. Hopefully, Al’s settlement will be reasonable, because I’m not sure anyone reputable would even rent her somewhere. There’s no evidence she could pay the rent. ‘Did you manage to find out how much is in your joint account? I mean, I don’t want specifics, I’m not being nosy – but if he splits whatever’s left with you, will you be able to buy yourself a place? A normal place, I mean, not …’ I wave my hands around the space ‘… like this.’

  ‘Not much.’ I have no idea what ‘not much’ means in Stella’s world. A million? Ten? I certainly can’t imagine it means the same as in mine. ‘His salary is still being paid in. I suppose he thinks if payments suddenly start getting rejected, then I’d want to know why.’

  That doesn’t sound good. ‘You need to go through and cancel any regular outgoings – not essential things like gas and electric, obviously. But anything else. And then pay those exact amounts into your PayPal every month. Exact, OK? Anything you can that he won’t notice. And Stella, no more weekly massages or facials or nails or whatever it is that you do. Take what you usually spend on stuff like that out and pay it into your own account. Everything PayPal or cash, OK?’

  She looks at me as if I’ve suggested she give up eating, although, come to think of it, she’d probably prefer that to giving up her pampering. ‘I’m serious.’

  She blinks at me slowly. I think I’ve lost her. ‘Tell you what, I’ll go through it all with you, OK? And if you want, I’ll come over and we’ll go through all your stuff to see what you can sell …’

  ‘I’m not sure I can go through that humiliation again.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be jewellery. You must have loads of designer clothes, right? Shoes? We’ll put it all on eBay. Like I said, I’ll help.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she manages to say. ‘I’d appreciate that.’

  ‘I really do have to go and deal with this now, though. Will you be all right?’

  She nods unconvincingly. I wonder if I should find Pilar before I leave, but then I think Stella’s going to have to get used to standing on her own two feet. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, if you want. Don’t forget to signal.’

  I rush out, leaving her there. Halfway across the hall, I realize I don’t have my phone in my hand. I step back into the kitchen. Stella is still sitting slumped at the table, head in her hands.

  I take a step back out again. ‘Stella,’ I call, loudly. When I walk back into the kitchen, she’s sitting bolt upright, pretending to be looking at something on her own phone. ‘Sorry … I forgot my mobile …’

  I grab it up. ‘Thanks. See you soon.’

  I go into efficient mode and call Rahina, the mortgage adviser at the bank and the conveyancer who dealt with the sale of my marital home. Rahina tells me that the family didn’t even flinch at my low offer. I try to be grateful for my stroke of luck.

  I’m loath to tell Betsy about the flat yet. I think she’ll panic about living there, with the black ceilings and the reek of decades-old tobacco. It will probably all fall through anyway, if the grieving nieces and nephews get wind of the fact that they have grossly underestimated London prices, I tell myself. And, if it doesn’t, I decide, I won’t mention it till it all goes through and I’ve been in with an industrial-sized tin of white paint and a fumigating spray and blitzed the lot.

  I remind myself I need think with my head. I suddenly feel overwhelmed with how much I have to do, especially when I check my work emails and find one from AJT Music asking if we can fit their spring clean in this weekend, and another from one of the local houses I quoted for saying they’d like to book in for the cheaper of the two options I presented them with, and a very specific list of dates and times. I decide I need to start delegating a bit more, something I have always found almost impossible. But I know how time-consuming even the most straightforward home purchase can be.

  ‘I have so much to tell you,’ I say to Angie when she answers my call. ‘But not now. I’m in a bit of a rush.’ I do tell her quickly about the flat, and she’s so pleased for me I can’t help but start to feel more upbeat myself.

  ‘So, it’s not the dream home you imagined in your head, but if it’s got enough space, it’s in the right area and the neighbours aren’t crack dealers, then it could be,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know about the last one yet,’ I say with a laugh. She’s right, though. ‘You should start an advice column. Ask Auntie Ange.’

  ‘No one could afford me. My opinions don’t come cheap.’

  She’s happy to coordinate with all the others to get everyone’s availabilities for the upcoming weekends. ‘Leave it all with me,’ she says, and I wish I’d done this earlier. ‘But you owe me big time. I want detailed updates of life in The Close next time I see you.’

  I wouldn’t even know where to start because so much has happened since I last filled her in, but I tell her it’s a deal anyway. I do tell her about number 7’s application for permission to build an iceberg basement – two underground storeys and an additional six thousand square feet of leisure centre, car parking, servants’ quarters and a dedicated hairdressing space, according to the plans which are being bandied about The Close by the furious neighbours.

  Angie laughs. ‘Maybe you could move in there. They wouldn’t even notice you.’

  I decide to take twenty minutes out and go for a walk round the block to clear my head. Things keep randomly popping into my brain, like the fact I’m going to have to shell out for new carpets that I can’t afford, because god knows what’s living in the existing ones. I remember they were grimy. A shade of red that’s straight out of a brothel in an episode of The Sweeney. I wonder if there’s a stunning wooden floor underneath that no one thought to mention. Unlikely. I need to ask Rahina if I can get in and have another look round, because I can’t actually remember anything except the colours, the smell and the garden. But I’m almost scared to, in case I realize I’m making a horrendous mistake. Better now than later, I suppose.

  I’m deep in thought as I reach the end of the road and I almost bump into Ferne, pushing the baby buggy as I round the corner. We both jump like startled cats.

  ‘I was about to call round,’ Ferne says, once we’ve recovered our composure. ‘They want to book in a cleaning date.’

  Blimey. It never rains but it pours. I don’t think I’ve ever had a sixty-six per cent success rate from domestic quotes before. Maybe I’m pricing myself too low.

  ‘Oh, that’s great, thanks.’ I’m pretty sure she must have put in a good word for me, and it turns out I’m right. She offers up a few dates and I make a note of them in my phone, promising to email her lat
er on. They don’t want to do a weekend, which complicates everything massively in terms of staff availability, but needs must, so I’ll make it work somehow. We’re chatting away about nothing, and I’m making random faces at baby Alexei to make him laugh, when a flash car pulls up beside us (I want to say it’s a Ferrari, but I have no idea. It’s one of those uncomfortable-looking, totally impractical but beautifully sleek things, anyway) and the window rolls down. Katya leans across from the driver’s seat.

  ‘Laura! I was hoping to bump into you,’ she says, all smiles, as if she’s forgotten that she blanked me last time our paths crossed. Like everyone else on the street, she has some kind of Spidey sense for underlings and she doesn’t acknowledge Ferne at all.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, and then I’ve got nothing.

  ‘I just wanted to say I’m really sorry. I can’t believe we all got it so wrong. Typical Stella.’ She rolls her eyes exaggeratedly to let me know she’s joking.

  I force myself to smile. ‘That’s OK. No harm done.’

  ‘Good. Well, pop round any time. It would be nice to catch up.’

  ‘What was that all about?’ Ferne says, once Katya’s mean machine purrs off again.

  Annoyingly – because I would love to see her reaction – I can’t tell her, in case she lets Al know that I’m no longer going along with his phoney explanation for the book. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. You know what they’re like …’

  Ferne nods. ‘Rich girls’ club.’

  ‘Exactly.’ It occurs to me that soon she’ll be joining. Hopefully, she’ll remember what it’s like to be one of us little people. Throw us a few crumbs from on high.

  It’s the weekend, and the AJT Music deep-clean. A couple of weeks ago, I would have been thrilled to have the chance to sift through Al’s office with a fine-tooth comb, but I feel as if I’ve already found the mother lode in there, so now it’s just another cleaning job. I’m only pitching in on the Saturday morning this time, because I’m damned if I’m missing a weekend with Betsy when David’s had her all week. She came along with me first thing this morning and spent an hour or so wiping down windowsills, her tongue poking up out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on getting right into the corners, and then Michaela popped by with Zara and the two younger ones to whisk her away to theirs for a couple of hours. She managed to use her new favourite word at least four times before she left, whenever anyone asked how she was getting on.

  Angie and I have opted to do the executive offices together, to give us a chance to catch up in private.

  ‘I just feel as if I can’t leave them all to drown. I mean, she’s ridiculous and spoilt and a bit of a bitch, but she has no idea. I think, left to her own devices, she’d sit in that house, still ordering all her food from Fortnum’s, still being waited on hand and foot by Pilar, having her Botox and eyelash extensions and manicures, until the bailiffs showed up and threw them all out on the street.’

  ‘My heart bleeds.’

  ‘If it was just her, then I think I’d leave her to get on with it. But there are kids …’

  Angie interrupts. ‘The kids who were so mean to Betsy?’

  ‘I know. Still kids, though.’ I want to get off the subject. I don’t even really understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. Except that I remember what it was like to be eight and suddenly find your father had exited your life with no warning. What it was like to be forty-two and suddenly find your husband was doing the same.

  ‘You’re too soft.’

  ‘You can talk,’ I say, and I know it’s true. Angie might be tough as nails on the outside, but she has a soft centre, especially where children are concerned.

  She shrugs. ‘Maybe. Just don’t let her turn you into another person who does everything for her. Like you said, she needs to learn to stand on her own two feet.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I say, brushing a strand of hair away from my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘Promise.’

  ‘Rad,’ she says, with a smirk.

  As I’m cleaning Al’s desk – all the bits and pieces have been moved to a box on one side, as with all the desks, so we can polish them properly for once – I decide it would be foolish not to check his locked drawer one more time, just in case there’s anything new.

  ‘Keep a look out for a minute,’ I hiss to Angie. Maggie is meticulously wiping down the louvre blinds at the other end of the main office, while Jean and Catriona tackle the kitchen and Tomas and Paul take on the toilets, everyone’s least favourite job. She screws her face up as if to say, Really? This again? The key is, thankfully, in the same place, so I don’t think he can suspect anyone has been going through his things. Or that I am on to him, hopefully. I huddle down in the kneehole of the desk, out of sight of the main office, and go through the documents systematically. There’s nothing new.

  I put everything back where it should be. Angie is idly flicking through the box on the desk into which Al (or his assistant, I assume) has haphazardly thrown everything in sight to clear the way for us. She opens an envelope, pulls out the contents, dismisses them. Does the same to another. Then another. She takes her time reading this last one, hands it to me, looking at me expectantly. It’s obvious straightaway what it is.

  ‘Shit,’ I say.

  30

  Inside is a copy of a contract. And a letter from an estate agent laying out the terms for the sale of number 3, The Close. The letter reiterates that the sale is to be completely confidential, not advertised on their website but offered privately to prospective clients only. That viewings are only to be held on certain dates and with the prior agreement of Mr Thornbury only. The first is booked for 2 May. This coming Thursday. That all business will be discussed with Mr Thornbury and Mr Thornbury alone. There’s a suggested sale price that makes my eyes water, but it’s not much more than I now know Al owes to the bank. The letter is dated a couple of days ago.

  ‘He’s put the house up for sale,’ I tell her – although she’s read the letter herself, so she must already know – taking photos of every page. ‘He’s selling it out from under them.’

  I’m too knackered to hang up the red tea towel when I get home and, besides, I couldn’t discuss anything in front of Betsy, who has all the discretionary skills of a parrot. Michaela dropped her back after lunch and she spent the afternoon playing in the reception area with Jean’s ten-year-old daughter, who had refused to go to Sharon’s with the rest of the ‘little kids’, as she called them. She’s a sweet, serious girl and a good antidote to Amber, so I left them to it.

  On Sunday, there are enough staff available so that I don’t have to pitch in, at least until after I drop Betsy back at her dad’s when I pop in to do a last walk-through, making sure everything is as it should be. Thankfully, this morning we saw Stella’s whole family pile into their Bentley and I remembered she told me it was Al’s mother’s eightieth birthday and they were taking her to lunch. Anyway, it means there’s no question of Betsy demanding to go over there – something I’m keen to avoid when Al is about. He might start to wonder how Stella and I have suddenly become matey, or at least civil, with each other, and I certainly don’t want to open that particular can of worms.

  First thing Monday, though, the red tea towel is up, flapping in the breeze of the open window. Stella is going to have to find somewhere to live for her and the girls, and fast. It’s unimaginably cruel, what Al is doing to his family. I find it hard to believe that he’ll go through with it, but the evidence is there in black and white (and garish colour, because he’s somehow managed to have a photographer in to capture the full glory of their house. I spent quite a while last night poring over the pictures I’d taken with my phone, enlarging them with my fingers, fascinated by the rooms I’ve never seen before – the swimming pool, the state-of-the-art gym, Stella and Al’s stadium-sized bedroom, which looks like something Hugh Hefner might have thought was overstated, with opulent drapes, deep pile, dark grey carpet, black silky bedding and ‘erotic’ monochrome photographs on the wall behind
the bed).

  By the time Stella appears, I’m pacing anxiously. I have so much I need to be getting on with, but I’m finding it impossible to concentrate. Angie has emailed over a rota of people for the two house cleans – including a plan for midweek at number 1, which leaves enough people free to leave early and cover the usual evening’s work – but other than that I’ve spent most of the morning rehearsing in my head how I am going to break the news to Stella.

  ‘Sorry, been dropping the girls off at school,’ she says when I open the door. She says it like it’s an achievement, like she’s expecting praise for her selfless service. I decide to indulge her.

  ‘Good for you.’

  She perches on the sofa as I fill the kettle. Now she’s here, I don’t know where to start.

  ‘So, what’s so urgent?’ she says.

  I pluck the red tea towel from the window. ‘Can I ask you a random question? What are you doing this Thursday?’

  She looks at me, confused. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just indulge me,’ I say, spooning coffee into mugs.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’m going to the spa at The Sanderson for the day.’

  ‘When did you book that?’

  ‘Al booked it for me, actually. Very unlike him.’

  Ah. I exhale noisily.

  ‘What?’ she says. ‘What’s going on?’

  I slosh milk into the coffee, sugar in mine, and then I plonk a mug down in front of her. ‘I found something …’ I say. I sit on the sofa next to her, pull out my phone. I need to just say it; there’s no way to sugar the pill. ‘Al has put the house up for sale. They’re doing viewings on Thursday. I wondered how he was going to make sure you were out of the way.’

  ‘No …’ Her eyes flood with tears.

  ‘It’s all here, look …’ I hand her my mobile, watch while she scrolls through the photos.

  ‘He’s had a fucking photographer in the house?’ she spits. ‘When the hell was that?’