Queen Bee

by Jane Fallon

  I shake my head. ‘God knows.’

  The edges of her face screw up. I almost make myself laugh, thinking that she resembles a Cornish pasty. I should make a list: foodstuffs that Stella’s frozen face resembles. It’s not funny, though. None of this is funny.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ she says.

  A thought hits me. It’s hardly a long-term solution, but it’s certainly a delaying tactic. ‘What if you don’t go to the spa? Tell him you’re ill. He’ll have to cancel everything.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ she says, although I can’t tell if she really means it.

  ‘Of course he’ll just rearrange, but you’ll know as soon as he organizes for you to be out of the house for a day.’

  ‘He’ll be furious.’

  ‘Probably. But, if you’re ill, what can he do?’

  Meanwhile, she tells me, she has earmarked a large pile of designer clothes – both hers and Al’s – as well as bags and shoes, for us to put on eBay. It feels too much like hard work, but I know she needs all the money she can lay her hands on, and soon, so I trail after her to her house, to show her what to do. For which, read ‘do it for her’. Luckily, The Close is empty, so I don’t have to worry about anyone wondering why me and Stella are suddenly hanging out together.

  It’s the first time I’ve been upstairs chez Stella – although, of course, I have now seen photos. She leads me through the Fifty Shades of Black bedroom (I try to avert my eyes from naked – I assume – Stella on the walls. I’m pretty sure it’s her, at least; I don’t like to ask), through an adjoining bathroom the size of my studio – more marble, and gold-coloured taps. Maybe they’re actual gold; I wouldn’t be surprised. I can see that the other side is a mirror image, so I assume this is ‘hers’ and that is ‘his’ – and into a vast wardrobe-lined dressing room. There are mirrors everywhere, reflecting off each other to give you a front, back and side view of yourself in any outfit. I can’t imagine anything worse. There’s a dressing table with a looking glass surrounded by lights and expensive-looking jars featuring names I’ve never even heard of on top. Piled on a chaise longue is a mountain of clothing. I assume this is the reason I’m here.

  ‘Won’t Al notice if all this just disappears?’

  She shrugs. ‘He never wears any of it any more. The same with me and my stuff.’ She flaps a hand, and I see another, much smaller heap of what looks like dresses and bags. ‘Right,’ I say. ‘OK.’

  It takes us over an hour and a half to photograph everything. Stella insists on modelling half of it, and I take pictures that cut her head off, just in case. Then I show her how to set up an eBay account (i.e. I set it up while she reads Vogue), link it to her PayPal account, then start the painstaking process of listing all the items.

  ‘You do one,’ I say, after I’ve sweated over five or six.

  ‘Oh gosh, no, you’re so much better at this than me.’

  Two can play at that game. ‘Only because you haven’t tried.’

  ‘Please, Laura,’ She flaps her eyelashes at me, pouts the fishy lips. ‘I’m hopeless at anything with computers.’

  I imagine this is how she always gets her way. Plays the helpless little lady. Well, that one’s not going to cut it any more. ‘No. You need to learn how to do this stuff.’ I hand her the laptop. Sit back.

  See, this is why I could never be a teacher. After fifteen minutes, I have to sit on my hands to stop myself grabbing the computer back and doing it myself. I must tell her the same thing twenty times. I don’t know if she’s deliberately not getting it to make a point, or she really is this useless. At this rate, we’re going to still be here when Al gets home from work.

  ‘I think I’ve done it!’ she announces suddenly. I’ve almost drifted off. I peer over her shoulder. Thank god.

  ‘Fab. Now the next one …’

  ‘You’re so much quicker than me,’ she whines, but I stand my ground.

  ‘I won’t be now you’ve got the hang of it. Keep going.’

  She sighs. I sit there, impassive. ‘Go on, it won’t do itself. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll finish.’ Maybe I could have been a teacher, after all. I certainly know all the clichés.

  ‘You need to buy a load of packing stuff. Just get brown paper, and tissue paper – cheap tissue paper, not fancy stuff – and Sellotape,’ I say, once she’s reluctantly back to it. ‘And put everything somewhere he won’t see it. Not in here.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that. Everything’s going in one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. It has a lock. He’d never have any reason to go in there.’

  ‘OK. Good.’

  ‘Oh, and I’m taking the girls for bridesmaid dress fittings tomorrow.’

  I wonder if I’ve misheard. ‘You’re …?’

  She laughs, and I realize I don’t think I’ve ever heard her laugh before. It’s a sort of dry honk. No joy in it whatsoever. ‘I haven’t gone crazy. It’s the only way I can transfer the money without them giving away the fact that they don’t know anything about it. I can’t afford to bribe them any more, can I?’

  ‘What did you have to get them for them not to tell him about the nanny, by the way?’ I realize I’m talking about her girls like they’re a pair of experienced blackmailers, but I think perhaps they are.

  ‘You’d be proud of me,’ she says, more animated. ‘They’re desperate for a miniature pony, so I told them I was going to arrange for them to keep one of the ones we’ve booked for the wedding. By the time they find out there’s not going to be a wedding, and so no pony either, it won’t matter what they say to Al …’

  She looks at me, waiting for praise. I don’t even know where to start with the morality of this one. The idea that you would promise your small daughters a pony to keep a secret from their father. Let alone the fact that you were actually conning them in the first place. ‘Gosh,’ is all I can manage. ‘Whatever it takes, I guess.’

  ‘I knew you’d be impressed.’

  I change the subject. ‘How much does a bespoke bridesmaid’s dress cost in these here parts anyway?’

  Stella shrugs. ‘I’ve told him fifteen thousand each.’

  ‘Oh my god, Stella! It would take me months to earn that.’

  The look on her face is priceless. I may as well have said something in Mandarin. ‘But you have your own business …’

  ‘Cleaning,’ I interrupt. ‘I have a tiny cleaning business, and most of what comes in goes on wages. It keeps my head above water, that’s all.’

  ‘And what about your ex-husband?’

  ‘He’s good,’ I say, because he is. I can’t fault him on that. ‘He pays maintenance for Bets, and he’ll contribute to our living costs once she’s back with me full time. But it’s not as if he has loads of spare cash knocking around. He just has a normal job. Nothing flash.’

  ‘Well, then, I’m lucky, I guess,’ she says. But we both know that’s not true.

  31

  May

  Of all the things that hurt about David leaving, it was somehow the fact that he’d been viewing flats to buy, that he must have had our place valued, sat down and worked out exactly what he could afford to offer, that hit me the most (he’d left aside precisely half of the potential profit for me, and half of our savings). We’d been lucky – well, ‘lucky’ is definitely the wrong word; I don’t know what the right word is, but bear with me – in that, being an only child, he’d inherited his parents’ house when they died in quick succession. Not a pile, by any means. A modest three-bedroom home in Kent, but nearly all paid off by his mum and dad’s careful planning. And we’d bought the maisonette using most of the money from its sale. With a big mortgage on top, obviously. But it gave us a chance, and it meant we had a hope in hell of getting two places once we split. He told me his intentions the day his offer was accepted. He didn’t want to be going behind my back, he’d said. He wanted to be upfront, like he’d promised. No deceptions. Our idea of what constituted a deception clearly differed. I’d lain awake at night obsessiv
ely picturing him and our besuited, ruddy-cheeked, wine-bellied bank manager poring over our finances in secret, both agreeing to keep it from me for now. Mistresses come in all shapes and sizes.

  I obsessively check Stella’s eBay items. Of course, not much is happening, as it never does until the last few hours of any sale, but, when I click on her, the seller, I see there are new listings. A Mont Blanc pen. A silver paperweight. A pair of men’s Tom Ford sunglasses. I feel proud, like I did the first time Betsy tied her own shoelaces. She did it all by herself. That’s my girl. I leave the blue tea towel hanging, just in case Stella needs me, and I get on with work.

  I feel as if I’ve neglected Gail a bit. Since the time I showed up unannounced and Stella was there, I haven’t been round and, lately, I’ve been too scared of what I might say, what I might give away. I’ve avoided her on the drive a couple of times, waiting until she got into her car and drove away before leaving myself. I feel bad. Not that I think she will have given it a second thought, but she was the only person who gave me the benefit of the doubt when I was blackballed. So, the next time I see her pottering in the front garden, watering the hedge round the fountain in the early evening, I go out, as if I’m going for a walk.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, feigning surprise at seeing her.

  She pushes her fringe out of her eyes with the inside of her elbow. ‘Laura! How are you?’

  ‘Good,’ I say. ‘I’ve found a flat. They’ve accepted my offer.’

  ‘That’s fantastic news. Do you want to come in and have a glass of wine to celebrate. Or … oh … were you on your way somewhere?’

  ‘No. Just a walk. I’d love to. If you’re free, I mean …’

  ‘Look at us pussyfooting around like two teenagers who fancy each other,’ she laughs. ‘Isn’t it funny how, when you’re a child, you just assume everyone is happy to play with you, and then you somehow lose that.’

  I think about Betsy and the Mini Mes. ‘It gets knocked out of you, I suppose.’

  She turns off the hose. ‘I’m going to make a resolution to live like an eight-year-old. We’d all be far less anxious if we did that.’

  I follow her into the house and through to the kitchen. ‘Um … you don’t have any white, do you?’ I ask as she reaches for a bottle of red.

  ‘Of course.’ She roots around in the fridge. ‘Don’t tell me you’d have preferred white all this time?’

  ‘Well …’ I say, and we both burst out laughing.

  ‘Here’s to living like eight-year-olds,’ she says as she pours me a glass. I clink it against hers. ‘If you don’t like what you’re being offered, just say so. Life would be far easier if we were all a bit more honest.’

  ‘Here’s to that,’ I say. She opens the glass doors and steps out into the garden, and I follow. It’s incredible out here. There’s a stone patio with a table and chairs and two rattan loungers, an epic area of pristine grass (I’ve seen a gardener hard at work a couple of times a week) surrounded by blossoming rhododendrons of all colours, and behind them a row of tall fir trees. Over to the left, out of sight of my bedroom window, is an azure swimming pool.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Lovely, isn’t it? One of these days, Ben and I are going to have to have the downsizing conversation, but I don’t think I can bear to leave this.’

  ‘Not yet, surely?’

  ‘Once we’re both too decrepit to manage the stairs.’ She laughs, showing her perfect veneers. ‘Come and sit over here, it gets the last of the sun.’

  She leads me across the lawn to the table where I watched her and Stella share a bottle. It’s idyllic. Almost silent, except for the birds.

  ‘Oh no!’ she says as we sit down. ‘I’ve just realized that means you’ll be leaving us.’

  I screw up my face. ‘Sorry. Not for a few months, and that’s assuming it all goes through smoothly. Anything could go wrong.’

  She takes a sip. ‘What’s it like? Tell me everything.’

  ‘It’s …’ I start to say, and then suddenly I’m biting back tears. ‘It’s awful.’

  Gail laughs, thinking I’m making a joke, but then a loud sob escapes me and she puts her glass down, alarmed. ‘Laura … what?’

  I dab at my eyes with my sleeve. ‘Sorry. God …’

  ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No. I mean, apart from the flat … I’m being stupid. I should be happy that I’ve found somewhere …’

  She reaches out a hand and touches my arm. ‘You’re allowed a wobble.’

  ‘That’s all it is,’ I say, getting my breathing back under control. ‘I just need to keep reminding myself why I’m doing it.’

  ‘Because you’re a good mum …’ Gail says.

  I manage a watery smile. ‘Don’t. You’ll set me off again …’

  Gail produces a tissue from somewhere and hands it to me. I rub at my eyes. ‘It’ll be fine,’ I say decisively. ‘I just need to get my head around it.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be missed. By me and Ben, at least. I can’t speak for the rest of them.’

  ‘It’s got better. I think Stella called the dogs off.’

  ‘I’m glad. You might be gone before the wedding.’

  ‘Lucky me,’ I say. I mustn’t give anything away.

  We sit in companionable silence for a moment. I watch a jay hop cautiously towards a bird feeder. ‘Do you think my separation would have been much more difficult if we hadn’t been married?’

  Gail wafts a fly away from her glass. ‘In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know. Dividing the spoils? If David had been difficult, I mean. Which he wouldn’t have been.’

  She shrugs. ‘I know nothing about family law, but I imagine if you have a child together, the father has a duty of care. I mean, maintenance for the child obviously, but also a responsibility to make sure they have somewhere decent to live and such.’

  ‘Keep them in the style to which they’ve become accustomed, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure it depends, but yes.’

  I thought so too. I’m still confused as to why Stella won’t see a lawyer. Get her ducks in a row. No one would have to know, but she could at least find out where she stands. Make plans before it’s too late and it’s all academic because everything is gone anyway. I resolve to mention it to her again. Press her a bit, now we’re getting on.

  I’m in her kitchen. Before I ended up here, I drove to Tesco and bought big bags of macaroni and cheap cheese. No more Fortnum and Mason delivery. No more filet de bœuf. She’s going to squirrel away the money and buy budget from now on. And she’s going to learn to cook, because Pilar is not going to be there for ever. Stella has complained every step of the way, like a sulky toddler, and I’m beginning to wish I had never started this.

  I’ve fetched a Pyrex dish from home and I’m knocking up my own smaller portion for Betsy and me to share tonight. I talk Stella through every step of the way (I assume nothing, once I realize she doesn’t even know how to boil pasta. Me instructing her to tip it into the water: ‘How long would you think it has to cook for?’ Stella, shrugging her shoulders: ‘Half an hour?’ – then, noticing my expression: ‘A minute?’) and I try to ignore the massive pile of washing-up we’re creating by using two of everything. Just this once, I’ll let Pilar clean up. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I’d end up having to do it.

  ‘What about before you met Al? Didn’t you have to fend for yourself then?’ I ask, stirring the sauce. I know nothing about her background. Maybe she was just left by aliens at the age of twenty-seven. Fully formed, but with no life skills whatsoever.

  ‘I was married before,’ she says, casually.

  ‘You were …?’

  She nods. I indicate to her that she needs to keep stirring. ‘I got married at twenty-one. Andrew.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ I say, although, why would I?

  ‘We split up when I met Al. One of those things.’

  ‘Right. Did you never … I mean, you and Andrew weren’t big on cooking?
’

  She gives me her weird fishy smile. ‘He liked to do it. Or we’d eat out. Whatever.’

  Ah, so she’s always been a princess. ‘And you’ve never worked? Anything?’

  She wafts a hand. ‘Oh, a bit of modelling, you know.’ She says it in a way that makes me think, if I asked her what campaigns she’d done, she wouldn’t be able to provide an answer. I can’t imagine she ever had the drive, or work ethic, to make a go of it, even if she had the vital statistics. So she really does have zero experience of earning her own living.

  ‘What did Andrew do?’ I stir my pasta into the sauce. She does the same, watching my every move, as if there’s a trick to it.

  ‘He worked in the financial sector. He had a good job, but he never quite made it.’

  Probably because he had to leave early to go home and cook dinner every night. She sounds quite wistful when she speaks about him, though. There’s obviously a fondness there.

  ‘He was older, you know. Very handsome. Very kind. But he just lacked that drive.’

  ‘Are you still in touch?’

  She shakes her head. The horse tail swishes. ‘Oh god, no. There’s nothing deader than an ex-love. Isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘Something like that. And before Andrew, what?’

  ‘I lived at home.’

  ‘Put the bread in the food processor,’ I say, and she looks at me as if I’ve asked her to split an atom. I point at it. ‘Are your parents …?’

  ‘Still alive. They live in Dorset.’ She’s wrestling with the lid of the Kenwood. Pilar walks through, watching us nervously. I smile at her.

  ‘Look,’ I say to Stella, twisting the top off. Before she can take it from me, I twist it back on again so she’s forced to do it for herself. ‘So could you maybe go and live with them for a bit? You and the girls? While you sort yourself out?’

  I have to play ‘Guess the expression’ again, because something moves bits of her face around, but it’s unclear what. I think it’s a grimace. ‘I don’t think so. They live in an apartment complex for the over-sixty-fives. I mean, it’s nice, they like it. But, you know …’