Читать книгу The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia: A Black-Hearted Soap Opera - Sarah May - Страница 11
ОглавлениеIt was three o’clock in the afternoon and Linda was standing in the lounge of No. 8 Pollards Close tilting the blinds so that she could see out into the street. The blinds were part of an over-order for Quantum Kitchens that Joe had brought home and put up at the lounge windows and all the bedroom windows at the front of the house as well because Linda liked things to match. They were made of strips of stiffened fabric connected by chains that clattered when you tilted them. They were clattering now and it was making her nervous. The snow had eased off again and she’d just got in from the new Tesco superstore on the other side of Littlehaven that had launched an inflatable elephant for its opening week. She saw them launching it from the roof while she was there, and men in suits had been wrestling with guide ropes. When she got home she realised she could see it from the window in the spare room, but what had she been doing in the spare room anyway? She couldn’t remember. Now here she was looking out into the street from behind the same blinds Joe had in his office, chewing her nails and wondering why Dominique and Mick weren’t back from Gatwick Manor yet; eaten away by the fact that they were probably in one of the hotel’s rooms together right now having sex in the afternoon on linen sheets. A married couple having extra-marital sex with each other.
The only thing that managed to distract her was a purple Granada turning into the Close and parking outside her house. She watched as a man in a ski jacket with what looked like oil stains on it got out of the car and started to walk down her drive. She went outside.
‘Hello?’
‘Wayne Spalding,’ he said, flipping up the sunglasses lenses attached to his spectacles. ‘Local council.’ He paused. ‘Were you going out?’
‘No, I was –’ She looked down and realised that she still had her coat on – a grey fake fur one that an antivivisectionist once spat on. ‘Did you say local council?’
‘Environment department.’
‘The tree. Of course.’
‘We tried telephoning this morning, but there was no answer.’
‘I was at an aerobics class,’ she said automatically.
This seemed to please him, and the way he looked at her made her feel as though she had done something worthy; something moral even, and this confused her momentarily: a) because she didn’t like him very much, and b) she’d never really thought of aerobics as either moral or immoral. ‘D’you want to come through?’
She led Wayne Spalding through the garage and he held the door open for her as they went into the back garden.
‘You’ve got a lot of snow here,’ he said.
‘Hasn’t everyone?’ Linda smiled, and walked into the middle of the garden, trying not to notice the trail of dog turds dotted across it. ‘There she is. The bane of my life.’
Wayne Spalding turned his flat stare to a four-hundred-year-old Turkey oak. Half the tree overhung the back fence of No. 8 Pollards Close, its lower branches disappearing into the snow piled on the lawn.
‘You should see it in autumn.’ Linda crossed the snow with Wayne following her like a prospective buyer, his basket-weave grey loafers sinking twenty centimetres deep. ‘The leaves make me really frantic. Really, really frantic.’ The idea of a rogue tree was gaining momentum with her; it helped keep her mind off the fact that the Niemans were coming to dinner that night; that Joe hadn’t called yet; that Jessica was in her first ever detention; and that there were still no lights on in the Saunders’ house. ‘The leaves get – just – everywhere. All round here. Everywhere. My husband,’ she sighed, ‘well, he’s a busy man and it would take him all weekend – all of an entire weekend in something like October, November – to clear this lawn.’ She faded out, less sure. Wayne Spalding was still staring flatly, his bovine gaze on the spot where the lowest branches disappeared into snow like they were about to start growing downwards into the lawn. Linda felt a sudden panic. The tree had intentions. It wanted to ruin things for her.
‘You see what I mean?’ she said, pointing to the branches. She glanced at the dandruff in Wayne’s hair. ‘The council should be doing something about it.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Wayne said, without turning round. He walked over to the fence at the end of the garden where some honeysuckle had been dying ever since Linda planted it two summers ago. ‘It’s nearly four hundred years old. Healthy,’ he said, looking up into the tree then reaching out for a lower branch and running his hand along its underside.
The garden at No. 8 was the same as all the other gardens on the executive side of Pollards Close: approximately one hundred and forty-four squares of turf that had grown into 144m2 of lawn infested with a strain of clover that not even Flymos were able to eradicate (Linda was convinced the clover was Irish), and bald patches where paddling pools stood during photogenic summers. The whole thing was framed with puddles of buddleia, lilac, viburnum and hebe. The gardens arrived on the back of contractors’ trucks and were left pretty much as they were delivered. The world in which people who moved there found themselves was too new for them to contemplate changing.
Wayne Spalding counted the paces between the spot where the branch touched the lawn and the house. He walked past Linda, his flat eyes on the patio doors.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just checking something.’ He paused, watching the TV through the double glazing. ‘Anyone in there? Anyone watching that?’
‘My dog, Ferdinand. He likes TV.’
‘You’ve got the TV on for your dog?’
‘He’s a dachshund.’
He turned and stared at Linda for a moment then walked back up the lawn, counting his paces again. ‘Waste of electricity.’
Linda didn’t say anything. She wanted to, but couldn’t think of anything, so she put her hands in her coat pockets instead.
‘You’ve got a lot of space between the house and the tree. A lot of space,’ he said to her, adding, ‘This is a big garden’ – making it sound like excess rather than achievement.
Linda began to get the feeling that her time was being wasted. ‘So what are you saying?’
‘I mean, even if there was a storm and the tree got hit by lightning – even if that happened and we determined that the tree would fall into your garden and not into the field, even then –’
‘Even then, what?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t hit the house.’
‘Hit the house?’ Linda shouted. ‘I was just talking about leaves.’
Wayne stared at her.
‘So I’d have four hundred years’ worth of oak lying across my lawn, but it wouldn’t hit the house? What then?’
‘You’d have to call a tree surgeon.’
‘And how much would that cost?’
‘Look,’ Wayne moved his hands slowly up and down, pressing the thick, cold air downwards with his palms. ‘Look,’ he said again, louder, as if Linda was already hysterical and not just showing signs of it, ‘I’ve done the risk assessment.’
‘You’ve done it? That’s it? That’s your risk assessment?’
‘That’s my risk assessment, and I can safely say that there is no risk. That tree poses no threat to your property, none whatsoever – not even in the event of an act of God.’
‘Wait. Wait. Wait.’ Despite the heavy cold, she could feel angel wings of sweat growing across her back. ‘That’s all there is to it? You walk across my lawn and that’s it? What if … what if we’re out here in the garden in the summer having a barbecue … and the tree falls down? What about that?’
Wayne thought about this, his face going grey now with the cold. ‘The wind would have to be gale force to bring that tree down – why would you be barbecuing in the middle of a storm like that?’
‘Listen, I phoned your department and talked to somebody about leaves, not lightning and … and storms, and oh, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Do not take the Saviour’s name in vain. I won’t have that,’ Wayne said quietly, pointing his thick mitten at her.
‘I’m not having this,’ Linda said after a while. ‘You walk across my lawn … you’ve got no equipment with you or anything, no tape measure or … or machinery. You don’t even have a clipboard. I want a second opinion.’
‘I can put it in writing.’
‘I don’t want your opinion. I want someone more senior.’
‘You want someone older or someone more important?’
Linda swung nervously from side to side not knowing what to say again, and this wasn’t like her. She had to be herself tonight; she had to be wholly herself because the Niemans were coming to dinner.
‘We can’t just go round cutting down all deciduous trees on the estate,’ he said.
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Deciduous means that a tree sheds its leaves in autumn.’
‘I know that,’ Linda snapped.
‘No you didn’t.’
‘I did.’
‘You didn’t. You should be more honest.’
‘I don’t accept this,’ she said loudly, trying to fold her arms, which was difficult with so much fake fur encasing them.
Linda followed Wayne Spalding back across her lawn, through her garage, and onto the road outside her house where he’d parked his car. ‘I really don’t accept this.’
Wayne got into the car and wound his window down. His trousers were wet to the knee. He flipped the sun lenses down over his spectacles again and two discs of tinted glass stared up at her so that she was looking back at herself, twice over.
‘Do you get hot in the summer?’ he asked her suddenly.
She checked to see if there was anybody around who might have heard this: only Mrs Kline, lumbering down the pavement towards them in the tracksuit she’d worn to aerobics that morning. ‘Do you get hot in the summer?’ he asked her again, his voice as flat as his eyes. She stared at his hands, loosely gripping the steering wheel. The oversize mittens were on the seat next to him and the backs of his hands were covered in freckles. She didn’t like freckles on men. Was Wayne Spalding hitting on her?
‘He planted trees to provide shelter from the heat.’
Linda hung back, lost. ‘Who did?’
The streetlights came on, making everything seem much darker.
‘God did – and you should think about that. You should think about that a lot.’ He turned the ignition on. ‘Do you have children?’
‘Just one daughter.’ Why was she telling him this?
‘Then you should think hard about trying not to take the Lord’s name in vain. For your own sake. For the sake of your daughter.’ He looked up at her. ‘I can help you, Mrs Palmer.’
‘I don’t need your help.’
‘People say that. Then things change. People change.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
She stood on the drive and watched the purple Granada pull away, thinking about phoning the council’s environment department and speaking to Wayne Spalding’s boss – if he had one – before he got back to the office, but she didn’t move.
The Granada disappeared round the corner into Merrifield Drive and the next thing she was aware of was Mrs Kline standing at the top of the drive.
‘Hi,’ Linda waved and turned abruptly towards the garage.
‘I didn’t know you knew the minister.’
She spoke so quietly, Linda half considered pretending she hadn’t heard. There were a couple of gateaux she needed to get out of the chest freezer in the garage for the party that night. ‘Knew who?’
‘The minister,’ Valerie said, more loudly this time, still smiling.
‘What minister?’
‘Minister Spalding. Our minister.’
Valerie Kline waited at the top of the drive.
‘The man in the car?’ Linda called out. ‘The man who was just here?’
Valerie nodded.
Linda hesitated then walked to the top of the drive. Valerie, she noticed, was still wearing sandals. ‘He was from the local council. He came about the tree. You know, the one that hangs over most of our back garden?’
Valerie didn’t know because she’d never been invited to No. 8 and didn’t ever expect to be.
Linda was becoming increasingly unnerved by Valerie Kline’s silent, comprehending nods. ‘We have a huge problem with the leaves. In autumn. A really huge problem.’ Behind her, through the open garage door, she heard Ferdinand whining. ‘So what’s this about a minister?’ she said impatiently.
Valerie stopped nodding, suddenly. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot he worked for the council as well – the environment department, isn’t it?’
‘So – he’s Minister Spalding?’
Valerie started nodding again. ‘At the Free Church. We hold a service up at the school on Sunday mornings, and I thought …’ she batted her hand quickly in front of her face, ‘… anyway, it doesn’t matter.’
Linda thought of Wayne Spalding as he’d been dressed today. ‘The Free Church? What’s that then – evangelical or something?’
‘It’s non-denominational, that’s why it’s called the Free Church.’
Linda couldn’t be certain, but wondered if Valerie might be laughing at her. ‘And Minister Spalding,’ she said hurriedly, ‘does he do that healing stuff?’
‘The healing stuff? He does the laying on of hands. Faith healing.’
‘What – like making cripples walk? Blind men see? Cancer disappear? Infertile women pregnant?’ She forgot, too late, that Mrs Kline’s son was adopted. ‘That kind of stuff?’
‘Sometimes,’ Valerie said, quietly.
It was starting to snow again.
‘He does that? What – like – miracles?’
Valerie shrugged.
Linda couldn’t shake the impression that Valerie was laughing at her, and it didn’t seem right that they should be standing here talking about miracles in the middle of a snowstorm.
‘I should go, we’ve got people coming to dinner tonight,’ she said.
‘Well … give my regards to your husband, and to Jessica,’ Mrs Kline replied, disappearing into the snow in her tracksuit and sandals.
Linda went into the garage and lifted the lid of the chest freezer, on the brink of remembering what it was she needed to get out for dinner that night when she heard the phone ring. She dropped the lid, letting it bang shut.
‘Where are you?’
‘Brighton,’ Joe said.
‘Still? It’s nearly quarter to four. I thought you said you were leaving at three?’
‘It took longer to pack away the stall than I thought – then I called in to see your mum.’
‘My mum?’
‘Just a cup of tea. I’m leaving now.’
‘Well, if it’s of any interest to you, I’m going out of my mind over here,’ Linda exploded. ‘There’s a blizzard you’re probably going to get stuck in if you stay there any longer drinking tea; Jessica – who’s meant to be coming home to help me – is in detention because of something nuclear; and this man from the council came round to talk about the tree, you know – the tree – and I thought we would just talk about the leaves, but he didn’t want to talk about the leaves, he came to do a risk assessment – with no warning or anything – and then when he got into his car to go, some end-of-the-line Granada – he had freckles, Joe, all over his hands – he started talking to me about God – the man from the council – and Mrs Kline says he’s a minister or something, and …’ She stopped suddenly.
‘Linda?’ Joe prompted her.
‘Gateaux.’
‘What?’
‘The freezer. Triple chocolate mousse cake and Black Forest gateau – that’s what I was looking for in the freezer.’
Down the line from Littlehaven to Brighton, faster than the speed of light, came a profound sigh of relief.
Tired, Joe Palmer had made a deal with Steve, his business manager. If Steve agreed to oversee packing up the two showroom kitchens and stand into the van, Quantum would pay for him to stay in the Metropole that night and he could drive the van back to Littlehaven on Saturday morning.
‘I could do that,’ Steve had said, off-hand but sincere at the same time. Neither of these were qualities Joe liked on their own, but Steve managed to run them simultaneously and it had always made Joe trust his business manager.
He’d left the Brighton Centre, where Britannia Kitchens roadshow had been running for the past three days, and crossed the road onto the promenade. As he walked it had started snowing again and the headlights of late-afternoon traffic picked people out, making them look more interesting than they did in daylight. Above and beyond the traffic was an uneven December night, and the sea, which he couldn’t see but knew was there. Something that was true of a lot of things in life, he supposed. He’d heard it dragging itself backwards and forwards across the pebbles on the beach, distant and impartial.
The pier had been open, sending out its multi-layered stench of fish and chips, waffles, candyfloss and donuts: smells he found less easy to stomach the older he got. He’d thought about the penny slot machines in the amusement arcade, but it was too cold and anyway he’d promised to drop in on Belle, Linda’s mum.
The Pavilion Hotel on the corner opposite the entrance to the pier hadn’t drawn its curtains yet and passers-by were treated to a panorama of geriatric diners eating in sync. Foreign waiters stood poised against green fleur-de-lys wallpaper as the diners stared out the window, past the SAGA TOURS coach, looking for someone or something they might recognise.
Joe had passed the Aquarium where he used to take Jessica when she was small, then carried on up Roedean Road that rose with the cliff. No. 26 still had its stained-glass hotel fanlight: a rising sun with LYNTON HOTEL written underneath. It used to belong to Jim, Linda’s stepfather, and after his death it had been bought by a trust that built sheltered accommodation for the elderly. It was flats now – he didn’t know how many. There were six buzzers by the door and he was sure there had only been four the last time he came.
How could they say the world was getting bigger when all the time they just kept on dividing it up like this. What was it Jessica said? Something about matter being continuous, that you could divide up one piece over and over again and never stop. He didn’t understand what Jessica said half the time – hadn’t understood what she’d been saying, in fact, since she was about nine. But then children, he discovered, were the one thing in life you could love without understanding.
He rang the bell for Flat Three, which used to be the upstairs residents’ lounge, and about four minutes later a young woman in jeans opened the door, a pair of scissors in her hand.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi.’ She stared at him. ‘Belle said it would be you.’
‘Who’s me?’
‘You’re Joe, aren’t you? Her son-in-law, Joe? There’s a photograph of you on the sideboard upstairs. You on your wedding day,’ she said slowly.
‘Ah.’ Joe didn’t want to think about his wedding day right then, and his prick – which had gone from belonging to Joe Palmer to belonging to a munchkin to belonging to a Lego man – was about to drop off with the cold.
‘Only you’re old now.’
‘Older,’ he corrected her, shoving his way into the hallway. ‘But then that’s only natural.’
The girl nodded, unconvinced, and led the way upstairs past the badly maintained stairlift tracks.
‘I sent Lenny down to get the door. She’s younger than me,’ Belle said as he walked into the flat.
She was sitting in her wheelchair with a Chanel towel wrapped round her shoulders, which Linda had got free with some perfume and given to her mum as a Christmas present. The girl, Lenny, went and stood behind her and carried on cutting Belle’s hair. The toes of her boots were covered in grey curls and a halo of them had formed on the carpet around the chair.
When Joe thought about it later, it was what he remembered most about that afternoon in December: the sound of the scissors and Belle’s grey curls on Lenny’s boots.
‘Don’t mind, do you, Joe?’ Belle asked. ‘We was right in the middle.’
‘You go ahead. Wouldn’t want to get between a woman and her hair.’
He went over to the window, pulling the nets to one side. A seagull on the ledge eyed him and let out a shriek then flew away. In summertime you got a bird’s-eye view of the nudist beach from here.
‘Not such a good view in December, is it?’ Belle said, smiling.
He looked to see if Lenny was smiling as well, but she wasn’t.
The room was lit by the gas fire and a couple of heavily tasselled standard lamps with shawls draped over them. The lack of overhead light combined with net curtains, snow and twilight made it difficult to see anything but shadows in the room, and the flat suddenly felt as though it was waiting for somebody long overdue.
‘Your eyes all right?’ Joe asked Lenny.
She nodded, tucking the scissors into her belt as she started setting fat pink curlers in the old woman’s hair.
‘D’you want tea?’ Belle asked Lenny, her eyes closed. Then, without waiting for an answer, ‘Go and make us some tea, Joe, and don’t forget the biscuits.’ Her eyes opened and followed her son-in-law into the kitchenette in the corner. ‘And you can take your coat off – the flat’s got central heating.’
The light in the kitchenette was orange and unsteady, and speckled with the corpses of flies. It made his eyes hurt. Belle’s cupboards were full and it took him a while to find the tea caddy – the one with elephants on that he remembered from his courting days – behind the rows of sugar, flour and canned fruit and vegetables that she always had in, never having recovered from rationing and the urge to stockpile. The whistling kettle had been replaced by an electric one, and as he plugged it in he wondered when the overhaul had happened and why Lenny, the hairdresser, didn’t like him. Animals and children liked him, which meant that most men and women did as well. Why didn’t the hairdresser? He looked down at his black suit and dark purple tie and thought about her standing in the hallway with the scissors.
In the room next door the hairdryer went on, and when he took the tea in neither of the women looked up. Belle still had her eyes closed and he hoped she hadn’t fallen asleep. He put the Coronation tray on the coffee table and walked past the photographs on the sideboard, as alarmed as he always was at how prolific they made his life seem. They were nearly all of him, Linda and Jessica. The only one Belle had of herself was of her and her first husband, Linda’s father, who had drowned in the sea while home on leave at the end of the war. This was the first thing Belle ever told him. Then she said that Eric had never been able to make her laugh while he was alive, but talking about his death always set her off.
There were no photographs of her and Jim, her second husband, or even just of Jim. When he died all the money from the sale of the hotel went to Brighton Cricket Club, who got a new clubhouse and practice wickets built with it.
Joe looked at a photograph of himself as a grown man then looked away. The hairdryer cut out.
Belle’s hand went up to her hair and Lenny unhooked the mirror from the chimney breast.
‘Isn’t it nice? Won’t last, but isn’t it nice?’
‘Won’t last if you keep touching it and messing it up. Here.’ Lenny took a can of spray out of the case on the table and covered Belle’s head in it.
The spray hung heavily in the heated air.
‘You staying for tea?’ Belle asked her.
‘I should go. I’ve got Mrs Jenkins in Flat Four to do, and she’s going out tonight.’
‘Jenkins is always going out,’ Belle grumbled. ‘Probably goes out more than you do, and she’s not “Mrs”. Never got married – whatever she says. Pour her a cup, Joe.’
‘Milk? Sugar?’ he asked.
‘Both,’ Lenny said, packing away the hairdryer, scissors, spray and rollers into the case.
‘How many?’
‘How many what?’
‘Sugars.’
‘Three. Please.’
‘How many sugars’ll you have, Joe, now she’s not here to tell you off?’
He smiled, but didn’t put any in his cup.
‘Go on, just have one.’ Belle turned to Lenny. ‘He used to have sugar with some tea in it when I first knew him. Won’t let you have sugar no more, will she?’
‘Linda’s just looking after me.’
‘That’s what she calls it, is it?’
Joe paused then dropped a spoonful of sugar into his tea. ‘Look what you made me do, Belle.’
Belle smiled, pleased at her son-in-law’s dissent.
Lenny, moving about rhythmically in the corner of the room, didn’t look up.
‘Joe’s been at the Britannia Kitchens roadshow at the Brighton Centre. His company had a stand there.’
Lenny looked up, taking in the suit. ‘That’s what you do, then?’
‘Course it’s what he does, I told you.’
‘What?’ Joe said to Lenny, over Belle’s head.
‘Build kitchens?’
‘He doesn’t build kitchens, he sells them, but that isn’t what Joe does.’ Belle slurped her tea and started on the biscuits. A flake of chocolate melted in the corner of her mouth and ran in a rivulet down one of the wrinkles there. ‘Joe makes money.’
‘I’m a carpenter,’ he cut in. ‘By trade, I’m a carpenter.’ Why did he think this sounded better than making money?
‘Was a carpenter.’ Belle wasn’t having any of it. ‘Now you just make money. Got a whole office full of people working for you. Joe’s got his own company.’
‘I’m a carpenter by trade. My dad was a carpenter.’ If Lenny didn’t look up or say something soon, he thought he was going to explode. ‘I’m from Brighton,’ he yelled. ‘Brighton born and bred.’
Lenny turned her back on him and clicked the clasps on the case shut.
‘Cassidy Street. Right there on Cassidy Street.’ He gestured blindly at the net curtains as if his entire past lay just beyond them.
‘Calm down, Joe,’ Belle said, leaning forward to pour herself another cup of tea and farting. ‘You’ve earned the money. No need to be ashamed of it.’
Lenny drank her tea in one go and at last turned to look at him. ‘What makes you think I’m from Brighton?’
‘I don’t know, I …’
‘You think I’m from Brighton?’
Belle started rattling the biscuit tin. ‘These’ll melt if we don’t eat them. What’d you put them so near the fire for, Joe? Look at this!’ She held up her hands, covered in chocolate, for him to look at. ‘Look at this, Joe. Why’d you get the chocolate ones out? It’s a bloody sauna in here with the gas on and you know what I’m like with the chocolate ones.’ She let out another fart. ‘I’ll sit here and eat them all. Why’d you get these ones out?’
‘I don’t know.’
Belle was disappearing out of earshot.
‘Turn the heating down, Joe. Have a fiddle with the thermostat or something, there’s bloody chocolate everywhere.’
‘Skirton Street,’ Lenny said.
‘What?’ Joe couldn’t hear. The flat was suddenly made of chocolate and it was melting.
‘I grew up on Skirton Street. The one after Cassidy.’ She was smiling.
Lenny the hairdresser was smiling.
‘The thermostat, Joe. Just behind the microwave.’
‘Skirton Street. I know Skirton Street,’ he said to Lenny.
‘There you go then,’ she said, walking past him into the kitchenette and re-emerging with the carpet sweeper.
‘Don’t know why you put the microwave there,’ Belle said to Joe, ‘I can’t get to the thermostat.’
‘All right, Belle, I’ll sort it out.’
‘It’s just behind the microwave.’
He went into the kitchenette and found the thermostat, which was above the sink. When he went back into the living room, Lenny was gone. ‘Where did the hairdresser go?’
‘Don’t know why you put the microwave there.’ Belle shook her head. ‘Didn’t you get me any tissue, then? I’m covered in bloody chocolate.’
Joe went back into the kitchenette and pressed his knuckles into the sink rim, letting his head drop between his shoulders. After a few minutes he grabbed the kitchen roll off the windowsill and went back into the living room.
‘Pass me that.’ Belle flicked her eyes over him, her hands full of kitchen roll. ‘You should phone Linda or I’ll be getting into trouble for keeping you here.’
He stood there watching the kitchen roll moving in her hands, the rings and liver spots suddenly intensely familiar.
‘I’ll be getting into trouble,’ she said again.
He sat down in the armchair that matched the lamp-shades on the standard lamps and dialled home.
After a struggle, Belle dragged the small leather pouf across the rug towards her. She heard ‘Brighton’, and ‘I called in to see your mum’, and ‘Just a cup of tea. I’m leaving now’, then settled her head back against the cover she’d crocheted for the wheelchair, put her feet up on the pouf and let out a small, silent fart. Joe was going to do something stupid, she was suddenly convinced of it – and Joe wasn ‘t the kind of man who could get away with doing stupid things and not suffer the consequences. What had she done?
Linda went into the shed to look for a bucket. She couldn’t remember whether they had a bucket or not, but she hadn’t been able to find one in the house or the garage so if they did turn out to have a bucket, this is where it would be. The torch-beam swung across the red-tiled roof and upper-storey windows of the doll’s house Joe built Jessica for her fourth birthday that was put into storage by the time she was six, after the incident with the Sindy dolls. Linda had been cleaning Jessica’s room one day and opened up the doll’s house to find a scene inside worthy of a Turkish prison. Jessica had a penchant, it turned out, not only for cutting off her dolls’ hair, but for holding bits of them – usually the forehead or breasts – against light bulbs until the plastic melted. There wasn’t a doll with nipples intact or a complete forehead left. The light hit a Classic Cars calendar for 1979, hung on a rusting nail, the page turned to May. The girl in the picture was wearing a white cowboy hat and looked happy. She didn’t know why Joe had put the calendar up. The off-cut from the lounge carpet at Whateley Road that he had put down on the shed floor was much more Joe than the Classic Cars calendar; much more the Joe she knew anyway. She looked down at the orange swirls, remembering Whateley Road as clearly as if it was a place she could walk into. They’d had a bucket at Whateley Road – Jessica’s old nappy bucket – that she used to mop the kitchen and bathroom floors with twice a week, and that Joe used to wash his car and the windows with. Whateley Road had been immaculate – bacteria free.
Then she moved to Pollards Close and met Dominique, who didn’t mop floors or put magazines at right angles on the coffee table, or iron the family’s underwear. Once a week an elderly woman with facial hair and arthritis came and cleaned No. 4 Pollards Close. She did the ironing as well, and in between her weekly visits Dominique just let the fallout gather. When they ran out of dishes she bought Findus ready meals and they ate them out of the cartons; clothes were worn un-ironed, and dirty underwear was left stranded on the bedroom floor. Linda remembered on only her second visit to No. 4 – while drinking coffee from a cup with rings of stains inside – the cleaner coming downstairs with a pair of lace knickers in her hand.
‘What d’you want me to do with these?’ She held them up in a crabbed hand to show where the lace panel at the front had been ripped.
The three women stared at the ripped knickers. Linda tried to take a sip of her coffee and burnt her mouth.
‘Bin them,’ Dominique said.
The cleaner nodded, her yellow eyes watering, and left the room.
‘No initiative,’ Dominique apologised.
Linda soon realised that Dominique and her cleaner were playing games with each other. War was going on; a war that had never been declared, which was what games were, she supposed: war without the declaration, and people played them whether they loved each other or hated each other. Not because life was too short, but because for most people life was too long. Even people like Dominique, who got their underwear ripped during marital sex. All Linda saw for months afterwards, every time she shut her eyes, was the pair of knickers held aloft in the cleaner’s arthritic hand. What kind of animal was Dominique married to? An animal who knew how to fly planes, and who looked like an anarchic version of Cliff Richard: Captain Saunders.
No. 4 was a pigsty whose pigs were having sex, and its slovenly glamour was something Linda spent a lot of her early months in Pollards Close trying to emulate, until Joe complained. Then, when she finally persuaded him to take on the Saunders’ arthritic cleaner themselves, she got embarrassed about the state of the house and ended up cleaning the day before the cleaner arrived. The thought of a stranger finding pubic hairs in her bath made her wince, and this was something she just couldn’t change about herself. After ten months the arthritic cleaner handed her notice in. She stood there in a badly felting jumper with a row of snowflakes knitted across it and told Linda that her conscience wouldn’t let her carry on taking money from her every Thursday. Linda handed her an envelope with her last week’s wages in and the yellow watering eyes nodded their thanks. No. 8 Pollards Close became immaculate once more, and that month Linda ordered over fifty pounds’ worth of home-improvement gadgets from the Bettaware catalogue, including a hands-free can opener, a vacuum packer for storing summer clothes under the bed during the winter and vice versa, and a stone frog with a hollow stomach to hide spare sets of keys in. She especially loved the frog that came lying on a lily pad – until Dominique pointed out that it looked like it was masturbating.
After a while she found a bucket shaped like a castle that they must have bought for Jessica on one of the Dorset holidays. Ever since the company had taken off she’d tried to persuade Joe to take them somewhere they’d need suntan lotion, but he didn’t like it abroad – wherever that was. The white plastic bucket handle had rust notched into it from where it had been hanging on a nail in the shed wall. Inside there was a web, but no spider. Linda went back into the garden. When did snow fall so hard and fast it technically became a blizzard? She swung round, the bucket in her hand, and tried to pick out the lights at the back of the house while wondering if anybody had ever died in a blizzard in their own back garden before, but was too preoccupied by the Niemans coming to dinner that night to imagine her funeral properly, and Joe’s grief over her tragic death.
Trying not to look at the tree, whose branches stood out clearly, she ploughed through the snow to where she’d seen the dog shit earlier. If this blizzard carried on the turds would be buried, but she needed to make sure because she wanted to put the garden floodlights on later, the ones Joe put in last weekend, and leave the curtains in the lounge open, and she didn’t want Mrs Nieman staring out through the patio doors at a trail of turds. She stumbled around for a while, her nose streaming and the bucket banging against her thighs, but the turds were buried without trace.
Just to make sure, she went back into the garage and flicked on the switch for the garden lights. Peering through the kitchen window, she could see floodlit snow and, if she concentrated, the pond Joe put in last summer for his fish. Joe loved fish; he loved sitting in his deckchair watching them, and he’d made a good job of the pond. She was proud of it as well because theirs was the only back garden in Pollards Close with a pond, but was it worth putting the lights on tonight if the guests had to concentrate in order to see it? Was concentrating something you should expect guests to do?
She carried on staring through the window, becoming slowly more aware of the kitchen behind her, reflected in the glass, than the floodlit garden on the other side of it. There were two empty plates on the breakfast bar where there had been a triple chocolate mousse cake and Black Forest gateau before she went into the shed. She turned slowly away from the reflection in the window to stare at the real plates on the real breakfast bar. For the next two minutes, she swung between reflection and reality, her life pivoting on the fact that the gateaux were no longer there. She’d been on the Slimshake diet for over a fortnight now. Was she so desperate for solids she’d eaten the gateaux herself – without even realising?
Still in Jessica’s old Wellingtons, she ran into the garage, yanked open the lid of the chest freezer and pushed her arms through a month’s worth of freezer food the Ice Man lorry had delivered only yesterday, but there were no more gateaux: cheesecakes, but no gateaux; ice cream, but no gateaux. She’d spent hours over the Ice Man catalogue preparing the order, and the gateaux had a whole centre spread to themselves. She could see that centre spread now as she walked in from the garage.
‘Ferdie! FERDIE!’ she yelled.
A dog’s collar bell tinkled in the living room.
She went through. The dachshund she’d asked Joe for last Christmas stood up on the sofa, but looked as though he was still sitting.
An oasis of brown and pink vomit lay underneath the coffee table, caught between spasmodic festive light from the tree and the aura from the TV.
Ferdinand was panting expectantly.
Linda went over to the patio doors and slid them open.
‘FERDIE, OUT!’ She gave a nasal yelp, trying not to breathe the stench in.
The dachshund jumped off the sofa and went over to the vomit, nosing his way round it.
‘FERDIE, OUT!’ Linda grabbed hold of his blue-studded collar, dragging him through the carpet and the open patio doors. ‘OUT, YOU FUCK.’ She slammed them shut before he managed to get fully outside and his tail, which was trapped inside, went stiff. Ferdinand screamed.
She slid the door open then shut it on the dog’s tail again.
‘You fuck, Ferdie, you fucking, fucking dog.’
Ferdinand was trying to turn round and reach the part of him that hurt, but his head kept smashing into glass. Linda didn’t hear the front door open. ‘Those were centre-spread gateaux, you fucking, fucking fuck of a fucking –’
‘Mum!’
‘What?’
Jessica came running into the lounge, covered in snow, her school bag still over her shoulder and her keys in her hand.
‘Mum – what’s going on?’
Linda turned round, but could hardly make out her daughter standing there. ‘What?’
‘Let Ferdie go.’
‘Why should I?’
The dog started to howl.
‘Let him go,’ Jessica shouted, trying to pull Linda’s arm off the door. ‘Come on, Mum.’
Ferdinand pulled himself suddenly out from between door and doorframe and shot across the garden leaving a thin trail of blood specks across the snow.
‘He’s bleeding. You made Ferdie bleed.’
Linda slammed the door shut and tried to regulate her breathing just like she’d tried to regulate it on the bike that morning and then at class, but failed because she was so wound up about the Niemans coming.
‘He ate the gateaux. Both gateaux,’ she said.
‘What gateaux?’
‘The centre-spread gateaux. The gateaux for tonight.’
‘He wasn’t to know.’
Linda surfaced from her rage, gasping for air. ‘And Mrs Klushky rang me today,’ she said, trying not to let the fact that Jessica hadn’t taken her shoes off in the hallway bother her.
‘Klusczynski,’ Jessica corrected her.
‘Klushwhatever. She gave you a detention.’
‘Did she tell you why?’
‘She told me, and we need to talk about this.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it, and anyway the teacher who was meant to be giving it never showed.’
‘But it’s five o’clock now – what have you been doing?’
Jessica was watching Ferdinand in the garden. ‘I was with Peter Klusczynski. He was in detention as well. He had a fit during period two and Miss Witt sent him to special needs.’
‘You were in special needs?’
‘It’s where detentions are held.’
‘With Peter Klush …?’ Linda didn’t want to think of her daughter holed up for an hour alone with Peter Klushky. It would be just like her to fall for an epileptic. ‘But what did you do?’
‘We talked,’ Jessica said, staring through the patio doors. ‘It doesn’t matter – I think Ferdie needs to see a vet.’
‘It does matter. I need to phone the school about this.’
‘Since when have you ever phoned the school?’ Jessica said, rounding on her.
‘Jessica …’
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Mum.’
‘Well, we are going to talk about it. Maybe not tonight, but we are going to talk, and now I need you to clear that up,’ she said, pointing to the vomit underneath the coffee table. ‘There’s a blue jug under the sink, and some carpet shampoo. Use the floral bouquet room spray when you’ve finished. Leave no trace.’
‘Where are you going?’ Jessica asked.
‘Out.’
‘Out where?’
‘To find dessert. We have no dessert. I need to find dessert.’
Jessica let her miner’s bag, which had badges pinned all over it, slip off her shoulder onto the carpet. ‘But what about Ferdie? Ferdie’s bleeding, Mum.’
Linda ignored her. ‘When I get back we need to sort out the canapés. And,’ she stared past her daughter, suddenly realising that the blinds at the front window were still open, ‘shut those bloody blinds.’
She put the fake fur coat back on over her sweatshirt and jogged through the blizzard across the road to the Saunders’. Stephanie, who was six, answered the door dressed in a fluorescent emergency services outfit. Her feet, in rollerboots, were moving backwards and forwards across the parquet in the Saunders’ hallway.
‘Hi.’
Stephanie took an orange ice-pop out of her mouth and stared at Linda’s Wellingtons. ‘Hi.’ She put the ice-pop back in.
‘Is your mum in?’
Stephanie shook her head then took the ice-pop out of her mouth again. ‘My sister’s been crimping my hair. She’s going to do my whole head.’
‘Who’s there, Steph?’
‘Delta? Are you in there?’ Linda called out.
‘Who is that?’
Stephanie skated off down the hallway.
Linda hadn’t slept for a week when Dominique told her she was having her fitted carpets ripped up and parquet flooring laid down. Then Dominique told her how much it was costing – and she let Stephanie skate indoors? On the parquet flooring? She’d tried telling Joe at the time that Dominique would never get the asking price if they sold the house without fitted carpets, and Joe had said, ‘not these days’. ‘Not these days’? Joe wasn’t a cryptic man – she was used to understanding him. So what did he mean by that? She felt she was missing something that Joe was on to – that everybody but her was on to.
Delta appeared in a kimono that belonged to Dominique. Linda recognised it immediately. It was the one Mick had brought back with him from a trip to Kyoto, and she was struck – as she always was – by how much more attractive Delta was than her own daughter. Especially in Dominique’s kimono. She couldn’t imagine Jessica wearing any of her clothes.
‘How are you, Linda?’
Delta always called her Linda – never Mrs Palmer – and even though the smile was frank, for the second time that day Linda got the feeling she was being laughed at. ‘I don’t suppose your mum’s in, is she?’
‘Nope.’ Delta shook her head, then trod in the puddle of melted orange pop. ‘Shit – what’s this?’
‘I think it might be Stephanie’s ice-pop.’
Delta looked down. ‘Shit.’ She hooked her feet up one after the other and wiped them on the end of the kimono.
‘So – your mum’s not in?’
‘Sandra dropped Steph off after school – Mum and Dad were having lunch or something.’
‘Lunch? It’s nearly five p.m.’
‘Shit,’ Delta said again, still trying to wipe her feet.
A bedroom window opened and Stephanie hung her head out. ‘Delta, you promised you’d do my whole head.’
‘Just coming, Steph. Don’t touch the machine, it’s hot.’
‘You promised.’
‘And I’m coming.’
Linda caught Delta looking at her fur coat and her Wellingtons. She forgot she still had Wellingtons on. She straightened up.
‘Did your mum get her Ice Man delivery this week?’
‘What – the freezer stuff? I guess she did.’
‘And do you know if she got the triple chocolate mousse cake and Black Forest gateau? They’re difficult to describe – there was a centre spread in –’
‘I don’t do catalogues,’ Delta said.
‘No, of course not. Neither do I, really, but the Ice Man one …’
‘Have you got your mother-in-law to dinner tonight or something?’
‘My mother-in-law?’
Didn’t everybody know they had the Niemans coming tonight? And didn’t Delta know that mother-in-law jokes were for women who had them?
‘I mean,’ Delta said, dragging the words out, impatient at Linda for not getting it, ‘that freezer stuff isn’t something you give to people – it’s something you inflict on them. Have you read the back of the packet? Have you read what’s in that stuff?’
Linda read the front of the box where it gave you the maximum freezer storage time and – if it was microwaveable – how many minutes it took to defrost. ‘But does your mother still get the Ice Man?’ she said, coming back to her original point.
‘I guess it’s what Steph’s been eating all week. I mean, it’s Friday and she’s climbing the walls. She’s toxic. I’m probably toxic as well, but it’s too late, and Mum can cook, that’s what really pisses me off.’
Linda tried to be offended that Delta was swearing in front of her, but she was too busy worrying about Dominique and the Ice Man, and the fact that Delta’s nipples were pushing their way through the branches printed on the kimono because of the cold.
‘We have people round and she’s doing soufflé.’
‘She does soufflé?’
‘That’s what I mean. She only cooks for dinner parties.’ Delta paused. ‘So … d’you want me to go and look in the freezer and see if she’s got a triple mousse … mousse … what was it?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘What’s it for anyway?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Honestly.’
‘You sure?’
‘Honestly.’ Linda turned and sniffed the air. ‘What’s that?’
Stephanie skated up the hallway, screaming.
‘Steph? Oh shit, Steph. I told you to wait.’
‘You told me it was hot,’ Stephanie cried, clumps of burnt hair falling onto the shoulders of her cardigan.
‘Where’s the crimper now? Is it still on?’
‘I dropped it on the carpet,’ Stephanie sniffed.
The girls disappeared indoors and, turning away from the smell of burnt hair, Linda crossed back over the road to No. 8, temporarily caught in the headlights of a car. She stopped at the top of the drive thinking it might be Joe, but it wasn’t. It looked like Dominique’s green Triumph. Without waiting to find out, she went back indoors, took the Wellingtons off then went into the kitchen to attack the collection of cookery books she and Joe had been given as newlyweds. She left the cordon bleu one where it was because it had never been opened, and grabbed Good Housekeeping’s Quick Guide to Dinner Parties that she often used the beef bourguignon recipe from. Turning to Contents, she saw that there was a whole chapter on soufflés. A whole chapter, and no pictures – apart from a series of diagrams showing you how to prepare the soufflé dish. A hot soufflé had to make an impressive entrance at the end of the meal and TIMING IS CRUCIAL.
After reading the page through three times she finally digested the fact that soufflés had to be prepared in advance but served immediately. ‘Finishing Touches’ had a section to themselves. And what was everybody else doing while she was standing there making her way through ‘Finishing Touches’? Who was preventing Joe from roaming freely through his repertoire of flatulence jokes, then his record collection, and putting Pink Floyd on? Who was taking care of all that? How did Dominique Saunders manage to serve immediately. Come to think of it – had they ever eaten soufflé at No. 4? Linda couldn’t remember. The times Dominique must have served soufflé were the times she and Joe weren’t there – the dinner parties she and Joe weren’t invited to – and how many of those had there been?
She slammed the book shut. Who were these people? TIMING IS CRUCIAL. What did they know about her life? SERVE IMMEDIATELY. They didn’t know anything about the early years of her marriage and the house on Whateley Road; or what she and Joe had been through.
Whimpering with the effort of trying not to cry, she pushed Good Housekeeping’s Quick Guide into the bin, then went into the garage, the cement floor freezing the soles of her feet in their thin socks.
She pulled up the freezer lid and saw the box with the picture of the mandarin cheesecake on it.
‘Jessica!’ she shouted up into the house when she was back in the kitchen.
A bedroom door opened and she heard music, then feet on the stairs.
‘What’s wrong with your face?’ she said as her daughter walked in.
‘Ferdie’s bleeding.’
‘You’ve been crying?’
‘Ferdie’s bleeding, Mum.’ Then Jessica saw the dog’s water bowl on the floor by Linda’s feet and started crying again.
Linda stared at her. She hardly ever cried herself and didn’t know what to do when other people did – especially when those other people were her own daughter. She’d never picked Jessica up when she was small and started crying – grief left its marks on the shoulders of jumpers and blouses, and some of them were dry clean only. So now they stood in the kitchen and did what they usually did: Jessica sobbed and Linda stood staring at her, and after a while she got the mandarin cheesecake out of its box and put it on the cake stand to defrost.
‘I told you to go and change,’ Linda said, her back turned.
Jessica sniffed.
‘Did you clean the lounge carpet?’
‘Yes.’ Jessica sniffed again.
‘There’s a pineapple over there in the fruit bowl – why don’t you cut it up and mix it with some cottage cheese?’
Linda watched her daughter move round the kitchen in silence and start to deftly slice up the pineapple, still sniffing.
‘Ferdie ate all the desserts I’d organised for tonight. All of them.’ Linda paused.
Jessica didn’t say anything. She put the mixing bowl with the cottage cheese and pineapple chunks in to one side.
‘Then he sicked them up.’ She stared at her daughter’s back in its school pullover.
‘D’you want me to make dessert for tonight?’ Jessica said, turning round at last.
‘I’ve got dessert for tonight. I sorted it.’
‘I could make something,’ Jessica said, looking at the mandarin cheesecake.
‘Like what?’
‘Like – syllabub.’
‘Syllabub?’
‘We did it in home economics last Thursday, all you need is some double cream and some wine and some –’
‘I don’t like syllabub,’ Linda cut in.
‘It’s dead simple.’
‘I don’t like syllabub,’ Linda said again.
‘You’ve never even tasted it.’
‘I have tasted it.’
‘Haven’t.’
Linda began drying the knife Jessica had used to cut up the pineapple with. ‘Where’s Ferdie?’ she said suddenly.
‘Upstairs.’
‘Upstairs, where?’
‘On my bed.’
‘On your bed?’ Linda yelled, throwing the knife and the tea towel down on the draining board.
‘He needs to see a vet,’ Jessica yelled back. ‘You made him bleed.’
‘I want him off your bed and outside – now!’
‘We can’t put him outside in this – look – there’s a blizzard going on out there.’
Linda’s mind flicked briefly to Joe, who she hoped had the sense to take the new bypass home from Brighton and not the road over the Dyke, then turned back to Jessica, who was crying again and pulling the cuffs of her school jumper over her hands.
‘He’s a bloody dog,’ Linda shouted at her.
‘He’s your bloody dog. Dad bought him for you.’
‘Upstairs. Now. Get upstairs.’
‘I hate you.’
Linda turned away and picked the tea towel up off the draining board. ‘Yeah, well…’
‘And that cheesecake’s disgusting – me and Dad have jokes about that cheesecake.’
She swung round, but Jessica was already out of the room. The clock on the kitchen wall shook as she banged up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door shut.
Linda went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Dad and I,’ she shouted up into the darkness. ‘Dad and I.’
She went back into the kitchen and there was Joe standing in the doorway to the garage.
‘What’s all that about?’
‘I don’t know. You’re late,’ she said, looking at him.
‘I phoned. I was at your mum’s – you know what it’s like: tea, biscuits, amnesia, more tea, more biscuits.’ He paused, but didn’t mention that Belle had been getting her hair cut while he was there. ‘She looked well,’ he said after a while, then walked past Linda into the hallway.
‘Joe? Where’re you going?’
‘Upstairs. See Jess. Change.’
She followed him to the foot of the stairs. ‘When you’ve changed I could do with some help down here. We’ve got people coming tonight.’
Joe stopped, his hand on the banister. ‘I forgot.’
‘You forgot? For Christ’s sake, Joe.’
She went back into the kitchen and opened Jessica’s lunch box, which was lying by the sink, automatically shoving a handful of uneaten crusts and half a packet of crisps into her mouth. The only serving plate she had big enough for the canapés had a crack running across it, but she covered this with some green paper napkins then put cling film over the bowl with the cottage cheese and pineapple in it. From upstairs she heard running water, and a few minutes later Joe came back downstairs in old jeans and a sweatshirt.
‘I thought you might have worn your new polo shirt.’
‘I couldn’t find it.’
‘That’s because it’s still in the bag.’
‘Oh.’
Joe sniffed and disappeared into the garage. He came back with a can of beer.
‘So – who’ve we got coming tonight?’ he asked, watching her open a sachet of Hollandaise sauce.
‘Mick and Dominique – if they show.’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘I went over there a while ago and they weren’t even back from lunch.’
‘Who were they having lunch with?’
‘Each other.’ Linda looked at him then poured the contents of the sachet into a pan of boiling water. ‘They went to Gatwick Manor.’
‘It’s expensive there.’
She looked at him again.
‘So – anyone else coming?’
‘I invited the Niemans – the new people at number twelve.’
‘The Niemans?’
‘Yes, the Niemans, Joe. The double-glazing people two doors up.’
‘The Belgians?’
‘I thought they were Dutch.’
‘It doesn’t matter – they all speak English.’
Linda stopped stirring the sauce. ‘I’m sure they’re Dutch.’
‘Well, why don’t we ask them?’
‘We can’t just ask them. Don’t you dare ask them.’
Joe started drinking the beer.
‘D’you want a glass for that?’
‘Jess seems upset,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘She’s lying on her bed upstairs with Ferd, and Ferd’s bleeding or something. She wouldn’t say what happened.’
‘Has she changed out of her school uniform yet?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You were only just up there.’
‘I didn’t notice.’ He finished the beer. ‘I said Ferd’s bleeding.’
She started to stir the sauce again. ‘Ferdie ate a triple chocolate mousse cake and a Black Forest gateau this afternoon.’
‘He did?’ Joe started to laugh. ‘Is pudding gone then?’
She felt him behind her. ‘Dessert – it’s dessert gone.’
‘So why don’t you make one of your steamed puddings?’ he said softly. ‘What about one of them treacle ones?’
‘I can’t give the Niemans steamed pudding.’
‘I love your treacle puddings. Best thing, they are.’ She felt his hair brushing her ear. ‘I’ll do the custard,’ he said.
‘Custard?’ Gravity gave her a short sharp pull. ‘We’ve got gazpacho for starters, Joe. After the gazpacho, we’ve got salmon en croute with Hollandaise sauce. Do you really think the Niemans are going to want to finish with treacle pudding? And custard? Why don’t we just throw a brick at them while we’re at it.’
‘I like treacle pudding.’
‘We’ve got mandarin cheesecake,’ she said.
‘But I bloody hate mandarin cheesecake.’
‘What’s wrong with everyone tonight?’
Joe disappeared into the garage again.
Linda stopped stirring to watch some lumps the size of Atlantic icebergs forming in the sauce. ‘Joe,’ she called into the garage. ‘Are you coming back in? Joe?’
Silence.
‘I could do with some company in here. It’s been a long day.’
Silence.
‘You know sometimes I wish I was a bloody schizophrenic – at least I’d have my other self to talk to.’
Joe appeared in the garage doorway, a second can of beer in his hand.
‘So what d’you want to talk about?’
She watched him drinking his beer, one hand in his trouser pocket, and one bare foot on the kitchen step. She didn’t know. ‘Aren’t you cold? You should go and put some socks and shoes on.’
‘I’m going into the garden.’
‘You can’t go out like that.’
He picked up some rubber clogs Linda had ordered from the back of a Sunday Times supplement, which was the only part of the paper she read.
Pouring the sauce down the sink, she watched through the window and falling snow as he went into the shed and came out with a deckchair, planting it in the snow next to where the fishpond was just about still visible. He had his back to the house and his feet in their rubber clogs stretched out over the frozen pond. What was he thinking?
She made a second batch of Hollandaise sauce then laid the table before going upstairs to shower. Jessica’s bedroom door was shut but the music had been turned down. She would have gone in – to make sure Jessica had changed and Ferdie hadn’t marked the bed – but she was afraid. Were other women afraid of their daughters?
So instead she showered, put on the new dress she’d bought at Debenhams the other weekend, where they’d also bought Joe’s polo shirt, then went into Jessica’s bedroom, wearing heels and fully made up. Jessica was lying on the bed with Ferdie stretched out beside her. She was still in her school uniform.
Over the summer they’d painted and refurnished Jessica’s room so that it was better suited to the needs of a fifteen-year-old girl taking A Levels three years early. That was at least four months ago and it still smelt of freshly unpacked MDF. The new furniture was dwarfed by a black and white CND poster Jessica had insisted on putting back up, alongside an even larger floor-to-ceiling poster of Snoopy. Without ever knowing why, Snoopy had always depressed Linda – even now, when she was on the antidepressants that came with the Slimshake starter pack to help overcome any emotional instability likely to be encountered switching to a liquids-only diet. On the wall above the stereo, the Advent calendar Jessica was still adamant about buying had nine open doors. Linda looked through the black sugar-paper snowflakes stuck to the bedroom window, down at the garden. Joe was still out there, and beyond him was the oak tree, which she’d started to feel inexplicably threatened by since Wayne Spalding’s visit that afternoon. She drew the curtains then turned to face the bed again.
‘Jessica?’
Jessica didn’t move.
On the pinboard above the desk there was a photograph of Jessica aged eight on the beach at Brighton, with Belle. They were both smiling. The photograph next to it was of an even younger Jessica on Joe’s shoulders; her hair was almost covering her face and she was yelling something at the camera. There was a river and castle behind them, in the distance. Linda tried to remember where they might have been that day, but couldn’t. She remembered the sandals Jessica was wearing – and the dress – but she couldn’t remember the day. Above the photographs were a series of images she’d first noticed a week ago when she came into the room to dust, and that she’d since asked Jessica to take down – of a captured Iranian soldier with ropes attached to his wrists and ankles, spread-eagled in the dust, about to be quartered by Iraqi-driven Jeeps. Jessica had to explain all that to her – and that American Indians used to torture prisoners in the same way, using horses. Why had Jessica told her this? Did she expect her to have an opinion on it or was she just giving her some sort of chance? Jessica’s German teacher had torn the pictures out of Das Spiegel for her. ‘She knows this is the kind of thing I’m into,’ Jessica had said – implying that she, Linda, didn’t.
‘Jessica,’ she said again, resisting the urge to pick up the can of Impulse body spray on the corner of the desk and shake it to see if it was being used. She watched her daughter roll onto her back, one arm resting protectively over Ferdie’s flank. ‘I told you to get changed.’
Jessica rolled back onto her side again and watched Ferdie blinking at her, wondering if he was trying to send her a message in Morse or something. Was it possible to blink in Morse? Probably – with either dedication or desperation.
Not wanting to push it any further, Linda went downstairs and arranged some Ritz crackers on the serving plate then took the cottage cheese and pineapple out of the fridge and started spooning it onto them in bite-size dollops. Joe was still in the garden, sitting on the deckchair by the frozen fishpond. Maybe he’d fallen asleep. Was it possible to fall asleep in a shirt and rubber clogs when it was minus five degrees Celsius? Didn’t people die if they fell asleep in the snow? Then she started laughing, thinking how funny it would be if she was in here putting cottage cheese and pineapple on Ritz crackers while Joe was out there dying.
Joe, hearing laughter, looked up and turned towards the kitchen window.
The Niemans arrived at seven forty, before the Saunders, which meant that even though there were two Niemans to two Palmers, Linda felt outnumbered. They arrived in coats, hats, scarves and gloves, looking like identical (European) twins with their matching spectacles and matching haircuts.
Joe had forgotten to close the door to the downstairs loo and the smell of bleach was hanging heavily between them as they all stood awkwardly in the hallway.
‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ Daphne said. ‘Winke was in Brighton today.’
‘Brighton?’ Linda echoed, excited. ‘Joe was in Brighton today as well.’
Winke gave Joe a slow, almost suspicious look, but didn’t say anything.
‘What were you doing in Brighton?’ Daphne asked sharply.
Joe had a brief but strong memory of Belle’s hairdresser stood in front of him with a pair of scissors in her hand, and forgot to reply.
‘He was at the Britannia Kitchens roadshow – at the Brighton Centre,’ Linda said. She waited for some sort of reaction to this, but there wasn’t any. ‘Quantum Kitchens – our company – had a stand.’
‘I wasn’t at the Britannia Kitchens roadshow,’ Winke said at last.
‘So.’ Linda laughed. ‘The coats, Joe?’
‘What? Oh, right.’
Daphne handed her coat to Joe and they all watched as he tried to get it onto the hallstand, which was already full.
As Daphne’s coat fell onto the floor for a third time, Linda said, ‘Upstairs maybe, Joe?’
‘Upstairs, where?’
‘The bed,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Nice coat,’ Joe said as he took Winke’s from him.
‘Thank you. Wait a moment, please.’ He pulled a spectacle case out of his coat pocket, waving it briefly in the air. ‘I might need these. My reading glasses.’
Linda tried not to panic. What had Winke anticipated doing that would require his reading glasses?
Joe disappeared upstairs with the coats while Linda stood smiling enthusiastically at Daphne and Winke, unable to believe that Littlehaven’s renowned entrepreneur was here in her hallway. She tried not to stare at Daphne’s grey knitted dress, which reached nearly to her ankles and looked like it was made of cashmere. Her jewellery was large, tribal; the sort of jewellery Linda would never have conceived of buying.
‘You have a nice hallway,’ Winke said, leaning towards her.
She was immediately suspicious. Was he laughing at her? ‘Well, I suppose they’re all the same. The hallways. In these houses, I mean.’
Daphne shook her head. ‘No, actually.’
‘So,’ Joe said, coming back downstairs, ‘what can I get you people to drink?’
‘I’ll just take a mineral water, please,’ Daphne said.
‘Do you have whisky?’ Winke asked.
Joe nodded.
‘Let me help you,’ Daphne said, sliding into the kitchen after him.
‘Would you like to come through?’ Linda led Winke into the lounge.
In spite of viewing No. 8 Pollards Close three times before buying it, it wasn’t until they moved in that Linda realised the lounge wasn’t wide enough to fit two sofas in facing each other, which meant that they had to go side by side, with the armchair near the patio doors. The effect, when both sofas were occupied, wasn’t unlike a row of seating at the theatre. Only there was no stage. Opposite the sofas there was a coffee table with a fish tank on top, and a TV cabinet. Winke and Linda sat on the sofa opposite the fish tank.
Linda had been preoccupied by thoughts of the Niemans for as long as she could remember. She had watched their comings and goings from behind the lounge blinds for so long, and the virtual Niemans had become so familiar, that it struck her now as odd – how unfamiliar the real ones were. Total strangers, in fact.
They heard laughter from the kitchen.
‘Your fish is dead,’ Winke said.
Linda sprang up and went over to the tank, peering through Perspex and algae to see if anything was moving in there. She could just make out bubbles coming from the statue of a diver standing over an open treasure chest. Maybe that was the fish. Maybe? What else was it going to be – the diver?
‘I think it’s breathing,’ she said, tapping on the side of the tank.
‘Fish don’t breathe.’
‘Yes, I read that somewhere,’ she said, trying to keep her voice level.
The reflection of Winke on the side of the tank didn’t look convinced.
‘Maybe you should clean the tank.’ He folded his hands on his lap. ‘Or buy a filter.’
‘I know, I know,’ Linda said, keeping it light. ‘I’m terrible. Jessica’s always telling me to clean out the tank, but I just get so busy the day runs away with me, then it’s time for that first glass of wine and everything just goes down the chute.’
Winke didn’t react to this, he just sat there with his hands in his lap.
Linda was thinking, simultaneously, fuck the fish and thank God for the fish. If it wasn’t for the dead or dying fish they’d both be sat there listening to Daphne and Joe laughing in the kitchen. And how long did it take Joe to ask Daphne if she minded tap water because they didn’t have Perrier, and to pour Winke a whisky? Did he realise that she was alone in here with Winke trying to find some common ground.
‘Is the fish your daughter’s?’ he said, after what seemed like ages.
‘Sort of.’ She tapped the Perspex again, smiling vaguely. Her tapping produced small shockwaves across the surface of the water; waves that pulled the fish out from behind the diver, on its side. There were clumps of white stuff that looked like cotton wool bulging from its body, and she might have cared more if the creature wasn’t so genderless. She hoped Winke couldn’t see as she started tapping on the other side of the tank, trying to send out waves that would pull the fish back behind the diver. She didn’t have the stamina to face the fish’s death right then, and once Winke knew it was definitely dead he might expect some kind of reaction on her part: like grief or resuscitation or burial even, and she hadn’t prepared gazpacho and salmon with Hollandaise sauce just so that the Niemans and the Saunders (if they ever stopped fucking in order to show up) could stand out in a blizzard and bury a fish.
The fish had a spasm.
‘Do fish dream?’ she asked Winke hopefully.
Winke didn’t answer. A sudden thought occurred to her – maybe Winke was vegetarian. Did vegetarians eat fish?
Then, after a while he said, ‘It’s a terrible thing when a child’s pet dies. When anybody’s pet dies, but especially a child’s. They have a connection to animals we just don’t understand, don’t you think?’
‘Jessica’s fifteen.’
‘I hope, for Jessica’s sake, the fish lives.’
‘So do I.’ Linda wondered how much longer she was expected to carry on kneeling in front of the tank waiting for the fish to either live or die.
‘What’s its name?’
That was enough. Linda couldn’t do the fish any longer – she’d done the fish. After dinner they’d either stay in the dining room for coffee or make sure, if they did come in here, that Winke was put on the sofa opposite the TV cabinet.
‘Valerie,’ she said off the top of her head, because she’d been thinking how like Mrs Kline Winke was. In fact, they could almost be related. She could see quite clearly, without making her mind stretch at all, Winke dressed as Mrs Kline and Mrs Kline dressed as Winke.
‘So,’ Winke said, nodding, ‘the fish is a she.’
‘What?’ Linda was by the door, trying to exit so that she could get Winke his whisky. She needed Winke to drink his whisky.
‘The fish – Valerie. Valerie’s a she.’
Linda looked at him closely, suddenly suspicious again. Was he laughing at her?
‘Unless you mean Valéry, which is a masculine name in both France and Russia.’
What was he doing bringing France and Russia into her lounge?
There was the doorbell.
‘Excuse me.’ She went into the hallway. ‘Joe! Winke needs his whisky. Joe?’
She opened the front door. Mick kissed her first, then Dominique.
‘Where d’you want us?’ Mick asked, tripping up over the step.
The hallway smelt suddenly of alcohol.
‘In there.’ She tried to guide them into the lounge, but Daphne was waving at them from a bar stool in the kitchen, food in her mouth.
Linda moved over to the breakfast bar. What was Daphne eating? How could Daphne be eating when nothing had been served yet?
Joe and Mick nodded at each other.
There were about five canapés left on the serving dish and a pile of pineapple on the paper napkin she’d lined the plate with. She watched Daphne take the fifth remaining canapé, pick the pineapple off and push the cracker into her mouth.
‘So – you found the canapés,’ Linda said.
‘You know Joe,’ Mick said, ‘you’ve got to lock him up.’ He stretched past Daphne and grabbed remaining canapés numbers four and three. There were two left. Linda tried to laugh, but couldn’t.
‘I hope you don’t mind, but I’m allergic to pineapple,’ Daphne said.
‘Maybe somebody wants to offer Dominique a canapé,’ Linda said, looking at Joe. ‘And Winke’s still waiting for his whisky.’
‘Poor Winke,’ Daphne said, smiling and watching Joe pour the whisky.
‘What can I get you two?’ Joe asked the Saunders.
‘No more wine,’ Dominique said.
‘Two glasses of red wine it is then,’ Mick said, pulling the other bar stool up next to Daphne.
‘We’ve been talking about beer,’ Joe told them.
‘Belgian beer,’ Daphne said proudly. ‘I’m going to send Winke home to fetch some Belgian beer.’
‘Please. Don’t. Really. You don’t have to,’ Linda pleaded.
‘Joe must taste some Belgian beer,’ Daphne said, banging her hand down on the breakfast bar with each word.
Linda handed Mick and Dominique their wine then went to take Winke his whisky.
Winke was kneeling in front of the fish tank with his reading glasses on and his face pressed up against the Perspex.
‘Your whisky.’
‘It is very strange, but I smell something like vomit here – and your fish is definitely dead,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘Maybe,’ Linda conceded.
‘Maybe? Definitely.’
‘Winke,’ Daphne said from the doorway. ‘Winke, I want you to go home and fetch some Belgian beer.’
Winke got slowly to his feet, his eyes still on the tank.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Linda, ‘we’ll sort this out when I get back.’
Linda, who was still holding his whisky, tried to nod as mournfully as she could, and sighed.
The front door shut and Daphne disappeared back into the kitchen, her tribal jewellery clinking as she moved.
Linda put the whisky down on the coffee table and stared into the tank. The fish was lying on its side just by the diver’s feet. It made the diver look guilty.
She turned the dimmer switch by the door so that the lighting level in the room went down, and hoped that a combination of flashing tree lights, low overhead lighting and algae would make it difficult for Winke to pick up where he left off.
Five minutes later the doorbell rang and she went to answer it. The porch light illuminated Winke, a crate of Belgian beer, and a younger, slimmer, taller version of Winke with blond blow-dried hair.
‘Paul carried the beer for me,’ he said, stepping back into the house and leaving his son and the beer on the doorstep.
‘Everyone’s in the kitchen,’ Linda said. ‘Straight ahead. Just there.’ She put her hands on Winke’s back and pushed him in the direction of the kitchen.
Paul was stamping his feet loudly on the doormat. ‘Mind if I come in?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
She stood to one side and watched as the Niemans’ son carried the beer into the kitchen, treading snow laced with mud from the soles of his shoes into the hallway carpet, which was beige. Resisting the urge to get down on her hands and knees and start removing the stains, she followed Paul into the kitchen.
The crate, which had been put on the dining-room table, was being unpacked by Daphne. The cutlery and fantailed napkins were pushed to one side, and two of the candles had fallen over.
‘Linda – we need glasses here,’ Daphne called out.
Linda squeezed past Mick, who was staring at the wooden gazelle he’d just picked up from the sideboard, and got to the cupboard where she kept her glasses. She made a show of moving around some tumblers and a couple of Jessica’s old baby beakers. ‘No beer glasses,’ she said, hoping it sounded as though they’d once had some.
‘Any cognac glasses?’ Daphne persisted.
‘I’ve got these.’ Linda held up a couple of tumblers.
‘Make it wine glasses. The bigger the better.’
‘Joe,’ Linda said, ‘we need glasses from the drinks cabinet.’
Joe unlocked the door in the sideboard behind him.
‘These’ll do,’ Daphne said, pushing past Mick who was still contemplating the gazelle, and taking the glasses out of Joe’s hands.
Everybody had a glass. Everybody had to drink. Daphne had taken over.
Linda tried to catch Dominique’s eye, but Dominique wasn’t seeing straight. Why weren’t they sitting on the sofas in the lounge with their pre-dinner drinks like she’d planned? Why were they all crowded round the dining table instead with an empty crate of Belgian beer on it and Joe and the Niemans – all the Niemans – pressed up against the frosted glass that acted as a divider between the kitchen-diner and the hall.
‘You’ll stay and eat with us?’ Daphne asked Paul.
Paul shrugged.
‘He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to,’ Linda said. Repeating, ‘Really, he doesn’t have to.’ There was enough gazpacho for six people. There were six pieces of salmon and six dining-room chairs. Paul would make them seven, and she didn’t have the stamina to pull off the ‘fish and loaves on the shores of Galilee’ stunt tonight.
‘He’ll stay,’ Daphne said.
Linda stood smiling back at her. ‘So – will he eat fish fingers?’
Daphne laughed. In fact, she didn’t stop laughing for a long time after the fish-finger joke. Only Linda wasn’t joking. Fish fingers were the only thing she could think of to remedy the disaster of turning an evening for six into an evening for seven, and she was working on the premise that all children like fish fingers. Only Paul wasn’t a child. He was the tallest person in the room, and he was drinking beer. In fact, there were no children here tonight. Linda felt her hormones take a quick dive. She had to stop thinking about Paul Nieman.
‘I’ll get Jessica down,’ she said. Then, ‘Maybe she and Paul could eat before us?’
‘Yes, I’d like to meet Jessica,’ Winke said sadly.
‘Jessica,’ Joe yelled up the stairs.
‘Why don’t we just all eat together?’ Daphne asked.
‘I’ll get her, Joe.’ Linda went upstairs and knocked on Jessica’s door. When she went in, her daughter was sitting at her desk. ‘Jessica?’
‘I’m busy.’
‘What are you doing? Homework?’
‘No. Just something.’
‘I need you to come downstairs.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘You have to come and have something to eat.’
‘I already ate. You told me to get something earlier.’
‘Well, now you have to eat something with us. Downstairs.’
‘I’m busy.’
There was an A4 pad on the desk with the words ‘Biological Hazards’ written across it. Then a list underneath: Anthrax/splenic fever/murrain/malignant – she couldn’t see the rest. ‘Paul Nieman’s here, that’s why I need you to come downstairs. You know Paul, don’t you?’
‘He’s in my physics class.’
‘Well, then – downstairs. Now.’
Jessica stood up. She had a pair of washed-out jeans on and an oversize black T-shirt with the word ‘Kontagion’ printed across it in white.
‘For God’s sake, Jessica. I told you to get changed.’
‘Well, I got changed.’
Linda grabbed hold of her daughter’s arm, and kept hold of it as she pushed her down the stairs in front of her.
The crockery didn’t match and nobody commented on the gazpacho. There wasn’t enough elbow space, and Paul and Jessica, who Linda had hoped to sit together, were on opposite sides of the table in deckchairs from the garage – ones she hadn’t been able to wash the mildew off. She hadn’t even got round to lighting the candles.
‘Computers’ll never take off,’ Joe said.
‘You’re not tempted to get one for the office?’
Joe shook his head and Winke put his reading glasses on.
‘In two years’ time you won’t be able to avoid them.’ Then, waving his spoon at Joe, ‘The school’s ordered thirty-five BBC computers.’
‘When?’
‘Last week.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘I ordered them.’
‘At the last Governors’ meeting, we appointed Winke Information Technology Liaison Officer.’
Linda started to clap then saw the look Jessica was giving her.
‘We were thinking of starting up a distribution company – when the time’s right,’ Daphne added.
‘As well as double glazing?’ Linda asked.
‘For a while.’ Winke turned to Jessica. ‘You’ll get to use them maybe … learn some basic programming skills.’
‘You’ve got daughters, haven’t you? You should bring them over,’ Daphne was saying to Dominique.
‘Steph’s too young and Delta’s looking after her.’
‘Delta – that’s a beautiful name.’
Linda stood up and started to clear away the gazpacho bowls so that she wouldn’t have to listen to the story of how Delta was conceived in Egypt at the mouth of the Nile when Mick and Dominique used to fly together.
‘I read in the FT that Laker Air’s in trouble,’ Winke said to Mick.
Linda looked at Dominique to see if this was something she knew about.
‘Difficulty. Not trouble,’ Mick said. Then, seeing Winke smile, he added, ‘It’s weathered worse.’
‘Do you miss flying?’ Daphne whispered to Dominique, who was sitting next to her.
Dominique stared at the Belgian woman whose hand was on her arm. ‘I don’t know – it was a long time ago – yes,’ she added unexpectedly.
The two women smiled at each other.
Something in the way Daphne was resting her hand on her arm made Dominique run on, way beyond the usual confines of her ‘Mick and I got it together at fifty thousand feet’ speech. ‘I mean, I miss the flying, but not the job. The trolley, the foreign hotels between coming and going – I don’t miss that, but the flying itself …’
‘Was it what you always wanted to do?’
‘I didn’t know what I wanted to do – the only O Level I passed was Home Economics. Then I got accepted on this training programme, and –’
‘Do you ever think about going back to it?’
‘I don’t know – no – I’ve changed so much.’ This sounded indefinite, more like she was looking for reassurance than making a statement. ‘I’ve changed so much,’ she said again. Then, turning to Winke, ‘What were you saying about Laker Air?’
‘That it’s in trouble,’ Winke said, pleased to repeat this.
‘It’s fine, Dom.’ Mick, who had overheard, watched his wife’s face as it turned towards him, settling fully on him and resting there.
‘I hope so.’ Winke started shaking his head, and he was still shaking it when conversation moved on, and Joe was telling everybody his favourite story.
‘Believe it or not, it was one of the first jobs I took on after starting up the company,’ Joe’s voice was saying, ‘and it came my way through one of the estate agents in town – can’t remember which one. They’d been renting out a house for some people who’d gone to America short term then decided to sell, as renting it out was too much hassle and the last tenants had disappeared without a trace. The agents reckoned they’d get a better price if they had the kitchen re-done. So … I went in on a Tuesday, I think it was, yeah, a Tuesday. One of the first things I did was turn the freezer off so that I could move it out the way, and – bloody hell …’ He turned to Mick. ‘I know you’ve heard it already – don’t you dare say anything.’
Linda wanted Joe to finish his story and start making an effort with Winke so that in, say, two weeks’ time, Joe could ring him to talk about the possibility of offering Nieman double glazing at a reduced price to people who were getting kitchens designed and fitted by Quantum. She also wanted to ask Daphne whether they’d considered getting their original Laing kitchen replaced? The Nassams at No. 6 and the Saunders all had Quantum kitchens.
Joe let his chair fall forward, forcing his belly into the edge of the table.
‘Guess what I found when I opened the freezer? The missing tenant. Well, one of them.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Daphne looked cross. ‘Not in the freezer, surely.’
‘Seriously – I’m not kidding you.’
‘He’s not,’ Mick added.
Here was Joe talking about dead people, Linda thought. Dead people here in Littlehaven, where the only thing people should have to worry about was whether they ought to take advantage of the new offer by Quantum Kitchens and have Nieman glazing – at a reduced price – put in at the same time. Why was Joe the one rocking back on his chair legs, laughing, when she was the one who got to open the letter from the bank telling them they’d missed a mortgage payment.
‘It was in the papers and everything,’ Joe carried on. ‘The head was in the bottom drawer and everything else was in those freezer bags with labels and dates written on them. Each bag had a different date on it – never worked that one out. Must have been something personal; a private joke or something between the killer and her victim.’
‘Wait,’ Daphne said, ‘it was the wife who killed the husband?’
‘Well – according to the estate agent it was a husband and wife who left without paying their last month’s rent, only, technically speaking, I suppose the husband never vacated the property after all because he was in the freezer the whole time.’
‘Why don’t you two go and watch some TV?’ Linda whispered to Jessica.
‘Who’s “you two”?’ Jessica asked, staring back at her.
‘You and Paul.’
‘I need to go and see if Ferdie’s okay.’
Linda saw this as her last opportunity to reclaim the evening for six people. She’d managed with the gazpacho, but she just didn’t know how to make six salmon steaks into eight.
‘Ferdie’s fine.’
‘Who’s Ferdie?’ Paul asked.
‘Ferdie’s our dog,’ Linda said, then to Jessica, ‘and Ferdie’s fine.’
‘How do you know – have you been upstairs?’
‘Jessica!’
‘I’m going.’ Jessica shunted her deckchair back into the breakfast bar.
‘So what is this Kontagion thing?’ Winke said, looking at her T-shirt as she stood up.
‘Last year’s Glastonbury T-shirt for Youth CND,’ she mumbled.
‘You went?’
Jessica looked at Linda. ‘I wasn’t allowed to go – a friend brought it back for me.’
‘I think Paul should go to Glastonbury,’ Winke said, his mind on neither Paul, who was sitting opposite him, nor Glastonbury.
‘That was very good gazpacho, Mrs Palmer,’ Paul said as Jessica left the room.
‘What the hell’s gazpacho?’ Joe asked Mick.
Linda wondered briefly if anyone was checking Paul’s alcohol intake. Then whether anybody needed to – how old was he, anyway? ‘Teenagers,’ she said nervously.
‘You’re okay, you escape all this with a boy,’ Dominique said to Daphne. Then, turning to Linda, ‘I mean, when did you last get to use your own phone?’
Linda gave what she hoped was a sympathetic shrug. Jessica didn’t seem to phone anybody, and nobody phoned Jessica – apart from Mr Browne, who lived at No. 14.
‘And all the cupboard space taken up with cheap makeup – Delta doesn’t seem to stick to one brand, she just gets bored and moves on to the next one.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Linda said, hoping Dominique would leave it at that.
‘And that’s just the ongoing stuff. This afternoon – while we were out – the girls nearly set fire to the house.’
Linda tried to look surprised.
‘Some accident with a crimper – you should see Steph’s hair.’
‘Will Jessica be going to university next year?’ Daphne asked, turning to Linda. ‘I mean, what’s the procedure for someone her age, in her position?’
Linda didn’t know. She hadn’t thought about anything much beyond the feature Trevor Jameson was going to run in the County Times, and now she came to think of it – what was going to happen with Jessica next year?
‘You should think about an American university for Jessica – maybe wait four years, let her mature … specialise … get her head round the direction she’d like her research to take. I’ve got a good friend at Berkeley you and Joe should speak to.’
‘Anyway, you got your picture in the paper, didn’t you?’ Mick was saying to Joe.
‘I did.’ Joe looked pleased. ‘Yeah, I did.’
Linda put the mandarin cheesecake on the table and tried not to look at Daphne’s face. She had a feeling that Daphne would have an opinion on frozen mandarin cheesecake.
‘Well, it’s not soufflé,’ she said, because nobody else was saying anything.
‘Since when has anyone here made soufflé?’ Dominique asked.
‘Oh, come on, Dom, I know you make soufflé …’
‘I’ve never made soufflé in my life before. Have I ever made soufflé before, Mick? Mick?’
Mick looked up. ‘What’s that?’
‘I said, have I ever made soufflé before?’
‘You and soufflé? Never. Dom doesn’t cook, she – well, she just doesn’t cook.’
‘So you’ve never made soufflé?’ Linda persisted, thinking of Delta in the kimono; Delta who had lied to her. Why?
‘Linda, I’m telling you …’
‘Well,’ Linda lifted up the cake slice, her stomach vibrating with nausea, ‘this is mandarin cheesecake.’
‘I love mandarin cheesecake,’ Paul said.