Bad Girls Good Women (84 page)

After they had done the letters Julia pulled the stack of papers towards her and worked at full stretch for an hour. Then she realised that the offices had gone quiet around her. She looked at her watch. Six thirty, and everyone had gone home. She would have to go herself, because she was meeting Felix at seven. They were going to have dinner together, and Julia was looking forward to it.

Julia went through into the bathroom that was part of her office suite, smiling briefly as she often did at the memory of the dingy, all-purpose cubicle behind the first shop. Julia stood in the shower for five minutes, letting the hot needles of water ping against her skin, then rubbed herself briskly down. She noted with an automatic sidelong glance into the mirror that her stomach was still flat, there was no loosening of the skin under her arms or over her thighs. Then she redid her face and her hair, and stepped into her dress. It was a Thea Porter, with a tight bodice and a skirt made of panels of oriental silk. Julia wore it with a wide, beaded choker, but even as she did up the ribbons that fastened the choker and turned her head from side to side, she felt dissatisfied. The dress had been expensive, and looked it, but she was afraid it lacked the certainty of style that Suki had managed in her velvet shorts.

Perhaps I am losing my touch
, Julia thought.
Like with the bloody teapots. What do I know, any more
?’

Or care
, she retorted to herself. She marched back into her office, picked up on of the teapots, and stuffed it into her bag. She would ask Felix what he thought of it. As always, the sight of him cheered her up.

He was waiting for her at a corner table in the mirrored bar and he stood up at once and kissed her on both cheeks. Then he held her at arm’s length to look at her.

‘That dress is wonderful.’

If Felix said it was, then it was. He could still criticise, while managing to remain beyond criticism himself. Tonight he was wearing a cream raw silk Nehru jacket. The pale colour made his skin look darker, the bones of his face more prominent.

George Tressider had died twelve months before. He had been ill for a long time, and he had survived longer than the doctors had predicted, but even so the loss of his partner had shocked Felix deeply. For a time he found it too painful even to go into work at Tressider Designs. He grew alarmingly thin, and saw almost no one except Julia. Then he disappeared. Julia didn’t know where he had gone but she guessed, approximately. When he resurfaced he was dead-eyed with exhaustion, but he went back to work. He reorganised some of the systems at Tressider’s, and he began to gain weight again. Felix had dealt with his grief in his own way. Julia loved and admired him for his strength.

Now that Mattie was away working so much of the time, and so occupied with Mitch even when she was in London, Felix had become Julia’s closest friend. They saw each other often, and she still glanced half anxiously at him when they met. But she knew that Felix was all right.

Tonight, they sat at their corner table exchanging their small snippets of news.
As if we were married
, Julia sometimes thought.

Felix asked her about Garlic & Sapphires. She reached into her bag and brought out the bundle of tissue paper. She unwrapped it, and put the teapot on the table in front of Felix.

‘There now. What do you think of that?’

He stared at it expressionlessly. Then he raised one eyebrow. ‘Do I have to think anything?’

‘You certainly do. It’s funny, it’s wonderfully kitsch, it’s what people want.’

‘Then God help them. Another drink?’

While she drank hers, Julia told him about Suki, and the new stock. ‘You remember what the first shop was like. Remember Thomas’s armchairs? I promised myself that I’d never sell anything I wouldn’t have in my own house. It was all supposed to be so clever and original and daring. It was supposed to be …’ she broke off and eyed him ‘… the opposite of everything you and George were doing, but just as good. Yet now I find myself selling stuff I hate, on my buyer’s excellent advice. I’m running a chain of gift shops, aren’t I? It isn’t what I planned.’

The black cat sat on the table in front of them, its heart-shaped sugar-pink nose gleaming with apparent satisfaction. Julia made a face at it.

‘You’ve expanded,’ Felix said drily. ‘Once you employ other people, you accept their contributions. As for the teapot itself, I’m sure it will sell. This, and the ducks and all the other bits you dislike, are briefly fashionable. The fashion will pass.’

‘There will be others,’ Julia replied. ‘Felix, am I too old?’

‘Do you feel too old?’

Too something
, Julia realised.
What was it?

‘You’ve got three choices.’ Felix held up his fingers. ‘You can let Garlic & Sapphires go on the way it is. Getting bigger and more successful. It’ll make you rich, probably. Or you can cut it back to being what it once was. So you don’t have to sell anything you don’t personally admire. Or you can sell up, and come back into Tressider’s with me.’

Julia was amazed. At first, she was sure he was joking. And then she was afraid that he was serious. She was warmed, and flattered, but she knew she couldn’t do it. It would be going back. Stepping around George, and all kinds of other memories, and going in the wrong direction.

‘Tressider, Lemoine & Smith,’ Felix mused. ‘What do you think?’

Julia put her hands over his. ‘It sounds like an ad agency.’

‘You can choose the name.’

‘Thank you for asking me, Felix. But no. I don’t know what I should do next, but I don’t belong in Tressider’s, George knew that.’

Felix’s face changed, saddened, before he looked directly at her again. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m quite sure.’ Of that, at least.

Felix nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s just go and have dinner, then, shall we?’

They enjoyed the meal, and each other’s company, as they always did. At the end, Julia asked him, ‘Would Jessie be proud of us, do you think?’

Felix thought for a moment. ‘Jessie admired material success. But it was contentment that she valued.’

Julia smiled. ‘Still a little way to go, then.’

‘A little way.’

Felix kissed her goodnight, and put her into a taxi. His touch was light and his skin, brushing hers, was cool. Brother and sister. It was a long time since Julia had looked for anything different from anyone.

Sitting in her corner on the way home, looking out at the lights, Julia thought about Jessie and Felix, and about Mattie. Not about Lily at all. But when the cab drew up outside her house, Julia frowned. The downstairs lights were still on. It was eleven o’clock, and a school day tomorrow. Lily should be in bed. Unless it was Marilyn sitting there, although Marilyn always watched the television in her own rooms.

Julia paid off the taxi and ran up the steps.

Lily was sitting curled up in an armchair facing the television, but the screen was blank.

‘Lily, what are you doing? Do you know what the time is?’ Slowly Lily uncurled herself and stood up, facing her mother.

‘Hello, Mum. How’s Felix?’

‘Fine. He sends his love. Did you hear me, Lily? Where’s Marilyn?’

‘Downstairs. She saw me into bed, then I got up again.’

‘Why?’

Lily squared her shoulders. Her T-shirt was an old one and there was a three-cornered tear in it. Her skin, brown from the summer, showed through. Her small, suntanned feet emerged from the flares of her jeans. She had painted her toenails with silvery polish, from one of Julia’s bottles.

‘I wanted to talk to you.’

Julia hesitated. ‘Well, good. But it’s late now, Lily, and you shouldn’t have waited up all this time.’

‘I want to talk to you now,’ Lily repeated.

Julia looked at her again. Lily thrust her hands into her pockets, her shoulders hunching to make deep shadows at the base of her throat. But the protective stance didn’t quite hide the beginnings of her breasts. The new roundness contradicted her bony shoulders and skinny legs.
Not a child any
more,
Julia thought sadly.
Not a woman, either
.

‘What is it?’ she asked. Perhaps trouble at school, with one of her friends. Nothing else, yet, surely?

Lily looked straight into her eyes. ‘I want to go and live at Ladyhill.’

Shock made Julia stupid. ‘What?’

‘It’s a good time,’ Lily said clearly. ‘I needn’t start the new school here. I can go to the comprehensive there, instead. Elizabeth is starting too.’

Julia sat down, hard, against the corner of the scrubbed pine table. The edge of it dug savagely into her thigh with the impact. Lily had thought it out. It wasn’t an impulsive idea, blurted out to test her. ‘You live here, Lily.’

Lily put her head on one side, studying her. Julia saw determination, something else too. Pity? Sympathy? Had she looked at Betty, once, like that? It was Lily’s awareness of her strength that made Julia feel cold, and helpless, and terrified now. She remembered feeling her own strength in just the same way. She had defeated Betty with it, of course. ‘You can’t go to Ladyhill. You live here, with me.’

‘I want to. I know I couldn’t before, when Alexander was just on his own with Mrs Tovey. But Clare lives there now. She was there all last summer. She …’

Julia held up her hands, fending it off. ‘They aren’t married, Lily.’

‘They could get married.’

Julia stood up again. There would be a bruise on her thigh, where it had hit the table. Her chest, and her throat, and her eyes all hurt her.

She saw Jessie’s old room. A paisley cloth over the back of a sofa, and oranges in a blue bowl. Betty, standing up to her, but already beaten.

‘Have you talked to Alexander about this idea?’

‘He said that I would have to talk to you. Daddy is fair.’ Anger swirled up inside Julia, all of it directed against Alexander. Fair, in his house with all the acres, that Lily had loved since babyhood. Fair, with his new girlfriend comfortably installed in it, who would be glad to look after Lily and go to her sports days and applaud her in her school play, because it would cement her more firmly to Alexander himself.

Fair, to take my daughter away from me
.

Julia heard and hated the childishness and the jealousy of her own response, but the recognition of her weakness only fuelled her determination to fight.

‘I won’t let you go,’ she whispered.

Lily held out her hand. Not to Julia, but to take in the room, with a single gesture. They both looked at the blank television and the empty chair, the chesterfield with its plumped cushions, the day’s newspapers, delivered but not unfolded.

‘You aren’t here. You’ve never been here, really. It’ll be easier for you.’

Julia stumbled to her, wrapping her arms around the knobbly shoulders. They stayed stiff, resisting her. ‘I will be here from now on. Lily, if that’s what you want, I’ll sell the shops …’ The words ran on. She was begging, now, but she knew it was too late.

Lily stepped backwards, looking at her with Alexander’s level gaze. ‘I want to go. I want to go with Daddy and Clare.’

The clear, high voice slashed into Julia, sharper than knife blades, colder than steel.

‘You have to live with me.’

‘What kind of life will it be, if you make me?’

The terrible, inexorable clarity of youth and strength. That strength, that she had once possessed herself. Experience took it away, and only gave back endurance. Lily was too old, and yet she knew nothing, and she had everything ahead of her to endure. Pity for her, and for herself, and Betty, made Julia catch her breath. The tears started, and ran down her face.

‘Lily … I’m sorry. For all the things I’ve done to you, and the rest I’ve failed to do. I didn’t mean any of it, because I meant it to be different. I should have known how to make it different.’

‘I’m sorry, Julia. It’ll be better, I know it will.’ And Lily turned away from her. She was part-acting, Julia knew that. She was making moves that she had rehearsed. She even had that advantage, while Julia still gasped with the shock of it.

Julia wanted to run after her, to pick her up and smother her with hugs, now that she was too big to be lifted. She wanted to love her differently, now it was too late to change anything.

The door closed. Julia was left, staring unseeingly at the familiar room, seeing the other room overlooking the square, helpless in the face of the inevitable. She poured herself a whisky that she didn’t want, drank it looking down into the darkness of the garden, then went upstairs. Lily’s light was off and her door was closed, and although she waited outside it, Julia could hear nothing.

She went to bed, but not to sleep. The mistakes that she knew she had made with Lily came back to her, magnified by the darkness and the silence. Her impatience stalked her as cruelty, her preoccupation as neglect. In the wash of guilt Julia clung to the single comforting truth – the evidence that Lily herself was all right. She was strong and determined, and she knew what she wanted. She would get it, just as Julia had done herself.

It was only much later, Julia told herself, when the truths became blurred and the hard-edged certainties melted, that life became difficult, and painful, and seemingly unchangeable.

In the morning, Lily’s resilience showed clearly. It was like any other day. Lily gulped her breakfast, gathered up her belongings and kissed Julia as she rushed past, then departed for school. After she had gone the house seemed dry and stale. Julia flung open the windows, but the weight in the rooms seemed immobile. She went to telephone Alexander. Her anger and bitterness focused itself on him. Alexander must have encouraged Lily with her idea.

‘I did nothing of the kind,’ Alexander said. ‘It was Lily’s own suggestion.’

‘You must have worked on her. You and Clare.’

‘Clare wouldn’t presume to do anything of the kind, either.’

No, of course not. She’s too good, too nice. But I know what she wants. She wants you, and Lily’s a part of you. She’s not as stupid as she seems, Clare isn’t
.

‘I won’t let her go, Alexander.’