Out of My Depth (9 page)

I nodded. ‘Ten thousand euros.’ There were multiple certificates to prove it. I had put up with four young men clumping round my house for a fortnight, injecting every piece of wood with foul smelling chemicals and stubbing their cigarettes out in my basins.

Reluctantly, we took the chaise longue apart, and reassembled it upstairs. My beautiful day bed, my most prized piece of furniture, looked so ludicrous dressed up in Teletubbies bedlinen that I caressed it apologetically. I couldn’t even sit on it, because the plastic undersheet was crinkly. Neither of us had a clue whether three-year-olds wore nappies at night, but if the boy wet the bed he would ruin it and I knew I would find it hard to keep my temper if that happened.

After this visit, we were going to be left with all sorts of rubbish we would never use again.

Maybe we would though, I mused, as I sped through villages. Perhaps, in some unimaginable way, the friendships would be rekindled, and the visits would become regular. If not, I would use the duvet covers as novelty dust sheets.

I parked as close to the airport building as I could, and looked around the interior of the car, putting off stepping into the heat. According to my dashboard, it was forty degrees outside. The car was spotless. I had vacuumed it, and cleared out all rubbish and sundry items. All I had in the car now were three small bottles of mineral water, inside the passenger door, for my guests. There was a little booster on the back seat, which was an unfamiliar addition to my life. I glanced down at myself. This was it. I hoped I looked good enough, because my surface was all I had.

Pau airport was tiny. It looked like a stylish shed in a field. Its roof curved, and its windows were wide and surrounded by wood. I strode in, running through my mental checklist. Menus were planned. Most of the meals were prepared. The drinks cabinet was so full that the door was not shutting properly. Each bedroom, except for the children’s room, had vases of flowers that were just about to open. I had ironed the towels, with lavender ironing water. The cleaner had been. Everything was ready.

The only international flight from Pau was this one to Stansted, so almost everybody in the building was British. You only had to take one look at them to see that.

I pulled my hair over my shoulder and tried to look French. I had never, so far, been identified as English before I opened my mouth, because I didn’t let myself burn in the sun and because my hair was black, rather than any shade of mouse or ginger. I tried to strut, like a French woman, and I gazed disdainfully at the people around me to get into character.

In fact, though, these travellers were positively endearing. They were a benign subset of the British Abroad, far removed from their distant cousins in Falariki. I followed a couple with my eyes as they walked, hand in hand, across the shiny atrium. They were in their fifties, and in spite of myself, I envied them. They looked so happy together. They were lugging rucksacks on their backs, and looked windswept, so I guessed that they had been walking in the Pyrenees. The woman’s hair was naturally grey — I shuddered, as I had no idea what salt-and-pepper would currently be plaguing my head if I let it — and she wore it in a wiry ponytail at the nape of her neck. The man was half bald, and had grown the rest of his hair long in compensation. He looked like a professor of Ancient Greek, and she looked as if she taught evening classes in pottery. Her cotton trousers were slightly too short, and the neckline of her blue T-shirt was too tight. The man’s baggy shorts — or perhaps the knobbly legs that stuck out from them — made me laugh. I was jealous of their closeness. I was jealous of this woman, of the fact that she could look like herself, and that even on a bad day this man would still adore her.

Suddenly, I wondered whether my old friends were going to like me. I had lived my life for years on the assumption that I was, in every way, better now than I used to be. I had gone upmarket: from Suzanne to Susanna; from Suzii to Susie. At school I was bossy and headstrong. As an adult, I had learned to cloak all that in feminine sweetness. I had been masculine, as a teenager. I had not known how to make the most of myself.

Roman had remarked to me, earlier, ‘You must have been jailbait when you were at school.’ He went a bit quiet. ‘I can see you in a uniform. Taunting men with those eyes of yours. You must have been quite the Lolita. Fuck.’ He had a faraway look in his eyes.

I had laughed nervously as I shook my head. ‘You didn’t see my spiky hair,’ I told him, suddenly afraid that someone might bring photos. ‘Or my stonewashed jeans. Or my ginormous arse.’ I had no photographs. There had been a ceremonial burning, years ago, attended by nobody but me.

He snorted and ran a hand over my silky hair. ‘Guess what? I don’t believe you.’ He pulled me in close and kissed me.

I knew that my friends were going to see through me. They had known me as I really was. They would discard the surface with one glance, and see everything.

At the airport, Amanda tried to pretend she was on her own. She was never bloody on her own any more — not out of the daily domestic drudge, anyway. She never got to go to airports or on planes by herself. Taking the children to Stansted to board a cheap flight was not a relaxing start to the holiday. They had parked in long-term thanks to Patrick’s tight-fistedness, and then waited for ever for a shuttle bus which took about an hour to get them to the terminal. Then there was the check-in queue.

She was playing truant from the check-in queue now; grabbing a quick, yet large, coffee, by herself. She had asked for an extra shot. Jake and Freya were engrossed in their Nintendos, and Patrick didn’t mind standing in line behind a family of noisy Spaniards. Amanda looked with distaste at the people around her. There were too many of them, and they were too common. They were, she thought, selfconsciously using a word she had never used before, chavs. Nobody with any taste would fly from Stansted. It epitomised everything that was wrong with travel at the moment. Travel should be exclusive. Not the preserve of these people. She stared hard at a group of young men, sitting in a bar with pints of lager in front of them. They must be a stag party, she thought. They are binge drinking at nine in the morning. They have no idea of what is classy. She shuddered. One of them saw her.

‘You wish, darling!’ he shouted. She looked furiously away as the boy’s friends all looked up at her, and started jeering.

‘Who ate all the pies?’ chanted one, and his friends joined in. Their chant followed her as she stalked away, as she tried to pretend that she was not the object of their derision. When the child ran into her legs, she was ready to snap, and the poor kid, who was only knee-high, copped Amanda at her worst.

‘You little bastard!’ she shouted at him. He looked up at her, confused. ‘Piss off! Where are your bloody parents?’

He pointed, but she was not interested. She got back to the check-in queue to find Patrick two from the front. She knew that her cheeks were pink, and she knew that she was on a knife edge, and she did her best to overcome her rage and act normal.

At the gate, she stared sharply at all the passengers, searching for Isabelle and Tamsin. They both had to be here. She was sure she would recognise them. She was relieved to see that, so far, the abusive young men were not on her flight; with all the cheap and beery destinations available, she would be surprised if they were spending the weekend in Pau. In fact, the people here looked fairly civilised.

Jakey and Freya sat a few seats away from their parents, with their heads still buried in their Gameboys. Amanda disapproved of this in other people’s children, but in her own she positively encouraged it. There must be some positive effect on hand-eye co-ordination and speedy reactions. There was an indisputable positive effect on her own state of mind. The children were occupied, and Patrick was reading the FT, and so, cradling a double mochaccino with extra shot, she was free to stare around, trying to corral all the women’s features into those of her old friends. Across the waiting area, a woman was holding up a copy of the Guardian, hiding behind it. Amanda could just see her long fingers with clear nail varnish on them. Her nails were well tended, though shorter than Amanda liked to wear hers. The woman’s black skirt, or dress, ended at her knees, and her legs were bare and thin and brown, one crossed elegantly over the other. She had black sequinned flip-flops on her feet. She was lazily flipping one of them back and forth with the toes of her left foot. She was, Amanda decided, a likely candidate for Izzy; and with the paper held up like that, providing a barrier all around her, Izzy was certainly hiding. Hiding from Amanda. She pictured Isabelle behind the paper: her auburn hair loose down her back, yet styled artfully around her face. The black dress would be beautiful and cool, perhaps worn with a teeny cardigan. She couldn’t wait to see Izzy again.

She was considering walking over and peering over the top of the paper. She was putting down her cup, preparing to do it, when she heard someone calling her name.

When she looked up, a fat woman was standing a couple of metres away. Amanda frowned. Then the brat she had sworn at looked out from behind the woman’s knees.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said. She was probably going to have to apologise, and she hated that.

‘Amanda?’ the woman asked again.

Amanda was confused. ‘Mmm?’

‘Amanda!’ said the woman, with a sincere and slightly familiar smile. ‘I recognised you straightaway. How are you?’ There was a short pause. ‘Izzy,’ the woman added.

‘Izzy!’ Amanda exclaimed. This woman had short, greying hair and fat calves. She was dressed in stretchy High Street clothes, and that white top did nothing for her stomach. This woman could be forty-five, not thirty-two. This could not possibly be Izzy. If this had happened to Izzy, then anything could happen to anybody.

And the brat was staring at her. He reached for Isabelle’s hand.

‘Mummy,’ he said, in a loud whisper. ‘That’s the mean lady!’

‘Oh, Sam,’ Izzy said to him. ‘You ran into her, didn’t you? Sorry, Amanda. It’s lovely to see you again. You haven’t changed a bit.’

Amanda searched for something to say. She was about to point out the Guardian readier and tell Izzy about the mistake she had been about to make, but she suddenly felt it would be too cruel. Instead, she turned to Sam.

‘Hello, Sam,’ she said, in a baby voice. ‘Don’t worry about before. I’m sorry I told you off. How old are you?’

He glared at her and pushed his lips tightly together. He looked like an angel, but Amanda knew trouble when she saw it.

‘Sam? Tell Amanda how old you are,’ said Izzy. He shook his head, still scowling. ‘He’s three and a half,’ she said.

‘Well, Sam,’ said Amanda, testily. ‘I’ve got some children too. That’s them over there. They’re bigger than three and a half, though. Jake and Freya. Ask them to show you their Gameboys.’ She raised her voice. ‘Jake! This is Sam. Be nice to him.’

Jake rolled his eyes but nodded, and Sam trotted off to annoy him. Amanda turned back to Izzy, who had sat down beside her. She had no idea what she ought to say. ‘I didn’t know you had a son,’ she said. ‘Susie never mentioned it. How’s Martin? Is he here?’

Izzy shook her head, and smiled a tight little smile. ‘No. Martin’s not with me. Not in any sense. I’m expecting the decree absolute any day.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Sorry we’ve lost touch, too.’

‘I know. Me too.’

Amanda waved a hand. ‘You remember Patrick?’ It was Izzy’s turn to look surprised, and Amanda smiled as she realised that last time Izzy had seen Patrick, he must have had a full head of hair. He, too, had aged dramatically between mid-twenties and early thirties. He worked too hard. That was what had happened to Patrick. He worked hard to keep away from her, and to provide for the family, and now he was getting his boring, persistent headaches as a result, and the doctors were encouraging his hypochondria by inviting him for a scan.

Patrick and Izzy exchanged pleasantries, and Amanda tried to keep on top of her feelings, to hope that her mixture of triumph and dismay did not show on her face. The fact that Izzy had recognised her at once must mean that she looked better than Isabelle did. Isabelle had been ravishing, with her auburn hair and her swishing skirts and her black lace-up boots. She had become anybody, nobody. If this was what divorce did to you, Amanda decided she had better not take Patrick too much for granted.

She sat by the window. The children were still obsessed with their stupid games, and Patrick was not remotely interested in views. Apparently they were going to be seeing the Pyrenees at the end of the journey. She was the only one likely to notice. They were sitting miles away from Isabelle and her boy. Amanda had contrived that by, for once, not taking up the offer of early boarding with young children. Jake and Freya were too old for that really.

There was plenty of time for catching up, later. She’d like to talk to Izzy, to try to fathom out exactly what had happened to her (motherhood alone could do that to some people, she supposed), but since her own kids were big enough to amuse themselves, she balked at the idea of sharing plane space with a three-year-old. Particularly with an unruly and sulky one.

‘Want me and Jakey to swap with Isabelle and the boy?’ Patrick asked casually He wanted to, she knew it. He wanted to kick back and pretend he was single. Jakey would obligingly ignore his father for the whole journey. Patrick would call a hostess over and make her bring him a whisky. Then he would make Amanda drive the hire car.