Perfect Blend: A Novel (16 page)

“Honestly?”

“Why else would I be asking?”

“Okay … Well, if you really want my opinion, I think a sharp, trendy cut would do wonders for you. Your mop’s lovely, but it makes you look about seventeen.”

He nodded. “Say no more.”

“Look, don’t take any notice of me or Bel. Do what makes you happy.”

“I am,” he said. “I’m getting it cut.”

CHARLIE CAME
home from his classmate’s party high on sugar. He spent ten minutes charging around the flat yelling the Spiderman theme song before Amy shooed him into the garden with his football to cool off. Each time she looked out the kitchen window, he would be dribbling the ball and singing: “Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can, spins a web, any size. Catches thieves, just like flies … Goal!!!”

These days, children’s birthday teas tended to consist of healthy dips and crudités and coarse wholemeal bread sandwiches filled with hummus, or pâté made from brain-boosting oily fish. Judging by Charlie’s behavior, this had been an old-fashioned, more traditional affair.

Once Charlie had calmed down, he started planning his evening with Lilly, the baby-sitter. Lilly was Ruby’s university student niece. Amy used her a fair amount because she felt guilty always asking Val to baby-sit.

Lilly was gorgeous. She had golden waist-length hair and eyes the color of the Caribbean. What was more, she adored Charlie and would read to him for as long as he could stay awake. For his part, Charlie behaved like the perfect child when he was with her. She seemed to cast a spell on him. Amy suspected that her son was ever so slightly in love with Lilly.

While Charlie sat in front of his new shelving unit, grabbing puzzles, games, and DVDs, Amy phoned Mrs. B, whose surname she had managed to remember.

“Mrs. Brannigan, it’s Amy here, Phil Walker’s daughter. We met a couple of times at my dad’s house, if you remember.”

“Oh, yes.”

Amy recognized the smoker’s voice and Irish accent.

“Dad happened to mention that you’ve started fetching pizza and KFC for the local schoolkids at lunchtime.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you’re happy to carry on doing this for the kids?”

“Oh, yes.”

It was all coming back to her now, how Mrs. B (a short, inordinately thin woman who, if the need arose, could have sought refuge behind a bread stick) possessed few words and little emotion. She remembered that Phil, who had just finished reading
Angela’s Ashes
when Mrs. B started working for him, suspected she’d experienced extreme poverty and drunken male brutality growing up in the Dublin slums in the years just after the war. This experience, he concluded, had left huge emotional scars. Amy tended to think she was just one of those people who didn’t waste words.

If Phil was around when Mrs. B arrived on a Thursday morning, she would greet him with some pithy reference to the weather like “Blowy again, then.” If the weather was looking really grim, she might be moved to comment: “Reminds me of the winter of forty-seven. All thirteen of us children were snowed in for near on a fortnight. Oh, yes.” Having gotten that initial bit of chitchat out of the way, she would take off her coat, hang it over one of the kitchen chairs, put on her apron, and start filling her bucket. Phil would offer her a cup of tea, which she would accept, along with a chocolate digestive, but conversationwise that was pretty much it until she had finished work. Her traditional parting message to Phil was a downbeat “I’ve left yer smalls in the linen cupboard to air.”

“The reason I’m asking about what you’re doing for the schoolkids,” Amy pressed on, “is that I am doing some freelance journalism and I thought it might make a rather good newspaper story. After all, you are going against government initiatives to try to get children to eat healthily.”

“Oh, yes.”

“If it is all right with you, I’d like to come along and interview you about it.”

“Oh, yes. When might that be?”

“Say, Monday, early evening? Half past six be okay?”

“Right you are. You’ll be wanting my address, then.”

Amy wrote down Mrs. B’s address, hit “end” on the phone keypad, and prayed that when the time came, she would be able to string together a decent quote.

For a few minutes she allowed herself to imagine what her life might be like as a successful freelancer. Not only would she be able to organize her hours around Charlie, she could earn substantially more money. She could learn to drive and buy a car, take Charlie to Disneyland Paris. Maybe in time she could even do up her flat.

She looked at her bedside table. It was piled high with interior design magazines. At night, instead of reading a book, she would flick through a couple to get herself to sleep. She found herself almost salivating over the kitchens, bathrooms, furniture, and wall coverings she couldn’t begin to afford. She got so carried away that she could practically touch the granite worktops, smell the wallpaper. At the moment she had her eye on a spectacular stainless-steel kitchen. She couldn’t decide between glass and stainless-steel splash boards or whether the floor should be tiled or covered in industrial-look rubber.

Of course it was all moot. She had no money. Until she started earning a decent salary, she would have to make do with her eighties pine kitchen that had turned orange over the years and her crusty old bathroom.

She found herself reaching under her bed and taking out her shoe box full of swatches of fabric and wallpaper samples. She’d been collecting them since she was in her twenties.

On top was a piece of latte-colored silk damask covered in an elaborate rose design. She picked it up and held the soft fabric to her face. A few years ago, while she was in Paris on an assignment for Dunstan Healey Fogg, she’d stumbled across this über-chic upholstery shop in the back streets somewhere near Montmartre. The roll had been placed at one end of a bottle-green velvet chaise longue. Several yards had been unfurled so that it skimmed the floor. Amy couldn’t help noticing how each ruche and fold had been arranged with impeccable elegance and grace. She had fallen in love with the fabric on the spot, but it was something like a hundred euros a meter and she couldn’t begin to afford it. The owner—a sixty-something woman with a severe bob and edgy titanium glasses—had taken pity on her and let her take away a headscarf-sized sample. Amy looked at the swatch and smiled. It always amused her because it was so over the top, so very Louis Quatorze. She had a special place for it—or something very like it—in her grand design plan.

She imagined knocking down the wall between her galley kitchen and the living room and creating one large, white minimalist space. She could see the pale wood floor, the stainless-steel kitchen units, the brightly colored abstracts on the walls. So far, so brutalist. Then would come the design clash, the bit that would soften and lift it all—not to mention add some fun—a huge crystal chandelier suspended over the dining table and in one corner a pair of the campiest, most ornate bandylegged French armoires, covered in silk damask.

Aware that time was getting on, she didn’t spend long with the box. Pretty soon, her thoughts turned to what she was going to wear for her date with Sam. They were going to a pub, so nothing fancy was required. Nevertheless, she wanted to give him the impression that she’d made the effort.

A dress, maybe? All her dresses and tops had either wide-scooped or deep V-necks. They flattered her bust rather than emphasized it and made her feel sexy. High necks and turtles in particular made her breasts look like a shelf.

She started pulling clothes off hangers and laying them on the bed. It reminded her of when she was a teenager preparing to go out on a first date. Back then, though, there was rarely any excitement or anticipation. She often went out with boys just to keep up with the other girls. In her teens she dated a stream of greasy youths with mullet haircuts just to keep up with discussions about French kissing and below-the-waist sexual exploration. It was only as she got older and started going out with men she liked and actually found attractive that those few hours before the date stopped being a chore and turned into something thrilling. Tonight, as she laid out more and more clothes on the bed, she was feeling the same excitement.

In the end she chose a purple sundress with tiny white flowers dotted over the full skirt. It wouldn’t be warm enough on its own, so she picked out a three-quarter-sleeve white shrug to go on top. She would finish it off with purple ballet pumps. She was wondering if it was all a bit Joanie from
Happy Days
, when she realized she hadn’t done her date prep.
Bluff Your Way in Architecture
, a mercifully slim tome she’d found in Waterstone’s, was in her bag. She’d read it through a couple of times on her way to and from work, but she wasn’t sure how much of it had stayed in her head. She unzipped her bag, took out the paperback, and sat down on the bed. Flicking through the pages, she realized she had absorbed a reasonable amount. If it came to it, she could hold a short conversation on modernist and postmodernist architecture. She knew the difference between Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns. If she was asked, her favorite buildings were the AT&T Building in New York and the Chrysler Building.

She didn’t hear Charlie come in.

“Mum, where are you going tonight?” he piped up.

“Oh, just to the pub with a friend. I won’t be late.”

She had decided not to tell Charlie she was going out with a new man. It still concerned her that Charlie was unhappy about her dating because he feared she might abandon him. This was her first date with Sam. At this stage, she had no intention of fueling her son’s anxiety.

“A girl friend or a man friend?”

“What?” She hadn’t been expecting that. She hated lying to Charlie. “Well, it’s actually a man friend.”

“Can he be my daddy?”

“So you don’t mind me going out with men, then?”

“No. I like it ’cos you might choose a daddy.”

She suspected that his feelings were still confused. He wanted a dad, but at the same time he was frightened of his position being usurped. She took his hand and drew him toward her. “Oh, Charlie …”

“I’d like a daddy. I mean, I’ve got Brian and Granddad and sometimes we see Uncle Simon, but I’d like a proper daddy.”

“I know, darling. I know you want to be like the other children. It’s rotten being the odd one out.”

“If I had a real dad, it would be better.”

“It would?”

“Yeah … He’d get me a snake.”

AMY AND
Sam took their drinks outside onto the pub terrace. “I really love this old place,” she said, her eyes drawn to the high garden walls, the yellow London brick just visible through a waterfall of wisteria.

The terrace wasn’t too packed, and they were able to find a table next to a tub bursting with arum lilies.

“I’m so glad you agreed to come out tonight,” he said as they sat down. She noticed the fine lines that fanned out from his eyes as he smiled, making him look ever so sexy.

“I’m glad you asked me,” she said, returning his smile. He was wearing dark jeans with a white shirt that looked brand new and a black linen jacket with a pale, narrow pinstripe. On his feet he wore brogues—midbrown lace-ups. There was an easy elegance about this man that appealed to her.

“I was sure you were still angry with me,” he continued, “and would tell me to take a hike.”

She shook her head. “God, I really am sorry for losing it that day at the café.”

“C’mon, let’s not have that discussion again,” he said.

“Okay, deal.”

There was a hiatus as he took a sip of wine. In that couple of seconds, Amy’s first-date nerves, combined with her need to fill all conversational gaps, kicked in. “It’s funny,” she said, “you being an architect, because I’m really into buildings.”

“Really?” he said.

“Absolutely.”

“What kind?”

“Well, I love postmodern architecture and how it evolved from the modernist movement yet contradicts many of the modernist themes. I like the way it combines new ideas with traditional forms and how postmodernist buildings can sometimes startle you, surprise you, or even make you laugh.”

He was clearly taken aback. “Wow. I’m impressed. You know, it’s so rare to find anybody who takes an interest in architecture. Most people totally ignore the buildings around them.”

“Oh, not me,” she continued, feeling like she was on a roll now. “Of course, Philip Johnson’s AT&T Headquarters in New York is often cited as a perfect example of postmodernism. I always find myself taken by the sleek classical facade. Then, when you look up, there’s this oversized Chippendale pediment. It’s the clash of two worlds that makes it so amusing.” She considered telling him that she was planning something similar with a crystal chandelier and froufrou armchairs in her fantasy open plan kitchen-dining-living room but decided against it on the grounds that he’d think her vision was pretty pedestrian compared with Philip Johnson’s genius.

“That’s so true. The frustrating thing is that nobody gets that … So what’s your favorite building?”

Easy peasy.

“Oh, without doubt the Chrysler Building. Did you know that the gargoyles depict Chrysler car ornaments and the spire is modeled on a radiator grille?”

“Actually, no, I didn’t.”

“And I just adore the Pompidou Center in Paris. I mean, Richard Rogers has to be one of the greatest architects in the world. He’s totally up there with Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto.”

“And even Frank Lloyd Wright. Are you a fan?”

Frank Lloyd Wright. Of course she knew the name. World-famous architect. Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song about him. God, how did it go? “So long, Frank Lloyd Wright …” Something about architects coming and going. She spooled through what she could remember of the lyrics for specific architectural references. As far as she could tell, there were none.

“Oh, who couldn’t be a fan? The man was a genius.”

“So which do you think is his best work?”

She tried to deflect the question. “Oh, there are so many to choose from.”

“But if I pinned you down, which would you choose?”