Perfect Blend: A Novel (19 page)

“Oh, hi, Amy,” came the languid, upper-class drawl. “Look, sweetie, I’m just about to go into conference.”

“I won’t keep you,” Amy persisted. “It’s just that I’ve got this amazing story.” She pitched it in thirty seconds flat.

“Right. Okay. Yah. Actually, that does sound interesting. I’ll put it up in conference and get back to you in an hour or so.”

Amy spent the afternoon on what Zelma kept referring to as
shpilkes
. This was Yiddish for “tenterhooks.” Bel—who decided to “hang out” at the café for the rest of the day because a meeting she was meant to have with her agent had been canceled—went around practicing the word. “So, how are your
shpiel keys
, Ames? Still on them?”

“It’s not
shpiel keys,”
Zelma corrected, laughing. “It’s
shpilkes
. And you can see she’s still on them. Just look at her. That’s the third time she’s given a customer the wrong change.”

It was after six, and Amy was at home, stirring Bolognese sauce, when the phone rang.

“Hi, Amy, it’s Boadicea. The editor loves the story. We’re running it in the morning. Can you e-mail me a thousand words? And we’ll need the woman’s details to sort out a picture. I’ll be in the office until seven.”

Bloody hell. A thousand words? In an hour? “Okay, fine. No problem,” Amy said.

She dished up Charlie’s spag bol and left a portion of chocolate ice cream on the kitchen counter to thaw. As he started on his supper, she did something she swore she would never do: She bribed her child. “Charlie, if you can amuse yourself and not disturb me for the next hour, I will give you some money to spend this weekend when you go to stay with Grandma.”

“Why can’t I zisturb you?”

“Because I have something very important to write. It’s an article for a newspaper, and they want it very quickly.”

He nodded. “How much?”

“How much what?”

“Money.”

Although Charlie still didn’t get pocket money, he had, in the last few months, started to take an interest in cash.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Two pounds.”

“Five.”

“No way.”

“Four.”

“Three, and that’s my last offer.” She couldn’t believe that she was haggling with a six-year-old.

He thought for a moment. “Okay.”

“But you can’t spend it on sweets. Deal?”

“Deal.”

She left him to eat his supper and went into her bedroom, where her laptop was on charge. She sat on the bed, propped up by pillows and cushions, and began typing.

A 73-year-old London woman is single-handedly taking on the government’s healthy eating initiative by organizing mass lunchtime deliveries of junk food to schoolchildren.

Children at Nelson Mandela Comprehensive telephone or text their orders to grandmother Dymphna Brannigan.

For a small fee, she collects their lunches from fast-food outlets, including McDonald’s, KFC, and Pizza Hut, and delivers them to the school gates.

Teachers are powerless to act …

Fifty-five minutes later, she was pressing “send.” She just prayed she had gotten the house style right.

When she went into the living room, Charlie was sprawled out on the living room floor with his crayons. She sat down beside him and ruffled his hair. “Thanks for not disturbing me, poppet. I really appreciate it.”

He didn’t react other than to swat her hand away from his hair. He was busy finishing a picture and didn’t want to be disturbed. It was a street scene. Amy recognized it at once. “Look, there’s the deli and the dry cleaner’s and Café Mozart. You’ve done buses and cars and people. And you’ve even remembered the ice-cream van.” She was no expert, but he seemed to be developing a real understanding of perspective and scale. When she looked more closely at the people, she couldn’t help laughing. The women in particular were unmistakable. There they were, Richmansworth mummies in their A-line Boden skirts and sandals, pushing their tank-sized strollers. “Oh, Charlie, I don’t know what to say. This is wonderful. It’s one of the best drawings you’ve ever done. You really do have a photographic memory.”

“What does that mean?”

“Come and get in the bath and I’ll explain.”

ONCE CHARLIE
was in bed, Amy went to check her e-mail. There was one from Boadicea titled “Great piece, will be in touch re fee.” There was no actual message. Her fist shot into the air. “Yes! Cracked it.” She was on the point of phoning Bel and Brian and her mum and dad to tell them her piece was going to be in the newspaper the next morning, but she thought better of it. Experience had taught her that an editor liking a story and promising to run it was no guarantee that it would appear.

She went to bed and flicked through some of her interiors mags until she felt drowsy. She dreamed that it was the next morning and she was out trying to buy a copy of
The Daily Post
. Everywhere had sold out. She ended up tramping across London, going into hundreds of newsagents, and nobody had a copy. Her frustration turned to desperate panic when she realized she was lost and couldn’t find her way back to Charlie. She woke up sweating, her heart pounding, to find Charlie jumping on the bed. “Yay—swimming today. Have you packed my stuff?” He slid under the covers.

“Yes, I’ve packed your stuff. Come here.” She hugged him to her. “Don’t I love you.”

“Love you, too. So when do I get my five pounds?”

She burst out laughing. “You little so and so. We agreed on three, and you know it.”

“Okay, so when do I get it?”

“Saturday morning.”

Amy sent him into the bathroom to brush his teeth. She was desperate to see
The Daily Post
and cursed herself for not having the newspapers delivered rather than buying them on the way to work. She could get it online, but it wasn’t always reliable. They often missed out on stories. She looked at her clock on the nightstand. The paperboy would be dropping off papers to other residents in the block just about now. She decided to stop him and beg him to let her have a quick look at somebody’s
Daily Post
. She tightened the cord of her dressing gown and went out onto the landing. No sign. She hovered for a couple of minutes, but he didn’t show. She would have to pick up a paper on her way to work, as usual.

While Charlie ate breakfast, she showered and got ready for work. Afterward she made his lunch and double-checked that he had his swimming gear. All the time her stomach was churning the way it used to before she took an exam.

She stopped at the newsagent by the bus stop. It occurred to her that last night’s dream was going to come true and they would have sold out of
The Daily Post
. But they hadn’t. She’d just finished paying when her bus pulled up. There was a long queue, so she didn’t have to rush. She stood at the back of the slow-moving queue and opened the newspaper. It wasn’t easy turning pages with nothing to rest on. To make it worse, there was a strong breeze. She fought with the billowing pages. Page four, five, six … twelve. By the time she got to page nineteen, she was pretty sure they hadn’t used her piece. By the time she reached the funnies and the horoscope section, she knew they hadn’t. She fought the urge to swear out loud. On the other hand, she knew how things worked on the dailies. No doubt a big story had come along late last night and hers had been dropped to make room for it. They probably were holding it over until tomorrow.

Just after ten, Amy rang Boadicea to find out what was happening, but all she got was her voice mail. That went on all day. The woman was either out of the office or—and Amy couldn’t help thinking this was the most likely—she had caller ID and was avoiding her.

Brian accused her of being paranoid. “Why would this Boadicea woman ignore you? Surely she understands that you need to know what’s going on. And if they’ve decided not to use the piece, it’s only polite to let you know so that you can try placing it elsewhere.”

“Yes, but she’s scared I’ll be pissed off, and she’s trying to avoid a confrontation.”

Amy knew that Boadicea would be in the office until well after six, so when she got home, she e-mailed her to ask what was happening to the piece. Eight o’clock came and went with no reply.

The next morning, Amy managed to catch the paperboy and plead with him to let her look through a copy of
The Daily Post
.

“But you’ll get creases in it and mess it up.”

“Please. It’s really, really important. I’ll be ever so careful. Please?”

He grunted and handed her a folded newspaper. Her story was mentioned on the front page. Yes! Way to go.

“Grandmother encourages pupils to defy Government’s healthy eating initiative. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver reports. See page three.” Staring up at her was a picture of the cheeky chappy, all roguish grin and
“easy peasy.”
What? No! Wrong way to go.

Amy turned to page three. This was her story, all right, but not the one she had written. Above Oliver’s byline was a short introduction: “Jamie Oliver, who has worked tirelessly to revolutionize the quality of food served in British schools, meets the grandmother setting out to single-handedly destroy his good work.”

Miserable and pissed off as she was, she supposed it made perfect sense that the desk editors had changed their minds about using her story. Jamie Oliver was a huge name.
Jamie’s School Dinners
, the TV series in which he taught school cooks how to prepare decent, nutritious food on a budget, had been watched by millions. Why wouldn’t they send him to cover this story? She couldn’t help thinking, though, that it wouldn’t have hurt Boadicea to phone or e-mail her to explain what was going on.

She thanked the paperboy and handed him back the newspaper, which she had carefully smoothed and refolded.

Back in the kitchen, Charlie was eating his cereal “It’s Saturday. You said I could have my money today to spend with Grandma and Trevor.”

“I did indeed,” she said, reaching for her bag. She took three pound coins from her purse. As she handed the money to him, she asked him what he was going to spend it on.

“Secret.”

Then the penny dropped. “Charlie, you are not buying a snake. Do you hear me?”

“Duh. You can’t get a snake for three pounds.”

“Yes, but you’ll convince Grandma and Trevor to put up the rest. You are absolutely forbidden to do that. Are we clear?”

Charlie’s crest couldn’t have looked more fallen.

Val and Trevor didn’t arrive until after nine. “Sorry we’re late,” Val said. “We were driving around for ages looking for somewhere to park.”

“I chanted for a space,” Trevor said. “Never fails. We ended up getting a spot right outside your building.”

“Trevor, you chanted for twenty minutes,” Val said, hands on hips. “Doesn’t it strike you that we might have found a place anyway in that time?”

“What? Right outside Amy’s flat? I don’t think so. This was the universe providing us with what we needed. You see, the universe is divided into a single dynamic web of energy. It’s all part of the Noble Eightfold Path, and when we combine this with our own consciousness, which Buddhists describe as
vinnana—
”

“Trevor, please,” Val said. “Not now.”

“Okay, no need to get irritable.”

“I’m not irritable. It’s just that for once I’d like to talk about something other than tantras and mantras and the Noble Eightfold Path.”

Trevor shrugged. “Fine.”

Amy looked at her mother. She didn’t look so much irritable as weary. It seemed that Val wasn’t finding Trevor quite as cool and interesting as she once had. If there was tension between them, Amy didn’t want Charlie picking up on it and getting upset.

“Mum, could I speak to you for a sec in the kitchen?”

“Of course.” Val followed her daughter. Meanwhile, Charlie was asking Trevor if he would teach him to chant. Trevor scooped him up. “Absolutely, young man. We shall practice in the car.”

“Oh, perfect,” Val murmured. “Now I’ll have a duet.”

“Mum, I sense a bit of an atmosphere between you and Trevor. Is everything okay?”

“Not entirely, but it’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure we’ll sort it out.”

“Sort what out?”

“Look, don’t get me wrong, Trevor is an absolute sweetie, but he’s so passionate about shamanism. In the beginning I found it fascinating. It’s one of the things that attracted me to him. I loved being with somebody who was so spiritual. So different from your father. Trevor and I would take long romantic walks and talk for hours about life and the universe and what it all meant. But he lives his life with his head in the clouds and never seems to connect with the real world. He doesn’t understand that I need an occasional break from talking about astral planes. Sometimes all I want to do is sit in an armchair with a cup of tea and watch the soaps or my
Mamma Mia!
DVD. But I can’t concentrate because he spends most evenings chanting upstairs. Some evenings he’s got people with him who have come for healing and they’re chanting together. It’s such a racket.”

“Sounds like you need to sit down and have a serious talk about how he needs to take your needs into account.”

“I know, but I’m too scared.”

“But Trevor’s a lovely man,” Amy said. “He would do anything for you. Why on earth would you be scared?”

“Whenever I asked your dad to take me to the pictures or even come out from behind his newspaper to talk to me for five minutes, he refused. He rejected me over and over again.”

“And you’re frightened that Trevor’s going to do the same.”

“It has occurred to me.”

“Mum, speak to him. Tell him how you’re feeling. Do not let this thing fester. It will only get worse.”

“I know. You’re right. I just need to find the right time, that’s all.”

“You mean that?”

“Cross my heart.” She paused. “So, this new chap of yours is an architect? You know, you could do a lot worse.”

“That’s what Dad said.”