Perfect Blend: A Novel (6 page)

It wasn’t like that in Richmansworth. There, as in many other middle- and upper-middle-class areas, stay-at-home mothers and working alpha mothers were practically at war.

A stay-at-home mummy—role model: Angelina Jolie, motto: “The best academy, a mother’s knee”—believed that by being permanently available, she was raising well-adjusted children who would blossom into delightful, angst-free adolescents and emotionally stable adults. So she devoted her time to finger painting and making low-sugar wholemeal cupcakes with her brood. She fed them a careful balance of carbs, protein, and vitamins. She was also a firm believer that small children shouldn’t become overburdened by too many after-kindergarten activities. Her kids were encouraged to pursue destressing pastimes such as kiddie yoga, Kindermusik, and tending the plants at the Tots Herb Garden.

An alpha mummy—role model: the former prime minister’s wife, Cherie Blair (lawyer, author, mother of four), motto: “In it to win it”—believed that by combining motherhood with a high-flying career, she was achieving the goals that her teachers and university tutors had set down for her. Moreover, she was proving to the next generation that it was possible for women to have it all. “Discipline” and “determination” were her watchwords. The first thing an alpha mummy did after giving birth was phone her CEO. These days she was on the treadmill by six, making shopping lists at half past, and on the phone to the Shanghai office by seven, checking the Far East markets. These mothers lived to work. Their offspring—twin boys being coached for Eton, a pretty girl with a part in the new
Harry Potter
film—were simply another project, to be managed and organized with the same steely efficiency and determination that they used to pull off a takeover or merger.

Because an alpha mummy believed that free time was wasted time, her children were made to fill their after-school hours with mind-improving activities. The nanny was constantly ferrying them between Mandarin, chess club, and Suzuki violin.

Amy assumed that apart from school functions, alpha mothers and stay-at-home mothers rarely met. Their paths certainly didn’t cross at Café Mozart since the alpha mothers were already at their desks by the time the stay-at-home mothers arrived. Their mutual loathing was, of course, well known. God forbid the two groups should ever lock horns. Amy imagined naked mud wrestling with briefcases and breast pumps flying.

Of course, it went without saying that jealousy was responsible for the groups hating each other. Amy would have put money on there being nights when both sets of women cried themselves to sleep, each craving what the rival group had. She had no doubt that despite the day and night nannies, the gardener and the housekeeper, life for alpha mothers wasn’t as remotely glamorous as it was thought to be. Alpha mothers knew that “having it all” came at a price. That price was permanent exhaustion, and guilt about abandoning their children.

Amy suspected that the SAHMs cried because they were bored. After another day spent attempting to soothe cracked nipples and tantrumming toddlers, they surely craved the intellectual stimulation that work provided.

She knew from listening in on their conversations that many SAHMs felt they had let themselves down by abandoning careers that as women they’d often had to fight for. These women had hung on for as long as they could before getting pregnant. Now they were knocking on forty. If they stayed at home until their babies started secondary school, they would be fifty—far too late to pick up their careers.

Amy had no intention of waiting until she was fifty. She was aware of how important it was to break into journalism now, before it was too late. And if she freelanced, she would have the luxury of being able to work from home and set her own hours.

By a quarter to twelve, there was only a handful of customers left in the café. Things would stay quiet for twenty minutes or so. Amy was in the kitchen, wiping down surfaces. Zelma was next to her, loading the dishwasher. She held up the bottle of detergent. It was almost empty. Amy said she would nip out and get some more.

“You sure, darling?”

“Positive. I need to pick up something for supper, anyway.”

Amy pulled on her jacket and took her purse out of her bag. As she walked through the café, she noticed that Brian was sitting at one of the tables with a chap in a fashionably crumpled linen suit. They were having an intense discussion about Crema Crema Crema. There was much sipping and swirling and uttering of superlatives. Amy decided that Brian wouldn’t thank her for interrupting him to ask if she could have some petty cash to pay for the dishwasher detergent. She would pay for it, and he could refund the money later.

The early summer breeze felt warm on her face. Underneath the car fumes, there was a hint of freshly mown grass. She turned her head toward the common and saw a chap in his shirtsleeves driving one of those sit-on motor mowers. She watched him for a few moments phut-phutting over the grass while mothers and dog walkers called out to their charges to keep out of the way. Aware that she was squinting in the bright light, she thought about going back for her sunglasses, but she couldn’t be bothered. Instead, she set off down the road. She paused at the posh organic butcher and looked in the window. She had a hankering for lamb chops. Then she saw the price and moved on. They would be far cheaper at the supermarket. On the other hand, there was a deli a few doors down. Maybe she would get a couple of portions of lasagne. That and beef casserole were Charlie’s favorites. She smiled as she remembered the first time she had offered her son dumplings with his casserole and he had refused them on the grounds that it was cruel to the ducks. Months later, she was still having to reassure him that baby ducks weren’t called dumplings.

She decided she would pick up the dishwasher detergent and call in at the deli on the way back. As she set off again, it occurred to her that she hadn’t spoken to her dad in days. She really ought to give him a call and see how he was doing.

Even though it had been months since her parents’ breakup, Amy still found herself moved to tears when she thought about it. Ashamed as she was to admit it, she was upset mainly for selfish reasons. Despite her being a grown-up, her “child within” felt bereft. As a couple, Phil and Val had always been strong and united. With a few exceptions, which had had more to do with Victoria’s upbringing than with hers, they had been great parents. They had always been her soft place to fall. Of course, as individuals they would always be there for her, but it wasn’t the same somehow.

Val had left Phil on the grounds that he never really spoke to her, took her out, or told her he loved her. According to Val, he was interested only in the business, his newspaper, and watching football. “One of the things that attracted me to your dad,” Val told Amy shortly after the split, “was the way he cared about all the injustice in the world, but in the end he didn’t care about the person closest to him.”

Val had always owned a tiny terraced cottage in Clapham. She used to live there before she married. Until recently she had rented it out, but when her last set of tenants moved out in January, she moved in.

The other day when Amy went to visit Val, she’d heard her on the phone to her best friend, Stella. Apparently, prior to her leaving Phil, they hadn’t had sex in months. “And when we did do it, there was never any foreplay. It was a case of brace yourself, Val, I’m coming in.” Amy had cringed and hotfooted it into the kitchen to make Charlie’s lunch.

There was no doubt in Amy’s mind that her father had treated Val badly. In recent years, she couldn’t remember her parents having a proper conversation. She was aware that Val tried to engage Phil in discussions about things she’d read about or heard on the news, but mostly—probably because he considered her interests trivial—he just grunted from behind his paper. Their conversation rarely went beyond Val asking him what he wanted to eat, which of them was going to phone the bloke about the guttering, or whether those briefs and socks strewn on the bedroom floor were destined for the wash or another wearing. Amy couldn’t help thinking that if she’d been Val, she’d have walked out, too. But Phil was still her dad. She loved him to bits. He’d always taken a massive interest in her life—without interfering—and wanted to know her news. They had proper conversations. Whenever she walked into the living room, he would immediately put down his paper or turn off the TV. His face would light up at seeing her. If she had a problem, he made time to listen. He was exactly the same with Victoria. It always upset Amy to think she had such a good relationship with her dad while he neglected Val, but if her mother was jealous, she never said a word.

Now that he was on his own, Phil was pretty much living on takeaway curries and KFC. The last time Amy visited, they’d sat in the kitchen. The area by the back door was covered in empty beer and wine bottles. Amy asked him if he missed Val. “I’ve been missing her for years,” he said, desperate sadness in his voice. “Ever since she went back to work when you and Victoria were teenagers. From then on, she became so independent, always out with her friends from her book club. She didn’t need me anymore. I know I treated her badly. I admit that and I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t get over this feeling that I was superfluous to her requirements.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Amy said, trying to be gentle. “Of course she needed you. She wanted a companion, somebody to talk to and make a fuss about her, tell her she was still beautiful, show her he loved her.”

“Well, she’s certainly got that now.” He took out a boil-in-the-bag kipper and dropped it into a pan of water.

AMY TOOK
her phone out of her jacket pocket and tried Phil’s mobile. When there was no answer, she tried the office. Phil Walker owned a builders’ merchant. As a young man, he’d had no plans to go into the family business. Instead, he went to university, studied sociology because it was trendy, and planned a career working with deprived inner-city children. Then his father had a heart attack and died. It was the mid-1970s and the country was in recession, with most of the population on a three-day working week. Even though the business was struggling, Phil didn’t have the heart to wind it up and sack the staff, who had been loyal for decades. He took it over, sat tight, and prayed.

Back then it was a small business on the outskirts of a pretty Surrey village. In the early eighties the village expanded. It began to draw soap stars, C-list TV presenters, soccer players, and their wannabe model actress wives—all of them in urgent need of bricks, cement, and mock Grecian pillars for their new McMansions. The word on the new gated developments was that Walker’s was the place to go. Phil was earning several times what he would have made as a social worker, and by then he and Val had a huge mortgage. (For some reason, maybe because even then she saw it as a potential bolt-hole, Val refused to sell the Clapham cottage.) It was too late to follow his dream. He was never going to “make a difference.” He relieved his guilt by giving up a Saturday morning once a month to rattle a collecting box in the High Street. It wasn’t much, but by then things were so busy at work, he was putting in twelve-hour days. It was the best he could do.

“Hello-Walker’s-Chantelle-speakin’-how-may-I-help-hew?” Another ditzy, singsong temp on reception.

“Oh, hi, this is Amy, Mr. Walker’s daughter. Is my dad there?”

“Can I ask with what it’s in connection with?”

“Excuse me?”

“Can I ask with what it’s in connection with?”

“I’m his daughter, Amy. That’s the connection.”

“Oh-right-I-see. Bear with me. Trying to connect you.” Cue “Greensleeves.” “Sorree, Mr. Walker isn’t at his desk at present. Can I be of help to yourself?”

Suddenly Phil came on the line. “Hello?”

“Oh, you are there. It’s me, Ames. Nothing important. I was just ringing for a chat and to see how you are.”

“I’m fine. Really good. Listen, sweetheart, it’s sweet of you to phone, but I haven’t got time to talk. I’m on my way out and I’m running late for an important meeting. I’ll speak to you later. Love you.”

The phone went dead. That was odd. Her dad never had meetings. His accountant came twice a year to go over the books, and that was about it. She’d temped at Walker’s often enough during her university vacations to know that his day involved e-mailing or phoning suppliers. When he wasn’t doing that, he was dealing with builders who came in; ordered fifty kilos of cement or bricks; trashed the Prime Minister, the state of the economy, or the latest Russian oligarch to acquire a newspaper or soccer team; paid cash; and left. Where could he possibly be going? Still, he sounded remarkably chipper. That made a change.

Tesco was just off the main drag, opposite the Tube station. A few doors down was the old Odeon cinema, its elegant geometric Art Deco facade faded and flaking. Having been closed for years, the building was being redeveloped. It was covered in scaffolding, which butted out onto the pavement. This meant that pedestrians were forced into a narrow covered walkway in the road. As Amy stopped to let through a woman pushing a twin buggy, she noticed a sign attached to the scaffolding. It was the familiar brown and cream coffee bean logo that caught her eye. BEAN MACHINE COMING SOON, the sign read. What? This was the first she’d heard of it, and she was certain Brian knew nothing about it. He would be up in arms if he did.

Amy wasn’t just shocked. She was mystified. Everybody knew that the old Odeon building was being developed as office space. The town council had sent the plans to all the local businesspeople and invited them to raise objections. As far as she knew, there had been none and the plans had been approved. This had happened months ago. Contracts would have been signed with the office developers. How on earth had Bean Machine been able to claim the space? Amy could only assume that the original developers had pulled out, leaving Bean Machine free to march in and make the council a financial offer it couldn’t refuse.

However it had come about, the imminent arrival of Bean Machine was the worst possible news. Amy was no doom-monger, but there was a recession on. Café Mozart was doing okay because the coffee and food were so good. But it wasn’t cheap. She had no idea how the café would fare, faced with competition from a corporate coffee giant whose prices were so much lower.