Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (19 page)

No. 283 Prendergast Road was empty. Ellie had a shift at Film Nite and IKEA were meant to be delivering a desk some time after six. Jessica put Arthur to bed with Burke, then she phoned Kate, who was just getting into her car at the leisure centre.

‘Kate? It’s Jessicano, we got back almost an hour ago. Margery was finereally, she was fine. It’s about Robert…’

‘Robert?’ Kate snapped, clipping Flo into her car seat.

‘One of the kids at school pulled a gun on him.’

‘A gun?’

‘He’s not in hospital or anythingnothing was firedbut he’s pretty shaken up.’

‘Shitthat’s all we need.’

Jessica wasn’t sure what to say.

‘Waithow do you know all this?’

‘We passed him in the car, at the top of Champion Hill.’ Jessica saw Robert again, standing with his saddlebag in the rain.

‘On his bike?’

‘No, he was walking.’

‘Robert was walking?’

‘Something had happened to his bike. I don’t knowhe was kind of in pieces, Kate.’

‘In pieces?’

Kate sounded outraged.

‘He was shot at,’ Jessica said again.

‘I’d better get homesee what’s going on.’

After Kate called off, Jessica went upstairs to take a shower.

Standing under the jets of water made meagre by the fact that a lot of holes in the shower head had been blocked with lime-scale, she couldn’t get the image of Robert standing by the bin in the kitchen at No. 22, soaked through, out of her mindor the way his hands shook as he tried to undo the buttons on his shirt. Thinking about this, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the worst was yet to come. She wanted to phone Kate back and warn herbut what it was she wanted to warn her of, she couldn’t say.

She got out of the shower, changed and went downstairs to wait for the IKEA delivery. While waiting, she wandered through the maisonette, picking up stray toys and other daytime debris, redistributing it rather than tidying it away. A remote controlled T-Rex that needed new batteries made it from the floor to the sofa; a pile of ironing was moved from one scuffed dining chair to another scuffed dining chair. It was pointless, but gave her a certain amount of satisfaction. She was whistling as she went through to the kitchen, where she stared for a while at the now almost completely dead chrysanthemum. In a fit of generosity she poured the remains of some old tea over it then dropped the cupwhich had been bought by Grandma Belle in Brighton twenty years ago and had JESSICA written across itinto a basin of water now cold and greasy.

She tried phoning Ellie, but Ellie didn’t answer, and she was just taking a bottle of wine out of the fridge when the doorbell rang.

‘Hey.’ The man in IKEA uniform standing in the open
doorway grinned. ‘Delivery?’ He stared down at her bare feet then up again. ‘Jessica Palmer?’

‘That’s me,’ she said automatically.

‘You up there?’ He nodded at the flight of steps.

‘Yesup there.’

He grinned again then walked back to the lorry.

Another man appeared, older than the first. ‘We can’t park herewe’re blocking the road.’

‘Well, this one’s down for constructionwe’re not going to be ready for maybe another half-hour.’

‘What’s the time now?’

‘Coming onto seven.’

Where’s the other delivery?’

‘About a mile away.’

They hauled a large box out of the back of the lorry and stood it upright on the pavement.

‘Look, help me carry this up the stairs,’ the younger one said, ‘then go deliver the other stuff and come back.’

Jessica followed the two men upstairs.

‘Where’s this for?’

‘Second floor.’

The older man grunted. ‘Whereabouts?’ he called out, breathless and irritable from the landing.

‘Just here on the right,’ Jessica said.

‘No problem,’ the younger one said, backing into Ellie’s room.

They put the box in the middle of the floor.

‘I’ll be back in about forty minutes,’ the other man said, ignoring Jessica and running back downstairs, slamming shut the door to the maisonette.

‘Sorry about thatwork offends him,’ the man said as he knelt down on the floor. ‘You couldn’t flip a light on, could you? Cheers.’

She switched on the spotlight that was on Ellie’s desk,
and watched it catch the blade of the man’s Stanley knife as he started to open the packaging.

‘This your daughter’s room?’ he said, quietly scanning it.

Jessica scanned it as welland nodded.

‘What’s she want another desk for?’

‘She’s about to start her GCSEs.’

He didn’t say anything to this, suddenly preoccupied with the construction of the new desk.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’ she said after a while.

‘No, I’m fine.’

She waited a little longer, then swung slowly out the room and went back downstairs and into the kitchen, unsure what to do.

From upstairs there came the odd sound, muffled by carpet.

She went through to the lounge diner and picked up a copy of
CHAT
from the coffee tablehow the hell had that got there? Sitting on the edge of the sofa, she skim-read ‘
So bullied I carved my own face off
’ and had just started scanning an article on the next page about paraplegic pornwith pictureswhen she heard the IKEA man calling out quietly, ‘Hello?’

She went to the foot of the stairs.

‘You want to tell me where you want this?’

She went upstairs, tucking her still-wet hair behind her ears, and followed him into Ellie’s room. ‘That’s great,’ she said, pleased at the sight of the new MDF desk that she and Ellie had chosen on the trip to IKEA together. That had been a good day. Ellie had been cooperative and they had managed to buy the desk without having a fight. It was the first piece of furniture she’d bought since Peter’s death.

They stood contemplating the two desks.

‘What about seeing if we can get the old one along that wall there, then we could put the new one in the space between the bed and where the old desk is going.’

‘That would work,’ Jessica said, pleased.

‘It’s not part of the service,’ the man carried on. ‘I’m just offering. No trouble to me.’ He eyed her, briefly.

Jessica took the other side of the desk and they spun it round so that it ran along the wall opposite Ellie’s bed.

Jessica found herself smiling at him when it was done.

Smiling back, he moved over to the new desk.

‘It looks great,’ she said with feeling when it was done.

‘Yeah,’ the man agreed, pleased. ‘She’s got a sort of L-shaped workstation now.’ He paused. ‘How old’s your daughter?’

‘Sixteen.’

He whistled. ‘Difficult age, huh?’

‘Yeah…’ Jessica shrugged, aware that the man was watching her. She made a point of trying to look away, but ended up staring at his hands, which were holding the edges of the newly constructed desk.

He stood up, removing his hands, and then she knew what was going to happen nextwas suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that she couldn’t stop it even if she wanted to.

‘You smell nice.’

‘What?’ she said, laughing nervously.

‘I said, you smell nice.’ He was standing next to her, moving his nose over her hair and down her neck. The next minute they were kissing and his hand was sliding down her jeans. Then he pulled her gently down onto the floor.

She tried to push herself up on her elbows to meet him halfway and found herself staring momentarily at the picture of him on his ID badgebut in the end just let herself fall back onto the carpet as random objects crossed her line of vision, uncatalogued: a diary and a pink slipper under Ellie’s bedwhere was the other one? A Polish dictionarythat was new. Was Ellie teaching herself Polish? The headphones from Peter’s old Walkman hanging down the side of the bed…then she shut her eyes.

Afterwards they lay staring up at the lumpy contours of a
badly plastered ceiling, unconvincingly covered in lining paper, with Jessica wondering what the brown stains were and if water was getting in through the roofand not caring much. Then it finally dawned on her…she had just had unprotected sex with the IKEA delivery manin Ellie’s bedroom.

She turned to face himhe was smiling at her, still smiling. It felt like he’d done nothing but smile at her since she’d answered the door however long ago it was.

‘When are your kids home?’

‘Kids? How did you know I had more than one?’

‘I saw the toysdownstairs.’

‘Ohhe’s in bed, and the other oneshe’ll be back soon.’

Neither of them moved.

‘What happened to you?’ he asked after a while, rolling over to look at her.

Without hesitation, she said, ‘My husband diedthree years ago.’

‘Shit…I’m sorry.’ He paused. ‘You don’t want to talk about it.’

‘There’s nothing to talk about. It’s been hell. What happened to you?’

‘Nothing.’ He sighed. ‘I took an arts degree at Manchester and didn’t know what to do after graduation so went to Brazil to work for this charity, playing football with street children.’

She watched him, interested. ‘And now?’

‘Now I’m doing this and just sort of waiting.’

‘For what?’

‘No idea.’ He rolled away from her, staring up at the ceiling again.

‘It was a car accident,’ she said suddenly. ‘We were both in the car at the time, coming down Park Lane from Marble Arch. We’d been Christmas shopping on Oxford Street. I survived.’ She paused. ‘And I don’t know why. One minute
you’re living your life just like everybody else…some days are good; some are bad. ThenBANGyou’re on the outside with this life you don’t want and you’re like nobody else you know.’

‘Did you love him?’

She turned onto her side, watching him, then ran her forefinger slowly down his chest. ‘I think about that all the timeand I don’t know any more.’

‘You don’t rememberor you don’t know?’

‘I don’t know.’ She laid her hand flat on his belly. ‘And I don’t know how what just happenedhappened.’

Propping himself up on his elbow, he looked down at her and said, ‘Didn’t Home Delivery tell you about the flat-pack fuck?’

‘That’s horrible.’ She pushed him over, laughing.

‘It costs extra.’

‘Fuck off.’

He sat up, looking around for his shirt.

‘How much of a pushover was Icompared to the others?’

Abandoning the search for his shirt, he kissed her suddenly on the forehead. ‘You’re beautiful.’

‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘Twenty-eight.’

She sat up on her elbows. ‘Shit.’

‘What?’

‘That’s young.’

‘So?’

He didn’t ask her how old she was.

‘Don’t…’

‘What?’

‘Get dressed,’ she said.

He looked at her for a moment, then crawled across the carpet to where she was still lying. They’d just started kissing again when the buzzer went.

Jessica groaned as he rolled quickly away from her. ‘That was getting good.’

The buzzer went again.

‘Where are you going?’ she said, watching him get to his feet.

‘That’ll be Dave back with the lorry.’

‘Or one of my kids.’

He paused. ‘You want to get it, then?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘You want me to get it?’

‘YeahI do.’

A second’s hesitation then he left the room, buttoning up his shirt and pushing it back into his trousers.

He’d gone. How nice to be summoned by the outside world and for there to be someone else to take the call.

She let go of the moment and started to get dressed herself, able to smell him on her as she pushed legs into jeans and arms into a sweatshirt. She tried to flatten her hair out, which had been wet when they’d started to make love, but had to give up.

Then she heard him running back up the stairs.

‘It’s Dave.’

She nodded. ‘Your feet are bare.’

His face broke suddenly into a smile, but his earlier poise and assurance were gone, and Jessica felt suddenly much older.

She let him go and didn’t go down until she heard the door to the maisonette slam shut.

She stood in the doorway, listening to the lorry outside pull away, staring vacantly at a wire hanging from the intercom. She’d just had unprotected sex with the IKEA delivery man. What the hell was going on? And why did she feel like phoning Robert Hunter and telling him?

At No. 236, Harriet stood at the front window with Phoebe over her shoulder, swaying rhythmically from side to side while rubbing her baby’s back. She’d arranged for Evie’s au pair, Martina, to baby-sit tonight, and was taking Miles out to The Phoenix. They’d had it planned for weeks.

On the other side of the wall, she heard the dull whine of Casper’s remote-control 4×4 and the repetitive thud of it hitting the skirting board prior to the back-flip it was programmed to do.

Outside the rain was getting heavier again, making it dark much earlier than usual. It was barely seven and twilight already, but tonight the rain and the dark didn’t make her claustrophobic; tonight they made her feel safe. The cars had their headlights on already and there was a tailback down Prendergast Road, as there was most nights at about this time when it served as a shortcut onto the South Circular. It took her a while to realise that the car at the end of the tailback was their car. There were an increasing number of Range Rovers in the postcode, but the black one at the back of the queue was definitely theirs
not least because Miles was sitting behind the wheel. She couldn’t see him clearly because of the rain on the windows of the house and car, but she knew instinctively it was him.

‘Daddy’s home,’ she mumbled contentedly to Phoebe.

Then she heard Casper’s voice behind her and was about to tell him that Daddy was home but Casper was talking to her, asking her why it was so dark in the lounge.

She hadn’t realised how dark it was until he mentioned it, and switched on the lights so that the room was suddenly flooded.

‘Casper!’ she screamed.

Anybody would be able to see in. Terrorists…child abductors.

As she hauled the curtains across the windows, she thought Miles turned to look at her. He probably hadn’t seen her beforebecause of the rain and the darkness. She paused for a moment, despite her panic, expecting to see the car reverse into the parking space outside the front of the house

- Harriet liked it when there was a space outside the front of the house; took it as a good omenonly he didn’t. The Range Rover slid suddenly forwards out of sight and more cars joined the end of the queue. Harriet slowly finished shutting the curtains.

She was sure that was their car; sure it was Miles behind the wheel. Why hadn’t he stopped?

‘What’s that?’ Casper was speaking to her. She’d been practising face painting on him ready for the street party and today he was a butterfly. They’d had a fight over it. He didn’t mind her doing Spiderman or Batman, but he did mind the butterfly.

‘I said,’ Casper said, sounding impatient, ‘where was I before I was Casper?’

Harriet stared at her son, uncomprehending.

Why did he ask such things? She worried about Casper; had a feeling she’d always worry about Casper.

Staring at his mother, he said, ‘Okayso when will Martina be here?’

‘Soon,’ she said. ‘Soon.’