Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (20 page)

Miles had fully intended parking in the space outside the front of the house. He’d seen the traffic on Prendergast Road, come to a halt andafter several secondsrealised he had come to a halt outside
his
house. Excited, he saw that there was a parking space directly in front of the house. He wasn’t ashamed of his excitement. Life’s small pleasures were something no honest man or woman should be ashamed of. In fact, most people were unaware of just how often small pleasuressuch as a parking spot just where you wanted a parking spotwere called upon to act as life’s ballast tanks.

Only tonight, for the first time, his excitement over finding a parking space in such close proximity to the house felt wrong. The front of the house was dark, the curtains drawn back. Then the lights went on suddenly, illuminating Harriet standing at the window looking out; looking straight at him, in fact.

This was the moment when he waved and parked the car.

Only tonight he didn’t. Tonight, he found himself nudging it into first and carrying on up the road, staying close to the rear lights of the car in front. He followed the flow of
traffic right up to the top end of Prendergast Road, where the crossroads were.

He stopped outside the florist’s.

He did it without thinking.

He ran his finger round the steering wheel and peered up at Jessica Palmer’s maisonette, whose curtains looked as though they’d never been drawn. The lights were on.

Turning off the engine, he got out of the car and went into the florist’s.

Once in the shop, he wavered, uncertain. He had never bought flowers like this before. He bought them when occasion demanded itlike the bouquet he had delivered to the hospital after Phoebe was born; or the bouquets he came home with after Harriet agreed to have a bout of biannual sex with himbut never like this.

A young girl with bad skin, wearing an apron, emerged from the back of the shop, bringing marijuana fumes with her.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Yeah, I need…something.’ Miles swung round, taking in the buckets of rain-drenched flowers the girl had just bought in. She had been left to shut up shop on her own and was hoping to do it early.

‘Something,’ Miles said again, nervously. ‘A gift.’

‘A bouquet?’ the girl asked, in a panic.

‘No, not a bouquet.’

‘Who’s it for?’

Miles didn’t answer. He was thinking of a book he’d read a lot of years ago. He was no reader; it must have been at school. But he did remember a man in the book who gave a woman he wasn’t meant to flowers. Yellow roses. He couldn’t remember either of the characters’ names, but he remembered the yellow rosesand that they had been just the right thing.

The girl was watching him. He made her nervous.

‘Yellow roses.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I want yellow roses,’ he said, suddenly sure of this.

The girl shuffled round the shop. ‘I got yellow freesias,’ she said. ‘I’ll check out the back.’

When she reappeared, she said, ‘I’ve got somethey’re not great, but…’ She sounded excited, the idea of the importance of there being yellow roses in the shop gaining momentum with her. ‘How many bunches?’

‘Bring what you’ve got.’

She emerged from the back of the shop with her arms full. ‘Six bunches?’

He nodded and watched her wrap them.

Outside on the pavement, away from the shop’s orange strip lighting, the yellow roses came into their own.

Behind him, he heard the florist’s door being locked. He turned around and the girl was at the door staring at him.

The rain was getting heavier and for some reason this pleased him.

The next minute, before he had time to think about it, he was ringing on Jessica Palmer’s old intercom. He rang twice, but there was no reply.

Then he heard feet on the stairs, making the canopy above the florist’s shop window rattle.

A light went on behind the frosted glass and the door opened.

Jessica peered out at him as he took in the stained brown carpet and crumpled pile of junk mail behind the door.

‘Yellow roses,’ he mumbled, suddenly afraid.

Jessica was staring at him as though she’d been expecting somebody else and couldn’t quite believe it was him standing there. ‘Miles? Did somebody give you those?’

He stared back at her, confused. Maybe somebody had
given them to him. No, he remembered buying them. ‘I bought them,’ he insisted. ‘Just now. For you,’ he added, pushing them towards her.

‘For me?’ Jessica made no attempt to take the flowers. ‘But, Mileswhy?’

‘I had to,’ he said, automatically. ‘Please take them.’

‘I can’t take them. I’m sorry, Miles.’

She shook her head awkwardly then shut the door.

Her silhouette vanished from behind the door as he heard her make her way back upstairs.

He waited in the car as the rain turned to hail, loud on the car, forming a ridge along the bottom of the windscreen. The door to No. 283 remained shut and nobody appeared at any of the upstairs windows. He dialled Jessica’s mobile number but she didn’t answer.

Unsure what it was he had been expecting, he put the car into gear and drove back down Prendergast Road, homeseriously doubting whether he had just bought six bunches of yellow roses for Jessica Palmer or if he had just imagined the whole thing.

Harriet was upstairs running a bath when Miles came in, and she didn’t hear him until she turned the taps off.

Casper went running down to see him, but she stayed in the bathroom and finished getting Phoebe undressed.

They came back upstairs together, Casper talking quickly, giving Miles the highlights from his day in no particular chronological order.

Miles didn’t comment on the fact that his son’s face was painted with a butterfly. Had he even noticed?

Harriet was putting Phoebe in the bath and didn’t turn round.

Casper carried on talking about elastic bands.

Miles didn’t say anything.

Two of the bulbs in the bathroom had blown that week and Harriet kept forgetting to buy replacements. In the partial lighting, Miles cast a long shadow across the bath and up the tiled wall opposite.

‘You’re wet,’ she said.

‘It’s hailing out there.’

‘Is it?’ She wanted to take a look out of the window, but couldn’t move because she was supporting Phoebe’s head to prevent her from drowning.

‘I got caughtrunning from the car.’

It
was
their car she’d seen driving past the house earlier; she knew it was. If only he’d come back with flowers: flowers would have explained the drive-by.

‘Harriet…’

She turned round. He was watching her.

‘We just don’t work. We’re all wrong together.’

He was calm as he said it.

Phoebe’s eyes were bulging, irate, as she jerked about in the water. Casper was still babbling about the elastic bands.

Harriet had, without being particularly conscious of it, been bracing herself for something like this. As a couple, they never rowed. Miles rarely had explosions of anger or frustration. What he did have were these strange implosionson average, twice a yearwhere he said impossible, apocalyptically destructive things. Like just now.

The last time he’d had one of his implosions was when she told him she was pregnant with Phoebe and he told her he wanted her to have an abortion.

She dealt with this one as she dealt with all of themby smiling blankly at him as though he’d just told her, in Mongolian, that he had herpes. It was a method that had proved effective in the pastas effective as a surgery-free lobotomy could be, anyway.

‘We’ve got a reservation at The Phoenix tonight. Martina’s
coming round in about half an hour. Once I’ve got Phoebe settled, you can sort Casper out for me so I can get ready.’ She waited.

Miles, who had been looking at himself in the medicine cabinet’s mirror doors, turned to face her again.

A minute later, he sighed. ‘Okay.’

‘And there’s something we need to talk about…’

Hope flared up briefly in Miles.

‘We can’t tell Admissions I’m seeking refuge from you…your brutality, at Number eight Beulah Hill.’

‘We can’t?’

Harriet shook her head. ‘Mr Jackson has a niece.’

‘A niece?’

‘Jade Jackson is Mr Jackson’s niece.’ Harriet paused. ‘Jade Jackson is Head of Admissions for all primary schools in the borough.’ She tried to keep her arm steady so that Phoebe remained above the water. ‘She was there at the house today, when I went to see if there was any post for us. I’m scared, Miles…’

Robert and Kate were sitting opposite each other over two plates of liver and an empty bottle of white wine.

The Phoenix was one of SE22’s best gastro-pubs. Nobody really knewor caredhow good the food was any more; it was one of those places you were meant to spend your overdraft in.

‘It was featured in this month’s
Waitrose Magazine
.’

‘What was?’ Robert said, looking up from the liver he’d ordered. Why had he ordered liver? He used to hate it as a child when Margery cooked it, which was at least twice a week. He came to the conclusion that he’d felt pressurised by the waiter into ordering the liver.

‘The Phoenix.’

‘Oh.’ He looked around him then down at the liver.

‘God.’

‘What?’

We really need someone to put an offer in, and I thought Ros might—’

The waiter appeared, pulling the empty bottle of wine from the bucket. ‘Can I get you another one of these?’

Robert nodded, trying to remember how much the bottle had cost£28? £38? About one hundred times more than it had cost The Phoenix anyway. Shit.

He pushed the remains of liver to one side.

The second bottle of wine was brought to the table.

‘Can I take these?’ the waiter said.

‘What’s that?’ Robert, distracted, took a while to realise he was talking about the uneaten liver in front of them. ‘Yeahsure.’

‘Things need to move quickly with ours. If someone doesn’t put an offer in, we’ll lose the place we’ve put our offer on.’

‘
Our
offer?’ He stared at her. ‘What offer?

‘The offer we put in on the other place.’

‘What other place?’

‘The Beulah Hill house.’

‘What Beulah Hill house?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Robert,’ Kate hissed. ‘The Beulah Hill house I put the offer in on.’

‘You put an offer in on a house I haven’t even seendon’t know anything about?’

‘You
do
know about the house. I told you about the house.’

‘You never said anything about the house. When did you put the offer in?’

Kate hesitated. ‘Wednesday.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘OkayMonday.’

‘You never said anything,’ Robert said again.

‘I didyou just don’t remember. You don’t remember anything at the moment. You’re somewhere else, Robert.’

‘I’m here,’ he insisted.

‘You’re never hereand I had to move quickly. Then today I found out that Ros has got her eye on the Beulah Hill house as well, and now she’s gone and put an offer in.
Christ knows why, they could afford Beulah Hill twice over.

Shit.’ She broke off.

‘What?’

‘Harriet and Milesheading this way. I didn’t know they were coming here tonight.’ She waved as Harriet, wearing something stretchy and made of lacewhich only Jessica Palmer would have been able to carry off without implying that something tragic either just had or was just about to happenmade her way towards their table. ‘You terrible parents youabandoning your children like this.’

‘I know, it’s awful, isn’t it?’ Kate managed brightly.

Harriet looked not only pleased but relieved to see her. She was speaking loudly, and this wasn’t like heror maybe it wasn’t so much that Harriet was speaking loudly as that Miles wasn’t speaking at all.

Kate glanced at Miles, who was staring straight over all their heads, smiling blankly at a spot on the wall. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been holding Jessica Palmer in his arms. Now it looked as though Harriet had spent the early part of the eveningbefore coming outtrepanning him. ‘Who’s looking after yours?’

‘Martina. What about you?’

‘Robert’s mum.’

At the mention of his name, Robert smiled on cue at nothing in particular.

‘I didn’t see you at Evie’s party earlier,’ Harriet chastised her, carrying on before Kate had a chance to explain. ‘And you missed out on something very interesting.’

‘What?’ Kate was curious, despite herself.

‘Apparently, Aggie’s dyspraxic.’

‘Aggie? Who told you that?’

‘Evie.’

‘No.’

Harriet nodded, pleased to have the information; pleased at the effect the information had on Kate.

Robert and Miles remained silentsentinels with nothing left to guard.

They didn’t get on anyway. The few times they’d collided socially at summer barbecues arranged by the PRCusually held at Harriet’s or Ros’s, where the spouses were thrown together and meant to get on in the same way the women already didthey didn’t manage to make each other laugh. Miles felt threatened by Robert and dealt with it by convincing himself that Robert was probably a closet queer. Robert, in his turn, was made to feel like a major underachiever by Miles, and dealt with it by telling himself that there was no meaning to Miles’s life and that he was in all probability dangerously unhappy.

‘Anyway,’ Harriet’s voice rose again, ‘fancy you two putting your house on the market and not saying a thing to anybody. And why France?’

Robert at last came to life. ‘France?’ he said, looking from Harriet to Kate, confused.

‘I thought you’d found somewhere near Lot.’ Harriet turned irritably to Kate.

‘France?’ Robert said again.

Kate continued to smile brightly through the silence that followed, aware that Robert was staring intentlyalmost violentlyat her.

It was Milesunexpectedlywho came to the rescue. ‘We thought about France once,’ he said.

‘We did,’ Harriet agreed, level, but unable to conceal entirely her concern over the glitsch in the program that was Miles. ‘Anyway, I’ll catch up with you later,’ she whispered intimately to Kate.

Kate kept the smile on her face until Harriet and Miles had sat down at their table, Harriet virtually gliding over to
it with a spooky serenity that, like the loud, domineering voice, just wasn’t her.

‘What the fuck was she talking about? France?’

‘Stop snarling at meI’m telling people we’re looking for a second place in France.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the Beulah Hill house only has three bedrooms and everybody will want to know why we’re moving to a smaller house. I had to say something. You don’t know what it’s like for me, Robert. My lifeit’s tribal, and you’ve got no idea what it’s like living in a tribe day in, day out.

‘We’ve got rules of conductno, they’re more than that. You know what it feels like sometimes? It feels like we’ve rewritten the Ten Commandments. You’re morally obliged to upgrade continuallyhouse, car, partner, whatever. That’s why I’m talking about France. I’ve got no choice, Robert.’ Kate was aware that her voice had risen; that she sounded irate.

Robert leant suddenly forward. ‘This isn’t living, Kate; it’s…’ He broke off. The steak and kidney pie arrived. ‘And you’ve got to calm down. You’re tired. You’re just really, really tired. We’ve spent the last five years bringing up childrenFlo’s not even sleeping through yet. It’s been hard, Kateit’s still hardand we’ve been too busy going through it to realise. We’re not living at the moment, we’re surviving.’

They had both drunk enough now to no longer care how audible their private lives were becoming to the tables around them. The waiter had stopped communicating directly with them; had become a ghostly presence just beyond their elbows.

Kate leant her head in her hand and contemplated the slick, shiny steak and kidney pie. ‘Did you order anything without suet in it?’

‘What?’

‘I said, did you order anything without suet in it?’ She let her fork clatter against the side of the plate. ‘I can’t do this.’

Uncertain whether or not she was referring to the steak and kidney pudding, he said, ‘You just need some time aloneyou don’t get any time to yourself.’

She laughed. ‘Time alone? I couldn’t be any lonelier.’

She stared at him, watching his mouth slacken and his eyes widen.

‘Fuck it,’ he said, desperate, ‘we don’t have to do this. We don’t have to do any of this.’

‘I didn’t choose the restaurant.’

‘I’m not talking about the restaurant.’

‘I know.’ She paused, in order to drink half a glass of wine in one go. ‘Are we talking about Botswana again?’ She looked away from him, across the restaurant to where Harriet and Miles were sitting, not talking to one another.

Robert saw that her attention had drifted. Her face had assumed that vague look that always made him feel helpless; helpless to the extent of violent. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he exploded, ‘I was shot at today.’

The waiter removed the steak and kidney pies without comment, replacing them with spotted dick.

‘I know,’ Kate hissed back. ‘I took the callfrom Jessica Palmer. Have you got any idea what it feels like to have a friend ring you up and tell you your husband’s falling to pieces? Have you got any idea what that feels like?’

They stared at each other.

Then, after a while, Kate said, ‘This can’t go on, Robert. You can’t work like thiswe can’t live like this.’

This was a point
the
pointthey both agreed on. So why did it feel like a disagreement?

The waiter was at Robert’s elbow with the bill.

Robert stared blankly at it for a moment before getting out his wallet and dropping a card into the dish.

A minute later, the waiter was at Robert’s elbow again. ‘Would you mind just coming over here?’

Robert got to his feet with difficulty and tried to follow the waiter as he wound his way fluidly through the linenclad tables.

Once at the till, the waiter said, ‘The card doesn’t seem to be working. Do you have a different one you want me to try?’

‘Not working?’ Robert glanced over at Kate. ‘Are the lines busy or something? Here, try this,’ he said, handing him his credit card. ‘I think that’s the number,’ he added, punching the machine’s digits, suddenly scared. The bill was over two hundred pounds.

‘The PIN’s okay,’ the waiter said, distracted by a colleague shouting at him across the crowded restaurant. ‘I’ll be right there,’ he shouted back as the machine let out a series of irate bleeps. ‘Sorry, but that’s not going through.’

Robert, desperate, pulled out an old HSBC credit card he hadn’t used in ages.

‘You want me to try this?’

‘I want you to try that.’

‘Okay.’ The waiter sighed, staring absently through his fringe at a customer’s trainers as Robert put the PIN in.

‘Wrong PIN,’ he said.

‘Shit.’ Robert was trying to think quickly, but he’d drunk too much to do anything quickly. ‘Wait a minute.’

He steered himself unevenly back through the tables to Kate. ‘Have you got the chequebook?’

‘The chequebook?’

‘I’ve forgotten my PINit’s written down on the inside of the chequebook cover.’

‘But your PIN’s six-six-zero-zero.’

‘Yeah, but I’m using my HSBC credit card for this.’

‘You don’t have an HSBC credit card.’

‘It’s an old oneit’s fine, Kate.’

Kate dug blearily around in her bag, then looked up and shook her head.

‘Okay,’ Robert said, subconsciously scanning the packed restaurant for some sort of resolution.

‘Is there a problem?’

‘I’ll sort it.’

‘The card’s not going through, is it?’ she hissed.

‘It’s fineI’ll sort it.’

‘Shit, Robert.’

‘I knowI know. I’ll have to ask Mum.’

‘Robert, you can’t.’

‘So what’s the alternativemaking a run for it or washing the dishes?’ He went back over to where the waiter was standing in the corner of the restaurant, cutting up bread. ‘I’m just popping out to the cashpoint.’

‘I’ll have to tell the manager,’ he said, aware of the manager over by the bar, staring at them with his small eyes, set in a sunken face.

‘Why, it’ll be sorted in a few minutes.’

The waiter shrugged, unsure.

‘You don’t have to look at me like thatI’m a human being,’ Robert blurted out.

‘No shit,’ the waiter said through his fringe, stroppy. His salary didn’t cover this kind of hassle from people, especially not people wearing jeans from the last millennium. He turned his back on Robertwho left the restaurantand went back to the bread.

Kate sat pushing the crumbs on the table into a pile and didn’t see Harriet making her way over to the table. She’d forgotten about Harriet.

‘Abandoned you, has he?’ she said, cheerfully.

‘Yeah, we decided to call it quits,’ Kate replied.

Unsure of Kate’s tone, Harriet forgot what it was she had been about to say.

‘Cigarettes,’ Kate said after a pause.

‘Cigarettes?’

‘He’s gone to get cigarettes.’

‘I didn’t know Robert smoked.’

‘He did, then he didn’t, now he’s started again.’ She would never, under normal circumstances, have volunteered this informationespecially not to Harriet, who she didn’t even particularly like. But these weren’t normal circumstances; she was semi-drunk and needed to explain Robert’s departure somehow.

Even Harriet was aware of this, and was looking strangely at her. ‘Well, come and join us till he gets back.’

‘I’m fine…’

‘Please,’ Harriet said. ‘Please come and join us. It’s the first time we’ve been outsince Phoebe.’ She glanced over in the direction of their table.

Kate stared at her.

‘I’m exhaustedmaybe Miles is as well, I don’t know. It just feels…unnatural.’ The next minute she pulled herself up short. ‘That’s an awful thing to sayI don’t know what I’m saying.’

Surprised, Kate realised that Harriet was about to start crying and, without thinking, gave her hand a tight squeeze. ‘It’s fineI’ll come over.’

Robert left The Phoenix and ran rapidly through the rain in the direction of Prendergast Road. When he got to the corner he became aware of a slight figure walking ahead of him, shoulders hunchedEllie. He stopped, assailed by a sudden memory of her telling him she worked at Film Nite. Had he really stood in a cloud-darkened classroom earlier that day and almost kissed her?

He stood in the rain, breathing heavily, waiting for Ellie to pass No. 22. He watched her walk slowly, weightlessly
into the distance, and had a sudden premonition that if he didn’t call out to her or stop her, he would never see her again. But he couldn’t move. He remained on the corner, uncertain now that it had even been Ellie.