Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (21 page)

A few minutes later, he started to walk again.

‘Mum!’ he called out hoarsely as he pushed open the front door to No. 22, slipping in his wet shoes across the hallway’s wooden floor.

Margery was nowhere to be found downstairs.

‘Mum!’ he called out again as he started to climb the stairs.

Margery’s voice came hissing out of the darkness at him. ‘That you, Robert?’

At first he thought she must be in Flo’s roomthat Flo had woken up and Margery was trying to settle her. But she wasn’t.

Margery was standing by the window in their room, in the dark.

‘Come and look at this, Robert. Robert?’

He stood next to her by the window and found himself staring at the house opposite. The woman from earlier was staring back at them, dimly lit from behind, holding up the sign again.

‘I came up looking for air freshener. I can’t find any air freshener anywheredoesn’t Kate keep it?’ Margery whispered, irritably.

Robert didn’t respond.

‘She’s been standing there like that for the past five minutes.’ Margery paused then, suddenly urgent, said, ‘What should we do? Should we try phoning the number? I’ve made a note of it.’ She was clutching one of the scented notelets she used to write Edith letters from London on. ‘Does she look Lithuanian to you?’

‘Mum, I’ve got no idea.’

‘She definitely looks Slavic to memaybe Russian. D’you think she might be Russian?’

The woman in the Disneyland Paris T-shirt, and Robert, and Margery all continued to watch each other.

‘Maybe it’s one of them houses you hear aboutrun by Russian mafia. She might be a Russian sex slave,’ Margery continued to whisper, excited now.

Robert didn’t comment on this. His mind was full of Kate left behind at The Phoenix with the unpaid bill, and he didn’t have the stamina to turn it in the direction of Russian sex slaves right then.

‘Mum—’

‘She’s being held prisoner. She wants us to help her escape.’

‘Mum—’

‘I’m scared, Robert.’

The woman disappeared suddenly as the curtain swung back across the window.

‘She’s gone,’ Margery said. ‘Maybe we should call the police.’

‘Mum!’ Robert said, finally losing patience.

Margery turned round. ‘Where’s Kate?’

‘At the restaurant.’

‘On her own? What’s wrong, love?’

‘Mum, we couldn’t pay our bill.’

‘Your bill?’

‘Our billat the restaurant. Kate’s still there. I don’t knowmaybe I put in the wrong PIN and the bank automatically put a stop on the card or something.’

‘What about Kate?’

‘What
about
Kate?’

‘Didn’t she have any cards on her?’

‘She’s only got a card for the joint account.’

‘So, what are you going to do?’

Robert paused. ‘If there’s any way you could lend me the money until tomorrow…’

‘Robert…’

‘Mum, I hate asking, I really hate asking, but I need to get back to The Phoenix and settle this. Then I can go to the bank first thing in the morning and sort it out, and—’

Margery, who prickled easily around money, cut him short. ‘How much?’

Robert heard himself say, ‘Two hundred and tenincluding the tip.’

‘Two hundred and ten?’ Margery wheezed. ‘I thought it was just the two of you going out to eat?’

‘It was just the two of us.’

‘But, Robert,’ Margery said, more and more agitated. ‘What the hell did you have to eat?’

‘Liversteak and kidney puddingand spotted dick.’

‘Spotted dick?’ Margery exploded. ‘How much was the spotted dick?’

‘Six ninety-five.’

‘Nearly seven pounds for spotted dick? What is this place?’

‘The PhoenixKate’s been wanting to go for ages.’

‘Well she had no business.’

‘Mum, I knowbut right now, she’s…’

Without waiting to hear the rest of this, Margery went downstairs into the study and took a small black wallet they’d bought her on their honeymoon out of her handbag, handing it to Robert who’d followed her downstairsin silence.

‘Which card?’ he asked.

‘I’ve only got the one. The number’s zero-two-one-zero.’

His date of birth.

‘I’m helping out because I don’t have a choice right now, but you’ve got to promise me that you’re going to sort this money thing out, you and Kate. It can’t go on, Robert.’

‘We’re dealing with it.’

‘You are?’

He leant forward to kiss her, but she backed away. ‘You’ve got to sort it.’

Margery watched Robert until he disappeared round the corner.

It had stopped raining.

She was staring at No. 21 opposite, checking to see whether the woman was at the window again, when the door to No. 20 opened and there was Mr Hamilton, smiling at her.

‘I got these for you,’ he said loudly, holding up a carrier bag.

Margery jumped back into the hallway of No. 22. How did he know she was standing at the front door? He must have been spying on her. He would have seen Robert leave, and now he knew she was alone in the house.

‘It’s rhubarb from the garden. I got too much of it.’ He paused. ‘You like rhubarb?’

‘Just leave it on the wall,’ Margery said, slamming the door shut.

It was late. Ros was still up, looking at the website of a Ghanaian drummer she was thinking of booking for the street partyon the recommendation of a friend in west London who insisted that Ghanaian drums were the new Tibetan bells. She was in Martin’s studywhich Martin never used because Martin was never homeflanked by a series of framed photographs of her and Martin diving in the Red Sea before the children were born.

Blu-tacked to the wall above the desk was the stall layout plan for June’s street party, which she’d devised with Evie yesterday so that everybody was clear about who was manning which stall and where the stalls were going. The Carpe Diem stall was number six and she’d paid extra for a black awning to complement the pink and black merchandise.

Eventually the phone rang.

‘Martin?’

‘How did you know it was me?’

‘It’s ten minutes to eleven.’

Martin’s voice sounded shaky and kept coming at heralmost
aggressivebefore receding again, as if he was short of breath.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked, realising with a jolt that it was his turn to speak.

‘Finefine.’ She paused. ‘You’re phoning to tell me you’re not coming home tonight?’

‘I’m phoning to tell you I don’t know if I’ll be home tonight. So, don’t wait up.’ He exhaled. ‘Okay…’

‘Martin, wait…’ There was the sound of laughter down the linedistant, but suddenthen it passed. ‘I think we should put an offer in on that Beulah Hill place.’

His voice changed. ‘God, RosI can’t even begin to get my head round this right now.’

‘But, Martin, we talkedyou
did
get your head round itto the extent of telling me you thought it would be a good investment buy.’

‘I did?’

‘Martin…’

‘Why the hurry anyway?’

‘There’s no hurry,’ Ros said, defensive. ‘I just think we should move forward now we’ve made up our mind.’

Martin exhaled again. ‘Ros, we need to talk.’

There was the sound of sirens cutting between themso loud she couldn’t work out whether they were outside on Prendergast Road or being relayed down the line. More sirens followed.

‘What’s going on over there?’

‘No idea.’

Martin’s officewhere Martin was supposedly phoning

fromoverlooked a central atrium where a small patch of rainforest grew. The sirens were an impossibilityas impossible as the seagulls she’d heard down the line when he phoned one weekend a month ago.

‘Ros, I need to talk to you.’

‘See you later,’ she said quickly, calling off and turning back to the understanding eyes of Nicholas, the Ghanaian drummer.

A second later she heard, in the distance, the same sirens she’d just heard down the line.

It was happening again.

Martin was having another affairand she wasn’t sure she had the strength right then to listen to his confession or nurse him through the inevitable break-up. The last one left himthis one would as well.

Please, God, don’t let it be anybody I know, Ros thought.

Martin put his phone away.

He wasn’t in his office in Canary Wharf, overlooking a small patch of rainforest.

He was standing in a phone box outside Metro Tesco, less than a kilometre from No. 188 Prendergast Road.

The laughing couple who had passed him a few minutes before passed again, still laughing.

He left the phone box, crossed Lordship Lane and turned up Prendergast Road, giving his house the cursory sort of glance any commuter might give it as he or she passed twice a day on the way to and from work, becausealong with Evie and Joel’s at No. 112it was one of the nicest houses on the street. Unknown to Martin, his home was the dream home of countless young couples who passed that way every day, the connection between them still vibrant as they walked through the early morning heat before the suck of routine pulled them apart.

Martin walked straight past, and carried on walking until he got to No. 112, where he rang the bell without hesitation.

Evie was in the garden office, listening to Bonnie Tyler and doing what was left of Jack’s coke. The walls were hung with a selection of dresses from the shop, destined for the street party’s ‘Boutique’ stall. She wasn’t anticipating selling the dresses; she’d decided to stock the stall with vintage jewellery, accessories and T-shirts. Now the dresses were unsettling her. When her back was turned, she was certain she could feel them moving behind her. When she turned round to check, there wasn’t the slightest movement among the dresses. As soon as she turned her back again, she could feel them jostling on their hangers, planning something. What were they planning? They had something up their sleeves for the day of the street partyshe just knew they did.

The coke was gone. Unsettled, she left the office without looking at the dresses again and walked across the garden towards the house, resisting the urge to look back and check that the dresses weren’t following her.

The back door to the house was open and through it she could see Joel in the kitchen, leaning into the freezer.

The night felt suddenly empty.

She stood in the back doorway, humming and staring at
the white bars covering the back of Joel’s Wi-Fi detector

T-shirt. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘PeasI thought I’d do a pea risotto.’

‘Haven’t we eaten already?’

Joel stood up, on the alert.

‘No, we haven’t eaten already,’ he said, his eyes quickly scanning her face before he reminded his own to break into a reassuring smile. ‘And the reason I know that is because it’s my turn to do supper tonight.’ He paused, swinging his mind away from Evie and back to the pea risotto.

There was a time when he might have done a risotto for an informal supper with friends, but that was back in the last days of the twentieth century. By the early years of the twenty-first, everywhere you went there was risotto on the menueach with a different, agonising twist. Buffalo risotto? Fuck me, Joel thought, shaking his head. No wonder risotto had been forced undergrounduntil recently.

He couldn’t remember when, exactly, but at some point in the past few months, he’d had a feelinga big fat hunch, in factthat it was up for renovation, and the hunch had served him correctly when he opened one of the weekend supplements. There in front of him was a big glossy plate full of pea risotto. The recipe came from the chef’s latest book
Real Honest Food
; the chef blamed the demise of true risotto on the fact that risotto had lost its ‘inherent honesty’. While Joel had been in agreement with thisread it over quite a few times, in facthe still couldn’t quite feel the ‘rightness’ of pea risotto. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been able to source any fresh peasfresh peas were ‘absolutely necessary’and so was forced to use frozen. The risotto had lost its ‘inherent honesty’ before he’d even begun.

‘What d’you think?’ he appealed to Evie.

Evie had moved to the other doorwaythe one leading into the hallwayand was now standing still again, but in
that fraught, restless way that made her look as though external rather than internal forces were pinning her to the spot, and that all you had to do was cut the invisible guy ropes and she’d catapult into outer space.

‘About what?’

‘About pea risotto.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Whattoo boring? Too tawdry? God, that’s it,’ Joel said, feeling suddenly bereft. ‘The frozen peas make it too tawdry.’ He clutched his head, trying not to panic. ‘We just need to forget the whole pea risotto thing.’

‘Okay,’ Evie agreed, inhaling in the way she used to inhale when she smoked.

‘We just need to forget it,’ Joel said again, loudly this time.

He quickly picked up the torn-out page with the recipe on it and dropped it into the recycling box under the sink. ‘Thereit never happened,’ he said triumphantly, walking up to Evie and kissing her suddenly.

When he stood back to check that she was okay with the kissthat some element of communion had been achieved between themhe couldn’t help noticing the dusting of dandruff on the black V-neck sweater she was wearing. Now wasn’t the time to mention the dandruff, but he made a mental note to bring it up first thing in the morning. If she had a scalp condition, it was her responsibility to rectify it. To Joel, dandruff said self-neglect and there was no excuse for it at the moment, when things were going so well.

He’d taken a call from Tory, his agent, earlier in the evening, after settling Aggie and Ingrid, which had put him in a good mood. After that he’d gone through Aggie’s referrals from the speech and language therapist they’d been assigned to, followed by two episodes of
Antiques Roadshow
. He was about to ask Evie if she wanted a takeaway when the doorbell rang.

‘You want me to get that?’ he said after a moment’s hesitation, when it became obvious Evie had no intention of answering iteven though she was closer; even though she was already standing in the hallway. This fact struck him suddenly as immensely irritating.
She
should answer the door.

Evie, blowing on her nails in a way that used to excite him when they first started to date, looked up, uninterested.

‘It’s probably Martina.’

Joel waited, trying to unpick the logic in the sentence. Why was it his responsibility to answer the door if it was Martina?

‘She was out babysitting tonight.’

The doorbell rang again.

After another second’s hesitation, he pushed past her into the hallway and went to answer the front door. It wasn’t Martina.

There was a man standing outside in the rain. Joel recognised him, but couldn’t remember his name. ‘Hey,’ he said at last, hoping that vague congeniality masked the amnesia.

‘I’m looking for Martina?’

‘Martina.’ Joel repeated the name, and carried on staring.

Then Evie appeared in the hallway behind him. ‘Martin,’ she said.

This was Martinof course. Who the fuck was Martin?

‘I’m looking for Martina,’ he said again.

‘Martina?’ Evie waited for the explanation, but Martin just kept on smiling at them both.

‘She’s not picking up,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ Evie was lost. ‘Well, she’s not in tonightd’you want me to take a message? Is Ros trying to arrange a babysit?’

‘No.’ Martin shook his head. ‘I just want to speak to her.’

All three of them stood in silence, listening to the hollow tapping of the rain on Martin’s mackintosh.

‘Is everything okay?’ Evie asked at last, trying to conceal a rising panic. Had anybody else noticed that she was short of breathcouldn’t draw enough of itwas gasping, in fact. She was sure she was gasping: was she about to have a heart attack.

‘I don’t know,’ Martin said.

Unable to stop himself, Joel let out a short, irreverent laugh.

Martin stared at him.

It was Joel’s laugh that made Evie say what she said next. ‘She’s at Harriet and Miles’snumber two three six.’

Martin nodded, gave a wave and walked off into the night.

‘What the hell was that about?’ Joel said.

Evie shrugged, panting rapidly, and went back inside.

Joel stayed where he was, hypnotised by the rain bouncing off the lid of the recycling bin, until he pulled away suddenly. ‘Oh my God,’ he called out after Evie, slamming the front door shut. ‘They’re having an affair.’

‘Maybe.’ Evie paused, thinking about Ros.

The more Joel thought about it, the more convinced he became that their au pair was having an affair with one of their friend’s husbands. Did he like the idea, or didn’t he? What did it mean? On the one hand it was tacky, verging on cliché, but clichés became reality far less than people supposed. And there was something about Martin’s face…on the whole, he decided, it was a good thing. They were the sort of people who had the sort of au pair who had affairs. When people found out about it, it would lend Evie and him a sort of erotic vibrancy.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘About what?’ Evie was back in the doorway again, gulping something clear out of a tumbler.

‘About knowing,’ Joel said, automatically taking the tumbler from her hands, pouring the contents into a cocktail glass and
returning it to her. It was amazing, he thought, watching her take a gulp from the new glasswithout commenthow you could substitute a glass and the scene was immediately transformed from edgy desperation to mellow, sophisticated domesticity.

‘Nothing,’ she panted. ‘Because we don’t knowfor sure.’

‘Nothing?’

‘What is it we know, Joel?’

‘Well, it was pretty bloody obvious.’ He paused, his lips shaking with excitement. ‘It has to mean something.’

‘It will doto the Grangers, and their marriage, and their children. Ros is my friend, Joel. ShitI’m meant to be meeting her first thing tomorrow morning to finalise stall plans. Have you got any idea how that feels?’

Joel wasn’t listening.

The Grangers and the future of the Grangers weren’t that interesting to him. ‘Are you going to say anything?’

‘I want to speak to Martina first. Tonight. God,’ she broke off and drew breath, ‘are we going to have toI don’t knowfire her or something? Get another au pair?’

‘Tory says Kurds make good au pairs,’ Joel mumbled. Then, ‘But…Martin.’

‘Martinwhat?’

‘Why choose Martin? I mean, if you’re going to go to the effort of having an affair, why choose that?’ Joel concluded, outraged at the memory of Martin.

‘Well, Martina isn’t the one having the affair because Martina isn’t married.’ Evie let out a strangled, ‘Joel…’

‘What?’

Evie was staring at him, her eyes bulging, one hand grasping her throat.

‘D’you think she’s actually in love with him?’ Joel started to chuckle. ‘Martin and Martina.’

‘Martin and Martinawhat? Joel…’

‘They sound like prototypes.’

Evie’s eyes slid away from him. The kitchen and its contents were blurring over. The only thing she could make out with any real clarity was the bag of peaswhich had by now probably defrostedlying on the bench. ‘The peas,’ she gasped.

‘Yeah.’ Joel went over to the fridge and filled a glass with ice from the machine.

‘Joel, I can’t get my breathsome sort of panic attack.’

Joel stared blankly at her. Evie looked strange, as though she was about to pass out or something.

‘Joel…’

‘What?’

It seemed to Evie suddenly essential that the peas were put back in the freezer. If that didn’t happen…. ‘The peas,’ she yelped.

‘Evie, I’m getting there.’ He poured some Jack Daniels over the ice, took a sip, and the next minute Evie was yelling at him.

‘If you don’t put the peas back in the fucking freezer, I’m divorcing you.’

He turned and stared at her, the Jack Daniels still raised to his lips.

She meant it.

If he didn’t put the peas back in the fucking freezer, she was divorcing him.

She was swaying on the spot, her mouth open.

The next minute Evie blacked out and went crashing to the floor.