Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (7 page)

Parking beneath a bank of beech treesthe Hunters’ was the only car thereKate got out and opened the boot, putting on one of Robert’s old jackets, the pockets weighed down with conkers he must have gathered months agoback in the autumn before Flo was born.

Findlay, who was singing, ‘Happy birthday to me…happy birthday to me,’ refused to get out of the car, worried that the rain would shrink his foam musculature.

‘Okay, okay, but I want you to stay there in the back,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t want you going in the front or touching any of the controls. Findlay…are you listening to me? I said, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME…Findlay?’ she yelled.

Ignoring Findlay’s stunned face, she slammed the boot shut, picked up Flowho was chewing on her fist, asleepand stalked off across the allotments towards the one they’d had their name down on a two-year waiting list for.

Keeping the plotonce assigned to youwas almost as hard as acquiring it in the first place. Letitia Parry, chair of the Allotment Committee, made a formal inspection of all the plots the first Sunday of every month, and if it wasn’t up to scratch you were
dispossessed
of it. Not a monthly inspection
went by without a dispossession getting chalked up on the board that Letitia kept hung outside the committee’s old Nissen huta board that Giles Parry had spent a fortnight making a waterproof hatch for so that not even rain could wash away the incriminating evidence. Letitia was so harsh that families and individualsonce dispossessedpreferred to forsake tools and anything else they’d bought for their plots rather than face Letitia and get formally drummed out into the wilderness of the rest of the world where there were no allotments.

A man named Gordon, who used to have one of the full plots two down but was unable to keep it up due to the onset of Parkinson’s, tried to come back for tools given him by his dead wife on their last wedding anniversary. He left his car down by the golf club at around midnight and crept, shaking, through the orange London dark, past the old scout hut to the top of the hill where the allotments were. He’d brought his torch, but he didn’t want to use itjust in case. So he skirted the fringes of the allotments, winding his way through the halo of beech treesall that remained of the prehistoric Great North Woodsuntil he reached his plot.

He’d been worriedall daythat the padlock on his shed might have been changed, but it hadn’t, and he hissed with relief when the key fitted. So he opened the shed door with difficulty because the key was so small…and there was Letitia, sitting on one of his deckchairs, pointing a torch with its beam on full at him. Before he was allowed his tools back, he had to stand there, shakingat 12.22 a.m.and listen to the whole lecture on neglect as a form of vandalism, and the impact it had on the ongoing battle the committee was waging trying to keep the land out of the hands of the local counciland all the time he was standing there in the shed, his arm held shakily across his eyes to shield them from Letitia’s beam, which she kept on full throughout, he
was thinking…how did she manage to lock the bloody padlock FROM THE INSIDE?

Months of mental torment passed before Gordon found out that Letitia had asked Giles to lock her inand not just the night Gordon turned up at midnight either, but every night since the dispossession notice had been chalked up on the committee board.

The Grangers used to have a plot, but Ros fell out with Letitia over ideas she had about permaculture and was finally
dispossessed
when she covered the entire plot in old carpet they’d had ripped up from their study floorwith the idea of replenishing the soil’s nutrients by leaving the plot fallow for six months. The carpet had Letitia yelping at Ros from inside the huge body warmer she wore, summer and winter, which was covered in manure stains long since gone shinynot only because it desecrated the plot, but because Letitia and Giles had just had exactly the same carpet put down in their sitting room.

Kate put Flo inside the Little Tikes house they’d brought up to the allotment for Findlay to play in, which doubled as a shed. She waited to see if the rain drumming on the red plastic roof tiles was going to wake up Flo, who was sleeping soundly, then took the fork balanced against the cooker and went back out into the April storm. Descending into the mud, she started to dig. OthersRosmight be making tortilla as well, but was anybody making it with
home-grown
potatoes? Before having Flo, her dinner parties had acquired quite a reputation on Prendergast Road and now people had expectations of her.

She was unable to stand for more than a minute in one place without her feet sinking into the now liquid mud, and the potatoes weren’t as far on as she thought they were when she checked on Sunday. The earth yielded nothing she could transform into tortillathe four potatoes she pulled
up looked as if they’d been manhandled by O. J. Simpsonso she hauled herself out of the mud and onto the grass pathway, staring bleakly into the rain for some sort of inspiration, and trying to ignore the sound of a dog whining somewhere nearby.

Inspiration came to her, at last, in the shape of Letitia’s plot. Letitia’s plot had the best potatoes in a 2,000-mile radius, and she only needed three medium-sized ones. There were no lights on in the Nissen hut and still no cars other than the Audi in the car park. Stumbling along the grass verge, she slid behind the old metal Conway container just to the side of Letitia’s plot and checked the Nissen hut and the car park again, peered warily into the forest and even up at the skyafter all, Letitia had been waiting for Gordon five nights in a row ON THE INSIDE of a padlocked shed.

She waited another minute before making a dash for Letitia’s potatoes, slipping on a Savoy cabbage, thinking she heard a car, freezing, realising it wasn’t a car, only the rain battering the roof of the old scout hut five hundred yards or so away, then pulled up three of the best-looking plants, her hands shaking.

Without even checking them, she broke into a lopsided run, still shaking, tripped over some stones in the car park, threw the potatoes in the boot, slammed it shut, then got into the car. She sat, panting, staring at the misted windscreen, the water streaming off Robert’s coat down over her wrists and hands, filling the creases in the leather covering the gear box.

In the back, Findlay was concentrating hard on trying to block out his mother’s frantic breathing and the way the rain was running off her, out of heras if it had somehow got inside her.

With her hands slipping over everything she touchedthe ignition, gear stick, steering wheelKate finally got the
car into gear and reversed almost into the Nissen hut before swinging the wheel round and pushing the gear stick violently into first. The wheels spun and skidded in the mud before they pulled away, shooting past the scout hut and the entrance to the golf club.

‘Mum!’ Findlay said.

Kate was about to respond when she was confronted with Letitia’s Volvo coming towards them, doing what it had been manufactured to do: course smoothly through rain and mud. The headlights flashed on and off in an improbable Morse code and the horn sounded. Letitia had seen them.

Knowing she didn’t have a choice, Kate skidded to a halt and slid the window down.

Letitia was smiling the smile of a fanatic, her faceher whole head, in factlooked as if it had been involved in some intense physical activity, like driving a herd of cattle across a flooded river in Brazil’s Pantanal.

‘Undeterred,’ she hollered at Kate, through the rain, ecstatic at the thought of people maintaining their plots during storms. ‘That’s what I like to see,’ she carried on, swallowing gallons of water as her mouth opened wide. ‘UNDETERRED,’ she hollered again before banging on the steering wheel and accelerating up the hill towards the allotments.

After Letitia had accelerated out of sight, Kate sat there listening to the Audi’s frenetically capable wipers dealing with the flood on the windscreen. She ran her wet hands over the wet steering wheel, trying to find a grip, and didn’t even notice the rain coming in through the still-open window, soaking the upholstery and what was left of her to be soaked.

‘Mum!’ Findlay said again. ‘You forgot Flo.’

Slamming the gear stick into reverse, she drove the car at high speed back up the hill, got out, opened the boot and clicked the back shelf into place to hide the potatoes; then
started to slip and stumble her way back towards their plot, past Letitia’s Volvo, which was already parked, and the wet, hulking figure of Letitia herself, crouched at the edge of her plot, the rain hammering onto the resinous back of her body warmer.

Letitia was grunting and didn’t seem to notice Kate slipping and sliding across the soaked grass behind her until she skidded to a halt outside the Little Tikes house.

Kate wrenched open the door and stuck her head inside.

There was Flo in her car seat, awake now, giving her the same wet, blank look she’d given her earlier when Kate picked her up from Village Montessori.

With difficultymuch more difficulty than she’d had when putting her inKate hauled the car seat, with Flo inside, out into the rain. This time, no longer asleep, Flo started to cry as soon as the drops as big as her fists started hitting her face.

Kate tried holding the bottom of Robert’s coat over her, but there was as much water coming off this as there was out of the sky, so in the end she just decided to make a run for it, only now Letitia was standing, watching herwaiting for her?

‘Where did you get that?’ Letitia said, jerking her rainsodden head at screaming Flo, suspended from Kate’s arm in the uncomfortably heavy car seat.

‘This?’ Kate laughed, staring down at her daughter. ‘Just over therein the Little Tikes playhouse.’

‘Oh, I thought I saw you heading downhill in your car.’

‘I wasthen I remembered I’d left Flo up here.’ Kate laughed again.

They both stared at the screaming Flo, then Letitia turned away, back to her plot.

‘Some bugger’s been up hereransacked my plot.’

‘Ransacked it?’

‘There!’ Letitia cried impatiently, oblivious now to Flo’s wailing. ‘And thereand therewhoever it was got away with three prize potatoes.’ She shot Kate a quick look then stalked off round the boundary of the plot. ‘No other damage, far as I can see.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Kate said, over roaring rain and Flo’s hysterical tears: a traitor’s commiseration.

‘It’s bloody sacrilege, that’s what it isdidn’t see anything when you were up here earlier?’

Kate shook her head slowly, the rain running in rivers off the end of her chin.

‘Can’t rememberI think I was the only one up here.’

‘Didn’t notice anything amiss?’

‘I can’t say I was looking,’ Kate said.

Letitia grunted. ‘I’m not having this. I’m not having it,’ she yelled into the rain. ‘I’m going straight to the police.’ She walked heavily off in the direction of the Nissen hut and Kate managed to get back to the car.

‘Where was Flo?’ Findlay said, leaning forwards in his seat, guilty he hadn’t thought about this earlier before they’d started driving down the hill.

‘Over therein the Little Tikes house,’ Kate said.

‘Does she like the playhouse?’ Findlay asked.

‘I don’t knowwhy don’t you ask her?’ Kate threw her head back into the rain and laughed, suddenly.

Findlay, worried, stayed silent.

Through the window of the Nissen hut, Kate saw Letitia on the phone, her body jerking as though somebody was trying to jumpstart her as she attempted to interest the Brixton policemost of them fresh from another fatal shooting in McDonald’sin her three missing potatoes, currently in the boot of the Hunters’ car as it slid past the illuminated hut back down the hill, towards the South Circular.

Half an hour laterafter picking up Arthur Palmer from Village Montessori and dropping both boys at the leisure centreKate, exhausted and soaked to the skin, tripped over the recycling bag in the hallway for the third time that day as she made her way towards the kitchen with Letitia’s potatoes in her left hand and Flo, still in her car seat, swinging from the right arm. Leaving the potatoes on the surface next to Margery’s pie line-up, she went into the lounge with Flo.

The TV was on loudshe’d heard it from the front garden before even getting round to opening the front doorand Margery was asleep on the sofa. She was leaning rigidly over to one side with her hands pushed between her thighs and her chin tucked neatly down. As Kate stood there, she let out a shuddering whimper and slipped another inch sideways, but didn’t wake up. For a moment, Kate felt uncharacteristically protective towards Margery; then the moment passed.

Before losing consciousness, Margery had been watching Bid-TV and a man on screen was trying to shift 200 CD players shaped like electric guitars priced at £49.50 each. Kate watched the number of remaining CD players go down to 195, momentarily fascinated, and it took her a while to
realise that the persistent dripping sound she could hear was in fact excess rainwater running off the coat she was still wearing onto the carpet.

Leaving Flo in her car seat down on the floor by Margery’s feet, Kate hung her coat up in the hallway and went into the kitchen. She’d gone into the kitchen for a reason and now couldn’t remember why…until she saw the potatoes on the bench. Tortillafor tonight’s PRC.

Over the next twenty minutes she made a small, immaculate amount of tortilla. This was a tried-and-tested PRC trick, given that plates were expected to be empty by the end of the evening orbetter stillthe middle.

She moved quickly and efficiently round the kitchen, not doing anything that would sidetrack her or break up her rhythm. This was how most food preparation took place at No. 22 Prendergast Roadon borrowed time, and borrowed time wasn’t something she had any control over, so thirst and the need to urinate were compartmentalised because at the moment Margery was having an afternoon nap and Flo was quiet and this was the only way she was going to get the tortilla made and not suffer the shame of turning up empty-handed, which basically amounted to a public declaration of
not being able to cope
.

She was just pouring the eggs into the pan when the phone rang. It was Jessica.

‘Hello,’ she said, distracted, as she slid the dish under the grill and the sound of scraping metal drowned Jessica out. ‘What’s that?’

‘I said I was just phoning to make sure that Arthur was okay after nursery.’

Kate, preoccupied by the tortilla, had barely any memory of leaving two small children at the crumbling leisure centre the Lib Dem council was forever promising to regenerate.

‘He seemed fine.’

‘Fine?’

What sort of details was Jessica prompting her for?

‘He didn’t seem quiet or anything? I mean, like, too quiet?’

Kate slid the tortilla out, satisfied herself that it was bubbling in all the right places, then slid it in again.

‘Jessica, he was fine.’

‘He seems to have become quiet latelyand he’s started biting his nails. I noticed that the other day.’

In the silence that followed, Kate turned off the grill.

‘Did he have everything he needed? I kept thinking I might have forgotten something. So Robert’s picking the boys up from swimming still?’

Kate had completely forgotten to phone Robert and remind him. ‘Of course.’

‘Brilliant,’ Jessica breathed out, relieved.

‘And don’t forget about the PRC meeting tonight.’

‘I’ll see…it depends on—’

‘Ellie. I know.’

Kate rang off, passing her face over the tortilla and inhaling. She was about to phone Robert when she heard Flo in the lounge.

Margery was still asleep and the man on screen had sold nearly all 200 CD players. Trying to imagine the sort of people who were buying themthen giving upshe took Flo upstairs into her bedroom. Once there, she stared absently out through the window at a eucalyptus they’d planted two years ago that was already over fourteen feet tall, thrashing about in the wind and rain. The house the Hunters backed onto was being painted white, but they’d only got half of it done before the rain must have started.

She watched Ivan make his way unevenly along the fence that separated their gardens and jump onto the shed roof, certain he was limping. Lying Flo under her baby gym, she pulled up the sash window, which was difficult because the
wooden frame was swollen with rot at the bottom and got stuck after about four inches, and called out Ivan’s name.

He stopped, settled onto his haunches and looked up at her. After a while he licked at one of his front paws and looked away, distracted.

Sighing, Kate watched Flo pull off one of her socks.

A cloud must have shifted then, as late afternoon sunshine broke through into the room, the trees still blowing outside, making it move restlessly round the walls and ceiling. Even though it was only April, the sun had warmth in it and, where it fell on her, Kate felt warm. When the sun vanished the room was suddenly much colder and darker.

Overcome with exhaustion, she went through to their bedroom and, without thinking, rolled under the duvetpulling it up over her head and curling her body round her clenched fists. There was something she needed to do that she kept forgetting to do. What was it?

In less than a minute, she was fast asleep.