The Hive (8 page)

Heather stood at Colette’s kitchen sink, her hands in the soapy water, looking out at the bare square garden. “So is that where you work, then, in that little wooden hut out there?” It looked a bit like Maisie’s Wendy house. In fact, wasn’t it exactly Maisie’s Wendy house?

“That’s the Serenity Spa Sanctuary Beauty Therapy Suite, yes.” Colette was squatting in front of the tumble dryer, reeling in the latest load.

It had been Bea’s idea, at their special meeting about the car boot sale, that they have a stall of jumble there as well—except she preferred to call it the “donated nearly new.” It had been Bea’s idea, too, that they gave all the jum—sorry, donated clothes—a good old wash beforehand, because they always sold better that way. And it had been Bea’s idea that everyone went round to her place to do the washing together. They had all been really looking forward to that. But, sadly, when the great day dawned, it turned out that Bea had carpet fitters or some such. Wasn’t it always the way? So in the end, Heather and Colette told her not to worry, and to just leave it to them. But to be honest, Heather wasn’t really enjoying it all as much as she thought she would.

“This stain’s not coming out, whatever I do, but I don’t think we can be bothered with a second wash, can we?” Heather kept rubbing at a stubborn patch on a tatty little jumper. She hoped it was ketchup, although the phrase “organic matter” kept springing, unbidden, to mind.

“Well Bea did say, the cleaner the stuff the higher the price…”

“Yeah…but…” They’d been slaving away for ages, and though Heather’s enthusiasm and energy had noticeably diminished, the bin-bag mountain full of grubby donated clothing had not. She smuggled the yucky top out in a clutch of other dripping things and took them to the dryer.

“Hang on! We can’t tumble dry the woolens! Bea warned us about shrinking anything…” Colette filled up the basket and headed out to the clothesline and Heather ambled out after her. She made a tunnel with her hands and peered in through the window of the Serenity Spa Sanctuary Beauty Therapy Suite. Always been an Immac girl herself. Immac or just the Ladyshave. Goodness, look at all that clobber in there. What on earth do they get up to?

“Do you get a lot of your customers from school then?”

“The bulk of my client base, yes. I know everyone’s little secrets.” Colette was talking through a mouthful of clothes pegs. “Every Brazilian in St. Ambrose”—Brazilians? Heather hadn’t met any Brazilians. Weren’t they normally Catholic?—“was rrrrrrrrrrr-ripped into place on that table.”

Brazilian! Heather had read about Brazilians, of course, but she did not till that moment really believe in them. She had them down as one of those things of which the human race was obviously capable, but that nobody in their right minds could possibly want. Like total nuclear warfare, say, or child slavery…Her legs had at some point, involuntarily, crossed. She uncrossed them, but kept her thighs firmly plastered together as she waddled uneasily back to the haven of the kitchen.

The bin-bag mountain was still there, uneroded. “Colette, we couldn’t have a little break, could we? I mean, I know there’s still loads to do, but…”

“Go on then. Sit down.” She put the kettle on and got out the biscuit tin. “To tell you the truth, I’m beginning to wonder if we’re going to get all this done.”

“Or even,” Heather said without thinking, “if we need to.”

Colette froze. “But Bea said…”

“Yes, of course.” She took a Hobnob—“Silly me”—and dunked it. “So, any gossip?”

“Only about me…” Colette raised her left shoulder and peered over it, adopted the voice of Dolly Parton. “Only that I am pretty sure that I have found myself a very nice new man.”

“Oh wow, Colette! I thought you were looking particularly gorgeous. That glow. Anyone we know?”

“Well, promise not to tell a living soul…”

They were both leaning in over the table, heads close together. Heather thought she might actually burst, it was all so thrilling. “Promise…”

“…IT’S TOM!”

Er.

Tom.

Who’s Tom? Did she know a Tom? Was she supposed to know a Tom? She could tell, from Colette’s excitement, that she ought to know this Tom. Tom. Tom…No good. Nothing doing.

“Um…Tom?”

“Orchard! Tom Orchard!”

There was the faintest ringing of a distant bell…

“THE HEADMASTER!”

“Oh!
Mister
Orchard!” Tom? She’s calling him Tom? “Hey. You’re a quick worker.” This wasn’t quite the thing, was it? Headmaster and single mother? She didn’t have him down as the type. Bea might have a few words to say about this…

“Oh, nothing’s happened yet.” Colette twisted the top of the Hobnob packet and put it back in the tin. “But you know when you just know?”

Heather wasn’t entirely sure if or how you did know when you just knew. Not much experience in the just-knowing department. Her own romance, if that was the word, with Guy had moved at what you might call a careful pace. They’d met at a disco in the Lower Sixth and married the year they both hit thirty. Georgie had made the best-woman speech. She had said something about how exciting it had been, seeing the relationship blossom—like watching pandas mating. Then she’d done her David-Attenborough-in-a-bamboo-tree impersonation that she was so proud of, and everyone had laughed. It was a bit annoying, now she remembered it…

“He used to go out with a pop star, apparently.” Heather was keen to share all she knew on the subject of Mr.—er, Tom.

“Did he?” Colette was pleased with this. “I’m not surprised.”

“And the pop star used to go out with a footballer…” Even as she repeated it, Heather became less confident of her information.

“Well he is very attractive.” Colette was studying her cuticles.

“Have you told Bea yet?” Heather wanted to know for a few reasons. Had Colette confided in her first? Before Bea? That was a rather delicious thought, and Heather was enjoying it. But at the same time, she needed to know where Bea would stand on one of their own entering into a relationship with the new headmaster.

“Bea.” For the first time, Heather heard something other than adoration in Colette’s voice. “Not yet, no. I haven’t. It’s sort of early days. I mean I haven’t actually spoken to him yet, but we do have a meeting in the diary next week. To discuss my ‘concerns about Johnny’s progress.’ Though I haven’t actually got any!” She giggled, and then her face darkened again. “If you want my opinion, it wouldn’t actually have hurt Bea to have thought up this very obvious match and made it herself. But she didn’t.”

Colette stood up, took the mugs, turned around and saw anew the laundry mountain.

“And I’ll tell you what: you’re right. We don’t need to do any more of this horrible smelly revolting washing.” She kicked the nearest bin bag.

Heather was shocked: “But Bea says we’ll make more money…!”

“Yeah, right. Ten p? Twenty? So bloody what?”

“But she…”

“Heather! She isn’t even here. She will never even know!”

“Ooo-er,” said Heather. And “Gosh!” And “But…” And “She’s got a job…”

“No buts.” This was a new, commanding Colette, and one that Heather had not previously seen. “And I’ll tell you something else.
Lewis
is on ITV3 in a minute. Find yourself an armchair. I’ll give you a free mani-pedi while we watch.”

H
eather marched up and down the playing field feeling quite sick. For two days she had eaten nothing more than raw cake mixture off the back of a palette knife, and she wasn’t sure if it quite agreed with her. She was overstuffed, undernourished and sleepless, so nervous was she about today. She had tossed and turned, tossed and turned as the words “major fund-raiser for the school” pounded repeatedly upon her brain like a mallet on a gong.

Her jacket said that she was a
STEWARD
, in large black letters on its yellow neon front and its yellow neon back—so that someone could find her instantly if trouble broke out. And trouble could break out at car boot sales. She had done her research. She knew that the real professionals, the ones that came early with sharp elbows and wads of cash, could be really difficult. If two of the pros wanted the same thing, it could get very ugly. It was all such a worry…

These poor normal mums and dads who were just coming along to do their bit, they probably had no idea what to expect. Heather knew—from the internet—that the second you got there, these “punters” started to surround you like those monkeys in the safari park. They hung upside-down off the roof and prized open the windows with long dirty fingers and nicked all your good stuff before you turned off the ignition.

Guy had suggested that they write a list of dos and don’ts—like their Thomas Cook rep had done for them when they went to the souk in Tunisia last year, forewarned being forearmed. He and Maisie were handing out the printed sheets at the entrance now. And he had gone out and bought her a whistle, although she wasn’t convinced that if a burly “punter” was really angry a whistle would actually calm him. Did the local police station have a Taser? She really should have checked.

“What a hoot, eh?” Bubba trilled, to no one in particular. Her Range Rover was parked at right-angles to the rest of the row. She was carefully arranging outfits, plastic-wrapped from the dry-cleaner, on a portable clothes rail, which was divided into categories: £20; £40; £60; £80 and so on, upwards. She was delighted to be getting rid of it all, to be completely honest. And wondering what she might do with the money she made today. It could be really quite a bit…

Georgie was three cars down, in the front of her Land Rover, with her feet up on the dashboard, a nice cup of coffee in her hands and the papers spread out on her knees. She hadn’t actually bothered to check, but it sounded like the kids were doing a brisk-ish sort of business with their used toys at the back there. Very nice way to spend a Sunday morning, all told. A change being as good as a rest. In fact, she thought, putting down her coffee and wriggling deeper into her seat, this might be the perfect opportunity for a proper, actual rest. Everything seemed to be ticking over. She might just close her…

Heather, gripping her whistle and her walkie-talkie, her knuckles white, her eyes on stalks, surveyed the scene. The playing fields were filling up nicely.

Bea had been right about the cake stall—that was a very nice touch. Raised the tone. And when she had seen the great spread of cakes that Heather had made, Bea had volunteered to run it herself! She had been down to sell the jumble—sorry, donated nearly new—with Colette. But then she said, “No!
I
shall sell those gorgeous cakes!” She was kind, Bea. Really lovely. There she was, over by the fence, wearing her apron that said
THE BOSS
on it, all ready for business. She also had on—and Heather was a bit surprised by this—one of those headsets, with a thingy stuck in her ear and a mouthpiece. If she needed one of those, surely Heather should have one too? Who else, after all, was Bea planning to communicate with if not the actual organizer?…Strange. Heather gave her a little wave. But if she had had her own headset, she could have said something. Like “Hi!” Or something like that.

Although she wasn’t letting go just yet, Heather was beginning to wonder if the whistle was entirely necessary.

A Volvo estate came bumping over the grass towards Heather and stopped. Rachel emerged, leaving her door wide open. The list of dos and don’ts was clearly visible on the dashboard: “1,” it said. “DON’T leave your car door wide open.”

“Morning. Nice turnout. Well done.”

Rachel went round to the passenger side and opened the front door for Poppy and the back door for a Dalek. “I wouldn’t put it on now, love. Why not wait till Daddy gets here, and then…”

But Poppy was clambering into the large box even as Rachel was urging caution. “Look, Heather! Look what I made. Daddy’s picking me up from the entrance, and he said wouldn’t it be really funny if people saw him just drive up all normal and then a Dalek gets in! They’ll be like hey wow that’s really weird and random…” She peered out of the eyeholes and waggled the protruding sink plunger in farewell. “See. You. Lat-er,” she said in a Daleky monotone, and stomped back across the field.

The two women watched her go. “If he is even one fucking minute late,” said Rachel, “I promise you I will fucking murder him right there in front of the fucking coffee and the fucking tea and the fucking fancy fucking cakes.”

Heather groped for her whistle. And then voices started to rise around the cake stall. It sounded like some sort of commotion was breaking out over there. She hurried off.

“How’s it going?” Heather asked nervously as she passed Colette at the Donated Nearly New table. She was looking really very groomed for early on a Sunday morning, but not quite so cheerful.

“Oh, great. Couldn’t be better. Stuck here on my own behind a mountain of stinking jumble. Never been so sodding happy in my entire sodding life.”

“Oh dear. Sorry. Only Bea felt she was needed on Cakes.”

“Humph. And why couldn’t she have felt I was needed on Cakes. Eh?”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Long as we’re all doing our bit?”

“Well, yes. Actually. It does matter.” Colette was so cross it was really quite scary. “Some of us aren’t just here to do our bit. Some of us are here because today was a good, you know”—she pulled a face and flicked her eyes a bit. Were those eyelashes false?—“opportunity.”

“Sorry, I’m not quite following you…” She really needed to get over to Cakes…

“You know. To get to know him a bit better.” She dropped her voice to a hiss. “Tom. Tom Orchard. And very tasty he’s looking this morning too, in his civvies.”

“Well…” Heather started to pull away.

“I mean, he’s bound to go over and buy a slice of something, isn’t he? He’s a bloke. OK, I do not have the world’s best track record”—she lifted up her manicured hands—“first to admit it. But facts are facts and here is a fact: you’re a darned sight more likely to nab a single bloke with a slab of Victoria sponge than you are with a load of jumble.”

Here, Heather felt she could usefully chip in. “Um. Donated nearly new?”

Colette stopped to deal with a customer. “All of that? Thirty-five p altogether.

“So thanks a lot, everybody,” she spat as she tinkled the coins into her float. “Thanks a bloody bunch.”

Rachel went round to open the boot of her car. There was a bit of sorting out to do before she started flogging stuff—she had the boxes of Chris’s things here to give him. And she wanted to keep her eye on Poppy just until he arrived. He wasn’t late quite yet, but he would be very soon…

A black Chrysler that Rachel did not recognize came purring along the track and glided gracefully into position beside her. The door opened. Ooh, thought Rachel. How exciting. The promising newbie from the first day of term. First came her legs—long, lean, nicely denimed and culminating in yet another, very nice, pair of ballerinas. Then came the top of her glossy dark head, and the swinging, clean bob. With a neat little gesture, she tucked a thread of it behind one ear as she lifted her face to give Rachel a warm, thoroughly straightforward smile. And Rachel was just about to respond, would have loved to respond—she hadn’t clapped eyes on anyone this promising for ages—but just at that very moment she found herself under a sudden, unprovoked and most vicious attack.

Heather had warned her, but Rachel hadn’t really listened. She was fine, Heather, perfectly sweet, but she did talk utter tripe. So how odd, Rachel thought, that on this one occasion Heather should be right: that she really was being overwhelmed by large, burly, potbellied boot sale enthusiasts, coming right into her face and saying, “How much for this, love?”; that some were even now climbing into her boot and others were crawling over the front seat; that her car should actually be rocking at the force of their intrusion.

And how absolutely awful—so awful that now she couldn’t breathe, her chest hurt so, she was gulping hard and sharp—that Poppy was still standing there, in the drizzle which was dampening them all, still on her own, still clutching her sink plunger. Waiting, waiting, waiting…

“Cakes! That all you got? We’ve been up since the crack. Where’s the bacon sarnies?” The situation at the cake stall was starting to get tricky. There were quite a lot of punters around the table now. Bea’s hands were hidden in the wide pocket of her
THE BOSS
apron. She had removed her headset. Her jaw was clenched. “They’re all homemade.”

“Yeah, but haven’t you got anything a bit more substantial than all this stuff?”

“How about this Angel Cake?” Bea tilted the plate towards the punters. “I made this one myself. It’s fat-free.” She looked really quite tense as she scanned the faces around her. And then she spotted Heather. “Ah. Good. There you are. This,” Bea shot out a warm and generous smile, “is The Organizer.” She untied the strings and lifted her
THE BOSS
apron over her neck. “These nice people have been up since, er, the crack. They feel they would prefer bacon sandwiches rather than cake. Or at least something a bit more substantial.” She draped the apron over Heather’s shoulder. “I see my mother’s just arrived. I really must go and help her.”

No one was going near Bubba, Rachel could see that. She was sitting in the boot of her car, dangling her long legs over the back as if it were the side of a yacht. The sky was slate gray, yet her sunglasses were in her hair. Her eyes were smudged, her lips shimmered. “Armani!” Rachel could hear her call politely. “Lacroix!”

And the nice newbie, well, she was attracting a very nice class of customer. They seemed to be forming an orderly queue. So why was it only Rachel’s boot that was buried beneath this teeming mass of voracity? It must be something about those castoffs from her previous life, she thought, that was drawing them all in. People were now crawling over and through her car like maggots on a rotting corpse: the rotting corpse of her rotten marriage. She could have sold all of Chris’s bits and pieces three times over: the market for crap wedding presents from the groom’s side fifteen years back was, apparently, bullish.

“Sorry,” she called out for the tenth time, “not for sale,” while keeping one eye trained on the entrance.

Do you have to be a mother, she thought, to be able to look at a box fifty yards away with a child in it, and just know that the child in that box is crying? Scarlett Stuart and a group of Year 6 girls—swinging their shoulder bags, dressed for a disco—were walking up and down and round. Every time they passed the entrance, Rachel saw them fold in on each other, helpless with giggles. She wondered whether Poppy could hear them through the cardboard. Why had she let the child set off looking like that in the first place? But there was just no way she could get over there to stage a rescue. She couldn’t even reach her phone. She was completely penned in by these crazed punters.

“Have it for fifty p.”

She was trapped in a nightmare.

“Fine. Twenty-five. Whatever.”

She might be having a panic attack. She…

The nice newbie next door was giving a large tray of something chocolate to one of her boys. “Run this over to the cake stall, will you, Felix?” She then came over to the Volvo, put her hand on Rachel’s arm and looked into her eyes.

“Excuse me.”

Ah. She had a lovely voice.

“Are you OK?”

Heather stood, whistle in one hand, apron strings in the other, dejected. She could hardly believe it. She’d gone sweet and she should have gone savory, she’d gone sophisticated and all the time she should’ve gone substantial. She thought she might actually puke. She’d had this feeling before, of course. Standing on a school field, feeling rubbish—it was hardly anything new. “Heather! You should have passed! You couldn’t score!” Or “Heather! You could’ve scored! You shouldn’t pass!” Indeed, it was the pain’s dull familiarity that hurt, more even than the pain itself.

Here, she thought, we are again. Heather, she said to herself, you’ve let the team down, you’ve let yourself down. She looked across the infinity of lemon drizzle. It was all so neatly and nicely made. (Delia. Foolproof.) And yet it was all so woefully, hideously and embarrassingly wrong.

Bea’s apron seemed a little too tight in places; you’d think they’d make them one-size-only, be more sensible really. Even the neck was a bit tight. The whole morning was a total humiliation and the sooner it— There. Apron on, head free. Now for the mean and hungry punters.

But what had suddenly happened? Somehow, in the past few seconds, a huge tray had appeared on the stall in front of her, bearing neat slices of possibly the most delicious-looking thing she had ever seen in her entire life. It was chocolate, and it was—What’s in there?—biscuit and Maltesers and it smelled amazing and there was tons of it.

Where had it come from?

“You cannot go over there.” In the past five minutes, the nice woman in the ballerina pumps had taken over Rachel’s life—like a five-star general arriving in a war zone—and Rachel was close to tears of relief. First off, she had taken control of the Volvo. It was simple, really. She had just shut—slammed—the boot. The teeming maggots had all just melted away.