The School Gate Survival Guide (15 page)

‘Lawrence was livid. Told me I was an unfit parent who needed to grow up and stop letting the kids run wild. He said he was sick of living in a shit pit with an idle fat arse fed by a trust fund, while he was out there working his nuts off in an industry full of wankers, just so my family didn’t think I’d married a loser.’

She ran her hand through her hair, which made it stand up even more. She really did look like she could live under a bridge. She gazed round the room. ‘I know the house is a bit of a state but he’d always told me he’d hate to be married to someone who fussed about with a duster. I didn’t even know the mess bothered him. He’d never said anything before.’

I could see why Lawrence might have a problem with coming home to a lounge crunchy underfoot with glass after a long day at work. Mountain biking in the drawing room? Hel-looo? Nothing as freaking normal as a bit of PlayStation or a few Hama beads. Then I remembered that Clover was my friend, which automatically put Lawrence in the wrong. My newly discovered keeping silent skills soon hit the buffers. ‘You’ve got a trust fund?’ I was finding it hard to match the bag lady in front of me with the Cambridge graduates, pearls and flowing frocks of my imagination. I remembered too late that discussing money was common.

‘My grandfather made a fortune dredging clay out of rivers to use in building. Lawrence has always hated the fact that I have my own money, especially without working, because he knows that however much he earns, I’ll always have more. He’s a flaming northern dinosaur, thinks it’s a chap’s responsibility to bring home the bacon. He’s typically working class with a great big chip on his shoulder, thinks that anyone who inherits money is a spoilt nincompoop.’

I tried not to be offended by Clover’s view of the working classes.

Her problems should have made me feel great about Colin’s willingness to sit on the settee while I brought in every penny. They didn’t. Having a problem with your wife’s trust fund seemed like a wonderful worry to have.

‘I try not to use the money, or at least, not let him know I’m using it, but the truth is, the arse has dropped out of the bonuses in the City and if it weren’t for me topping up our cash from the trust fund, we’d have had to move.’

‘Why does he have a problem with it now? What’s changed?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know really. I’ve always thought that he was happy for the kids to have what he never did. Recently he’s started holding forth about them being brats and taking everything for granted. I don’t know what I’ll do if he never comes back.’

‘There’s something I could help you with.’

Clover raised a tiny eyebrow of hope. ‘What?’

‘I can clean. Perhaps if you got the house sorted out, he might feel like talking to you?’

‘I can’t have you cleaning my house, Maia. I really can’t. That’s just too much to ask. I’ve never had cleaners. Lawrence thinks it’s despicable to get other people to clean up your crap,’ Clover said.

‘Clover, it’s what I do for a living. You should see some of the places I clean.’

As in, they never get anywhere near as filthy as this.

‘If it hadn’t been for you and your kids, we’d never have made any friends at Stirling Hall. You were the only one who didn’t look down on us, probably still are. Lawrence doesn’t have to know.’

‘I’ll pay you.’ Clover’s voice had taken on a pleading tone.

‘I don’t want paying,’ I said.

‘Maia, don’t be so stupid. I need a job doing and if you’re going to give up your time to do it, then I’m going to pay you.’

We argued backwards and forwards without agreeing, until I marched through to the kitchen and armed myself with a dustpan and brush, black sacks, polish and dusters still in their packets.

Seeing me in motion seemed to jolt Clover out of her misery-filled fog and quite soon we had a good rhythm going – me sweeping all the bits of broken glass out of the corners of the room and Clover hoovering them up. I asked her what she wanted to do with the grandfather clock. ‘Goodness knows. I didn’t even like it. Let’s stuff it in a sack. I’ll stick it in the garage,’ she said, poking a brass dial with her toe.

Make do and mend seemed alien to Clover. While we worked, bits of information about her life slipped out, almost as though she was trying to grasp how she’d got from there to here. Lawrence was dirt poor when he was growing up. She’d bumped into him in Hyde Park when she was bunking off finishing school. I didn’t even realise ‘finishing schools’ still existed.

‘Never did like flower arranging. Stilettos are the death of me, though I can get out of the car without flashing my knickers.’ Lawrence was a trainee accountant but her family had still been horrified. ‘He was so prickly. He used to come to dinner wearing PETA T-shirts and sit with his elbows on the table, lecturing my mother about her fur coat.’

‘I didn’t have Lawrence down as an accountant.’ The backs of my thighs complained as I shoved the big leather settee back into place.

‘He’d just done it to get out of Manchester, some scheme for clever kids from poor homes, sponsored by one of the big accounting firms. He didn’t want to sponge off me, so I suppose he got sucked into it. He hates not being able to pay his way. Like most young men, he wanted to be a rock star. He’s a great singer.’

Yep. I could see Lawrence in drainpipes and Sex Pistols T-shirts.

Clover stood back with her hands on her hips. ‘Fucking hell, Maia. This looks great. I’m going to have to lock the kids in the cellar so they don’t mess it up.’

‘There’s still loads to do. No slacking.’

‘No slacking? This is the most cleaning I’ve done in years. My mother couldn’t relax if a curtain wasn’t hanging straight or there was a fingerprint on the window. I obviously don’t take after her.’

I handed her a bottle of ancient copper cleaner I’d found at the back of the cupboard. ‘I’ll do the wood round the fireplace. You get going on the surround.’

Clover hopped to it, her jodhpurs giving her a fetching builder’s bum as she got to work on all fours. ‘I never thought I’d see the day when cleaning made me feel better. Now I do. Thanks, darling. I hope Lawrence comes back to see it.’

‘I’m sure he will.’ I wondered if Clover could see the flashing thought bubble above my head that read, ‘Has he gone off with someone else?’ She’d perked up so much, I decided we could pick over possible colleague shagging another day. I pulled out the little occasional tables to polish and discovered water rings like a Spirograph drawing and several attempts by Sorrel at carving her name. I took better care of my Formica kitchen table. Coasters were obviously for the working classes.

I hoovered up the dead earwigs from behind the curtains, sucked out a range of food crumbs from down the back of the settee and cleaned the windows that had escaped the collision with the mountain bike and grandfather clock. Clover had brightened up, singing ‘We Are the Champions’ into the polish can as the drawing room became less of a tip and more of a place for butlers and trays of champagne. We hatched a plan. I would come in for two hours a day for the next month, straight after the new early morning shift I’d started at a gym.

And, yes, I would let Clover pay me. I couldn’t afford not to.

By the time the school musical,
Oliver!
rolled around on the day before half-term, I was practically singing ‘Consider Yourself’ in my sleep. Clover had lent us the CD and no breakfast time was complete without the children warbling ‘Food, Glorious Food’. I often walked into the front room to find Harley practising some nifty footwork for ‘You’ve Got to Pick-a-Pocket or Two’. He’d taken to preening himself in the mirror and making speeches to the audience.

Colin kept poking him and saying, ‘I hope you ain’t going to turn into one of them bleeding ballet dancing poofters, like that bloke, who was it? Billy Elliot. You wanna get yerself a proper job.’ Stones, glasshouses and all that. Whenever I mentioned Colin coming to watch, his stock response was ‘I’ve heard it here five million times. Why do I need to come to the school?’

In the end, I knew he wouldn’t let Harley down. I was more nervous about how Colin would perform than Harley.

When the evening arrived, people were crowding up the red carpet that led into the school. I looked round for Mr Peters. As Head of Upper School, I was pretty sure he would be there, but I could only see the headmaster who was greeting parents by name and wafting them inside. The men were moving along in tailor-made suits and silk ties, the women a swirl of floaty dresses and Jimmy Choos. Colin had refused to change out of his West Ham United shirt, clinging to it like a toddler to a teddy. He brightened up when he spotted the sixth formers going up and down the queue with trays of wine. ‘Great, free booze. Do you think they’ve got any Newkie Brown?’

I was staring ahead, perfecting my art of not hearing any whispers in the crowd around us. Colin belched. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him stick an empty glass on the tray and snatch up another one. I couldn’t wait to get inside where I would be able to hiss at him. I nudged him with my foot.

‘What?’ he said.

‘You’re only supposed to have one.’

‘Where does it say that?’

I sighed and looked away. I wished I’d come on my own. As we stepped through the door, I found myself standing in front of Mr Peters. I hadn’t been that close to him since the morning Bronte went back to school. Just occasionally I’d caught his eye across the playground, which had been enough to make my belly do a little backflip. Standing right next to him shot a burst of heat through my body. I was desperate to stand on tiptoes and sniff his neck. Colin squirting Lynx under his arms and down his crotch didn’t have the same pull.

‘Ms Etxeleku. Mr Caudwell. Good evening. I saw the dress rehearsal earlier on and I think you will be very impressed with Harley. Please do go through and take a seat,’ Mr Peters said, waving us through into the hall. With its wood panelling, ornate ceiling and raised seating, I felt as though I was stepping into a West End theatre. At Morlands, I’d been grateful to squeeze half a buttock onto a folding chair.

A tiny corner of my mind was slightly disappointed that Mr Peters hadn’t reserved a special little comment for me. Thirty-six going on thirteen. ‘Let’s sit at the front,’ Colin said, barging through a group of people dithering about the best place to sit ‘from an acoustic point of view’.

Colin stopped in the middle of the front row, picking up the programme on his seat. He’d barely had time to plonk down, when Jen1 came scuttling up. ‘Excuse me, these seats are reserved.’

‘What do you mean, reserved?’ Colin said.

‘There’s a whole group of us sitting together, which is why we got here early and put our programmes on the seats.’

‘I can’t see no sign that says reserved. How am I gonna look at a programme and think, oh yeah, that’s the seat belonging to the blonde over there? I’m not, am I? I’m gonna think, great, someone’s done a good job, they’ve put a programme out for me.’

Jen1’s eyes narrowed to little slits. ‘Mr Etxeleku, I understand you’ve had rather a problematic time of late with Bronte going missing, so I will excuse your attitude, but I would be grateful if you would move elsewhere as we have already reserved these seats.’

‘Look, love. First things first. I ain’t Mr Etxeleku, I’m Mr Caudwell. And secondly, darling, I ain’t moving and me attitude has got nothing to do with Bronts. This is me, right, I’m like this. If you wanted to sit here, you should’ve got your little arsicle on the seat. Maia, sit down.’

I was in no man’s land, knees bent, halfway between sitting down and running away. ‘Come on, Colin, look, there are still loads of seats left.’ I pulled at his arm and pointed towards the back.

‘You move if you like, but I’m staying here. Miss Thimble Tits can bugger off and sit somewhere else.’

I don’t know who gasped first – me or Jen1. Colin did have a point, though. Under that halter-neck top, her chest did look like a couple of hazelnuts nailed onto a stick. Just when I thought the Caudwell/Etxeleku family might add being led away by Stirling Hall security to its list of honours, Jen1 poked Colin in the chest, told him he was a nasty, vulgar little man, then spun round on her stiletto spikes and stomped off. Colin sat down, laughing and congratulating himself on showing that nobby woman a thing or two, banging on about her needing a good shag until the lights went down and the curtains swished back.

I’d been expecting a few children prancing about with tambourines, triangles and a couple of drums against a papier mâché backdrop. Instead, to the side of the stage, a full orchestra belted out ‘Food, Glorious Food’ while Frederica’s son, Marlon, stepped into the spotlight and made Oliver all his own. Even Colin was nodding and whispering, ‘Bloody hell, he’s good.’

I forgot about Jen1, about Colin, as the energy poured off the stage, each carefully timed foot stamp, each pair of outstretched arms sucking me into the story. I was waiting for the moment when Harley would appear as the Artful Dodger. I barely recognised him when he burst onto the stage, his front teeth blacked out and his hair spiked up. He turned to Oliver, and with a wave of his hand, launched into ‘Consider Yourself’. This wasn’t the pale boy who sat blubbing in Mr Peters’ office a month ago. This was my son, in charge and confident. Colin slipped his hand into mine and squeezed. I squeezed back. My eyes prickled. When Harley pulled a pocket watch from Fagin’s waistcoat, the crowd clapped, everyone laughed and cheered. I felt as though I was on stage myself. I glanced at Colin. He didn’t normally do ‘poncey musicals’. Without a sneer on his face, he looked almost handsome.

When the curtain came down for the interval, an announcement that drinks were being served in the refectory got Colin scooting to his feet. Pupils from the senior school were moving through the parents with trays of wine and orange juice. I sent up a prayer that I’d be able to keep the show on the road long enough for Bronte and Harley to stay on for the sixth form. These kids were probably only sixteen or seventeen but they seemed so confident. They looked like models to me. There was something so wholesome about them. All that shiny hair and straight teeth. And straight backs, as though they were sure of their place in the world. They didn’t have that ready-to-pounce tension, that wary look that the teenagers round our way had. They were so charming. When Colin started talking in a posh voice, asking dumb questions about the vintage of the red wine he was about to chuck down his throat, the young girl smiled like someone in a toothpaste ad and said, ‘I don’t know which year it’s from, but I’ll get the bottle for you.’