Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva Read online

  ‘I didn’t like to leave her in case she was choking or something.’ Margery paused, as if the fatal choking had already taken place, adding, ‘She’s only six months.’

  Kate disappeared into Flo’s room and, as she lifted her daughternow bleating hystericallyout of her cot, Margery, who was still in the doorway, said again, ‘She’s only six months.’

  Kate stared at the rhinoceros on Flo’s safari curtains, pulled over the Gina Forde-recommended blackout blinds, rhythmically stroking her daughter’s back, aware of every bump in her unformed animal spine, and didn’t say anything.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been standing like that, but when she at last turned round, Margery was gone and the house was full of the smell of economy bacon frying in the water it had been injected with at the processing plant.

  Kate crossed the landing, walking through the toxic bacon fumes with Flo towards Findlay’s room. Findlay was up, kneeling intently on the floor. His bed looked as though it had barely been slept in.

  ‘I’m building a world,’ he said, without looking up from the piles of Lego he had heaped on the rug in front of himthe Lego obscuring the Calpol stains that raising Findlay for the first four and a half years of his life had cost her so far.

  ‘We need to get you dressed,’ Kate said vaguely, over Flo’s body draped across her shoulder.

  ‘Okay,’ Findlay agreed, standing up in a manner that was efficient rather than obedient, and that already lured her into confiding in him things about the world and the people in it that she wasn’t convinced he was ready to hear yet.

  ‘Should I wear my Spiderman suit?’

  ‘Oh, Finn…’

  ‘I should,’ he insisted.

  ‘But you’ve worn that nearly every day this weekit’s filthy.’

  He thought about this for a fraction of a second. ‘But I should,’ he said again. Then, ‘Is it okay?’

  Kate felt as though Findlay was prompting her, and when she finally nodded at him, he smiled back at her as if they’d just consented to take a huge leap forward in cross-cultural understanding.

  Unnerved, Kate made a show of efficiency, opening curtains, making the bedall with one hand. ‘But not the maskthey won’t let you wear the mask to nursery.’

  Findlay watched approvingly as she helped him into the Spiderman suit while listening to what was going on downstairs. Had Robert, who didn’t mind the economy bacon sandwiches as much as he pretended, finished making his way through the rashers leaking white residue, layered between Blue Ribbon margarine and two slices of Mighty White? She hadn’t heard him come back upstairs and he hadn’t brought her a cup of tea yeta ritual observed every morning since the first time they woke up together.

  Downstairs, Margery, who had been outraged when she’d discovered that Robert was expected to help himself to a bowl of cerealwhen there was anyat breakfast, before a full day’s work, was overwhelmed with pride that now she was here she could send him out into the world with meat in his stomach as well as a greasy chin and cuffs. That was one wrong in this marriage she’d been determined to set to rights.

  She trailed after him now to the front door, in a grey tracksuit she’d been given by American Airlines on one of her Florida trips when her luggage got lost, and waved frantically as he cycled off down the streetuntil he turned the corner, out of sight. Then she sighed involuntarily, stared threateningly at the innocent commuters passing No. 22 on their way to the station, and shut the front door quickly before the Jamaican next door saw her standing there and decided to rape her. According to the free paper they got at home, The New Shopper, these things happened in BROAD DAYLIGHT in London, and nobody lifted a finger to help.

  When she turned round, Kate was standing at the foot of the stairs, watching her.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Margery said, fairly certain from the look on Kate’s face that this was the firstor one of the first times, anywaythat Robert had left the house in the morning without saying goodbye. Had the Hunter marriage entered a new phase, and would sheas she’d always hopedlive long enough to witness her son rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a passion gone cold?

  Kate hid her face in her daughter’s back again, briefly shutting her eyes so that Margery couldn’t read in them the last two minutes spent at the bedroom window, watching Robert cycle off down Prendergast Road without so much as turning to look up at the house; without so much as even saying goodbye.

  When she opened them again, Margery had disappeared into the kitchen.

  ‘You’re never wearing that to nursery,’ her voice exclaimed, outraged at the perversity of Findlay’s fancy dress when there was no occasion.

  ‘Mum said I could.’

  ‘You’ll get your eczema back if you wear that nylon suit in this heat.’

  ‘What’s nylon? I’m not hot anyway.’

  ‘You wear it day in, day outit needs washing.’

  This had been Kate’s point upstairs. Is that what she sounded like to Findlay? God.

  Findlay didn’t respond to this.

  ‘You’ll be covered in eczema by this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m not hot,’ Findlay said again, beginning to sound tearful.

  At this, Kate went into the kitchen.

  ‘The eczema’s got nothing to do with the heat, it’s stress related.’

  ‘Stress related?’ Margery stared at Findlay. ‘He’s five years old.’

  ‘I’m four and a half,’ Findlay said. ‘Can I have some fruit?’

  Unable to bear it in the kitchen any longer and feeling suddenly displaced, Kate prepared Flo’s baby rice and took it upstairs, balancing Flo on their unmade bed among the pillows, and feeding her what she could. She got her dressed and was just getting into a pair of trousers when she heard Findlay, yelling distinctly, ‘I DON’T LIKE PINEAPPLE.’

  Leaving Flo floundering on the bed, Kate ran back downstairs into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s going on down here?’

  ‘She’s giving me pineapple,’ Findlay said, pushing his face into his hands.

  ‘You like pineapple,’ Margery said petulantly.

  ‘I don’t,’ Findlay started to sob.

  ‘He drinks pineapple juice,’ Margery appealed to Kate.

  ‘I like pineapple juice, but I don’t like pineapple,’ Findlay sobbed.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Kate said, going up to him and stroking the back of his neck just beneath the hairline.

  ‘I’ve opened it now,’ Margery grunted. ‘It’ll go to waste.’

  ‘Opened what?’ Kate said, losing patience.

  ‘The can.’

  ‘Can of what?’

  ‘Pineapple.’

  ‘But we don’t have any cans of pineapple.’

  ‘I bought this yesterday.’ Margery held up the can with the can opener still clamped to the top, slamming it back down so that the syrup ran down the side over her fingers, which she started sucking on. ‘He said he wanted some fruit.’

  Kate watched her, suddenly revolted.

  ‘He meant fresh fruit.’ She gestured aggressively towards the basket on the surface near the coffee machine, adding, ‘It’s not like we’re on rations or anything.’ She tried to laugh, but it didn’t work. She’d been waiting to say that for too long.

  ‘I know we’re not on rations,’ Margery said, thinking suddenly of a cousin of hers who’d fought in the war and been taken prisoner in Burma by the Japanese, ‘But real fruit’s expensive and it goes off in this weatherdoesn’t keep.’

  ‘It doesn’t need to keep, it just gets eatenand it’s only April,’ Kate said, her hand gripping tightly now onto Findlay’s neck.

  Margery licked the last of the pineapple syrup off her fingers. She was drifting now, more concerned with the memory of her POW cousin than the preservative quality of tinned fruit.

  She stared at Kate, trying to remember what on earth they’d been talking about, but in the end gave up and turned away from her, starting to wash the frying pan instead.

  ‘You’re
sure you’ll be okay today?’ Kate said, finally letting Findlay go.

  Findlay ran upstairs.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Margery responded, without turning round.

  Kate wasn’t convinced. ‘You’re sure you’re going to be okay?’ she said again, feeling a sudden, unaccountable remorse at the sight of Margery’s swollen feet, bound purple with varicose veins, emerging from a pair of mauve slippers they’d bought her at Christmas.

  ‘I was thinking about doing some cleaning,’ Margery said after a while.

  ‘Cleaning?’

  Margery tore off the rubber gloves she was wearing and strode purposefully to the kitchen door, standing on tiptoe and running her finger along the top of the frame. ‘Look.’

  Kate stared at her.

  ‘Dust!’ Margery said and, as she said it, Kate had a sudden memory of Margery filling the indoor drying rack with baby vests and sleep suits after Findlay was born, saying, ‘You’ll be washing at least twice a day from now on.’ Stumbling blearily around the postnatal void and trying to come to terms with the fact that she had become two people, Kate had nothing at her disposal with which to defend herself against Margery’s prediction of infinite domestic drudgery.

  ‘I never knew you were meant to clean the top of doorframes.’

  ‘I had an electrical engineer round once, who complimented me on the top of my doorframes,’ Margery said, as if this settled the matter.

  ‘Well, Martina’s coming today.’

  ‘Who’s Martina?’

  ‘The cleaner.’

  Margery digested this rapidly, staring at the dust on her fingertip. ‘I never heard Robert talking about a cleaner; he’s never mentioned a cleaner to me.’

  For a moment, Kate thought Margery was going to cryit looked like her eyes were starting to water.

  ‘She’s a friend’s au pair.’

  ‘Where’s she from?’

  ‘Bratislava.’

  ‘Have you given her keys?’

  ‘Of course she’s got keys.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t…I just couldn’t.’

  Margery was about to predict something apocalyptic when there was a banging sound from upstairs, followed by screaming.

  ‘What’s that?’ Margery yelped, her nerves shattered under the duress of the newfound information about the cleaner who’d infiltrated her son’s household.

  ‘ShitFlo.’

  Was somebody breaking into the house to kidnap Flo? When she was a child and her mother lost her temper she used to say she was putting her out for the gypsies to take, but now it was the Arabs you had to be careful of. As everybody in East Leeke knew, there was a buoyant market for blond children in the Arab world. Were they coming for Flo herenow? The world was a terrifying place Margery thought, her mind full of Arabs scaling drainpipestoo terrifying sometimes.

  Ignoring the strange whimpering sound that Margery, immobile, was making, Kate ran upstairs.

  Flo was lying on her back on the stained carpet in their room, howling, and Findlay was kneeling beside her. When did Findlay come upstairs? She couldn’t even remember him leaving the kitchen.

  ‘I was waving at the face in the other house, then she fell,’ he said, waiting.

  ‘The face?’ Kate picked Flo up, tentatively feeling her head and looking out of the window. There were no faces at any of the windows in the house opposite, whichlocal rumour had itwas some sort of Albanian- or Russian-run brothel. ‘She’s fine,’ she tried to reassure him, as Flo started to calm down.

  Findlay remained motionless. This wasn’t good enough.

  He wanted to know why she had permitted such a thing to happen and it dawned on her, standing there cradling Flo, that he was angry with her. The eyes staring at her through the slits in the Spiderman mask, which he must have come upstairs and put on himself, were angry. She’d shattered an illusion he didn’t want shattered and now he knew that mothersin particular, his mothersometimes left their babies on beds and forgot about them, and sometimes the babies rolled off.

  She tried to think of a comforting lie to tell him when she heard the post being pushed aggressively through the letterbox by the postwoman, who had some minor mentalhealth issues.

  From the top of the stairs, she made out the red gas and electric, and the one from Southwark Council that would be their second and final reminder for overdue council tax. Between the recycling bag and piles of shoes that were beginning to look like something a UN forensic scientist might go to work on, was a brown A4 envelope that had to be the letter from Schools Admissions.

  ‘Was it okay to wave at the face?’ Findlay called out behind her.

  Ignoring him, she stumbled down the stairs towards the letter.

  ‘How is she?’ Margery said, watching her.

  ‘Who?’ Kate couldn’t take her eyes off the brown A4 envelope.

  ‘Flo. What happened?’

  ‘Ohshe rolled off the bed.’

  ‘You left her on the bed?’

  Kate swooped down on the letter from Schools Admissions, trying to decide whether to open it now or in the car.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The letter from Schools Admissions.’

  ‘Well open it,’ Margery said, impatiently. She’d been in on most of the week’s conversations leading up to this momentand the rows; like the one that had resounded through the ceiling last night.

  With Flo balanced awkwardly on her shoulder, Katenow nauseous with anticipationripped open the envelope and scanned the lines of the letter over and over again until she became aware of Margery watching her.

  ‘So?’

  ‘What?’ she said, stupidly.

  ‘Did he get in?’

  Kate carried on staring stupidly at her and it was only when Margery said, ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ that she realised she must have nodded.

  ‘Your face,’ Margery said after a while.

  ‘My facewhat?’

  ‘It’s a picture.’

  ‘It’s gone bendy,’ Findlay put in from behind her on the stairs.

  Margery, still watching her closely, didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘Don’t forget to tell Robert.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Kate said, automatically, with a sudden awful feeling that Margery was about to ask to see the letterwhen the doorbell rang, followed by the sound of keys turning in the lock. ‘Martina!’

  Pushing the letter quickly into her suit jacket pocket, she ushered in Evie’s Slovak au pair who, Kate sensed, much preferred the Hunter family to Evie and the rest of the McRaes at No. 112.

  ‘Heyit’s Spiderman.’

  ‘Tell me about the pig,’ Findlay said, running up to her.

  ‘Not right now, Finn,’ Kate cut in, ‘we’re late for nursery.’

  ‘Her grandma made a football out of a pig’s head,’ Findlay said to the assembled adults.

  ‘For my bruvversit was Christmas,’ Martina said, resorting to the south London colloquialism she found easier to pronounce than the ‘th’ sound of received pronunciation.

  ‘Fascinating,’ Kate said vaguely, beginning to lose the day’s thread. ‘Finncome on.’ She was about to leave when she remembered Margery, framed ominously in the kitchen doorframe.

  ‘Martina, this is Margery.’

  ‘Hello Margery,’ Martina said cheerfully, entirely unaware, Kate thought with pity, of what the next few hours held in store for her.

  Margery took in the tall skinny girl with bad skin in the bottle-green leggings and Will Smith T-Shirt, and grunted. Margery didn’t know who Will Smith was and wondered if Martina was some sort of activist. She’d always been under the impression that one of the things the Communists had going for them was that they didn’t like blacks.

  ‘Martinayour money’s in an envelope by the cooker,’ Kate called out, starting to make her way down the hallway towards the front door.

  ‘D’you want me to get anything for supper tonight?’ Margery called out after her.

  Poised on the doorstep, Kate’s mind and stomach skit
tered rapidly over last night’s chicken chasseur assembled with the aid of a chicken chasseur sachet and some bestbuy chicken goujons. ‘It’s fineI’m out tonight.’

  ‘But what about the children?’

  ‘They get hot food at nursery and I’m only doing a halfday so I can get them some tea.’

  ‘And Robert?’ Margery tried not to yell. ‘What about Robert?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘I guess there’s pasta and stuff in the cupboardshe can dig around and fix you both something.’

  Margery was staring at her open-mouthed. She knew things were bad, but not this bad; not only had Kate been sucking him of potential all these yearshis glorious, glorious potentialshe’d been starving him as well. Margery felt suddenly, almost crucially short of breath. Her poor, helpless boy.

  ‘I’ll shop,’ she gasped.

  ‘If you wantbut there is stuff in the cupboards.’

  The two women stared silently at each other before Kate turned and made her way with the children to the Audi estate parked on the street outside next to an abandoned blue Bedford van that she would have seen on last night’s Crimewatch in conjunction with an armed robbery at the Woolwich Building Societyif she’d got round to watching any TV.

  Chapter 2

  Margery carried on standing on the doorstep to No. 22 until the Audi had turned the corner out of sight. She was about to go back inside when a BMW pulled up on the opposite kerb, the doors clicking smoothly open as a smart young woman got out and walked towards the house with the red door and nets (at least somebody on this street had the sense to have nets)No. 21. The house with facesthat was what Findlay called it. Kate said it was a brothelMargery wasn’t sure whether she was joking or notand Robert thought Oompa-Loompas lived there because, apart from the smart young woman and short man in a suit now following her, nobody ever went in and nobody ever came out.

  As Margery continued to watch, a face did appear at a first-floor window. The smart young woman who was at the front gate looked instinctively up and the nets fell back into place. She turned round and said something to the man, and it occurred to Margery that the man was afraid of the woman, now framed in the doorway to No. 21 and glancing across the street at Margery.