Authors: Judy Astley
The Lake District. Wouldn’t that suit Mac and Lottie? Why weren’t they the sort who took up gentle hill-walking if they wanted a challenge? This wasn’t even remotely reassuring. Clover had only told Mary-Jane because she thought she could count on her saying the right thing, something along the lines of, ‘Oh how sad, your parents selling up the family home. End of an era.’ A hug would have been nice. Except that obviously it
wasn’t
sad – well, not the kind of sad you could expect anyone who wasn’t a family member (and who already had her own to-die-for dream-home in France) to understand.
‘No, really I don’t think so. It came out a bit too spontaneously for that, as a sort of follow-up to something else. And besides, planning isn’t my parents’ strong point,’ Clover told her. This was true: the existence of Sorrel was surely proof of that. Sorrel was a brilliant little sister – at a safe distance – but what on earth had they been thinking of, producing another baby when their first two were practically finished with school?
‘I mean, on the one hand why shouldn’t they go travelling while they’ve still got their health and strength? Fine, go for it. Take a holiday. But just getting rid of the family home,
our
home, our
base
,
well
, that’s a shock to the system, really kind of final and drastic. They could have run the idea past us a bit more gently. They didn’t give us any consideration at all, as if the place was just, like
nothing
, like any old anonymous semi. Holbrook House is so incredibly special, full of all our memories and still quite a lot of our stuff. I felt as if they thought it didn’t count for anything, that they could casually chuck it all away.’ She felt ridiculously close to tears. ‘
And
…’ she added, summoning up a bit of fury, ‘Sorrel still lives there! When she goes off travelling, where’s she going to come back
to
?’
The terrifying word ‘You?’ hovered unsaid between the two women. Imagine, Clover thought, Sean’s reaction to the news that they were to give house-room to a moody teenager and all her chaotic possessions. She daren’t so much as put that possibility into words, not even to Mary-Jane.
A dawn chorus trilled out from Mary-Jane’s soft, buttery and so envy-provoking Mulberry bag and she delved in to find her phone. She checked the caller ID and switched off, slinging the phone impatiently back in her bag. ‘It’s Polly, no surprise,’ she said. ‘Bugger. I wish Lance had never given her that stupid little phone. What does a seven year old need one for?’
Clover rather thought it was for what Polly was almost certainly doing now – calling to insist that, in spite of what every harassed early-morning mother promised, she didn’t feel at all better just
because
she’d gone into school. But yes, why
had
she got a phone with her in school at her age? Her little brain would fry and, worse, every child in her class would be demanding one, starting with Sophia.
‘Quick, let’s get out of here before Mrs Thing comes out of the class and sees I’m still within catching distance. I can really do without Poll around me today – I’ve got
loads
to do.’ And Mary-Jane was round the front of Clover’s car and in through the Touareg’s passenger door before Clover had a chance to go through the polite motions of offering her a lift. Clover looked back across the playground as she started the engine in case Polly was actually there, standing on the main-door steps, in pain and weeping. How awful it would be for the poor child to see her own mother being driven away at bank-robber speed rather than rushing back in to scoop her up and take her back home for a day’s sympathetic cherishing.
‘You don’t mind dropping me off back at mine, do you, sweetie?’ Mary-Jane settled back in her seat. ‘We’ve got a new nanny coming for an interview. I’ve got a little job starting in a few weeks – chauffeuring Wimbledon tennis players around. It’s for three and a bit weeks, including training. So, cross fingers, this new girl absolutely needs to be The One.’
‘You said that last time!’ Clover laughed. Mary-Jane’s nanny-disasters were well known: the cheery
one
from Newcastle had been arrested for shoplifting (how useful Jakey’s fancy three-wheel stroller had turned out to be, equipped like a Barbour jacket with enough pockets to hide half the John Lewis cosmetics counters), the posh Cotswold one had had sex with the Fed-Ex delivery man in Mary-Jane’s bed and at least two idle souls had quit after a mere week, finding that the care of two small children in a terminally untidy household was simply too much hassle.
‘I don’t know why you don’t have a nanny too, Clover. It would free up so much of your time.’
What
did
Mary-Jane do with all this time? Clover wondered. It certainly wasn’t housework and she didn’t have a regular job to go to or even a dog to walk. She was quite scruffy too, albeit in an attractive, jeans-and-quirky-tops sort of way. It was one of the things Clover liked about her. A lot of the other mummies seemed so positively hell-bent on achieving personal yumminess that you’d think their skin would be exfoliated to bone level. Clover slicked ruinously costly Crème de la Mer across her face and indulged a passion for having her nails done but didn’t spend hours having hot-stone massages or hay-wraps or Restylane treatments. She kept her blonde hair at convenient shoulder-length so it could be tied back or piled up or scuzzed about for maximum sexiness if Sean needed reminding that she was the one he was supposed to fancy but it didn’t take much hairdressing effort beyond the
usual
four-weekly trim. Mary-Jane’s hair was spiky, as if she had had a bad fright. Clover had heard she cut it herself. So it certainly wasn’t pampering that took up all her time. Perhaps Mary-Jane climbed back into bed and read trashy novels till it was time to collect Jakey from pre-school. How lovely to do that, Clover thought, imagining the guilty bliss of a daytime duvet. How wonderful to have so little conscience. Clover was amazed Mary-Jane had found herself a job at all – even for just a few weeks. She didn’t seem to need the money. No one with children at St Hilary’s
seemed
to need money. This job’s appeal couldn’t have anything to do with sharing closed-in car-space with staggeringly fit champion sportsmen, could it? Surely not. Or was school-hours sex the time-consuming little hobby of Mary-Jane’s that Clover didn’t know about?
‘I don’t really need a nanny,’ Clover said. ‘Not since Elsa’s been at Toddle-Tots. What would the poor girl do all morning? What does yours do?’
‘Children’s laundry, their lunch, shopping, you’d think of something. And then in the afternoon she takes Jakey to his various activities, cooks their supper. I can usually get them to do my ironing as well, when they’ve got a moment. I find it terribly hard to manage without one,’ Mary-Jane said, yawning. ‘I really hope today’s candidate is worth missing my Pilates session for.’
Clover had actually considered employing someone so that she could find herself a part-time job.
Perhaps
Home Comforts would take her on for a few mornings a week. It would be so lovely to get back to handling and choosing fabrics again, not to mention the staff discount on anything she might need for when that little house in the sun became reality. But Sean had been adamant – not to mention crudely basic – about not having someone living in. ‘We’d never get any shagging time,’ he’d complained. ‘We’d be sure to get one with ears like a bat. I don’t want some dolly grinning at me in a knowing way over breakfast.’
Clover could have suggested getting one who lived out, but in fact she wouldn’t have minded someone within listening distance. It might force Sean to be a bit less vocal in bed. She sometimes wondered if he’d been a cowboy in an earlier life, the way he whooped and hollered during sex. It could be so off-putting. Never mind a nanny, in a year or so it would be Sophia giving him the knowing looks and Clover a permanent blush of shame. Her own qualms about employing a nanny were that there’d be someone around all the time seeing what she did all day, which was actually, perhaps like Mary-Jane, far too little. Daniella came in and did the cleaning twice a week, and did it so thoroughly, silently and competently that Clover’s domestic input was whittled down to being merely concerned with chauffeuring the girls to gym club, ballet, Penguin swimmers, violin, extra maths, Monkey Music and
Bébé France
. She obviously dealt with
food
(and even that was mostly ordered on-line and delivered, thanks to Ocado) and there were the ever-growing heaps of clothes the girls seemed to need. It wasn’t so much a nanny they needed as a wardrobe mistress. Not that they could probably afford one now anyway, not since Sean had thrown in that terrifying spanner about work taking a downturn. She prayed they’d at least be all right for the school fees: how mortifying it would be to have to give a term’s notice and then slap on a brave face every day at the school gate. Whatever protests you made about a sudden political commitment to state education, all the mummy-radar would home in on exactly what your financial score was.
Clover dropped Mary-Jane off at her house and watched her de-code the lock on the high wrought-iron security gate, then pick her way along her untidy, lavender-strewn garden path, side-stepping three cats, a jumble of small bicycles and several overflowing bags of hedge-clippings. The casual domestic chaos reminded Clover of home – not of the bright, ordered house where she lived with Sean and their daughters but of Holbrook House and her muddy, happy childhood. It hurt, this sad, bitter feeling that her whole life’s comfort-base could be about to vanish for ever. She’d trusted it would always be there – not for anything specific but … just in case. It wasn’t a grown-up feeling; it wasn’t worthy and it wasn’t generous but it hurt. She bit her lip and carefully executed a tidy three-point
turn
. What was it that life coach (last year’s must-do-better attempt, Sean’s idea) had told her? Always concentrate on the results you wanted, think only of that successful solution to any problem. She needed to snap herself out of this mood. Carefully she visualized herself a few minutes from now, pulling up in her own driveway, opening the shiny pink front door and stepping onto the seagrass carpet in the hallway. Out loud she told herself, ‘Now I’m going
home
. I’m going to my
own home
.’ It almost worked: she focused on the new Brora cashmere catalogue she’d left on the console table in the hall and on the silver-framed photos of her daughters that would smile up at her, remind her who loved her most in the world. That’s better, these were her people, the ones she’d made.
Her
family.
Her
home.
She would make a cake. This calm, pale, silent house would fill with the snug scent of baking and chocolate to comfort and steady her. And later she’d choose something lovely from the Brora catalogue as she ate a soft, sticky slice. Cashmere and cake, was there ever such a perfectly soothing combination?
SEVEN
SO. IT SEEMED
she and Mac weren’t the only ones with plans to sell up. As Lottie went through the gates to the road on her way to visit Susie at the gallery in the village, possibly with a view to offloading some surplus paintings from the house, she could see a new For Sale sign across the road outside the old Major’s house on the green. So where’s he off to, at his time of life? Lottie wondered. He must be at least eighty-five, probably older. She hoped it was a move he’d chosen, rather than one forced on him by age and infirmity. She liked to imagine he was going back to Sri Lanka, to recapture the sparkling times of his youth where he’d enjoyed a glamorous colonial social life of racy cocktails and silky ladies. If where he was heading was a care home, well, there were plenty in the area to choose from. Recently, driving from London, Lottie thought that if someone blindfolded her and took her for a six-hour winding drive in a dark lorry,
she’d
have no problem at all recognizing Surrey when at last allowed to look out of the window. Surely no other county in England was so over-provided with garden centres, nursing homes and – for some mad reason – boarding kennels and catteries. The area must attract people from miles around in search of every kind of pedigree kitten from Abyssinian to Siamese, and a place to park their dogs for the holidays.
Now she and Mac were planning to leave the place, Lottie felt as if she was looking at her surroundings for close to the last time. Alongside the Major’s house, a row of gloomy leylandii (another Surrey speciality) had sprouted new growth, surely taking it way beyond bearable heights. Not that she’d complain. That had been the Major’s hobby. He had taken years to come to terms with the appalling scandal of having Mac living in the village, considering all popular music people to be of the same shockingly deep depravity. He’d done a lot of muttering about standards and what-were-things-coming-to and he probably wasn’t alone in his thinking either, for at one time during the 70s, a rock musician was a Surrey must-have. Just about every village had one in residence, like a mascot. Their function was to be fodder for dinner-party gossip by driving expensive cars into swimming pools, landing helicopters on the village greens and seducing pink-faced Pony Club daughters fresh out of boarding-school. It was a terrible local let-down when they
behaved
well and took up golf or merely pottered around quietly minding their own business and becoming a fixture on the pub quiz team as Mac did.
‘Your COCK woke me at FOUR!’ The furious voice of the Major jolted Lottie out of her thoughts. The stocky, bull-headed man stormed out at an impressive pace from behind the leylandii and stood in his gateway as Lottie approached. He must have been watching for her. Maybe he had some sort of tracking device that triggered whenever the electronic gates of Holbrook House opened. Lottie tried not to laugh – he reminded her of an elderly version of Grant Mitchell from
EastEnders
, about to order her – with menaces – out of the Queen Vic.
‘Sorry, Major, but I can’t do much about it. Crowing at dawn is what they do.’