Lucky Break (33 page)

Sita frowned and examined the phone as if its small stout body could reveal the truth.

‘Have I got the job?' Nell winced, when Sita didn't speak, and Sita laid her head back on the pillow.

‘I actually, honestly, think you might have.'

The two girls screamed and clutched each other's hands. ‘But I'm only guessing, it's just why would he phone like that if you hadn't?'

‘I know, that's what I was thinking.' Nell hadn't allowed herself to think anything of the sort, or if she had, just for the smallest second. ‘Soon as you can,' she echoed. She leapt up and tugged at the blind. ‘Have you seen?' A cotton-wool curtain of snow fell vertically down.

Sita took up the phone again and pressed it to her ear.

‘What are you doing?' Nell asked.

‘I'm calling.'

Nell wrestled it from her hand. ‘It's one in the morning,' she was laughing, ‘and anyway, it's an office, there won't be anyone there.'

‘But it's so exciting,' Sita insisted.

‘I know.' Nell climbed into the warm bed beside her. ‘Or it might be,' and they chatted and planned and watched the snow plunging past the window, inching themselves towards morning and the moment when, officially, Nell's life might be about to change.

Rice Cakes and Starbucks

When Dan and Jemma arrived in Los Angeles it was raining. Not drizzling, or even pouring, but streaming down outside the glass doors of the arrivals lounge in thick, grey sideways slices. Water sluiced along the airport roads, tumbling in the gutters, spinning in the wheels of the taxis that splashed up to collect the lucky people at the head of the queue. ‘Blimey,' they said, almost in unison, and Dan put his hand up to his mouth and laughed.

‘I'm cold,' Honey shivered in her T-shirt, and Dan knelt down to rifle through their bulging bags, removing as he did so, numerous insubstantial outfits which they'd packed with the expectation of the six of them lifted out of a grey London winter into an endless bright blue Californian afternoon.

Dan and Jemma had rented a house in the hills. The house had been recommended by a friend of Dan's, although at the last minute his wife had interjected: ‘They can't stay up there! They've got to be by the ocean. In Santa Monica.'

‘But Santa Monica's extortionate, and you don't even get a pool,' Dan's friend told her, ‘and what's the point of LA if there's no pool?'

Jemma and Dan had listened nervously. They'd already said yes to the house in the hills, paid their deposit, filled in numerous forms for the insurance, the gas, the electrics and the telephone, and so neither of them mentioned Santa Monica or the ocean again. Instead, they talked about the pool. ‘The pool, the pool,' they repeated like a charm, and Honey and Ben tugged on their swimming costumes, blew up their armbands, and ran shrieking up and down the draughty, carpeted stairs of their north London home.

The higher they drove the more heavily it rained. It clattered on the roof of the taxi and washed in sheets over the windscreen, and when the driver stopped to call the number that they gave him for directions they could see the water rushing downhill over the cobbled streets. ‘Got it, got it,' he assured their landlord, who was waiting with the key, but then almost immediately they'd become lost again, roaring up and down the narrow roads, catching glimpses of lit-up Spanish villas and rain-soaked ferns and the same few street names over and over again.

By the time they finally found the house, in a tiny cul-de-sac obscured by darkness and a large half-fallen bush, Ben and the twins were asleep, although Honey was still up, staring out intently at the night. ‘Careful,' the driver warned as Dan stepped into a foot of gushing water, and the landlord opened the yard door and stood watching them from underneath a white umbrella as they struggled with their luggage and the warm weights of their children, unloading them into the chilled hush of the hall.

 

It had been Jemma's idea to come. ‘Dan!' he'd heard her calling from the bathroom, and although she hated it when the children shouted to her from the top of the house, she was doing it herself now.

Slowly Dan walked upstairs and put his head round the door. ‘What is it?' He waited. She was lying stretched out in the bath, her face flushed, her hair a straggle of damp curls, her breasts blue-veined and swollen from feeding the twins. ‘Listen, I've been thinking. We could rent this house out, say for six months, put all our things in storage, and then before the children get too big, we could go to America and give it a chance. While your series is still on.'

Dan sat down on the toilet seat. ‘Are you serious? With four kids?'

‘Why not? We could get good money for this house, and we could use that money to rent somewhere out there.'

Dan looked at his feet. ‘I suppose, in theory, we could.'

Jemma was busy calculating. ‘I'll phone the estate agent first thing on Monday and see what they say. And we could look into the right time to go. If there's a good time, a good season . . .'

‘I don't think they have seasons.'

‘Don't they have pilot season?'

‘Well, yes . . .'

Honey was shouting from the kitchen. A door slammed and Ben gave an almighty scream. Dan imagined fingers caught in the hinges, small creased digits sliced right off. He flew down the stairs. ‘What are you doing?' Honey and Ben looked round at him. They'd climbed on to the worktop to get at some biscuits and for a second they froze. ‘No,' he snatched the biscuits away. ‘It's lunch soon,' he told them, and then thinking that actually, with Jemma still in the bath and the babies sleeping, lunch may not be for at least an hour, he peeled back the shiny plastic wrapping and gave them a biscuit each.

‘Just one,' he said, to impress on them this new unshakeable rule.

‘Oh please, just two,' Honey made her eyes as round as coins, and giving up any pretence he was in charge Dan slid out two more and shoved them into their hot hands.

‘Dan!' Jemma was shouting to him again and he ran back upstairs. ‘What?'

‘Shall we do it?' Her eyes were bright.

‘I don't know.'

‘Why not?' she challenged, and instead of telling her why not – so that he could blame her for ever for holding him back, for having four children when he only needed one, for making it impossible to realise his dreams when they all relied on him, all five of them, to be at home, he changed the inflection and shrugged. ‘Why not?'

They looked at each other and Dan attempted a smile. ‘I mean, the worst thing that can happen is they hate me, and then we can come home.'

‘Well, not if we've rented the house.'

‘True.' He bit his lip. ‘Well, they'll just have to love me.'

‘They do love you. Of course they love you. Didn't Finola say the show was getting great reviews?' and showering him with tiny flicks of water she levered herself out.

 

The house was immaculately furnished, with fragile lamps and highly polished surfaces, and although it had a den, a dressing room and a study, it seemed to only have one bedroom. ‘But it does have a pool,' Jemma said brightly, and they pressed their noses against the black panes of glass and stared out into its choppy, rectangular depth.

All night it rained. Dan could hear it crashing against the glass windows of their cold white room while Lola and Grace kicked and snuffled in the bed between them and Ben and Honey shifted uneasily on lilos that they'd laid down in the dressing room next door. At three Grace woke and began to gurgle happily as if it were late morning, which of course it was, for her, and Dan turned on his side and pretended to be oblivious. Jemma fed her and shushed her and even pleaded a little with her to be quiet and then, when Lola woke, she sighed, got up and took them both away. Not long after, he heard Ben begging to be allowed to go in the pool, and then Honey screaming that she was mean, mean, mean for not letting them even try it. ‘It's dark,' Jemma protested, remarkably cheerfully, and some time later, although it was
still
dark, he heard the garden door creak open and the sounds of the three of them, Jemma, Honey and Ben, squealing as they ran out into the rain to dip their feet into the water. ‘It's freezing!' Honey complained. ‘You said it would be warm!' And he heard the slam of the door as they hurtled back in. Eventually, when he really was asleep, Jemma slid in beside him. Her body was chilled and she pressed herself against his back for warmth. ‘The twins are having a nap and the others are watching
Sponge Bob
,' she whispered, and Dan tried to remember where he was. Oh God, it all came back to him, what if they don't like me? What if I can't get a single audition, let alone a job, and then by the time I get back to London they've all forgotten who I am? He felt so sick and weary that when the first baby woke, forty minutes later, Jemma had to kick him in the shins to rouse him.

But once Dan was in the kitchen with Grace under one arm, he was cheered by the sheer Americanness of everything. The size of the fridge, inside which was a two-litre carton of fresh orange juice and a giant bag of bagels, the size of the cooker with its industrial grey hob, and the width of the wide-screen television before which his children sat like puppies, their eyes round, their mouths open. He peered out at the pool. It filled every available space of garden and could be reached from French doors in the den. Once it stops raining, Dan told himself, I'll swim in that pool every day, one hundred lengths, until my body is hard and lean and irresistible.

 

But it didn't stop raining. ‘Is this normal?' they asked the landlord, who appeared shortly after nine to tell them how to work the washing machine and the dryer, how to sweep out the gas-fuelled log fire and adjust the temperature in the pool when – if ever – that became applicable.

‘Not normal at all.' He shook his head and he flicked on the television news to show them how some of the neighbouring houses, clinging to the hill by steps and stilts, were beginning to slide down the mountain. ‘Four people already lost their lives,' he said. ‘And this rain still ain't letting up.'

He lent them his umbrella and offered to drive Dan to a car-hire centre.

‘I won't be long.' Dan turned to Jemma, who'd been mentioning since seven that it would be great to get out, somewhere, anywhere, for breakfast, or lunch, or whatever meal they were on now.

‘Dan . . .' she hissed, widening her eyes at him, but he pretended not to notice and quickly turned away. ‘I'll be half an hour at the most.'

 

The car-hire centre was clean and spacious. There were gleaming saloons and magnificent four-by-fours. ‘I need a family car, with two baby seats, and a booster seat . . . and . . . Do I get a discount if I take it for . . .' he swallowed, ‘six months?'

‘You sure do.' The man smiled at him, his teeth were so highly polished they were translucent. And by the time he'd chosen and filled in all the forms the car salesman, whose name was Duane, wished him not just a Nice Day, but a Fantastic Day, with such genuine enthusiasm that Dan felt quite uplifted. Once behind the wheel, he couldn't resist it, he took the car for a quick spin, and then finding himself driving past a supermarket he decided to stop and buy provisions. The supermarket was enormous, a whole aisle for sliced cheese, and after filling his basket with fruit and vegetables he became distracted by the hardware section where he bought cheap raincoats, a pack of cards and a bumper bag of teething rings for the twins. Then on the way back he forgot the street sign was hidden by the fallen bush and drove fast past it at least five times. When he finally arrived home it was after twelve.

‘How is everyone?' He rushed in through the rain, shaking himself and stamping in the hall.

Jemma's face was stony. ‘Fine.' She handed over Lola and slammed out of the room.

‘What's up with Mummy?' he asked in a conspiratorial way, and Honey hung her head and said Mummy was cross because she'd taken Lola into the garden. ‘I only dipped her feet in the pool up to her toes. I wanted to see if she'd like it.'

‘And did she like it?' Dan laid the baby along the length of his knees and kissed the dense pads of her feet in their stripy skin-tight socks.

‘Not really. I think it's too cold for her. She screamed and screamed and cried.'

‘Right.' Jemma was back, with Grace in a cagoule. She looked as if she'd been crying too. ‘Let's go. We need to get out of this house. Now.'

 

‘For God's sake.' Jemma frowned when she saw the car. A great black seven-seater SUV that all four children had to be lifted into.

Dan raised his hands to show the decision had been beyond him. ‘It's all they had,' he told her. ‘And if it goes on raining we'll need something powerful to get up and down this goddamn hill . . .'

‘Sure, sure . . .' Jemma threw him a disbelieving look and climbed into the front.

‘Honestly.'

The inside of the car smelt so new, so sleek and shiny that it made Dan smile. The windscreen wipers whipped back and forth, the lights on the dashboard twinkled. ‘Hang on,' he said and he ran back into the house and returned with a CD which he slipped into the player. Green Day swelled and roared above the weather. The children squealed and even Jemma couldn't resist a smile. ‘Where to?' he asked, as if everything, from now on, were up to her.