By the same author

The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia

Nudist Colony

Spanish City

The Internationals

The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva
SARAH MAY

This book is dedicated to all women who are either currently attempting - or who have in the past attempted - to raise children and pursue a career…at the same time. Whatever your bank balance… whatever your dress size…whatever the state of your mental health …you’re all DIVAS!

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

The PRC

Prologue

April

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

May

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

June

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

- THE PRC -

THE PRENDERGAST ROAD COMMITTEE

CONTACTS LIST

Name | Address | Tel.
Harriet Burgess | 236 Prendergast Rd | 020 8369 4435
Ros Granger | 188 Prendergast Rd | 020 8369 2311
Kate Hunter | 22 Prendergast Rd | 020 8369 7866
Evie McRae | 112 Prendergast Rd | 020 8369 4956
Jessica Palmer | 283 Prendergast Rd | 020 8369 4221

Prologue

Deep in a valley in the heart of south London, Kate Hunter woke up suddenly among the kind of rumples only a nightmare’s sweat can give black sateen sheets. It was 4.52 a.m. She pulled the sheet up over her head, not wanting to see the early hours’ outline of their IKEA wardrobe, IKEA bed, or IKEA chest of drawers - in case she saw something else that wasn’t meant to be there; something that didn’t feature in the IKEA catalogue - excluding Robert.

The only thing she could remember about the nightmare - and it was a vivid memory - was the feeling of water beneath her. She’d been floating effortlessly until she became aware that the dress she was wearing was beginning to pull her down - was in fact weighted in some way. As soon as she became conscious of the dress, her legs fell down through the water and she started to drown.

She and Robert had argued the night before - or rather, she had argued and he had watched. This was the way they rowed these days. What had the row been about? She didn’t know any more - all she remembered was Robert sitting on the edge of the bed, looking sad and slowly undressing.

For a moment she thought it had started to rain, but it was just a dry April wind brushing through the branches of the rowan tree outside.

Peeling the still-damp sheet from her face, she watched orange streetlight and flat moonlight fall through the broken blinds and compete for space on the bedroom walls. Turning towards the unconscious hump of Robert’s back, she curled into his warmth, her fringe tickling his spine in a fragile apology as she let her nostrils fill with the scent of his skin - and drifted back to sleep.

On the brink of losing consciousness, she thought she heard a strange, sobbing scream. Her body jerked momentarily awake. One of the children? Robert’s mother - Margery - asleep on the sofa bed downstairs? Whoever it was, she wished… she wished…her right leg slipped out of the side of the bed until her toes were hovering just above the floorboards. So that it looked as though she’d been dancing.

At that moment, Robert Hunter woke up without meaning to, unsure whether it was the scream - which he’d heard in his sleep - or Kate’s hair and breath running up his spine that had done it. Rolling carefully onto his back and trying not to trap any of his wife’s hair under his shoulder blades, he listened. In his muddled, pre-dawn mind, he became convinced that Kate’s breath on his spine and the scream had conspired to wake him.

The scream unsettled him and, not entirely convinced he wasn’t still asleep, dreaming, he took himself off to the bathroom and had a perplexed, early morning wank in the shower.

Afterwards, he let his back slide down the tiles until he was crouching, hot water pounding on his bent head.

Today he was teaching Jerome.

On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, he taught Jerome - and today was a Thursday. He didn’t know when exactly it had happened, he was only aware that now he plotted his week mentally around when he did and when he didn’t teach Jerome.

There were children who got to you and then there were children who got inside you. Every teacher he knew - apart from himself, up until now - had one, and his was Jerome. When he shut his eyes he could see Jerome’s face more clearly than he could see his own son, Findlay’s, and what terrified him more than anything was that Jerome was changing him in a way nobody else had; not even Kate, not even his children… and he hated Jerome for that. He’d never been afraid of teaching before, but he was afraid now.

The dry April wind carried on making its way up Prendergast Road through the branches of winter-flowering cherries, silver birches, poplars and more rowans, past bay-fronted Victorian terraces whose drawn curtains were meant to conceal nothing more than healthy functioning families coping with life’s run-of-the-mill ups and downs. The wind knew better, but didn’t have anybody to tell.

As it brushed past No. 112 (which had featured on TV’s Grand Designs only a fortnight ago), Evie McRae - in the grip of exhaustion-induced insomnia after having scored more than a line of cocaine in her garden office - left the house with her five-month-old daughter, Ingrid, and headed for the 24-hour Sainsbury’s where she did the McRae weekly shop.

Ingrid was an abnormal baby.

She slept through the night - often for more than twelvehour stretches - leaving Evie with very little to talk to other women about. So she’d woken Ingrid up - partly because she hated spending time alone and partly in the hope that by 8.00 a.m. she would have the same shadows under her eyes as everybody else she knew - and was now pushing her, screaming, down empty aisles towards the one open checkout.

At No. 188, Ros Granger woke up in an empty bed. It was only 4.52 a.m. Martin was sleeping on the floor of his office at Curlew & Fokes where they were so stretched on the immigration case that most of the lawyers working on it were only getting a maximum of four hours’ sleep a night. After making sure the alarm was set for 6.30, she buried her face in the pillow that still smelt of him and waited to fall back to sleep. ‘I deserve to be happy,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I do deserve to be happy.’

At No. 236, Harriet Burgess woke up to eight-week-old Phoebe’s still newborn-sounding screams. She had been dreaming that Miles had grown breasts and was feeding their daughter. Probably because her sister had phoned last night to tell her she’d just found out that prehistoric Irish chieftains used to symbolically breastfeed their entire kingdom - men, women and children. What sort of person knew this kind of thing? What sort of person thought other people wanted to know this kind of thing? Hauling herself out of bed, she went through to Phoebe, the sensory-triggered security camera they’d had installed in the hallway training its lens on her as she plodded past.

At the top end of Prendergast Road - beyond the crossroads with Whateley Road - Arthur Palmer, aged four and three quarters, woke up screaming. His mother, Jessica Palmer - only half awake - stumbled automatically into his room, tripping over a garage and farmyard, until her hand grasped the foot of Arthur’s bed where Arthur was sitting screaming, still asleep. He was having a night fright, the extremist form of a nightmare.

Even in the half-light, Jessica could make out the muscles on his neck as his body took the strain of fear. He looked like he did when he was having one of his bad asthma attacks and she grabbed his inhaler off the bookshelves.

As she sat down next to him on the end of the bed, closer than she wanted to, the screaming stopped.

Arthur raised his arms weakly - one hand clutching his favourite Transformer, Burke - before sinking untidily back onto the duvet.

Jessica waited, then yawned and got slowly to her feet, creeping out of the room.

In the hallway, eyes nearly shut again, she walked into her sixteen-year-old daughter, Ellie.

‘Everything okay?’ Ellie asked.

‘Oh - everything’s…yeah, it was just Arthur, one of his…one of his…you go back to bed.’

They eyed each other uneasily and, after a moment’s hesitation, Ellie walked unsteadily back into her room on her spindle legs.

‘See you in the morning,’ Jessica called out after her, hoping it sounded natural, then went back to bed herself, thinking she’d fall straight to sleep again; only she didn’t. She rolled around in the big empty bed that seemed to get bigger and emptier every night, then listened to the central heating coming on and - realising that she wasn’t going to get back to sleep until it got dark again in twelve hours’ time - got up.

Downstairs in the kitchen, she stared at her day, plotted out in blue marker pen on the whiteboard next to the fridge.

Her neighbour, Kate Hunter, was picking Arthur up from nursery at 4.30 and taking him to Swim School with Findlay then bringing him home, because Jessica had viewings booked throughout the afternoon. She yawned again as the wind changed direction outside and the fan in the kitchen window started to clack unevenly in its broken frame. When would she get round to mending that? Probably never.

Turning round, she saw the pot of chrysanthemums on the windowsill that she’d bought because she liked the colour pink they’d been in the shop. When she got them home the pink seemed different, and she couldn’t work out why she’d bought them when she’d never liked chrysanthemums anyway. Now they were half dead, the leaves and petals shrivelled.

She went over to the sink, filled an empty milk carton, and was about to water the plant when she stopped, suddenly pouring the contents of the milk carton back down the sink and lighting a cigarette instead.

She stood by the windowsill, smoking and staring at the chrysanthemums, not thinking about anything much.

APRIL

Chapter 1

When Kate woke up again, an hour later, the edge of her pillow was wet, and for no reason at all her first thought was that Robert had been crying. Only Robert wasn’t even in the bed.

‘Robert?’ she called out, anxious.

‘Here,’ he mumbled.

Then she saw him, kneeling on the floor in front of the chest of drawers, the bottom drawer open.

‘I didn’t hear you get up.’ She didn’t like to think of Robert awake while she was asleep.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said and carried on digging around in the drawer.

Neither of them mentioned last night’s row; the sun was shining, a new day was beginning, and there just wasn’t room for it.

‘You’re wet,’ she observed.

‘Yeah—I showered.’

‘Already? I didn’t hear the shower.’ Kate carried on watching him.

Robert scratched at his armpit then stood up suddenly.

‘What is it you’re looking for?’

‘I don’t know—I’ve forgotten. Christ…’ he added, ambivalently.

On the other side of the bedroom door they could hear Margery, who was staying with them at the moment while she had her Leicestershire bungalow repainted, irritably attempting to make a pot of tea. Everything about No. 22 Prendergast Road irritated Margery—primarily because she couldn’t believe what Robert and Kate had paid for a terraced house with neighbours on one side who weren’t even white.

The kettle started shrieking on the hob. The kettle irritated Margery—why didn’t they get an electric one? Even the water coming out through the tap irritated her, and the irritation was so intense that Kate, lying upstairs in bed, could feel it as Robert walked towards her through bars of early morning sunlight.

‘I heard someone screaming last night,’ she heard herself saying as the smashing sounds carried on downstairs. ‘I thought it might have been your mum.’ Why had she said that? She hadn’t meant to say anything about the scream in the night.

Robert, who had been about to sit down on the side of the bed and kiss her, stayed standing instead.

‘She used to do that when I was a kid,’ he said, suddenly remembering.

Still propped on her elbow, which was sinking deeper and deeper into the pillow, Kate waited for him to carry on, but he didn’t. Unexpectedly, at 6.10 on a Thursday morning, the clouds had parted and Robert had given her a picture of a small child standing outside a shut bedroom door on a cold landing in the early hours of the morning, waiting for the woman on the other side to stop screaming; hating himself for not having the courage to open the door and walk in and comfort her when he knew he was all she had.

Kate and him stared at each other, momentarily stunned. Robert never talked about his childhood. He never talked about it with Margery or other people who had been there, so why talk about it with people who hadn’t? For him, it was time that had passed—and anyway, now he was healthily involved in the direct manufacture of his own children’s childhoods.

He shrugged uncomfortably at his own transgression, then said cheerfully, ‘So—what’s on for today?’

‘Today’s the day.’

‘For what?’

‘Robert—you can’t have forgotten.’

‘What?’

‘St Anthony’s. Today we find out…whether Finn’s got a place at St Anthony’s.’ That’s what the row had been about last night—now she remembered and, pulling the pillow out suddenly from under her elbow, threw it at him.

Robert ducked and the pillow went crashing into the already broken blind, breaking another three slats.

‘God, I hate those fucking blinds.’

Kate was trying to decide whether he was genuinely angry or not when she heard Flo, on the other side of the bedroom wall, starting to cry.

‘Princess is up,’ Robert said.

Ignoring this, Kate hauled herself automatically out of bed and said, ‘Well, let’s hope we don’t have to sell the house or anything.’

‘Why would we need to sell the house?’

‘It’s the only viable option,’ she carried on.

‘Viable option for what?’

‘Getting Finn into St Anthony’s. This end of Prendergast Road isn’t guaranteed catchment area.’

‘But isn’t that why you’ve been dragging him to bloody church every Sunday since before he could talk, and why you—’

Kate started to speak over him. ‘Beulah Hill’s guaranteed. Jessica’s been telling me about this place that’s been on the market for over a month now—and it’s a hundred and twenty thousand cheaper than what we’d get for this so we’d actually make some money,’ she said, realising as she looked at Robert’s face that this was the first time either of them had openly acknowledged that they needed to. ‘What d’you think?’ she said after a while, over Flo’s increasingly loud and peculiar bleating sounds. Even after six months, the bleating still sounded odd to Kate.

She smiled absently at him as he walked over, put his hands on her shoulders, eventually kissed her and said quietly, ‘I think that’s fucking nuts.’

‘But, Robert—’

‘If we need to talk about our finances—’

‘Our finances?’ Kate started to laugh.

The laughter was ambiguous. Now he was anxious and over the past six months, which had been difficult—although the word ‘difficult’ didn’t do justice to their marriage so far, so he’d avoided using the word—anxiety had become the third person in their marriage, making it an unpredictable ménage à trois.

There was a scratching at the door and Margery’s voice, ‘Flo’s awake—do you want me to feed her?’

‘It’s fine,’ Kate said, ‘I’m just coming.’

How long had Margery been there? It was difficult to tell; she’d perfected the art of creeping soundlessly around the house. Sometimes, when Kate came back from work, she thought the house was empty until Margery appeared at random, framed in a doorway Kate was about to walk through, claiming to have been asleep.

‘She’s really working herself up.’

‘Mum—it’s fine,’ Robert cut in.

Margery paused. ‘Morning, love.’

‘Morning, Mum,’ Robert called back, watching Kate pull on some black pants that had gone threadbare at the back.

‘D’you want tea—I’ve just made some?’

‘We’re fine.’

‘There’s plenty in the pot.’

‘It’s okay—we’re coming down now.’

When Kate appeared five minutes later, Margery was still hovering on the landing.

‘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 daughter—now bleating hysterically—out 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 him—the 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 week—it’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 bed—all with one hand. ‘But not the mask—they 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 yet—a 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 cereal—when there was any—at 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 street—until 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 first—or one of the first times, anyway—that Robert had left the house in the morning without saying goodbye. Had the Hunter marriage entered a new phase, and would she—as she’d always hoped—live 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 out—it 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 weather—doesn’t keep.’

‘It doesn’t need to keep, it just gets eaten—and 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 cry—it 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.

‘Shit—Flo.’

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 here—now? The world was a terrifying place Margery thought, her mind full of Arabs scaling drainpipes—too 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, which—local rumour had it—was 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 mothers—in particular, his mother—sometimes 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?’

‘Oh—she 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 moment—and the rows; like the one that had resounded through the ceiling last night.

With Flo balanced awkwardly on her shoulder, Kate—now nauseous with anticipation—ripped 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 face—what?’

‘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 letter—when 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.

‘Hey—it’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 bruvvers—it 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. ‘Finn—come 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.

‘Martina—your 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 skittered rapidly over last night’s chicken chasseur assembled with the aid of a chicken chasseur sachet and some bestbuy chicken goujons. ‘It’s fine—I’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 cupboards—he 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 years—his glorious, glorious potential—she’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 want—but 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 Society—if 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 faces—that was what Findlay called it. Kate said it was a brothel—Margery wasn’t sure whether she was joking or not—and 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.

Margery smiled—she wasn’t sure what else to do—and continued to smile as the woman disappeared into No. 21. She looked—Margery decided—like the girlfriend of the landlord at the Fox and Hounds where Margery and her friend Edith had a spritzer on Fridays—and she was Lithuanian. Darren, the landlord, had intimated softly to Margery and Edith that Lithuanian girls really knew how to look after men.

Edith always used to say that Robert would end up with someone like that. A Lithuanian—or worse—a Rastafarian. Margery wasn’t even sure if there were female Rastafarians, which made the insult even worse. Was Edith implying that Robert was gay? She’d got East Leeke library to order a biography of Haile Selassie in order to get to the bottom of the matter, and had been halfway through it when Edith informed her—through pinched lips—that her son, Andrew, was marrying a girl called Joy, who was Thai.

Up until Joy, Edith and Margery’s friendship had a formula. It was understood that Edith had things and people in her life that Margery—bringing up an illegitimate child alone—was expected to envy. That’s how their relationship had always worked, and Margery had put up with a lot from Edith over the years because Edith was all she had and her son, Andrew, all Robert had.

Joy changed everything.

Edith had been all the way to Thailand to visit her. Joy lived in a village with no running water, but they’d gone to a restaurant for Edith’s birthday where you paid for the glass and could then refill it with Coca-Cola as many times as you liked. Not that Edith liked Coca-Cola, but—as she was quick to point out—that wasn’t the point.

Edith said Andrew was going to buy Joy’s village and turn it into a tourist destination—the Genuine Thai Experience. She also gave Margery some lurid and unasked-for details about Andrew and Joy’s sex life that Margery was unable to fathom how she’d come by. None of this sex and commerce, however, detracted from the fact—as far as Margery was concerned—that Andrew had married a mailorder Thai bride because he couldn’t get himself a decent English girl.

Since their sons’ respective marriages, the balance of power had shifted in the relationship between Margery and Edith.

While Margery might not exactly get on with Kate, Kate did at least speak English.

‘Do you like tea?’ a foreign voice called out from somewhere in the house behind her.

‘Tea?’ Martina asked her again, from the kitchen doorway this time.

Margery nodded, shutting the front door tentatively behind her and staying where she was, listening to the clink of china in the kitchen. So the au pair knew how to make her way round the kitchen then; knew how to help herself.

‘Please—try this,’ Martina said, reappearing in the hallway and handing Margery a cup of scarlet-coloured tea.

‘What’s this?’ Margery asked, sniffing at it.

‘Raspberry. I drink it three times a day,’ Martina said.

Margery had no intention of drinking the tea. Not after the article she’d read in CHAT last week about the cleaner who’d given an elderly woman like her a drink with a paralytic in it that had paralysed her from the neck down. Once the woman was paralysed, the cleaner performed an autopsy on her WHILE SHE WAS STILL ALIVE, filmed the whole thing and put it on the Internet. Nobody was catching Margery out like that—especially not a communist. Nobody was performing an autopsy on Margery without her permission.

She followed Martina back into the kitchen, noting the carrier bag on the bench with the box of tea bags inside that Martina must have brought with her.

‘You bought these all the way from Czechoslovakia with you?’ she asked, suspiciously

‘From Slovakia—yes.’

‘You can get hold of that sort of thing there then?’

‘Of course,’ Martina said, lifting her cup. ‘You like?’

Margery didn’t respond to this. ‘Did you have to queue a long time for the tea?’

‘For this tea? I don’t know. My mother bought it at the supermarket. There are always queues at the supermarket.’

Margery put her cup of tea down on the kitchen surface. ‘You have supermarkets?’

Martina nodded, blowing on her tea. ‘I take my mother in the car one time a week.’

‘Car?’

‘My car—yes.’

‘You’ve got more than one?’

‘We have two.’

A two-car family—and there was Robert having to either cycle to work or get the bus because Kate needed the car. Margery glared at Martina, as if her car, the Krasinovic’s second car, parked outside their block in Blac, was somehow denying the Hunter family their second car.

At least—as she discovered several minutes later—all the Krasinovic family lived in a flat; unheated, she presumed, until Martina set her straight on this as well, informing her that the Krasinovic apartment in Blac not only had central heating, but double glazing as well.

Margery’s eyes skidded, mortified, over the rotting, peeling sash windows in the Hunter’s kitchen that Kate refused to replace with new uPVC double glazing—not even after one of Margery’s insurance policies came off and she offered to pay for the double glazing herself.

Presuming the conversation over, Martina retrieved the Carry-It-All that Margery had bought Kate at Christmas from the cupboard under the sink. The Carry-It-All was a turquoise plastic container with a handle that you could use to transport your cleaning arsenal round the house.

Margery had a lilac one at home—which she had ordered from the Bettaware catalogue along with Kate’s—and it gave her a huge amount of pleasure, on a Monday morning, to make her way round her East Leeke bungalow with it. It was dishwasher proof as well—something she’d pointed out to Kate when Kate hadn’t shown quite the right amount of enthusiasm or appreciation of the carefully chosen Carry-It-All. ‘It’s dishwasher proof,’ she’d said, pointedly, and Kate had given her that lopsided grimace she thought passed for a smile, followed by that look she put on—like she was the only person on the planet who’d ever had to forsake their dreams.

Margery found the Carry-It-All at the beginning of this visit, at the back of the cupboard under the sink—where Kate had thrown it—on its side with part of its handle discoloured where bleach had dripped onto it. Its abandonment felt more intentional than careless and this fact had moved her almost to tears when she’d discovered it on her first morning here, in an empty house. She’d since washed it, replenished it with a selection of cleaning products bought with her own money, and left it at the front of the cupboard.

Someone was talking to her. She’d got lost in herself again and hadn’t heard; one day she’d get lost in herself and never come back and Robert and Kate and the children would put her in a place that smelt perpetually of food nobody could remember eating—like that place her and Edith went to visit Rose in when Rose came down with Alzheimer’s.

‘What’s that, dear?’ she said to Martina. The ‘dear’ surprised her, had slipped through usually tight lips without her even thinking about it. She said it sometimes, to waitresses when she was out with Edith, or to young cashiers at the Co-op. She only ever said it to strangers, and it always caught her unawares.

Whether Martina understood the endearment or not, her face lost some of its wariness.

‘I must clean now,’ she said, the Carry-It-All in her hand.

‘Yes,’ Margery agreed vaguely, suddenly shouting, ‘wait!’ Martina was going upstairs to clean. What if she’d forgotten to flush the loo? She pushed upstairs ahead of the au pair, breathing heavily, until she was standing, panting while staring down the toilet bowl. She had flushed the loo, but flushed it again anyway for good measure. Watching the flush, she thought fondly of the streams of luminescent blue that flooded her toilet at home as the flush passed through her new toilet bloc, clipped to the rim. She thought about how she’d stood in the new ASDA store where the mobility bus dropped her off and debated for at least five minutes over whether to choose the green or blue toilet bloc. There was nothing so colourful about the flush at No. 22 Prendergast Road; nothing to wipe away the memory of necessity.

For a moment Margery forgot what she was doing up in the bathroom, staring down the loo, then at the tread on the stairs, she remembered. They really were going to put her in that place alongside Alzheimer’s Rose if this didn’t stop.

Chapter 3

Kate pulled up slowly in front of Village Montessori, checking to see if cars belonging to anybody she knew were parked in the nursery’s vicinity. Seeing Evie’s, she drove round the block slowly twice and after the second lap saw the tail end of the black Chrysler disappear into Hebron Road. It was safe.

Fading out Findlay’s monologue on the death of one of the nursery chickens, which were kept in a hut in the playground—bird flu?—she moved swiftly through the security gate with Flo on her and Findlay behind her towards the nursery entrance, past the Welcome to our Nursery sign in French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Gaelic, Arabic, Chinese, and Urdu. On the wall next to this was a montage of photographs taken by Sebastian Salgado of child labourers in South American mines that parents were beginning to complain to the Management Committee about.

‘Red rooster’s eyes went yellow and mushy when she died, like inside a wasp when you squish it, and Sandy who does music and movement said it wasn’t a fox,’ Findlay carried on as he hung up his coat, then added, ‘Martina’s grandma did make a football out of a pig’s head and it’s true. I’ve seen the film.’

Kate, who’d been on the verge of pushing him gently into the Butterfly Room, stopped. ‘Film?’

‘She’s got a film of it on her phone. Arthur,’ he yelled, then, turning back to Kate said, ‘is Arthur going to my new school?’

‘We don’t know what school Arthur’s going to—why don’t you ask him?’

Findlay ran over to the Home Corner where Arthur was kneeling in front of the oven, removing a large green casserole pot that he’d put a Baby Annabel doll in earlier.

‘What school are you going to?’

Kate waited.

Arthur was about to respond when one of the nursery staff went up to Findlay and said loudly, ‘Shall we give this to Mummy?’ tugging pointedly at the mask on his head.

Sighing, Findlay pulled it off and pushed it into Kate’s hand, turning his attention back to Arthur.

‘We need knives and forks,’ Arthur was saying, efficiently.

‘We have a no-masks policy at nursery,’ the woman said.

‘I forgot,’ Kate quickly apologised before virtually running along the corridor with Flo towards the Caterpillar Room, where she handed her over to her primary carer, Mary.

She got back to the car without running into anybody else she knew, and checked her phone. There was an ecstatic message from Evie telling her that Aggie was ‘in’, an almost identical one from Ros re. Toby Granger, and a message from Harriet telling her in a strangely officious manner that Casper had won a place—won?—and reminding her to bring a food contribution to that night’s PRC meeting. Kate hadn’t even given it a thought.

She drove the car round the corner to Beulah Hill and parked outside the property Jessica had told her about. The house had nets up at windows painted peach, and a dead laurel in the front garden. She got the letter out of her breast pocket and read it again, just to see if anything had changed since she put it in there. She reached the Yours sincerely, Jade Jackson—Head of Admissions at the end. Nothing had changed. She felt, irrationally, that Findlay not being offered a place at St Anthony’s had something to do with Jade Jackson being Jamaican.

We are writing to inform you of the outcome of your application for a Southwark primary school. Your child has been offered a place at Brunton Park. The school will be contacting you with further information shortly….

She watched a pit-bull urinate against the tree on the other side of the window, then tried phoning the Admissions line, knowing how hopeless it would be trying to get through on the day all the offers had gone out. She listened to the engaged tone until she was automatically disconnected, then tried phoning St Anthony’s instead, eventually getting through to a woman who told her the school was once again oversubscribed and how this year more than twenty-five places had gone to siblings.

The woman cut her off before Kate even got round to telling her that they attended St Anthony’s Church every Sunday—every Sunday—or asking whether the school had definitely received the Reverend Walker’s letter confirming this.

She pushed her head back roughly against the car seat and tried phoning Robert, who didn’t answer, so sat contemplating No. 8 Beulah Hill instead. She was going to be late for her first appointment, and didn’t care.

Chapter 4

At No. 22 Prendergast Road, Margery stood listening to Martina clean the bathrooms, then went back into the kitchen, humming a Max Bygraves song to herself as she started on the pastry for the corned beef and onion pie she’d decided to make for Robert’s tea that night. She watched her fingers lightly pull the mixture together in the way she’d been taught as a girl by her grandmother, who went mad playing the organ, and thought of all the different kitchens she’d watched her fingers do this in over the years, and how the fingers had changed—grown lines, knobbles, arthritic twists and turns and finally gone all loose; so loose that the few rings she had would probably have already fallen off if they hadn’t got caught in the loose folds of skin round the knuckles.

The litany of industrious sounds coming from upstairs comforted Margery as she rolled the pastry and lined the pie tin—Communists certainly knew how to clean. When she went to wash her hands, she saw the envelope Kate had left for Martina on the surface by the sink. She went into the hallway and listened. Martina had just started hoovering. Margery went into the lounge and took another envelope out of Robert’s desk drawer—it wasn’t actually Robert’s desk, it was Kate’s, but Margery always referred to it as Robert’s—and went back into the kitchen.

She quickly tore open Martina’s pay packet and pulled out a twenty-pound note. She stood there for a moment, brushing flour off her nostrils with the crisp new note and knew that, according to her calculations, there was no way Kate and Robert could stretch to eighty pounds a month on a cleaner. Margery knew the Hunters’ finances as well as any accountant because she’d spent the better part of yesterday morning going through their two fiscal files. The Hunters were, in her opinion, in dire straits—she didn’t know how they kept the show up and running or why they weren’t collapsing under the strain of their imminent financial ruin. She could only surmise that Robert was keeping it from Kate and bearing the burden alone. She didn’t understand her son’s marriage. It seemed unnatural to her; more important still, it was unsustainable. What was it Robert said to her all those years ago: ‘Wait till you meet her, Mum—she’s going to change the world—not just mine; everyone’s. Kofi Annan beware.’

Well, personal finances were clearly below the likes of Kofi Annan, but Margery knew bailiffs—had had experience of bailiffs throughout her childhood, and she could smell them in the air now. Kofi Annan or not, when it was time they came for you and nothing could keep them from the door. They went where they were sent and didn’t discriminate. Margery stuffed the twenty-pound note into the new envelope as the hoover cut out upstairs, put it back on the bench by the cooker and opened two cans of corned beef that she’d bought with her from East Leeke. When she turned round, Ivan the cat was standing motionless on the kitchen floor, watching her, its back arched. She felt immediately nauseous; cats always made her feel nauseous. They brought her underarms out in a rash and gave her vertigo.

Then the phone started to ring in the lounge and she wasn’t sure what to do about it because Ivan showed no sign of moving, was in fact now sending out a hissing spit in her general direction. Even without Ivan, the phone alarmed her with its flashing lights and antennae.

‘You want me to get?’ Martina called out from the upstairs landing.

At the sound of Martina’s voice, Ivan relaxed and strolled past Margery towards his bowl, brushing her ankles.

Margery jogged quickly into the lounge and started to wrestle with the still ringing phone, eventually pressing the right button—because it might be Robert; it might always be Robert…

It was Beatrice, Kate’s mother.

‘Margery—how are you? I had no idea you were in town.’

Town? What town? ‘The cleaner’s here,’ Margery said, for no particular reason.

‘That’s nice,’ Beatrice said after a while.

So the cleaner was news to Beatrice as well. Margery relaxed a little. ‘She’s from Czechoslovakia,’ she explained.

On the other end of the phone Beatrice, unsure why they were talking about the cleaner, said briskly, ‘There’s no such place.’

Margery baulked. ‘What?’

‘There’s the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but no Czechoslovakia.’

‘Martina never said,’ Margery carried on, more to herself than Beatrice, ‘but they were Communists?’

‘While the Soviet Union was still in power—yes.’

‘I was going to ask her if she had any KGB stories.’

‘KGB?’

‘You know—the KGB—the secret police.’ Margery had withdrawn an abundance of material on the Gestapo and KGB from East Leeke Library’s well-stocked history section.

‘You must of heard about the KGB, Beatrice—how they used to come in the night while you were asleep,’ Margery carried on, breathless. ‘The footsteps on the stairs, down the hallway…knocking on doors, doors opening…people disappearing.’ She paused. ‘They came in the night,’ she said again, insisting on this.

After a while, Beatrice said lightly, ‘So does Freddie Kruger.’

‘He sounds German—was Czechoslovakia covered by the Stasi?’ Margery asked, interested.

‘Margery,’ Beatrice reined her in. ‘How long are you staying for?’

This brought Margery up short. Always sensitive to any hint of expulsion or the fact that she was outstaying her welcome, she said quickly, ‘Not long—it’s just while I’ve got the decorators in.’

‘What colour?’ Beatrice asked. She’d been to Margery’s East Leeke bungalow once—when Kate and Robert got married—and the only place she’d ever been to before that bore even the slightest semblance to the bungalow in terms of décor and overall atmosphere was a euthanasia clinic on Denmark’s Jutland coast.

‘What colour—what?’

‘What colour are you having the walls painted?’

Beatrice was shouting—Margery was sure Beatrice was shouting at her, and there was no need to do that; there was nothing partial about her hearing.

‘Magnolia,’ she said, surprised Beatrice had even asked.

‘What colour was it before?’

‘Magnolia.’

A pause. ‘Margery—is Kate there?’

‘She went out,’ Margery said, making it sound like she’d gone shopping and not to work as a clinical psychologist.

‘I was just phoning to see if Finn got into St Anthony’s—Kate said they were meant to hear by today.’

Finn—was Robert Rob or Robbie? ‘The letter came.’

‘And?’

Margery paused; suddenly thrilled by the notion that she had a small piece of the Hunter family’s future in her hands that Beatrice wasn’t yet aware of. ‘Well…’ she trailed off, provocatively. She could get Edith to the point sometimes where she was begging, her cheap dentures sliding around inside her mouth across saliva-ridden gums.

‘Did he get in?’

‘The letter said he did.’ What did that mean? Margery wasn’t sure, but she felt herself scanning the lounge to see if Kate had left the letter anywhere. She wouldn’t mind a look at that letter.

‘Thank God,’ Beatrice breathed down the phone. ‘Kate was talking about home schooling if Finn didn’t get in…leaving London—the works,’ she carried on.

‘Leaving London?’

‘Well, now she won’t need to bother.’

‘Leaving London for where?’

‘I don’t know, Margery, you know those two—Kate was going on about America, and Rob…’

She called him Rob.

‘…was talking about New Zealand. They talked themselves into a taste for bigger things; who knows, maybe they’ll end up going anyway,’ Beatrice concluded cheerfully.

Margery was shocked. New Zealand? Robert never said anything to her about New Zealand.

‘I’ll try and catch Kate before she starts work—and you must come down here to see us—get a blast of fresh air.’ She paused. ‘Come on your own, if you like, I mean if you get sick of family life. I can always come and get you—just give us a bell.’

Margery didn’t respond to this; still hadn’t responded by the time Beatrice rang off. New Zealand. She tried phoning Edith, but Edith didn’t answer.

Martina appeared in the lounge doorway.

Margery stared helplessly at her before blurting out, ‘New Zealand’s on the other side of the world.’

Martina smiled and moved cautiously into the room with the hoover, watched by Margery. After a while she put the hoover away and disappeared into the kitchen. Margery remained in the lounge, staring at the phone.

‘I go now,’ Martina called out.

‘Already?’ Margery responded, involuntarily, walking slowly into the hallway.

Martina was at the front door, the white envelope in her hand. ‘Now I have much ironing to do for Mr Catano.’

‘Catano?’

‘A bit Korean, I think.’

‘Korean?’ Margery said as Martina opened the front door, thinking briefly of cousin Tom.

Martina pushed her bike past sunflowers that Kate had let Findlay plant and that Margery thought would look ridiculous by July when they reached shoulder-height.

‘I see you again next week.’

‘Maybe,’ Margery called out, unable to think about next week when she could barely keep her mind fixed on what was happening the rest of today—especially after hearing about New Zealand.

‘And please—I fed the cat.’

Margery was about to say something about the cat when she heard the door to No. 20—the Jamaican’s door—start to open. She went quickly back inside, slamming the door to No. 22 shut and going into the lounge where she watched carefully, through slatted blinds Martina hadn’t forgotten to dust, as Mr Hamilton moved slowly over to his recycling bin and put an empty milk carton in it.

The sun glanced off his gold wristwatch as he turned round, shaking his head at a private thought before looking up suddenly, straight at her, smiling.

Scowling, Margery backed away from the window, almost running into the hallway where she slid the chain across the front door as quietly as she could, then waited. No sound of movement on the other side. Then, after another minute, the front door to No. 20 was shut.

Scared as well as preoccupied, Margery went into the kitchen to pick up where she’d left off with the corned beef pie. She sliced an onion over the pastry base and went to get the corned beef out the cupboard before remembering that she’d already done that. There it was on the bench. Only the tins were empty. When had she done that? She looked from the empty tins to the empty pie case.

Where was the corned beef?

Slowly her eyes took a downward turn to Ivan’s bowl, which was full.

Chapter 5

Robert sat staring about the Ellington Technology College staff room waiting for Kate to call him about St Anthony’s—and whether Findlay had got a place.

The seat next to him was blue and covered in cigarette burns from the days when staff were allowed to smoke. A Swiss cheese plant belonging to Les Davies, deputy head—that had been there as long as Les—was on top of a filing cabinet behind him that nobody had opened for years, and that blocked out what little natural light had the heart to try and make its way into the room.

The bell had rung and the dust had resettled. An art teacher with a cold was snivelling in a corner and muttering at a memo Sellotaped to the wall while inadvertently slopping the sleeves of her jumper into her coffee. The memo was from the Metropolitan Police warning staff at the school of a new gang whose initiation ceremony comprised driving a car in the dark without putting the car’s headlights on. If another driver on the road flashed the car, the wannabe gang member had to pursue it and shoot the driver. Bettina, the new geography teacher from South Africa, was looking at a property investment magazine’s special Romania supplement, which was the only place in Europe on her salary where she could afford to buy.

After staring for another second, transfixed by a ripped corner of carpet tile the same helpless blue as the chairs, Robert hauled himself to his feet. Bettina looked up from the computer-generated image of a Romanian shepherd’s hut after modernisation, and stared—distracted—at Robert.

‘I’m meant to be teaching now,’ he said.

Bettina didn’t say anything to this; she just nodded and went back to the modernised shepherd’s hut.

The art teacher carried on muttering and Robert left the room, the smell of burnt coffee, frustration and despair replaced immediately by the smell of the next generation—whoever they were.

When he got to his classroom, the door was open and the kids were inside, unaccountably silent, until Robert realised that the squat man in the corridor outside, staring through the window opposite the door, was Les the deputy head. Despite bearing an uncanny resemblance to Goebbels, he was the only incorruptible thing in the school and, because of this, the children were terrified of him. Les was from the Rhondda Valley and used to get heavily involved in school musicals—when they used to have school musicals…when they used to have a music department.

Most people found Les aggressive; some of them even found him tyrannical, but Robert and Les shared a mutual, hard-earned respect for each other, and Robert always found him protective.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said to Les’s back, jerking his thumb at the classroom full of children and suddenly aware that he was out of breath even though he hadn’t been running. ‘I got caught up, and…sorry,’ he said again.

Les sighed, but didn’t turn round.

He carried on standing, motionless, as if he had finally come to the conclusion that while he didn’t have a life, he did have an existence and an existence, if nothing else, did at least provide respite from having to decide whether he was alive or in fact dead.

‘What are you doing with them?’ he said at last, still without turning round.

‘Seamus Heaney,’ Robert said, automatically.

‘I never did like Seamus Heaney—I think I tried to. Anyway, I unlocked the classroom and got them in for you.’

‘Thanks—thanks for that.’

‘I was passing and Keisha was banging Shanique’s head repetitively against the wall.’

‘Yeah, Keisha does that.’

‘Ellie Palmer’s in this class,’ Les said, suddenly changing the subject.

‘Ellie’s—’

‘A brilliant and messy girl,’ Les finished quietly for him. It was Les and Robert, jointly, who were behind getting Ellie to apply for the St Paul’s sixth-form scholarship. He turned round suddenly, staring at Robert. ‘Are her and Jerome Simmons still going out?’

Robert shook his head slowly. ‘Don’t think so.’ He didn’t have the perverse interest in the students’ love lives that a lot of the staff had.

The two men watched each other, Robert fighting hard against his instinct to tell Les that, for the first time in his professional life, he was terrified of walking through that classroom door because of Jerome Simmons. That up until this moment he’d always felt that the job needed him as much as he needed the job, but now he was starting to believe he was in the wrong place and that somebody else should be doing this. He wasn’t sure he wanted Les knowing this because this would make him, Robert, just like every other teacher in Ellington and the kids already knew… were already onto him with the instinct of a pack, systematically rooting out weakness because children can’t abide weakness.

‘What’s he doing?’ he said instead to distract Les, pointing at Simba, the caretaker, who was out on the flat roof just below.

‘What’s that?’ Les turned slowly away from him to stare at Simba. ‘Oh—pigeons. He’s been trying to perfect some sort of acid glue he can paint on the roof to discourage them from landing.’ Les let out another sigh. ‘The acid in the glue burns their feet off if they do land—apparently.’

Robert didn’t comment on this.

The murmur from the classroom behind them was getting louder and interspersed with distinct screams, shrieks and rhythmically choreographed abusive exchanges. Robert recognised Jerome’s voice and knew his face had changed and knew that when Les turned round he wouldn’t be able to disguise the fear his face was full of.

So he turned quickly to the window again, staring out over Simba’s bent back and the edge of the roof to the only piece of green in sight; an inexplicable mound about the same shape as a small Iron-Age fort that was known among staff and students alike simply as ‘The Clump’. Beyond The Clump was the Esso garage the council had sold the school’s last playing field to and, beyond that, the Elephant and Castle.

Local press abounded with mythical promises of regeneration, but at the moment the panorama on offer was a four-lane super-roundabout with exits leading to some of London’s most destitute spinal cords—and a Soviet-era shopping centre, which was quite a feat of urban planning in a country that had never had its own Soviet era.

A couple of boys—possibly students—pushed a moped across the empty playground.

‘In the beginning,’ Les said suddenly, ‘somebody somewhere had a vision, that’s all.’ He sounded elegiac—as though he’d decided right then and there that he’d lived one life too many. He clapped Robert warmly, forcefully, on the shoulder. ‘You’ll be all right.’

Robert nodded.

Then, with Les’s footsteps still ringing down the corridor, he walked into the classroom and the crescendoing, unavoidable, ‘Yo, sir! Yo, sir!’ There in front of him was the mob.

His eyes hit Ellie because she was sitting at the front of the class to the right-hand side of his desk and was the first thing in his line of vision. He hadn’t meant to look at her in particular, and certainly never intended to look at Jerome after that. But he did—and saw that Jerome had seen him looking at Ellie.

He’d been caught off guard, but then it had been so long since anybody had looked at him in the way Ellie had when he walked into the room. When was the last time he’d caused anybody so much pleasure, simply by walking through a door?

Her eyes opened so wide he felt he could have just carried on walking straight into them.

He came to a halt behind the desk, pressing his fists down hard into the surface. This was wrong. The wrong way to think and the wrong direction to start walking in—no matter how wide her eyes opened.

Chapter 6

At No. 22 Prendergast Road, Margery was on all fours crying with rage over Ivan’s bowl, which was full of corned beef. She’d seen it, smelt it and tasted it—and it was definitely corned beef.

When Ivan came creeping back into the kitchen, his shoulder blades rolling smoothly as he sniffed at the floor around his bowl, Margery screamed at him, still sobbing, ‘Bugger off, just bugger off.’ She elbowed the white cat away, anger replacing fear, but Ivan came back, nonplussed by the elbow in his flank—and gave the corned beef a few aggressive licks.

Margery staggered to her feet and kicked him across the kitchen.

After bouncing off the fridge, he landed with a whine, paused, licked at a back paw then padded quietly into the hallway where he sat and waited, letting his posture insinuate that his dignity, at least, was intact.

Panting, Margery slammed the kitchen door shut, decanted the corned beef from Ivan’s bowl into a plastic mixing bowl and, taking a pair of tweezers from her handbag, which she always kept within close range, started to painstakingly pick Ivan’s hairs out of the corned beef.

Chapter 7

Jessica Palmer was inside No. 8 Beulah Hill doing a viewing with a young, top-of-the-range couple when her mobile rang. She didn’t usually take calls during viewings—not unless it was Ellie or the nursery—but she took this one because it was Kate Hunter, and Kate was meant to be picking Arthur up from nursery and taking him to Swim School. In fact, Kate Hunter was her childcare lifeline.

The top-of-the-range young couple drifted upstairs.

Beulah Hill, like the rest of the streets in the postcode, had gone from destitute to up-and-coming to boom as generations of Irish and Jamaicans started selling up and moving out, and young couples started selling flats in Battersea, Putney and Clapham and moving in; taking out extra-large mortgages in order to pay for the reinstallation of sash windows the Irish and Jamaicans had replaced with uPVC double glazing. Once the sash windows were reinstalled, they moved onto the floors, replacing carpet with solid wood flooring. Sea green and lilac bathroom suites were ripped out, along with any dividing walls—to create living spaces that allowed lifestyles to circulate more freely. Some of the houses—like the McRaes’—got to feature on TV makeover programmes.

No. 8 had yet to be made over.

‘Kate?’ Jessica whispered into the phone.

‘Hi, Jessica?’

‘Hi…’

‘Why are you whispering?’

‘I’m doing a viewing on Beulah Hill.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I said, I’m doing a viewing on Beulah Hill.’ There was a pause. ‘Kate?’

‘Beulah Hill? You’re there at the moment? Has anyone put an offer in yet?’

‘No.’ Jessica scanned the green shag-pile carpet and green leather three-piece. The light coming through the double layers of net at the windows made the room seem as though it was under water, and had the effect of making Jesus, with his arms outstretched, executed in oils and framed on the wall above the mantle—look as if he was floating.

‘Why were you asking—?’ she joked. Then, before Kate had time to respond to this, said, ‘Is it still okay for you to take the boys swimming tonight and pick them up?’ She tried not to sound desperate, knowing from experience how off-putting desperation was but, since Peter’s death, she seemed to be perpetually desperate, and perpetually having to conceal it was draining.

When Kate didn’t respond to this, she prompted her, ‘The boys? Swimming?’ and waited.

‘Swimming?’ Kate’s voice sounded vague and preoccupied.

‘You were going to take the boys to Swim School after nursery and then I was going to pick Arthur up from yours around six?’

Silence, as Kate rapidly processed these facts as if she was hearing them for the first time, which she wasn’t. ‘Fine—yes, that’s fine. Robert’s going to pick the boys up from swimming.’ She made a mental note to remind Robert.

Jessica, trying not to cry with relief, missed what Kate said next. ‘What’s that?’

‘I said maybe I am interested.’

‘In what?’

‘Taking a look at Beulah Hill.’

‘You’re thinking of moving?’

‘Possibly.’ Kate’s only appointment that morning had been a teenage schizophrenic, so she’d spent most of her time after printing off a map of the St Anthony’s catchment area, as well as two copies of the appeal form, on Rightmove. By the time she discovered that the only property with at least three bedrooms under seven hundred thousand and within the catchment area was No. 8 Beulah Hill, a dull thumping sensation had started somewhere just behind her left temple, and she knew that at some point that day she would have a migraine.

‘But you’ve got a lovely house.’

In the silence that followed, Kate realised that Jessica was waiting for some sort of explanation. ‘We were thinking of buying something abroad,’ she lied—another lie. ‘Maybe downscaling in London, cashing in on some capital and getting somewhere in France—to take the kids in the holidays.’

‘Well, how much were you thinking of spending?’ Jessica said, thinking that at least the Hunters would be around in the term-time still. Kate was the only person she knew who ever offered to help with Arthur.

‘Around four fifty?’

‘This is on for four eighty.’

‘I know, I’ve been looking at it on Rightmove. How long’s it been on the market for?’

‘Over six weeks.’

‘So you haven’t been able to shift it.’

‘Well, I’ve got a young couple here at the moment…you never know: people are unpredictable.’

There was undisguised panic in Kate’s voice as she said, ‘What about this afternoon? Could I take a look this afternoon?’

‘This afternoon?’ Jessica laughed. ‘I can’t—I’m booked through to five thirty. I think everybody in the office is.’

‘What about now?’

‘Now?’

‘I can be there in under ten minutes.’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Come on, Jessica.’

‘I’ll give you ten minutes then I’ll have to go—I’ve got another viewing.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Jessica was about to call off when Kate said, ‘Wait—I meant to ask. Did you get your letter?’

‘What letter?’

‘The St Anthony’s letter?’

‘No idea—I left before the post. Did Findlay get in?’

‘He did.’

‘Well, I hope to God Arthur gets a place then. They’re almost like brothers—he’ll be distraught if he and Findlay get separated.’

Kate tried to think of something to say—a statement like this warranted something—but she couldn’t. Arthur Palmer swore; Arthur Palmer looked malnourished; Arthur Palmer’s hair was too short, his clothes inflammatory. Arthur Palmer was all wrong and Kate had done everything she could to separate him and Findlay, but nothing worked. Ros Granger and Harriet Burgess had both commented on this—smugly—but no matter how hard Kate tried to push Findlay in the direction of Toby and Casper, Findlay refused to have anything to do with either of them.

When Kate failed to respond, Jessica said, ‘So it’s definitely okay for you to pick Arthur up after nursery?’—getting back to her primary concern.

A moment’s hesitation, as Kate fought to remember the complicated logistics involving her own children and Jessica’s, then, ‘Yes—fine. Okay, I’m leaving now.’ Kate called off.

Jessica hadn’t heard the young couple come back downstairs, and now they were standing in front of her, and she could tell from the way the man said, ‘So how long has it been on the market for?’ that he’d already asked her once, maybe even more than once.

‘Not long,’ Jessica said.

‘How long?’ he insisted.

‘Just over a week,’ she lied, ‘which is why we haven’t got round to printing details yet—and, to be honest, properties like this are going so fast, nine times out of ten we don’t even get round to printing details. A lot of the properties don’t even make it onto the Internet.’

The man was staring at the oil painting of Jesus on the wall opposite, unconvinced.

Jessica was about to give them the whole spiel on getting the loft converted into a fourth bedroom with en-suite, and how unusual it was to find a seventy-foot garden in this area, when Mr Jackson, the elderly Jamaican vendor, shuffled into his home carrying a blue plastic bag with two cans of Kestrel inside.

‘Y’all right?’ he smiled awkwardly at them all. ‘Sorry—I stayed out; thought you’d be done by now.’

‘Don’t worry, we’re just leaving, Mr Jackson,’ Jessica said as brightly as she could.

Mr Jackson carried on staring at them all, confused by the whole process. ‘That’s my wife,’ he said after a while, following the young man’s gaze and pointing to the picture of Jesus.

The young man nodded and smiled and tried not to look scared.

‘She was the one what had the religion.’ Mr Jackson paused. ‘She died,’ he added, looking hopefully at them all, as if one of them might have heard otherwise.

The young man mumbled, ‘Sorry to hear it,’ and started to propel his partner towards the hall.

Jessica followed them out.

Mr Jackson stayed where he was. ‘Y’all goin?’ he said to the empty room.

On the pavement outside No. 8, she shook hands with the young couple as a fleet of motorised scooters raced up the road behind them.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ she called out enthusiastically, watching the couple get into their car and start to argue.

No. 8 Beulah Hill was a bargain—if she had the money, she would have bought it herself. All it needed was thirty to fifty thousand pounds of work done on it and it would be worth over six hundred and fifty, but nobody seemed to have the imagination to see beyond Mr Jackson and the Jackson décor. People these days wanted to walk into readymade lives. Her phone started ringing again.

It was Kate.

‘Still there?’

‘Still here.’

‘Great—I’m just round the corner. Oh, and Jessica, I meant to say—you’re the only person I’ve told about the whole downscaling/second property in France thing, so…’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.’

‘To anyone.’

‘To anyone.’

‘Great.’ A pause. Then again, ‘Great.’

By the time she came off the phone, the silver BMW containing the young couple had slid away. She turned and knocked on the door of No. 8 again—to see if it was okay to do the viewing with Kate now.

After a while, she rang a second time, and Mr Jackson appeared in the door, the blue carrier bag still in his hand, staring blankly at her. He looked as though he’d been crying.

‘Mr Jackson? It’s Jessica, Mr Jackson—Jessica from Lennox Thompson Estate Agents?’

He nodded patiently at her—without any apparent recollection.

She turned and pointed to the Lennox Thompson For Sale sign attached to his gatepost.

‘It’s Jessica, Mr Jackson,’ she said again, glancing at him standing in his doorway staring at the Lennox Thompson For Sale sign as though he’d never seen it in his life before. ‘I’ve got someone who wants to see the property.’

‘The property,’ he repeated, grinning to himself.

‘Yes, the property—your house—now. If that’s okay with you?’

‘They want to see it now?’

‘They want to see it now—is that okay?’

Mr Jackson sighed, shaking his head and disappeared back inside without shutting the front door.

‘Mr Jackson?’ Jessica called out.

Then the Hunters’ Audi estate pulled up and Kate got out panting, as though she’d been running, not driving.

‘Jessica—thanks so much.’

‘Are you serious about this?’

‘I just want to take a look,’ Kate said, her eyes once more skimming the peach-coloured window frames and impenetrable layers of net hanging at the windows.

‘It needs work doing to it—about thirty grand’s worth. Nothing structural—mostly cosmetic. Sorry, we’re going to have to be quick, I’m meant to be somewhere else.’

Jessica gave Kate the tour.

Mr Jackson remained motionless on the sofa watching a Gospel channel.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Jessica called out to him as they left the house.

There was no reply from Mr Jackson.

‘Well, I’m definitely interested,’ Kate said on the pavement outside No. 8.

‘Have a think about it.’

‘I’m definitely interested,’ she said again.

‘Well, talk to Robert -.’

‘I’m going to.’ She nodded to herself then swung back to Jessica. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘Tonight? Nothing.’

‘Why don’t you come to the PRC meeting?’

‘I didn’t know there was a PRC meeting.’

‘Didn’t Harriet phone you?’

Harriet hadn’t phoned for some time. In fact, Jessica hadn’t been to the last three PRC meetings. ‘No.’

An awkward silence. Jessica was one of those people it was almost impossible to lie to. ‘Harriet’s probably just lost your number or something. You know what she’s like.’

Jessica didn’t respond immediately. ‘Look, I’ll let you know—I’ll see how Ellie’s day’s been, and if she minds me leaving Arthur with her.’ She paused, looking suddenly pleased. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Course I’m sure. It’s an important one tonight—about the street party.’

‘What street party?’

‘The street party we’re having in June.’

‘Oh. Okay—well, I’ll call you.’

Even though she was late, Jessica stayed on the pavement waving stupidly at the disappearing Audi before getting into her own car.

Watching her in the rear-view mirror, Kate felt a stab of regret.

What had incited her to invite Jessica to the PRC?

Harriet had an almost pathological hatred of Jessica Palmer, whose misshapen life filled Harriet with horror. She treated her as though tragedy was contagious, because even dullwitted Harriet realised that the grief that comes with tragedy has the ability to shape lives in a way happiness never does.

Sighing, Kate turned the corner onto Lordship Lane.

Jessica sat for a while, listening to a dog barking somewhere close by, then turned the keys in the ignition.

Twenty minutes later, she walked into the newly openplanned offices of Lennox Thompson.

Most of the staff were out on viewings or valuations—apart from Elaine and the manager, Jake, who was almost ten years Jessica’s junior, on the Oxford Alumni, and seriously addicted to coke, which gave his skin a grey pallor that was only heightened by being perpetually offset against the white shirts he insisted on wearing.

Jake thought Jessica and him had things in common—primarily their education—which led him to keep up a repartee with her that was at once fraternal and elegiac.

Jessica knew it wasn’t Oxford they had in common—it was tragedy.

In Jake’s case, the fatal error of perpetually trying to impress parents who had never learnt how to love their children—he once told her his father used to make him weed the borders naked, as a punishment.

In Jessica’s, never having made any provision—emotional or material—for Peter’s untimely death.

‘Guess what?’ Jake said, looking up as Jessica walked into the office.

‘What?’

‘They’re opening a branch of Foxtons here.’

‘Foxtons?’

He nodded, pulled at his nose and said, ‘With a promotional six-month zero per cent commission. It’s going to kill us,’ he added, starting to chew on his nails before shunting his chair backwards and disappearing, jerkily, towards the loos at the back of the office.

Elaine looked across at her.

Jessica was about to say something when her mobile started to ring.

‘Jess?’

It was Lenny—her stepmother.

She didn’t feel like speaking to Lenny right then and started to scratch nervously with a drawing pin at the edge of her desk.

‘I was just phoning to see if Arthur got into St Anthony’s.’

‘I don’t know—the post hadn’t arrived when I left this morning.’

‘Oh.’ Lenny paused at Jessica’s flat tone.

Jessica let herself fall back in her chair, slouching uncomfortably as she started to swing it from side to side.

‘Well, give us a ring later.’

‘I will. How’s Dad?’ she said, with an effort.

The line started to break up and Jessica, now swinging aggressively from side to side, hoped they’d lose the reception altogether, but Lenny was still there. It was something she’d been trying to come to terms with since she was fifteen—the fact that Lenny would still be there—always.

‘I said—how’s Dad?’

‘He’s fine—engrossed in some new cat-deterrent he got by mail order this morning.’

At the beginning, because of what happened between Joe and Lenny, it had been more necessary for Lenny to get on with Jessica than it was for Jessica to get on with Lenny, and this early imbalance in their relationship had never really been redressed. Lenny had made huge efforts—Jessica could see that now, from the vantage point of being thirty-five—and not only out of necessity. Lenny had genuinely cared, but at the time Jessica felt she was owed too much to bother responding to overtures made by the woman her father had been having an affair with while her mother was still alive, who became the woman he moved in with after she died.

‘You keep cutting out—where are you?’

‘I don’t know—somewhere between Brighton and Birmingham; on a train. How’s work?’

‘Fine—yeah, it’s fine.’

‘Well, you know where we are if you need anything—why not bring the kids down and have a weekend to yourself?’

‘I don’t know—it’s busy at the moment.’

‘We haven’t seen them in ages, and Dad’s started on that tree house for Arthur.’

Jessica tried to think of something to say to this, but couldn’t.

‘And I miss Ellie—I really do.’

‘I’ll call,’ Jessica said, as the line broke up for a third and final time.

As she came off her mobile, the office phones started to ring. ‘Lennox Thompson sales department—how can I help you?’

‘I’d like to speak to someone about the Beulah Hill house you’ve got on the market.’

‘Well, you’re speaking to the right person.’

‘Wait a minute—is this Jessica?’

‘This is Jessica—Jessica Palmer.’

‘Jessica—it’s Ros.’

‘Ros?’

‘Ros Granger from No. 188?’

‘Ros…’ Why was Ros calling? Ros never called her…

had never called her since she took Toby to McDonald’s in Peckham that time for Arthur’s fourth birthday. In fact, nobody from the PRC apart from Kate had phoned since Arthur’s fourth birthday—and that was nearly a year ago.

‘So—how’s it all going?’

‘Fine.’

Ros let out a long, smooth laugh as though Jessica had just said something funny. ‘I was phoning to arrange a viewing -.’

‘You’re not thinking of moving as well, are you?’

‘Who else have you been speaking to?’

‘Nobody,’ Jessica said quickly.

Ros paused. ‘Today would be good.’

Chapter 8

Even late as she was after the impromptu Beulah Hill viewing, Kate still found time to stop at St Anthony’s vicarage on the way to Village Montessori. Jolting over a speed bump at the crest of the hill, she was sure she saw someone—the vicar?—in the vicarage garden, and on an impulse decided to stop, parking behind a distinctive black Chrysler just pulling away, which—if she hadn’t been so preoccupied—she would have recognised as Evie McRae’s.

She got out of the car and started to walk through the dull April drizzle, trying not to slip on the overspill of gravel from the vicar’s newly gravelled drive. Ignoring the increasingly invasive smell of wet tarmac, which always made her panic, she emerged from behind a bank of hydrangeas with what she liked to think of as a healthy smile on her face.

‘Hi,’ she said across the uneven trail of hydrangea cuttings littering the immaculate lawn.

The Reverend Tessa Walker—it was the vicar—looked up, a pair of secateurs in her hand. She managed to master her annoyance at the interruption—the second interruption that morning—but it left her face looking glum.

After what felt like a minute’s silence, Kate said, ‘Sorry—this is a bit impromptu; I should have phoned. Actually, I did phone, but no one was in and then I was driving past and I saw you in your garden and…’ She inhaled a lungful of wet tarmac and then panic set in as the memory of long wet suburban days fell over her…She stared blearily at the Reverend Walker, trying to claw her way back into the present moment. ‘I tried to phone, but there was no answer and…’

The Reverend Walker lost the grip on her secateurs so that they hung from the band round her wrist. She didn’t attempt to speak; she just carried on staring at Kate.

‘I’m Kate—Kate Hunter? I come to church here on Sundays. Every Sunday…here to St Anthony’s every Sunday—well, most Sundays…’ She paused, letting out a nervous laugh that made her feel like the only child in a roomful of adults.

The Reverend Walker said nothing. She was too busy thinking…this woman comes to my church every Sunday and I don’t recognise her. It made her feel old.

The drizzle was gaining momentum. There was going to be a downpour, which hadn’t started yet, but there was so much moisture in the air that Kate could feel it collecting on her eyelashes.

The sound of children being let out onto a playing field reached them through the dense, moist air and she started to panic again. Nursery—she needed to collect Findlay and Flo from nursery. ‘I came here to talk about a child,’ she said suddenly. This sounded epic; she hadn’t meant to sound epic.

The Reverend Walker said, ‘A child?’

‘My son—Findlay.’

‘You want to talk to me about your son?’ the Reverend Walker said, helplessly. Was this the first time the woman had mentioned a child? She didn’t know any more. It just seemed as though she’d been standing on her wet lawn among the hydrangea cuttings for weeks, and now wasn’t a good time for anybody to be talking to her about their children—because she was undergoing a crisis of faith; a profound crisis of faith. With an effort, she twisted back to Kate. ‘You’re having concerns about your son?’ she said, trying to sound less helpless this time.

‘Concerns?’ Kate echoed.

‘Spiritual concerns?’

‘He’s five years old,’ Kate said, trying not to yell. ‘No, it’s nothing like that. I just came to check that you wrote the letter to St Anthony’s confirming the fact that Findlay comes to church here on Sundays. You needed to write a letter—about Findlay. It was part of our application, and I just wanted to check that it was done because I got a letter this morning saying he didn’t get a place.’

A place where? Heaven? Full of a sudden dread, the Reverend Walker wondered whether they were talking about a dead child—the woman’s son? Was he dead? Had there been a funeral she’d forgotten to attend? A child she’d forgotten to bury? She started to walk slowly, earnestly, towards Kate.

‘We’ve been coming here to church since he was nine months old and this morning—this morning—I find out that he doesn’t have a place at St Anthony’s, and nobody seems to know why. Every Sunday—nearly every Sunday—for over four years, and he doesn’t get a place.’

The clouds gathered and the moisture thickened until it officially became rain—the steady sort of rain the birds carry on singing through.

Kate tried to breathe in but there was no air anywhere, her nostrils were full of rain and it seemed as though the Reverend Walker was staring at her from the end of a long green tunnel.

‘We’ve been coming to St Anthony’s every Sunday,’ she said again, before realising that she was repeating herself.

Somebody’s voice—a long way off—was saying, ‘Only fifty per cent of places are offered on the basis of faith; the other fifty are offered according to catchment area criteria and whether a child has siblings at the school. Do you want to come inside?’ the Reverend said at last.

‘We’ve done everything right—everything,’ Kate yelled. ‘Right down to sitting through sermon after sermon on those fucking Sudanese orphans.’ She broke off, vaguely aware that the rain was running so steadily down her face now it was impairing her vision. The right-hand side of her head seemed to be filling with blood, and the weight of it was pulling her down through the rain towards the lawn. She stumbled, but managed to regain her balance. This prompted the Reverend Walker to say, ‘Come inside,’ again.

Kate stared at her, suddenly intensely aware of the fact that she was, in effect, accosting the vicar in her garden. If she took a look around her, the evidence would be there: her footprints in the gravel on the drive, and across the wet lawn behind her. God. This was exactly the sort of thing her mother would have done. God.

The church bells began ringing and, pushing the vicar’s hands away, she turned and ran back across the lawn and gravel drive, her head thumping so badly with migraine now that it was beginning to seriously affect her balance. She staggered towards the Audi. Somewhere beyond the bells there were screaming children and, beyond them, a dog was intermittently whining and yapping.

A workman standing in front of a Portaloo on the drive next door was staring at her. How long had he been standing there?

Ignoring him, she yanked open the driver’s door and fell into the car—the sound of the wet afternoon immediately muffled by safety glass as she slammed the door shut.

What was it she’d yelled at the Reverend Walker? Something about Sudanese orphans…?

Afraid, she phoned Robert, but Robert didn’t answer his phone.

Chapter 9

She pulled up in front of Village Montessori nearly twenty minutes late—which, following stringent regulations, she’d have to pay for by the minute—with a full-blown migraine; but at least the rain had stopped. She retrieved Flo from the sensory room where she was lying on her back with fifteen other babies—who looked as if they’d just been thrown out of heaven, and landed on a rug of synthetic fur—all jerking their arms and legs towards the ceiling where silver spirals were revolving, overlooked severely by the black and white faces on the Wimmer-Ferguson Mind Shapes mural. There was a CD of rainforest sounds playing.

Mary handed her Flo from among the minute bodies jerking on the floor, and Kate wasn’t entirely sure—if it hadn’t been for Mary—that she would have recognised her daughter. The lighting in the sensory room was eerily low and Kate wondered how Mary coped, sitting among the parakeets and the jerking, snuffling bodies, with the door shut. Surely Village Montessori was in breach of EU health and safety regulations?

Once in her mother’s arms, Flo showed absolutely no sign of recognition. It must have been the same with Findlay at this age, but with Flo, for some reason, Kate felt less able to cope. Flo twisted her head blearily from side to side, blinked her wet eyes at nothing in particular, posited a dribble of something white and curdled on Kate’s lapel then concussed herself on her collarbone—and started to cry. Kate felt a wave of violence pass through her that she found difficult to control—because of the migraine.

Her arms started to shake and she experienced an almost vertiginous nausea as she tried to remember the names of familiar sights and sounds. This had been happening to her at least twice a day since Flo was born—the first time, slumped in a hospital bed at King’s, she had been staring past the mass of bouquets on the table at newborn Flo, in her Perspex hospital tank, and there, right in front of her, her daughter turned into a piglet.

Findlay, sitting on the end of the hospital bed, pushing a small fire engine with a broken ladder along the railings, became a centipede, and Robert became a bear—a huge bear clumsily trying to pull the blue curtains round the bed for some privacy.

Now, all she wanted to do was hurl Flo over Mary’s shoulder through the silver spirals and into the wall behind her, where the impact would no doubt make various bits of Flo burst open and trickle over Wimmer-Ferguson’s impervious black and white faces. Then everybody—including Mary—would be able to see that Flo wasn’t a human baby after all; she was in fact nothing more than a tiny pig.

Kate stood with her arms shaking, listening to Mary give her a rundown on all Flo’s bowel movements since 8.30 a.m.

Then it passed, and after it had passed, she remembered to smile adoringly at Flo—like the woman on the front of the Johnson & Johnson’s wet wipes packet—and nod and say ‘great’ in response to Mary’s monologue.

Mary looked surprised, indicating that ‘great’ wasn’t quite right.

‘Everything okay?’ she asked.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Kate said, hoping she was still smiling.

‘I saw Findlay today—he’s a big boy now—he’ll be leaving us soon?’

Kate was aware of Mary—who had been Findlay’s primary carer as well—watching her.

‘I know,’ she said vaguely.

‘Where’s he going?’

A pause. ‘St Anthony’s.’

‘That’s good—a good school. A lot of my friends—their children, they all went there and now they go to university.’

Mary was smiling at her.

‘And Findlay—he told me Flo had an accident this morning. He told me she fell off the bed.’

‘I know,’ Kate said again, sounding as though she was confirming gossip she’d heard about another person’s child. ‘She did sort of roll off—onto the duvet, fortunately. Our duvet was on the floor.’

Mary carried on smiling, and carried on watching. ‘I think she has a bump, just on her left temple. There’s a swelling.’

Mary’s finger hovered over the pink and green protrusion.

‘But the duvet was on the floor,’ Kate insisted, taking in Flo’s swollen forehead.

Mary nodded. ‘I didn’t put her to sleep this morning.’

‘She hasn’t slept?’

‘I didn’t want to—not with that swelling. It’s not good for them to sleep after a head injury.’

‘Head injury?’

‘I think she should see the doctor,’ Mary said calmly.

Kate watched her take hold of Flo’s hand and balance it on her finger and for a brief moment it became a tiny trotter she saw balanced on Mary’s index finger before the tiny trotter became a tiny baby hand again. After reassuring Mary that she would take Flo to the doctor’s that afternoon, she finally managed to exit the sensory room with the A4 sheet of paper she was given every day, accounting for Flo’s dietary and excretory highs and lows.

Findlay was retrieved from the Butterfly Room and coaxed into his coat. It was all looking normal—no sign of pigs or centipedes. She even managed a breezy smile—in case Mary was still standing in the corridor behind them, watching—and a light-hearted, faux commander’s, ‘Okay, people, let’s move out,’ for Findlay.

Ignoring his retort—‘We’re not people, I’m Spiderman’—she propelled them across the playground past the nursery’s chicken coop, and through the security gate. There, on the pavement by the Audi that they were two instalments behind on, was Ros Granger, mother to Lola and Toby Granger.

‘Kate!’ Ros called out, dismounting from her Dutch-style bicycle, ‘I’ve been trying you all morning—where’ve you been? Did you get my message?’

Kate nodded, not trusting herself to speak, and wondered how it was that, despite the rain, Ros didn’t look bedraggled. Her skin was tanned and the white T-shirt advertising her company, Carpe Diem Life Classes, was still white. Ros was somebody other women wanted not only to emulate, but to become, and here she was walking towards Kate, her eyes glistening with an obscene wellbeing she just couldn’t keep to herself. The overall effect was pathologically upbeat. She looked as if there wasn’t a thing in existence she wouldn’t be able take succour from—not even mobile-phone adverts that used Holocaust survivors to imply that global communications had the ability to wash away all tears.

Ros was the postcode prototype of a young, successful mother. Within their group—the PRC—she’d gained herself a reputation for originality that was, if you looked closely, nothing more than a highly evolved form of plagiarism. When Ros dropped her wheat intolerance for lactose intolerance, everybody followed suit because—as Ros pointed out—if you were still wheat intolerant it was because you weren’t buying sourdough bread. So then everybody had to buy sourdough bread from the deli and—after the lactose intolerance phase—make sure their fridge was full of soya milk.

‘So -.’

‘So—what?’ Kate managed to say cheerfully back, pretending not to understand while knowing exactly what was coming next, exactly what question she was going to be asked.

Here it was—in Ros’s clear, ecstatic diction: ‘Did—Findlay—get—in?’

The letter was crackling in the pocket of Kate’s suit jacket just above her heart -, as if it was about to start talking. With an effort, she managed a slow up and down nod and the sort of smile somebody recovering from a minor stroke might produce.

Ros couldn’t quite work out what was going on.

Kate, who had never seen Ros’s eyes darken with doubt before, saw them darken now, and had a sudden apocalyptic vision of just how lonely her future in the postcode would be if she were ever excommunicated from the PRC. She would become Jessica—and nobody wanted to become Jessica. Suddenly terrified, she threw the arm that wasn’t holding Flo up into the air and screamed an evangelical, ‘YESSSS!’, walking for no reason whatsoever into Ros’s arms.

The next minute the two women were hugging and Ros was the first to pull away. This unexpected physical contact with a woman she didn’t even particularly like provoked an unexpected, almost uncontrollable urge in Kate to cry, and to counteract this she started mumbling, ‘I can’t tell you how…how…’

‘…relieved,’ Ros put in, letting out one of her light-hearted laughs.

‘Relieved—that’s it—I am about the whole St Anthony’s thing.’

‘And now you’ve got Findlay in, getting Flo in won’t be such a hassle.’

‘Exactly,’ Kate said heavily, while thinking, who the fuck’s Flo? Then remembering, and patting her on the back, hoping this wouldn’t make her posit anymore.

‘So—everybody’s in,’ Ros said.

Apart from me, Kate thought, staring at her. ‘Everybody?’

‘Evie, Harriet, me, you…everybody in the PRC.’

‘What about Jessica?’ Kate asked.

Ros’s pause suggested that this question wasn’t strictly necessary given that Jessica wasn’t a fully acknowledged member of the PRC, but she showed magnanimity by shrugging and responding with, ‘I can’t get hold of her.’

‘Me neither,’ Kate lied.

A strobe-like frown flickered over Ros’s face, then she was smiling again because life really was unbelievably good—apart from when you had to run past people in mobility aids. Although, in her darker moments, she had to admit that the thought of the cripple’s eyes on her honed body as she streaked past, fully functioning legs pounding, did thrill her.

‘You wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on the bike for a minute, would you? Just while I nip in and get Tobes—saves me locking it up. Bless you,’ she said, squeezing Kate’s arm and jogging past her through the security gates and into Village Montessori.

Kate put Flo, in her car seat, down on the pavement next to the railings and got Findlay into the car, pushing on a nursery CD whose tracks she now heard in her sleep. Satisfied that Findlay’s head was bobbing in time to the music, and that his laughter wasn’t hysterical, merely effusive overflow from some complex childhood game, she scanned the contents of the Sainsbury’s Organic Bag bulging out of Ros’s bicycle basket, and had just managed to uncover a tub of natural cherries and a bar of Valrhona chocolate, some luxury Jersey cream and a gluten-free swiss roll, when Findlay’s window whirred down and Findlay called out, ‘That’s not yours.’

‘I know that, Findlay—I wasn’t looking in it, I was looking after it,’ Kate explained as Findlay swung his head out the window. ‘There’s a difference.’

Findlay grinned, nonplussed.

What did that grin mean? Was Findlay being ironic?

‘My bike’s got four wheels,’ he said.

‘Four?’ she said, uninterested, but relieved he’d changed the subject. Her mind swung back to the natural cherries and gluten-free swiss roll…she was sure there’d been something heavy at the bottom of the bag as well—potatoes? Keeping her eyes on Findlay, she gave them a quick squeeze. Definitely potatoes. Was Ros making tortilla for the PRC that night as well?

Kate had, she realised—staring into the abyss of perfectly honed merchandise in Ros’s bicycle basket—set her heart on tortilla for the PRC that night, and making something else instead just wasn’t an option at this stage. She had eggs in the fridge—in fact eggs were about all she had.

Findlay was saying, ‘Soon it’s only going to have two.’

‘Two what?’ Kate asked, preoccupied.

Findlay was staring at her and there was a baby whimpering somewhere nearby. ‘Wheels,’ he said after a pause, still staring.

Did she have time to get up to the allotment this afternoon? If Ros was making tortilla as well, wouldn’t home-grown potatoes give her tortilla the edge? Kate let out a sharp, involuntary chuckle: a home-grown tortilla.

Behind her, the nursery security gate clanged shut, the sound searing through her cranium as her entire head continued to pulsate with migraine.

‘Thanks for that,’ Ros called out, and was soon strapping Toby and Lola into the child-carrier attached to the back of her bike.

Toby sat staring blankly through the PVC window at Findlay—who was still hanging out of the car—as if he’d never seen him before. Kate thought Toby Granger might be autistic, but even if he was—or ever turned out to be—Ros would somehow manage to turn her son’s autism to her advantage. As Ros always pointed out, whenever she had an audience—even a non-paying audience: everything you do, right down to whether you decide to pick up that piece of litter on the pavement or just walk on past, defines you. So why, with a maxim like that, didn’t Ros look more exhausted—surely there were only so many definitive moments one person could sustain in the course of a lifetime, let alone on a daily basis.

‘Harriet wants us there by eight tonight,’ Ros said, as she tucked in the ends of the Sainsbury’s bag that Kate had undone and forgotten to push back down again. ‘A Labour councillor’s meant to be turning up.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘To talk to us about getting speed bumps on Prendergast Road. It was Evie’s idea.’ She paused, adjusting the Sainsbury’s bag again. ‘You know Evie’s been campaigning for speed bumps? I mean—I’m thrilled about the speed bumps, it’s just the focus of tonight’s meeting has to be the street party: it’s less than two months away now.’

‘My digger,’ Findlay started to yell, ‘I want my digger.’

The digger was in the boot of the car and Kate was about to get it when she remembered that the Pampers extra-value pack she’d picked up in the chemist that morning on the way to work was also in the Audi’s boot. Members of the PRC didn’t do Pampers or Huggies, and they never did supermarket own brand. They bought Tushies, Nature or the German Umweltfreundlich brand, Moltex Öko, which looked as though they’d been made by young offenders as part of some community project. Ros, of course, used non-disposable nappies. Buying Pampers was on a level with buying nonorganic food or Nike baby trainers or getting Flo’s ears pierced or naming your children after luxury goods. Getting Findlay’s digger out of the boot was out of the question because it would give Ros, perched on her ergonomic bike saddle, a bird’s-eye view of the Pampers value pack…and Ros mustn’t see the Pampers value pack.

‘My digger,’ Findlay carried on yelling. ‘I want my digger.’

‘Seems like he wants his digger pretty badly,’ Ros said with an indulgent smile.

Kate was about to answer when she heard a car door open behind her and, turning round, saw Findlay climb out and make his way towards the boot. ‘Findlay…Findlay!’

Findlay stopped short in his tracks, his hand on the catch for the boot.

‘Get back in the car—now!’

Aware that the request for his digger was entirely reasonable, Findlay—taken aback—didn’t move.

Kate tried to say it more calmly, ‘Get-back-in-the-car-now.’

Findlay still didn’t move so she crouched down in front of him, beside the wheel arch, and grabbed hold of his arm, which was difficult to find inside the Spiderman suit’s foam musculature.

Ros was staring at her. Kate saw her glance at the stain on the lapel of her suit jacket as well. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Fine…fine. Just work. Work stress,’ Kate said, folding herself up rapidly and getting into the car they were defaulting on. ‘See you later.’

‘Eight o’clock,’ Ros reminded her.

Kate nodded, started up the engine, put the car into gear and pulled away, trying to ignore Findlay who was yelling at her to do up his straps. Her phone started to ring. It was Ros.

Ros?

Looking in her rear-view mirror, she watched Ros put her mobile away and swerve off the pavement onto the road in pursuit of the car.

Despite all precautions, Ros must have somehow seen the Pampers extra-value pack in the boot after all—and now she wanted to lecture Kate on disposable nappies and the death of the world.

Kate accelerated.

At the crossroads the Audi hit a red light and she seriously thought about jumping it, then panicked and ended up slamming on the brakes at the last moment. Findlay thudded into the back of her seat and screamed something sanctimonious about Kate not strapping him in and how he was going to die one day. ‘So—die,’ she yelled, wrenching up the handbrake and getting out of the car as Ros, shaking, came to a halt beside her.

‘Okay—so they were out of Moltex Öko at the chemist’s, and I was in a rush. I grabbed the first thing to hand and…it wasn’t Moltex Öko because they were out,’ she said.

‘Flo,’ Ros grunted, out of breath and still shaking.

‘Flo?’

‘Flo—she’s back there—on the pavement. You left Flo in her car seat on the pavement.’ Ros fell over her handlebars, sweating and gasping. ‘I tried phoning you.’ Toby stared out, expressionless, through the child-carrier’s PVC window.

Kate peered around the interior of the car. The passenger seat where she usually put Flo’s car seat was empty.

The light changed to green and the cars behind were leaning on their horns as drivers pulled angrily on their steering wheels and tried to circumnavigate the parked Audi and the woman on the bike, inadvertently digesting the slogan on the back of her T-shirt: You deserve to be happy.

Kate stared blankly at Ros for another ten seconds before getting into her car, executing a three-point turn into oncoming traffic and driving back down the road to the patch of pavement outside Village Montessori where she’d left Flo.

Chapter 10

By the time they finally got back to Prendergast Road, it was after two and Kate couldn’t get the door open because Margery had put the chain across.

‘Margery!’ she yelled.

Further down the street, the Down’s syndrome boy at No. 8—David—was in his front garden, smiling happily as he hugged the loquat tree growing there. The next minute, he started to sing—a series of loud, prolonged wails that started to make Kate panic.

‘Margery,’ she yelled again.

‘Who is it?’

‘Kate. Margery—come on, it’s starting to rain again.’

The chain was taken off and the front door opened to reveal Margery standing in the hallway with Robert’s old hockey stick raised above her head.

Findlay ran past her without comment.

‘I heard someone at the door—wasn’t sure who it was,’ Margery said, without lowering the stick.

‘It’s us.’ Kate stared at her. ‘I work half-days Thursdays—I told you.’

Tripping over the same recycling bag in the hallway that she’d tripped over earlier, she navigated the unmoving Margery and reached the kitchen, where she was confronted with a row of pies.

‘Once I got started, I couldn’t stop,’ Margery said behind her, the hockey stick still in her hands. ‘He’s got corned beef and onion, cheese and onion and potato to choose from,’ she carried on more to herself than Kate. She’d been keeping up a steady patter of conversation with herself most of the morning since Martina left.

‘Potato pie?’

Margery nodded.

Her eyes bouncing off the mound of carbohydrates, Kate said, ‘Can you keep an eye on Flo for me while I go up and change?’

‘Off out again?’

‘I thought I might go up to the allotments.’ She paused, and with an effort added, ‘Why don’t you come with us?’

‘It’s raining.’

Kate glanced out through the kitchen window but didn’t say anything.

‘You don’t want to take them up there in this weather. Findlay won’t want to go,’ Margery insisted, raising her voice so that Findlay who was playing in the lounge would hear.

‘What are you talking about me?’ he called out. ‘Where won’t I want to go?’

‘The allotments,’ Margery shouted back.

‘I don’t want to go to the allotments,’ Findlay moaned.

Margery’s eyes skittered triumphantly over Kate as Findlay appeared in the kitchen doorway, his shoulders pushed forward and his arms hanging loose—a posture he often assumed to denote despair.

‘Half an hour, that’s all—I need you to help me dig.’

‘Digging stinks.’

‘Findlay…’

‘I don’t want to go—my suit’ll get wet like it did last time then it won’t fit.’

‘He can stay here with me,’ Margery put in.

‘Yes, yes,’ Findlay started to shout, gripping onto the doorframe and using it to jump up and down.

‘Findlay, calm down—if you stay here there won’t be any TV.’

The last time she’d left Findlay with Margery for an afternoon they had watched a documentary on the Milwaukee cannibal.

Findlay stopped jumping.

‘He can help me with my Tom Jones jigsaw.’

Findlay remained silent, considering this, as Flo started to cry.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Margery said, irritably.

‘Hungry. Could you heat her up a bottle?’

Margery grunted something Kate chose to ignore as she made her way upstairs, running the rest of the day’s schedule through her head. She couldn’t stay up at the allotments for more than an hour—she had to leave herself time to pick Arthur up from nursery, take him and Findlay swimming then get back to make the tortilla. Pausing at the top of the stairs, she made another mental note to phone Robert and remind him to pick the boys up, before disappearing into the bathroom and swallowing 400 mg of Nurofen.

She took a quick shower in the Philippe Starck shower room they’d remortgaged the house for—along with the Philippe Starck en-suite—before it finally dawned on her that nobody they knew would know the fixtures and fittings were Philippe Starck…unless she told them.

On the way to the bedroom she stuck her head over the banister as the microwave she’d finally capitulated to—which Margery had brought in triumph at Christmas when Flo was barely two months old—let out a resounding bling. The constant bling, bling, bling of the microwave had become one of the signature tunes of Margery’s brief Christmas reign at No. 22 Prendergast Road. The entire Christmas, in fact, had been a nonstop triumph for Margery, who found her usually challenging daughter-in-law captive in a postnatal world where sleep deprivation and hormone imbalance sent her careering between vegetative trances and hysterical ranting. For the first time in their relationship, Margery had been able to control Kate. Robert no longer knew how to and, anyway, needed all the help he could get when he realised that the two weeks’ paternity leave granted him by the government wasn’t nearly long enough to construct the illusion that the Hunter family was a happy, thriving unit.

The Christmas dinner Margery insisted on buying was entirely microwaveable. Everything, including the turkey, was nuked—the bell kept blinging, the door kept opening and shutting and there was so much packaging stacked against the kitchen window that it blocked out entirely the drab, drizzling festive daylight.

Kate only finally came alive to the fact that Margery’s selfdefined role as douala was a smokescreen for total takeover when Robert started mumbling something about getting the spare room properly fixed up so that Margery could be on hand to give round-the-clock help. Enough was enough. Margery was dispatched swiftly but messily back to Leicestershire. This was the first time since the post-Christmas dispatch that Margery had been to stay at Prendergast Road.

In the bedroom, Kate changed into jeans and her new boutique wellies by Marimekko—black daisies on a white background—that Evie had insisted she had to buy on one of their shopping trips, and that Kate had only been able to afford because the family allowance had just gone into the account. Sometimes it felt as though her libido had been sacrificed to Marimekko, Orla Kiely, Philippe Starck…along with the Reverend Walker’s Sudanese orphans and other people she didn’t know.

Dressed in the postcode’s requisite uniform for young mothers, which basically consisted of suggesting rather than revealing your female anatomy, she sat down on the bed and thought about having two minutes’ lie-down, but knew if she did that she’d never get up, so straightened out the creases she’d made on the throw and stood up again.

Through the broken blinds, she saw a woman standing at the same window as her in the house opposite. She was wearing a Disneyland Paris T-shirt, but didn’t look as if she’d ever been to Disneyland. She was holding back the curtains that were usually drawn and was staring intently at the Hunter house. Kate made out black hair hanging down either side of the woman’s face, then she started to flap her right hand.

It took Kate some time to decipher the flapping hand.

The woman was waving at her.

Kate was about to wave back when she remembered the St Anthony’s letter, Harriet and Evie’s ecstatic voicemails, hugging Ros—and was overcome with a sudden nausea she didn’t think she could control. Everybody was in apart from them, and it had something—she was convinced—to do with the woman waving at her from the house opposite. The brothel. Evie, Ros and Harriet didn’t live opposite houses whose curtains remained permanently shut. The woman opposite, still waving, was the flaw in their lives.

Kate was about to turn and leave the bedroom when she saw that the woman was now holding up a sign—plees help 02081312263—written in blue on what looked like the inside of a cereal packet.

Kate, startled, stood back and let the blinds fall.

Forgetting about the discarded suit, still on the bed, she went downstairs.

Margery was nursing Flo awkwardly in the crook of her arm, and Findlay was shuffling the pieces of the Tom Jones jigsaw.

‘I don’t want to get my suit wet,’ he said morosely.

‘Well, if you don’t come to the allotments, you won’t be able to go swimming.’ She paused.

That stumped him.

‘Why?’

‘Because after the allotments we’re going to pick Arthur up from nursery and then I’m taking you both swimming. So…if you don’t want to go swimming with Arthur you can stay here and finish that jigsaw.’

Findlay looked up, flicking his head between his mother and Margery, aware that they were both waiting.

After a while he dropped the piece of jigsaw he was holding and followed Kate out to the car. She pulled the seat belt over his bulging foam abs and pecs, then got into the car herself and was about to start the engine when Margery appeared in the front garden with Flo over her shoulder.

‘That’s my sister,’ Findlay said.

Kate got back out of the car.

‘I thought you’d gone without her,’ Margery said.

Without commenting on this, Kate retrieved the car seat from the kitchen. ‘I’ll be home around five,’ she called out, making her way back to the car—with Flo this time.

‘What time’s Robert back?’

‘I don’t know, he didn’t say, but he’s picking the boys up from swimming at six.’

Margery nodded, then slammed the front door quickly shut.

Five minutes later, Kate was driving at high speed down Prendergast Road towards the allotments, through rain that wasn’t letting up.

Chapter 11

Once Kate had gone, Margery went upstairs to change in Findlay’s room—where some space had been cleared for her in the wardrobe and chest of drawers.

She chose carefully.

She was dressing for the meal with Robert that evening.

It took her over fifteen minutes to decide on the easy-fit bottle-green trousers and aubergine silk blouse, and she had just got into the trousers when she heard a drilling sound on the other side of the bedroom wall. Was the Jamaican drilling spyholes? How did he know that this bedroom was the one she used to get dressed in? Her eyes scuttled nervously over the wall as she quickly pulled the aubergine blouse on as carefully as she could—she’d already had to repair one underarm tear. She fumbled with the buttons while eyeing the wall opposite warily, expecting the drill to break through at any minute.

When the drilling stopped, the silence that followed was even worse, and Margery waited for it to start again—at least then she knew what the Jamaican was doing.

But the drill didn’t start again and, after a while, Margery found herself staring at the three pairs of shoes she’d managed to fit into her case and bring with her, trying to decide whether or not to christen the blue ones she’d bought with Edith in Leicester. Her shoes never retained their original shape for long—after a while they all ended up acquiring the same bunion-riddled silhouette as her feet.

She decided she would wear the blue ones and after this went into the bathroom to put her make-up on and spray her hair.

She smiled at herself in the mirror—the coy leer she always reserved for mirror gazing—and was about to go back downstairs when she saw Kate’s suit strewn across the bed. She turned automatically into the bedroom and picked up the suit. She didn’t view this as a transgression, although she was aware that her daughter-in-law would. Margery couldn’t abide mess, but this wasn’t her mess and it wasn’t her house. The discarded suit would be the cause of an argument between Robert and Kate—because Kate would see Margery going into their bedroom to hang up her suit as a transgression verging on the pathological. Robert would come to her defence and say she was only trying to help out. They would hiss and shout at each other behind the closed bedroom door—a pointless precaution given that Margery would be able to follow it word for word through the ceiling, while lying on the sofa bed downstairs.

In deference to the argument that hanging up the suit would provoke, she stroked the creases out once it was on the hanger—and felt a letter in the jacket pocket.

Again, automatically and with no sense of transgression, she pulled the letter out of the pocket. It was the St Anthony’s letter. She read it. Then put the envelope back, but kept the letter and was about to go downstairs when something caught her eye through the blind slats. A woman in the house opposite was holding back the curtains, staring straight at her.

Margery pulled the slats further apart.

She didn’t know whether the woman could see her or not until the next minute, she started to wave.

Margery waved quickly back—something she wouldn’t usually have done—then let the blind slats drop back into place and went downstairs humming something from an advert she’d seen on TV.

She put the letter in an inside pocket of her suitcase, then, still humming, went into the kitchen and made herself a sandwich out of WeightWatchers’ bread, cottage cheese and the tinned pineapple she’d opened that morning, and took this through to the lounge where she settled into the sofa in time for the Dynasty rerun she was following. Joan Collins thrilled her—had always thrilled her. If she was truthful, she’d put on her green and aubergine outfit, new blue shoes and make-up as much for Joan as she had for Robert.

Joan Collins and Margaret Thatcher made her proud to be a woman.

Chapter 12

Parking beneath a bank of beech trees—the Hunters’ was the only car there—Kate got out and opened the boot, putting on one of Robert’s old jackets, the pockets weighed down with conkers he must have gathered months ago—back in the autumn before Flo was born.

Findlay, who was singing, ‘Happy birthday to me…happy birthday to me,’ refused to get out of the car, worried that the rain would shrink his foam musculature.

‘Okay, okay, but I want you to stay there in the back,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t want you going in the front or touching any of the controls. Findlay…are you listening to me? I said, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME…Findlay?’ she yelled.

Ignoring Findlay’s stunned face, she slammed the boot shut, picked up Flo—who was chewing on her fist, asleep—and stalked off across the allotments towards the one they’d had their name down on a two-year waiting list for.

Keeping the plot—once assigned to you—was almost as hard as acquiring it in the first place. Letitia Parry, chair of the Allotment Committee, made a formal inspection of all the plots the first Sunday of every month, and if it wasn’t up to scratch you were dispossessed of it. Not a monthly inspection went by without a dispossession getting chalked up on the board that Letitia kept hung outside the committee’s old Nissen hut—a board that Giles Parry had spent a fortnight making a waterproof hatch for so that not even rain could wash away the incriminating evidence. Letitia was so harsh that families and individuals—once dispossessed—preferred to forsake tools and anything else they’d bought for their plots rather than face Letitia and get formally drummed out into the wilderness of the rest of the world where there were no allotments.

A man named Gordon, who used to have one of the full plots two down but was unable to keep it up due to the onset of Parkinson’s, tried to come back for tools given him by his dead wife on their last wedding anniversary. He left his car down by the golf club at around midnight and crept, shaking, through the orange London dark, past the old scout hut to the top of the hill where the allotments were. He’d brought his torch, but he didn’t want to use it—just in case. So he skirted the fringes of the allotments, winding his way through the halo of beech trees—all that remained of the prehistoric Great North Woods—until he reached his plot.

He’d been worried—all day—that the padlock on his shed might have been changed, but it hadn’t, and he hissed with relief when the key fitted. So he opened the shed door with difficulty because the key was so small…and there was Letitia, sitting on one of his deckchairs, pointing a torch with its beam on full at him. Before he was allowed his tools back, he had to stand there, shaking—at 12.22 a.m.—and listen to the whole lecture on neglect as a form of vandalism, and the impact it had on the ongoing battle the committee was waging trying to keep the land out of the hands of the local council—and all the time he was standing there in the shed, his arm held shakily across his eyes to shield them from Letitia’s beam, which she kept on full throughout, he was thinking…how did she manage to lock the bloody padlock FROM THE INSIDE?

Months of mental torment passed before Gordon found out that Letitia had asked Giles to lock her in—and not just the night Gordon turned up at midnight either, but every night since the dispossession notice had been chalked up on the committee board.

The Grangers used to have a plot, but Ros fell out with Letitia over ideas she had about permaculture and was finally dispossessed when she covered the entire plot in old carpet they’d had ripped up from their study floor—with the idea of replenishing the soil’s nutrients by leaving the plot fallow for six months. The carpet had Letitia yelping at Ros from inside the huge body warmer she wore, summer and winter, which was covered in manure stains long since gone shiny—not only because it desecrated the plot, but because Letitia and Giles had just had exactly the same carpet put down in their sitting room.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.