Inheritance

by Jenny Eclair

  Maisie hadn’t found it at all intimidating. She’d been to a school where the only sport most boys were interested in was up-skirting, and you couldn’t get through registration without someone commenting on someone’s tits, so it didn’t bother her.

  She played along, she sat on the laps of fat men and laughed when fifty-pound notes were tucked into her cleavage. She was more than equipped to deal with this kind of nonsense; in addition to a push-up bra she wore a little money belt around her waist, with a compartment for change and a compartment for tips, but by around 11 p.m. things got a little muddled, she was tired, she’d had a few sneaky drinks herself. Who cared if a few tenners meant for the change compartment of the belt went into the tips side? These blokes were loaded, she wasn’t, and everyone knew what kind of game they were playing.

  He was on table number 9, over in the far left-hand corner, she had to pass the table every time she went to the bar. She saw him watching her and put an extra sway into her hip action, sucked in her stomach and pushed her tits out; he was good looking in a clean-shaven telly presenter kind of way, which was fine by her.

  Maisie had never had a type, she fancied people on instinct – older, younger, bald or beardy, executives or mechanics she didn’t care, it varied and it just so happened that her type that night was the bloke on table 9.

  By midnight, the place was carnage, men were falling over other men, some were trying to dance, others were riding around on each other’s backs, one man was crying and a few had fallen asleep face down in the festive tiramisu.

  The bar girls had only been employed till midnight and at ten to, pale-faced hotel staff positioned themselves in a ring around the room, poised to do a final tidy once the gentlemen decided to call it a night.

  Finally the metal shutters came down on the bar and the crowd began to thin. Maisie’s money belt felt satisfyingly heavy.

  On stage, an exhausted-looking red-coated MC announced through an onstage microphone that ‘Any more drinks would have to be purchased from the residents’ bar’, someone was sick into an ice bucket, balloons popped, and men began to stagger out into the night.

  But one man remained in his seat, Mr Table 9. She walked past him on the way to get her coat – she and Megan were going to get an Uber back to South London – but he caught her hand and put something in it, a key card in a cardboard sleeve with the number 303 written on the front. He patted his breast pocket and she noticed that tucked in front of a cream and black spotted silk handkerchief was a matching key card, he gestured five minutes with his hand and left the table.

  Who did he think he was, the prick? Maisie retrieved her coat, she could see Megan waiting outside the revolving doors at the rear exit, she only had to cross the lobby and she and her friend could go home. But she didn’t, she was going to, but the lift was gold and shiny and the next thing she knew the doors were sliding open and she was pressing the button for the third floor.

  She knocked lightly on 303 and he was there almost instantly. He said his name was Greg, he called her ‘Amazing Maisie’, said she could have whatever she liked from the minibar. She even opened a jar of jelly beans – he laughed at that, he said she was like a kid in a sweet shop, and then they had had sex all night and ever since then, it’s that sex she thinks of when Ed loses his erection between her legs and turns away in a huff, it’s that sex she thinks of when she is alone and horny like now, it’s that sex she told a furious Megan about the next day in glorious detail and it’s that sex that she remembers as being the best sex she has ever had in her life.

  Maisie is being quite vocal now, if Bel hadn’t popped out to the chemist to pick up some athlete’s foot powder for Andrew, she might have heard and come charging up the stairs, she might have barged in without knocking, in which case, she may well have been surprised to find her son’s girlfriend, in flagrante, frantically pumping the large scented candle Bel’s boss had given her for her birthday in and out of her neatly shaved vagina, while the magazine article featuring her adoptive younger brother lay open and propped up against the chest of drawers.

  Maisie comes and collapses, she is breathless – masturbating can be quite demanding. After a moment or two, her scented wanking candle is reunited with its holder and she readjusts her clothes. As it happens, she knows now that he wasn’t called Greg at all, his name is Lance and he’s going to shit himself when he sees her at the weekend.

  Serve him right, thinks Maisie, remembering the shame of having to go straight into work from the Park Lane hotel the next morning. She was still wearing her smelly waitress outfit and recalls spending the entire day painting miniature Christmas scenes onto acrylic fingernails with a stinking hangover, hands shaking over countless tiny plum puddings and bearded Santa faces. She’d been sick twice in the staff toilets before lunch.

  45

  Jumpsuit Weather

  Kittiwake, the day of the party

  Freya wakes up and immediately checks the weather on her iPhone. She could open the curtains and look out of the window, but Lance is still fast asleep.

  Typical, she thinks, after the hottest summer on record in over forty years England has reverted to her usual sulky self and the weather app predicts a mixture of sunshine and cloud with 30 per cent chance of rain in the afternoon. Tomorrow is the same, while Sunday doesn’t bear looking at.

  Freya tries not to feel bitterly disappointed. If only Lance had been born six weeks earlier, they could have held the party under blazing July skies and by now the entire weekend would be over and Instagrammed.

  She tries to slow her breathing down. Today is ‘family only’ she reminds herself, secretly wishing it was only her family and that Natasha and Bel plus her mob were arriving tomorrow, along with all the other guests. Ideally, she’d like a night alone with her mother and sister, the two people, apart from Lance and the kids, that she loves most in the world. Her sister’s small children are coming too and Freya smiles at the prospect of seeing them: little pug-faced Astrid, freckly Nico and baby Aksel. Freya is delighted her sister decided to have a third child, it had given her the perfect excuse to buy an overpriced but adorable wooden crib she had seen in a reclamation yard some months ago.

  Once five-month-old Aksel has made use of it, she might take it downstairs and come October she can fill it with decorative gourds?

  Freya pads down to the kitchen in her floral Toast pyjamas. Katie, the part-time nanny, is making pancakes with the children. Freya tries not to mind about the egg-goo mess and tugs Katie’s plait playfully, although slightly harder than she intended, as she passes her by and kisses her children on top of their pink scalps. Despite their father’s Mediterranean looks, her children are resolutely fair, their hair the colour of the white owl she occasionally sees in the barn.

  Katie is to keep the children occupied all day, preferably out of the house, while Freya and her usual daily cleaner plus another girl from the agency do a final titivate around the house. Freya mentally runs through her to-do list: garden flowers in all the bedrooms and bathrooms, charming bunches of mismatched dahlias chosen seemingly at random, plus scented candles and boxes of long matches in all the en suites and lavatories.

  The fresh fish van should be arriving at nine, followed by the yurts and porta-loos for the top field before midday, this afternoon the trestle tables will be erected for Saturday night’s feast in the barn, and at 3 p.m. the gardener is coming to position the outdoor candles and fairy lights, tick, tick, tick.

  She has timed this operation with military precision: she wants everything including the fish pie done by 4 p.m., giving her plenty of time to get ready to meet her guests in a smiling and relaxed fashion, despite not being able to wear the knitted lace Missoni shorts she was saving for the occasion.

  Today is jumpsuit weather. Hers is a charcoal parachute silk number which she will wear artfully rolled up at the ankle and wrist to show off her tan and the children will be in nautical stripes. She likes them to look as though they belong to the seaside, just a
s a small piece of the seaside belongs to them.

  Freya feels a sudden wave of exhaustion – all this monumental effort and some people probably won’t notice any of it, because there are some people who simply don’t care if there are empty toilet rolls lined up on top of the lavatory. She is thinking of Lance’s sister, naturally.

  Freya visited Bel’s house in Clapham once and found the experience profoundly depressing.

  They had been having an awkward cup of tea (served in vile mugs emblazoned with ugly pictures and stupid sayings) in the sitting room when an ugly dog had waddled to the middle of the lawn and proceeded to take a crap in front of the French windows.

  No one had mentioned it but Bel must have been mortified.

  The great thing about having a lurcher, decides Freya, is that even mid shit, they are elegant. Anyway, it’s not Bel that she’s trying to impress, it’s her husband’s mother, Natasha, who remains unmoved by anything other than Lance, her expression melting as soon as she sets eyes on her son. Freya considers for a second how difficult this must have been for Bel growing up. Her own mother Mari was scrupulously fair in sharing her love between Freya and Elise, dividing it as precisely as the chocolate bar she would cut in two when they came home from school.

  But then she and Elise are Mari’s own, they both have her eyes and Elise has her nose while Freya has the same wide smile and perfect teeth, poor Elise having drawn the DNA short straw from their father’s side of the family around the mouth.

  Surely the woman will have something to say about Kittiwake, surely she will marvel at its transformation, the clever colour schemes and quirky individual touches. As if for luck, Freya strokes a piece of driftwood on the windowsill. How many pieces of driftwood had she discarded along the beach until she had found this one, the perfect combination of colour and shape, so beautifully sun-bleached and intricately knotted? She has surrounded it with an arrangement of ‘interesting’ striped pebbles and black-only shells.

  Sometimes the children try to add to this collection with any old rubbish they pick up on their trips out and Freya has to secretly re-edit the display at night. It’s like when they attempt to dress the Christmas tree and she has to redo the entire thing while they’re asleep.

  Outside, the pristine bunting flaps in the breeze and a gunmetal cloud crosses over the sun, but it’s only momentary and as the sun reappears, Freya notices that her precious bronze kitchen island, is splattered with pancake mix and covered with a thousand tiny greasy fingerprints. Freya removes a wooden spoon from the earthenware jar next to the cooker and bites down hard on the handle.

  Please, she intones silently, let me have this one perfect weekend and I will never ask for anything else.

  Eventually, Katie corrals the children into the garden and Freya can concentrate on wiping down the work surfaces. The kitchen island has its own special bucket of cloths and cleaning agents, and she finds polishing the thing somehow therapeutic.

  It’s Lance’s actual birthday tomorrow and she has spent a fortune on his main present, but it’s what he wants. He had even pointed it out in a magazine. The children have bought him a Liberty silk pocket handkerchief and some Paul Smith socks and they’ve both hand-painted him a card. Luna’s is quite good but Ludo’s makes her wince. Never mind, she will find somewhere discreet to display it. Gifts will be presented at breakfast time tomorrow over smoked salmon and scrambled eggs; fresh bagels are being delivered by van at 8 a.m. If they don’t turn up, she will burn down their premises.

  Freya chooses a couple of Nespresso pods for the machine. She and Lance can have coffee in bed, the calm before the storm – not that there will be a storm. She checks her weather app again. No storm, although Sunday’s beach breakfast barbecue looks certain to be rained off and all her lovely wicker baskets will go to waste. If only it wasn’t a bank holiday weekend, she despairs. Normally everyone would leave on the Sunday, but oh no, this is a three-day event, like a mini-festival, complete with ukulele band and fire-eaters. She is very tempted to put brandy in her coffee, but she resists.

  She is going back upstairs, her husband is going to wake up to the aroma of a freshly brewed cup of coffee and then he is going to take her in his arms and – how long has it been? Putting the milk back in the fridge, Freya notices a small colourful packet tucked behind the bread bin. Who the hell has brought Angel Delight into her E-number-free kitchen? If she finds Katie has been feeding her kids with that muck she will have her fired, drawn and quartered. She drops the offending article in the bin.

  The phone rings. It’s Bel, who is calling to say they’re setting off now and is there anything Freya wants picking up on the way, like some bread or loo rolls or something? No, she reassures Bel, she doesn’t need anything picking up, everything is in hand, just bring yourselves, she adds cheerily. ‘See you later.’

  Freya shivers. Dammit, she might have to put the under-floor heating on.

  46

  The Drive Down

  Bel isn’t sure what she is dreading most – the drive down or seeing her mother. She has woken up with what might be cystitis but could be nerves and has been peeing every half-hour from 5 a.m. until Andrew woke up at eight. There is some of that fizzy pink powdery stuff in the bathroom cabinet that is meant to work wonders for UTIs; it’s three years past its sell-by date but she knocks back the medicinal sherbet anyway.

  They have agreed to leave at ten, but with two hours to go, Bel already feels anxious. Jamie, who never goes out, went out last night. In fact, come to think of it, she didn’t hear him come home.

  Oh God, what if he’s gone missing and she has to phone the police? She’ll kill him.

  As for Maisie and Ed, oddly enough she can already hear them moving around above her head. Maisie was in a high state of excitement last night, the poor child has probably hardly ever seen the sea, Cornwall can be yet another new experience she can thank the Robathams for, like guinea fowl and Manchego cheese.

  Sitting on the lavatory again, Bel promises to be good all weekend. She won’t be catty or snide or wince on the motorway, even when a big lorry overtakes and she is convinced they are all going to die.

  She will do everything in her power not to annoy anyone, she wants to present a united front, a normal, healthy, happy family, with fully functioning adult children.

  She wishes her sons had let her pack for them. She has told them both that jeans will be fine, she offered to buy them new shirts, but they curled their lips like cheap Elvis impersonators and rolled their eyes.

  Well fuck you, she thinks, breaking her promise to be good and kind and patient before she has even wiped her bottom.

  When they were little boys she would buy them cotton shorts from Mothercare and iron their little T-shirts if they were going anywhere nice. She made sure they had sensible lace-up shoes that were properly fitted by the nice lady in Peter Jones, she bought them new socks and white pants and vests and replaced them at the beginning of each new term. Her boys were well turned out and washed behind the ears, their hair smelt of anti-dandruff shampoo and she lined them up at night to make sure they cleaned their teeth properly.

  She would like to do the same now, she would like to shave off their beards and flannel their necks, she would like to remove each individual blackhead from around Jamie’s nose with one of those metal extractor things she has seen on the internet and she would like to burn Ed’s filthy trainers and kit him out with a fun but respectable pair of suede desert boots.

  As for herself, all she can do is to pull her stomach in and hope for the best, but at least thanks to Maisie she won’t be wearing her dressing gown tomorrow night.

  Surprisingly the girl had been as good as her word and Thursday’s late-night shopping trip had been more successful than Bel anticipated. They’d met outside Top Shop directly after Maisie finished work and Bel had been slightly taken aback when Maisie had linked arms and purposefully marched her to down to Cos on Regent Street. Here, jaw set in a poke of determination, the girl had rif
led through the shop with a speed and efficiency that had left Bel feeling tortoise-like by comparison, before pushing her into the changing rooms with an armload of possibilities. Twenty minutes later, Bel had been surprised to see a version of herself in the mirror that she knew ‘worked’.

  Nothing about the navy and white polka-dot pleated chiffon skirt had screamed ‘buy me’ from the rail, but teamed with a sweet square-necked, puff-sleeved, Tyrolean-style blouse that mercifully didn’t require tucking in, even Maisie had given the ensemble the thumbs up.

  Standing at the till, waiting to pay for her new clothes, Bel had felt a sudden warmth towards her son’s girlfriend, and suggested they attempt a couple of shoe shops and the possibility of a nice girlie supper somewhere with a celebratory bottle of prosecco thrown in. But Maisie had apologised and explained that she’d accidentally booked herself in for a professional spray tan at a mate’s salon in Streatham and was already running late. Which was a shame, because for a brief moment the two of them had felt a bit closer. So Bel had gone home on the Tube alone, consoling herself with the thought that at least Maisie having her tan done elsewhere had saved yet another of her towels from looking like an incontinence blanket. Silver linings and all that.

  She has packed a shared suitcase for herself and Andrew, instructing him that he must be responsible for his own toilet bag and prescription drugs, as she has no room in hers.

  Bel views her toilet bag with despair, then squeezes in the remaining cystitis powders. Once upon a time, she could go away for a weekend with nothing more than a razor and a few paracetamol, but those days are long gone. Now her ancient Superdrug floral zip-up contains blood-pressure medication, anti-indigestion tablets, Deep Heat in case her back gives out, multi-vitamins and, the latest addition, a tube of over-the-counter cream to prevent itchiness of the vagina – a new and troubling condition which no doubt she will have to go and speak to her GP about.