by Kiki Archer
Keeping her eyes closed, Camila pictured Harriet standing in the rain, staring at her, calling her hot, calling her perfect, calling her her little pocket rocket. She paused. Would Harriet call her that in the moment? Probably not. Would she like Harriet to call her that in the moment? Well, she’d liked it when Harriet had said it before; it was cute and endearing. Camila refocused. So the rain would lash down. Harriet would call her a little pocket rocket, a hot little pocket rocket, before moving forward with an outstretched hand that would reach up and wipe the rain from her cheeks. They would stare into each other’s eyes before Harriet’s lips, slightly parted, would advance, kissing the rain into her mouth.
Imagining the moment, Camila quivered. Kissing a woman. What would it actually be like? Would the kiss be hard or soft? Would they moan? Would their breasts push together? Would Harriet’s hands start to wander? Where would they go? Would they reach behind her waist and pull her in tight? Would their legs part? Would Harriet’s sexy black underwear that she’d had her face pressed against when retrieving the can of hairspray become damp, and not from the rain but from the kiss, the kiss that was heated and searching and—
Camila jumped at the loud bang on the bonnet. “Julie!” she gasped, seeing the fuzzy outline of the pink dressing gown and large golfing umbrella through the now steamed up windscreen. “What are you doing?”
“Hurry up!” said Julie, pulling open the driver’s door. “It’s bloody pissing it down out here!”
Camila unbuckled herself and grabbed her bag from the front seat, tucking under Julie’s umbrella as Julie guided them both towards Camila’s front door. “Why are you in your dressing gown?” she said, over the noise of the lashing rain, even though Julie in her dressing gown wasn’t an unusual sight, but three-thirty was rather early, or rather late, even for Julie depending on which way you looked at it.
“Terry’s back. Well he was. He’s gone again now. Bought me a load of Champagne, the real stuff. Shall I bring a bottle round? Why are you back? I saw you sitting out here. Quick, get in the bloody house would you?”
Stepping into the hallway, Camila noticed the shoes first. A pair of female moccasins placed neatly next to her eldest son’s huge pontoons that had obviously been kicked off and left to lie on their sides with their muddied soles in full view. Her attention turned to the portrait pictures on her stairwell wall. They were rattling, gently.
“Get in the bloody house would you!” gasped Julie, shoving Camila forward with her bottom as she struggled to get the large and soaking wet umbrella through the doorway.
“Shush!”
“What? It’s bloody pissing it down out here!”
“Shush!” repeated Camila, silently signalling towards the school portraits.
“What?” mouthed Julie, finally closing her umbrella and staring at the scene.
Camila whispered. “The pictures!”
Julie stared. “What about the pictures?”
“They were moving.”
“Well they’re not now. Shall I get the Champagne? Do you have another promotion? Is that why you’re back early?”
“They were moving. And keep your voice down. Look at the shoes, she’s here again. There’s no way they should be back so soon, plus the walls shouldn’t be rattling.” Camila slid off her heels and crept up the stairs before shouting: “Michael,” willing to give a one second warning before she blasted her way into his room. “Why aren’t you at school?” she said, throwing open his door as she winced, unsure what she was expecting to see.
“Mum?”
“Yes, it’s Mum. What are you doing?” She surveyed the room. Just as she thought. Her eldest son and Cassie Stevens were standing by the bed, red-cheeked. Had they just jumped up? She studied their attire. His tie was off and his school shirt was loose from his trousers. She looked at the older girl: An easy access jumper dress that was rolled up at the sleeves, and ankle socks, not tights.
“We’re working on a maths project.”
“In school time?”
“School’s finished.”
“Fifteen minutes ago, you can’t get home that quickly.”
“Maths is last lesson. They let us home early to start work on our project.”
“Oh, Michael, do you think I was born yesterday?”
The pretty girl spoke up. “It’s true. We’re manipulating Newton’s theory of gravity.”
Camila looked to her flushed son. “You’re manipulating it? With your tie off and your shirt out?”
“It’s hard work. Look.” The boy picked up a large ball of elastic bands from his desk before moving back to the bed and stepping onto the duvet. “Ready, Cassie?”
The girl took her phone from the pillow and nodded.
Camila watched as her son dropped the ball from waist height as he jumped off the bed. “Careful! You’ll go through the floorboards!”
“It’s an experiment.”
“Wait. Do it again.” Camila held the bedroom door open as she looked towards the stairwell and portrait pictures. The frames rattled noisily. “They weren’t moving like that,” she said, her focus back in the room.
“What weren’t?”
“The pictures on the wall.”
“Cassie’s been jumping, she’s lighter than me.”
Camila looked at the red-cheeked pair. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
The girl spoke again. “Of course not. We’re trying to prove that mass attracts every other mass in the universe and that the gravitational force between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.” She smiled. “You know how Newton demonstrated the universality of the force of gravity with his cannonball thought experiment? The one where he imagined a cannon on top of a mountain? Without gravity, the cannonball should move in a straight line. If gravity is present, then its path will depend on its velocity. If it’s slow, then it will fall straight down. If it reaches the orbital velocity where the gravitational force equals the centripetal force then it will orbit the Earth in a circle or ellipse. If it’s faster than the escape velocity when the kinetic energy is equal to the gravitational potential energy then it will leave the Earth’s orbit.”
Camila stared. “Right.”
“You can go now, Mum.”
“Right.”
“Go on then.”
Camila coughed. “Does your father know you’re here, Cassie?”
“Yes, and he’s really keen for you to use your links with Harriet to promote his new boxing outreach scheme.”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that one,” said Camila, leaving the room more flustered and perplexed than when she’d arrived. Descending the stairs, she watched as the pictures rattled once more. It was definitely a different rattle.
“Are they fucking?” asked Julie, looking up from her position in the damp hallway.
“Of course not! And as if they’d carry on the second I left!”
“What are they doing then?”
“Manipulating Newton’s theory of gravity.”
Julie burst out laughing. “Ha! That’s better than the one I got from Terry’s youngest. She said she was practicing first aid on her boyfriend. You know what I said to her? I said you don’t blow air up there, my love!” Julie paused. “And isn’t it Einstein’s theory of gravity anyway?”
“As if I’m meant to know.”
“And they know you don’t know.”
“Should I go back up?”
“Don’t be daft! Think about what you were getting up to at their age. They’re only kids.”
“Exactly!”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes.”
“So trust him.”
Camila stood still on the bottom step. “Should I trust him?”
“No bloody way!”
“Oh, Julie, what would you do?”
“I’d crack open a bottle of champers and say chars to the fact I had a kid bright enough to bluff
me with a load of old bollocks about gravity.”
“This only started because I took that damn job. The second I turn my back and they’re off the rails.”
“He’s upstairs with the head girl. He’s hardly under a bridge taking meth.”
“Julie!”
“What? Lighten up. Let me bring round some champers. Terry got me a load of new shoes as well. Jimmy Choos. The ones with the red soles. You can buy a pair if you want? I’ll have to charge you full price though as they’re the real deal, not like those ones from the market; remember them? Soles painted with red poster paint, left footprints whenever they got wet.”
Camila took off her blazer and hung it over the bannister. “Why’s Terry so flush?”
“Oh I don’t know, some deal’s come good. Come on, get in your PJs, I’ll be back with the booze.”
“I’d rather just have a cup of tea?”
“You okay?”
“Not really.”
“You’re not still pissed off with me about that bloody car business are you?”
“Did you have anything to do with that car business?”
“I didn’t, no.”
“But you know who did?”
Julie shook her head in disbelief. “Has she taken it out on you? I knew she couldn’t be trusted. They never can, those self-serving rich bitches. Go on, go and get changed. I’ll put the kettle on.”
“No, honestly—”
“Go.”
Not having the energy to argue, Camila turned back to the stairs. If she was honest she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted Julie in her house, let alone making the teas or offering up comfort, as there was a high possibility that it was Terry, suddenly flush, who’d taken Harriet’s car, and yes while that wasn’t directly Julie’s fault someone had told him it was here, and he’d been working away, so his coincidental reappearance was hard to ignore. Pausing on the middle step, she turned back to her neighbour.
Julie was still standing there, smiling and nodding in support. “Go on, I’ve got this. This is what friends are for.”
Camila laughed, her resolve suddenly broken. She’d heard that sentence on so many occasions before where Julie had been there to save the day after some disaster that was more often than not of her own doing. Particular highlights included the time Julie had managed to source a continental adaptor on Christmas Day for a distraught nine and ten-year-old Ethan and Michael whose eager and excitable unwrapping had quickly turned into tears on the discovery that the game console, secretly sourced by Julie, turned out to have foreign plugs. “That’s what friends are for,” she’d said with a smile. Or the time she’d driven Mick, and a number of other guests who’d eaten the prawns at Mick’s birthday gathering, to the hospital, having supplied the buffet herself. “That’s what friends are for,” she had said after blaming the hoo-ha on a bug that was going around. Camila stared at the woman standing there in her pink dressing gown. “Oh bloody hell, Julie, go and get the champers instead.”
****
Lighting her grey glittery scented candle, Camila took the glass of Champagne from the shelf below her television and settled on the sofa, reaching out to pull the cord on the free-standing lamp so the pretty beaded crystals danced light all around the room.
“Sorted?” asked Julie, taking a sip of her drink, already in position on the other side of the soft grey cushions.
Camila tucked her feet under herself and pulled her dressing gown in tight. “Remember when you gave me that cherry hair dye?”
Julie laughed. “Not this again.”
“It ran in the rain, staining my skin and ruining the new jumper my mum bought me.”
“That jumper was horrible. Long haired and itchy.”
“It was white. And remember how Michael and Ethan were just babies? They were totally freaked out whenever they saw me because the streaks looked like blood running down my neck.”
Julie laughed and lifted her glass. “Chars chars. Good times.”
“You offered me your umbrella.”
“Of course I did.”
“Because, no matter how many times I washed it, it still managed to run in the rain.”
“What’s your point?”
“And remember those light bulbs? Everyone on the street had them? They buzzed. Loudly.”
“Was that the time I got the job lot of ear plugs? They were great, tucked right inside your ears, couldn’t even see them.”
“But you supplied the buzzing light bulbs.”
“At half the price of the normal ones.”
“And that DVD you gave Ethan last week, it’s in Chinese.”
“I’ve got an app that can translate it in real time. That film’s not due out for another month.”
“You’re missing my point.” Camila lifted her glass. “This Champagne? What’s this for?”
“Because you’ve obviously had a bloody crap day.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know, you’re about to tell me.”
Camila sighed. “Fine. Harriet didn’t come in.”
“Was she meant to?”
“Yes, wearing her red stilettos.”
“And this has upset you?”
“Yes, well no, it’s not just that, that wasn’t the final straw, the final straw was horrible.” Camila paused, suddenly realising that her whole journey home and subsequent sit on the drive had been occupied by thoughts of Harriet, not thoughts of the email in the lift, or Tina in the focus group, or Pamela passing on her trophy. She shook her head. “Do you want to know why I got the job? The first job?”
“Because you’re bloody good at what you do?”
“No, because Pamela from Insights is actually called Pamela Isabelle Simpson-Smith. P.I.S.S. She gets awarded with the company’s crappest acronym trophy every year and she wanted to pass on the mantle and move away the unwanted attention. I’m C.U.M, Camila Uma Moore. C.U.M tops P.I.S.S every day of the week.”
“Bloody hell.” Julie tried not to laugh. “That’s the only reason?”
“That’s the only reason.”
“I thought Harriet saw something in you?”
“Yes, my tits. You were right.”
Julie leant over the sofa and rubbed Camila on the knee. “Oh bless you, you little good-titted orgasm.”
“It’s not funny.”
“I know it’s not, but if I’m honest you’ve lasted longer than I thought you would.”
“Two days?”
“I gave you one.” Julie took another sip of bubbles. “Women like us don’t live in their world. We’re the honest grafters.”
Camila was now the one trying not to laugh; honest grafter was the least likely accolade she’d gift to Julie.
“What? We are. We look after our kids. We do the jobs no one else wants to do. We live the real life, not some showy-off car with wings, big-bollocked red-stilettoed world.”
“She wasn’t showing off in her car.”
“You only buy cars like that to show off.”
“So you wouldn’t have something sporty if you could afford it?”
Julie lifted her glass. “No, I’d sell the car to buy important stuff like Champagne.”
“I do hope you’re joking because I feel upset enough as it is.”
“That you lost your job?”
“No, that she didn’t come in today, and I haven’t lost my job, I walked out.”
“You walked out because Harriet didn’t come in? That’s a bit bloody dramatic isn’t it?”
“I thought I walked out because people were being mean and, you know me, I’m not usually bothered by that, I’ve put up with so much stick in my time, which makes me realise it must have been the fact that Harriet didn’t come in that was the deciding factor. I was wrong about her and that upset me. I feel genuinely upset.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You know when someone gets inside your head.”
“Camila, this sounds dangerous. Take A Break are always talking about peo
ple who play mind games. Gaslighting’s the big thing at the moment.”
“I don’t think she meant to play mind games, and if I’m honest I liked the idea she thought I was special.” Camila sighed. “But how I performed at work today shows I’m not special at all which must mean she was saying kind things because she was in actual fact after more than my mind, just like you said.”
Julie was nodding seriously. “You’ve had a lucky escape. Tomorrow you can do a stint with me on the bacon butty van. We’ll soon have you remembering who you are.”
“And who am I?”
“You’re the average everyday woman who doesn’t get thoughts above her station.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You’re normal. Basic even, in the nicest of ways.”
“Right.”
“Tomorrow on the van, I’ll make you feel back at home.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sitting in the slow-draining shower tray with only a pool of lukewarm water for company, Camila tucked her knees into her chest and hugged herself tightly. She’d turned the shower off five minutes ago but instead of getting out she’d slid down the wall and slumped onto her bottom. She wasn’t bothering to shave her legs so there wasn’t any need to be down there, but likewise there wasn’t any need for her to be anywhere else. The boys had taken themselves off to school half an hour ago and Julie wasn’t leaving until ten. Not that a shift on the van was anything to get geed up about. Camila cursed herself. When had she become so precious? A few days in the world of work and here she was hating her real life, something that risked shunting her onto a dangerously slippery slope of despair… and that wasn’t like her. This was her lot and she’d been foolish for thinking she was worth more. She mothered, she picked up the odd shift here and there, she helped out with her young nieces and nephews, and she cleaned. Yes, she thought, standing back up and reaching for the loofah that was hanging behind her so she could wipe a stray blob of conditioner from the wall, she cleaned.
