ELEVEN
She didn’t wear the emerald green in the end. She had pored over the photographs on the website long enough, by the time the date came round, to know that something lighter and sweeter would set her off against the pale panelling of the dance-floor room and the picked-out plasterwork of the little supper room. Not to mention toning with her chosen roses. She wouldn’t have admitted to the organizers that her favourite roses were blood-red. Surely no woman would have said so. They would all know what Laura knew, that the first red roses of a new relationship were heavy with meaning.
No one would say purple, would they? That nasty shade somewhere between soot and liver. No, the other fourteen – Laura had got to imagining them, when she was on her exercise bike, all of them pitting against her for Grant, the prize of the night – they would all have said what she said, more or less: yellow, pale pink, pure white. And so she dressed herself up like a sweet pea, in ruffles that winked – now peach, now cream – as she moved. She made up her face with the lightest of touches, cheeks dusted pink, a few freckles painted on as if she’d tried to cover them but not very hard and just a little Vaseline on her dyed lashes and her lips. She would find an excuse to rub her eye at some point in the evening, sending the signal to Grant (or Robert, at a push) that she wasn’t wearing any muck on her face, that this was the real thing sitting opposite him, smiling.
Pearls were a step too far, she thought, sitting at her dressing table and casting her eye over the jewellery at her disposal. Jewellery was tough for a single woman, before she gave up and started buying herself the ‘I’m worth it’ defiance pieces. Costume was pathetic once you were over twenty-one. Funky, quirky earrings and big bangles made her shudder. But until there was someone to put a diamond on your finger, any diamonds you put on your wrist or in your ears or hanging from a chain around your neck only served to highlight that empty finger even more. Pearls were the answer for a few years, but at forty, still to wear your pearls in the evening – such an obvious present from parents instead of more recent tributes – invited unkind looks, or, what was worse, kind looks. Kind comments, even. These days, Laura wore her pearls with a jumper and jeans, with a shirt for work meetings sometimes, and that was the end of it.
There was always the option of loading herself up with good gold chains and bangles, a garnet here, an opal there. It looked like cheap finery at first glance but then she would mention one of them. She could say the bangle with the sapphires and tourmalines was her granny’s, or claim that she had only just got the flat platinum chain back from the menders. Let everyone know, in no uncertain terms, that all this clobber she’d flung together carelessly was worth a bundle.
But not with a peaches and cream ruffled dress for a dance in a room full of roses.
What if everyone except her had said red roses were their favourites? What if the other fourteen women had nailed their colours to the mast and she was going to look like a coward? Or an original? No man wanted an original. Not for keeps. Grant was looking for someone to settle down with, and Robert must be sick of sticking out in every crowd.
Laura lifted her hand mirror and looked at the carefully messy bun she had put together. Tonight was an exception to hair down, she was pretty sure. She didn’t want to look disrespectful, like a soap star on the red carpet, clueless and scruffy. She had secured the twist of hair with a diamond hat pin she’d bought online, a real bargain. No one wore hat pins. But she wore it as a brooch, stuck through her dress, or like tonight as a hair clip.
No rings, she decided. Any ring at all was a joke for a single woman of forty. Her manicure was perfect and that meant more than baubles. Nothing round her neck either. Just a tendril of hair curling from behind one ear to rest against her collarbone. The diamond hat pin when she turned round, and through her ears … Oh sod it all. Her diamond studs were a carat each and she was bloody well wearing them. Anyway, when she put them in, she was surprised to see how titchy two carats’ worth of diamond looked. Would she ever have a necklace – a whole necklace; not just a pendant on a chain? Would she ever have a tiara? A real one? She regarded herself with a look any witness would have called steely. If she didn’t start paying attention and getting this right she wouldn’t even get the chance to wear a plastic tiara for her hen-do.
It was quite a drive from Ayr. At first, she’d assumed Hephaw was some classy suburb of Glasgow she’d never heard of. Like most west coasters, she tended to think of Glasgow first. And last. When she punched in the postcode to time her journey and saw the road snaking all the way to the middle of the central belt, to the pits of West Lothian, she wondered for a moment if she’d found the catch. It sent her back to the website gallery and all the pictures of candlelit tables, marble fireplaces and gleaming parquet floors. What if it was like those hotels in Spain that used stock photos and, when you arrived, they were round the back of an abattoir?
Then she reconsidered it. Actually, it made perfect sense to put a business that would draw car drivers right in the middle somewhere. Edinburgh and Glasgow equidistant, and the bridges over the Forth bringing punters from the north. Should she think of that for herself, when the time came? Not that she was considering a destination premises like a supper club (or whatever this was) but she hoped for some foot traffic when her shop opened. Surely it was still better to have it in Glasgow though. Her empire might expand – would expand, and fast if she had anything to do with it – but her flagship store would be right there in the West End, where people with a bit of spare put it on their backs and flaunted it. Laura understood them and admired them. Ayr might be her birthplace, and house prices might keep her there awhile, but Glasgow was her true home.
She pulled the door closed and checked it, then tripped down the stairs to her covered parking space, feeling irrepressible bubbles of hope rising inside her. She had to stop while a patient transport bus backed in to the pavement dip to drop off one of her elderly neighbours. Niamh, Laura thought her name was. She remembered because it seemed a young name for such a frail old lady. But she was probably Irish and Niamh had probably been an Irish name since forever. Laura waved through the bus window at her and Niamh gurned back and shook her fist, which was as close as she could get to waving, since arthritis had bent her hand up into a claw. She did manage to poke her index finger almost straight and jabbed it down towards Laura’s feet, her strong horny nail hitting the window with a pock-pock-pock. She frowned.
‘I know!’ Laura mouthed. ‘They’re for driving.’ She opened the shoe-bag thrown over her shoulder and showed Niamh the frivolous strappy sandals with the spindly heels that she’d swap for the ballet flats when she got to Hephaw.
Niamh smiled and nodded and then grimaced as her chair lurched against the stops on the lift and her head jerked back. Laura crossed to her car and slid in, smoothing her dress and fastening her seat belt under her bosom to stop the ruffles at her neckline getting crushed.
An hour later, she was crawling along the main street of the kind of town she never thought she’d have business in. Ayr had its rough corners, of course; Laura avoided the bottom of the High Street and the Sandgate leading off it. Not that they were dangerous, but they were depressing. There was no way to avoid the depressing bits of Hephaw. The town, like so many Scottish towns, was just one long street with a few council estates tacked on behind it on each side and even fewer desperate attempts at gentrification squeezed in here and there, like this development of townhouses she was driving past now, whose weedy flower tubs gave away the fact that they hadn’t attracted Yuppies in the end, as their builder must have hoped.
Laura stuck her chin in the air, refusing to recognize the echo of her own townhouse in her own affordable town. There was no danger of recognizing herself in any of the people lining the pavements this late Saturday teatime. Flipflops, leggings and a double buggy seemed to be the uniform for the women of Hephaw, tracksuits and pool slides over socks for the men. Laura kept going, past a pub that advertised Sky Sports, a Farmfoods freeze
r shop and a combined kebab and pizza takeaway.
‘If there’s a Payday Loan, I’m leaving,’ she said aloud to herself. She hadn’t seen one by the time she reached the turn-off for Loch Road. The newsagents with grilles on the windows and the pitiful nail bar with its aspirational name had been bad enough.
‘Where’s the bloody loch, I don’t wonder,’ she said, pulling in beside a gate with ‘1a’ picked out in gold paint on black iron. From habit she looked at the other cars parked up and down the sides of the street. A Skoda, a Hyundai, an Escort, for God’s sake, with a mismatched wing and a missing hubcap.
These couldn’t be the cars of Grant, Robert, Piers and the rest of them. Was she early?
It was just ten past seven. The invitation had been for seven o’clock. Maybe there was a carpark round the back. But when she peered through the bars of the gate, 1a Loch Road looked to be a house. A cottage. And it was joined on to its neighbour on one side and a high brick wall on the other. If there was a carpark then it was off a back street.
Laura wriggled out of her flats and into her sandals. She checked her tendril and her ruffles in the driving mirror, then rubbed her lips together to spread the remaining Vaseline over them. Perfect, she told herself, and opened her car door.
She couldn’t see much of what was inside as she walked up the path. The bay window in what – from her study of the website – she knew was the dancing room had lace curtains, although she could tell from the points of brightness that the chandelier was lit. Candles would have been better with the roses.
She took a deep breath and knocked on the door, hearing the hollow echo of it reverberate inside the house. Then there was silence for what felt like a minute, but couldn’t have been. Laura put her ear close to the wood, ignoring the peeling varnish. If the band had started up already, maybe no one could hear her. Maybe she should just go in.
She turned the handle and pushed, surprised and not entirely pleased to feel the door give way and start to open. She knocked again, in case just walking in was wrong, but again no one appeared in answer and she could tell now there was no music drowning her out. There wasn’t a sound from inside the house.
She took a step back and glanced down the path and through the gate at her car. She could be home in another hour, out of these torturous heels and this flimsy dress that was always wrapped round her wrong no matter how she plucked at it. Then she shook herself, pasted an innocent smile on her face and stepped inside.
The quiet was unnerving. To her left, through a pair of half-open double doors, Laura saw the real-live version of the photographs she’d been poring over. The floor was polished and the fire at the far end was lit and crackling. She stepped inside.
‘Hello?’ There was another set of double doors halfway along the side wall of the dancing room and through there a cluster of little tables was set with white cloths and empty vases. Where were the roses? Where were the people? ‘Hello-o?’ Laura called.
She checked her phone, even though she knew she was here at the right time. Maybe there was a garden and they were all out there enjoying the pleasant evening. (But where were the roses?)
She stood in the middle of the supper room, wondering whether to sit. Some of the tables were for two and some for four. She hoped she sat with Piers and Robert when there was another couple there to dilute the awkwardness and she hoped on her third rotation, when she met Grant, it was at a table for two.
If Grant was coming. If any of them were. Was it possible for everyone except Laura to have cried off for some reason? But wouldn’t the organizers have let her know? She took her phone out again and opened Chrome, wondering if there had been some catastrophe that she alone had missed, from listening to her music instead of the radio.
But someone was coming. At last. She could hear footsteps, metalled heels on stone, then the sound of a door opening.
‘Hello!’ she sang out. ‘I let myself in. I hope that’s OK.’
A woman appeared around a door in the corner of the supper room, a colourless little thing with lashless eyes and wispy hair. She was carrying a deep plastic tray, the kind used to lease out glasses for parties.
‘Can I help you?’ she said. She was tiny and slender, with ankles like a little bird and wrists that looked too fine for the weight she was carrying.
‘Are you Myra?’ Laura said.
‘No!’ said the little woman with a panicked look over Laura’s shoulder. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Laura. Wade. For the dance?’ Laura said, feeling irritation start to gather under her ribs. She had done herself up like a flower fairy and driven an hour to get here and this stupid dishwasher with her rented champagne flutes was just boggling at her.
‘Oh, love!’ she said now. She went to set the tray down on the nearest table then thought the better of it and bent, groaning, to put it on the floor. She wiped her hands on her apron as she straightened. ‘Oh Laura, love!’ she said. ‘It’s tomorrow! The dance is tomorrow. Oh, and you look so lovely too in your pretty dress.’
‘Tomorrow?’ said Laura. ‘No. No! It’s today. It’s tonight. The rose ball. Saturday the twenty-fifth of May.’
‘It’s the twenty-fifth of May right enough,’ the little woman said. ‘But that’s tomorrow. Sunday. We always have our dances on Sunday. It’s … well, it’s nicer, isn’t it? We think so.’
Laura blinked a couple of times. Could that be right? Had she just assumed it was Saturday, because Saturday night was date night? She fished in her bag for her phone to check the calendar and the little woman put her head on one side, and twisted her face up into a rueful half-smile.
‘You still don’t believe me?’ she said. ‘But look: no one else is here. Everyone else is coming tomorrow.’
Laura let her phone slip out of her hand again and gave an answering smile.
‘Promise you won’t tell them all,’ she said. ‘When I come back.’
‘Oh, I am glad to hear you say that.’ The woman literally clapped her hands. ‘I’m so glad this hasn’t put you off and you haven’t got another appointment. That would have been awful.’
‘See you tomorrow then,’ Laura said. All she wanted was to get out and get home. She couldn’t rock up again the next day in the same dress and she needed time to think about another one. Maybe she’d even need to go shopping.
‘See you.’ The woman seemed to hesitate and then went on: ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? It makes us look bad to have a lady make a wasted journey. I’d be really grateful if you didn’t put it on social media.’
‘Of course not!’ Laura said. ‘I honoured your request. There’s nothing anywhere about me coming here. I didn’t even tell friends. Not that I’m embarrassed. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. But … well, you must understand. Or you wouldn’t have asked for confidentiality yourselves.’
‘You didn’t tell anyone at all?’ The woman’s smile was hard to fathom. She seemed too pleased, somehow. Perhaps she felt pity. Perhaps she’d decided if Laura hadn’t told a soul it was because she didn’t have a soul to tell. Laura found herself hoping that was it, but feeling a flicker of understanding that it was something else entirely, something she didn’t want to name.
The woman was looking over Laura’s shoulder now, and quite intently. Laura felt the hair on the back of her neck lifting, and was sure that someone else was there, standing silently behind her. She half-turned but could see nothing except shadows, a half-open door leading back to the hall, a half-open door on its other side, darkness beyond. She strained her ears but heard nothing except the tick-tock, tick-tock of a clock that she hadn’t noticed until now.
‘You’re forty, Laura, aren’t you?’ the woman said suddenly.
Laura turned back to face her. ‘Yes. I didn’t lie about my age.’
‘And that’s exactly right. That’s exactly the right age. You’re a perfect match.’
‘Who for?’ Laura said. She couldn’t help a little leap of excitement inside her. ‘For which one?’
‘Are you talking to me?’ Laura said. The clock had stopped. How could a clock just suddenly stop though?
The woman blinked and then she did look straight into Laura’s eyes. ‘Who else?’ she said. Then, ‘Before you go, can I ask you to do something? And then to say thank you, I’ll show you something? Can you say “show” if it’s a smell, not a sight?’
‘A smell?’ Laura said.
‘It’s the roses, for tomorrow. They’re downstairs in a little flower room we’ve got down there and the smell would make you drunk. It’s glorious. I mean, they’ll be sweet enough tomorrow when they’re up here, but the rooms are bigger and we’ll have the windows open and scented candles and food, so they’re bound to be diluted. I’d love to let you experience them all massed together today. I know you’re a true rose fan, from the ones you chose. A named variety, not just a colour.’
Laura smiled, flattered. The truth was she had asked for Princess Elizabeth to see how far this outfit would go to please a guest.
‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘Thank you. And what is it you want me to do?’
‘Oh!’ said the woman. ‘I nearly forgot. We’ve changed our wine supplier and I’ve just opened a bottle to check it out. For tomorrow. And I’m not sure. Now, I know you’re driving, but would you take one sip and tell me honestly what you think?’
‘Happy to,’ Laura said. ‘I bet it’s fine. But it’s good to pay attention.’
‘This way,’ the woman said, beckoning her to the open door in the back corner of the room. ‘I’m Kate, by the way. You’ll meet my sister Gail tomorrow and we’ll have some servers too. Sixth-year students from the high school, but we’ve trained them properly. This way.’
A Gingerbread House Page 12
