The McCabe Girls Complete Collection

by Freya North

  ‘Course you can,’ Zac says, ignoring Juliana’s frown. ‘You know where it is,’ he continues pointedly, aware that this turns the frown to thunder.

  ‘Thanks,’ Pip says meekly and shuffles in. As soon as she has locked herself in Zac’s bathroom, she realizes she has all but trapped herself. She slumps down with her back to the basin and wonders what to think. Bizarrely, she suddenly fancies taking a shower. She doesn’t need the loo at all. She notes that there is only the one toothbrush and she’s pleased. She half-thinks of cleaning her teeth. She runs her fingertips over Zac’s luxurious towels. She sniffs his aftershave balm to see if it springs to mind. She doesn’t recall it, but it smells nice. She catches sight of herself in the mirror but glances away and dutifully unbuttons her trousers and sits on the toilet. She really does not need the loo. She puts her head in her hands.

  I am sitting on Zac’s loo. I’ve sniffed his toiletries, manhandled his towels and resisted the urge to shower or to brush my teeth with his toothbrush. Good God!

  You really ought to leave the bathroom. It’ll be a little embarrassing soon.

  It’s mortifying already. I want to stay in here for ever. I want to magically evaporate – like bubble bath around the plug hole.

  Pip – you really do need to emerge.

  And then what? What on earth am I meant to do? Or say?

  As discreetly as she can, she unlocks the door and opens it. She emerges into the hallway and clears her throat, preparing to enter the sitting-room. Only she remembers that she hasn’t flushed the toilet, not that there’s anything to flush. But she ought to flush it or they’ll think she forgot to which won’t look good at all. Not that turning up on spec trilling ‘Hullo, cupcake’ looks particularly good. So she returns to the bathroom, flushes the loo and goes through to the sitting-room making a big deal about wiping her hands on the back of her trousers – though she suddenly wonders if they’ll wonder why she didn’t use Zac’s fine towels for the purpose.

  Juliana is reclining languidly in the Eames lounger, her stockinged legs curled sinuously, the Sunday Times ‘Review’ section in her lap. She looks most at home, very at ease with her Sunday at Zac’s.

  ‘Thanks,’ Pip says to her in a servile way she regrets at once, ‘that’s better.’

  Shut up, Pip!

  ‘You know how it is when you’re bursting for a pee!’

  Don’t say another word, just bugger off out of here!

  ‘I mean, I could have popped in to McDonald’s but I thought hey, why not pop in and say “hullo” to Zac!’

  For Christ’s sake, just leave!

  Juliana smiles cursorily and regards Pip with an all-too-fleeting look of distaste that is all the more pointed for its brevity.

  ‘Tea, Pip?’ Zac calls through.

  ‘No, no!’ Pip calls back over her shoulder.

  ‘I’ve made a pot – stay,’ he suggests, coming into the room with a tray laid for three. Milk in a china jug.

  ‘Really,’ Pip says, locking eyes with him, ‘I was just passing. I just needed to have a wee. I ought to bugger off. I mean – you know – Sunday afternoons are precious.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Zac says.

  Pip wants to gaze at him, try to detect what he’s feeling, see if there is a sparkle to his eyes, a spark between them. But she feels suddenly shy and stupid and incapable of maintaining, let alone instigating, eye contact. ‘Sure I’m sure,’ Pip nods. ‘Ta-ra,’ she says to Juliana who looks up eventually from some paragraph or other and fixes her with a synthetically sweet swift smile.

  ‘Righty-ho,’ says Zac with a shrug.

  ‘New painting,’ Pip remarks, nodding at his recent acquisition as she turns to leave.

  ‘Yes,’ he says proudly. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s very you,’ Pip confirms warmly. ‘You’ve moved the blue boobs?’

  ‘They’re in the bedroom,’ Zac laughs, ‘and they’re mountains, I tell you!’

  ‘Yes yes,’ Pip jests, ‘and lap dancing is a higher form of ballet.’

  I really really have to go.

  ‘Well, porn is educational,’ says Zac drily with a nonchalant shrug. He walks Pip to his front door, both of them a little confused by how abstract art had led to porn so seamlessly. Both a little amused, too. But soon enough, awkward again. ‘Anyway,’ says Zac, frowning momentarily at his door lock.

  ‘Yes,’ Pip answers him, staring at his letter-box.

  ‘That was a surprise,’ Zac says, but too quietly for his tone of voice to suggest whether he means nice or nasty.

  ‘Sorry,’ Pip shrugs. ‘It was impetuous. I should have called.’

  Zac brushes away her apology and opens the door. ‘Take care,’ he says.

  The sound of the door closing denies Pip the ‘cupcake’ he adds to his sentence. Juliana hears it, though. It pisses her off, yet jealousy doesn’t figure. She feels restless and cooped up. She isn’t really remotely interested in the Sunday Times ‘Review’ section, let alone lounging about with a whole stack of weekend papers. She isn’t really that interested in the clown with the weak bladder. Certainly, she doesn’t feel remotely threatened. Why should she? She denounces the clown as physically uncouth and irritatingly quirky in personality. Furthermore, she feels no threat because actually, she harbours no true possessive affection for Zac. Suddenly, she feels bored beyond relief. And irritated. Christ, if she could use the toilet in McDonald’s – that’s where Zac had taken her and his kid that lunch-time – why couldn’t Pip?

  ‘I’m going, hon,’ she says to Zac, testing for attention and an objection. Zac, however, doesn’t object. ‘Maybe we’ll do something later in the week.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says.

  ‘Maybe we won’t,’ Julia poses.

  Zac shrugs.

  ‘No doubt your sister-in-law will contrive one of her staged evenings,’ Juliana says with a cockily raised eyebrow.

  Zac regards her squarely. There’s no way he’s going to dignify that with a worded response. She’s pushing it, she’s pushing him, he realizes. But he doesn’t want to be shoved into a corner like the bad boy. There’s nothing to justify, apologize for or clarify. So he just stands his ground, leaning nonchalantly against his wall, looking at his new green painting, quite happy to have his home to himself for the remainder of the afternoon.

  ‘I’ll give you a call,’ he says. She sees herself out.

  Pip says ‘shit shit shit’ all the way home. She walks as fast as she can, saying ‘shit’ with every footfall, straight down Hampstead High Street, through Belsize Park, all the way down Haverstock Hill, turning left up Prince of Wales Road. Pounding the pavement, her heart pounding, chanting ‘shit shit shit’. Only when the Kentish Town Baths come into view does she slow her pace slightly and cease her fulminations. She’s given herself a blister. And a headache. And of course, as soon as she’s home, the answering machine flashes urgently and the phone starts to ring before she’s shut the door and switched on the light. She’s not scared of answering it any more. She doesn’t wonder who it will be. What will be will be, and all.

  ‘Well?’ It’s Cat.

  ‘I’m on the other end!’ It’s Fen as well.

  ‘Well,’ Pip tells her sisters, while wriggling out of her shoe, peeling down her sock and wincing at her blisters, ‘I did it.’

  ‘You didn’t!’ says Cat, full of awe.

  ‘You didn’t!’ says Fen with admiration.

  ‘I certainly did,’ says Pip. ‘I rang his bell and I said “Hullo, cupcake”.’

  ‘Hullo, cupcake,’ Cat repeats as if it’s a line of poetry to commit to memory.

  ‘Awesome!’ Fen says excitedly.

  ‘I did it,’ Pip repeats, ‘I said “Hullo, cupcake”. And that’s the point.’

  ‘And he said?’ Fen asks.

  ‘What did he say?’ Cat begs to know.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Pip, ‘initially. Nor did his girlfriend.’ Her sisters gasp. ‘So I pretended to need the loo.’ Her sisters
are too shocked to wonder whether this was a cunning plan or not. ‘Then what could I do but leave?’

  Fen and Cat try to make sense of the facts. Cupcakes and girlfriends and asking for the loo. They wonder what they’d’ve done. They wonder what Pip should’ve done.

  ‘I bet he calls,’ Fen says decisively, though deep down she thinks it now sounds pretty futile.

  ‘I bet so, too,’ Cat says, privately thinking that asking for the loo on top of the cupcake part would not have done her sister any favours.

  ‘Whatever,’ says Pip. ‘I did it, that’s the thing.’ She was feeling enormously tired – as if saying ‘Hullo, cupcake’ was in itself as complete a declaration as any she had composed whilst striding the moors. Somehow, she feels released from obligation. In truth, ‘Hullo, cupcake’ had utilized an enormous amount of energy. She needs to preserve a little because she wants to paint the door frame into the kitchen a shade of raspberry sorbet before the weekend is over. She switches Radio 2 on and her mind off.

  Zac doesn’t clear away the tray of teacups until nearly midnight. His cup has drying sediment on it. Juliana’s is still half full with a discoloured scummy film now clinging from surface to sides. But it’s Pip’s cup that catches his attention. It hasn’t been used, of course. But he puts it in the dishwasher nevertheless, as if it has been. Before he goes to bed, he surprises himself by holding the towels in his bathroom against his nose. He can’t detect Pip. He tells himself he’s not trying to, anyway; tells himself he’s just checking to see whether he needs to wash the towels, though he knows full well that they’ve only been out a couple of days because he put them there.

  What a peculiar turn of events. The last thing he was expecting that afternoon – or at any time, really – was an impromptu visit from Pip. He really hadn’t thought about her much recently at all. Apart from the morning when she intruded on his reverie though it was Juliana in his bed in reality.

  She called me ‘cupcake’. What a peculiar thing to say. What an odd thing to do – to turn up here, with a manic smile on her face, calling me ‘cupcake’ and asking for the loo. What the fuck is a cupcake? I suppose I could ask June – it’s the sort of thing she makes, no doubt.

  Call June! Do. Call June, Zac. Ask her about cupcakes.

  Of course he does no such thing.

  There again, I always thought Clowngirl was a trifle odd.

  He goes to sleep thinking of audits.

  ‘What’s a cupcake?’

  Ruth looked at Zac and thought it a most peculiar question to be asked in the interval of A Streetcar Named Desire. She looked at Juliana and raised an eyebrow in a hopefully conspiratorial kind of way.

  ‘What’s a cupcake?’ Zac repeated.

  ‘It’s a fairy cake,’ Ruth replied, wondering if the gin and tonic wasn’t quite as watered down as she thought, ‘an individual sponge cake baked in one of those crinkly paper cases.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Zac, sipping his G & T and thinking it a travesty that theatre bars should be allowed to so obviously water down their liquor.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Ruth probed.

  ‘No reason, really,’ Zac shrugged. The second bell sounded.

  ‘A friend of his fronted up on Sunday afternoon,’ Juliana informed Ruth, ‘out of the blue. Wanting the toilet.’

  Ruth nodded, none the wiser. ‘And he brought cupcakes?’

  ‘No,’ Zac laughed, ‘she called me “cupcake”.’

  ‘Who did?’ Ruth asked. ‘Who’s she?’

  Juliana remained silent, as if she really couldn’t remember the visitor’s name.

  ‘Clowngirl did,’ Zac told Ruth.

  Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.

  Zac headed for the auditorium. ‘Then she asked to use my loo,’ he told Ruth who stared at him and couldn’t deduce what his expression could possibly mean.

  Suffice it to say, Ruth could not concentrate on the second act at all, though the tickets were expensive and Glenn Close was magnificent. She was desperate to call June. Immediately. Also to have Zac to herself and grill him intensively. Phoning Clowngirl herself seemed like a good idea, too, just then.

  There had to be more. You don’t just turn up on someone’s doorstep and say ‘Hullo, cupcake, can I use your loo?’ There had to be more. Zac couldn’t have taken it at face value alone, surely. He must have thought there was more to it, too.

  Christ! Pip turns up with cupcakes and a full bladder and Juliana is there, too!

  Ruth declined Zac’s suggestion of a drink after the play. And she was far too distracted to chat to her husband in the car on the way home. It was too late to phone June. But she sent her a text message anyway.

  pip went 2 z’s on sun. called him cupcake & asked 4 loo. j there …

  Zac declined Juliana’s offer of spending the night at her place. He was tired. There were unforeseen hassles at work. He took a cab home alone. He was hungry. He shouldn’t have mentioned the sodding cupcakes. Now he quite fancied an individual portion of sponge cake. He asked the driver to stop at a late-night store. The choice was between Bakewell Tarts and Fondant Fancies. He couldn’t decide. He bought both.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘Accidentally on purpose.’

  Zac loved the expression. He also liked ‘almost’, because it could instantly cast a positive light on a possibly negative situation. With ‘almost’, you couldn’t deny that you hadn’t done something you should have, but you could make it appear an innocent timing issue. ‘Accidentally on purpose’ enabled you to absolve yourself of a certain amount of responsibility in a situation.

  And so it was, accidentally on purpose, that on the Tuesday evening, Zac took the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line instead of the Edgware branch. And of course, the first opportunity he had to retrace his steps meant alighting at Kentish Town. However, as if his careless re-routing wasn’t enough, while walking to cross platforms he decided that he might just have forgotten to go to the loo before he left work, accidentally on purpose. He didn’t actually need the loo – but there again, just say there was a delay for an Edgware-bound train at Camden Town? What would he do then? Well! Doesn’t fortune smile on those in need – look where he is! Kentish Town! What a happy coincidence. He knows someone with a loo. Just round the corner. Who owes him a favour. A quick pee and he’ll be home in half an hour. Just a minor detour. No big deal.

  When Pip’s bell rang, she groaned. Most days, at this time, she had been opening the door to some ragamuffin or other trying to flog substandard household goods in aid of some dodgy cause. Consequently, Pip’s kitchen drawers were brimming with luminous orange dusters that left more lint than they picked up dust. She had enough pairs of rubber gloves to kit out a family of octopi though the rubber was so thin that even warm water felt scalding hot and hot water caused holes in the fingertips immediately. She’d bought oven cleaner of which one spritz had got her so high she hadn’t dared use her oven for days afterwards. She’d bought sponges that disintegrated on contact with water long before they came in sight of a pan; she’d bought plastic bags that didn’t open. Tupperware that didn’t close, toilet freshener that smelt toxic and bleach that smelt innocuous. So no, this Tuesday, she wasn’t going to open the door. Buying the Big Issue was one thing, cramming her change into collectors’ cans on street corners was another, sending cheques to charities placing tear-jerking appeals in newspapers was another. But giving her hard-earned cash to the slightly threatening urchins who loitered on her doorstep was something else entirely. She didn’t want any more tat. She had no need for any cleaning implements. In fact, she had no more room. Anyway, deep down she didn’t believe in their so-called charities and she feared her money was more likely to fund daily inhaling of the oven cleaner or some other solvent. So she was going to stay put. Sit stock-still on her sofa, muting the sound on the TV remote control, chanting quietly ‘piss off piss off piss off’.

  The bell rang again.

  Piss bloody off!

  And again, this
time a barrage of rings and an insistent flapping of her letter-box. The audacity!

  Pip sighed and huffed and cursed that enough is enough. This time, she was going to ask for ID and tell them she’d check it first and would call if she required a subsequent presentation of their wares – subject to twelve-month guarantees. She stomped to the front door. ‘I’m coming!’ she barked. ‘For God’s sake.’

  It was Zac.

  Nothing to buy, nothing to sell. Nothing to do but stand and stare.

  ‘Can I use your loo?’ he asked.

  Can he use my loo?

  Her static silence caused his features to soften into a swift but imploring shrug of his lips. ‘I took the wrong train,’ he explained almost apologetically, ‘and I’m dying for a pee.’

  Can he use my loo?

  Pip shook her head to shake off the shock. ‘Sure,’ she said, realizing he didn’t deserve the stern expression she’d fixed to her face in anticipation of the scrounging urchins, ‘sure. Sorry. Come on in. I thought you were flogging dodgy dusters.’

  Zac laughed and followed her into the flat. ‘I come empty-handed but full-bladdered,’ he said, standing in her sitting-room, thinking that something was different but unable to define what.

  They stood, side by side, for an awkward moment or two. ‘Would you like a drink?’ Pip asked, suddenly mortified that she looked a mess in mismatched socks, jeans and hair that needed a wash. She wanted him to say ‘yes’ partly because she wanted him to stay, partly because she wanted the chance to duck into her bedroom and change her socks if nothing else. She could pinch along her cheek-bones when she was in the kitchen. She’d learned that from Scarlett O’Hara and, though it made the eyes smart, it certainly put a becoming blush to one’s face. She’d scoop her hair back into a pony-tail – she knew there was a hair-slide on top of the fridge next to the spare keys and the torch.