by Judy Astley
Polly knew something was going on, and one way or another was planning on profiting from it. Daisy wasn’t spending hours getting ready for a quiet evening in, that was for sure. She was just dialling Harriet’s number to consult with her on suitable blackmail charges when Daisy and Emma marched importantly into the sitting-room and switched off the television.
‘Hey, I’m watching that!’ she shouted at them.
Daisy took the telephone from her and replaced the receiver, then took her hand and led her to the sofa. Polly felt nervous, Daisy was being quite gentle with her, which left her unsure how to react. Daisy being stroppy and demanding, she could deal with – she was used to that. Daisy and Emma sat each side of her on the sofa, and Polly waited for the worst, possibly a thorough beating-up.
‘Polly, how would you like to go out to a really good party? With us,’ Emma asked, smiling sweetly at her as if she was offering her a treat.
‘Yes. But it has to be a secret. You mustn’t tell the parents,’ Daisy added.
Polly pretended to consider for a long moment, trying not to smirk. They thought she wouldn’t want to go, that she’d need persuading. How stupid of them. She slowly curled her legs up underneath her to look more settled for the night. ‘But it’s Casualty. I always watch that.’ Defiantly, she folded her arms, wondering how far she could go with making Daisy furious.
Daisy bit her lip. ‘We’ll set the video. You’ve got to come Poll, I can’t leave you here on your own.’
‘No, you can’t do that,’ Polly agreed. ‘What do I get if I come? You’ve got to make it something really good, because you wouldn’t want to be grounded again would you?’ she said slyly, her big eyes staring innocently at Daisy’s multi-coloured eyelashes.
But Daisy had looked at the clock and knew her options had expired. She wanted to leave, and leave now. Her patience evaporated and she grabbed Polly by the hair. ‘You’re coming with us Polly, and you’re going to be really good and do just what I tell you, and you’re never going to mention this to anyone, not ever or . . . or . . .’
‘Or what?’ Polly held her breath.
Daisy grinned, frighteningly. ‘Or, you know that mouldy cat that you and Harriet half-dug up last night?’
‘Ye . . . es . . . ?’ Polly mumbled.
Emma, one step ahead, smiled equally maliciously.
Daisy was still grinning. ‘Well I saw a film once, and there was a very silly man in it who told tales when he shouldn’t have and one morning when he woke up there was a horse’s head in bed with him, all horrible and bleeding. In your case you could end up sharing your bed with that putrid pussycat. Imagine that.’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Emma slid closer to Polly and whispered in her ear. Polly could smell her musky perfume. ‘You wouldn’t like that, would you Polly? I know I wouldn’t.’
Chapter Fifteen
If he’d known that Serena was coming, Alan would have thought of some excuse, a previous engagement that was impossible to miss. He could understand that for some men, the sort more used to playing ‘away fixtures’, the thought of sharing a dinner table with both a wife and a focus of lust was overwhelmingly thrilling, a real kick to the old and flagging virility, but for him it was heartstoppingly hazardous. Suppose he got drunk and said something really stupid, like calling the wrong one ‘Pudding’? Adultery, even the planning stages of it, obviously didn’t come naturally to him. He was a shambling amateur at it. Who were those men who ran sleek-stockinged mistresses and dared to book smart hotel rooms by the hour for conscience-free afternoon sex? Both women were looking equally desirable, Jenny with her lion-coloured hair, already starting to look sexily dishevelled in her low-cut black velvet dress, and Serena in silky pink, the jacket not quite covering something lacy and black underneath that looked enticingly like underwear. Jenny’s body was known, familiar. Serena had the advantage here of being the more tempting through being untried.
Guilt gripped Alan’s intestines and made him peevish, blocking off his appetite. He’d been really looking forward to going out with Jenny, liberated from all guilt-inducing fantasies for once in a way that reminded him of taking well-earned time off work. He liked his wife; much better than that, he loved her. What he felt for Serena was completely separate, and the two women had no business facing each other and exercising their social graces across a restaurant table. If he’d known, he could have conjured up a wedding anniversary, or a godchild’s birthday treat, or a suddenly dead Irish aunt with a compulsory three-day wake in Kilburn, and simply taken Jenny out to Riva in Barnes as he’d planned. He wished he was there now, watching the men admiring Jenny and looking forward to linguine with crayfish in a deliciously creamy tomato sauce. It would all have been so conveniently close to home, too, not two counties away out there in God-forsaken pony club territory, with something that may or may not be Vivaldi giggling shrilly from sub-standard speakers. Bernard really should have left discussing the office finances till Monday, it surely couldn’t be that much of a crisis, Alan thought as he sat sulkily crumbling his bread roll (freshly baked on the premises, the menu promised) and wondering if he dared to risk the garrulousness that came with even the smallest amount of alcohol.
He thought he recognized Frankie as the woman waiting on the pavement the night he had driven Serena home. She’d definitely been that sort of squarish shape, though he hadn’t seen enough of her to notice the pretty, feathery haircut, or the huge green eyes. Serena introduced her at the table as simply, ‘My friend Frankie; we share the flat.’ He had been under the impression that Serena had bought her flat herself, so Frankie must be a lodger brought in to help with the mortgage. Typically sweet of Serena not to mention that, thought Alan. He flinched nervously in his seat as, next to him, she swished one silky leg across the other under the table, terrified that he would unconsciously (who was he kidding?) find his thigh drawn towards hers under cover of the tablecloth and that Jenny, all-seeing and all-knowing, would see and know all.
Sandwiched between Bernard and Frankie, Jenny wondered, rather cattily, why the lovely Serena was manless on a Saturday night. Perhaps she had an absent husband; a fiancé in the Navy would rather suit her, she thought, somebody who looked good in a uniform, doing something important defending the Gulf on the Ark Royal. She looked like the well put-together Surrey sort who would have no trouble with Officers’ formal dinners, or telling a Captain from a Commodore at thirty paces. She had a plummy little ex-deb voice, just falling short of being gushing as she asked Jenny about her family.
‘And has Polly recovered from her exams?’ she enquired politely, making Jenny feel immediate and unreasoning resentment that Alan must have discussed his family with her. Instead of sensibly imagining them over coffee in the office or whiling away the journey to a client’s audit, she instantly pictured the two of them indulging in cosy chats among crisp linen pillows on Serena’s bed, making languorous after-sex conversation, with Alan recounting amusing little tales of disordered family life. Jenny tried not to seethe, tried to control her wandering imagination. It was only one evening, it could and would be got through.
Bernard, Serena and Alan had the advantage of knowing what they had met to discuss. ‘We’ll just get the boring stuff out of the way quickly and then we can get on with enjoying ourselves,’ Bernard announced jovially, as if pleasure in the dinner could be put on hold and resurrected at will. ‘Just got to sort out whether we’ve actually got work premises to return to on Monday or not.’ He laughed as if, deep down, it was quite unthinkable that the firm could really be in dire trouble, as if this never really happened to people like him.
Jenny, for one, felt dismissed from the discussion across the table, and after ordering food from a waiter who quite rightly curled a scornful and amused lip at the shameful Restaurant Watch slip, knew she was relegated to making conversation with Frankie and Monica. Her brain cut out momentarily while she pondered whether she should have ordered the sea bass instead of lamb, and returned seconds later to find Mo
nica comfortably launched into listing her weekly timetable.
‘And on Tuesdays and Thursdays it’s Meals on Wheels, then Fridays I do the hospital run.’ She did a girlish giggle and confided, ‘They call it the After Eighties clinic, a bit like the mints, because that’s the minimum age for our old dears. The charge-nurse calls them the Still With Us brigade, because that’s what everyone says to them; “Still with us are you dear?”, you know, everyone from the ambulancemen to the consultant. Naughty really, I know,’ she laughed cosily, her necklace with dangling fruit-drop beads cheerfully bouncing at her throat.
‘Rather patronizing, don’t you think?’ Frankie’s icy voice chipped in as she leaned forward earnestly. ‘Just because people are old, surely that’s no reason to treat them as if they’ve no more intelligence than domestic pets?’ Jenny turned to Monica, who looked slightly puzzled, as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard properly. Frankie had a coldly serious look on her face, her pale pink mouth tight with righteousness. Jenny felt sorry for Monica, who, naïve and well-meaning soul that she was, had no streak of artful wit with which to defend herself.
‘Are you in social services by any chance?’ Jenny asked Frankie with an innocent note of interested enquiry.
‘Physiotherapy. I work with stroke survivors. We don’t call them victims any more, of course,’ Frankie answered. ‘It’s a matter of positive attitudes.’
‘It must be enormously rewarding, helping the poor old things regain their faculties.’ Monica had recovered and smiled eagerly, making a misplaced bid for Frankie’s good opinion. Frankie glowered at her. Not over-rewarding for the patients, Jenny thought, having their broken-nerved limbs coaxed back to useful life by a therapist who thought it was a political crime to call someone ‘love’, however carefully respectful they were being while they were not doing it.
From across the table small hints of disastrous financial insolvency were making their way to Jenny’s ears. Just the odd word, like ‘bailiffs’, and ‘receivers’ and ‘liquidity factor’. The situation at the office sounded even worse than Alan had been telling her: more clients than ever not paying up. The overheard snatches told her that, unless the firm came up with the annual office rent, plus inevitable extortionate increase by Monday lunchtime, eviction would surely follow. No wonder Bernard couldn’t wait another forty-eight hours to discuss it with Alan. What kind of accountancy practice goes broke? Jenny wondered. She listened to them discussing the hiring of motorbike couriers to dash round picking up as much money as indebted clients could pay to prop up the bank balance, and felt very much like she was having the final, over-lavish banquet aboard the Titanic. The waiter hovered, dawdled with the wine and listened, with a superior smirk on his face, which broadened as he caught on to the prospect of this collection of punters not being capable of paying their bill. Alan and Bernard and Serena pored over a pocket calculator so tiny that they could hardly read the figures, and Jenny heard Alan complain that it was useless, it was solar powered and running down. You’d think, she mused to herself, that a bunch of chartered accountants could either run to a proper state-of-the-art computer notebook, or be able to do the old-fashioned adding-up thing with a bit of paper and a pencil.
‘We’re late,’ Daisy said, sprinting down the road and dragging Polly after her. It wasn’t easy running in the boots, and her little toe on her left foot was already rubbing. By the end of the evening it would be raw.
‘We’re not. Parties are always dead boring at the beginning; nobody’s there and nobody’s drunk!’ Emma shouted breathlessly, trying to keep up with her and having to stop and gather up her layers of ancient jumble-sale skirts. They were at the far end of Sophie’s street, and could hear the music. Boys were loitering in the road, swigging from cans of beer which would later be kicked into hedges, and working themselves up to being offensively noisy. One of them called out to Daisy, jeering, ‘What’s that? Your kid?’
‘Kid sister,’ Emma called back.
‘Shut up, Em!’ Daisy hissed at her furiously. ‘I don’t want the world to know. I’m going to dump her as soon as I get inside.’ She pulled crossly at Polly’s hot little paw to hurry her up. She’d wanted to get there early, before some other girl, one of the slaggy, done-it-all sixth-formers probably, moved in to get off with Oliver. He’d think by now that she wasn’t coming.
Sophie had obliging and accommodating parents who had agreed that it would be nice for her to have a birthday party. Like all similar parents in the neighbourhood, they considered it scandalous that there was nowhere for teenagers to go at night that didn’t involve either breaking the law (pubs, clubs) or breaking the environment (the riverside, the Common). At least with parties they knew they were safely at someone’s house, not risking a knifing hanging around in town, and if the party was at their own house they didn’t even have to argue over who stayed sober enough to drive out into the 1 a.m. cold, police-patrolled Saturday night air to collect their child. So, refusing to go out and leave Sophie alone to cope with gatecrashers and trouble, they trailed upstairs to camp unseen in the unused and underheated au-pair suite in the attic, with an ancient television and an Indian takeaway, turned up the volume and assured each other that everything would be fine. The guests were all nice children, from good schools, who had been taught a healthy respect for alcohol. They didn’t fear drugs. Sophie had told them that only thick young kids sniffed glue, and had rather snootily laughed off the idea of Ecstasy ‘only people who go to raves and wear orange lycra take Es,’ she’d sniffed scornfully. If Sophie did run into any problems they would be safely there to deal with it, and if not, well they’d promised their anxious daughter that they wouldn’t interfere, wouldn’t terminally humiliate her by so much as showing their faces. The noises drifting up the stairs were what the optimistic parents hoped to hear; well-cared-for teenagers having a good time, laughing, a bit of squealing, lots of music (Jimi Hendrix – they smiled knowingly to each other, does anything change?), but no glass breaking, no screams, no roaring of boys indulging in excess-testosterone aggression. They settled themselves comfortably in the ancient pinewood and corduroy Habitat chairs, long abandoned from the first sitting-room they’d ever furnished together, and looked forward to watching, uninterrupted, a gloomy French film on BBC2.
Oliver and Ben were in the kitchen leaning against the fridge when Daisy walked in to get herself a drink. She completely ignored them both and simply helped herself to a bottle of K cider from the supply on the draining board along with, as an afterthought, a can of Coke for Polly, then left the room again.
‘There you are,’ Oliver bragged to Ben, ‘told you she likes me. Lucky I came prepared,’ he said, leering and tapping the top pocket of his denim jacket. Ben took a swig from his beer bottle and thought he preferred not to know about Oliver’s contraceptive supply if it was going to be used on his sister, though it might come in useful if he got astoundingly, beyond-belief lucky with Emma. When, he wondered, would he be like Oliver and feel able to amble into any old petrol station and casually pick up a packet of Mates as if it was quite the natural thing to buy along with a Crunchie bar? When, please God, he thought, taking another large swig, would he need to?
Polly sat cross-legged underneath the desk in Sophie’s bedroom and quickly finished her Coke. She knew she’d made an absolutely unbreakable promise to keep well out of the way and not be a nuisance, but surely she wasn’t expected to sit there all night? She sat very still, thumbing casually through Sophie’s diary and listened carefully as two boys sat on the bed and smoked a sweet-smelling joint, discussing how much Ben had been charging for it and whether they could get it cheaper from one of the dealers down on the estate. After they’d left the room she uncurled herself and wandered to the top of the stairs. Down below her through clouds of cigarette smoke, she could see that the house was now pretty well full. No-one would notice if she went down and found somewhere more interesting to be. She crept down and snaked her way through the mass of people. From a chair safely hidden be
hind a large frondy plant in the sitting-room, Polly could see Daisy being closely talked to by a boy with very dark hair and the kind of eyes that don’t leave your face when they’re talking. Daisy was smiling up at him, gazing intently back and looking, Polly thought, quite horribly soppy. He was probably telling her enormous lies about how wonderful she was. If he was, Daisy would believe every single word, so they’d probably be snogging soon and that would be something to report to Harriet. Polly was thirsty again but didn’t want Daisy to catch her, so she looked around and found a bottle on the window ledge just behind her. It didn’t seem to be anyone’s, nobody pounced on her crossly when she picked it up and sniffed at it. It wasn’t Coke, but it would do.
Ben was successfully squashed up against Emma in a corner of the dining-room. It wasn’t dark enough for doing anything adventurous to her body, and there were too many people all squawking noisily around them and banging into them. The air was swirling and heady with cannabis fumes. The obvious thing would be to entice her up to one of the bedrooms. He felt his hands getting clammy at the thought, but he’d had a few courage-gathering drinks and could only ask, it was now or never. ‘Shall we go somewhere quieter?’ he whispered into her hair, despising himself for his corniness. He held his breath and waited for her to laugh in his face and tell him to drop dead.
‘OK,’ she whispered back unexpectedly.
Perhaps she hadn’t realized what he meant. He took her hand and led her to the stairs, where an embarrassing number of sniggering people watched them go up together. Just at the bit where the stairs curved, Ben happened to glance back and into the sitting-room. What was Polly drinking from that bottle he wondered? She was Daisy’s responsibility though, he decided, absolutely not his, not at a moment like this. It crossed his mind then that back in the kitchen just forty-five minutes ago, he should have thought to borrow a condom from Oliver. There really was just the most wonderful outside chance he might need one.
