by Meg Mason
Phil had never heard her speak quite so directly, without her usual darting eyes, wringing of hands and sucking of hair. She raised her glass in salut. ‘Well, by dint of having had his child, Stuart is your family. So, excellent. That puts us well ahead.’
Abi relaxed, and began to look amused as Phil topped up her schooner with the last of the rosé.
‘You know Abi, I really don’t think he’s a bad egg. Having never laid eyes on him of course. I get the distinct sense he’s just a confused young man, scared witless no doubt, taking his time to get his ducks in the proverbial row. Don’t mind my probing, but how have things been in the bedroom, as it were? Or how were they before he skived off? It’s always a fairly good barometer in my experience.’
Abi blushed a ferocious crimson.
‘Don’t be childish Abigail, it’s a genuine question,’ Phil said. Unable to face another ‘jat’, she skewered the last triangle of cheese and ate it directly from the knife, washing the lot down with another tremendous lug from the schooner.
‘We hadn’t actually, fully you know. I was still a bit . . . on the tender side . . . down there . . . and so well we hadn’t done anything . . . major. And then he moved out.’
‘Ah. I see. Well that won’t do. Men are simple creatures, Abigail, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to jolly up and get on with it. Your grace period is over. It’ll be awful until you get going, but lie back and think of England.’
Abi looked very sincere. ‘I think that would put me off.’
Phil erupted and, helplessly, Abi joined in.
‘Have you got anything else?’ Phil asked a moment later. She tapped the bottle with a knife. ‘This one’s as dead as a dodo.’
Over some kind of red that didn’t look fit for gravy but was all Abi could find in the kitchen, they worked on a plan that relied in equal measure on sex, more many-layered lasagnes, the sweetness of Jude, acquisition of furniture and Abi resuming her studies to develop a wider range of conversation starters. ‘And if required at a later point’ – Phil said with a discreet burp – ‘the most blistering ultimatum.’
Phil wanted Abi to write it all down, but the highlighter was being uncooperative and at some point, towards the end of the red, Abi started drawing all over her leg. Phil was slumped to one side, finding the display uproarious. It felt so good to laugh, harder and harder, until tears were streaming down her face, and Abi was lying on her back, smoking the highlighter like a fifties ingénue.
Shortly after, Abi seemed to remember something and crawled to the kitchen on hands and knees, coming back with a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream, which had been intended as a gift from Stu to his mother and never given. The plastic bow was still on the top and Abi was sticking it to her hair when a phone rang.
After a dozen rings, Phil realised it was hers and fished it out of the basket.
‘Hello,’ she said, with deliberate steadiness. Abi began modelling the bow as a corsage, then a single earring, then a sort of fascinator, and Phil pressed her fingertips to her lips to stifle more giggling.
‘Hello Polly dear. Yes, I’m fine thank you. And h-how are you? Keeping. Well? I hope.’ Abi tried the bow as an eye-patch and Phil turned sharply away from her towards the window, shoulders drawn in against a further outbreak. ‘Having your breakfast?’
‘What darling? I’m very fine. No I’m not. That’s between Brid-ja and I. Don’t wade in Polly. You’re such a fearful wader, darling, honestly. Can I go please now? I’m terribly fatigued. Goodbye.’ She mashed the keyboard with the flat of her hand, hoping she’d shut the thing off. ‘Whoop! We’re in trouble now. Poll’s onto us. Truly though.’ Phil tried to be serious. ‘What do you have by way of sweets? I’ve got such a hankering.’
‘Oh.’ Abi planted the bow, finally, as a tasteful brooch and said, ‘I have got Grandma Jenny’s Microwaveable Self-Saucing Puddings, Flavour Selection, but there’s only date left, sorry. They do have their own sauce, although to be honest, I’ve found that one in four will be a dry one.’ She and Stu had discussed it once, and he agreed it was the case. ‘And I can’t remember if I’ve had the dry one from this packet yet.’
‘Oh,’ said Phil, sobbing with laughter. ‘Oh, I don’t like those odds at all, Abigail.’ Phil rose very unsteadily to her feet and reached out for her basket, missing the handle the first time. ‘I suppose I ought to go home. What time is it? Oh look, it’s on here.’ She was surprised to find the phone still in her other hand. ‘Not even eight! All right well look, lean out your window and if you don’t see me in five minutes I’ve been accosted and you’ll need to be the one to tell Noel. Go gently, dear, he’ll be utterly destroyed.’
She paused with her hand on the doorframe and refused Abi’s offer of escort on the grounds of Jude and something about the blind leading the blind, and gave her a farewell peck on the cheek. Abi staggered over to the window and a few minutes later saw Phil attempting to wave up to her, before teetering over the brickwork and disappearing inside. Leaving the chopping board and cups where they were, Abi lay on the pull-out with her feet up on the opposite arm and tried to memorise the plan for winning Stu back, because if she showered in the morning, it was all going to wash off her leg.
48.
Horrible, horrible
Brigitta lay with her face to the mattress and a pillow over her head. It had been a long, tedious Saturday since the phone call early that morning, which had left her unable to settle to any sort of activity. Fits of cleaning that had no visible result, leafing through an old Vogue and finding nothing that could sustain her interest, a run that she aborted after seven minutes, breathless and unhappy. And now too early to bed to sleep, her mother’s accusations still playing in her mind as they had all day. ‘Your father would feel the same . . . you’ve tried . . . it didn’t work.’
Over the course of the day, her embarrassment and rage had settled into a low, throbbing panic, attached mostly to the question of money, and there being no more of it from her mother. If she hadn’t stormed out of the restaurant last night, she would be there right now, with an apron pocket full of tips. As menial as the job could be, she felt the loss of it keenly.
After an hour more of tossing and turning, Brigitta fell asleep. She woke again too early the next morning, rolled onto her side and stared into the middle distance. Outside the window, clouds passed in front of a weak sun, making it seem as though a light inside was being flicked on and off with a switch.
Some time later, Brigitta got up and as she pulled an old cashmere jumper of her father’s on over leggings, she began to think of walking down Marylebone High Street, having a look at the shops and picking up breakfast, until a painful stab of reality erased the picture.
Another day alone in the studio would send her mad and she considered decamping to Polly’s for the day, but ever since she had refused her sister’s offer of the X Factor and Polish savouries, relations had felt fragile. After the twenty-four hours she had just endured, another instalment of her sister’s ongoing Be Kinder To Mum lecture would be the absolute end.
In the heat of the moment, she’d forgotten to ask Phil not to tell Polly about the spending and of course she would have by now. Brigitta tipped out her purse and realised she was set for a long walk and whatever you could get by way of breakfast for £3.12.
Setting out for Regent’s Park, she hastened through less inviting sections of Malden Road, littered with takeaway boxes and stripped chicken bones, weaving through families doing Sunday market shopping and slowing once she crossed Haverstock Hill Road.
By the time she reached the northern tip of Primrose Hill, Brigitta had finished a processed egg sandwich and established the fact that acting was a poor job for meeting anyone, friends or lovers, vis-à-vis the temporary nature of the work; that her sister and mother were probably talking about her at this exact moment, picking over every embarrassing charge on the statement; that she needed to ring Lawrence and beg for her job back; and that life would be vastly improved if she were
taller, and married to Guy.
Guy. The thought came to her suddenly, and wonderfully, like a boathook thrust towards a drowning soul. Although they hadn’t seen each other again after her stage door sacking, soon afterwards he had started dispatching flirtatious text messages, requesting drinks, a visit after midnight one evening, and only yesterday, offering details of a director friend who was looking for someone of her ‘precise physical form’ for an experimental thing at the National. Against her strongest impulse, Brigitta had replied to none of them, wanting to simultaneously punish him for booting her off his production and further arouse his appetite for Kentish Town. Realising that she must be somewhere near his house by now, Brigitta sent him a short, enticing message and his reply came back immediately. He could meet her in half an hour. Anywhere she wanted. He was longing to see her, he said. It had been the most tedious six weeks of his life.
With a thrill, Brigitta replied to say she was actually quite nearby and why didn’t she just come to him? After a pause, he suggested the European deli they both knew by sight on Fitzroy Road.
Brigitta ducked into a small Boots on her way and sampled a volumising mascara and dry shampoo, arriving with minutes to spare. She opened the tinkling door to a small room hung with salamis and onions and smelling pleasantly of espresso. A large family of tourists were seated around a table in the window, taking each other’s photograph with expensive-looking cameras and speaking in loud, rapid Italian.
Taking a booth at the back, she sat facing the door. As she ordered coffee for both of them, Guy entered. She watched him edging between tables and checking each booth. He was wearing cords, an ancient cricket jumper and, uncharacteristically to Brigitta’s mind, a plain baseball cap.
‘Darling,’ he said, with a smile that carried the full force of his charisma. ‘There you are.’ It felt exactly the same as walking on stage with a tray and feeling the follow spot hit her face, hot and bright and for that moment, all hers. He slipped into the booth beside her, pressed her against the wall and kissed her with an intensity unsuited to a public dining room. Unnoticed, a waiter set down two espressos and backed away.
‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he said, breaking away and examining her thoroughly. ‘Although this is bloody dangerous you know, Birj, I’m really shitting in my own kennel meeting you here.’ He removed the cap and his hair fell about his face.
‘Why dangerous?’ Brigitta wiped the corner of her lips.
‘Well you know, Primrose Hill is a bloody village. It’s not that I can’t be seen with you, it’s just because I’m so recognisable.’
The notion that Guy could not be seen with her hadn’t exactly occurred to Brigitta until then and she found it galling now.
‘Anyway, darling, tell me everything.’ He gathered her hands up in his. ‘Where have you been, doing what and with whom, and why wasn’t it me?’
‘Oh you know, nothing.’ Brigitta hoped her reply sounded mysterious, rather than factual. ‘But I want to know about you, or us actually, Guy. The last time I saw you was horrible.’
‘Oh, darling, I know. Horrible, horrible. Work is a beast, the pressure Birj. But listen, you must just hang on. Can you? Sylvie’s days away from moving to the country, so it’s only a question of time, darling.’ As he spoke, still holding her hands, another round of flashes from the direction of the tourists lit up the room.
Brigitta kissed him. ‘All right.’
‘And is everyone well? The sundry Woolnoughs?’
Guy had never asked after her family before and his thoughtfulness was touching, especially after the conversation she’d had with her mother.
‘Actually, they’ve all ganged up on me a bit,’ Brigitta said. ‘My mother’s cut me off, would you believe?’
‘Oh darling, how boring.’ He found a wallet in his back pocket and drew out what to Brigitta’s eye looked like at least five hundred pounds in twenty-pound notes. ‘Take this and do something reckless with it, would you? Your poor thing.’
‘Does this make me a kept woman?’ she asked, half joking but strongly inclined to accept it.
‘Only if you’d like it to. I actually ought to dash though, lovely.’ Below the table, he slid both hands up her jumper and held her bare waist. ‘It’s been bliss to see you. Can I drop in tomorrow night? I feel an overwhelming nostalgia for the bedsit.’
‘Of course.’ Brigitta smiled as he shuffled out of the booth, bathed in another flash of white from the front of the restaurant.
As soon as he’d gone, Brigitta ordered a proper breakfast and nabbed a luscious-looking newspaper supplement from an empty table. Intensely satisfied, she opened the magazine in search of the Arts bit. There, grinning out of the social pages, was Guy Kidd. Of Guy Kidd and Sylvie Allen Kidd, who was wearing some sort of draped gown that clung to a rounded belly, then cascaded to the floor, pooling on the red carpet. She was leaning in so that her forehead pressed against Guy’s temple. His arm was curved around her back, fingers appearing at the other side of her waist. They were frozen in the middle of a private joke. In a flare of paranoia, Brigitta thought they were laughing about her.
Burning, she got up to leave and found herself blocked by a waiter coming the other way with her breakfast. Already regretting the extravagance, she dropped one of Guy’s twenties on the table and, pushing past him, headed to the exit where she vaguely sensed a final flash of the tourists’ camera as she stepped into the street.
Looking up and down Fitzroy Road, she chose what she thought would take her in the direction of Guy’s house, and as she began walking, a figure in a silly baseball cap emerged from the newsagent fifty yards up, holding a thick stack of newspapers under one arm.
She kept her distance, following him around the corner and all the way to a pretty mews, then hid behind a delivery van, watching him forage for his door key, then tap on the door with a knuckle. A child in pyjamas wrapped himself around Guy’s leg as he leaned inside, kissing someone out of view.
Brigitta had no plan as she strode towards the house. Instead, she only heard a voice, some version of her own, inside her head. It spoke as though testifying to an imaginary jury. No, I didn’t think about what I was doing. No, I didn’t plan it, it just happened. I expected Guy to answer the door, so when it was his wife . . . No, I didn’t realise she was pregnant. I did throw money at her, yes. I don’t remember exactly what I was shouting, only that the money belonged to her husband so she should have it back. That’s when I saw the flash again, yes, and that’s when Guy came to the door and saw the photographer, and that’s when I ran off and got into a taxi. Yes, he followed me. The photographer, not Guy.
49.
Deadly Predators or Arsenal
Polly lay listening to rain tick against the sash windows of her bedroom and the rapid chatter of morning cartoons coming from downstairs. It was a wet bank holiday Monday. An hour of animated rubbish would be allowed, if it meant a lie-in. She wondered why Mark was taking so long with her tea and hoped to God he hadn’t let the boys talk him into pancakes, which would mean every dish in the kitchen pressed into service and a precipitous drop in mood and behaviour when the sugar wore off mid-morning.
She occupied herself by starting a mental to-do list for the day until she heard Mark bounding up the stairs in such a way he couldn’t possibly be carrying a cup and saucer. He flung open the bedroom door and stood there, holding the Daily Mail, which he took as a cheap weekday pleasure, and Polly took as a recurring moral and aesthetic affront. Mark dragged a hand over his bald scalp and looked decidedly queasy. ‘Briggy’s in the paper.’
‘What?’
‘She’s been snapped having a stoush on the doorstep of some theatre person. Never heard of him, but there’s another lot of them together in a caff. Being fairly amorous. Really nasty stuff. Who knows how they get it.’
Polly leaped out of bed and snatched the paper Mark was holding between two fingers like a dirty rag. ‘Give it here.’
The grainy image on the front page showed h
er sister standing on a doorstep, throwing what looked like pieces of screwed up paper at Sylvie Allen Kidd, whose too-lovely-for-radio face was frozen in terror. Her hands were shielding her stomach, and in a smaller inset, a little boy had joined the fray.
Across the bottom of the page a blurry time-lapse sequence showed Brigitta running along the footpath with her jumper pulled up to hide her face. Polly’s hands began to shake as she turned to pages four and five, which a cover splash promised would contain ‘Bonus Pics!’ There, Polly saw her pressed up against Guy in a seedy-looking café booth, and an overblown close-up, circled in red, captured what could only be Guy’s hand under the table disappearing into the darkness of Brigitta’s leggings.
Polly flung the paper at the wall, with a surge of protectiveness so strong it curled her hands into fists. ‘Oh Briggy,’ she said, out loud. ‘Oh no.’
Mark strode over to his wardrobe. ‘I’ll go and get her.’
‘No, I’ll go. Call whoever you can think of who’ll be useful, and get Natalia to take the boys out,’ said Polly, pulling a trenchcoat over her pyjamas and noting her own commanding tone with approval. She was not sure she could do it, but she had to. She must.
Downstairs, she found the car keys, intending to drive all the way to Kentish Town and retrieve her sister. But as she opened the door, a taxi stopped at the curb and Brigitta struggled out. With a stricken expression, she mimed the signing of a bill.
Polly made her way down and paid the driver while her sister hovered behind her, wiping rivers of mascara off both cheeks. As the car rumbled away, Polly turned and faced her sister, who immediately collapsed against her chest.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said, as Polly folded her arms around her and sighed from her core.
‘It’s all right, we’ll fix it. Mark will think of something, don’t worry.’
As Polly steered them back to the house, Brigitta wiped her nose on her sleeve, leaving behind a glistening trail of clear mucus on the fabric. ‘I’m so sorry. Really, I’m so sorry.’
