‘I lied,’ said Charlotte cheerfully, switching my TV on and squatting down in front of the video recorder. ‘Get the bloody kettle on, for God’s sake.’
She was on her second croissant by the time I brought the mugs in. I handed her one and flopped down on the sofa beside her. ‘This is going to be horrendous,’ I said.
‘Clive reckons you went down a storm,’ Charlotte pushed the bag of pastries toward me. ‘He says you look a bit frightened at first, but they all loved the bit where you started screeching.’
‘What about my make-up? I meant to ask him that the other night. The cheapskates. Didn’t he promise me …?’
‘He says he didn’t realise they’d stopped doing it. It wasn’t cuts – they’re going for the more natural look. They like to see when people go all red and blotchy.’
‘Well, that’s bloody great,’ I began, clapping a hand to my mouth as I saw the graphics that had just appeared on the screen. ‘Oh my God!’ I sunk into the sofa as the opening music began and Randolph Kendall loomed large in front of us. ‘They used it all up on him, more like!’
Though actually he looked less orange on screen. Unlike me. I recoiled as I spotted myself hunched in my front row seat – body like a misshapen Satsuma, face positively ashen, and looking as though I’d just been told I had three days to live.
‘Why did I do this?’ I wailed to Charlotte, who wasn’t listening.
‘There I am!’ She jabbed a gleeful finger at the screen. ‘And there’s Doris. Look, you can see her grinding her teeth already. Ha! There I am again. That was a terrible blouse that girl next to me had on …’
She kept up a joyful commentary all through Maureen and Jean and Brian, while I cringed inside, waiting for the moment when I would start speaking.
‘Ah! Here you are,’ yelled Charlotte as the camera panned in so horribly close you could see the hairs up my nose. My voice sounded strange and my hands were flapping about all over the place but I looked calmer than I remember feeling.
‘I had no idea I pulled all those faces when I speak,’ I said in wonder.
‘Oh yes,’ said Charlotte airily. ‘You’ve always looked freaky as soon as you get excited about anything. Hey, look at you now,’ she shrieked. ‘Oh my God, Lu – look, look !’
My face was contorted into the sort of “snarl like a wolf” expression recommended on the Save-Yourself-Surgery video of facial exercises that had been Charlotte’s idea of a witty birthday present, and I was waving both arms now.
I turned away and groaned.
‘You tell ’em, love,’ said Charlotte, grinning. I looked back briefly as the camera panned into my open mouth, while my voice rose in a crescendo. Back on my own sofa, I blocked my ears and firmly shut my eyes …
The phone rang almost as soon as the credits began to roll.
‘Oh Lord, I hope that’s not my mother,’ I said. ‘If she’s seen it there’ll be hell to pay. She’ll be saying I should have sat up straighter and why wasn’t I wearing a nice navy suit with my hair set?’
But it was Alicia.
‘Did you see it?’ she cried, the moment I picked up the receiver. ‘I’m sitting here with Gran – we’ve been pissing ourselves laughing.’
‘I’m sitting here groaning,’ I told her. ‘I can’t believe how awful I looked.’
‘You looked cool,’ said Alicia dismissively, ‘and I reckon we made a jolly good team. Now, I’ve downloaded the form for this cookery programme, and filled in most of it. All you have to do is answer your questions and get them back to me – what’s your email address?’
‘Oh no, I really don’t think –’
‘Yes – go on. They definitely do your make-up on this one – I told you my friend Shirley’s been on. And one of you wins five hundred quid – we can split it, whoever it is. Come on Laura – £250 for a few hours and a bit of a laugh.’
‘I don’t even know what I have to do.’
‘Well, watch it at 5.30 p.m. – it’s funny. I’ll phone back this evening.’
‘No, listen. Alicia …’
‘Oh, and Gran says hi. Catch you later.’
‘Where did she get my number from anyway?’ I asked Charlotte, as I put the phone down.
‘I gave it to her. Oh bloody hell – look at the time. I’m supposed to be showing someone round a house at North Foreland in five minutes – must scoot.’
She gave me a hug. ‘You TV star, you. Want to come round tonight and we’ll watch it with all the kids?’
‘No, not really. I’d rather sit here with my head in a bucket.’
‘I’ll see you about six. I’ll do spaghetti.’
When she’d gone, I went upstairs to consider the delights the day held. Namely finishing the copy for a double-glazing brochure filled with plastic-looking men in suits pointing at equally plastic-looking white windows while a suitably thrilled-looking family of four stood arm in arm surveying their new heating bills, slashed to a fraction of their normal size, by the installation of Glow-Glass Windows and Doors …
I thought about Alicia as I waited for my computer to whirr into life and yesterday’s page to come up on the screen. I didn’t want to do any more TV, that was for sure, but there was something attractive about being around young people who still had some drive. I liked Alicia’s energy – the way she was bent on success. I remembered Daniel saying it about Emily. With his usual tact and sensitivity, he’d thought nothing of listing his new girlfriend’s latest achievements. Telling me how well she’d done, all the top clients she’d had. ‘She’s very ambitious,’ he’d finished with pride.
Was that the must-have quality now? To be ambitious? To make something of yourself, as Daniel had put it.
Once, it had been enough to earn sufficient funds to pay the mortgage. To have a child. Daniel had been promoted every few years since his initial days of filing and form-filling in the civil service but he’d always just accepted this as the natural order of things. He’d never shown any particular excitement or hunger to be elevated up the ranks. He’d take the odd exam, come home and tell me he’d been put up a grade. I’d say well done, and we’d both agree the extra money would be useful and we’d turn on EastEnders . There was no talk of ambition then.
In fact, when Stanley was a few months old and I still couldn’t stop crying and had sat at my computer trying to write an ad campaign for Mike, tears dripping, feeling as though the copy was in a language I couldn’t understand, it was Daniel who’d phoned Mike and said I wasn’t ready to be back at work.
‘We’ll manage,’ he’d said to me. ‘The money isn’t worth you putting yourself through this. You’re looking after our baby – that’s more important than any sort of paid job.’ No mention of ambition then either.
But now, he was impressed with career, money, status … fame?
‘She’s made something of her life,’ he’d said accusingly. The implication being that I hadn’t. I had sat back and done the same job writing brochure copy for the same clients for ten years, driven back and forth down the same roads on the same school runs, gone to the same supermarkets and now I was 42, with the same face looking ever more ravaged, and nobody would employ me now even if I did want to get on a ladder. It was all rather too late …
‘Why are you watching this?’ asked Stanley in surprise, coming into the sitting room at 5 p.m. to find me in front of the TV.
‘One of the women I was on the other programme with wants me to go on it with her.’
Stanley raised his eyebrows. ‘Cooking?’
‘I might win some money.’
‘Can I have the new iPhone if you do?’ Stanley looked hopeful.
‘It might not be that much money,’ I said hastily. ‘But who knows,’ I added, giving him a small wink as his face fell again. ‘We’ve got a couple of months till your birthday.’
I smiled at him, thinking that if I could make the £250 I could offer to pay for the handset and Daniel could provide the swingeing monthly payments for the contract they�
�d make us have. After all, Stanley did need a better phone now he was at secondary school; the old one of Daniel’s he carried in case of emergency was on its last legs, and why shouldn’t he have the latest gadget for once?
Maybe it would give him a bit more street cred with the other kids –make them treat him like one of the gang. The more I thought about it, the more the idea took hold. If I went on the TV programme I could try to win the money for my son. It would only take a few hours, after all, and he deserved something nice. I’d do it for him. For Stanley …
‘Come off it,’ said Charlotte that evening as she strained the pasta. ‘You’ve got the TV bug. Stars in your eyes! You just fancy yourself on the box again.’
‘It might be a bit of fun.’
‘Can I come?’
‘I don’t know, Alicia is sorting it. But in the meantime, I’ve got to fill in all these bloody forms.’
Charlotte put a large, steaming bowl on the table and picked them up.
‘An amusing anecdote? The shepherd’s pie against the wall again?’
‘It was lasagne, and no thank you. Something funny, it says.’ I looked at her desperately. ‘What’s happened to me that’s funny?’
‘What about that time you fell asleep with your head in the trifle?’
‘No .’
‘Or when you got locked in the loo at Janice’s hen night. Now that was funny–’
‘Not for me it wasn’t – I was in there hours.’
Charlotte waved a hand. ‘Just make something up.’
‘Like what? And, oh God, look at this one: What is your greatest achievement?’
Charlotte considered. ‘Forcing someone to marry you?’
‘Getting rid of him again,’ I corrected sourly.
‘Look,’ said Charlotte, putting a pot of parmesan cheese and a pile of cutlery in front of me, ‘you just need to make yourself sound as though you can say something witty when asked. If you sound like a dreary old divorced housewife they won’t touch you with a barge pole.’
She sat down opposite me and picked up the pen. ‘I’ll fill it in – you lay the table and get the wine open. I always find a glass of vino inspiring in these situations.’ She looked at the paper in front of her. ‘Who would you love to have dinner with?’
‘You. That gorgeous young bloke who’s on Strictly Come Dancing . I don’t know.’
‘We’ll say Jeremy Paxman – they won’t be expecting that. Say you go weak at the knees when the Newsnight theme tune comes on.’
‘But I don’t …’
‘What would you spend a million pounds on?
‘Um, er, I’m not sure. Maybe a bigger house. Stanley’s bedroom is a bit small …’
Charlotte wrote rapidly. ‘Diamonds, fast cars, loose men, and a boob job. What is your favourite party trick?’
‘You can’t talk about boobs and I haven’t got one.’
She thought for a moment and then bent over the paper once more. ‘Playing – the – spoons.’
‘Charlotte!’ I squeaked. ‘Come on – I can’t do that.’
Charlotte looked up and sighed. ‘It’s a joke ,’ she said wearily. ‘Remember jokes?’
Chapter Nine
Nope. I can’t say I did. Some things just weren’t funny.
The rubbish bag splitting as I dragged it from kitchen bin to front door wasn’t at all amusing, for example. Particularly when an empty tin of spaghetti hoops bounced out of it and left tomato sauce drips all along the hall carpet. The house being in a mess didn’t make me laugh either, nor did discovering Stanley’s school trousers were totally covered in mud while the other pair were still in the washing machine, or him wailing that he would get detention if he went to school without his tie again and he’d looked everywhere and still didn’t know where it was (it eventually turned up beneath Boris).
I didn’t smile once when I dropped a cup of coffee and the china not only smashed into a thousand pieces on the quarry tiles but the dregs managed to splash all over the front of every kitchen cupboard and half way up the wall. (How does that happen ? How does a mere inch of liquid left in a cup manage to drench an entire room?)
By the time Stanley and I had finished yelling at each other and I’d driven him to the bus stop as it was pouring with rain, and given in to his request to pull up round the corner so his friends wouldn’t see me in my dressing gown if the bus happened to arrive at the same time as we did, and had narrowly avoided driving into the back of a rubbish truck while I did it, I was at screaming point.
I let myself back into the house and took seven Oil of Evening Primrose capsules – and some vitamin B which is supposed to be good for one’s nerves. Mine were shredded – it being Day 24, which is only one step down from Day 19. I still felt ready to explode.
‘I wish I had your life,’ I told Boris, who was laid out on the floor with the length of his body pressed against the radiator, sleeping peacefully. I could have done with being comatose myself.
Instead, there was the joy of another catalogue of garden artefacts and water features for Mike’s newest client, and some ad copy for a series of uninspiring-looking shelving units.
I’d already had three emails from Mike and it was only a matter of time before he started phoning as well. In a moment of weakness, I’d promised him some slogans by lunchtime for a presentation he was making at 2 p.m. so I averted my eyes from the washing up and trudged upstairs to get going.
If I could get a load of work done this morning, I could catch up on other things this afternoon. I still needed to get hold of Roger. I’d come up with the cunning plan of phoning him up at work but giving a false name until I actually got him on the line – so that if he wasn’t there and didn’t have time to ring me back, there’d be no danger of him doing so from home and/or saying to Charlotte, as he was bound to, Laura called me today.
I’d pretend I was a client, with something private to say and avoid giving any details since I wasn’t entirely sure exactly what sort of solicitor Roger was. Saying it was strictly confidential and I could only speak directly to Roger seemed foolproof enough.
As soon as my thousand words of dullness had safely disappeared down the line to Mike and I figured Roger would be back after lunch, I got the number from the Internet and dialled. A female voice answered at once.
‘Hammond and Barnes.’
‘Roger Forbes, please.’
‘Who shall I say is calling?’
‘Lucille Hamilton.’
‘Just putting you through.’
There was a pause and then another voice came on the line.
‘Mr Forbes’ office.’
Must be the secretary. I adopted a chummy tone. ‘Is Roger there, please?’
‘I’m afraid he’s in a meeting. How can I help you?’ Her tone was cool. She probably thought I was being over-familiar. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t the same voice I’d heard before.
‘Thank you but I need to speak to him personally, really.’
‘If you’d like to give me your number, I’ll pass the message on.’
Unless, of course, this was her professional telephone voice and she only went into the breathy one when she was being a stalker out of hours.
‘No, don’t worry, I’ll call back later.’ If I gave my mobile number and he wrote it down and took it home, Charlotte would recognise it at once and how would I explain that? ‘When will he be free?’
‘Perhaps after three. I’ll tell Mr Forbes you called, Mrs Hamilton.’
Damn it. Now he’ll say he doesn’t know me and it will be even more difficult next time.
‘Thank you.’
Sure enough, he wasn’t there after three either. The secretary was chilly and polite. ‘If you could tell me what it’s concerning, maybe one of the other partners could help you?’
‘No, thank you. I’ll phone back again.’
But not today. In the meantime I’d realised that not only were we almost out of cat food and there was no milk for Stanley’s cereal
in the morning, but I only had about £2.50 in my purse.
Fortunately I had thought to look at the calendar on the kitchen wall which had revealed it was parents’ evening. That started at five and went on till God knows when, so I needed something I could cook quickly for dinner once we got back. I looked at the clock. There was just time to get to the cash point and the small Tesco in the High Street before Stanley got home.
Or there would have been if Mike hadn’t phoned to drone on about his presentation and how marvellous everyone thought it had been and how I’d be pleased to know they loved my ideas for the ads and wanted me to do their next brochure as well.
‘Great, great,’ I said with forced jollity, one eye on my watch.
‘So I’m emailing the brief and can we be looking at the end of the month?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s fine,’ I said, thinking I’d worry about the fact it was already the 23rd later. ‘Must go now, Mike. Got to dash – need to pick up Stanley.’
It was raining again by the time I’d run into Tesco for some free-range chicken Kievs and salad, so since I knew Stanley would be getting off the bus soon, I found a space on a double yellow line just up the road from the bus stop and waited.
I answered a text from Charlotte, demanding to know where I was, just when she needed a coffee, and despatched another to Sarah from Greens Wine Bar who’d sent one days ago saying she’d seen me on TV (thanks Clive!) and to whom I kept forgetting to reply.
I was just contemplating a quick game of Mine Sweeper to pass the time when I looked up and saw Stanley trudging up the hill toward me. He looked rather red in the face. A group of boys trailed behind him. I saw Stanley look back as if someone had called out to him. I wound the window down and waved.
Stanley looked behind him once more and then hurried over to the car and got in. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said crossly.
‘I was shopping – I thought I’d save you getting wet.’
‘Oh. Thanks,’ he said shortly without looking at me.
I started the engine. ‘Were those boys being horrible?’
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