Prime Time

by Jane Wenham-Jones

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, mortified, ‘it’s all been a bit …’ I stopped, feeling the tears well in my eyes and spill over, helpless to stop them running down my face and wishing I could shrink away to nothing, ‘I’m sorry.’ I scrabbled in my pocket for tissues. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

  I felt the parents standing behind me begin to shuffle their feet.

  Mr Lazlett stood up. ‘We’ll be a little longer yet, I’m afraid,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Sorry for the wait but perhaps you’d like to go and see another member of staff in the meantime or you could sit over there.’

  I heard muttering and the sound of steps moving away. I sat hot-faced, head low, my hands over my eyes. A few minutes later, a glass was put down in front of me.

  Andrew Lazlett sat down opposite me again and began speaking, still in the same quiet voice. ‘A lot of the boys take a while to adjust. It’s a big change – moving from primary school to here – all the different teachers, having to move about the school for the different lessons. The noise, the sheer numbers of pupils, having to remember which books to take where.’

  I took a mouthful of water, too embarrassed to look up and meet his eyes. He was still talking.

  ‘It takes a few months for some, but they get there in the end. I haven’t seen anything to make me worried about Stanley but I’ll keep a special eye on him and if you have any concerns you can always phone me. If I’m not able to speak right then, leave a message with the school office and I’ll call you back …’

  His voice was low and soothing. ‘And I’d like you to tell Stanley that he can always come and speak to me at any time too. If there’s anything he’s unhappy about.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I mumbled, still feeling like sinking into a hole.

  ‘And I will make a point of having a chat with Stanley myself. Not in any heavy way that will draw attention to him, but when the opportunity arises. I’ll make sure that happens quite soon.’

  He was looking at the papers in front of him again. ‘He seems to be doing fine work-wise. No concerns from any of the staff. No detentions. I take him for English, as you know, and there are certainly no problems there.’

  ‘That’s good. He was always quite good at English at primary school,’ I said lamely, forcing myself to glance up. ‘I’m not really worried about the work, more whether he’s happy or not. I think it’s all been very hard on him since …’ I felt my voice begin to break again and stopped.

  Andrew Lazlett went calmly on. ‘I don’t know the details of your situation, of course, just that it’s always difficult when a marriage breaks up. But kids are surprisingly resilient, you know. My wife has children from her first marriage and it hasn’t always been easy – my stepsons were going through a hard time when I first met them.’ His tone was reassuring. ‘But they came out the other side and, if anything, are stronger for it. I’m not in any way minimising the situation, but I’m sure Stanley will be fine.’

  I nodded and sniffed and blew my nose. I opened my mouth to say something – to thank him and tell him that I knew I was probably being over-anxious but that Stanley was sensitive and not given to talking much and that it hadn’t really been very long since Daniel left – but I knew if I actually attempted to put any of this into words, I would cry all over again. So I just kept my head down and nodded a bit more and took another sip of my water.

  ‘We do our best to look after the boys here,’ Andrew Lazlett was saying. ‘I’ll have that chat with him as soon as I can.’

  There was the sound of more feet around the table. ‘Could you just give us five minutes?’ I heard him say. His voice dropped again. ‘I know a bit about what you’re going through.’ There was another small silence. Then I felt his hand briefly touch my arm. ‘It will get better.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘And now,’ said the young man in the suit, who was walking ahead of me, ‘it gets even better.’

  Oh gosh, I can hardly wait.

  ‘Here is our range of gnomes …’

  Yee- ha!

  I had now spent two hours trailing around the Ashford yards and warehouses of Paradise Gardens – Bespoke Iron Furniture and Quality Garden Installations – and was beginning to feel slightly deranged. I stopped and surveyed the army of small, garish, bearded folk.

  ‘Do people really buy these?’ I enquired.

  The young man – Martin – raised his eyebrows. ‘They’re ironic,’ he told me loftily. ‘I was told you were being sent down as you were the person best suited to conveying the unique wit of our own original hunting and fishing range.’

  Yes, that definitely had Mike’s brand of bullshit all over it.

  ‘Of course,’ I said wearily. ‘Talk me through them.’

  I followed him along the line of green-jacketed gnomes with red hats and red-jacketed gnomes with green hats and cross-legged yellow gnomes with fishing rods and blue gnomes holding something that looked like a shovel.

  Martin stopped proudly before a stripy-hatted gnome standing in the middle of a pond grasping a small – “note the quality of the distressed iron” – watering can from which a fountain cascaded around the legs of several metallic storks. Or they might have been herons.

  I fixed on a bright smile. ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That’s quite something. Now, tell me about your target market …’

  By the time I got back in the car half an hour later, I was gnomed out. I looked at the clock on the dashboard as I started the engine. It was coming up to five. Stanley was being picked up by Daniel straight from school. He’d made mutterings about having to leave work early but I’d insisted, not being able to bear to see his smug face again quite so soon.

  He’d ended up bringing Stanley back two hours after I’d got home from parents’ evening – by which time, unable to fancy the wrinkled, over-baked potatoes that resembled a couple of large walnuts, I had climbed down half a bottle of Pinot Grigio (never a great idea when the hormones are raging) and was having a nourishing supper of tortilla chips topped with melted cheese. I came to the door holding several in one hand which Daniel immediately looked at pointedly.

  ‘Still on a diet, are we?’ he said.

  ‘Find yourself some nice alfalfa shoots, did you?’ I replied sweetly, adding, in an undertone once Stanley was safely upstairs, ‘You pompous wanker.’

  He’d still insisted on coming into the kitchen for the “feedback” on what the staff had had to say about our son, and had then been so condescending and objectionable, implying that if Stanley hadn’t settled in properly it was down to having a mother who didn’t feed him enough nutrients or have the wits to ask him the right questions, that I’d ended up only managing to avoid battering him with the cheese grater by digging my nails into my palms and silently visualising him with a shrunken baked potato rammed up each nostril.

  ‘He probably feels you’re nagging if you go on all the time,’ he finished self-righteously. ‘I’ll have a man-to-man with him on Friday night and get to the bottom of what’s upsetting him.’ He stood up a bit straighter. ‘I’ve been a boy of that age myself, remember.’

  Clearly thinking this gave him very much the upper hand, he finally stalked out, leaving me kicking the swing bin and resolving to avoid any further conversation with him until at least Day Five in case I ended up in Holloway.

  So Stanley was going straight there and staying overnight and wouldn’t be back till Saturday afternoon. Maybe I could leave the door on the latch – Stanley was sure to have forgotten his key – and manage to avoid seeing the wanker then too.

  But in the meantime, there was no rush to get home and I’d resolved if it was at all possible I would try to catch Roger at his office. I’d explain I was on the way back from a meeting and just needed a quick word. We could go for a drink and I’d tell him calmly about the phone call and see what he said.

  I was beginning to think that maybe I was making too much of it – perhaps it had
been a wrong number, after all, or it was some mad woman who just liked phoning numbers at random and wreaking havoc.

  Or perhaps it was someone with that complex where you fall in love with someone in authority – perhaps Roger had handled her company takeover or whatever it was he did, while she was also going through a divorce and was a bit unbalanced – and she was now in love with him and convincing herself they were having an affair, whereas really he was just being his usual, smiling, professional self.

  (I had read an article about this once where a woman had got a fixation about her GP and used to sit on the wall outside his house for hours and ring his wife up to tell her they were going to elope together, until one day the wife got so fed up with it she came out to sweep the front step and ended up hitting the woman with the dustpan brush and was done for assault, which seemed a little unfair. I’m not sure you can do much damage with a plastic brush and if the woman was that barking, she probably wouldn’t feel it anyway.)

  Anyhow, after the usual delights of being stuck in the traffic on every roundabout on the ring road, I eventually made my way toward Canterbury city centre. Roger’s offices were in a couple of bow-fronted terraces knocked into one, in a little back street behind one of the main car parks near the bus station. I’d been there once before with Charlotte when we’d been perusing wrinkle creams in Fenwicks.

  By the time I’d parked it was nearly 6.00 p.m. I walked down the dark street, hoping I’d remembered it right and that Roger would still be there and hadn’t left promptly at five just for once.

  I peered at the house numbers, shop fronts and brass plaques until I found Hammond and Barnes. It appeared to be closed. The solid green front door was shut tight and the blinds were down.

  Pressing my face against the glass, I could see through the slats a tidy, empty desk in reception, the lights turned down low. Stepping back across the road, I could see full lights on upstairs. Perhaps Roger was still up there. Dammit – I’d brought their number with me but it was back in the car. No doubt even if I called reception it would go straight to answerphone as it was out of hours. I went back over to the door, found a buzzer and pressed it. No-one came. I stood in the street again and tried hollering, ‘Roger!’ A passing couple looked at me pityingly but nobody appeared.

  It was cold. I pulled my coat more tightly around me as I walked back down the road, thinking I’d get the number, try calling just once and then give up and drive home.

  I’d almost reached my car and was just wondering, whether, if I put a note through his office door marked “Roger Meredith – Personal”, it would actually be left for him to deal with or some nosy secretary would rip it open anyway, and cursing the fact that I didn’t carry envelopes in the car with all the other junk, and was fumbling with my keys, when I looked up and saw him. He was with a woman.

  I jumped in alarm. They were coming into the car park from the other entrance. Instinctively, I found myself ducking down behind a car, heart thumping. It suddenly seemed terribly important he didn’t see me. I peered round the back of the bumper of a grey Ford.

  It was difficult to see her that clearly in the street light but she seemed to be about 35, thinnish, light-brown hair, mid-length skirt, short jacket, boots. She appeared to be talking fast and be slightly agitated, she was waving her hands around and pushing her hair back. But it was Roger I was fixated on.

  He was walking close by her, head on one side, listening intently in a way Daniel had never listened to me or – come to that – I had never seen Roger listen to Charlotte. I looked at his face coming toward me, oblivious to anything around him, deep in concentration, his body curved toward hers, and I got a nasty sick feeling. This was serious.

  Roger did listen to Charlotte, of course he did. She would allow nothing less. But not in that way men do when you’re new. When they’re still behaving as if you’re the most fascinating creature on the planet, as if what you said really mattered. As if they cared …

  I swallowed.

  Should I just breeze over there? Say, ‘Hi , Roger! I was just passing – wondered if you fancied a drink?’ Force him to introduce us?

  But then he could say anything and I could hardly interrogate him in front of her. He could say she was a client. Maybe she was a client. Maybe all that attention was just Roger doing his job. I wished I could get close enough to hear her voice and see if she had the same breathy, bunny-boiler tones I’d heard on the phone. But they were coming closer and instead I ducked down again, hugging my knees until they’d passed ten metres or so in front of me.

  Where were they were going? For a drink? Maybe they went for a drink together every night. And there was Charlotte saying how he seemed to be working ever harder and longer these days.

  I would have to get hold of him and get hold of him soon. I’d have to have a scout around Charlotte’s kitchen and see if his mobile phone number was written up anywhere. Or grab her phone when she wasn’t looking and get it out of there. Bloody Roger – what the hell was he playing at?

  Please let it be nothing, I thought. Let it be my fevered imagination working overtime. It was one thing Daniel being a snake in the grass. I really couldn’t bear it if Roger was doing it to Charlotte as well …

  I still felt upset when I got home. My plan to have a long bath, watch EastEnders and cram some junk food didn’t seem right when there could be a marital crisis looming a mile and a half away. I looked at the phone. Should I just phone Charlotte and ask to go round? See if I could get Roger on his own, or at least procure his mobile number?

  She wouldn’t mind – she never minded. On the other hand, I’d been round there a lot lately. She always seemed to be feeding me and Stanley and all she ever got from here was a few biscuits when she called in between appointments. It was really my turn to invite her round for the evening – maybe cook them all dinner. She probably just wanted to chill out herself in front of the TV without listening to me going on …

  She answered on the first ring. ‘Hello, you.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Marvellous. Just contemplating a couple of mountains of washing and wondering how this kitchen manages to look totally trashed by the time Friday comes. As well as being overwhelmed, as ever, by the eager offers of help from the rest of the family –’

  ‘It’s all a bit of a mess here too,’ I said, surveying Stanley’s breakfast things congealing on the table. ‘But I was phoning to tell you I’ve got another form to fill in for this cookery programme. Alicia says that means we’re definitely getting an audition. And one of the questions is how would your best friend describe you?’

  Charlotte laughed. I could hear the flick of her lighter as she lit up a cigarette. ‘A right bloody nightmare.’

  ‘And there’s a load of other stuff to write as well. I’m beginning to regret ever starting this.’

  ‘Don’t give me that – the fame from being on with Randolph has got to you. Did I tell you what Sandra said? She said she couldn’t imagine you throwing shepherd’s pie around, ’cos you always look so demure. I said, “Oh, that’s a front love, she’s as mad as a fish. I could tell you tales of her hurling the food about that would make your hair stand on end –’

  ‘Thanks. What would I do without you?’

  Charlotte chuckled again. ‘You coming round? Roger’s going to be late back – got a meeting or something.’

  My heart gave a little lurch. ‘Has he? Um, well …’ I could hear myself stuttering but Charlotte carried on in her usual tones.

  ‘I know that’s all you were phoning up for. Stanley’s away and you’d rather have my sparkling company than sit there on your own. I can totally understand it.’

  I gave a feeble laugh. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You’ll need to bring some wine – I’ve drunk the only thimbleful we had left.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And I could do with some nibbles to sustain me too.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘What you waiting for then, gi
rlfriend? Get your arse round here now.’

  I decided to drive, thinking I’d leave the car there and cab it home – it would be good for me to walk and collect it in the morning. Perhaps if Daniel got Stanley home at a decent time, we could both walk.

  I’d been up to my eyes in gnomes and distressed iron fountains all week and Stanley had been glued to his Nintendo – only grunting if I asked about school. We could walk along the beach to Kingsgate, where Charlotte lived, and have a proper conversation. I could have a mother-to-son with him and see if I, too, could find out how he was really doing.

  I stopped off at Charlotte’s corner store and bought two bottles of Pinot Grigiot, a large pack of Kettle Chips, some peanuts and a pot of hummus.

  ‘Ah, you go see Mrs Fobbs,’ said Mustafa. ‘You need cigarettes too?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t want to encourage her.’

  Mustafa shrugged and held out his hands in a gesture that said whatever I did, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to Charlotte’s nicotine intake. I shrugged back. ‘Yeah. go on then.’

  I kept an eye out for Roger’s car as I drove slowly down her road. It would be good if I could give him the third degree out of Charlotte’s earshot – but there was no sign of him.

  Tucked up in pub somewhere with her ? I did hope not.

  ‘Ooh, you angel – thanks, darling!’ Charlotte pounced on the fags and gave me a hug. ‘How did you know I was getting low? I sent Roger a text asking him to bring me some but we know he won’t.’

  ‘That’s because he doesn’t want you to die of cancer.’ Becky strode into the kitchen in her dressing gown, scowling.

  Charlotte pulled a face. ‘Shut up,’ she said in a good-natured tone.

  I gave Becky a kiss. ‘How are you, sweetheart?’

  ‘She’s a moody cow,’ said Charlotte. ‘She’s even worse than you.’

  We settled companionably at the kitchen table with a glass of wine each and my forms. I picked up a pen and looked at the first one.

  ‘Right. How would you describe me, really?’