The Time of Their Lives

by Maeve Haran

  If Julia had had any sense she would have stopped there, but Zoopla had shown her the pot at the end of the rainbow. ‘Of course Neil says—’

  ‘You’ve discussed me moving with Neil?’ Ella asked quietly.

  ‘We’ve got your own good at heart, Mum. We worry about you here all alone.’

  ‘Thank you, darling. And what does Neil say?’

  ‘That giving money away seven years before . . .’ Even Julia baulked at saying ‘before you die’.

  ‘Julia, darling, I might live for another thirty years.’

  ‘All the more need to plan your financial future.’

  ‘Is that what Neil says too?’

  Julia flushed slightly. Clearly Ella and Ella’s finances were a popular topic in her daughter’s household.

  She sat down next to Julia and gently closed up her laptop, then she reached for her daughter’s hand. ‘Look, darling, I love this house and I’m not moving any time soon. I think it would be better for us all if you and Neil accepted that.’

  Her daughter’s face took on a mulish look. ‘It’s just that the school fees are so crippling . . .’

  ‘Then don’t send them to that school. They’ll only turn out like . . .’ Now it was Ella’s turn to pause.

  ‘Like their father? That was what you were going to say, wasn’t it? Well, I think you’re a selfish old woman.’

  Ella shrugged. Maybe she was selfish. And then she thought of Laurence and how he would have backed her up although he would also have put it more diplomatically, and it was only because he wasn’t here that Julia was saying this. She was damned if she were going to feel guilty.

  For now she needed to get outside, to blow away all these thoughts chasing each other round her brain. She would go to the allotment.

  ‘I have to go and change,’ she announced, grateful to abandon the subject.

  ‘Out with the coven?’ Julia asked acidly. Clearly Don’s description of the four of them was catching on.

  ‘Not today. I promised to keep an eye on my neighbours’ allotment.’

  ‘You?’ Julia laughed. ‘Growing vegetables? Neil says it’s ridiculous anyway. Grow-it-yourself types are causing potato blight. It would be much better if the land were used for housing.’

  ‘I might agree if I didn’t know what kind of housing he means.’

  ‘You’ve never liked Neil, Mum!’ accused Julia.

  Ella felt a pang of guilt. ‘He has lots of good qualities. Anyway, he’s not my husband.’

  ‘No,’ Julia replied sullenly. ‘He’s not. And look at Cory. Thirty and no boyfriend now or ever.’

  Ella felt the knife going in. She worried about Cory. That her younger daughter, who had been such a daddy’s girl, still hadn’t recovered from Laurence’s death and that this was an element in her lack of relationship. She had tried to get Cory to go to bereavement counselling but Cory had just replied: ‘Julia isn’t going to counselling.’ But then Julia and Cory were as different as sisters could be.

  It was a good day at Sal’s office. One of the days when she loved her job, liked the people, adored the buzz of the busy building.

  Modern Style, with its rather incongruous name, was based in a tall, thin early Victorian house in Soho. Next door on either side were shops that sold trimmings for costumes, stuffed with row after row of ribbons, sequins and feathers. Sal often wondered how they stayed in business year after year with margins that were infinitesimally small. Maybe a lesson for the magazine world.

  Modern Style was owned by Maurice Euston, who had once owned countless strip and porn joints, which explained their location in Soho, but had decided ten years ago to go straight. He was in the process of handing over the reins to his daughter, Marian.

  Sal’s office was on the second floor. The décor had originally been haute bordello, all plush velvet and deep-pile carpets with crystal chandeliers and more gilding than Versailles. Marian had effected a makeover last year and the entire building was now bone-coloured and minimalist, a victim of Farrow & Ball fascism.

  Sal was sitting at her curved glass desk looking through the Christmas edition. This edition sold so much better than any other that they had started bringing it out earlier and earlier so that two editions could be squeezed out of the holiday period. There was always a race between similar magazines to see who could get their Christmas version out earliest.

  Sometimes Sal thought it might end up in September.

  The phone rang and she picked it up. It was her assistant. ‘Great edition,’ she congratulated. ‘Maurice and Marian want to take you out to lunch. One o’clock at The Ivy.’

  This was a good sign. If the two Ms were displeased it would have been the trattoria over the road, the only restaurant in London that had ignored the arrival of modern Italian cuisine and still served stodgy lasagne with pride. Or maybe even sandwiches in the office.

  Maurice, short and stocky, with skin that was mottled with dark patches like a bruised apple that had fallen off the tree, sat muffled in a coat and scarf as if the temperature outside were freezing, rather than it being a balmy October day. Marian, dainty in pastel mohair with bows down the front that belied the razor sharpness of her mind, sat next to him, a glass of champagne by her side. She ordered another for Sal.

  ‘Sally, good to see you. Have a seat.’

  ‘I see we’re drinking champagne.’ Sal beamed. Her contract was due for renewal and she had been worried about the year-on-year sales figures and that the National Readership Survey had shown a small decline in reader reach as well as advertising, but the fizz seemed to belie all that.

  ‘Are we here to talk about the Christmas issue?’

  ‘The Christmas issue is great. What we actually need to address is where we go from here. We have big plans.’

  ‘I hope that means a budget increase?’ It amazed Sal that she was expected to produce the magazine for the same page rate as the one she had edited twenty years ago, and had to exploit unpaid interns, streams of hopeful young journalism graduates eager to get their feet in the door, while having zero budget for training anyone.

  They ordered their food.

  ‘The thing is, as you know, magazines are changing fast,’ Marian announced, ignoring the food on her plate. ‘To keep up with the competition we need to extend across all the different platforms.’

  Sal hated the obsession with platforms. She saw herself as a magazine editor but increasingly she was expected to be that hideous piece of jargon, a ‘platform-neutral content provider’, which meant she had to produce endless material for websites, Facebook, Twitter and even appear on everyone else’s platforms promoting Modern Style whenever she could.

  ‘And the thing is –’ Unusually, Marian paused.

  At that very moment Sal caught sight of a scene that stunned her. Over Marian’s fluffy shoulder sat Simon, Laura’s husband, the one she raved about being so happy with, and he was kissing the palm – actually kissing the palm in a restaurant celebrated for its gossipy media types! – of a stunning young woman. Sal studied her in horror. On closer inspection she wasn’t as young as she’d seemed at first, probably in her mid-to late thirties, voluptuous, with long red hair and a predatory look.

  Oh shit, thought Sal, not hearing what Marian was droning on about, that was the worst possible age. He would be thinking their affair was all about his incredible sexual prowess while she was hearing nothing but the ticking of her biological clock. Poor, poor Laura. Men were so bloody predictable.

  ‘Of course you have been a highly satisfactory editor,’ Maurice Euston’s voice finally penetrated her consciousness. Sal’s radar picked up the past tense and gave them both her full attention. ‘But the future is going to be challenging. It requires a digital native, someone who grew up with these platforms, who lives and breathes them.’

  ‘Producing a great magazine is about ideas, not platforms,’ Sal scanned their faces for a reaction and found none.

  ‘Certainly, but it’s becoming hard to argue that goo
d ideas are enough,’ Marian’s eyes narrowed, giving her the look of a pink sugar mouse wielding a sub-machine gun, ‘which is why, Sally, I’m afraid we won’t be renewing your contract.’

  At that moment Simon stood up and swept his companion into his arms, kissing her passionately as if there were no one else in the room.

  ‘Bastard!’ Sal expostulated, unable to contain herself further at this barefaced betrayal.

  Marian stood up. ‘I will advise our lawyers of your response. I can’t say I’m surprised. I have always found you an intractable employee. You needn’t return to the office. We will waive your notice period and have all your things sent round in a cab.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Sal asked, recovering her wits. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I don’t think we need go over it again, Sally.’ Marian stood up and waved for the bill even though they were only halfway through the meal. ‘I wouldn’t pursue unfair dismissal, if I were you. Half the restaurant heard what you called me.’

  Marian was struggling into her coat with Maurice Euston helping her. ‘Bag up Ms Grainger’s meal please,’ he asked a passing waiter. ‘I can’t bear waste.’

  Sal stood, uncharacteristically speechless, as a doggy bag of posh shepherd’s pie was pressed upon her. What was the point of explaining? Marian was clearly using this as an excuse for something she had already decided on.

  Her former employers were halfway across the restaurant when Simon, hiding his shock beneath a front of unconvincing bravado at being caught out by one of his wife’s best friends, pretended to greet Sal enthusiastically.

  ‘Sal! This is Suki, a colleague of mine. Fancy meeting you here.’

  ‘Simon, I am a journalist,’ Sal replied in what she hoped was a sufficiently withering tone, ‘and this is one of the best-known media haunts in London.’ She looked his luncheon companion up and down. This sleazebag and his floozy had helped cost her the job she loved. With a sweet smile she handed Simon the greasy brown receptacle. ‘Here. Have this doggy bag. Maybe your bitch might enjoy it.’

  Laura, entirely unaware of the drama unfolding in town, was happily filling in her diary when she remembered their anniversary was fast approaching. She had been thirty-eight when they married. She could remember the look of amazement mixed with relief on her parents’ faces when she’d told them about their wedding plans. ‘Going to make an honest woman of you, is he?’ her dad had joked. The awful thing was, Laura knew he meant it. He really did see marriage as completely different from living together. That ‘piece of paper’ was worth its weight in gold to her parents. How stunned they’d be to find their daughter and son-in-law still together twenty-five years on. Of course her parents were both dead now which Laura had to admit was a slight relief as their disapproval of Bella and her Goth propensities would have been stinging.

  She was pretty stunned herself. It was quite an achievement in the modern world that she and Simon had lasted so long. She grinned, remembering the day Bella had come to her and said that it was so unfair, nearly everyone in her class had divorced parents. Apparently divorce meant double the presents, no insistence on homework, and the unlimited potential to play off one parent against the other. Bella, with two parents who had stuck together, was apparently a disadvantaged minority.

  The question was, what should they do to celebrate it?

  Simon didn’t really like surprises but Laura loved them. Besides, if she left it to him to arrange something, it would never happen.

  So Laura decided to think of a way to mark the last twenty-five years and look forward to the next twenty-five, and which would be a complete secret.

  Smiling to herself, she began to make a list. A party? Their oldest friends round to dinner? A romantic weekend away? Laura realized that much as she loved her children, the surprise would work better if it were just her and Simon so she could give him her undivided attention. A weekend away, then. She sat down at the computer and began to browse. The Top Ten romantic locations came up as Venice, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Barcelona, Prague, Copenhagen, Budapest, Berlin and – Brighton!

  Laura laughed out loud because, amazingly, that was where they had met. It had been a reunion for their year at Sussex University and they’d both gone expecting to have a so-so time, convinced that reunions were for losers.

  Instead they’d met each other. Their acquaintance while they were at college had only been slight, but suddenly they’d clicked and couldn’t stop talking all night. And then, to crown it all, in what Laura wasn’t to know was the only genuinely romantic gesture of Simon’s life, he took her hand and led her down to the beach.

  Having equipped himself with a bottle of wine, a blanket and a portable CD player, he laid the blanket out under Brighton Pier and played ‘Under the Boardwalk’, warbling flatly along to the chorus that, under the boardwalk on a blanket with his baby, was where he’d like to be.

  Laura had been charmed. And even more so when it turned out that he’d booked them a room in an extravagant Art Deco hotel, just like the ones in the movies in the days when a private detective might barge into the bedroom with a camera to capture infidelity and earn Brighton its reputation as the dirty-weekend capital of Britain.

  Laura felt her heart skip with excitement. That was exactly what she’d do again, the same hotel, the beach, under the boardwalk, all of it. And the brilliant thing was she could keep it all secret and pay for it herself. Unlike a weekend in Venice or Amsterdam, a night in Brighton was something she could afford out of her own money.

  She hugged the pleasure and anticipation of the venture to her chest. She thought of Ella without Laurence, Sal all alone, and Claudia with her dull Don, and felt like she was the luckiest woman alive.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ella pulled back the curtains and looked out at the garden, trying to work out how cold it was. Today was the day she was going to seriously tackle Viv and Angelo’s allotment. She turned out some old jeans and a holey sweater of Laurence’s that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to throw away. Unconsciously, she held it up to her nose, checking whether it held any faint aroma of Laurence, that distinctive scent he’d had of shaving foam, citrus cologne and the odd stolen Gauloise, which he thought she didn’t know about. There was nothing except maybe mothballs. Certainly no hint of Laurence.

  The funny thing was, she’d always wanted an allotment but Laurence had laughed at her. ‘You’ve already got more garden than you can manage!’ he’d tease her. But the Moulsford garden had been Laurence’s empire – a male preserve of lawn mowed in straight lines and flowerbeds that stood to attention as if on parade. Vegetables had never been part of Laurence’s ordered dream. Until now Ella’s yearning to reap as she had sowed had been confined to a Gro-bag of tomatoes on the terrace.

  Persuading herself that this project was just what she needed, Ella tied up her shoulder-length dark hair with a scrunchy, catching sight of herself in the cheval glass as she did so, surprised that, for a fleeting moment, she looked young, girlish even, provided you didn’t stare too closely. Maybe it was because this was the way she used to wear her hair in her teens, or perhaps the action of gathering it also tightened the skin in what Sal naughtily called an Essex facelift. She rifled about in her drawer for heavy walking socks to keep the cold out when she put on her wellies. She was grateful these were made of straightforward green rubber, not some ludicrous Cath Kidston flowery substance which made you look as though you came from Chelsea by way of the Cotswolds.

  She shut her sock drawer reflecting that she had a ludicrous amount of storage space for one person. Funny, when the news about Laurence had come she’d thought she would physically collapse but instead she’d gone into the utility room and folded sheets for hours. She’d bought this book on mindfulness, the hip concept of the moment. It told you that the way to avoid being consumed by the past or fearing the future was to make yourself concentrate 100 per cent on the present. And to do this the book instructed you to take a household task and do it ‘mindfully’. She had
chosen laundry and had spent hours folding sheets perfectly, making herself stay in the moment, feeling the touch of the fabric, smoothing them with the flat of her hand, taking an inordinate pride in the neatness of their appearance as she stacked them in the airing cupboard, folded side outwards, like the spine of a book. After that, she’d just cried but when she stopped, she was sure it had somehow helped get her through that deep dark valley of grief.

  She was halfway down the stairs, enjoying the sensation of thick stair carpet underneath heavy woollen socks, when she stopped, suddenly alert. Something seemed unfamiliar. She listened for a moment but there was nothing different about the sounds of the house. She heard the usual faint banging of ancient water pipes, the occasional creak of old wood, but otherwise there was silence. Then she worked it out. There was a strange breeze. The front door, always bolted and double-locked with a mortise key, was wide open. The shock rooted her to the spot. How could the door possibly be open?

  And then, on the small half-landing, she noticed a drawer pulled out of the console table. She ran to the nearest bedroom and found the mattress had been pulled up. The same was true in the one next door. Ella ran through the house feeling at first sick and panicked, then spitting with anger. Bastards! She’d been burgled!

  The irony was she didn’t really have anything to take. A lot of old books, an ancient radio, a TV that no modern-day burglar would want, not even a phone that would merit resale and her computer would probably be more at home in a museum than being hawked about for a cheap bargain in the public bar of the Dog & Duck.