by Fiona Gibson
‘Ste-llaaaaa,’ Diane singsongs, then bangs the letterbox shut. There’s a sharp rap on the glass, then just the doleful squawk of a gull. I sink deeper into the water, thinking about my disastrous dive, and how next time I’ll swoop beautifully into the water, watched and applauded by Ed.
I come downstairs to find a note on my hall floor. It’s smeared with something greasy and red, as if it’s been used to blot lipstick, and bears the message: Stella can you babysit later, about 8:30? I am going out. Luv Diane. The letters are painstakingly rounded, like an early attempt at joined-up writing.
I could pop round and say, ‘Of course, I’d be delighted—what time do you need me?’ Diane’s singing now, to a Phil Collins record. ‘Groovy Kind of Love.’ Not a favorite of mine. Her voice wavers on the long note: luuuuurve. She’s probably dancing. I’ve glimpsed her, swaying in front of the gas fire, not caring that lit rooms are easily seen into.
I screw up her note. I don’t want to babysit tonight. In the living room I curl up with a newspaper, but can’t concentrate. I keep expecting to see it—Diane’s pink-cheeked face looming at the window as she announces, ‘Ha! I knew you were in. I need you to babysit. Jojo, Midge—I’ve found her.’
In case she comes knocking again, I creep upstairs to my bedroom. There are hairs—Surf’s long, pale hairs—on my duvet. The room still smells of Jean Patou, with canine overtones. Dad has left a book, Beautiful Gardens in Difficult Places, on the bedside table. The handwritten message on the inside cover reads: To my darling Frankie, from your Maggie xxx.
Outside a gang of children wobbles down Briar Hill on silver scooters. I draw the curtains and lie flat out on the bed with Dad’s book. I’m vaguely aware of Diane’s front door banging, and the clop-clop of her heels growing fainter as she strides down the hill.
From next door comes a cartoony burble from the TV. Perhaps she asked a friend to look after them, or some relative. The girls have never mentioned any family apart from their dad. ‘The thing about George,’ Diane once told me as she pegged shredded dishcloths onto her washing line, ‘is he liked the idea of a family, but wasn’t prepared to look after us.’ The girls, she added, hadn’t seen him since they’d left the Midlands. ‘He’s the one with the fancy car,’ she muttered, stomping across the cracked flagstones, ‘but can’t be bothered to get off his fat arse and visit. I’ve always been drawn to useless lumps of shit.’
Music filters through from next door. It’s not Phil Collins but something with a relentless bass and bouncy chorus that’s sung over and over. Midge is squawking tunelessly. It’s 9:20 p.m. on a school night—why aren’t they in bed? There’s a small cry, and a clatter like something metallic hitting the floor. I want to check they’re okay, but say they do have a babysitter? ‘Of course everything’s fine,’ she’ll say, looking up from a multi-choice quiz in her teenage magazine. ‘The girls are just mucking around, that’s all.’ Anyway, I’m not even dressed.
There’s another noise, thin and strained. Maybe they’re playing one of Midge’s war games. She’s blammed Jojo with the torpedo shooter, or pinged her in the eye with the spud gun. Jojo’s been blinded, and it’s my fault. The packaging said it was fun and safe but I still shouldn’t have bought it. Diane remarked, rather tersely, that she was sick of her vegetable rack being ransacked, and hoovering up pellets of moldering spud.
Someone’s crying now—heartily, from the diaphragm. It could just be pretend, some dramatic accident game. I pull on a sweater over my pajamas, hurry downstairs and step out.
I bang on their door—no one answers—and peer in through their living-room window. Their TV’s on, but no one’s watching. Fairy lights blink dolefully. There’s a scattering of toast on the carpet, beside an empty plate, as if someone has been trying to fling their crusts onto it and missed every time. The crying is fainter now, coming from the back of the house.
I try the door and push it open. Jojo tumbles from the kitchen, crying, ‘Stella, please help us.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Midge is hurt.’ I hurtle past her and find Midge in the kitchen, clutching her wrist. There’s a large welt there—livid pink and wet-looking, in the shape of a slug—and an angry glow around it. ‘Where’s your mum?’ I ask.
‘She went out.’
‘What were you doing?’ I pull her in for a hug, feeling sick, helpless.
‘I touched that,’ she whimpers, pointing to the black enamel grill pan that looks as if it’s been pulled out in panic and flung on the floor.
‘Wait,’ I say, ‘I’ll get something.’ What’s best for burns? Butter, cold water, magic cream? I’m totally unequipped to deal with an injured child. Melody did a better job at dealing with Charlie’s bleeding arm, the day he cut himself in the Beetle.
‘It really hurts!’ Midge squawks.
‘Don’t panic, sweetheart, I’ll find something—’ I delve into the everything-drawer, sending bills, take-away menus and ripped-open buff envelopes fluttering to the floor.
‘I think there’s magic cream,’ Jojo offers, ‘but maybe it’s all used up.’
‘Here it is.’ I grab a crushed tube of Savlon and some of the grubby off-white fabric that Diane uses for bandages. Midge grips my sweater sleeve with her good hand as I dress the wound.
Work tops are scattered with grated cheese. The pan is heaped with baked beans and edged with slabs of something pink and fleshy—some kind of meat from a tin. The beans are partially covered by a burned crust. ‘You were cooking,’ I say, ‘all on your own?’
‘It would have been all right,’ Jojo snaps, ‘if she’d let me do it, but she pushed me and snatched it—’
‘I didn’t,’ cries Midge. ‘She made me do it.’
‘It doesn’t matter whose fault it was….’
‘I was hungry,’ she protests.
‘Couldn’t you have had just a biscuit, or—’
‘You never made my special tea,’ she adds, accusingly. ‘You said you’d make jelly. And you didn’t.’
‘Well, I’m sorry.’
‘Can we have jelly another day?’
I sigh, gathering up the papers that fell to the floor and stuff them back into the drawer. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
We wait in the living room away from the food and the burned smell. Jojo sucks a strip of graying lace that’s come loose from the neck of her nightie. Someone has snaffled all the chocolate decorations from the tree without untying them; remnants of foil still hang from the branches. An opened box of dates lies beside the lip-shaped ashtray on the coffee table.
Midge keeps rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. ‘Does your mum often leave you alone at night?’ I ask.
‘Not much,’ Jojo mutters.
‘What were you trying to cook?’
From her pajama pocket Midge extracts a crumpled square of paper—onionskin paper. I take it from her, unfold it, and it’s Dad’s writing:
Baked Beano
Take a can of luncheon meat, slice thickly and spread with French mustard. Fry until… The rest is smeared with bean sauce and illegible.
‘She stole it,’ Jojo whispers.
18
Steak Diane
From the hall she yells, ‘You girls still up? Didn’t I say bed by half ten?’ There’s a clatter of heels on floorboards, then the smell of her—perfume and smoke and good humor—as she strides in. ‘Oh!’ Diane says. Her gaze drops to my striped pajama bottoms.
‘Hi,’ Jojo murmurs without turning around. I’m sandwiched between the girls on the sofa. It feels as if we’ve been positioned like this for some weeks now, waiting morosely for someone to storm in and take all the furniture away. On TV a choppy-haired woman flips crustaceans across an enormous flat pan on a barbecue.
‘Everyone all right?’ Diane asks, casting off her denim jacket and dropping it onto the mustard armchair.
‘I came round,’ I say, ‘when I heard—’
‘You’re in
your pajamas,’ Diane says, laughing through her nose. ‘Not that I mind, Stella. I like friends to feel comfortable in our house.’ She is wearing a deep purple top and a tight above-the-knee denim skirt. Her cheeks are glossy like pink snooker balls.
‘Midge,’ I say, ‘show Mum your hand.’
Midge drags her gaze from the TV and reluctantly offers her wrist. Diane lowers herself unsteadily and touches the bandaged hand. ‘Oh, my baby,’ she cries, ‘what happened?’ She unfastens the bandage and peers at the wound. Her eyes dampen instantly.
‘It got burned,’ Midge whispers.
‘They were cooking,’ I snap. ‘Midge burned herself on the grill pan.’
‘My poor darling!’ Diane lurches forward and wraps Midge in a fierce hug. Midge continues to gaze at the crustacean lady over her shoulder.
‘They were on their own,’ comes my voice, as I remember Charlie—who was much older, of course, but still scared, still hurt, with bloodstains on his T-shirt from cutting his arm on the Beetle’s shattered window. We needed Dad then, not to administer magic cream or fix on a bandage—Melody had already done that—but just to be there, because we were kids.
Diane glares at me. ‘Jojo was supposed to be in charge,’ she states flatly.
‘She’s only ten.’ I hate my new voice: superior, accusing. I’m astounded, really, that you can’t long divide!
‘I wrote you a note,’ she says, gathering herself up from the floor, ‘asking you to babysit.’
‘Are you suggesting it’s my fault?’
‘I do have a life, Stella—’
‘So do I!’
‘Just went for a drink with a few girls from work. Birthday do. Why shouldn’t I have some fun?’
‘But they’re children, it’s nighttime, anything could have—’
‘What do you know about children?’ she asks, shouting now.
‘I know they shouldn’t have been left by themselves.’ I stand up, aware of the space I’ve left on the sofa. Jojo winds a length of tinsel tightly around a finger.
‘Who are you to judge me?’ Diane rages. ‘What do you know about my life, Miss Perfect?’
‘Nothing, I—’
‘I thought you were a friend,’ she says, sounding helpless now. Her lips are tightly gathered like the opening of a drawstring bag.
‘They’re not my girls, Diane.’
I want to be out of here, away from the beleaguered tree and the cards shoved wonkily on to the mantelpiece. Midge hiccups into her hands. Jojo’s middle finger is entirely encased in tinsel.
Diane follows me into the hall, thrusting her face into mine as she snaps, ‘Damn right they’re not.’
January skulks forward, milky and misty as if a fine veil has fallen over the town. My private pupils start to leave like migrating birds. Katy’s mother calls to announce that they’re moving to open a chip shop in Yorkshire—chips are gold bars in edible form, apparently—and shows up for the final lesson with a bouquet of cream lilies that look mournful wherever I place them. Finally I position the vase on my bedside table, hoping they’ll mask the smell that still hangs there, but I can still detect Mum’s spilled perfume. It’s impregnated itself in my nasal passages, and will stalk me, even if I move house.
Amy, a sullen thirteen-year-old who’s had only a handful of lessons, explains, ‘My dad can’t afford it anymore. Says it’s not worth the money.’ Another new starter simply fails to show up. When I call her house there’s just her mother’s bleak voice on the answer phone, and no one ever rings back.
Although she still comes to group lessons at school, Jojo has stopped turning up for her Thursday-night lessons. The first one she missed, I wanted to go round there—to remind her that these are proper lessons, that we have an arrangement—but couldn’t face Diane’s pinched mouth and hostile eyes. I saw the three of them one Saturday, marching through the market. Diane kept her gaze fixed straight ahead as if her life depended on it. The girls scurried behind her across the puddled ground.
Some mornings I see them marching to school in their oversize Christmas coats. They walk purposefully, not looking back.
My evenings are longer now, longer than days. They start at around five and yawn onward through the dull thump of Queen and the occasional squabble. The girls’ fights are brief—compressed into seconds of squawking—then it’s all over, as if someone has trapped all their hate in a tin.
Things happen so quickly when children are involved. They come from nowhere with their missiles and antennae umbrellas and creep under your skin without you noticing. They pop round just to tell you about their day, or to lie on your rug and demand Party Hoops—none of your rice cakes or organic oat cakes, which they complained tasted like cardboard. You find yourself collecting cartons and plastic bottles for the little one to bind together with Sellotape. You start buying chocolate fairy cakes with chunks of flake jabbed into the butter cream, and gigantic bottles of lemonade. The big one says, ‘We wanted to come round earlier but we know you teach Lisa till a quarter past eight,’ and their intimate knowledge of your weekly schedule fails to even surprise you.
An unfamiliar sensation settles uneasily in your chest. You feel needed. You don’t even mind when they try on your slippers, doing lumbering flat-footed walks around your house. Some evenings the little one falls asleep on the sofa with her head on your lap. Her hair is pale blonde, as soft as pillow stuffing. The older one swoops through Faure’s ‘Sicilienne,’ and when she’s all played out she draws at the table. She knows where felt tips are kept without having to ask. Some roll onto the floor. They are lidless, and will probably stain your cream rug. You didn’t notice the point at which you stopped fretting about minor damage happening to your home.
Then something happens. The girls just stop coming. Your home, your life and your slippers—they’re all yours again. You’re left with a grocery box stuffed with missile components, and flat lemonade in the fridge.
‘What I’m making tonight,’ Dad says, ‘is Steak Diane—a quick, easy dish for an informal get-together.’ Dirk, the presenter, lurks behind him, rocking from foot to foot. He looks mildly agitated, like a child forced to behave nicely during a visit with a tedious uncle. ‘I’m tenderizing the meat,’ Dad continues, ‘to make it—’
‘Tender,’ Dirk cuts in.
‘That’s right. Makes a big difference to the finished result.’ One side of Dad’s shirt collar is poking up, jabbing his chin. Contemporary chefs don’t wear shirts and ties. They wear T-shirts and lob a meal’s components into a pan, slosh on olive oil from a great height and slam the entire thing into the oven. ‘Now I’m briefly frying the mushrooms,’ Dad says, ‘and in a separate pan I’ll cook the steak, adding lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce—’
‘What’s interesting,’ Dirk butts in, ‘is I didn’t think anyone made Steak Diane anymore.’
‘It’s very popular,’ Dad protests, flipping the steak and mushrooms onto a plate.
‘Who is Diane?’ Dirk asks.
‘I’ve no idea. The chef, perhaps, who first invented—’
‘Is Diane your wife?’
‘No,’ Dad blusters, ‘my wife—’
‘What?’
‘She, she…’
My stomach flips. Dad’s wearing a tight, static smile. He’s not required to be witty—it’s too raucous now to decipher what anyone’s saying—but just stand there, grinning wildly, being Frankie—a sixty-one-year-old joke.
He’s started to appear in magazines again. One women’s mag, which I’d found on the table in Paul Street’s staff room, reported that he’d been tracked down at his cottage at Penjoy Point. The article was accompanied by a blurred snapshot of Dad in his garden, his face a boulder of fury glowering over the wall.
Friday Zoo’s credits are rolling now. The camera closes in on the messy remains of Dad’s Steak Diane.
The comeback king, the magazine called him, who has turned his naffness to his own advantage, regaining a place in the nation’s hearts.
&n
bsp; That’s preferable, perhaps, to being forgotten. Or being no one.
It’s the coldest winter I can remember—too cold, even, for dipping so much as a toe into the sea. I fill after-school spaces by swimming powerful lengths at Aquasplash, always keeping an eye out for Ed, and becoming suddenly aware of my pulse when I glimpse someone who looks like him. The right height, right color of skin, right hair length and shade. Wrong man. I alternate between breast stroke and crawl, thinking: One more length, and he’ll stride right out of that changing room. Just one more length. I swim on and on, farther than I’ve ever managed before. My limbs feel strong, powerful, tireless.
Other days after school I go shopping—I’ve devised my own charity route—but still can’t see beyond the pottery owls with gold-painted beaks and the sandals adorned with plastic crocus. I walk home past the old launderette. Its window has been covered with a canvas sheet, to stop people like me peeking in.
One Monday evening after school, I join Jen and a cluster of teachers at the Anchor to celebrate Claudine’s return to work after maternity leave. Claudine runs the nursery at Paul Street; her endless patience runs through her like blood. ‘Anyone know what happened to Toby Nichols’s eye?’ she asks, sweeping scattered peanuts into a small pile.
‘I’m not sure,’ I tell her. ‘When I asked about the bruise, he said he’d lain under his sister’s bed with his Dad’s old tape recorder. You know how they sound, when the battery’s worn down? He played it really loudly, scared the life out of her….’
‘And she punched him?’ Claudine asks.
‘So he says.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Jen cuts in. ‘We know what a bully he is. How old’s his sister, Stella?’
‘Six.’
‘Some punch,’ Claudine murmurs, ‘for a six-year-old.’
I spot Robert at the bar, dipping his hand into a bowl of nuts. He’s wearing a dark gray suit, and his hair looks freshly combed—ironed, even. I’ve never seen him spruced up and workish before. Everything about him looks older.
I go up to order drinks, and startle him by saying, ‘Hello stranger,’ right into his ear.
