We left soonish after that. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the corner and a man in a moustache with a guitar and a mike came and sat, side on, on a stool, so it was clearly time to beat a retreat. Mel said she’d come back to my house for a nightcap. “It would be nice to see Jake,” she said. “See how mysterious he is with my own eyes.”
When we got in, he was at the kitchen table, surrounded by papers. “Mel’s here,” I said.
He stood up and stretched and gave her a long hug. “How nice,” he said, still with his arms around her.
We sat on the steps up to the garden with a bottle of wine between us. Mel told him about the difficult partner at work and Jake, who as the head of a department knew about these things, told her what to say and how to approach her. (“The thing is to be nice, always nice, but firm. Reasonable, but firm. Explain how things seem to you, and see what she has to say. Then, if there’s still a problem, go to the head of the practice. Whatever you do, don’t be emotional.”)
Mel asked him about Kyushi and, darting me a look, he said it was very boring, very frustrating, very time-consuming. “And how are the pimples?” she said. He proffered his chin for her to inspect. She ran a medical hand over it. “Hmm. Have you tried. . . . ? might I suggest. . . . ?” She pretended to delve into her bag and bring something out, holding it like a dart in front of her eyes, “ZAP-IT!”
“STOP-IT!” he said, pretending to grab it off her.
She stayed only for half an hour, but it was a nice half hour, almost like old times. I felt warm and comfortable with my two favorite people around me. I said, “Let’s go away somewhere next Bank Holiday, us and Mel and Milly and maybe even Piers.” Mel winced. “All right. Not Piers then. We could get a cottage, by the sea or something. When is the next one? August. End of August. Let’s go then. Can we?”
Mel looked enthusiastic, but Jake gave a weary grimace. “Oh. Maggie. Didn’t I say? Or have you forgotten . . . ? You know . . . Ed and Pea?”
I frowned. I didn’t remember.
“We said we’d go and stay with them in Suffolk?”
“Did we?”
“To make up for Majorca?”
“Were you going to go to Majorca?” asked Mel.
“No,” I said, shortly.
“Never mind,” Mel said. “Another time.”
When Mel’s mini-cab came, I walked her to the curb. “Try and be a bit more understanding with Jake,” she said, as we parted. “Otherwise, I’ll have him.”
When I got back into the house, Jake was back at the kitchen table, head bent over a mess of paper. “Sorry about Suffolk,” he said, not looking up. “I think I’m guilty on that one. I was just waiting for an opportunity to slip it in.”
“You slipped it,” I said.
He still didn’t look up.
“Are you all right?” I came up behind him and rested my chin on the top of his head. There were lines of gray in among the dark brown.
“Exhausted actually.” He kept his eyes on his paperwork. But he reached behind to put an arm around my legs. “Perhaps you could just go and check on your children. I think I might have just heard Dan.”
“They’re my children now, are they?” I said. “Only yours when they’re quiet?”
“Absolutely,” he said, smiling. “Oh, and Fran rang earlier . . .”
“Your sister.”
“Definitely my sister. She said can you ring her? Something about a tennis machine?”
“A Tens machine,” I said. “You know, the thing you strap on your back when you’re in labor. Nothing to do with tennis. You idiot.”
I was about to give him a playful slap, but he’d already bowed his head again and was back to his figures, so I went upstairs to check on the children instead. Dan’s hair was all sweaty on one side from where he must have been lying; Fergus’s mouth was squashed open against the pillow and he was breathing through it: thick, wet, rasping snores that pulled at my heart. Still clasped in his hand was the 747 Jake had bought him at the Amsterdam airport. My children. Our children. What had I been thinking of? We were a family. Nothing could come between us. It was just a rough patch, that was all.
I rearranged their blankets and went back downstairs to make Jake some tea.
The next morning, I took the children to the urban zoo: held Dan up to stare blankly at the penned-in sheep, let Fergus sit for our entire visit in the rusty old tractor, fighting off the other children with his feet. I dropped in on Rachel on the way home, and we sat in her garden and I chatted happily about Jamie Oliver’s pine nut and pancetta penne as if I didn’t have a care in the world. She said we should have “a girly night out,” which made me smile. “Right,” I imagined her saying. “Let’s be girly. Come on girls, line up”—but it was a nice thought.
Fergus did some painting while we were there. Mostly he painted on Harry’s piece of paper, which made Harry screech and flail his arms in annoyance and spill the pot of water. I mopped it up with a dishcloth I’d found by the sink. I should have known Rachel’s dishcloths would be color-coded. “Stop, stop,” she shrieked. “Pink’s for faces; blue’s for floors.” When we left—Rachel soothing, “Please don’t worry about it, he’s just tired”—I took Fergus’s picture with us, drove up to the common, and parked at a bus stop. On the back of the painting (it was just red actually; Fergus often saw red) I wrote:Dear Pete,
On further reflection, I think it’s best if we do call it a day on the garden front. I’m thrilled with the work you’ve done so far, but on further reflection [I scratched those last three words out] it’s probably getting a bit too expensive in the long term. Thanks for untangling the bindweed and [I thought for a while before adding] your care and attention. It was much needed! Let me know how much I owe you for services so far rendered. [I regretted that last bit, but felt I couldn’t cross anything else out without having to find another piece of paper. I wondered hard how to finish. In the end I wrote]
Best wishes, Maggie (Owen)
Then I opened the car door, ran down the steps of the house he shared with Claire, and posted the note through the basement door. I didn’t feel sad as I drove home. I didn’t really feel anything. There was nothing to feel anything about.
Chapter 12
“I’m going to have to meet you there,” said Jake on the phone that afternoon. “I’m sorry. I can’t get away early tonight. There’s a good-bye party I have to show my face at. And then I need to come back to the office after that. I’ve got people breathing down my neck left, right, and center. Not just Kyushi, the people at Zap-it say they want a whole new cradle-to-grave strategy by the end of the week.”
“Cradle to grave?”
“It’s not just teenagers who get spots, they say. They want the new improved cream to be really big.”
“You mean, in your face?”
Jake didn’t laugh. He sounded impatient. He said, “So, what with everything, Maggie . . .”
I said, “Well, don’t stay forever at the party. And then you won’t be too late, will you? Don’t be rudely late.”
“I’ll try and be there by 9:30 p.m. . . .”
“Jake!” I said.
“Look, I’ve got to go. Bye.”
I found it much easier finding something to wear than I had a few weeks before. It might have been because I was browner after a few days on the common. Or it might have been because my self-esteem had been lifted out of my shoes on the fork of a flirtatious gardener. Either way, I happily ironed a spotted tea dress I’d once found at a yard sale. It was rather too wide and rather too long, but I decided, looking at myself sideways in the mirror, that it was just fine. I put on some earrings and some makeup, and felt, in the bathroom light at least, almost glamorous.
Merika, Maria’s Slovakian au pair, cycled over from Wandsworth to baby-sit. She was bang on time so I got to Claire’s a bit early. I sat in the car for a while, watching the house as I’d watched it before. There was no sign of life in the bottom flat. I wondered what Pete was doin
g. Who he was with.
At 8:45 p.m. I rang Claire’s bell.
“Magsarama,” she cried. She was wearing cropped jeans, bare feet, and no make-up. Immediately, I felt overdressed. She steered me in. “Entrez, entrez.”
I was not the first. Her sister, Rowena, the television presenter, was reclining on the sofa in the sitting room. She exclaimed, “Maggie Owen, the French-skipping queen of Lower Fourth! Remember me after all these years? Claire’s little sister!” I said of course, not adding the fact that I’d caught her elfin figure bottle-feeding a lamb on Animal SOS only a few weeks before. Celebrity always made me awkward. She pointed across the room to her boyfriend, Johnny Something, whom I also recognized from the television or the pages of the Mail or Hello—who was slipping a CD into the machine. He furrowed his handsome forehead into one long eyebrow as he straightened up and, white man’s overbite at the ready, pointed his finger at me in a faux familiar “my man” gesture. I pointed my finger back at him and then put it in my pocket.
I said, “What’s this?” meaning the music. Johnny said, “M&M.”
“Like the sweets?” I said.
He looked pained. “No. E.M.I.N.E.M.”
From then on, Johnny Something clearly thought I was an imbecile. Every time anybody said anything about anybody, he turned to me and, sideburns standing to attention, gave me a quick explanation. He’d just said, “That’s Guy Ritchie, the film director, they’re talking about. He directed Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. He’s married to Madonna. That’s Madonna, the pop star,” when the buzzer went and almost immediately there were shrieks in the hall. I could hear a high voice and a deeper one. For a gut-wrenching moment I thought this was Pete’s—but when the couple entered, the deep voice belonged to a balding, burly-looking bloke who turned out to be a cookery writer on one of the Sunday papers.
“Maggie, er . . . cooks too,” said Claire.
“No, I don’t,” I parried. “I microwave. Though I can make cakes.”
The man, who was called Tom, laughed and introduced me to his wife, Lily, a book editor with pouting lips and Louise Brooks hair. They smiled so broadly I liked them both at once.
When Claire was in the kitchen, and Rowena and Johnny were busy flicking through a book of “promos,” Tom mouthed conspiratorially, “Any news on Claire’s man?” as if we’d known each other all our lives.
I whispered, “Not sure. Do you think he’s coming?”
Lily hissed, “I think he’s had his chips. I asked Claire on the phone earlier this week and she said, ‘Curtains.’ ”
“Oh really, ‘curtains’?” I repeated, interested.
“What do you mean ‘curtains’?” said Claire, coming up behind me with a bowl of marinaded olives.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “Just discussing curtains versus blinds.”
“God, you marrieds,” she said. “You’ve got to get out more.”
Lily and I exchanged glances.
Soon after that, the buzzer went again, and I thought with relief, that’ll be Jake: he’s not embarrassingly late after all. But Claire was gone quite some time—you could hear muffled discussions from the hallway. When she came back she looked pink and ruffled around the hair region. There was a triumphant bounce to her gait and in her wake, holding her hand like a reluctant teenager dragged onto the dance floor by a tipsy aunt, was a tall man in his forties with shoulder-length gray-brown hair. Claire said, after a deep breath, “Everybody. Meet Marcus.”
Marcus, who was, I was almost sure, the man I’d seen leaving Claire’s flat, looked dazed but gave a sheepish smile. He was wearing a pin-stripe suit but the stripes were exaggerated as if to announce his distance from conventionality and proximity to youth. There were deep notches in his cheeks and furrows across his forehead, and a burned-orange hue to his face which didn’t look entirely natural. He waved slightly to Rowena to acknowledge having met her before and then rummaged in his jacket pocket to retrieve a nasal spray, which he applied noisily to his nose. Ah, so he was the man I’d seen leaving Claire’s flat. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, after he’d cleared his throat. Then he looked down blankly at the pigskin briefcase in his hand as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
“You’re not interrupting,” said Claire slowly as if explaining etiquette to a child. “You’re invited. Remember.”
He made a high-pitched sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh and took his briefcase through to another room—possibly the bedroom.
“Have a drink,” called Claire after him. “He’s had a hard day,” she said sotto voce to the rest of us. “Sony v. Visconti,” she added, wrinkling her nose. She was smiling, but there was something vulnerable in the set of her mouth.
Johnny was whispering to me. “Breach of contract. Visconti, the sixties crooner recently revived through the Ibiza club scene, is . . .”
“Sorry? What?” I said. I was trying to catch Claire’s eye. “Yeah, I know,” I said, though actually I didn’t.
Thinking back to the conversation with Claire in my kitchen, I did some mental calculations. It was, technically, next week. Did this mean Marcus had left his wife? And did this mean Claire had decided to forget the other man, the one she said she really loved? Was she happy with this? What was going on? I managed to catch her eye when she was pouring herself a glass of wine, and I opened mine wide inquiringly. She gave me a half-hearted thumbs-up. So he had . . . and apparently she had too.
Marcus sat dazed in an armchair, jacket off, tie undone, nursing his drink, occasionally taking a snort from his spray, while the rest of us chattered around him. Johnny and Rowena had just been on holiday in Madagascar and were full of lemurs (“Nocturnal,” Johnny assured me in an aside, “principally found in Madagascar. Similar to monkeys”). Tom and Lily were thinking of downsizing. They’d seen a house in Suffolk. Tom wanted pigs. “For the bacon,” said Lily, raising her eyebrows.
Rowena and Claire did a funny double act about their parents, who had moved to an old rectory just north of Oxford. “Handy for Stratford for Mummy,” said Rowena.
“And a handy supply of female students for Daddy,” said Claire.
And all the while, I surprised myself by my sociability. It was like being single again: I could be who I wanted. So I did impressions of some of the more awful “playground mums” and discussed books with Lily and told tales on Claire that made her squirm with pretend-embarrassment and made the others howl. “And do you remember?” I said, “the day you streaked and Mr. Brown, the geography teacher, escorted you into the staff room? And what about that time we ‘slept out’ for Wimbledon tickets just so you could snog David Ramsay? Oh God, and all those boyfriends you nicked off the rest of us. Remember Nigel?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I don’t remember him.”
“Nigel? With the bike? My first boyfriend? The man I loved and you took.” I camped that bit up. “With the bad skin?”
“No. Blank, I’m afraid.”
“Unlike your detention sheet,” I said, secretly stung. Everyone laughed (especially, I noticed, Rowena), and I laughed too.
It was almost 10:30 p.m. when Jake finally turned up. The olives had long been eaten and too much wine had been consumed on top of too many empty stomachs. He was definitely rudely late. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” he was still saying, as Claire brought him into the sitting room. He looked windswept, full of energy. “Hello,” he said to the others. “Sorry,” he said again to Claire.
“It’s all right,” Claire said, gaily. “I’m too drunk to care. And it’s only risotto. Burned to a cinder. You can have the charred bits from the bottom. Now, Maggie you know. Rowena—you remember. This is Johnny, her boyfriend. Lily and Tom: did you meet them at the party? Oh good. And this—” she put her arm around Marcus as if presenting a soufflé that might collapse at any moment—“is Marcus.”
Jake had been smiling and shaking hands, but he turned the charm off for a fleeting moment then. No one
but me would have noticed, but it was almost as if he’d met Marcus before, or as if he had something against him. “Hi,” he said smoothly, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Then, quickly, he turned to me. “Hello, sweetie.” He gave me a single peck. Then mouthed, silently “Sorry, I couldn’t get away.” I shook my head as if to say, it doesn’t matter.
We had finally started eating when the phone rang. We were in the kitchen, which was the most dead-grannyish of the rooms. It had spice racks on the walls, though the jars had gone, and special suction pads on the edge of the melamine counter for tea towels, also empty. The linoleum on the floor had white swirls in it like the trail left at the back of a cross channel ferry. Jake was sitting next to Rowena, who was laughing at whatever he was saying, her head cocked at an angle, so that she could look out at him from behind her hair. Sometimes I forgot how sexy Jake was, what an effect he could have on other women. Rowena was picking leaves of lettuce out of the salad bowl, and then licking the dressing from her fingers, almost, you could say, suggestively. Johnny was looking handsomely pensive at the end of the table, rigid with the effort of not minding about Jake, occasionally frowning winsomely as he caught his own eye in the darkened window. And Lily and I were trying to cheer up Marcus. We were doing party-style good cop, bad cop. I asked the questions, she administered the flattery.
Me: “So what does a showbiz lawyer actually do?”
Marcus: “I’m principally involved with the drawing up of contracts, with protecting my clients’ reputation and trademark, and any disputes that might arise as a result of damage to that reputation or trademark.”
Lily: “It must be so demanding dealing with all those egos. You must need to be such a patient, strong person.”
Marcus, preening: “Well, I don’t know about that.”
Having It and Eating It Page 14
