by Kerry Fisher
By the looks of the names on the intercom, the building was a one-stop health and beauty shop. I bet it had a gym and swimming pool in the basement. There was a homeopath, beautician and reflexologist on the ground floor. Of course, the residents couldn’t possibly survive without a homeopath to press a little pill into their hands every time they got an ache in their big toe. Half the people I worked for swore that a tiny tablet of some stupid herb diluted a million times cured everything from arthritis to psoriasis. Shame it didn’t cure their stupidity at wasting money on crackpot ideas. I’d have to find out if Mr Peters was a gnat’s piss convert. I checked my teeth in my little compact mirror and rang the bell. He buzzed the front door open straightaway and was leaning over the banister beckoning me up as soon as I got into the lobby.
I tried not to pant up the stairs. Without his jacket and tie, he looked much more approachable. He ushered me into his flat, straight into a light open plan room, all wooden floors and cream walls except for one bright orange one. The furniture was what all those housey magazines I sorted into neat piles would describe as ‘statement’ – enormous stripy olive green, orange and brown settees and armchairs. No cushions, vases, ornaments or plants. Good.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, shaking his head as he looked at my face. I didn’t blame him. There was something of the elephant woman about me. He pulled out a tall stool for me at a granite breakfast bar. ‘Coffee?’
I nodded, looking down at my clothes. ‘Sorry for looking such a state. I didn’t have time to go home.’ I shrugged. ‘Wherever home is.’
‘Stop fishing. Most of the mothers at Stirling Hall would give their right arms to look as good as you.’ He wasn’t going to pretend nothing had happened, then. He didn’t say anything for a moment, just ferreted around in the freezer. ‘Why don’t you lie down on the sofa with this ice pack on your face, while I make coffee?’
‘No, no, it’s fine, honestly. I’m okay.’
‘You are not okay. You can’t even open your eye. Come on, you’ll feel so much better.’
‘I thought you wanted to talk to me, not nurse me.’
‘I do want to talk to you. But I also want to look after you.’ One raise of an eyebrow and I obediently shuffled off to the settee. Or sofa, as he called it.
I was terrified that some blob of bleach or horrible chemical from my clothes would take the dye out of his upholstery so I made him find a sheet for me to lie on. Not, of course, a raggedy old grey thing he would have got in my house, but some super-cotton, super-ironed, super-white number that made me want to snuggle down and go to sleep. He held me gently by the shoulders and eased me into position, slipping a pillow under my head. He came close enough for me to smell his aftershave. And see a hole in his earlobe. Mr Peters with an earring? Maybe he gelled his hair into a baby Mohican at weekends and put in a dangly cannabis leaf earring. I couldn’t conjure up the picture. He put the mask over my bad eye and cheek. ‘Stay still for ten minutes. That should ease the swelling.’
In the meantime I heard the fridge open and close, cutlery and glasses clink down onto the granite top, the bread knife sawing away. With my good eye, I tried to snoop as much as possible. I could see one photo on the windowsill but couldn’t make out who was in it. I’d have to have a nosey at that when I got up. Check out the competition past. Or maybe even present. A rack of magazines stood by the fireplace. Private Eye. I hoped he didn’t expect me to get all those political jokes. The BBC Good Food magazine? Either he was dicing and slicing himself, or there was a woman around the place.
After a few minutes, he peeled back the ice pack, patted me dry with a towel and rubbed in some cream, tutting away as he did. My good intentions had grown wings. I was in no hurry to get up. He knelt on the floor beside me. ‘That looks a bit better.’ He leaned closer. If I lifted my head a fraction, I could kiss his chin. He looked at me with a question in his eyes and I must have held the right – or wrong – answer in mine. He lowered his mouth onto mine with such gentleness, that I felt every ‘mustn’t do this’ thought fade away. He smoothed my hair back from my face, kissing me over and over until my head was spinning. I moved over to let him come onto the settee. He lay down beside me, slipped his arm under my head and whispered, ‘Am I hurting you?’ before carrying on where he left off. My body had turned hussy and was crying out for the man to clamber on top of me. But in the same way he opened doors for me, Mr Peters was nothing if not well-mannered. Damn him. Eventually, he pulled himself up onto one elbow to look at me.
‘What?’ I said. I always sounded aggressive when I was embarrassed.
‘I really didn’t want to do that.’ He blushed, which made him look like a teenager. ‘I did want to do that, I mean, of course I did, but I wanted to talk to you first. I don’t mean, first, before, well, you know. God, it doesn’t matter.’ He pressed his fingertips to his eyes and got to his feet, adjusting his cuffs and tucking his shirt in again. ‘I’ve made you some lunch. Hope you like crayfish and rocket salad.’ Right then, I would have fallen at his feet for a fish paste sandwich.
He hauled me up. I glanced over to the photo while pretending to be checking the weather. Older lady with a big woolly scarf. Didn’t look like someone he would sleep with.
He pulled out a stool for me at the breakfast bar, then sat down beside me. ‘I didn’t get you round here to kiss you. Even though you’re absolutely lovely. I wanted to talk to you about your family.’
I rolled my eyes. My family wasn’t much of a family right now.
‘Hear me out. Then you can tell me to get lost if you want to,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘It’s kind of difficult for me to have this conversation now, because I’ve destroyed any official credibility that I might have had. But I need to say this, and then even if you never speak to me again, I can live with myself.’ Mr Peters passed me the olive oil and balsamic vinegar. He took a sip of his coffee. ‘I grew up on a rough estate in Bolton.’
‘Bolton? You sound like you were born in Guildford.’
‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ he said, in a perfect Lancashire accent. He unbuttoned the top of his shirt and pulled it to one side to reveal the tattoo of an eagle just above his left nipple.
‘Oh my God. You weren’t joking when you told Bronte you had a tattoo. I thought you were having her on.’ I was struggling to match up the Mr Peters of the suit and how-do-you-do manner with the one who had once been a customer of some hairy biker boy tatt shop.
He carried on in pure Boltonian. ‘I was expelled from school for brawling just before I took my CSEs. No one at my school did O-levels. Dad left when I was five and Mum didn’t really get education. Thought I should stop mithering about stuffin’ me bonce with facts and gerr’out and earn some money.’
‘Can you go back to your normal voice now?’ I said. He was freaking me out. I felt as though I was having lunch with Peter Kay and any minute now he’d ask if I wanted some gaaarlic bread.
‘That is my normal voice. Well, one of them.’ Phew. Mr Posh Peters was back. ‘Sorry to do a Zachary Peters This is Your Life on you but there is a point to this. I ended up on a building site, no qualifications, no prospects. My old history teacher happened to walk past one day and saw me there, shovelling gravel. He wouldn’t go away. He sat on the pavement reading his newspaper until I finished my shift, then he took me home.’
I sat very quietly. I’d never seen Mr Peters so earnest. He sounded a bit choked. ‘That teacher always wore shirts with cufflinks and a suit. I remember feeling so ashamed because Mum was wearing her coat and a woolly hat like a tea cosy because we didn’t have any heating in the house. He told Mum that I had so much potential, that it would be criminal for me not to continue my education. He persuaded her to let me apply for a bursary for a private sixth form that his cousin ran in Surrey.’
‘So that’s how you ended up here?’ I tried to imagine Mr Peters as a scruffy lout catapulted into posh surroundings.
‘Yes. I boarded for
two years, got good A-levels and made it to university. I’m not trying to make out that it was a dream come true. It wasn’t. I got into an awful lot of fights, mainly with other boys teasing me about my accent and my strange “northern” vocabulary. In the end, I started talking like them and now it’s become a habit. But I’d probably have got into drugs and petty crime if I’d have stayed where I was.’
A bit of Boltonian accent dobbed in and out of his speech as though talking about it took him back there.
‘Everything I have now is the result of someone believing in me when I was on the verge of pissing my life up a wall.’ The swearing sounded funny coming out of his mouth. His cheeks were mottled with pink. He took my hand. My fingers tightened around his. Everything he was telling me was coming from a raw place deep inside, which, of course, made me want to laugh hysterically.
‘Are you laughing at me?’ he asked with mock severity.
‘No, not at all. It’s just so weird to hear you swear. I sit in the van saying, “Piss, bum, bollocks” to get it all out of my system before I have to come in and see you. You make me nervous.’
He stood up. ‘You make me nervous. There’s always so much I want to say, then I say it and wish I’d kept me bloody gob shut.’ He was back in Boltonian mode. He swivelled my stool round and took my face in his hands. ‘It’s a good job I met you now. I have to admit I’m struggling here. I couldn’t have been this restrained in my youth.’
‘What do you mean, “restrained”?’ I thought I’d enjoy my moment of power for a bit longer.
He smiled, a naughty, if-you’re-not-careful-I’ll-show-you smile. ‘Fighting wasn’t my only vice.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘I’d better sit down. I have serious things to say and I can’t think straight when I’m touching you.’
My whole body missed him the second he moved away, though he didn’t let me go with his eyes. He went back to sounding all strung out and angry. ‘What I am trying to say is that I don’t want you or your children to miss out. You’ve got an opportunity to turn your life around, just like I had. If you’re not careful, Colin is going to ruin it for you. He is making it impossible for your kids to be the best they can be. He’s scrounging off you, he’s beating you up, he’s a terrible role model, especially for Harley.’
I shifted on the stool. ‘I know all that but right now there’s not a lot I can do about it.’ I felt criticised for cocking up the choice of father for my children. I hated the way he’d skipped from soft and sexy to some kind of busybody preacher. I had to work hard not to look sulky.
Mr Peters was one step ahead. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I admire you. You get on with life, you don’t mope about feeling sorry for yourself but you are capable of so much more. You’re bright. You’re funny.’ He took my hand and turned it over, tracing circles on my palm, which made me long to have a sticky beak at that eagle tattoo.
‘Funny doesn’t pay the rent though.’ I knew he was telling me all this for the right reasons, but that didn’t make me want to listen. Colin thumping me, leaving home to stay with Clover, snogging my son’s teacher . . . my memory card was full, no room to store anything else. I couldn’t get my head round leaving Colin permanently. And when Mr Peters was so busy admiring me for ‘getting on with life’ – ha bloody ha – how could I possibly shout out that my kids were coming out of Stirling Hall? I couldn’t look at him. I felt as though I had FRAUD stamped on my forehead. I chased a piece of crayfish round my plate.
‘You could get training, get a better job than cleaning. God knows, Maia, you’re capable of it. I think you’d make a brilliant teacher. I’ve seen how you handle Harley and Bronte, how you encourage them. That’s half the battle. Making them want to do well.’
‘Me a teacher? That’s a laugh.’ That was probably the biggest compliment I’d ever had.
‘Why not? You’re brighter than lots of teachers I know. You could study in the evening. I’m sure the Open University does a whole range of courses for people like you who missed out on a formal education first time around. In the meantime, why not look for a job as a housekeeper, somewhere you could live with the children? Lots of families round here have annexes or cottages in the garden. Promise me you’ll think about it. Colin will still be able to see the children, but you’ll have a much more stable life. And you won’t have to worry about whether he’s going to hit you again.’
‘Do you really think I could teach?’
‘I’m sure you could. You’ve got natural empathy with children and you’re not a pushover.’
‘I am for you.’ The words came wanging out of my mouth before I could get them back in.
‘Are you? That’s good to know. I can’t imagine you being a pushover for anyone.’ Good job we weren’t lying on his bed, really. He leant over and caught a long strand of my hair. ‘Maia, you are really special. I’m sorry because I’ve complicated the whole thing by getting too close to you. I’m trying to tell you this as a neutral observer, not as a man who has very inappropriate thoughts whenever you walk into the room.’
Joy that Mr Peters found me attractive mingled with irritation that now he’d voiced his concerns, he’d be waiting for me to do something about them. Could I find a way to keep the kids at Stirling Hall without ending up homeless? We were so far in arrears with the rent, the council wouldn’t wait much longer. The ache in my face was making it difficult to think. I looked at my watch. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got a shift at the leisure centre in half an hour.’
‘Will you think about what I’ve said?’ He came round to help me off the stool, his hand firm under my elbow.
‘Yeah. I will. I just feel that my whole life is two steps forward, one step back.’
‘Hang on in there. I know you can get through this. If you let me, I could really help you.’
‘You’ve helped me enough.’ I was dying to come clean, tell him that I was going to let him down, fuck it all up, send my kids back to Morlands to a dead-end future. There was no time for that. I couldn’t have that conversation in two minutes.
‘Thanks for lunch – and the pep talk.’ I hesitated. He didn’t. I braced myself against the granite island to stop my body shaking as he pulled me close.
‘I didn’t even get round to talking about us,’ he said into my hair.
‘What us?’ I felt him sigh against me. He tried to silence me with a kiss. I allowed myself a mini-melt for a moment, but I had to be heard. ‘You’ve worked very hard to get where you are. I’m not going to ruin it for you. In a few years, you could be head of Stirling Hall, if you don’t mess up by sleeping with white trash.’
I pulled a face to show that I was half-joking but he didn’t crack a smile. I peeled myself away from him. I reached up for a final sweet peck on the lips and forced myself out of the door.
My mops were waiting.
21
I could hear the shouts of laughter from the end of the lane as I drove back from my shift at the dentist’s. We’d been at Clover’s nearly a week and the kids were as happy as pigs in shit. When Bronte wasn’t walking Weirdo, their Old English sheepdog, in the orchards, she was camped in the outhouse with the guinea pigs and rabbits. Orion made the mistake of saying there was a quad bike in the garage and since then, I’d barely dared look out of the kitchen window as Harley flew past the statues in the gardens and out into the paddocks at the back. Our little terraced house was going to seem like a right shoebox when we finally went back.
Clover seemed to love the company. Even though I had to stop myself telling her children off for swearing and bouncing on the furniture, my kids didn’t seem to irritate her at all. She’d started to teach Bronte how to ride and the sight of her straight-backed, heels down, on the little white pony made me want to stop the clock and stay here forever. As the kids played hide and seek, racing round and round the house, dodging each other by scooting up and down the servants’ staircases, screeching with laughter, I forced myself not to worry about what would happen when we had to go home. And we would hav
e to go home, though for the moment I was earning my keep in elbow grease. Whenever we finished a room, Clover would dig a bottle of champagne out of the wine cellar and toast us like a couple of explorers back from Antarctica.
As I pulled into the drive, the screams and shouts got louder. I followed the noise to the back of the house. Clover was standing with a stopwatch and the kids were taking it in turns to complete an obstacle course – clambering over garden chairs, flying round the orchard on Orion’s bike, bouncing off the trampoline onto an old mattress and swinging themselves onto the monkey bars. I never saw her kids gawking at the telly in the same way mine would sit there, mouth open, deaf to every word until I blocked their view. When I got back from my shifts, there was still so much to do in my own home, I didn’t have the imagination or energy for playing. I suppose that’s where a trust fund helped out.
Clover saw me and beckoned me over. ‘Who wants Maia to have a turn?’
All the kids clamoured for me to join in. I was nervous about knocking my face but I didn’t want to mention it and remind them. Harley grabbed me by the feet and wheel-barrowed me down the slope to the orchard. ‘Go Mum, go Mum, go, go, go.’ I kept falling on my belly on the wet grass but Harley was determined to make me finish the course. It was years since I’d been on monkey bars but I was still strong – all that polishing must have been good for something. I was so smug as I swung to the end, though my hamstrings were killing me as I ran the last few yards, with Clover keeping a running commentary about how I might just beat Saffy if I put my back into it. I insisted that Clover had a turn, then everyone wanted to see if they could beat their first time and we all went round again, faces shining pink in the cold.
It was only when my whole body was shivering and I was gagging for the warmth of Clover’s Aga, that I realised that I needed to be at Harley’s parents’ evening in half an hour. I’d gone for the early slot so Clover could look after the children until I got back, then we could swap over. I ran inside, glorying in the fact that I had my own en-suite shower and didn’t have to stand trying to light the boiler for twenty minutes before I could thaw out.
