She busied herself with unpacking. She could hear the faint thumping of music through the walls. She thought she could hear Ellie’s voice too, singing along, and there were busy scraping and thudding sounds as if she were arranging her belongings as well.
Isabel’s rucksack contained mostly clothes and once they been put away the room looked similar to how it had when she had started. She decided to strike out, find the kitchen and explore the bathrooms. The bathrooms were at the end of the corridor; she remembered passing them on her way down.
Opening her door again, she set off along the soundless corridor. It was odd how dead and strange concrete felt beneath one’s feet, even concrete under a carpet.
The kitchen was at the end, as seventies as the rest of the décor, with rather battered off-white units containing water glasses, plain white plates and mugs. There was a large steel sink with a ridged draining area and a white metal stove with round black electric rings scuffed and faded in the middle as if they had seen a great deal of use over the years. There was a window with a view over the college gardens; they looked rather scrubby and unloved, Isabel was thinking. Someone was working out there, though: a woman in a funny-looking purple hat . . .
Someone entering the kitchen from behind made her turn round suddenly. A girl in skinny jeans, Ugg boots and with one hand plunged deeply into the pockets of a long, baggy pale blue cardigan: Ellie, obviously.
She swished her long fair hair and smiled. ‘Hi,’ she said in the light, rather insubstantial voice that Isabel already knew. ‘I’m Ellie.’
‘Isabel.’
‘Oh, you’re the girl next door,’ Ellie smiled. ‘Fancy a coffee in my room?’
Ellie was reading history. Her room was a revelation; she seemed to have eradicated all institutional touches. The bare bones were the same as Isabel’s, but it could not have looked more different.
‘Oh, I’ve had years of practice; horrid girls’-school bedrooms and all that,’ Ellie said breezily, as Isabel, clutching a steaming mug with the BBC logo admired the colourful embroidered cotton throw on the bed and the fringed, sequinned and patchworked Indian cushions piled on top amid a couple of teddies, evidently worn by love and time. One had an eye missing, the other lacked an ear but they were, Ellie had rather touchingly confided, her absolute favourite possessions.
She had strung pink fairy lights along the top of the wardrobe and customised the biscuit-coloured shade fixed to the centre of the ceiling with magenta tissue paper. The general restful, souk-like atmosphere was completed by a thick, white, scented candle glowing on the desk and emitting a delicious citrus smell. Inhaling it, drawing in the general rosy comfort and warmth, Isabel wanted to lie down on the glittering bed amid the teddies and surrender to exotic dreams. Or else hear about Ellie’s gap-year stint as a BBC intern. Her godmother worked for Radio Four, Isabel’s favourite station. ‘Jenni Murray?’ Ellie said absently. ‘Oh, she’s really sweet. Anyway, here’s my travel blog.’
Her smart new laptop was open beside the scented candle on the desk and she was busy scrolling through a sequence of colourful pictures.
After the BBC, which Isabel would much rather have heard about, Ellie had gone to work for various charities abroad. She had helped in the favelas of Brazil and on a women’s collective farm in the Congo. She had also taught English in India and helped build a school in Mexico.
‘Where did you go for your year off?’ Ellie asked brightly as she prodded the buttons from time to time, to change the image.
Isabel felt the sudden urge to giggle. Working in ‘Bide A Wee’, the Lochalan café, hardly compared to Ellie’s altruistic globe trotting. She had been saving up for uni, not saving the world. The only social difference she had made was to persuade Miss Macpherson, the café’s somewhat conservative owner, that a patisserie range consisting entirely of shortbread was somewhat limiting and carrot cake could be introduced with no loss of life or limb.
‘Oh, nowhere amazing,’ she said with perfect truth, quickly turning the subject back to Ellie again. ‘That school sounds wonderful.’
‘It was,’ Ellie sighed, pulling a rueful face. ‘I know this sounds a bit much but I really did feel privileged to help these poor children; realised just how lucky I am and all that.’ Her face flushed, but then she grinned. ‘But it wasn’t all like that,’ she added, launching into a description of a holiday in Thailand with two schoolfriends called Milly and Tilly, both now at Exeter. ‘It was sort of like our last fling,’ Ellie reminisced wistfully. ‘They were my absolute besties.’
Isabel examined the photos on the blog of Ellie and her absolute besties. The besties had long hair, just like Ellie, although, being thinner, they were better suited to the gap-year uniform of strappy black vest top and safari shorts. In the picture, the three of them were sitting under strings of fairy lights holding pastel-coloured plastic cups the size of large plant pots, bristling with straws. ‘Thai buckets,’ Ellie explained, her voice fond with remembrance. ‘You can dance all night after one of those. Actually, I did some fire-eating.’ She giggled.
‘Fire-eating?’
‘Mm. I’d seen a couple of girls from Australia do it in Koh Jum. I really wanted to do it and it was quite easy, actually. The lighter fuel in your mouth doesn’t taste half as bad as you expect.’ Ellie was giggling. ‘Tills and Mills thought I was an absolute maniac.’ She sighed and looked suddenly serious. ‘We had such fun. I wish they could have come here too. I miss my besties.’ She turned to Isabel anxiously. ‘But we can be friends, can’t we?’
Isabel nodded in delight. She was more than happy to fill the bestie gap. She’d never really had a bestie before.
‘That’s that then,’ Ellie said, pleased. ‘Maybe we could go to the Incinerator together later?’ She was rearranging a few things on her desk, including the large pinboard covered in invitations, postcards and notes that she had had since she was thirteen.
Isabel stared. ‘But I’ve hardly got anything in my bin yet, I haven’t been here long enough.’
Ellie was giggling. ‘The Incinerator’s what they call the dining hall.’
Isabel had not yet visited the dining hall and had been prepared to accept the official prospectus description of its being ‘a great, white, light-filled circular space occupying the central position beneath the college’s distinctive dome.’ But, according to Ellie, it looked like an industrial plant crossed with a hospital mortuary. ‘And not in a good way.’
‘And afterwards we could go to the Turd – that’s the bar, you know . . .’ Ellie continued.
‘Yes, I know,’ Isabel interjected, keen to dispel the impression she knew absolutely nothing about anything.
‘And then we come back here and watch a film on my laptop. I’ve got loads of romcoms.’
Ellie had it all mapped out, Isabel thought, happy to be bowled along in her slipstream. Bars and romcoms. It wasn’t the life she was used to, not at all.
Outside, in the garden, Diana was getting tired. Gardening was so exhausting when you did it all day. You ached all over, your extremities numbed. Hopefully she would get used to it; she would have to.
Perhaps she was overdoing it, working on Sunday when, officially, her first day was tomorrow, Monday. But the thought of sitting at home when there was so much to be done was impossible. There were issues with her new home that she chose not to face just yet: the neighbours, mainly.
Diana hastily reminded herself that, even in the wealthy part of London she had lived in, there had been neighbour problems. Different ones, perhaps. Her old neighbour, Sara Oopvard, she of the Queen’s gardeners, had been particularly ghastly. It seemed almost incredible, now that money was so tight, to recall how freely Sara had spent it – and no doubt still did – on services of such marginal necessity as the professional from the London Zoo aquarium who came to clean out the fish tank. Or the fashionable interior desig
ner who, each December, came to ‘theme’ the Oopvard Christmas tree.
Sara, English wife of a rich Dutch banker, had been the first to drop her like a hot brick once divorce loomed, Diana remembered. But that had actually been a relief. Rosie need not, any longer, go for playdates with Milo, the Oopvards’ spoilt son.
Flashing now into Diana’s mind came the memory of Milo at his last birthday party. ‘Mu-um! Cassius and Ludo’ve dressed as Buzz Lightyear as well. They’ve copied me! You got me the same costume as everybody else. I hate it!’ He had ripped savagely at the Velcro on his spacesuit front. Diana felt a warm sense of relief that she never had to see the Oopvards again. However bad the new neighbours, they could not be as bad as the old.
Gathering her gardening tools, she pictured Sara in the gym, or on Twitter, or donning paper pants for a spray tan. Or competing away – and definitely not eating – in some fashionable organic café against other aimless and wealthy wives in the same boat – or yacht. Or perhaps having the muslin-covered fingers of a Hungarian facial specialist rubbing creams into her Botoxed forehead. Or as one of a privileged coven complaining around skinny lattes about Svetlana’s calling Moscow whenever she felt like it, or Imelda’s inability to manage the six-ring burner. Rosie’s own nanny, Hannah, had been a large, slow-witted creature employed solely because everyone they knew had such ‘help’. Diana, who had long wanted to look after Rosie herself, had been secretly glad to see the broad back of her.
Divorce had given her this opportunity. At first, accustomed to leaving the details to someone else, Diana had constantly found herself in sudden rain without a coat for her daughter, in a muddy park without a change of clothes. She had never had a bottle of water when Rosie was thirsty. She had not understood the importance of frequent loo breaks. Or how dips in sugar levels triggered mood swings.
Gradually, she had broken through. Among the things Diana now knew was that Rosie preferred crisps to chocolate and, while hating broccoli, would eat carrots. Rosie liked to draw and loved to swim. So far as books were concerned, she preferred Malory Towers to St Clare’s, Just William to Horrid Henry and, while she liked Harry Potter, she preferred Lemony Snicket’s ill-starred Baudelaire family, especially the baby, Sunny. She also loved Sherlock Holmes. Each new insight was a source of joyful fascination to Diana, mixed with guilt. She should have insisted Hannah went long ago. The person she was now would never allow someone else to take such a primary role in Rosie’s life, even if money was no object.
Diana looked carefully about to make sure no tools had been left. She could not afford to lose a single one. Then she walked over to where Rosie was reading in the back of the car.
Diana’s afternoon had been punctuated by near-constant glances over to the battered blue banger, which contained the single thing most precious in the world to her. But Rosie had not moved.
‘You won’t be bored?’ Diana had asked, anxiously.
‘I’m OK, Mummy, honestly,’ Rosie said, smiling and shaking her light brown curls. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ she added reassuringly.
Rosie had been as good as her word, Diana reflected now. As good as gold. Autumn gold.
There were a couple of mature beeches overlooking the car park. Diana admired them as she carried the tools towards her car boot. She loved beeches, especially at this time of year, their formerly rich green leaves turning slowly through gold to burnished copper. Sometimes, to show off, one tree did all three at once. Whereas the poor old elms, so stately in the summer, lost their leaves like men lost their hair: the top was the first to go. Simon’s early-onset baldness had been a source of agony to him. Perhaps, Diana reflected, it was that which had made him vulnerable to predatory women. She blinked, recognising a sea change. She had been, up to this point, too angry with her ex-husband to care in the least about his motivation.
It was getting colder. There was a nip in the air, tweaking the tops of her ears and tightening the end of her nose. Diana felt glad of her hat, however unflattering. What did it matter if only stupid people like the cyclist saw it?
She opened the boot and placed the tools carefully in. Rosie was sprawled on the back seat placidly reading In The Fifth At Malory Towers. It took some time, even after opening the door and speaking to her several times, to catch her attention.
Diana got in, her heart sinking slightly at the mess. The front passenger seat was awash with battered cardboard boxes, empty plastic plant pots and plant markers. The days of valeted limousines were over, she reminded herself. And, on the whole, unlamented.
Apart from in one respect, possibly. It was not enough, Diana thought, that she herself had survived her own change in circumstances. Rosie’s great test was yet to come. None of what had happened was her fault, but was she about to suffer for the folly of her parents?
Diana could hardly believe how Rosie seemed amazingly happy, in spite of everything. She was sure she must be pretending in some way, and yet, Globe acting lessons notwithstanding, would a nine-year-old be so accomplished a dissembler? Nonetheless, she had worried herself sleepless that Rosie would miss her old lifestyle, her princess bedroom, her riding lessons, her friends and their birthday parties that seemed to get more elaborate and expensive every year. One of the last Rosie had attended involved stretch limos and party bags containing DVDs and Dior make-up.
More than anything else she had worried about how Rosie would cope with school. It was her first day at her new one, Campion Primary, tomorrow. Diana’s secret terror was that her daughter would be bullied. Would she be picked on for her refined manners and accent? For the fact she had come from a different world?
Smart’s Preparatory School in West London had occupied a white stucco town house with a portico. Rosie had worn a blazer and a stiff-brimmed straw boater. The school’s website was slick, as was the silver-fox headmaster, whose blog successfully balanced amusing with authoritative. Among Rosie’s fellow pupils, the offspring of media bigwigs, film stars, oligarchs, Cabinet ministers and royalty (both home-grown and European) had been two a penny. The school’s narrow hallway had been, on a daily basis, a combination of the Vanity Fair post-Oscars party and the Newsnight greenroom, as high-end TV presenters pushed past Westminster power brokers. Less-rich parents, it was said, took out mortgages in advance of the summer fête. This was so they could bid for raffle prizes ranging from trips in other parents’ private planes to walk-on parts in their films.
Meanwhile, Campion Primary was a state school of some two hundred and seventy pupils and had seemed, to Diana’s panicking eyes, a shanty town of prefabricated and temporary-looking units set on broken tarmac and cracked concrete. Of the notices stuck all over the walls, the emergency, anti-bullying and Childline numbers were the ones that leapt out. The acting headmistress, during their brief meeting, had seemed a severely harassed woman mainly in the business of crowd control.
To make things worse, the first term of the year had already started. Friends, Diana fretted, would have been made, alliances formed. It was into this alien world that Rosie would walk alone tomorrow. And yet she seemed utterly unruffled. Diana urged herself to feel the same.
‘I love this film,’ Ellie sighed joyfully. ‘It’s the best bit, too.’
Isabel, snuggled amid the teddies and the cushions on Ellie’s bed, felt almost ridiculously happy. Uni was bliss, as Ellie herself might say. Dinner at the Incinerator had been great fun, despite all the hard concrete surfaces making for a deafening noise of clattering plates, clashing cutlery and voices. But Isabel had loved looking about at all the other new students from the safe haven of Ellie’s companionship and thinking how alone and vulnerable she would have felt without her.
The food had been, at best, unremarkable. ‘We used to have something like this at school; we used to call it “Dead Man’s Leg”,’ Ellie said, poking the unidentifiable meat about her plate. ‘And that pudding of yours is just like one we used to have at St
Mary’s. “Nun’s Toenails”, we used to call it.’
Isabel had laughed. Even the bad food at Ellie’s school sounded fun. In the Turd, afterwards, she had sat against the blue-lit, curved concrete walls and – after Ellie’s example – drunk vodka while her companion assessed the romantic possibilities. ‘Not great,’ was Ellie’s conclusion after a swift scrutiny of the available talent. ‘Fat hippies, mostly, and Goths in guyliner.’ Isabel wasn’t sure what guyliner was, but there was no disagreeing with the rest; large, shambling long-haired types in black T-shirts seemed overrepresented in her view.
‘No one to practise my snogging skills on,’ Ellie lamented, then giggled at Isabel’s expression. ‘You looked so shocked! But that’s pretty much all we learnt at school: how to snog and how not to get a hangover.’
Isabel stared at the vodka in her hand and felt she didn’t have much of a clue about either. She felt lumpishly unsophisticated in comparison. But Ellie must have learnt something else at school, surely, or she wouldn’t be here.
They went back to Ellie’s room and set up the laptop.
‘We spent our lives watching DVDs at school,’ Ellie said.
Isabel was beginning to feel she had attended Ellie’s south-of-England girls’ school herself. Perhaps she just wished she had been part of the jokes, the camaraderie, the communal atmosphere. It certainly seemed more real to her than the far-distant lochside where, right this moment, her mother would probably be sitting alone in front of the TV. Isabel pushed the thought away – she would ring tomorrow – and tried to concentrate on the film, Dog For Christmas.
‘Two lonely people who, after hilarious misadventures, misunderstandings and mistakes, are brought together by a loveable mongrel just in time for the festive season.’
Isabel, feeling warm and woozy after the vodka, was conscious of missing various crucial plot twists because of her eyelids drooping. She tried, now, to concentrate as a bespectacled actor of the handsome geek variety and a dark-haired actress of the pouting temptress variety were making passionate love on a sofa. A blonde actress of the wholesome-but-beautiful variety was coming in the door.
Gifted and Talented Page 5
