Gifted and Talented

by Holden, Wendy

  Fury raged within Sara. She was staring at disaster. Defeat. They would have to go back home now. Even she couldn’t brazen this one out; even Diana, wet as she was, would refuse to give them houseroom after this. And where would she be then with Richard? She felt like laying a blow on Milo herself.

  ‘Get up,’ she snarled at her cringing, snivelling son with such violence that even Shanna-Mae paused in her sobbing and peeped at her, awed, through her fingers. Fingers which, Sara found herself noticing, had long false nails attached, with elaborate patterns in diamonds on some of them.

  A great flash of blinding light struck her. As Milo heaved himself upwards, wailing loudly at every beating and bruise he claimed to have suffered, she stepped swiftly forward. ‘Is that,’ she demanded, wrenching her son’s sharp chin towards her, ‘a scratch? From those talons?’ She stared incriminatingly at Shanna-Mae’s hands.

  ‘Yes!’ Milo screamed immediately. ‘She almost murdered me, Mum. I bet she’s broken some of my bones, Mum.’

  Sara looked at him contemplatively. ‘She might well have done, son. We’d better go and have you checked out.’ She swung her glittering gaze to Rosie. ‘You’d better show me the phone,’ she hissed, suppressing with difficulty the exultation in her voice. ‘I’m going to ring your mother. They’ll have to come back and then Richard will have to take me and Milo to casualty.’

  ‘Why can’t you drive yourself?’ Rosie challenged, shaken but not quite defeated.

  Sara was outraged. What right did this infant have to question her, still less lay open the fact there was no reason beyond dividing Richard from Diana and having him all to herself. ‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ Sara snapped. ‘I’m far too upset to drive. And someone needs to look after my poor little boy. Your horrible fat friend nearly killed him.’

  The evening was going wonderfully, Richard felt. Better even than the first one. The restaurant was a small French bistro recommended to him by the Bursar, who had spent a lengthy period in his office that afternoon complaining about the alumni dinner. It was progressing apace, Richard learnt. There was to be a welcoming drinks reception in the Turd and the final menu had been drawn up with the kitchen. The Bursar confided to Richard his doubts about the pudding – a sauternes jelly with grapes suspended within. ‘Looks like dog food’, the Bursar sighed.

  ‘Dog food!’ Diana snorted, as Richard repeated the story to her now. She seemed to find everything concerning the alumni dinner interesting and amusing and the idea of asking her as his guest was starting to bloom in Richard’s mind. It would cause a stir in the college, he knew. People would gossip. But so what? Diana was a Branston employee, and besides, he liked her. Perhaps more than liked her. Certainly, he wanted to see more of her. And the dinner was coming up, and having her there would make it approximately one hundred times more bearable. Even fun.

  Diana was amazed. Such a public announcement of the fact of their relationship was both thrilling and terrifying.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ he said quickly, glancing over the bread roll basket towards her astonished face. ‘I’ll understand if you say no. It’s just that I need someone to come with me and it would be great if it was you; we seem to get on pretty well . . .’ He stopped himself before he could downgrade things between them any further. It wasn’t coming out the way he meant it to, not at all.

  ‘Er, OK,’ Diana said quickly, hurriedly filtering and evaluating all this new information. Seem to get on pretty well – was that all? It wasn’t what she had expected, when the second date had followed so fast upon the first. She had imagined – hoped – that it was the beginning of something between them.

  ‘You don’t sound very sure,’ Richard said, but knew it was his own fault.

  Diana did not contradict him.

  ‘It’s not the hottest of dates, I admit,’ he added, then shut up again. He was in a hole and it was best to stop digging.

  A sound caught her ear now: a muffled, insistent ringing from somewhere close. Diana’s hands slapped the sides of her chair, searching for her bag. ‘I’d better answer it. It might be Rosie.’

  He watched her shake back her hair and reveal a small and delicate ear. She shoved the phone against it, her mouth half-open with anticipation. He saw her face disappear under a scrunch of frowns. ‘Sara,’ Diana said, flatly.

  That monster in the make-up, Richard thought. She had just dropped in, Diana had said earlier. She had not offered anything further and he hardly wanted to ask. The least said about that creature, the better. He would have thought her to be miles away by now, on her way back to wherever her lair was, but he was alarmed, now, to see the colour drain out of Diana’s ruddy face.

  ‘An emergency!’ Her voice was a choking gasp. ‘A disaster in the house?’ She was stumbling to her feet, wildly grabbing at her coat. ‘Sara, I’m coming. I’m coming right now.’

  They drove at top speed, Richard oblivious and uncaring as to the consequences to his career of being caught by the police.

  Diana, next to him, had been sick with fear. Sara had given no details. An emergency at home was all she had said. The line had then gone dead and Diana had been unable to reconnect despite constant, frantic, shaky-fingered dialling all the way home.

  The car had not even stopped outside Diana’s house before she had torn open the door, raced up the path, burst in.

  ‘Jesus!’

  The hall looked like the aftermath of a bomb – a bomb in a cosmetics department. Bottles of foundation and nail varnish spilled beige or sparkling viscous liquid into the gritty underfelt carpet. Gaudy colours daubed the walls. The tops of broken eye pencils lay around like small gold bullets on the floor. There was a powerful smell of perfume.

  Diana was too terrified even to think. For entire seconds the world whirled and blurred. Then it jolted back into focus as a small, white-faced figure appeared.

  ‘Rosie!’ Crushing the small body to her, Diana nearly collapsed with sheer relief. If Rosie was safe, she could face any catastrophe.

  In her ears, the screaming silence of panic had been replaced by screaming and shouting from the sitting room. Still clutching Rosie, Diana staggered in its direction.

  In the middle of a more intense and colourful devastation than that of the hall stood Debs. Her large face flamed red with anger as she shouted in her powerful voice at Sara Oopvard, who stood, hands on narrow, leather-clad hips, smirking. Behind her skulked Milo, clutching his face theatrically. Shanna-Mae lurked to Debs’ expansive rear.

  ‘Rosie? What’s going on?’

  Both women now turned and spotted Diana. There was a mutual intake of breath before Rosie’s explanation was drowned in an explosion of competing tales. With difficulty, Diana pieced it together. The bottom line seemed to be that Milo had wrecked Shanna-Mae’s precious collection of make-up.

  ‘Just a few eye pencils, that’s all,’ Sara spat dismissively. ‘Milo didn’t mean any harm.’

  Debs’ nostrils flared like a charging bull’s. ‘Let me at her!’ she yelled.

  ‘Mum!’ Shanna-Mae shouted, restraining the maternal bulk with difficulty.

  Rosie’s low, firm voice now took up the tale, explaining how, unsurprisingly, Shanna-Mae had retaliated with violent fury to the havoc wrought by Milo.

  ‘She’s gored him!’ came Sara’s interrupting shriek. ‘Scratched him so badly he’ll get tetanus if we don’t get him to hospital!’

  ‘Scratch!’ Debs exclaimed. ‘You can hardly bloody see it! I’ll give her a bloody scratch, just let me near her—’

  ‘Have you seen that girl’s nails?’ Sara hurled back. ‘She’s gouged him!’

  ‘Where’s the scratch?’ Diana was asking when Sara leant to the side and addressed someone behind her. ‘You’ll take us to hospital, won’t you Richard?’ she purred, throwing him a look of pure feminine appeal.

  R
ichard! Amid the whirl of action, the churn of panic, Diana had forgotten about him. He must have been standing behind her all the time, in the middle of all the mess, violence and hysteria.

  What must he think of this bedlam? Of the way she lived, the people she knew? She turned to him in horror, her lips framing an apology.

  But Richard, with a startled look back over his shoulder, was already being bundled out of the room by a satisfied-looking Sara, who was dragging Milo, who was clutching his iPad. As the door slammed behind them, it crossed Diana’s mind that he was probably relieved to get away.

  The others seemed to melt away too. The room that had been so full – of noise, of people – was now empty. The house seemed suddenly very silent.

  Diana looked slowly around. She saw with dull misery how complete was the wreckage of her efforts to make a new home. The carpet she had scrubbed was filthy all over again, the cushions and throws she had chosen from the market were smeared and torn. Diana bowed her head, fighting the tears.

  But then, as a glum-faced Rosie came back into the sitting room, she pulled herself together. As, slowly, they began to address the mess, Debs appeared in the doorway. She had evidently been in the kitchen with Shanna-Mae.

  Diana leapt to her feet and rushed to her friend, intending to give her a consoling hug. But Debs turned away and Diana was startled. Of course what had happened was dreadful, but surely the good-hearted, sensible Debs could see it was not her fault?

  ‘I’m so sorry, Debs,’ Diana gasped. ‘Of course I’ll pay for the make-up, replace everything that’s been ruined.’

  She knew, even as she spoke, that it would not be that easy. Both financially – the collection was worth hundreds – and because Shanna-Mae had assembled it from many different sources over the years. But she would find the money, look for the make-up online if necessary.

  Debs waved her apologies away, however. And not politely, either, but with angry cuts of the hand through the air. Diana looked with anguished appeal at Shanna-Mae, but she was leaning against the wall with her arms belligerently folded. It was obvious that the wreckage Sara had left behind was not only material.

  Panic clutched Diana. She could not let the corrosive Oopvards ruin this friendship. Unhesitatingly, she threw herself on Debs’ mercy. ‘Please,’ she began, desperately. ‘Please. You must forgive me. Sara just turned up, tonight, out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting her, I had no idea . . .’

  Debs turned to her, face wrenched into an unfamiliar expression. With a shock, Diana realised it was deep dislike – loathing, even.

  ‘You people,’ Debs spat. ‘You patronise us, you pretend to be friends, but all the time you’re laughing at us, looking down on us. Lying to us.’

  Diana’s mouth dropped open. From somewhere in the sitting room now rose the sound of Rosie’s quiet sobs. Diana shook her head frantically, holding her hands out to her friend in desperate appeal. ‘Debs, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t know where I’d be without you. You’ve helped me so much, from the minute I moved in—’

  ‘Save your breath, Mrs High-and-Mighty,’ Debs put in, violently. ‘Your good friend there –’ she jerked her thumb in the direction of the door – ‘told us exactly how it was.’ She was shaking with a sort of savage satisfaction.

  Diana was electrified with a sudden alarm. ‘What did she tell you?’

  Rosie stepped forward. ‘She said . . . you know . . . about Daddy . . .’

  The impact was almost physical. Diana belt double as if she had been punched in the stomach. She put her hands over her face as Rosie’s little voice went on, through the screaming in her head. ‘That he had been a cheat and lied to everyone, and that you had, too.’

  Diana parted her fingers slightly. Debs and Shanna-Mae were staring stubbornly at the floor, however. It was obvious from their set faces, their folded arms, that no arrows of reason were going to penetrate their defences. But what could she say, anyway? The Simon part of it was perfectly true.

  A furious misery welled within her, but no longer on her own account. What had Sara Oopvard thought she was doing? To lash out like this seemed a gross overreaction to the scuffle involving Milo in which her son, in any case, had inflicted the worst damage. And an appalling return on Diana’s generosity in, however unwillingly, giving the Oopvards houseroom.

  The fire had gone from Diana now. A feeling of absolute hopelessness overwhelmed her like a tide. She sank slowly down on the make-up sticky sofa, oblivious to the nail varnish soaking in to her best pair of trousers. As she pulled her daughter to her, the little body resisted only just enough to crank the handle of her pain still harder. But this was no time to feel sorry for herself. Rosie needed explanations.

  Wordlessly, the other mother and daughter left, the latter clutching what remained of her make-up kit. Wordlessly, Diana and Rosie watched them go. As the door shut behind them, Diana pressed her face to her daughter’s hair.

  ‘Is it true, Mum, what Sara said?’ The little voice was quiet, but steely. As the words came out, the small body in Diana’s arms had tensed.

  Diana hesitated. ‘Well, what did she say exactly?’

  ‘Well . . .’ The child bit her lip. ‘That Daddy spent money he didn’t have.’

  ‘Yes,’ Diana admitted. There seemed no point in pretending otherwise. After what Sara had said, euphemisms were hardly going to help. ‘But, actually, I didn’t know about it,’ she added. ‘I should have. I should have known a lot of things.’

  She shook her head regretfully. ‘I should have told Debs about it too, when I had the chance. Better that she heard from me than from Sara. Too late, though, now.’

  There was a silence. Diana waited, worriedly, for her daughter’s reaction. After holding still a few minutes more, the little body slumped, the little arms clutched her and Diana felt a soft, warm cheek on hers. ‘Never mind, Mummy.’

  ‘No.’ Diana held her daughter tightly and felt that, after all, she didn’t mind. What could she do? What was done was done. Rosie was all that mattered.

  ‘I’m glad they’ve all gone,’ the small voice, sleepy now, came again.

  ‘That’s definitely something,’ Diana agreed, with a glimmer of a smile. For Rosie, as ever, had accentuated the positive, even in a situation like this. Of course, the one bright prospect to emerge from the whole sorry mess was that they would never see the Oopvards again. Not even Sara would have the gall to re-enter the house after what had happened. When they returned from the hospital, it would be to climb into their white monster of a four-wheel drive and slink off, back to London. ‘And now,’ she said to Rosie, ‘to bed.’

  After many weary, wiping-and-mopping-up hours later, Diana’s last act was to stuff her unwelcome guest’s belongings back in her great gleaming case, drag it outside and lean it against her car. It was, she felt, a hint that even Sara Oopvard would understand.

  As she drifted off to sleep, Diana felt there was another positive aspect to tonight’s dramatic events. Yes, she had been wrong not to tell Debs about Simon and the divorce before. So Sara had got there first and given it the worst possible spin. Now she must learn from her mistake. She must, Diana thought, tell Richard about it at the first opportunity. Admittedly, on the back of all that had happened tonight, it was unlikely to impress him – the opposite, probably. Nonetheless, it needed to be done. She must come clean, and do it before that dinner he had asked her to; they could hardly discuss it there.

  As she went to sleep, Diana felt a further disquiet; Richard, of course, had taken Sara to the hospital. But it was surely out of the question that her divorce would be discussed. Even Sara would draw the line at vindictive gossip while in A & E with her son. And Milo’s wound was so slight they were probably finished now anyway and on their way back. Then Sara would see the suitcase, get in the car, return to London.

  All the same, Diana felt,
she must get to Richard as soon as possible.

  ‘Of course, you know,’ Sara said, turning to Richard brightly as they sat in A & E awaiting the attentions of a doctor, ‘that Diana’s quite notorious.’

  Richard had been watching Milo critically as he lounged on the seat beside him, muttering violent imprecations at his computer game. It seemed to him that the boy was perfectly healthy. As the last few surprising words of Sara’s sentence now sunk in, he turned to her in amazement. ‘Notorious?’ Had he heard right?

  But Sara was beaming at him, and nodding. In the hospital strip lights, her teeth were almost painfully white. ‘Oh, yes! I mean, I hate to say this, but strictly entre nous, that’s why she had to leave London.’ She drew breath to launch into the tale. ‘She and her husband—’

  ‘Husband?’ Richard jumped in, shocked.

  Sara seized on it. ‘Didn’t you know she was married?’

  He shook his head, gripped by a sudden misery. Of course, Diana had not said she was available, not in so many words. He had just assumed she was and, as a scientist, he should know how dangerous assumptions could be.

  ‘Divorced now though,’ Sara added. She was playing Richard like a cat would a mouse, or a fisherman a hooked fish, and enjoying the sensation thoroughly.

  ‘Oh.’ Richard’s despair now changed to a rush of relief.

  ‘Absolute crooks, both of them,’ Sara went on with relish, noting with triumph how Richard’s face fell again. For such a clever man, he was amazingly easy to read.

  ‘Crooks?’

  ‘Con men. Fraudsters. Borrowed like mad things, lived like lords and then declared themselves bankrupt when the bills came in,’ Sara announced with all the moral outrage of someone who had married for money and never worked in her entire life.

  Richard stared. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Well, believe it,’ Sara said brutally. ‘There are details online, if you want to look at them. I bet she never said anything to you about it, did she? And you’ve been out a couple of times, I’m guessing.’