by Rebecca Done
The kitchen was a spotless combination of gloss white and faux granite, making Jess’s look like a squat in comparison. Unable to discern a single stray breadcrumb, greasy olive oil bottle, filthy recipe book or leaking box of cereal, she now understood what Will had meant by living in a sanitized house.
Natalie eventually stalked back through to the kitchen from the living room, holding two gin and tonics and extending one to Jess.
‘Oh, no thanks,’ Jess said quickly. ‘Not while I’m working.’
Natalie tilted her head, shooting Jess a smile that narrowed her eyes. She’d added lashings of liner and charcoal to her already smouldering look, Jess noticed.
‘So, how’s that leg of yours?’ Natalie sipped from her drink, speaking in a manner that suggested Jess’s right thigh was like a troublesome child with behavioural problems.
‘Oh. Not too bad. Lots of ice and painkillers.’ Jess attempted to mirror her hostess’s perfunctory tone, then realized she was probably only succeeding in coming across as a little bit sarcastic.
‘Such a nightmare.’ Jess could feel Natalie watching her. ‘Will was distraught.’
‘He shouldn’t feel bad,’ Jess mumbled, struggling suddenly to meet Natalie’s eye. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’
Natalie crunched down loudly on to an ice cube. ‘No, thank God.’
Jess waited, unsure if she should perhaps acknowledge the money Will had offered her on Natalie’s behalf. But then Natalie switched on a smile, saving Jess from that particular discomfort yet launching her headlong into one that was, in reality, far worse. ‘He’s just through here. Come and say hello.’ She flicked her silken mane gently back in the direction of the living room.
Jess took a breath, having no choice but to follow her. As they reached the double doors, Natalie paused and whipped round, clamping her gaze on to Jess’s feet. ‘Sorry, no shoes,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Of course not.’ Jess removed her pumps and padded through self-consciously behind Natalie in her socks, feeling dowdy and ridiculous in comparison to her elegant hostess.
For a short-term rental, the house was terrifyingly well presented, the level of spotlessness such that Jess began to panic that her socks might not actually be clean. The carpet, walls and requisite furniture were bland enough (Jess assumed the place had come furnished) but touches of Natalie were still evident everywhere, as if she’d spun through all the rooms with her home improvement wand, whacking it against various fixtures and fittings so that people wouldn’t think she took her style inspiration from online rental listings. The coffee table in the centre of the room bore an enormous arrangement of calla lilies, candles in hurricane vases adorned every surface, and from the hearth a scent diffuser hinted heavily at the presence of a nearby pomegranate plantation. Jess also noticed two bottles of antibacterial spray on the bottom shelf of a half-full bookcase – presumably tucked away ahead of the party, to be squirted liberally around the place tomorrow. The books themselves she assumed to be Will’s – though he’d never been much of a reader before. She struggled somehow to imagine Natalie losing herself in the postmodernist ramblings of James Joyce, Philip Roth or Joseph Heller, or the scathing satire between the pages of all the Private Eye magazines.
But by far the most arresting item in the room was the enormous photo-on-canvas of Natalie, Will and Charlotte hanging above the gas-effect fireplace – the only evidence Jess had seen so far in the entire house to suggest that a small child lived here too.
They were posing for that studio photography classic – the three of them lying forward in a row, Natalie and Will flanking Charlotte, bare feet crossed playfully at the ankle. Charlotte had been styled to look like a catalogue model, beaming cheerfully through her teeth and hair with shiny camera-ready perfection. Natalie herself was a photographer’s dream, her very glance a sultry suggestion, though it contained just the right amount of virtue for a family shot. Will had clearly been groomed as well (as much as a person with a shaved head and zero beard can be groomed – Jess suspected fake tan) and primed to smile as if he’d just had the best sex of his life. The contrast between this photo and his appearance back then – his rock star look, as he had jokingly liked to call it – was quite astounding.
Seeing him on display like that, one third of a happy trio, brought a sudden stiffness to Jess’s stomach, so she turned her gaze away – only for it to land on the real-life Will instead. He was standing next to the sofa wearing jeans and a shirt in a shade of blue that somehow made him look even browner, even more handsome, than he had the other day. But the expression on his face was of someone who could quite happily have eaten his own fist.
‘Will, you remember …’ Natalie hesitated for a moment.
‘Jessica,’ she supplied quickly.
Will extended a hand to Jess, who wiped her own against her apron before shaking it. His grip was firm and he looked her right in the eyes. Even to touch him made her gently shiver.
‘Hello again,’ he said. ‘How’s your leg?’
Jess swallowed and shot him a hopeful smile. ‘Still in shock, I think.’
To her immense relief, he smiled back. Then, tipping his head at the music, ‘Simply Red. You a fan?’
‘Simply Red.’ She pretended to think about it. ‘Is the lead singer that guy out of Men Behaving Badly?’
He laughed. ‘Er, no! Good guess though.’
‘Oh, you’re so young,’ Natalie exclaimed sharply, and she sounded so alarmed about it that Jess instantly felt guilty.
Will looked away and reached for the remote, cranking Mick down a few notches. ‘I hope you’ve cooked us up a feast, Miss Hart.’
She nodded. Her mouth felt dry. ‘I tried.’
‘Is Charlotte ready, darling?’ Natalie enquired, gently swaying away to ‘Fairground’.
Will shook his head and avoided Jess’s gaze. ‘Not yet. Helen’s still doing her hair.’
‘Well, what on earth’s she doing to it?’ Natalie said impatiently, removing the cocktail stirrer from her glass and licking it.
Will shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Plaits?’
‘You’re going to think we’re terribly lazy,’ Natalie declared, addressing Jess, ‘but we do have a part-time childminder, even though Will doesn’t work per se. Everybody needs their own space, don’t they, darling?’ She looked across at him but gave him no time to answer. ‘And it’s not like we can’t afford it, so …’ She gave a little shrug.
‘I don’t think Jessica really needs to hear the finer details of our childcare arrangements,’ Will remarked.
‘Hiring help is nothing to be ashamed of, darling,’ Natalie countered, as if this was a couples therapy session and Will was being resistant.
Jess thought she saw Will flick his eyes briefly in the direction of the ceiling. Sensing the acuteness of his embarrassment and feeling it too, all the way to her toes, she concentrated too hard on the blank television screen behind him.
It was then that she spotted it.
A little statue in copper, about six inches tall, of a long-haired guitarist, head thrown back, rocking out. It was positioned prominently on its very own shelf above the television.
Unbridled, her heart began to pound. Over to her left, Natalie was experiencing her own lack of control, lost in a little dance tribute to Mick.
Jess simply couldn’t take her eyes off it, staring for so long that eventually she felt Will follow her gaze. The room swelled with a loaded silence to which only Natalie, apparently, was oblivious.
‘So, do you have everything you need?’ Will asked her then, briskly. His eyes were pleading with her to nod and retreat.
She swallowed and offered him a faint smile. ‘Yes, I do.’ She hesitated. ‘Thank you.’ And then she turned and disappeared into the kitchen, her heart still thumping.
Natalie came in after her only a couple of seconds later, pulling the living-room doors shut behind them.
‘You’ll have to excuse him,’ she said in the abrasive manner of
someone freshly bolstered by alcohol, ‘he gets like that sometimes.’
‘Like what?’
‘Irritable.’
‘Well, I’m probably the last person he wants to see again. You know, after the accident,’ Jess mumbled, for something to say more than anything else.
‘Between you and me,’ Natalie said, leaning a little closer, ‘that was actually part of the reason I asked you.’
Jess gaped at her. ‘How … how do you mean?’
‘He’s just been utterly floored by the whole thing. Understandably of course,’ Natalie added hastily. ‘Anyway, I thought it might help if he could see for himself that you’re recovering okay.’ She winked inappropriately, in a way Jess suspected she might not have done sober, before slinging down the last of her drink and stalking off back to the living room.
Two hours later and Natalie was slowly getting drunker. Jess could see and hear her through the double doors of the living room, holding court on the sofa with a gaggle of women from the village. She was gushing loudly about the renovations on the holiday home, her audience cooing in chorus over photos of the damp course like she was showing them pictures of a newborn baby.
An earlier well-practised scan of the party guests had told Jess most of what she needed to know, which was firstly that they all seemed to be intent on getting wasted, possibly to the point of throwing up in Natalie’s wheelie bin, but also that nobody appeared to be handing a dossier of Jess’s past around the room like security intel at a cabinet meeting. She had become expert over the years at separating in one glance those who knew from those who didn’t, and the ratio was continually calibrating in her favour anyway as old faces moved out and others moved in. Still, she always mentally readied herself for someone to make the connection at an event like this, because she deemed there to be a much better chance that way of snuffing out the spark before it became a flame.
Tonight, thankfully, nobody had particularly looked at her twice, other than when she’d done a quick round of the room to hand out her business cards or to top up the canapés. She felt as confident as she could do that Natalie’s new circle, as it currently stood, was safe enough.
‘Well, they’re starting to knock down the interior walls,’ Jess could hear Natalie informing them now, ‘so in a couple of days’ time we’ll either be looking at something out of Architectural Digest or a very big pile of bricks.’
One of the women said something Jess couldn’t quite catch.
‘Oh no, we’re going absolutely the whole hog,’ Natalie responded brazenly. ‘Adding two storeys to the back while we’re at it. The garden’s easily double the size it needs to be, so it makes sense to extend south as well as north. The neighbours despise us already.’ She laughed throatily. ‘They picked a fight with my builder the other day and I just told him: “Kevin, you know what to do.” ’
Another woman leaned over, presumably to ask her what it was that Kevin allegedly knew to do.
‘Took his pneumatic to the boundary, of course,’ Natalie declared, face flushed with self-satisfaction. ‘Broke up some residual concrete just for the hell of it. By the end of the day they were ready to put their own place on the market.’
Cue raucous laughter from her audience. Jess winced and turned away, unable to prevent herself from wondering exactly how the Will she knew was able to handle co-existing day-to-day with a woman like Natalie.
Still, the night had gone well so far. She’d been right to follow her instincts on the menu: the sweet pork meatballs had vanished within minutes, her vodka gazpacho shots coming a close second. In a few minutes she’d start clearing dishes from the canapés to take out the lemon meringue tartlets and cream-stuffed profiteroles.
And then, once again, her mind made an unexpected detour towards the little copper statue in Will’s living room.
He must look at it every day. Does that mean he still thinks about us?
Fortunately, Natalie’s party hadn’t so far been the sort of occasion where people stumbled into the kitchen with their eyes half shut and tried to go to the toilet in the sink (she’d catered plenty of those). As yet she’d had only a couple of interruptions – someone sticking their head round the door and asking for an orange juice, another guest complimenting her on the excellent canapés – and she hadn’t seen Will all night. Twice, she’d felt as if perhaps he was watching her; but when she’d turned round, there had been no one there.
Now, though, she did have a visitor: a dark-haired child in a fuchsia pink dress that looked as though it was probably something to do with a Disney film. She was a perfect little princess with deep green eyes, observing Jess with innocent curiosity.
‘Hello. You must be Charlotte.’
The girl nodded shyly.
Jess smiled. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
As she crouched down to Charlotte’s height, Jess felt her damaged leg twinge, and hoped that the child didn’t recognize her from the accident. She was fairly sure that it would have been traumatic for a seven-year-old to witness, especially as she’d been marooned in the back seat of the car the whole time with nothing by way of a coherent reassurance forthcoming from any of the adults.
Searching Charlotte’s face for signs of her father, Jess could see him straight away in her eyes and her little chin. Her heart was in momentary danger of snapping in two.
The girl frowned. ‘I’m seven,’ she informed Jess. ‘And Mummy wants some more meatballs.’
Jess laughed. ‘Well, as luck would have it, I think I do have some more in here somewhere. Would you like to help me carry them through?’
The child furrowed her brow, stuck a thumb in her mouth and shook her head, which made her curls bounce gently.
‘Okay,’ Jess said. ‘Do you know what else I have up there?’ She gestured above their heads to the worktop, and Charlotte’s gaze travelled upwards to where the desserts were ready and waiting.
Jess stood up. The profiteroles, drizzled in melted couverture chocolate, were stacked tall to make their grand entrance. She lifted the platter carefully from the work surface and squatted down with it to Charlotte’s height. ‘Do you think you can take this one from the top?’
Charlotte’s eyes widened and she nodded eagerly as Jess held the platter out. With chubby fingers the little girl reached up and gingerly removed the top profiterole from the stack, not pausing as some children might have done to check if she was allowed to eat it, but stuffing the whole thing quickly into her mouth in one urgent motion. Her entire face bulged for a few moments as she worked her little jaw against the pastry and cream, the chocolate sauce making a thick dark smudge around her lips.
‘Ooh, that made a nice mess,’ Jess said with a grin, reaching up for a napkin. She squatted down again and paused as Charlotte finished chewing before drawing it gently across her face. As the child waited, her gaze lowered slightly, eventually fixing upon a dark slick of chocolate sauce that had landed squarely down the front of her dress. Instantly, she started to cry, a long, thin wail, like a cat at midnight.
‘Oh Jesus,’ Jess muttered.
‘My dress,’ she began to bawl hysterically, ‘my dress.’
A door opened behind them.
‘What’s going on?’
It was Will. He rushed straight over to Charlotte and squatted down in front of her, the handsome white knight arriving to rescue his princess. In that moment, forming a little circle on the kitchen floor, the three of them could have been mistaken for a family.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jess breathed, ‘I gave her a profiterole.’
Will snapped his head round to look at her. ‘Didn’t Natalie tell you about her allergy? She’s only supposed to eat her own food.’ His tone was thunderous, his face dark.
‘It’s okay,’ she gabbled. ‘I checked everything before –’
‘Is there any peanut in there? ANY PEANUT?’
‘No,’ she stammered. ‘No, no. None. I’m so sorry, I didn’t think …’
He didn’t look at her after that. H
is arms were round his daughter, who by now was wailing a continuous note at a very high pitch. ‘Hey, darling, shush. Shush. It’s okay. We’ll fix your dress.’
His comfort felt like a reproach. ‘I’m really sorry,’ Jess said again.
He still didn’t look at her. ‘Shush, darling. Shush.’
Feeling increasingly like she was intruding on a private moment, Jess stood up. ‘I think Natalie wanted more meatballs, so –’
‘Charlotte needs changing,’ Will said sharply, and for a brief, terrifying moment, Jess thought he was asking her to do it. ‘And then we need some more ice.’ Still, he wouldn’t look at her. Charlotte’s howl had now turned into dramatic, shuddering sobs.
‘It’s in the garage,’ he added and, finally, he looked up and their eyes met. ‘Take those meatballs out to Natalie, I’ll sort Charlotte out. And then I’ll come and give you a hand.’
9
Most of the daylight had by now been lost, and the air was damp and cooling. The handful of guests who’d been chatting and drinking outside on the back lawn had retreated indoors, leaving footprints imprinted in the gathering dew and a smattering of empty cups on the patio.
Jess waited while Will fiddled with the key in the lock. ‘Fucking thing.’
Inside, the double garage was cool and dark, the sort of place someone might realistically need as a bolthole if they lived with a woman like Natalie. The space seemed cavernous, housing only a weights bench, Will’s car, a chest freezer and a small stack of groceries along the far wall. Jess was pleased, though, that the strong, comforting scent of damp concrete and engine grease still hung in the air. It reminded her of perching on her father’s work bench as a child, watching him painstakingly restoring his Triumph Spitfire, both of them listening to political programmes she didn’t understand on his faithful Roberts radio.
Jess let her eyes rest briefly on the groceries: curries-in-a-can, baked beans, sliced pineapple, bottled water. She guessed it was the work of Natalie; for what purpose, she couldn’t quite imagine.
