Seeing Stars

by Christina Jones

Amber smiled at the elderly lady. Vaguely. One of Mitzi’s neighbours? Name escaped her. The cycle helmet never would. Mitzi had explained how the Banding sisters had been told months ago, by her daughter’s paramedic boyfriend, that cycle helmets could save lives, and had taken to wearing them constantly ever since, even though neither of them had a bicycle.

  ‘Lavender Banding.’ She held out a wizened hand, liver-spotted and recently in close proximity with marmalade. ‘I’m looking after things this end while my sister Lobelia deals with the other things back at the house. Feeding Richard and Judy, things like that.’

  ‘Richard and Judy? Er – are they staying with Mitzi?’

  ‘They live with her, silly.’

  ‘Er – do they?’ Humour her, Amber thought swiftly, in case she reaches for the bread knife. ‘Really? I thought they lived in London.’

  ‘No, bless you. They’ve always lived with Mitzi. Well, since she rescued them from the garage, of course.’

  Oh, of course.

  ‘And – um – Lobelia’s feeding them? Can’t they get their own breakfast then?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Lavender’s cycle helmet nodded in scorn. ‘How are they going to get their little paws round the tin opener, for heavens sake?’

  Paws?

  Lavender chuckled. ‘They’re very spoiled cats are Richard and Judy.’

  Amber breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Ah, yes, of course – er so Mitzi isn’t here, then?’

  ‘No. That’s why I am. She’s left you a list. She says it’s only a very little soirée this morning and you’re a capable girl and –’ Lavender rummaged in her pockets and produced a much folded piece of paper. ‘Here we are … Young Mitzi said she’s very sorry but she knows you’ll understand.’

  Amber unfolded the paper.

  Amber – sorry about this. Lav will explain. The van’s parked out the back. Keys on the shelf above the microwave. Temporary cover note in the glove box. The food is on the third shelf down in the biggest freezer. Give it a couple of hours to defrost. There are chilled things in the fridge. All marked up for today’s customer: HHLL. The address is in the diary. If you could get there about 10.30 to set up that’d be perfect. Thanks, darling. I owe you one. Loads of love, Mitzi xxxxxx

  Amber folded the paper again. OK, it all sounded straight forward and at least she had the van. She’d coped with more difficult things than this, and if – big if of course – she was going to make her permanent home in Fiddlesticks and her career with Hubble Bubble she’d have to go solo at some point, wouldn’t she?

  ‘Is it all straightforward?’ Lavender peered at her. ‘Not too complicated?’

  ‘No, it’s fine, thanks. I’ll just have to find what I need and get the plates and doilies and napkins sorted out. It shouldn’t take too long. Er – do you mind hanging on while I do it, then you can lock up behind me? Um – is Mitzi ill?’

  Mitzi certainly hadn’t sounded ill over the phone. If she’d taken to her bed it had to be more to do with that fabulous dentist than a virus.

  ‘She’s gone to the hospital but she isn’t ill,’ Lavender chortled. ‘She’s gone to be with her daughter, Doll.’

  ‘Her daughter? Goodness – what happened?’

  ‘Doll started her pains in the early hours. She’s having her baby. It’s a few weeks early.’ Lavender beamed proudly. ‘We’re going to be a grandmother!’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Seventh Star

  ‘Can I come in?’ Zillah popped her head round the door of the Hayfields flat. ‘Er – not interrupting anything, I hope?’

  ‘Nothing carnal,’ Lewis grinned. ‘Unfortunately. Great to see you. This is a rare treat, Ma. Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?’

  ‘If it wasn’t ten in the morning I’d go for a double helping of the last, but coffee will be fine, thanks. Jem not here?’

  ‘Just dropped him off at the joinery. His hangover was a corker. And in this heat I pity the poor bloke who’s supervising him on planing and sanding this morning. Won’t be long.’

  Zillah watched her son, long legged in denim, move with that heart-tuggingly familiar inherited stride into the small kitchen, then having cleared a pile of washed but unironed jeans and T-shirts to one side, flopped onto the sofa.

  The flat, on the ground floor of Hayfields, was a bloke’s paradise. Both Lewis’s and Jem’s clothes were strewn everywhere, lads’ mags were discarded across the tables, beer cans and pizza boxes made an artistic statement by the fireplace, and the room was dominated by a plasma screen and dvd player, and a pile of silver stereo equipment that wouldn’t have looked out of place in NASA. There were no feminine touches at all – no cushions or pictures or plants – nothing, which to Zillah would have softened the edges and made it a cosy home.

  However, the sun-sprinkled view from the window across Hayfields’ extensive and well-stocked gardens running down to the tree-fringed river, was sublime.

  ‘Thanks love.’ She took the mug, not looking too closely. Neither Jem nor Lewis were too careful about washing up, despite the dishwasher installed in the tiny kitchen. She knew they relied on Fern, Win or Martha, Hayfields’ House Mother, to pick up on the worst of their lack of domesticity.

  ‘So? Is this simply a social call?’ Lewis slumped onto the low sofa beside her with an easy grace. ‘Or have you come to check on whether Sukie stayed for bed and breakfast?’

  Zillah sipped her coffee. ‘Don’t be sarcastic.’

  Lewis raised his eyebrows. ‘Sarcastic? You’ve been the morality police for as long as I can remember. You must be the only ma in the world who actually wants her son to find a nice girl and settle down sooner rather than later.’

  She grinned at him. ‘Well, is she? A nice girl?’

  ‘Very. I like her a lot. We had a great time last night. And disappointingly virtuous. I walked her home to Bagley as I’d drunk too much to drive, and left her with a chaste peck on her doorstep. We may or may not see one another again depending on who else crosses our paths in the meantime. We might meet up for a drink if and when we’re both free. All very friendly and casual. There – full story. Maternal curiosity satisfied?’

  ‘Not really,’ Zillah stared out of the window. ‘But it’ll have to do.’

  ‘So, why are you really here?’

  She told him. She’d realised as she’d walked from Chrysalis Cottage that he was the only person in the whole world that she could tell. She had plenty of friends, good friends, but no one else – apart maybe from Mitzi – who would understand. Of course she couldn’t tell him why Timmy’s choice of Cornwall made it a doubly awful idea, and hoped he wouldn’t ask.

  ‘Bummer,’ Lewis sighed when she’d finished. ‘But wouldn’t you like to return to the land of your fathers? OK! I gather from the “I’d rather pull my toenails out with rusty pliers” look that that’s a no. Sometimes, I wish you’d tell me about Cornwall—’

  ‘Nothing to tell,’ Zillah said quickly, ‘nothing at all. It’s where I was born and I left and I never, ever want to go back.’

  They stared at one another for a moment.

  Lewis shrugged. ‘OK – but I don’t think you should be too hard on Amber in all this. It was hardly her fault. She only did what Timmy asked her. She’s a newcomer so she doesn’t know anything about the set-up between you, does she? And she certainly wouldn’t know about Cornwall … She has no idea that you don’t reciprocate Timmy’s feelings, either. She probably thought it was a dead romantic thing to be doing – especially on Cassiopeia’s.’

  ‘You would defend her.’ Zillah placed her empty mug strategically over a magazine cover displaying more of Jodie Marsh than she wanted or needed to see. ‘But, maybe you’re right … Still, that doesn’t change the situation, does it? What the hell am I going to do?’

  ‘Tell him no,’ Lewis smiled at her. ‘Now – before he makes any more plans. Let him down gently, which you will anyway, but tell him. Thanks, and you’re very flattered but you simply can’t accept. He’ll be hurt – but no
t half as much as he will be if you play him along and then tell him later. And if you accept this dirty weekend—’

  ‘It’s not a dirty weekend!’

  ‘Whatever –’ he grinned ‘– but if you agree to go then you’ll be giving him false hope. Unless you’re prepared to accept the whole package of course.’

  ‘I’m not. I can’t. But if I tell him, then we can’t go on working together, can we? He’ll hate me and I’ll just feel sorry for him and that’ll be awful. He’s so nice – he deserves more than sympathy and second-best.’

  ‘So do you. And Timmy’s a great bloke – but given the choice I wouldn’t want him as my stepfather. Far too straight. But honestly, Ma, you knew all this, didn’t you? You didn’t need me to tell you.’

  Zillah sighed again. Lewis was right. He’d voiced her own thoughts. She knew she’d have to tell Timmy and take the consequences – even if it meant leaving the pub.

  ‘OK,’ she struggled to the edge of the sofa. ‘Thanks. You’ve helped a lot. A girl needs someone to talk things over with – even if she already knows what she’s going to do. But I’m still going to ask Amber to keep her nose out of things that don’t concern her.’

  Lewis laughed. ‘Treat her gently, then. I think there’s a well-meaning and vulnerable lady hidden underneath all that slap and phoney celeb clone glamour.’

  Zillah raised her eyebrows. ‘Is that some sort of hint that you’re not as disinterested in Ms Parlsowe as you pretend to be?’

  ‘I’m growing very fond of her if you must know.’ Lewis gave her a challenging look. ‘We get on well and she’s a friend – becoming a good friend – but how can it be any more than that? I’ve got as many issues with relationships as you have …’

  ‘I’d noticed.’

  ‘Yeah, well – you know my reputation – none better. So many girls, so little time and all that … What do you want me to say? Amber is nothing special to me? Isn’t that what you want me to say? She surely can’t be your idea of the ideal permanent fixture? And what do I know about permanent fixtures anyway? Love ’em and leave ’em, that’s what I do best.’ Lewis stood up and pulled a quizzical face at her. ‘Like mother like son, I guess. After all, isn’t that what you did with my father?’

  Amber was practically tearing out her scrunchied hair. The room was stifling, the food, so carefully arrayed, was becoming warm and runny, and the HHLL were, well, simply hell.

  Having carried out Mitzi’s instructions to the letter, she’d made several dummy runs round the quieter Hazy Hassocks roads, getting used to driving again, and found the Hubble Bubble van reasonably easy to handle and having had no difficulty locating the address, parking or unloading, the rest had so far been a nightmare of cliched proportions.

  HHLL were Hazy Hassocks Literary Ladies. A writers’ circle, they apparently met monthly in one another’s homes to discuss their work in progress, the latest literary gossip, and, most importantly, those unfortunate members of the HHLL who weren’t in attendance that day.

  ‘Put the food in the conservatory, dear,’ today’s hostess, a vision in lime-green Tricel, her pepper and salt hair held up in a scary number of diamanté slides, had looked down flared nostrils at Amber. ‘We’ll be in the library until eleven. There are only four of us owing to holidays. A small but select gathering of our finest writers. You make coffee for four, and we’ll come through for the nibbles when we’re finished. You were told about serving us coffee at eleven, weren’t you?’

  Amber hadn’t been, but she nodded.

  ‘I must say I’m rather annoyed that Mitzi sent an underling. I’m the first of our little group to bring in outside caterers – quite a coup – and I had hoped for the organ grinder, if you get my drift.’

  Amber had already explained about Mitzi’s happy and unexpected domestic crisis. The HHLL seemed to be of the opinion that Doll should have kept her legs crossed.

  Now it was nearly half past eleven; coffee, which Amber had made in the DIY flat-pack kitchen, had been served in the library – a very small annexe to the living room with three bookcases, which was probably the dining room in real life – and still the HHLL hadn’t appeared for nibbles.

  The conservatory, a south-facing lean-to with a corrugated plastic roof, was like a sweat-box. Amber huddled into the one patch of shade, perspiration trickling under her T-shirt, praying that her deodorant was up to the job.

  The Angelica Angels were wilting; the Saffron and Lemon Lumps had run into a dung-coloured mush; the Bronte Buns (Mitzi’s interpretation of her grandmother’s wisdom-giving recipe especially for the literary occasion) simmered.

  So did Amber.

  It was one of those moments when she wished she smoked. It would give her something to do with her hands. The insulated cool box which held Mitzi’s pièce de résistance with a scribbled note: ‘Ginger Janite Cake – this has been rechristened and reworked for the occasion. It was originally meant to produce total honesty and loosen inhibitions, but hopefully it’ll simply enhance their literary prowess, although I may have overdone the bodhi leaves. Time will tell … To work properly they’re supposed to chew the cake then spit it out but best not tell them that as it could lead to misunderstandings and a mess. Leave this right until last – and only give them a very small slice each – it’s very powerful’ – had several ice packs. Amber knew that if the HHLL didn’t show up soon she’d nick a couple of them and shove them down her T-shirt.

  Amber surprised herself with the ease with which she now almost accepted that Mitzi’s recipes might well have magical properties. Surely there were ancient tribes who still brought on hallucinatory experiences and mass trances simply by chewing leaves? Wasn’t this the same sort of thing on a Berkshire basis?

  She’d watch the effects of eating the Ginger Janite Cake on the HHLL with interest. The proof of the pudding might just sway her.

  The sweat was now making her scrunchied hair itch, little rivulets trickled and settled under Jem’s wooden pentangle, and beads of moisture had gathered malevolently on her upper lip. She scrabbled irritably in her bag for a tissue. God – what the hell had she got in here? Receipts and shopping lists and reams of paper but not a single tissue.

  Ordinarily she’d use one of the Hubble Bubble dark-green paper napkins but Mitzi had warned that this batch were of an inferior quality and left a nasty stain when damp. It’d have to be kitchen roll pinched from the flat-pack kitchen, then, and plenty of it. Maybe it would be considered unprofessional, but it was all the HHLL deserved for keeping her in this sauna.

  Then she grinned. One of the bits of paper, dragged from last night’s jeans and pushed into her bag, had all the contact numbers for the soul bands she wanted to contact for Harvest Moon. If only she’d charged her mobile she could get that out of the way while she was waiting for the HHLL to emerge.

  Oh, damn – now she’d have to wait until she got back to Fiddlesticks and she really wanted something to get her teeth into, especially as Lewis was no doubt romping at this very moment with the delectable Sukie. She needed something, well, challenging, to take her mind off that particular image – and hmmm … Amber remembered, as well as paper towels, there’d been a telephone in the kitchen, hadn’t there?

  Oh, what the heck.

  Darting out of the patch of shade and through the intense heat of the lean-to, Amber poked her head round the library door.

  The HHLL didn’t break stride.

  ‘… and of course we all know how she got published, don’t we?’

  ‘Well, seeing that she can’t string two words together it has to be a bung …’

  ‘Bung? Her agent’s sleeping with her editor, darling!’

  ‘But they’re both female.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ’Excuse me,’ Amber interrupted bravely. ‘How long do you think you’ll be? Only the food is out and it’s very hot in the lean-to—’

  ‘Conservatory!’

  ‘Er – yes, well – and I just wondered …’

&nbs
p; ‘We’re creative,’ a miserable woman with a little girl ponytail, sparkly jeans and a Barbie pink T-shirt which would have looked lovely on someone four decades younger, said mournfully. ‘You can’t rush creativity.’

  ‘Er – no. I don’t suppose you can.’ Amber gave what she hoped was a charming smile in the direction of the HHLL hostess. ‘Um – please – would it be OK if I used your telephone for a moment? I’ll pay, of course.’

  ‘Oh, you most certainly will. And yes, if you must, but do use the kitchen extension – I don’t want you prying. There’s a box on the shelf for the purpose of money – and none of the foreign currency like that bloke who came to check the drains diddled me with, thank you very much. But don’t you have a mobile? Is it urgent?’ Pausing for breath, the HHLL hostess drew her lips up to her nostrils. Affronted, they sprang apart. ‘Vital? Local?’

  ‘No. Yes. Yes again, and absolutely.’

  The last one wasn’t true but Amber no longer cared. Two out of three and all that.

  ‘Very well, but make it brief and don’t forget to pay and don’t spend all day out there. We’re nearly finished here and we’ll expect you to circulate with the nibbles. I’ve paid for waitress service and I expect to get it.’

  Amber smiled her thanks and backed out of the room, but not before she caught the next slice of HHLL invective.

  ‘Anyway, you do know that she’s up for an award with her latest, don’t you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I’ve got it on the best possible authority that her connections paid a fortune to the judges, of course.’

  ‘Well, they’d have to. It couldn’t get there on merit. But – surely it isn’t the one where—’

  ‘Yes it is – four hundred pages of badly written crap about expat in-breeds conveniently living the life of Reilly on fresh air, for heaven’s sake – not a job among ’em! – on a remote tropical island and they all have some sort of disability or terminal illness and half of them are related but they still all fall in love and then die in the most gruesome circumstances – and – and then she has the temerity to market it as a romantic comedy …’