by Judy Astley
Matt folded the paper, shoved it in the bin and went to take a good appraising look at himself in the long mirror in the bathroom. The old working day hadn’t really included much time for checking himself over properly. Last time he’d given his body a really good scrutiny he’d been sure he still didn’t look his age. People were always surprised if he let slip a clue to the truth, such as recalling being on an A-level field trip the day Jimi Hendrix died. His body was still in good slim shape, but would soon miss the lunchtime gym sessions that he’d been treating it to for the past few years. He must be careful not to let himself go, as his late mother would have put it – it would be too easy to get beerily fat, pig out on crisps and biscuits and become jowly. He’d let his hair grow a bit, he decided, running his fingers through it and feeling the relieved satisfaction that all men have when only two rather than two hundred strands come out. He wouldn’t let it get as long as Eddy’s – which bordered on a sparse and stringy version of the Heavy Metal look (presumably in memory of starrier times) – but something with less city precision about it, less fierce control would be good.
Briskly, for soon Jess would be home, Matthew showered. Wandering back into the bedroom, he stopped to look out of the window to see who was coming and going in the Grove below. Opposite, Angie was climbing out of her Discovery wearing a silky blue ruffle-edged skirt that somehow got itself hiked up as she slid off the car seat, showing a lot of creamy upper thigh. Angie’s shoulder-length blond hair bounced and fluttered as she fussed around, rearranging the skirt and leaning forward to reveal, from Matt’s elevated point of view, the bonus of a good deal of breast pushing against a skimpy V-neck cardigan. As if she sixth-sensed an audience she looked around and then up, caught sight of him and waved, grinning. Matt waved back, distractedly dropping his towel. Angie’s grin broadened and she turned to go into her house. Surely she couldn’t see, from there, he trusted, that he’d been sporting a fine erection?
Claire and Natasha sat on the bench on the hockey-pitch side of the field. The school buildings looked pleasingly distant. Open space that big was rare in London schools and the field featured prominently in the prospectus, presenting an illusion of rus in urbe. It was therefore a source of constant disappointment to the staff that the pupils, collectively, tended to loathe any sport that required running about on grass and lost almost all their inter-school matches through sheer apathy. The grass was only really in full demand on summer break-times when the sight of five hundred girls with their skirts and shirts pulled up for maximum tan exposure caused many a local male to make a diversion for the chance to glance through the knotholes in the fence.
‘So when are you seeing him again?’ Claire was ever-anxious for details and Natasha was delighted to be able to provide them. Claire was one of those girls you wanted to be like. It wasn’t anything you could put your finger on but she just seemed comfortable with herself.
‘He just said he’d be around, that I’d see him soon.’ It was hard to make this sound like a definite arrangement. Put like that, actually spoken, it sounded dismally vague, as if he’d met her, been unimpressed and gone off to find better luck somewhere else.
‘You could always go and see him, if he’s living down the allotments!’ Claire giggled. ‘Do you think he really is? Has he run away from home or something?’
‘He didn’t actually say. He mostly wanted to talk about me. Ask me stuff, what I do and that.’ It had been incredibly flattering, she recalled. He’d seemed really interested in her as a person. Boys from St Dominic’s told you stuff about themselves, or more precisely about what they owned in terms of computers and CDs and things. Never, at any of the parties she’d been to or down the Costa coffee shop or anywhere, had she had anyone asking her what she liked doing most on Sunday mornings, or what was her idea of the perfect breakfast. She’d been so astounded, she’d almost spoilt it by asking why on earth he’d want to know those things. Just in time she’d thought about it, realized that if she was seeing somebody, properly, they were the kind of things she’d be wanting to know about him.
‘Sounds like he’s really interested.’ Claire was gratifyingly encouraging, ‘So he’ll turn up again, bound to. He might hang about outside the school waiting for you then I can get a look at him.’
Natasha giggled. ‘Yeah he might I suppose and that’s OK but not knowing when or where I’ll see him means it’s a bit of an effort: I’ve got to keep the make-up on and my hair looking good all the time.’
‘You’re right.’ Claire sighed. ‘Whatever happened to good old-fashioned dating: he stays home then phones you, you spend two hours getting ready and then you meet like in Clueless or Sabrina? Bit of a strain, but you can do it.’
Jess trailed home on the tube feeling sour and grumpy and tried to tell herself that she should, instead, simply be grateful. At least she’d still got her job. It seemed to be down to her to make sure she kept this new version of it, try to guess what was needed, find the right voice. At least Paula hadn’t just fired her, said, with only mildly apologetic flippancy, ‘Sorry darling, but you know how it is, plus ça change and all that! Younger readers to target!’ A few Sundays from now, if the worst had happened, she could have opened the Comfort Zone magazine and found make-up tips from Britney Spears or ‘Going for Broke: the toddlers’ guide to dot.com investment’ on the page where her column used to be. It might be fun doing this new stuff, she told herself as she turned off the main road into the Grove. At any other time it definitely would be fun, going out to sample a delicious (and possibly not so delicious) array of new activities. If only she wasn’t feeling so much as if life was in a state of complete upheaval. It had never occurred to her before just how much she relied on the comforting security of routine. I am not a born adventurer, she thought as she reached her gate. I could no more take off to the unknown, all alone like Oliver has, than I could take up Formula One racing.
As she opened the door, Jess almost tripped over a sleeping baby in a buggy parked in the hall. The sound of deep male laughter erupted from the sitting room, but the baby stirred only faintly as if it was well used to such minor irritations. Inside, Matthew, Micky and Eddy were sprawled untidily over the conservatory sofas with Donald the cat, looking ludicrously thrilled to be allowed to join the Blokes, draped round Eddy’s shoulders, kneading his paws into his long hair and drooling over his ear. In front of them on the low table was a selection of coffee mugs and empty Budweiser bottles. A packet of Natasha’s favourite chocolate Hobnobs was tipped among the empties, leaving chunky crumbs among the debris. An overflowing ashtray completed the mess and the air reeked of stale smoke, some of which smelled headily illegal. They were worse than Oliver, she thought crossly as they greeted her, waving and grinning guiltily like naughty schoolchildren caught skiving maths.
‘Hello Jess!’ Matt got up and hugged her exuberantly as if he hadn’t seen her for a month. ‘We’ve got a great plan! We’re going to make all our fortunes!’
‘And it’s down to my new best mate here!’ Eddy said, hauling the cat round to his lap and tickling his ears. ‘We’re going to make him a shareholder.’
Jess moved Micky’s biker jacket from the back of a chair and sat down by her desk. ‘I can’t wait to hear, but whose is the baby? And is it all right out there in the hallway?’ she asked.
‘Oh that’s Eddy’s daughter’s littlest. He’s minding her while she fetches another one from the school. Go on, tell her the plan, Micky,’ Matt said. ‘I’ll make her a cup of tea. It’s what you do when the breadwinner comes home isn’t it?’
‘S’right, Matt,’ Eddy slurred, clearly the one on the outside of all the Budweiser. ‘You go and play the little house husband, put your pinny on.’
‘What have you done, hacked into the lottery system and fixed it so you win?’ Jess was concerned about the sleeping baby, whether Eddy was fit to be in charge of her – could you be done for being drunk in charge of a child?
‘We invented something.’ Micky leaned forwa
rd and lowered his voice as if rival patentees were lurking outside the door. He looked so much smarter than the other two, in a sky blue linen shirt and elegant black trousers. Eddy wore a sweatshirt so ancient it was advertising a Cream concert. His jeans, inside which his plump thighs strained to get out, must have been bought in younger and leaner days too. Matt was heading the same unkempt way, she noticed, in a tee shirt that she was sure she’d given to Monica for the duster bag.
‘It’s a cat tracking system,’ Micky told her. ‘You know people are always losing their cats. And cats are always losing their collars. So what you want …’ Eddy leaned forward and cut in. ‘What you want is like you get in posh cars for when they’re nicked. You need a satellite tracking system. A sort of moggy GPS.’
Matt came back in slopping a mug of tea which dripped on Jess’s jacket as he handed it to her. ‘Guess what we’re going to call it,’ he said eagerly. ‘Just guess. You’ll like this.’
‘It’s going to be called …’ Eddy started and the others joined in, ‘the Cat Sat!’ They laughed like children who’d just heard their first real joke.
‘The Cat Sat?’ Jess said. ‘As in …’
‘Yeah, you’ve got it, as in The Cat Sat on the Mat!’ The fact they seemed to find this so screamingly hilarious confirmed it was definitely more than tobacco they’d been inhaling. So they were spending the day smoking dope like students. No wonder all the biscuits had gone, they’d got post-spliff munchies.
‘Everyone will want one. They’ll be really expensive so everyone will think they’re the thing to have.’
‘And for lions too. Or have they already got them?’ Micky looked solemn.
‘Lions have.’ Eddy nodded his head too hard and the cat clung on tight looking alarmed. ‘I saw it on that vet thing with the Norwegian woman, the fanciable one.’
‘Yeah I like her,’ Micky agreed. ‘But she was scared of the lions, a real wuss about the puss. We just need smaller ones than the lions have got. Kitten size.’
‘Lions?’ They’d completely lost Jess. She didn’t want to put a downer on things but it was obviously one of those situations where you’d had to be there. All she longed to do was to go upstairs, put on some shoes that were more comfortable, brush an irritating shard of prawn from between a couple of top molars and let the end of the day creep quietly closer. Matt was leaning back with his hands behind his head, grinning as if he’d completed more work in this one short day than in the previous twenty years. He couldn’t be serious, she thought, surely to God he couldn’t think there was real mileage in this.
On her way home from school Zoe hesitated outside Angie’s house. It would be a huge betrayal to go in and inform her that her daughter was pregnant. Not that she’d do it quite like that, of course she wouldn’t. She couldn’t just march up the path, rat-tat-tat on the dragon’s-head knocker and come out with it the second Angie opened the door. Emily would never forgive her. But then why had Emily told her in the first place if she didn’t want her to take over doing something about it? As she dithered by the hedge, pulling leaves off and shredding them as she tried to think what to do, her own front door across the road opened and a dishevelled-looking Eddy tottered out, pushing a baby in a buggy. Micky from the Leo followed him and together the two men ambled down the path and off up the road towards Eddy’s place. She could hear them laughing, kind of silly and loud like her parents and their friends towards the end of a long boozy Sunday lunch.
‘I suppose they think they represent fine upstanding examples of the male of the species!’ Angie’s rather little-girly voice, coming from far too close to the hedge, startled Zoe. There wasn’t time to make a run for it. ‘And what are you doing, hovering among the leaves? Are you waiting for the coast to be clear?’ Angie appeared, wearing one of those special multi-pocketed gardener’s overalls that Zoe had seen advertised in the Gazette’s magazine. There was always a picture of some smiling clean woman in a straw hat with a trug-thing full of roses. Angie was clearly making full use of her purchase: Zoe could see at least five implement handles as well as a ball of string and some pink suede gloves festooned about her body.
‘Don’t you have to be careful when you bend?’ Zoe pointed to a fork sticking upwards from close to Angie’s waist, aiming dangerously towards her left breast.
Angie looked down at the prongs. ‘Oh I do. One wrong move and all my silicone will leak out!’ she giggled. ‘Listen, do you fancy a glass of orange or something? I do miss Emily and Luke when they’re off at school – I could do with some young company to make up for it.’
Zoe felt trapped. In Angie’s maple and mint-green kitchen she felt as if the only words that could form themselves in her head were ‘Emily’ and ‘Baby’. It was always the way when there was something you really didn’t want to say. It was like when her mum had confided to her, a couple of years back, that she was going to buy Natasha the suede boots she’d been craving for her birthday. The word ‘boots’ had seemed to be everywhere. It was in things like the computer, needing to be rebooted when it crashed, in the bootleg Stones album that Eddy-up-the-road had given her dad, in her mum asking her to get the shopping from the boot of the car. She’d almost gone faint with the effort of not telling. She felt just the same now, perched nervously on the edge of one of Angie’s chrome and pale wood chairs, tracing her name on the glass table-top in drops of orange juice that she’d spilled because her hands were trembly. She bit her lip as the finger and the drop of juice started forming the word ‘baby’ on the glass and she hurriedly smudged her hand over it before Angie, who was opening a packet of Sainsbury’s scones, could see.
‘They’ll be back for the Easter holidays soon. I can hardly wait!’ Angie bustled around with plates and strawberry jam and found a pot of clotted cream in the fridge.
‘Why can’t they go to school here like me and Natasha?’ Zoe asked as if she’d just thought of it.
‘Here? But where?’ Angie looked puzzled.
‘Emily could be with us, at Julia Perry’s.’
Angie laughed. ‘I don’t suppose you remember, but there was an entrance exam! Emily took it but didn’t pass. Simple as that.’
‘But there’s …’
‘Yes. Briar’s Lane comprehensive.’ Angie gave her a look that was obviously supposed to imply something. Zoe immediately got the gist but made herself look as if she didn’t understand, just for the meagre delight of seeing Angie wriggle about trying not to admit to snobbery.
‘I mean, I’m sure some people do awfully well there,’ Angie stammered as she poured herself a cup of tea from a tiny silver pot. ‘It’s just, that, we felt Emily might need a bit of extra help to achieve her potential, you know, and well, we could afford it. And you must have noticed,’ she lowered her voice as if the kitchen had filled up with people who’d disagree. ‘Some of the behaviour, and the things some of the girls wear, and so young …’
Zoe smiled, no longer worried that she’d blurt out anything about Emily’s pregnancy. Angie lived in a total fantasy land. Zoe would rather slit her wrists than tell her what really went on. But it did mean she and Emily would have to deal with things by themselves.
Five
‘… and sometimes the friends they bring home resemble strayed pets: slightly lost-looking, underfed and a bit grubby round the edges. Always they’re in need of a good meal. If you offer one the answer will be a decided ‘no’ as if they’d prefer starvation to the terrifying prospect of sitting at your table and being cross-examined about their GCSE options, but later when you’re looking in the fridge and there’s no sign of the last bit of Cheddar and all the yoghourts …’
But there were always exceptions.
‘Mum! I’m back and …’ Natasha crashed into the house, pulling with her the boy who’d been in the house a few days before ‘… what’s for supper and is there enough for Tom?’ Feeling almost guilty, for it had been this strange boy Tom she’d had in mind as she wrote, Jess quickly closed down the computer. Even so, she could
feel her face going pink, as if his unfathomable blue eyes could read behind the darkened screen.
‘Hello Tom,’ she said. ‘You’re very welcome to stay. It’s only a sort of posh sausage thing but there’s plenty of it.’ Tom grinned at her. He had, she thought, one of those smiles that looks as if it’s been worked on. At some stage in his young life he must have spent time gazing in the mirror and perfecting the ‘guaranteed to charm’ version. She hoped it wasn’t so calculated when he used it on Natasha.
‘Great, oh and Tom that’s my dad,’ Natasha said, hauling Tom out of the room before Matthew, whose steps she could hear approaching from the kitchen, got the chance to say or do anything dad-like and embarrassing.
‘Where are you off to?’ Jess heard them clattering up the stairs and called after them.
‘Only my room!’ Natasha yelled back. ‘Got CDs to play!’
‘“Only my room!”’ Matthew looked at Jess. ‘Is that OK do you think?’
