by Lisa Jewell
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘right. So not much longer than me then.’
She feigned ignorance of his current domestic situation and looked at him quizzically.
‘Yeah, I’ve had the place for three years but only lived there for a month or two before I moved out again. And now I’m back.’
‘Oh,’ she said cautiously, ‘right.’
‘And where were you before you were in a flat in Soho?’
‘I was in Guernsey,’ she said.
‘Oh, right. That’s an island, yeah?’
She laughed. ‘Yes. A very small one.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, sawing through a piece of toast and egg, ‘I think I’ve got some offshore accounts over there.’ He paused and shrugged. ‘Or maybe Jersey. One or other.’ He put the egg and toast in his mouth and Betty experienced a surreal moment of thinking, I am watching Dom Jones eat an egg. She put it to the back of her mind and continued her approximation of a cool chick who could not care less about celebrities eating eggs.
‘And you’re working at Wendy’s, yeah?’
She looked at him with surprise. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I saw you,’ he said, ‘remember, in your uniform? You had blond hair then ...’ He looked disconsolately at her head as though her current lack of blond hair was a great personal sadness to him.
‘Hair situation’s gone a bit pear-shaped,’ she said. ‘I really need to get it coloured professionally, but I can’t afford to. So until then I’m stuck in a hat.’
He sliced through a thick sausage, heartily and crudely, attacking it like a lumberjack. ‘And what’s it like,’ he continued, talking with his mouth full, ‘working at Wendy’s?’
She shrugged. ‘Not as bad as you might think. Nice people. Nice boss. Free dinners.’
‘I love Wendy’s,’ he said. ‘Always used to go in there after a gig, before ... you know ... before I couldn’t any more.’
She left his allusion to his supernova fame hanging uncommented upon.
‘Do you still do those chicken sandwiches,’ he asked, his body wriggling with boyish excitement, ‘you know, with the spicy sauce?’
‘Yes. They’re a bestseller, actually.’
‘God, I used to love those. That takes me back.’ His eyes filled with a nostalgic mist. ‘Yeah,’ he sighed. ‘Wendy’s, Shaftesbury Avenue, youth.’
‘You’re still young!’
‘Yeah, I’m young, but I’m not youthful. Once you’ve crossed over from twenty-five, that’s it,’ he clicked his fingers, ‘youth takes a ride. Then you get to be young for as long as you like. I’m going to be young until I’m about forty, I reckon. Maybe even forty-five.’ He winked and chuckled to himself. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.
‘Twenty-two. Twenty-three next month.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘youth. Yeah. There it is. Twenty-two. Man. I would give a lot to be twenty-two again.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Seriously. You wouldn’t. It’s shit. I live in a cupboard. Or actually, a cupboard within a cupboard. My downstairs neighbour is a crazy Asian dyke. I’ve got literally no money. And because no one in this whole city would give me a job I like, I flip burgers all day. It sucks being twenty-two, seriously.’
Dom laughed and wiped the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin.
‘Yeah, right, I get it. And I do remember being twenty-two, and I did live in a squat, and I did have crappy jobs, but I suppose I’m looking at it through this, like, bottle bottom. It’s distorted; seems so long ago I’ve forgotten what it felt like. And what sort of jobs were you looking for? Before you ended up at Wendy’s?’
She told him about the art galleries and the boutiques and the temping appointments at button factories. ‘My problem is, I’ve got no work experience,’ she said, ‘and because I’ve got no work experience, I can’t get a job. And it’s just a vicious cycle.’
‘What did you do in Guernsey? I mean, you’re nearly twenty-three, you must have been doing something, right?’
‘I was looking after my grandmother,’ Betty said. ‘She had Alzheimer’s and brain damage from a stroke. No one else wanted to live with her, so I did.’
She saw a flash of something across his features, something bright and dazzling. She couldn’t decipher it for a moment and then realised with a swell of pride that it was respect. He had thought she was an amusing young girl, some kind of diverting reflection of his own shabby, youthful existence. And now he thought she was something more than that.
‘Wow,’ he said, after a moment. ‘That’s, er ...’
‘It was nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘I loved her.’
‘So what, you did everything? Bum-wiping, the lot?’
‘Yes. The lot.’
‘On your own?’
‘Well, yes, most of the time. There was a carer, but only eight to five. I was there twenty-four-seven.’
He nodded knowingly. ‘Amazing,’ he said, ‘what you’ll do for someone you love.’ He glanced at his wristwatch and tucked his cutlery together on his plate. ‘I’ve got to run,’ he said. ‘The wife’s dropping the kids off.’
‘You’ve got kids?’ she asked, amazing herself with her fine acting skills.
‘Yes, three. Tiny ones.’ He raised his eyebrows exasperatedly. ‘And no nanny. Should be an interesting day.’
‘I can help,’ she said, the words propelled from her mouth by the force of some kind of latent insanity.
He looked at her questioningly. ‘What?’
‘I’m not working today. Well, not till later. I could come and help you. With your kids.’ She smiled a panicky, I’m-not-crazy-I-swear kind of smile.
He stopped completely in his tracks, then. She watched him, watched a thousand different and conflicting thoughts hurtling through his mind. He put a hand to his chin and rubbed it gently. Then he put his other hand to the back of his neck and squeezed it. He gazed at the floor and then at the ceiling. And then he stared straight into Betty’s eyes and said, ‘Yeah. Shit. Why not? I mean, if you’re sure. I can pay you. Obviously. Tell me how much you want.’
She shrugged and smiled. ‘Nothing. I don’t want anything. I just like kids and my flat is full of people with hangovers and I’ve got nothing better to do.’ This wasn’t strictly true. She planned to go to St Anne’s Court today, to see the building where Clara Pickle had once lived, see if there was anything new she could dredge up from that. But really, she suspected that was another dead end. And what was happening here now, in this steamed-up café, was too remarkable to ignore. She shrugged again and then Dom smiled at her.
‘I don’t know what it is ...’ he said vaguely, as though he were thinking out loud, ‘what it is, about you ...?’ And then in a louder voice, he said, ‘Cool. Excellent. Well, you want to come now?’
She fingered the rip in the seam of her dress absent-mindedly and shook her head. ‘I might pop home, first,’ she said, ‘have a shower, brush my teeth, that kind of thing.’
He looked at her, half smiling, half dazed, as though trying to ignore a persistent voice in his head telling him not to let her in his home whilst at the same time not quite believing his luck.
‘Cool,’ he said again. ‘Great. Well, you know where I am. Peter Street. Number nine. I’ll see you there in, what, half an hour?’
She nodded and tried to exude an overwhelming aura of trustworthiness and sanity. ‘Roughly,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said. Then he scratched his head, again, put his hands into his pockets and turned to leave. He stopped at the door of the café and turned back towards her. ‘Don’t tell anyone, though, will you? Don’t tell them where you’re going?’
She gave him her best Guide’s honour fingers-up and waited until he’d disappeared from view before exhaling and collapsing bodily and dramatically onto the slightly greasy tabletop.
21
WHEN BETTY GOT home five minutes later and finally made it to the bathroom, she saw the full horror of the reality of her appearance. She stared into the bathroom m
irror for so long and with such distress that all the features on her face seemed to start moving around, wriggling like fish.
She attacked her face in the shower with a bar of soap and a facial scrub. While she scrubbed she told herself it was good that she hadn’t known how bad she’d looked. If she’d known how bad she’d looked she would never have left the flat, let alone have had the gall to start a conversation with a pop star. If she’d known how bad she’d looked she would not be on her way into the pop star’s house to help him look after his children for a day.
She put on a black and white striped Lycra dress with the sleeves pushed up, knee-high boots and a denim jacket. She tucked all her hair inside the silver beret, reapplied her make-up, sprayed on some perfume, ignored every attempt by Joe Joe to find out where she was going all dressed up like that, and left the house feeling sick with nerves and excitement.
Dom Jones did a double take when he saw Betty standing on his doorstep a moment later. He had a small baby in his arms and another small child attached to his ankle. His eyes took in the full length of Betty from her crown to her toes.
‘Fresh,’ he said eventually. ‘Come in.’
He held the door open for her, his eyes scanning the street outside his house in both directions before closing it quietly behind them.
‘Come in,’ he said again, ‘excuse the chaos. This house was never meant to have kids in it.’ He smiled drily and led her through a tiny hallway painted matt black, then through a tiny, half-panelled sitting room painted aubergine. The living room beyond was furnished with two oversized, vintage tan leather sofas, art deco in appearance, a huge chrome and crystal chandelier, a wide-screen TV, distressed wooden floorboards, brown shag-pile rugs and two rectangular fish tanks embedded into a wood-panelled wall at the far end. The walls were hung with outrageous pieces of art, one of which, at least, Betty recognised immediately as a Damien Hirst. The coffee table was glass and covered in Lego and plastic beakers and plates of half-eaten toast. Betty saw the table as it had been intended, as a place for drug-fuelled sex with nubile strangers, a place for cutting up lines of top-quality cocaine, for late night card games and for displaying interesting books about artists and film-makers and dead rock stars. It had not been intended as a resting place for children’s plastic ephemera.
‘Right,’ said Dom, leaning down to pick up the small child who was still attached to his lower leg, so he was now holding two of his children, ‘let’s do some introductions. This is Acacia,’ he nodded towards the toddler, ‘this is Astrid,’ he nodded at a ringleted baby who looked like an actual doll. ‘And somewhere over there,’ he looked over his shoulder, ‘is my big boy. Where are you, Donny?’ A small boy appeared in the doorway, holding aloft a large plastic gun, with a war stripe painted across his nose and a belt of bullets thrown across his chest. ‘This is Donovan. Donovan, this is ...?’ He looked at her, aghast. ‘Jesus. I’m really sorry. I didn’t even ask you your name?’
‘Betty,’ she said, smiling from bemused child to bemused child. ‘Betty Dean.’
‘Cool name,’ he said, ‘excellent. Yeah. Kids, this is Betty. Betty lives just around the corner and she’s going to help me look after you all today until Mummy gets back. OK? So I want you all – especially you, Donny – to be really, really super-extra good today, OK?’
Donny narrowed his eyes at his father and then sat down heavily on the sofa behind him. ‘I want Mummy,’ he said.
Dom raised his eyebrows and turned to address him. ‘I know you do, mate, but Mummy’s busy today, Mummy’s working.’
‘Then I want Moira.’
Dom sighed and sat down next to him, a baby balanced on each knee. ‘Sorry, mate, but Moira had to go home, didn’t she? Moira had to go back to New Zealand.’
‘I wish there was no Noo Zeeling,’ he said, jutting out his lower lip and staring forlornly at the shag-pile rug.
Dom rubbed his hand across Donny’s thick blond shag cut and smiled. ‘Me too, buddy,’ he said. ‘Me too.’
‘So,’ said Betty, ‘how old are they all?’
‘Well, Astrid here is ... shit, I dunno – how old is the baby, Donny?’
Donny shrugged.
‘It was just before I went to Hong Kong, so must have been December, so she’s about six months. Yeah, that’s right. December the sixth. Of course. And Acacia is a year older, she was December the twelfth, so she’s eighteen months, and big boy Donny here, he turned three in ...’ he squinted, trying to conjure up the birth month of his first-born child. ‘September,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Yeah, he was three in September.’
‘Wow,’ said Betty. ‘You packed them in.’
Dom tucked the toddler, Acacia, between himself and Donny on the sofa and passed a beaker into her outstretched hands. ‘Well, yeah, not exactly planned that way. Cashie was supposed to be our last – well, I was happy for her to be our last – but it didn’t quite work out that way. Did it, little one?’ He looked down at the baby in his arms and smiled at her adoringly. ‘But still, you know, once they’re here, they’re here, and then there’s no going back. Forwards all the way, isn’t that right, troops?’
Donny put his hand to his head in a salute and Dom rubbed his hair again.
Betty stood, her hands in the pockets of her denim jacket, staring down at this family of three beautiful children and a handsome young father, and wondered for a moment what she was doing here. He didn’t need her here, surely. She was just an interloper, intruding into their beautiful world.
But as she thought this, the baby began to cry and the toddler dropped her beaker, spilling water onto the shag-pile rug, and Donny lifted his gun to his shoulder, and marched from the room. Then Dom looked up at Betty with his big brown eyes and said, ‘Thank God you’re here.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘what can I do first?’
He got to his feet and handed her the baby. ‘You hold her,’ he said, ‘I’ll make us some tea.’
She took the baby from his arms. She was warm and solid and a little damp. ‘Does she ...’ Betty began, hesitantly, ‘... does she need a change?’
Dom looked at her blankly, and then with realisation. ‘Oh God, yeah, she probably does. Sorry, yeah, um, there’s some changing stuff in the bathroom,’ he said, going to switch on a light on the staircase and pointing her in the direction of upstairs. ‘First door on the left. Light comes on automatically.’
She nodded and looked again at the baby. The baby looked back at her with a look that said, ‘I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care, just do what you have to do.’
‘Er, OK.’
Dom poked his head back into the hallway and said, ‘Are you OK doing this? I mean, have you changed a nappy before?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘no problem.’ She thought it only polite not to mention that it had been an incontinence nappy on a doolally old lady.
‘Just shout if you need anything.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, lacing her words with cool, calm and collection.
The stairs were dark, bare floorboards with a thin piece of black and cream striped carpet running up the middle. At the top of the stairs, steps went off in two directions. The steps on the right led to what looked like it must be Dom’s bedroom. Through a gap in the door she could see black bedding, a low-slung chrome ceiling light, a fan of discarded newspapers, a huge art deco mirror, a sculpture of some description that looked like it had been built out of motorbike parts, and another fish tank, this one built into a unit that also contained a flat-screen television.
She stood for a while and watched the bubbles rise up through the water, silent and nubile, mesmerising and calming.
In Dom Jones’s bedroom.
She shook the thought from her head and turned left.
The bathroom was tiled in floor-to-ceiling gold mosaic. A bejewelled bronze Moroccan lamp hung overhead, and in the middle of the room was a free-standing bath made of copper with an enormous rectangular copper shower head hung above it.
Free-floating glass shelves housed piles of fresh white towels; there was a row of three white orchids in gold-leafed pots on the window sill. And there, in the corner, a tatty, plastic-covered changing mat, a packet of Huggies, three packets of Johnson’s wipes, a basket full of plastic bath toys, and three small towelling robes with chocolate stains on them.
Why had one of the most famous people in the whole country let a total stranger into his home? Only three weeks ago this man’s house had been staked out by paparazzi. Only three weeks ago, Betty had been awoken by a police car sent to keep people away from Dom Jones’s house. He had seen her twice from his back window. He had bumped into her once outside her flat. And now, after just their fourth meeting he had invited her into his home. He had let her take his precious baby girl out of sight. How did he know she wasn’t a journalist? A stalker? How did he know she wasn’t up here poisoning his baby or drowning his baby because she was, in fact, a psychopath? Why did he trust her?
But she knew why he trusted her. He trusted her because they’d made a connection. Not just now, in the café, but weeks ago, across the courtyard. He’d seen her and she’d seen him and they had seen that they were equals. He’d seen a girl he could be friends with, a girl he might know in his real life, a girl he might once, possibly, have fallen in love with, but certainly a girl he could trust.
She placed the baby on her lap and then put everything back exactly where she’d found it, then she carried her down the stairs and into the kitchen at the back of the house, a dry, smiling baby in one arm and a balled-up nappy in the other.
‘Where does this go?’ she asked Dom, who was slicing up carrots into batons at a rough-hewn wooden surface next to a butler’s sink.
He glanced at the balled-up nappy and then at Betty and the baby, and said, ‘Well done, excellent! Bung it in here.’ He held open the lid of a large chrome bin and she dropped it in, on top of carrot peelings, beer cans, takeaway containers, old pizza and the contents of an ash tray.
Dom Jones’s rubbish.
