Queen Bee

by Jane Fallon

  ‘Actually, they’re expanding into Katya and Guy’s next door too. The girls wanted miniature ponies so they’re putting them in there. Some kind of petting zoo.’

  ‘Jesus.’ I wonder how much Al’s heart is in this. How he can be planning a wedding and seeing someone else at the same time? ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that this whole thing with the book happened so close to the wedding? I mean …’

  Gail shrugs. ‘Al’s always going to be a massive flirt. I don’t think we should read too much into it. Someone giving him a book with a flirty message doesn’t mean he’s reciprocating.’

  I think about the Polaroid. Keep my mouth firmly shut.

  ‘I wish I knew what it said.’ I drain the last of my tea. ‘I wish I knew what I was being accused of writing.’

  ‘Oh, well, I can just ask Stella,’ Gail says, shrugging as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. ‘Although I’m not sure you want to know. It might just wind you up more.’

  ‘I want to know what I’m up against,’ I say, standing up. ‘I should go. I need to do the rotas …’

  Someone is heading up the drive as I open Gail’s front door. Anya. We’ve only met in passing. Early days in the ‘antebook’ era, but I steel myself. I’m pretty sure I already know what to expect. She’s Katya best buddy. They look like twins. Aspiring Stellas in thrall of the OG. Still, I plaster a smile on to my face.

  ‘Hi!’ I say enthusiastically.

  Her first reaction is to smile. For a second, I think she hasn’t got the memo. Either that or she has a mind of her own. But then it’s as if she remembers, and her face drops. She makes a sort of non-committal noise and hesitates, as if she might turn round and walk off again.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I’m on my way home. It’s safe for you to come in.’

  She blushes. Shakes her head. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  I leave the door open for her. ‘No, of course you don’t.’

  Doing the rotas is my equivalent of picking the perfect football team. You can come up with the winning combination in your head, but when it comes to it, someone always has a last-minute injury or, in the world of Sunshine Cleaning, a school play to attend or a poorly child. Everyone has different preferences, regular commitments I have to avoid, amounts of nights and hours they’re willing to work. I first have to collate any texts I’ve had with requests for certain evenings on or off. Next week, Sharon wants Tuesday off; Catriona would rather not work on Tuesday either, or Friday; Maggie could do any day but would prefer Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and she’d like to do the four-storey office on at least two of those days to get away earlier; Amita wants four nights’ work, if possible; Jean three, but not Wednesday, and she’d like AJT Music and the financiers because she needs the hours; Kirsty also three, preferably Tuesday, Thursday, Friday; Aisha could do any evening but would like to coincide with Maggie.

  It’s like a huge game of Buckaroo. One false move and the whole thing comes crashing down. I’m thankful for the two students, Tomas and Paul, who will both work every day, as usual. It takes me the whole afternoon to come up with two teams of three for each evening in a form that – I hope – won’t piss anyone off. I email it over to Angie to check over before I issue it to the others. I know it will all change anyway, once someone’s kid gets the sniffles or someone suddenly remembers a commitment they entirely forgot to tell me about.

  It’s five o’clock before I remember I have a date tonight. As soon as I do, I also remember that I meant to cancel it. It’s been arranged for weeks, one of those things where you pluck a random day in the future, already knowing you’ll make an excuse to cry off when the time comes. Only this time, I forgot. My heart’s not in the dating thing. It feels reckless and frivolous. Not to mention pointless. Something I’m doing because I feel I’m supposed to rather than because I have any interest in it. I’d much rather put my PJs on and read a book or watch a film. I don’t want to have to make forced conversation with someone who probably wishes they weren’t there either. It all feels too much like hard work and, from my limited experience so far, I would put a bet on that nothing will come of it. I’ve often thought I’d rather just stick to the flirty banter stage. The light virtual conversations that pass an hour here or there. With the two conversions I’ve made so far, from online to actual human contact, the only result has been the end of a burgeoning friendship. Once we met in real life and realized that the chemistry was zero, that our pheromones were incompatible, we stopped chatting. What was the point? We were there to find love, not friends.

  Except that friends are what I really need.

  Tonight I am meeting Jeremy for the first time. We’ve been chatting for about six weeks. I agreed to move it on a stage and meet up face to face after dropping Betsy off with David one night. I got home, as I always do, feeling raw and rejected. I wanted to show him. Maybe you don’t find me attractive any more, but look! Someone does. I have a social life. A sexual life. I am functioning without you. This is how all my ‘dates’ have happened, by the way. Off the back of an encounter with David, followed by a couple of glasses of wine. Bravado. It makes me feel better for a few hours, until I wake up in the small hours of the next day and think, What the fuck have I done?

  I can’t even remember what I thought Jeremy and I have in common. I look back through our old messages. He’s a divorcee. Forty-six. Works at London University as some kind of sports administrator. Weekend custody of a boy and a girl aged thirteen and fifteen. We talk about our kids a lot. Two part-time parents trying to negotiate their way through their new normal. It’s clear from scrolling back that we both just want to offload to an empathetic ear. Hardly the way great love stories are born.

  And I’m meeting him for coffee in less than an hour. Definitely too late to cancel now.

  I’m in and out of the shower in minutes. Cursing myself for ever saying yes to his suggestion we take it up a notch. Never again.

  It’s nearly four months since David announced our marriage was over. That’s what it was, an announcement. Not a suggestion or a conversation. It was a fait accompli. An edict. When I think about that evening it plays out in my head like a bad soap opera, shot in high resolution, the colours too bright and jarring. I don’t know how true my memory is, or if the endless reconstructions of it have shifted the reality.

  It was a normal Monday. Betsy was galumphing around at her ballet class in the community centre up the road, and Zara’s mum, Michaela, was taking them both home to have tea at hers. We used to take it in turns. It was bitterly cold, I remember. I had the radiators turned up high, and fir-tree-scented candles – my winter indulgence on dark evenings – alight on the mantelpiece. I was pottering around in the kitchen preparing a meal for just the two of us, David and me. Date night. I can even remember what it was. A comforting lasagne, made from scratch, and a tomato, onion and basil salad. Even a home-made dessert. Tiramisu.

  All of these dishes were only half made when he arrived home from work earlier than usual. They never got completed. Never got eaten.

  ‘I’m moving out,’ he said when I asked him if he’d had a good day. I can remember what he was wearing. Black Levi’s and a grey V-neck over a collared T-shirt. He doesn’t have the kind of job where you have to dress up. He works in marketing. A good job, but nothing glamorous. A well-known range of domestic products.

  I thought I’d misheard. I don’t know what I thought he’d said, but it wasn’t that. When I didn’t respond he said it again. Slower. Louder. Of course, I assumed there was someone else. Someone I could fixate on. The enemy. He just kept reiterating that there wasn’t. That wasn’t what it was about. He’d thought it all through.

  ‘Obviously, you and Betsy can stay here for now, but we’ll have to put the house on the market …’

  He had found a flat he wanted to buy, he told me. And a place to rent in the meantime while he waited for it to go through. He had it all worked out. No, he didn’t want to talk about it. He’d agoni
zed for weeks, but this was something he had to do. He was sorry. Truly sorry.

  By the time Betsy got home, my marriage – her family – was well and truly dead.

  Of course, I blamed myself. When I was eight, my mum and I came home from a day out buying new school clothes to find my dad gone. For me it was a bolt from the blue. One minute he was my loving, lovely dad, and the next he had disappeared from my life altogether. It was only years later that my mum told me he had been cheating for years. It was the lying that was the worst, she’d said. All the heartfelt denials and the tears that she knew were just bullshit. His absolute refusal to tell her the truth. When David and I got serious, I made him promise he would always be straight with me. That he wouldn’t sugar-coat the truth if anything was wrong. And it seemed he had taken those words to heart.

  I’m meeting Jeremy in Primrose Hill, halfway – give or take – between my home and his work. I drive because I want to be sure of making a quick getaway, and I have no intention of drinking anything other than coffee. I call Angie on the way to make sure everything is OK for this evening, and to tell her where I’m going and with whom, in case he turns out to be a serial killer. I spend an age trying to find a parking space so, consequently, I’m late, and Jeremy is already nursing a coffee himself when I walk in. He stands up to greet me. We both look like our photos.

  He’s smart, pleasant, nice-looking. Ordinary. My heart’s not in it. I would rather be anywhere but here. I’m the opposite of sparkling company and I can tell that Jeremy thinks so too. After one coffee for me and two for him we agree to call it a night. Neither of us mentions meeting up again. I’m home by eight.

  I’m not ready for this.

  13

  Betsy does not want to come to the flat with me. She tells me this tearfully when I go to pick her up from school on Wednesday.

  ‘I hate it!’ she cries, clinging on to her rucksack. Michaela gives me a sympathetic smile over Zara’s head. ‘I want to go home.’

  Home. David’s flat is now home. The word flashes in my head in garish neon. My daughter no longer thinks her home is with me.

  ‘We can bake biscuits,’ I say running a hand over her soft curls. Betsy loves baking. We used to watch Bake Off together religiously, David laughingly protesting from behind his iPad. I make a mental note to find out when the next series starts. ‘We don’t have to go out. We don’t have to see anyone else.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she says.

  I crouch down so we’re eye to eye. ‘We can do whatever you want.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ she says, but less forcefully.

  ‘You can’t, sweetheart. Not yet. Dad won’t be there. Felix can’t babysit. He’s not old enough.’

  She gives me a wonky smile. ‘He is in cat years.’

  ‘Yes, but he doesn’t know how to turn the oven on. You’d starve.’

  Betsy laughs. I’ve won. This time.

  On the way we stop off in Hampstead High Street at the chi-chi ice-cream shop. We choose our flavours – black cherry for me and peanut butter for Betsy – and take them to a table outside because all the ones inside are taken, pulling our coats tight around us. Betsy shovels in a mouthful, all traces of her earlier meltdown gone, then pauses with her spoon held high.

  ‘Isn’t that that horrible woman?’ she says in a very loud whisper. I follow her gaze and spot Stella sitting across the alley, outside the bakery, deep in conversation with Jan – her of the shelf arse – over a couple of coffees. She’s just far enough away that she, thankfully, doesn’t seem to have heard Betsy’s comment, but the moment is ruined.

  ‘Don’t stare at her,’ I say. ‘Hopefully she won’t see us.’

  ‘I don’t like her,’ Betsy says, jabbing her spoon into her container.

  ‘Neither do I,’ I whisper conspiratorially. ‘Let’s just pretend she’s not there.’

  Of course, as soon as you tell yourself not to look at something, it becomes literally impossible not to keep turning round every ten seconds. And, of course, as soon as I start doing that, it becomes inevitable that I’ll accidentally catch their eye. In this case, Jan’s. I force a half-hearted smile of acknowledgement on to my face. She blanks me and turns round to mutter something to Stella, who turns to look at me and then blanks me too. Jan turns back to add a glare into the equation, just for good measure. That hurts. I’ve never had any problem with Jan. I’ve barely even spoken to her. I’ve realized, though, that she and Eva are second in the hierarchy. Stella’s loyal lieutenants. Katya and Anya are the young wannabes, waiting to earn their stripes. But it’s now abundantly clear that if Stella blackballs someone, they’re out. And I have definitely been blackballed.

  ‘Finished?’ I say with forced brightness to Betsy, thankful that she eats with all the decorum and restraint of a bulldog.

  She grins back at me. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Let’s go, then,’ I say, leaving my own ice cream half finished. I steer her away from the bakery so we don’t have to pass the Wicked Witches of the North.

  I’m driving her back, a couple of hours later – she’s clutching a Tupperware full of white-chocolate-chip cookies for her dad. The irony that he’s left me but I am still somehow baking him treats is not lost on me – when I get a text from Angie. I know it’s from Angie because Betsy grabs up my phone and tells me so. I dread to think what it might say, but I can hardly snatch the phone out of Betsy’s hands.

  ‘Something something is for something ring,’ she reads, and for the first time ever, I’m pleased that spelling is not her strong point. I’m dying to see what it actually says. ‘And then it says she had a look at something else,’ she adds, losing interest.

  ‘Oh well, nothing important,’ I say, clueless. ‘I might pop in there after I drop you.’ I had already decided to do this. The card and the Polaroid are burning a hole in my pocket and I want to put them back in their rightful place. For all I know, Al looks at them regularly. A little pick-up in a mundane day. I immediately regret mentioning it, though.

  ‘Can I come?’ she pleads, putting my phone back down. She has always loved going to visit the companies we clean for. It’s a different – grown-up – world to explore. Not to mention that all my staff make a big fuss of her. They all find it hard leaving their own kids in the evenings, so any small human that makes an appearance is treated to the full force of frustrated parental affection. Plus, Tomas is teaching her how to swear in Polish, so there’s that.

  ‘Maybe next time,’ I say. ‘It’s a bit late tonight.’

  Once Betsy and I have said a tearful goodbye, David smiling blandly at me like we’re two vague acquaintances and he can’t quite place where he’s met me before, I jab at my phone to bring up Angie’s message.

  Cartier receipt is for platinum ring. Had a quick look at the papers in there too. Might be interesting!! Ring me!

  I send her a quick text back. Be there in 5 x

  Angie is waiting for me at the top of the stairs, looking around furtively like an agitated owl. She beckons me into the offices.

  ‘I just had a quick look. I’ve not got behind with work …’

  ‘It’s OK. So there’s no clue who the ring is for?’

  ‘No. Forget the receipt. It could be for his wife, or F, or anyone. It’s the paperwork that might be worth a second look. It looks like it’s personal, not business. Financial. I might have misunderstood – because God knows, finance isn’t my thing – but I think they might have re-mortgaged their house …’

  ‘Really? They’re rolling in it. Why would they need to?’

  Angie shrugs. ‘Like I said, I only had a quick look. I might have got it completely wrong … But I thought it might cheer you up.’

  ‘Shit …’ I say. I can’t deny I’m itching to see what’s in there. Maybe Stella and Al are in financial trouble. Maybe their showy life is just that – a show. Maybe Stella is all fur coat and no knickers, as my gran used to say. I feel a satisfying rush of schadenfreude. Even if I could never let on to Stel
la that I know, I think it would make me feel less intimidated by her to know that she was a fraud. But there’s no denying this feels a bit more invasive than just trying to establish if someone has a bit on the side. This feels like spying. I would be crossing a line. Sod it. I’ve crossed it already. Hopped back and forth over it several times.

  ‘Same code?’

  Angie smiles. ‘Same. Luckily, Sharon’s not on tonight, or she’d think the place was infested with spiders. She’d be handing in her notice. I’m going to do the kitchen. No one can get past me. And I’ll block the stairs with the Hoover, just in case.’ The tiny kitchen has a door right at the top of the stairs. If either Tomas or Amita head up to find Angie, they can’t miss her in there.

  ‘Is this really bad?’ I say to her as she goes. She turns round and gives me her mega-watt smile. ‘Only if they find out.’

  Angie has left the key in the lock, so I crouch down behind Al’s desk and open the drawer. Lift out the first ream of papers, which are enclosed in a plastic wallet. The front sheet shows just his name and address. ‘Mr Alec J. Thornbury c/o AJT Music. Strictly Private and Confidential’. Alec J. Of course. He is AJT. So successful he has a multimillion-pound company named after him.

  It’s from a bank. A posh one, not your common or garden NatWest. The accompanying letter is addressed to Al. Further to your request blah blah blah. Raising finance. Three point five million pounds. Would Mr Thornbury please sign where indicated, in front of an independent witness. I flick further on. There’s Al’s signature, witnessed by Roman Fedorov, CEO of Alpha Recruitment, 4 The Close. Their neighbour. Jan’s husband.

  So far, so normal.

  I shove the papers back in the wallet. Reach for the next batch. They’re in a thick file. There are particulars for a stunning penthouse flat on the river in Battersea. Wraparound terrace. Floor-to-ceiling windows. State-of-the-art kitchen. Gym and swimming pool in the basement. Three and a half million. Various letters back and forth with a solicitor. OK, so they’ve raised some cash from their house and they’re buying an investment property in up-and-coming Battersea. Maybe they’re not quite on the breadline yet.