by Marian Keyes
I heard a key in the front door; Zulema and Ema were home from their walk.
‘I forgot about your tooth exemption,’ I said to Anton. ‘Please don’t worry. I’ll ring them.’
With this magnanimous offer, I rang off.
I would make Zulema do it.
OK, Zulema: Zulema was our au pair. She was part of our brave new world – new house, me writing my next book, etc. She was a tall, good-looking, strong-willed Latina who had arrived three weeks ago from Venezuela.
I was terrified of her. So was Anton. Even Ema’s perpetual grin dimmed a little in her presence.
Her arrival in our lives had originally been planned to coincide with the end of the building work. We had hoped to welcome her into a beautiful dry-rot-free home and when it became evident that the house would still be a wreck on her arrival date, I phoned to put her off. But she was as inflexible as a missile on a pre-ordained, computerized course. ‘I am comeeng.’
‘Yes, but Zulema, the place is quite literally a building site –’
‘I am comeeng.’
Anton and I ran about like headless chickens, preparing the bedroom at the back of the house – the only bedroom with intact walls – for her. We gave her our cast-iron bed and our best duvet cover and it actually looked very pretty, far nicer than ours or Ema’s room. But Zulema took one look at the scaffolding-clad house and its all-pervasive dust and announced, ‘You leeve like animals. I weell not stay here.’
With terrifying speed she found a boyfriend – someone called Bloggers (Why? I have no idea.) who had a nice flat in Cricklewood – and moved in with him. ‘Do you think she’d let us come too?’ Anton had asked.
Zulema was very helpful. Dreadfully helpful. All day long she policed Ema so that I was entirely free to write but I missed Ema and I loathed the very concept of having an au pair. The exploitatively tiny sum we paid her made me squirm with shame – even though we gave considerably more than the going rate, as I discovered at Tumble Tots when I tried discussing my guilt with Nicky. (Nicky and Simon had had their much longed for baby three months after I had Ema.) She said, ‘Simon and I pay our au pair half of what you pay yours and she’s bloody glad to get it. Think about it, this Zulema is learning English, she’s working – legally – in London, you’re doing her a favour!’
Because Zulema lived elsewhere, we did not have a built-in babysitter, but I so did not care. I was horribly relieved at not having to share the house with her. How could I ever relax? Sharing one’s home with a stranger is always difficult even if the person is adorable. Which Zulema was not. Hard-working, undoubtedly. Responsible, I grant you. Honest, apart from using my Gloomaway shower gel. (Which I needed. It was the only thing that could persuade me to wash in that grimy old bathroom.) But she was not much fun. Not even slightly. Every time I saw her in all her grim, beetle-browed beauty, my heart sank.
‘Zulema,’ I called.
She pushed open my study door. She looked displeased. ‘I feed Ema.’
‘Yes, um, thank you.’ Ema appeared between Zulema’s legs, winked at me – conspiratorially? But she was only twenty-two months… much too young to wink conspiratorially? – then clattered away. ‘Zulema, would you mind ringing Macko again. This time, beg him to come?’
‘What weell you geeve mee?’
‘Er, cash? Twenty pounds?’ I should not have been offering her money, we were so short of it ourselves…
‘I like Super-line Corrector from Prescriptives.’
I looked at her beseechingly. My beloved night-cream. And it was only new. But what choice did I have?
‘OK.’ At this rate I would have no skin-care left at all.
She returned within seconds.
‘He say he ees comeeng.’
‘Do you think he meant it?’
She shrugged and stared at me. What did she care? ‘I weell take Super-line Corrector.’
‘You do that.’
Zulema thumped upstairs to spirit away my night-cream from my dressing table and I resumed staring at my desk. Perhaps they would come this time. Just for a moment I let myself hope and my spirits inched upwards. Then my copy of Book News caught my eye and I was reminded of Gemma’s huge book deal – I had forgotten briefly – and my spirits lowered themselves back to base. Cripes, what a day.
Gloomily, I opened the rest of my post, hoping it would not contain anything too insane; now that I was a ‘successful’ ‘writer’ I averaged one mad missive a day.
I received letters from people who were looking for money; letters from people who said that writing about witchcraft was the devil’s work and that I would be punished (these were written in green ink); letters from people who had ‘lived a very interesting life’ and who were willing to sell me the details (the usual terms offered were a fifty-fifty split of profits); letters from people inviting me to spend the weekend with them (‘I don’t have much, but I am happy to sleep on the floor and you can have my bed. Local sights include the clock tower which is an exact, if smaller, version of Big Ben and only six months ago a Marks and Spencer opened – there’s posh!’); letters from people sending their manuscripts and asking me to ensure they got published.
Every day was different. Yesterday it had been a letter from a girl called Hilary whom I had been at school with in Kentish Town. She was one of a trio of bitches, who had made my life hell. It was just after the move from Guildford when I had been wretched with unhappiness and fear that Mum was going to leave Dad. Hilary and her two fat friends had decided I was ‘a stuck-up cow’ and got everyone to call me, ‘Her Majesty’. Whenever I opened my mouth in class Hilary led a chorus of, ‘Ooh, la-di-dah.’
In her letter there was no mention of any of that, however. She congratulated me on the success of Mimi’s Remedies and said she would ‘love us to get together’.
Yeah, now that you’re famous,’ Anton had scorned, speaking out of one side of his mouth because of his filling. ‘Tell her to go and fuck herself. Or if you like I’ll do it for you.’
‘Let’s just ignore it,’ I said, chucking the letter in the bin and thinking: How peculiar people are. Did Hilary really think we would meet? Had she no shame?
I decided to ring Nicky about it; Nicky had also been bullied by Hilary. Then I decided not to ring Nicky. She and Simon kept having Anton and me over for dinner and I was acutely embarrassed that although we now had a house, we still could not repay their hospitality.
I turned back to my post.
Today it was a letter from a woman called Beth who had sent me her manuscript a month earlier, asking me to forward it to my editor, which I had done. However, Tania must not have liked it enough to publish it because this was an angry couple of pages, letting me know what a selfish person I was. Thanks a bunch, Beth said. So nice of me to destroy her chance of being published, especially when I had everything. She had thought I was a good person but, boy, had she been wrong. She would never buy another of my books again for as long as she lived and she would tell everyone she knew what a piece of work I was.
I knew Beth’s career setbacks were not my fault but, nevertheless, the attack upset me and made me tremble a little. The delights of the post at an end, it was time to – aaagghh! – do some writing.
My new book was about a man and a woman who had been childhood chums and had met again as adults on Friends Reunited. Almost thirty years earlier, when they had both been five years old, together they had witnessed a murder. At the time they had not understood what they had seen, but their reunion had unlocked and recontextualized long-dormant memories. They were both married to other people but as they began to explore what they thought might have happened, they became closer to each other. As a result their marriages were suffering. It was not what I wanted to write, it made me unhappy, but it was still what my fingers persisted in typing.
I frowned at my screen to show that I meant business, and off I went. I did my best. I typed words, yes, they were definitely words – but were they any good?
I yawned. Sleepiness settled on me like a blanket and I found it hard to concentrate. I had had very interrupted sleep the night before. And the night before. And the night before that…
Most nights Ema woke two or three times and even though, in theory, Anton and I shared the getting-up, in practice I did most of it. Partly my own fault – I had to check for myself that she was OK; and partly her fault – in the middle of the night she preferred me to Anton.
I would make myself a cup of coffee. Just as soon as Zulema went out for the afternoon; I simply could not bear to have to stand in the ‘kitchen’ and make ‘conversation’ with her while I waited for the kettle to boil. Alert for noises of her departure, I waited. I longed to put my head down and have a short nap but, inevitably, Zulema would catch me and she thought I was pitiful enough as it was.
Then I heard her frogmarching Ema back out. I hurried to the kitchen, made my coffee, then resumed ‘work’.
When my word-counter told me I had done five hundred words, I stopped. But in my heart I knew that about four hundred and seventy of the five hundred were rubbish. If only this book would not persist in being a sad one.
Looking for advice – or at least distraction – I rang Miranda. Yes, Miranda England, that Miranda. When we had met at my catastrophic first signing, I had thought she was as faraway and remote as the stars. But we had run into each other at a couple of subsequent publishing events – the Dalkin Emery sales conference and the author party – and she had been a lot warmer. Anton said she was only being nice because I was a success now, and perhaps there was some truth in that. But she was different to the person I had first thought she was, and when I discovered she had been having a terrible time trying to have a baby, it humanized her for me.
She had finally managed to get pregnant and had taken time off from writing to avoid having a miscarriage, but she was still available to listen to my writing woes.
‘I’m stuck,’ I said, and explained my dilemma.
‘When in doubt,’ she advised, ‘put in a sex scene.’ But I could not write a sex scene. Dad might read it.
All at once, I became aware of the noise of a lorry chugging outside. At that moment the doorbell rang and voices sounded from the front step. Male voices. Shouty, tarry, cement-coated male voices. I thought I overheard the word ‘cunt’. Could it be…?
I glanced through my little window. They had arrived! Macko and his team had finally arrived to fix my house!
‘Miranda, I must go! Thank you.’
It had been worth losing my toner and night-cream. I could have kissed Zulema. Had I not been afraid of being turned into a pillar of salt.
I opened the front door and let the Mad Paddys stomp in. Because they all looked the same, I was never sure exactly how many there were but today there appeared to be four. The pick-up that chugged on the spot outside contained big, thick pieces of wood – the elusive lintels! Shouting and trying to order each other about, the Mad Paddys carried them upstairs, dislodging lumps from the walls and sizeable chips from the coving. (Original, irreplaceable, but at the time I was happy enough to overlook it.)
I rang Anton. ‘They’re here! With the lintels! They’re removing the old ones as we speak! Leaving enormous holes in the walls!’
Silence. More silence.
‘Anton? Did you hear me?’
‘Oh, I heard you alright. I’m just so happy I might puke.’
For the rest of the day I sat in my study trying to write while a team of builders swarmed over my house shouting, banging and calling each other ‘cunts’. I sighed happily. All was well with the world.
When Anton came home from work he looked around furtively and mouthed, ‘Is she still here?’ He meant Zulema.
‘She’s left for the day but the boys are still here!’
‘Jayzus.’ He was impressed. On the rare days they came, they tended to slope off at about four.
‘I have a suggestion,’ I said. ‘But you’re not going to like it.’
He eyed me warily.
‘Because they’re here in person, let’s have a word with them,’ I said. ‘It will have more impact than doing it over the phone. We need to praise them for the good work they’ve done.’ I had read this in some article on how to manage staff. ‘Then we have to, you know, scare them into finishing off the work. Kind of like good cop, bad cop. How about it?’
‘So long as I can be the good cop.’
‘No.’
‘Arse.’
‘Come on.’ I led him into our front room, where the lads were sitting on the new lintels, drinking tea, ankle-deep in sugar granules.
‘Macko, Bonzo, Tommo, Spazzo.’ I nodded at each one politely. (I was fairly sure these were their names.) ‘Thank you for coming back, and removing the old lintels. Those lintels are well and truly, er… removed. If you replace the new lintels as efficiently as you removed the old ones, we will be very happy.’
Then I dug Anton in the back and urged him forward. ‘As you know, lads, you were meant to be finished more than three weeks ago,’ he said sternly, then seemed to lose his nerve. He clutched his head and said, ‘Please, lads, we’re going mad here. There’s a small child involved. Er, thank you.’
We took our leave, and as soon as we had closed the door, the room exploded with guffaws. I swung the door open again; Macko was wiping his eyes and saying, ‘Poor cunts.’
We backed out once more. Anton and I presented wary looks to each other and I was the first to speak. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I think that went rather well.’
Anton and I were in bed. It was only eight o’clock but we were in the back bedroom, the only room in the house with intact walls. We had moved the television in three weeks earlier and since then we pretty much lived in there. Because there was nothing for us to sit on, we were in bed.
I was flicking through the Jo Malone catalogue, wishing I could climb through the glossy pages and live in it; it was a serene, fragrant, dust-free world. Anton was watching a sitcom because he was putting together a deal with Chloe Drew, the young, hot lead, and Ema was marching about purposefully in her vest and pants combo and favourite pink wellies that she even slept in. Her round, squeezy thighs could have been made of latex.
‘Ema, you look like the circus strongman,’ Anton flicked his eyes from the TV. ‘All you’re missing is the handlebar moustache.’
Ema had a selection of her favourite things – Jessie, her beloved wrench; a curly dog, which Viv, Baz and Jez had given her, also called ‘Jessie’ and an old moccasin of Anton’s, which also answered to the name ‘Jessie’ – which she was moving from one part of the room to the other, lining them up according to some vision only she was privy to. ‘Dinky,’ she said.
Her hair grew strangely with two long pieces framing her face, but shorter at the back and on top. She looked like a mod – even at times like Paul Weiler – but was the most adorable creature. I could have watched her for ever.
I waited until Anton’s programme had finished before showing him the piece in Book News about Gemma. I watched him reading it, studying his face, trying to gauge his response.
‘What do you think?’ I asked. ‘And please don’t be all optimistic and say it means nothing.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit freaky. How did she manage to get both your agent and your editor?’
If Anton, optimist of the century, thought it a bit freaky, it must be catastrophic.
‘The book isn’t about us, Jojo said.’
‘Well, that’s good. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.’
‘But Gemma told Jojo to say hello to me. The whole thing… I know it’s illogical but I feel this awful… dread. Like something terrible is going to happen.’
‘What sort of something terrible?’
‘I don’t know. Just a feeling I have, that she’s going to destroy everything for us, for you and me.’
‘You and me? She can’t touch us.’
‘Tell me that you will always love me and never leave m
e.’
He looked at me with the utmost seriousness. ‘But you know that.’
‘So say it.’
‘Lily, I will always love you and never leave you.’
I nodded. Good. That should help.
‘Would it make you feel any bit more secure if we got married?’ Anton asked.
I winced. Getting married would fast-track any dormant disasters.
‘I’ll take that as a no, then. Better take the twenty-grand ring back to Tiffany’s in that case.’
Ema shoved her wrench at me; it clanged off my teeth. ‘Lily, kiss.’
I gave the wrench a big smacker.
Entirely unprovoked, Ema had started calling Anton and me by our first names. This had alarmed us terribly, we did not want people thinking we were liberal Islington types. To lead by example, we had taken to calling each other Mum and Dad.
‘Now bring your wrench and get a kiss from Dad.’
‘Anton,’ she corrected me, with a frown.
‘Dad,’ I said.
‘Anton.’
After Anton had kissed the wrench, he said, ‘I have a present for you.’
‘Not a twenty-grand ring from Tiffany’s, I hope.’
He fished his arm under the bed on his side and produced a Jo Malone bag. It was a replacement of the toner I had given Zulema.
‘Anton! We’re skint!’
‘Not for ever. When me and Mikey pull off this deal, we’ll be loaded. And there’s your royalty dosh coming at the end of September.’
‘OK,’ I was already mollified. ‘My pores thank you. But why are you giving me a present?’
‘We have to live a little. And I’m hoping you’ll have sex with me.’
‘You don’t have to give me presents to get me to have sex with you.’ I smiled.
He smiled back.
‘Just ring the builders for my next three turns,’ I said. ‘And I’ll do anything you want.’
