by Alice Castle
The hand slammed into the door, a centimetre above her head. Jeff’s palm was heavy, immovable, holding the door closed, his body leaning into her so she was crushed up against the jamb. His scent was in her nostrils, the animal male smell she’d once loved, now rank and threatening. ‘Where do you think you’re going then, Jen?’ he asked very, very quietly.
Outside, Beth’s little Fiat sparked up. Then the headlights swung in a wide arc, driving away from Camberwell, into the night.
Chapter Five
What was it about this time of year? Beth wondered. The days and weeks seemed to start merging into one another and moving past faster and faster, like pages of a diary caught in a high wind. Autumn was a kaleidoscope of conkers, fallen leaves, Hallowe’en costumes, bonfires, dark nights and darker mornings, until they were on a slippery slope into winter, with huge quantities of tinsel and baubles mounded up to catch her at the bottom. The ‘C’ word. After a certain point in October, all roads seemed to lead inexorably to Santa.
It wasn’t that she was anti-Christmas. She loved the idea of snuggling up with Ben, opening his stocking, filching half his chocolates, then enjoying an enormous lunch cooked at a snail’s pace by her mother, and usually ready at about five in the afternoon. It was just that an unfeasible amount of preparation seemed to be involved in getting them to that stage. Presents without end had to be sourced and wrapped; decorations unearthed from the spidery loft; a tree dragged home from the little charity stall at the school. Beth always bought in every single bit of food herself, even if they ended up eating it round at her mother’s. Wendy insisted on seeing online shopping as tantamount to entering a pact with the devil and, left to her own devices, would have cooked her usual single chicken breast and been very surprised when it didn’t stretch to feed Beth, Ben, Josh, and whichever girlfriend was briefly in tow that year.
It was all lovely, yes, but it was a huge amount of extra work and expense. And perhaps worst of all, it reminded her so strongly of James and everything they’d lost. He’d loved Christmas and never seemed to see it, as she did, as a mildly entertaining inconvenience that was basically not really worth the bother. He’d kept a childish sense of wonder over fairy lights, cards, baubles, and glitter, so the house had always been full to bursting, like a tiny festive grotto dumped in Dulwich. In fact, Magpie’s fur would be twinkling away for months after Christmas, as she had a penchant for removing ornaments from the tree, then batting them all around the house and rolling around on them for good measure. Needless to say, none of their decorations were glass.
The weeks were spinning by, and it wouldn’t be long until it was time to unearth the battered boxes of goodies from their hiding place. At least James’s mad splurging years ago meant she hadn’t had to shell out an extra penny on decorations over the years, thought Beth, knowing she was becoming more Scrooge-like by the day.
But she did always have to count the pennies. It was hard, budgeting alone, and although her precious Wyatt’s job got her through, there always seemed to be additional expenses to grapple with, looming up out of the blue like obstacles on one of Ben’s PlayStation games. The tutoring, for example. It certainly didn’t come free, perhaps because the rate had been negotiated by Belinda MacKenzie, who thought economy was vulgar. Beth just hoped it would be worth it.
Already, the weekly trip to Camberwell had become an established routine, with no more broken nights. The three boys seemed to get on brilliantly, if boisterously, and the tutor – made of much sterner stuff than Beth – appeared to cope. If they were as bouncy during the sessions as they were in her car, then the man deserved several medals and all the money that Belinda could throw at him.
Beth had no idea whether this effort was being translated into improved academic performance. There was no homework at the Village School, apart from a few desultory spellings now and again, and Ben was fine on those when he could be bothered to look at them – but that had always been the case. Certainly, at the last parents’ evening, the teacher had not remarked that Ben had suddenly catapulted himself into an entirely different league of attainment. But neither had she informed Beth sorrowfully that the class hamster was brighter. Her son was no doubt somewhere in the middle, as he’d always been, and it was probably all a big waste of time and money.
Never mind, the end was in sight. Ben had already sat the eleven plus exam for the various grammar schools over the county border in Kent, which was a sort of warm-up for the private school exams in January. She would have loved it if he’d won a grammar place, but the system made that very unlikely. Thousands of children did the exams, and only the top two hundred or so each year got a guaranteed place at the grammar school of their choice. The rest, if they passed the test (and over a thousand would each year) and also fulfilled the crucial catchment area criteria, were in with a chance.
But Beth and Ben lived miles from most of the schools, and bright though she knew him to be, he’d emerged from the exam with a dazed look on his face. Later, under her gentle cross-questioning, it had emerged that he’d left the last nine pages of the maths exam blank, and had no clue what the comprehension passage was about either.
‘It was a whale, or maybe a dog, with some people fighting or maybe hunting. Anyway, it was really boring. Then there was another test even after that. Then the weakest orange squash ever and one biscuit. One! What is non-verbal reasoning, anyway, Mum?’
‘Don’t call me Mum,’ Beth had said automatically, but her head had been spinning. It seemed so unfair, making such a young child jump through these hoops. Mind you, she’d had to do it herself at that age, and had survived. And there was no alternative. She loved the Village Primary, but it didn’t go on past Year Six. Much as she’d love to keep on taking Ben there, just rocking up with him every morning, meeting the same mothers at the gate, and watching him play with the same friends forever, it wasn’t an option. She dearly wanted to keep him safe in his little primary bubble, where the biggest crises he’d ever encounter were sleeping through the alarm and half-baked school projects. But it was all coming to an end. Next September, none of his class or their mothers would be at those gates. They were all moving on. Big School was calling.
Like it or not, life changed, nothing stayed the same, and her beloved Ben, her beautiful child, with his guileless eyes so much like James’s, had to grow up.
And, talking of growing, Ben badly needed new trousers. The pair they’d bought at the end of the summer were already showing enough ankle to have a Victorian gentleman swooning. Beth hated that Oliver Twist look, and was planning to rectify it tomorrow with a swift trip to the Peacocks near Camberwell.
That reminded her; she needed to text Jen to see whether she was free. After that mix-up in the second week, she was careful now to plan ahead. A couple of times Jen had been tied up. They’d had one more cup of tea, but it had been a bit strained; Jen had been on edge. Jeff had been out, so Beth had hoped they’d have a proper natter, but Jen had jumped every time there had been a noise outside and the conversation had never really flowed.
The wedding present had been forgotten yet again. Beth had been so cross with herself when she’d driven off that last time, that she’d shoved it out of the way into the car’s glove compartment so it couldn’t reproach her from the passenger seat, and the glitzy paper was now getting scuffed.
She shoved her laptop to one side, fished her phone out from underneath Magpie’s fluffy petticoats, and quickly pinged Jen a message. If she was around, then Ben’s trousers would just have to wait. Friends took priority, even over her son’s chilly ankles, and Beth was seriously concerned about Jen.
It wasn’t until she was having a quick catch-up coffee with Katie the next day that she finally put her worries into words. They were in Jane’s, but due to Katie’s extremely careful scheduling, the place was only a third full so they could talk without every word reverberating around SE21. Fed up with the vile dishwater at Aurora round the corner, Katie had put in some diligent research to find th
e best possible Jane’s window to appeal to Beth’s highly developed sense of privacy. She wasn’t the least bothered herself – but then she spent her working life in skin-tight Lycra, bending over with her bum high in the air. Concealment wasn’t an issue.
The movements of mummies and au pairs in the area were as mysterious as the progress of spawning salmon – governed not by the tides but by the timetable of the Monkey Music sessions at St Barnabas Parish Hall, Baby Rhyme Time at Dulwich Library, and of course, school pick-up. While pick-up was immutable, all the other fixtures were subject to last-minute alteration and were on a need-to-know basis only.
To her excitement, Katie had discerned a distinct chink of light at about 11.15 every weekday, when the area’s babies were napping after a hectic morning of socialising, older children were locked into school, and mummies and nannies had an hour or so of downtime in which to book their next holidays or apply urgently for other jobs. Beth and Katie were both supposed to be busy at work, but it was amazing how flexible schedules could become when they had to be. Anyway, it was only a super-speedy coffee, wasn’t it?
Beth stirred hers absently, not sure whether she was right to voice her doubts or not.
‘Come on, Beth. Tell me. You’ve got something on your mind, I’ve seen that look before,’ said Katie, over the rim of her own delicious, hard-won cappuccino.
‘I feel a bit bad even mentioning it. But have you noticed anything with Jen these days?’
‘Jen Patterson? I’ve never really known her that well. Charlie isn’t great mates with Jessica. She does seem lovely, though,’ Katie tacked on. Finding people lovely was her default position.
Beth nodded. Of course. If your children weren’t friends, then you weren’t all that likely to know the mother well. It almost felt disloyal, being chummy with someone who’d produced a child who your own special boy or girl, blessed with innate perfect taste, wasn’t keen on. Jessica and Ben weren’t particularly close either, but Beth and Jen had always had things in common to help them over that hump. Besides, their children were boy and girl, and after a certain age people expected their kids to play more with their own side, as it were, so preferences weren’t as pronounced. This would continue for a few years until the two sexes spectacularly coincided again with a bump, in the teenage years – an event that was widely dreaded by mothers for a whole variety of reasons.
‘I’ve always really liked Jen. She had a hard time when Jessica’s dad upped and left ages ago. She was on her own for a long time, but made it work. Then all of a sudden, Jeff appeared,’ explained Beth.
‘Yes, I remember that,’ said Katie.
Beth wasn’t surprised. It had caused quite a stir in the playground when Jeff had first trooped up with Jen to pick up Jessica. They’d been hand-in-hand, Jen wreathed in a Ready Brek-glow of sexual contentment that was hard to ignore – and difficult not to envy a little, if you were either in a long-running Dulwich marriage, with all that entailed, or single in a wintry sort of way like Beth.
The effect of this unveiling had been an intense level of scrutiny and speculation from the mums, which hadn’t let up even when Jessica had been safely scooped up and led away that day. The fact that the little girl seemed entirely happy with the arrangement, not resentful or jealous of her mother’s new love interest, was chalked down as a big tick for Jeff, who’d clearly taken time to win over the entire mother-and-daughter package.
Jeff’s shock value had dwindled, slowly but surely, as he became a fixture and as Jen’s aura subsided from radioactive to normal levels of contentment. That wasn’t to say he didn’t have his flirtatious fans. Once it became known that he was great at DIY, a fair few radiators burst around the parish, and Jen was invited to double the usual number of coffee mornings in hopes that she’d tell her spellbound audience more about her dating triumph. Jen took it all with good grace, knowing that living vicariously was a sport played to Olympic levels locally.
‘Have you seen her recently in the playground? Something’s a bit adrift.’ Beth frowned at her coffee. It was so hot it burnt her tongue.
‘Haven’t seen her for ages. Jessica always seems to be in the classroom already by the time we get there.’
‘Her dad’s been dropping her off and picking her up a lot; she’s been staying with him loads,’ said Beth, raising her eyebrows. Everyone disapproved of Jen’s ex, Tim Patterson. It wasn’t just that he’d run off with someone else – that happened; look at Janice. But he’d tried to keep his options open for years, stringing along two women and lying determinedly to both to keep ménages on track.
Jen had taken him back several times and had her hopes dashed, until she’d finally drawn a line under the whole episode. Even then, there had been toe-curling scenes at the school gates, in front of Jessica, when he’d cried and begged to be allowed home ‘for the sake of his daughter’. For a sensible, no-nonsense woman like Jen, it had been agony, and what it had done to Jessica was anyone’s guess.
‘I really felt for her over all that stuff with her ex. God, that wasn’t great,’ Katie remembered.
‘She really didn’t deserve all that. Tim was an utter tosser to her, kept promising it was all over with the other woman, then she’d find receipts for hotel breakfasts for two when he swore he was on lonely business trips…’
‘I don’t really understand why a man would do that. Why go to the lengths of promising you’ll change and all the rest of it, and then still keep on seeing the other woman? He must have known he was bound to be caught out.’ Katie looked genuinely perplexed.
Beth rolled her eyes. ‘Men! Sometimes they seem to think they can just get away with things. Do you remember when the boys were little, if we were playing hide and seek, they’d just hide behind their own hands and be really surprised when you saw them? Some men don’t seem to grow out of that at all. It’s really odd, isn’t it? Especially when Jen’s so clever, and you can’t fool her for a minute.’
‘Maybe he liked the excitement of walking the tightrope between the two of them,’ Katie suggested.
‘Maybe he was scared of both of them, more like. He probably told Jen what he thought she wanted to hear when he was with her, but was too weak to refuse when the other woman wanted to see him.’ They looked at each other, realising this might well be the closest they’d come to understanding the pattern.
‘A cake-and-eat-it situation,’ Katie nodded.
‘And let’s face it, who doesn’t want more cake?’ Beth smiled. ‘Do you think our boys will be like that?’
‘Of course not,’ said Katie, shocked. ‘We’re showing them a better way.’
‘Well, you are, with your lovely stable marriage,’ said Beth. ‘But I’m not sure what my life is showing Ben. I’m on my own, my mum is, too. Look at his Uncle Josh – no sign of him ever settling down, unless a very large shotgun is pressed to his head. And even then, he’d somehow get on the next plane to a major crisis and escape again. My brother, the commitment Houdini.’
Katie gave Beth a meaningful glance. ‘You’ve just come up with yet another reason why it’s time for you to get out there and date, you know.’
Beth snorted. ‘All right, all right. But can we stick to dissecting someone else’s relationship this morning? Seriously, I’m worried about Jen. That whole business with Tim was why it was so lovely when Jeff first came along…’
‘I know you, Beth. Sounds like there’s going to be a ‘but’.’
‘You’re right. But something seems to have happened. Something I can’t put my finger on. Something’s gone wrong.’
‘Have you tried asking her about it?’
‘No! It’s one thing asking strangers intrusive questions when I really need to know the answer, you know, like those times we’ve had recently. But personal stuff? With someone I know? It’s so tricky. You know me. I’d rather go to Belinda MacKenzie’s next Valentine-themed dinner party, and you know what they’re like.’
Even Katie looked shocked at the thought of Beth at one of t
hose. It was typical of Belinda to have hijacked a private, and possibly even romantic, occasion and made it an annual extravaganza of red roses and fairy lights that could be seen from Crystal Palace.
‘Actually, I went to her last one and it was really fun,’ Katie confessed sheepishly. ‘Michael was thrilled; it let him off buying a card. Belinda had done everything, and we all went home with party bags with heart-shaped pralines and those little Love Heart sweets. I really don’t think you’d have liked it. We had to play those Mr and Mrs quiz games and guess each other’s partner blindfold, which was a bit odd. But seriously, if you think Jen’s not happy, shouldn’t you just ask?’
‘You’re absolutely right, I really should. But they’ve only just got married. I don’t feel I can just come out with it. They can’t really have problems, can they? So early on? And is it really any of my business if they have?’
‘Well no, but when has that ever stopped you?’ smiled Katie. ‘But listen, I didn’t come here to fret about poor old Jen. What about you?’
‘What about me?’ blanked Beth.
‘Come on, Beth. You know exactly what I mean. The dating. How are you getting on? If you get lucky, you could even bring your new man to Belinda’s next Valentine soirée.’
‘Well, that’s definitely put me off the whole idea,’ Beth laughed, and took a long swig of coffee. Thank goodness, it had reached drinkable temperature now. ‘And besides, didn’t we just agree not to talk about it?’
Katie smiled, but gave Beth a long look. She wasn’t about to let her friend off the hook. Beth sighed. ‘You know, I’m really not sure if it’s for me.’
‘Come off it, Beth. You can’t chicken out now. You’re braver than that, I know that much for sure. Give me your phone and let’s have a look.’
‘Um, I may have deleted it.’
