‘Why do they put “pan-fried” on the menu? Is it supposed to make it sound posher than just “fried”? Or less fattening, do you think?’ Jess was laughing as her lunch arrived. She looked down at the delicate arrangement of prawns perched precariously on top of a scaffolding of French beans and strips of celeriac and felt a childish urge to scatter the elaborate still life across the comically oversized plate on which it sat.
Paula Cheviot, editor of the Sunday Gazette’s Comfort Zone section, was opposite Jess at the inadequately small table in one of central London’s currently hyper-smart restaurants. She didn’t reply with an agreeing giggle as she normally would but looked a bit puzzled, as if Jess had questioned one of life’s acknowledged truths – such as did moisturizer really make that much difference. Slowly, Paula picked up a rocket leaf and nibbled at it, a look of intense concentration on her face. She had something on her mind. Jess could tell by the small frown lines. Paula never normally allowed such things to rumple her flat matt skin, for that would lead inevitably to the appointment at the clinic to have her forehead injected with botox into a paralysed (but smooth; divinely, age-defyingly smooth) expression of mild surprise.
Jess, in the process of loading her fork full of prawn, felt her appetite trickle away like chilled bathwater down a drain. Paula’s phone call two days previously, the apparently spontaneous suggestion that it was high time they got together for lunch and a gossip, suddenly seemed like a carefully calculated ruse. It was a trap. Jess put her fork down, suddenly shaky with the foreknowledge that she, like Matt, was about to be fired. His-and-hers dole cheques looked more than likely. After all, things went wrong in threes, didn’t they? There’d be this, and then something would happen to Oliver in Australia, or the girls would be expelled from school.
‘Oooh. This is delicious. Such a treat.’ Paula’s usual smile reappeared as she munched a delicate mouthful of duck with a coriander and lime dressing. ‘How’s yours?’ she asked, her social skills back in place and the fleeting moment of seriousness gone.
‘Fine.’ Jess tried to rekindle her appetite, taking too large a mouthful of white wine and almost choking. She could have been wrong – Paula’s mind might simply be full of which new-age diets to select for the next issue, or whether to commission someone to do a piece on Smart Cats.
‘It’s occurred to me lately,’ Paula then began, playing nervously with her silver Tiffany bracelet, ‘that perhaps the time has come for us to take a little trot down a different bridleway with your input at the Gazette, workwise.’
Here it comes, Jess thought, trying to maintain her breathing at a rate steady enough to keep her from faintness.
‘You mean, change the format?’ she prompted, praying that Paula didn’t mean ‘change the writer’.
‘Mm.’ With infuriating slowness, Paula worked her way through some more of her lunch. Jess was finding it hard to swallow a tiny piece of a French bean.
‘Of course we love your column. Wouldn’t be without it. Sweetly domestic chaos. Readers like that, makes them feel better about their own dysfunctional lives.’
‘Glad to provide a service.’
‘And you have, sweetie, you have, quite admirably. And for such a long time.’ She reached out and gave Jess’s wrist an electric little stroke. Her fingernails were perfectly manicured: evenly square-ended to look businesslike, but frosted candy pink for a hint of the girl within.
‘Of course we absolutely don’t want to lose you,’ she went on. Jess’s heart sank still further. The words sounded like a guillotine being jacked up ready for a long and vicious drop. ‘We’d like to keep Nelson’s Column going for at least another six months. There’d be sackfuls of letters to the Ed if we suddenly cut you out.’ Paula giggled prettily. ‘People look forward to your page, they need a kind of running-down phase, wean them off slowly.’
Jess pushed her food around with her fork, arranging the delicate pink of the prawns in a circle around the beans. Paula munched her way through her plate of warm duck salad and Jess watched fascinated: Paula had started with the lower left segment of the plate and was eating steadily across towards the top right. She reminded Jess of a termite, and she wondered if Paula approached other things in her life in the same way. She succumbed to the irresistible vision of her editor in bed with some gym-toned hunk, nuzzling her way down his body from right earlobe to left big toe, with a few savouring stops along the way.
About halfway across the plate Paula resumed her speech. ‘I would like to run a few new ideas past you, Jess, see if you feel up to something a little more challenging. We had a meeting and thought it could be a good idea to send you out to do new things, and then you report back, the kind of thing which might strike the average reader in terms of, “Oh I’ve always fancied having a go at that.” And if it works, well super. What do you think?’
‘Sounds interesting. What kind of thing did you have in mind? Not abseiling down Canary Wharf, Paula, please.’ Jess tried to sound perky and to look as if being ‘challenged’ was something that she was keen to rise to. The gnawing dread was still there though, along with a mild feeling of being cheated: if she’d suspected this lunch was more than just a jolly let’s-catch-up chat session she’d have made more effort on the looks front. She’d have bought something new to wear, rather than making do with her much treasured but four-year-old Ghost jacket. She also wished she’d had Philip at Hair We Are trim her rather shaggy hair into the kind of short sassy cut that could hold its own here so close to Sloane Street. Her highlights needed a bit of toning down too. The last colourist couldn’t quite believe that not everyone with mid-brown hair had a hidden craving to be blonde and had dabbed on chunks of pale gold with happy enthusiasm, radiantly confident of client satisfaction.
Around them, fellow diners looked as if they were having a much better time. Their feet beneath tables were surrounded by plenty of evidence of what Natasha called Big Bag shopping, plundered from the most delicious stores. Now, with Matt’s career over and her own clearly on some kind of test drive, she’d be limited to the Small Bag variety, if any at all.
‘We could have pudding,’ Paula suggested as the waiter took their plates away. ‘Shall we?’ Paula was leaning forward and sparkling her eyes at Jess as if the eating of a crème caramel was a huge and wicked temptation comparable with shoplifting at Harvey Nicks. The idea of something sweet was quite appealing, Jess thought, like a piece of chocolate when you’re a child and you’ve hurt yourself.
‘OK. I always love to have the kind of pudding I’d never be bothered to make at home. It’s like cocktails. A home-made piña colada just doesn’t have the same zing, does it?’
Paula’s delicate fingers waved a little, as if she was just catching a thought. ‘Now cocktails, that’s one of the things I was thinking of.’
‘You were?’
‘We could send you out to do a course, learn how to make the perfect margarita, that kind of thing. And have you ever had a proper fitting for a bra? Or gone on one of those ghastly “flowers for the dinner party” courses?’
Jess laughed. ‘No to all of them. Except the bra thing, and that was only because I was pregnant.’
‘Well there you are then.’ Paula leaned forward and smiled broadly. ‘Lots to do, plus any ideas of your own you can come up with. It’s more money of course, because it’ll take up more time. And we send you out with a photographer. It’ll be fun.’
That was an order. It probably would be fun. And the words ‘more money’ were very welcome. For a while, too, there would still be Nelson’s Column as well, so she’d be earning quite a bit, enough to keep her from feeling like nagging at Matt quite so much anyway. Jess at last relaxed and plunged her spoon into her raspberry parfait. ‘And so, Jess,’ Paula began as Jess started to enjoy herself, ‘how is that gorgeous husband of yours?’
Matthew was in the attic, still not dressed though midday had long since been and gone, sitting on the bed reading the Creative and Media vacancies in the Guardian. The paper was three days old but he assumed most of the jobs were still on offer, at least till the first wave of fast young things had had their e-mailed CVs downloaded and read. The problem was that he didn’t want to apply for any of them – it was Jess who’d bought the paper, thinking she was being helpful and with a careful look on her face as if she was trying hard not to ask him why he hadn’t rushed out first thing on Monday morning to buy it himself. He didn’t want to waste any more of his life trying to pretend to people that they were exactly as wonderful as they thought they were, and that those aspects of their lives/work/reputations that they wished the world to know about were the most fascinating things on the planet. He’d spent twenty-two years being, well what had he been? Surely there had to be a better word to describe his working persona than pleasant. There wasn’t. He’d spent all his working life buddying up to clients, colleagues and media reptiles to put other people’s messages across. It was time he had a message of his own, something for those Out There to take notice of. His job had been the equivalent of a wall emulsioned in safe magnolia: simply a bland background for enhancement of someone else’s artwork. Somewhere, deep inside, he could feel the long-dormant stirrings of a creative impulse. It was time for it to come out.
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 forward 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.