Eddy’s bedroom was a big surprise. Natasha, though she’d never given it any previous thought, would have expected it to be a seedier version of Oliver’s room: all discarded socks, CDs strewn around, beer cans, open cupboards showing clothes chucked in carelessly and a musty smell you didn’t want to spend any time with in case you caught it on your clothes. That was the style of ungracious living that she somehow expected of all men who lived alone, as if even when they got to Eddy’s age there would still be a fond regression towards teenagerhood. Instead there was no sign of any abandoned clothes and not so much as a used wine glass in sight. He must have had his cleaner in just that morning, she decided, imagining an oldish lady with rigid cauliflower curls, a floral apron and pink Marigolds, picking up underwear at arm’s length and dropping it into a laundry basket with a slight shudder. The room smelled faintly of new paint too, which she assumed was why there wasn’t even the hint of a mark on the walls and door which were the colour of Flora margarine.
Eddy had a vast pale wooden bed, the smart low sort with no twiddly details, as featured in her mum’s Elle Decoration, covered with a snowy duvet and a lot of plump square pillows. The edges of the pillowcases were lacy, like the tops of little girls’ socks. A massive ginger cat dozed on a small blanket on a moss green silky chaise longue under the window, cuddled up to a well-worn honey-coloured teddy bear. The cat yawned and stretched its fat paws towards Natasha as she leaned across it to look out of the window.
‘You wouldn’t dare go on that bed would you?’ she said to the cat as she fondled its ear. ‘Neither would I.’ Nervously, she glanced down at the fat-looped cream carpet, checking her path from door to window, dreading finding the prints of her trainers ingrained in the pile. There was no trace of her. There must be no trace of Tom either.
She wished he’d be quick. Natasha could still hear the shower running from along the corridor. Tom would use up all the hot water at this rate and fill the house with steam. That would be such a stupid giveaway. ‘Wouldn’t it make more sense,’ she’d suggested, ‘just to come to our house and use the shower there? Mum wouldn’t mind.’ But he hadn’t wanted to. This was what Tom was used to: wandering in and out of houses big enough to have spare, barely used guest bathrooms and making free use of the facilities. The trick was doing it so that people didn’t even notice anyone had been in. He’d told her he didn’t want to get out of practice.
Eddy’s own bathroom must be somewhere through one of the long row of mirrored doors on the far side of the bed. She really wanted to look, to see if it matched her idea of an ancient rock star’s vanity salon. She’d been well wrong about the bedroom, but surely his personal en suite should have mirrors surrounded by lights, a sound system of its own and acres of rhinestone-encrusted marble? By rights he ought to have a huge black oval jacuzzi and one of those mega shower rooms that had millions of water jets and doubled as a steam room and sauna. She couldn’t look though, couldn’t risk even one of her fingerprints on those mirror doors. Even if she polished marks off with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, she’d never get it to look as perfectly smearless as the cauli-head cleaner could. Anyway, she had to stay by the window, check that Eddy wasn’t coming back. Tom had been sure he wouldn’t, but you never knew. He knew Eddy’s routine: he did the same things every day. He got up about ten, went to the Leo for a late breakfast, read all the papers, chatted to Natasha’s dad and a few other lounging-around blokes, came home for a while and then went off out again. Right now, according to Tom, he should be halfway through a cheese and ham croissant and on his second cappuccino.
‘Stonking bed. We should test it.’ Tom, wearing only a dark blue towel, sarong-style, flung himself into the middle of the immaculate duvet which fluffed up around him like a cloud, then resettled slowly. Natasha gave a tiny frightened scream. ‘No! Quick get up! He’ll notice!’
Tom laughed and lay back on the pillows. His hair was damp, he was making wet patches.
‘No he won’t. Half the time he doesn’t even know what day it is. Come on Tash, come and lie down, just for a minute.’ She moved out of reach.
‘Not a chance! I know what “just for a minute” means. No way am I doing anything in a house I’ve broken into when the owner could come back and find me any moment.’
‘We didn’t break in,’ Tom pointed out, as if it made all the difference. ‘You’d think a man who lives next door to someone who’s just been burgled would bother to lock his kitchen window.’
‘It was a very small window. I don’t suppose he thought anyone could get in through it.’
Tom sat up and turned the damp pillow over, plumping it back into place. ‘No, well, people never do. But some of us are like cats; get one bit through a gap and the rest follows, no problem. You’re born with it, or you’re not.’
‘You make it sound like some kind of real talent, like being able to draw or play the violin.’
Tom looked angry suddenly. ‘Don’t diss it. It gets me a living. How many people who can draw a bit can say that?’ He got off the bed and stalked out of the room.
Natasha fluffed the bed back into its former neatness and looked out of the window again. She couldn’t quite see all the way to the square – there was a horse chestnut tree in full flower in the way. If Eddy really did change his routine and suddenly sauntered into the Grove they wouldn’t have long to get out of there. It had been exciting getting in. She’d felt adrenalin whizzing through her as she tiptoed across the kitchen floor, looking around her too fast to take in what was there and what wasn’t. She’d gone into the sitting room, seen that stupid bar thing Eddy had but couldn’t tell anyone who asked her now whether the front of it was covered in zebra fabric or a cowhide pattern. She’d make a lousy burglar. She’d be the type who’d struggle out of a house, staggering under the weight of an ancient worthless video machine, not having noticed the £5,000 in cash that someone had left lying on a table.
‘OK, let’s go.’ Tom was back in the room, this time with his clothes on. ‘Next time I’ll get in a bit earlier. His washing machine’s got a quick economy cycle. Very useful.’
Natasha pulled the door closed behind her, wishing she could remember whether it had been open or not. Tom smiled, reached behind and pushed it slightly ajar, adjusting the angle. ‘He wouldn’t have left the cat shut in.’
‘I didn’t think of that. I’m rubbish at this.’ Natasha giggled, relieved to be on her way off the premises. ‘You didn’t … it wasn’t you who did the house next door, was it?’ she queried, suddenly anxious. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t ask.’
Tom stopped halfway down the stairs, just behind her. He pulled her back against his body and whispered into her hair, ‘Hey, look at me. Am I taking anything from this place? Have I got Eddy’s guitars stashed up my tee shirt? Any of his whisky supply? And it would be so easy.’
Natasha’s heart was thumping again. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t let him see that somewhere in the back of her mind she was wondering about stray credit cards, a watch maybe. It wasn’t as if she’d say anything to anyone, she just wanted to know. Or maybe she didn’t. ‘No. Sorry. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
‘You’ve got to stop thinking of it as your problem,’ Angie told Jess. At the table next to them, in the health club’s café, a pair of women with newly extended nails delicately wielded forks to tackle their lunchtime salads. They reminded Jess of small children, concentrating hard on the unfamiliar skill of dealing with cutlery.
‘But it is my problem. It’s a problem for the whole family. It’s just that Matthew doesn’t see it as one at all. He’s happier than he’s ever been, going out to play like a little boy and not a care in the world.’ She sighed and pushed away her half-eaten low-fat, no-flavour carrot cake.
Angie giggled and reached across to help herself to the abandoned cake. ‘Well I hope that’s reflected in the bedroom department. A happy man is a sexy man, I’ve always found. It’s certainly true with workmen; you can really bank on the ones who whistle on the job, as it were.’
By Angie’s reckoning then, Jess worked out, Matthew was practically singing full-scale opera. She laughed. ‘Oh yes, I’ll admit the unemployment situation hasn’t got as far as his dick.’ That was all she was willing to divulge. She wasn’t going to tell Angie that Matt had taken to sneaking up on her in the shower for a spot of mutual lathering-up, or how he’d woken her a few nights before from a deep and satisfyingly dreamy sleep in the early hours and said, ‘Do you fancy doing it in the garden? Under the stars?’ She’d pointed out that as the nights were still cold enough to shrivel a brass monkey’s balls, his own might get severely frost-nipped. ‘OK,’ he’d said, snuggling down quite contentedly to go immediately to sleep, leaving Jess with her brain revving up into pre-dawn deep worry-mode. From the back of her mind she could sense her mother’s dire warnings about All Men. ‘Never say no to your husband,’ had been more or less the extent of Jess’s sex education. ‘If you let them go wanting, they’ll go and do their wanting with someone else.’ It hadn’t meant much to Jess at the blasé know-it-all age of fourteen. The very idea of a ‘husband’ had been enough to make her grimace with scorn and flounce out of range of any further embarrassing admonitions. Now, from the position of vulnerable middle age, it was all too easy to imagine Matt, in his current state of hyper-excitement and new glee at life in general, discovering that a spot of sexual diversion would be a fun way to fill in some of this extra free time.
‘Of course your Matthew wouldn’t go off the straight and narrow,’ Angie said, making Jess sure she was reading her thoughts.
‘Wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t he?’ Jess asked. Angie’s eyes were glittery, the way they always were when sex was the subject.
‘Well … he loves you. He’s got you and the children and well … I don’t know, he looks like a man who’s happy with his life as it is.’
‘I thought he was before the day he got sacked. I’m beginning to think I was reading him all wrong all those years. I do that. I take things too literally. It’s like when it says on the menu “coffee will be served at your convenience” I immediately imagine them carrying a tray into the Ladies. Just now I feel as if I didn’t know anything. And my own job’s all up in the air. Tomorrow I’ve got to go and have a proper bra fitting so I can write about it and I’m bound to go and buy one as well. It’ll be the Selfridge’s overspend all over again. I have no discipline. It’s as if I’m pretending nothing’s changed.’
‘Oh I know, I mean once you’ve tried things on …’ Angie giggled. ‘Shall I come with you? Then you can sort of buy one by proxy instead.’ She shoved the last of the carrot cake into her mouth and said, spitting crumbs, ‘I can at least help you get used to being poor.’
The Leo was pretty quiet. Matt could see Ben eyeing the door and wondering where the punters were. Wednesday didn’t seem to be a good day for going out for lunch. Only a few couples occupied the tables, along with a scattering of office singles who were bolting down plates of pasta while reading the newspaper.
‘It’s competing with the cheap hamburger joints that’s impossible,’ Micky was saying as he gathered up the empty lager bottles from Matthew and Eddy’s table. ‘You don’t get the women with kids in if you don’t provide the tacky sort of garbage the little brats want to eat.’
‘And there’s plenty of them out there, every one a potential paying punter. It’s affluent breeding country round here and they’re all going off to Pizza Express instead of in here.’
Eddy commented, ‘The park’s full of gorgeous young nannies. I see them when I’m out with Lola’s kids. You can’t walk down the path to the pond without getting mown down by a three-wheeled jogger-buggy. And they cost.’
‘Well Burger King are putting mozzarella on their Whoppers,’ Matthew said. ‘And if they can get away with that, why don’t you try making something that will appeal to all these mothers and their children? There’s got to be some mileage in trying it.’
‘It would give us some crumpet to look at while we’re gracing the premises as well,’ Eddy chortled.
‘It could take off. You could have a chain of bars.’ Matthew was in full enthusiastic flight now. ‘All you have to do is think up daft names for the menu that would appeal to children, like, oh I don’t know, a “Pokémon patty” or a vampire sausage or something, but make sure you list what’s in it in full-on Chelsea-mummy terms. Stick in plenty of extra-virgin-drizzled sun-caressed tomatoes and a ton of basil. That always gets them going.’
‘And we’d have to do some sort of chicken nuggety thing.’ Ben leaned over the counter and joined in. ‘But make sure Mr & Ms Picky-Parent know it’s free-range, pan-fried in peanut-free oil, with organic, wholewheat-floured batter and hand-chopped herbs. We could do them a bit of rocket salad, or at least a garnish.’
‘They’d want chips. The kids, anyway.’ Eddy rubbed his portly stomach. ‘Well, and me too. I like chips.’
‘We can do chips. Those skinny French things would go down well, like the ones you get at Le Caprice,’ Matthew said.
‘We?’ Ben and Micky said together. ‘You buying in then, Matt?’ Ben asked.
‘Er, no, slip of the tongue. Anyway, are you selling?’ Micky and Ben looked at each other and then at Matt. ‘No,’ Ben said, though Matthew thought he detected a hint of uncertainty.
‘Definitely not,’ Micky added.
‘I can hear something. Matt, wake up, there’s someone in the garden.’ Jess sat up in bed and turned her left ear, the one that was more acute, towards the door.
‘Hmm?’ The sound from Matt was almost like a purr. He was smiling in his sleep, as if he wasn’t going to wake up till his thoroughly enjoyable dream was over. Jess prodded him again, harder this time, jabbing him on the shoulder. If there was someone trying to get into the house, she didn’t want to have to face him or her alone. ‘Matt, I heard someone outside. It could be a burglar.’ At last Matthew sat up, albeit reluctantly and Jess couldn’t blame him for that: however much women had achieved over the last century, no matter how far they’d come in the workplace, running their own lives, their homes, their finances, when it came to things that went bump in the night it still seemed to be more suitable to send a person well-equipped with muscle and testosterone to do the investigating and challenging.
‘What did it sound like?’ Matt whispered as he climbed out of bed and groped on the floor for his jeans. Jess didn’t hurry him. She fully sympathized with the need to face a ruthless intruder clothed rather than vulnerably dressing-gown-clad.
‘A sort of scraping noise. Rustling. Coming from the back, near the conservatory or even on it. Could someone get in, do you think?’
‘Not very likely, everything’s locked. I checked after Clarissa got done over.’
‘What about Natasha!’ Jess leapt out of bed and wrenched the door open. ‘She must be scared stiff!’ There was no way of seeing out from the attic into the back garden: on that side there were Velux windows set high in the sloping roof and only of use for counting the stars and the passing planes.
Matt laughed softly. ‘She’ll be asleep. A herd of wildebeest could race through her room and she wouldn’t stir.’
They were both at the top of the stairs now, squinting down into the darkness. Jess shivered and wrapped her arms across her front to stop herself trembling, as if her bones could be heard crashing around in her body.
Matt, silent with bare feet, walked slowly down the stairs. At the bottom, he flung the bathroom door wide open and switched the light on fast. She almost giggled: Matt had flattened himself back against the wall, reminding Jess of TV cop shows when they’re searching for the armed villain.
‘Woss goin’ on?’ A bleary-eyed Natasha appeared on the landing next to Matt, scratching at her tangled hair.
‘Your mother thought she heard something, down in the garden.’
‘Oh thanks Matt,’ Jess said. ‘“Your mother thought.” I did hear something. I’m not losing my mind.’
‘’S just the cat.’ Natasha yawned. ‘He’s on my bed. He jumped on the window ledge and I let him in. Can we all go back to bed now?’ Without waiting for a reply she went back into her room and shut the door on them. Jess heard a bad-tempered grunt as she got back into bed. Natasha had never liked having her sleep disturbed. But in the morning, Jess knew, Natasha probably wouldn’t even remember waking up.
‘That was close,’ Tom whispered into the soft downy back of Natasha’s neck. ‘Suppose they’d come in?’
‘Jeez. Dad would’ve killed you. And me too, I expect. Still, he didn’t though.’
‘Nah, not this time.’
Robin was already there. Angie and Jess could see him as they walked down from the car park. He was photographing the shopfront from the far side of the road, stopping much too often, Jess thought, to adjust his lens settings. A pair of women walking past hesitated and turned back to look at him, then across at the window display full of highly titillating underwear that he was focusing on, after which they picked up speed and practically scurried down the road.
Angie giggled. ‘You can guess what they’re thinking,’ she said, smirking. ‘Mucky perv. He really shouldn’t have worn that mack. He’s practically in dirty-old-man costume – do you think he hired it?’
‘Paula said she’d try to send a woman photographer,’ Jess said. ‘There’s no way he’s snapping at me wearing the goods.’ In fact there was no way any photo of her in any state other than fully clothed was going to appear in the magazine. ‘Oh, but sweetie …’ Paula had protested when she’d called about the arrangements, though she’d given in unflatteringly quickly when Jess had mentioned the dreaded C-word: cellulite.
Robin crossed the road as they arrived and Jess introduced Angie. He nodded perfunctorily at her and then turned to Jess. ‘I don’t know what the brief is …’ he began. Angie snorted a giggle and he glared at her, turning pink. ‘Brief, briefs!’ she explained, pointing at the shop window full of beribboned lace knickers.
Jess tried hard to keep her face composed. ‘Angie’s got a … a sense of humour,’ she explained, pretty certain he hadn’t had much experience of one of those. ‘Come on then, let’s get in and get on with it.’
‘I’ve already met the owner.’ Robin’s gloomy tone suggested it hadn’t been a happy encounter. ‘She’s let me set up just inside the door but she won’t let me go any further in, not with a camera anyway,’ he said. He sounded sulky, as if he’d been denied a treat. He probably had, Jess thought, smiling to herself.
The manager of the shop was a small, chic, well-upholstered woman who was making a careful and largely successful effort to look as if she wasn’t on the far side of retirement age. ‘Hello, I’m Olive Cutler,’ she beamed at Jess, holding out a hand that supported a diamond ring Liz Taylor wouldn’t have scorned to show off, and a pair of ornate gold bangles so heavy Jess wondered how the narrow wrist could support them.
‘Hallo. I see you’ve already met Robin, and this is Angie. I brought her along because …’ Suddenly Jess couldn’t think of a reason.
‘Because I adore underwear,’ Angie gushed. ‘It’s my absolute favourite thing.’ Olive Cutler beamed approval at Angie and then looked Jess up and down quickly and not quite so approvingly, as if measuring with her practised eyes.
‘I take it you haven’t had a proper bra fitting before?’ she said, which Jess thought was possibly rather rude of her. After all, was it that obvious? She pulled her shoulders back, and her tummy and bottom in, trying to recall the rules of perfect posture as practised by her ballet teacher so very long ago. All she could remember was something about tucking her tail in, which had made her think of putting her dollies to bed.
‘Well, not since I was pregnant,’ she conceded. The inside of the shop was like being inside a child’s jewel box. The walls were lined with deep scarlet velvet and thick curtains, with fat-fringed gold pelmets separating the sales area from the fitting rooms. The other sales assistants, a couple of black-clad young girls, looked as if they’d taken full advantage of the stock and, with shoulders back and heads erect, seemed to glory in their high, pert bosoms.
Olive Cutler led the way behind the curtains like a diva flouncing from an unsatisfactory stage. ‘Tch! Pregnant! Completely the wrong time to be fitted! With your body changing from one day to the next!’
Angie and Jess looked at each other, trying not to break into giggles. Olive held open the door of a large fitting room and they filed in.
‘Right. Let’s have a look at what you’re wearing and we’ll see what can be improved on,’ she ordered.
Obediently, Angie and Jess stripped to their bras. Angie, Jess noted, was wearing a purple and pink polka-dot satin balcony number for the occasion, causing her breasts to loom up over the fabric in a challenging manner.
‘So you don’t mind if they escape then!’ Olive commented, at last allowing herself a wry smile. Angie, daunted, flipped up her hands to protect her vulnerable body. Jess had gone for the sensible approach, wearing her plainest and most comfortable bra, a pristine white one that hadn’t yet met with a colour-run accident.
‘Well that doesn’t fit, does it dear?’ Olive’s experienced fingers tweaked at the front of Jess’s bra, pulling it free of the flesh. ‘They’re staring at the floor, aren’t they?’ Jess looked down at her front, feeling as if she’d certainly failed. ‘I’m a 34B, have been for years,’ she rallied.
Olive Cutler laughed. ‘Oh I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Never mind, we’ll sort you out. Just wait there.’
‘Aren’t you going to measure us?’ Angie suggested, with commendable bravery, Jess thought.
‘Measure?’ Olive looked as outraged as if Angie had asked for a view of her knickers. ‘We don’t measure! No need!’ And she swished out of the room and back through the curtain.
‘I hope Robin isn’t up to no good out there,’ Jess whispered – anything louder couldn’t be risked, head-mistressy Mrs Cutler might rush back in and tell them off.
‘Oh sure, he’s probably dancing about with a leopard-print thong on his head,’ Angie giggled.
Mrs Cutler returned with her arms full of multicoloured frills and lace. ‘Right, you first, seeing as you’re the reporter,’ she said to Jess. Speedily she fastened her into a primrose yellow bra that was almost entirely soft, intricate lace. ‘Gorgeous!’ was Angie’s verdict. ‘Expensive,’ Jess mouthed at her behind Olive Cutler’s back, having caught sight of a pallor-inducing price tag.
‘Too tight,’ Olive decreed. ‘Digs in across here.’ She pointed to the tiniest irregularity in the diagonal line across the front.
It took a long time: Jess and Angie were wearying of taking bras off and on. Several times Jess had been certain they’d arrived at the perfect fit only to be told, with unarguable firmness, that she was completely wrong.
‘I don’t know what they’d say in M&S if we took the entire stock into the changing room like this,’ Jess commented as the pile of underwear surrounding them on the floor grew and grew.
‘Oh you soon get the hang of what to look for, with practice.’ Olive stood back and smiled; Jess stared at her reflection in the mirror. She looked OK, she thought, more than OK in the wispy scarlet item.
‘Now that’s perfect.’ Olive tweaked at the straps and showed her how the back of the bra should be straight, not pulled out of place by them.
‘You’ll have to buy it now,’ Angie prompted, taking her turn at being fitted and making a face at being strapped into something more demure than her own purple satin.
‘I know,’ Jess agreed.
‘We do matching panties.’ Olive scented a full-set sale. ‘High cut or mini or perhaps you veer towards a string?’
‘Er high cut for me.’
‘Oh I’m a thong girl myself,’ Angie giggled. Olive Cutler gave her a look as if any doubt about that hadn’t even crossed her mind.
Robin was blushing scarlet by the time they emerged from the changing room. Olive’s two assistants were talking him through the stock, suggesting he might like to buy something ‘for a friend’ or for a ‘special occasion sir?’ With great speed and hands trembling, he photographed Jess browsing through the racks of knickers as if she was a genuine customer.
‘Psst, got anything to fit my friend here?’ Jess spun round. Matt was in the shop, accompanied by Eddy who had fluffed his hair out and was pouting, in an attempt, with no great effect, to look girly.
‘Matt, get out, will you!’
‘Interrupting your work, my precious?’ Matt leaned across a rack of sumptuous bridal basques and kissed her cheek. ‘Me and Eddy are looking for some special pulling-knickers for him, what do you think? These pink fluffy ones?’ Matt plucked them off the hanger and held them up to the over-strained crotch of Eddy’s faded jeans.
‘Oooh! Gorgeous! Do you think they’re me?’ Eddy minced round the shop, squealing and holding the marabou-edged knickers against him.
‘Er excuse me! Do you intend to buy those?’ Olive Cutler’s voice cleaved the air like a whistling axe. ‘Would you mind either purchasing or buggering orf?’ she hissed at Matt, with no decline in dignity. ‘You’re disturbing my customers.’
‘Sorry.’ Matt and Eddy stood side by side with their heads hanging, looking like naughty ten-year-olds.
‘Jesus, Matt, haven’t you got anything better to do?’ Jess asked as Olive went to ring up her purchases (well she had to buy them now, hadn’t she?) at the till.
Matthew looked up at her, puzzled. ‘Anything better? Well …’ He scratched his head. ‘Well no. I haven’t, actually.’
‘You’re completely impossible! I could get fired over this if Mrs Cutler complains to Paula!’ Jess told both men off as they left the shop and walked back to the car.
‘Yes but you love us don’t you?’ Eddy put his arm round her and crushed her against him.
‘One for me too.’ Angie snuggled up to Eddy, demanding her share of the hugs.
‘I suppose so,’ Jess admitted, squeezing Matt’s hand. In spite of him messing about she felt pretty pleased with life just for the moment: with neither the effort of a diet nor the expense and pain of surgery, she had, according to Olive Cutler’s practised eye and professional judgement, lost two inches and gained two cup sizes. Not a bad morning’s work.