Life without Neville turned out to be exhilarating for Belinda. For yes, as she soon recognized with a pang, the rats had taken one look at Linda, packed their trapeze equipment and gone. Only a whiff of sawdust remained, and the echo of a drum-rolled ‘Hup!’ Belinda wondered whether she should break the good news to Stefan; but since he’d never subscribed to the Flying Vermin Brothers in the first place, decided to let this important Linda achievement pass unmarked.
Besides, banishing imaginary rats from her employer’s alimentary canal was only one of Linda’s more rudimentary accomplishments. For, returning next day from lunch with Jorkin, she bit her lip for a minute and then admitted that she’d sacked him.
‘I’m so sorry, but the thing is, he had no ideas and no belief,’ she told an astonished Belinda, as she tied an apron over a rather smart, pale pink skirt she’d worn for the meeting. She climbed a little set of steps and started methodically sorting a kitchen cupboard and, without the least fuss or bother, slipping most of its appalling contents into an open bin-liner.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she asked, disposing of an ancient lolly-making set. ‘Sacking your agent?’
‘Not at all,’ said Belinda, almost choking with bewildered excitement. Linda had worked here for less than twenty-four hours and had already jettisoned Jorkin!
‘I just felt that the book should come first. I mean, that’s right, isn’t it? So all I said to him was that we needed an income from the Patsy Sullivan stories that wasn’t dependent on so many new titles. In other words, a push on merchandising, serialization and foreign sales. I thought that’s what you’d have said if you’d been there. I mean, it’s obvious to anybody.’
Belinda, who had never had such a smart idea in her life, agreed readily. ‘Merchandising. Obvious. Anybody.’
‘Well, that’s what I thought you’d think.’ Linda tossed a bag of old paper napkins, a cracked wooden tray and some baby-blue birthday candles into the sack. A lot of this stuff had come with the house, and Belinda had never even looked at it.
‘So you don’t mind?’
‘Far from it. I just—’
‘He didn’t see it at all. He was very obstructive. But it seems obvious to me. Verity dolls, Verity bedspreads, tiny mucking-out sets, little bales of straw at ten pounds each, curry-combs the size of your fingernail. I read a couple of the Verity books last night, just to get the feel of them, and I have to say, I think they’re very good.’
‘Do you?’ Belinda, who loved praise, wanted to ask which ones her new friend had read, but stopped herself. Despite her high-flown literary pretensions, she was exceptionally proud of the second book, A Big Day for Verity.
‘It just makes me mad that your agent can’t see we’re sitting on a gold mine.’
‘He’s quite literary,’ Belinda apologized. ‘More of a Faber poets kind of chap. There’s not much call for Christopher Isherwood mucking-out sets. I don’t suppose Jorkin has ever met anyone like you before. Who did you tell him you were, by the way?’
‘Oh, well, I hope you don’t mind,’ Linda said, ‘I sort of implied I was you.’
The shock made Belinda blink and swallow for a couple of seconds, but she managed to keep smiling. A silver cake-stand she’d received as a wedding present was tipped into the bag.
‘Didn’t Jorkin remember what I looked like?’ she ventured, at last.
‘I suppose he can’t have done.’ Linda was now mopping and dusting in the empty cupboard, turning her back. ‘Although he did say he was expecting someone in blue stockings, and was pleasantly surprised. You don’t wear blue stockings, surely, Mrs Johansson?’
‘I expect he was being unpleasantly metaphorical.’
‘Oh, I see. Anyway, what do you think?’
Belinda looked up to see the effect of Linda’s work. She felt gooey with admiration.
‘Actually, there’s something else,’ Linda continued. ‘On the subject of real stockings, he tried to put his hand on my knee, so I’m afraid to say I struck him.’
Belinda yelped. ‘You struck him?’
‘Just on the head. Only enough to knock him down. He was able to get up again and finish his spotted dick.’
‘Where were you?’
‘The club he belongs to. Begins with a G.’
‘The Garrick?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Jesus,’ said Belinda, with feeling. ‘Any people around?’
‘Yes. The place was quite full.’
‘And you said you were me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh my God.’
Neatly, Linda stepped off her little ladder, which Belinda now realized she’d never seen before. More of a surprise, however, was that the cleaning lady appeared to have tears in her eyes. What was happening?
‘I only did what I thought you’d do, Mrs Johansson,’ she protested. ‘It was all for you. But if I was wrong—’ She dabbed her eyes with a tissue, and gave Belinda a soulful look reminiscent of a chastened puppy on a biscuit-tin lid. She slumped as if her backbone had been removed.
Belinda felt stricken. Had she really sounded so disapproving? She’d only said, ‘Oh my God,’ and suddenly Linda had turned from a white tornado into a tepid drizzle.
‘You’ve already been so nice to me,’ Linda faltered. ‘So have your husband and your mother. If you want me to leave—’
As Linda sank to a chair, Belinda suddenly remembered in a wave of panic what Viv had told her: that Linda needed reassurance. Was this what she meant?
‘Don’t upset yourself, please,’ interrupted Belinda. ‘I think you’re wonderful. I’ve been thinking about how to put this without sounding drippy, but I can’t. Basically, if you were a girl at school and I were a girl at school, I’d worship you.’
‘You’re not just saying that?’ Linda’s eyes, sparkling with tears, were of the purest indigo.
‘No. Absolutely not. The fact is, I wish more than anything that I’d struck Jorkin in the Garrick. Absolutely the next best thing is you doing it for me without asking.’
‘I know I get carried away a bit,’ Linda sniffed. ‘But what sometimes people don’t realize is that I’m—’ She struggled now against her feelings, fielding the tears that suddenly rolled down her cheeks. ‘I’m completely on their side.’ She wiped her eyes and adjusted her apron. ‘So you will tell me if I do anything you’re not happy about, won’t you? Because I’ll just go. I won’t make a fuss.’
Belinda smiled reassuringly and patted Linda’s hand. She wanted to mention the expensive cake-stand; she wanted to mention that she really, really didn’t like fish. But now she knew how feeble Linda’s confidence was, now she knew how easy it was to hurt her feelings, she simply couldn’t bear to do it.
Over the next few days Jago’s genetics research led him nowhere, especially after Laurie Spink assured him personally that despite the journalistic dash and verve of the article ‘Ten Ways to Tell if Your Grandparent is a Clone’, scientifically it was less than watertight. Thus, even if Stefan exhibited all ten of the detailed tendencies, such as incontinence, deafness and a greedy appetite for cakes and puddings, the signs could not be wholly relied on.
But if the muddied waters of clone technology might take a while to clear, Jago was sure at least that Stefan was not teaching at Imperial. That lie at least was uncovered. For, over a period of three days, Stefan was observed to board a bus each morning, cross the river in approximately the right spot, but then hide away in Habitat in the King’s Road, drinking coffee and reading English-language reference books, whose pages he would mark with sticky tabs. Sometimes he had a cookie; sometimes a Danish pastry. Then he would stroll to the college in the afternoon to do part-time work as a lab assistant. And that was it, save for the bus home, and more reading. The dossier presented after a week by young Tanner, a rather supercilious graduate trainee in Features, was depressingly slim. Double-spaced, and on one side of the paper only, it still amounted to just one page.
Jago waved it irritably. ‘So what happens after six thirty?’ he demanded. They were alone in his office, and he had shut the door.
‘At home, of course,’ Tanner scoffed, and ran a hand over his fashionably shaven pate. He couldn’t think of much else to say. His ambition was to make his name one day in investigative reporting, and he couldn’t see how tracking harmless Swedes for maniac executives fitted in. Tanner’s father, chairman of the board of the Effort’s parent company, expected more for him than this.
‘All right, tell me. Did you notice anything odd about him?’
‘Mm, one thing.’
‘What?’ Jago was breathless.
‘Kept turning round. Seemed to think he was being followed.’
Jago rolled his eyes. You couldn’t bawl out Tanner, he knew that. He was too well connected. This useless boy could get him sacked. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’ve done all you can here, Tanner. Now I want you to go to Sweden.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘I want you to dig some dirt in Malmö.’
The boy sighed. ‘Do I have to? Oh, what a bore.’
‘You don’t seem hungry for this job, Tanner. I have to say that. This could be an enormous story. Impostors, cloning, Sweden, what more could you ask?’
Tanner shrugged. ‘Been offered a stint on Fashion, actually. The editor rang Daddy. It’s just that my sister is the youngest designer ever at Christian Dior, and he wants a piece on it.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Five.’
‘Damn. That’s a fucking good story! Damn.’
Tanner smirked. ‘I’ll come back to the clone, though.’
‘You will?’
It was hard for Jago to be patient with this irritating upstart, but at the same time utterly necessary.
‘Why not?’ said Tanner. ‘Where is Malmö, anyway? Sounds ghastly.’
‘No idea. Get an atlas.’
‘An atlas,’ repeated the boy. ‘Any atlas?’ He surveyed Jago’s office with the curled lip of someone who would certainly redecorate before he moved in.
‘Any atlas with Sweden in it.’
Tanner didn’t move.
‘Try the library.’
‘Right.’
He started to leave, but Jago pulled him back. ‘You haven’t breathed a word of this to anyone?’
‘Of course not.’
Tanner sighed deeply, but only when fully out of earshot. ‘What a stupid, stupid man,’ he said to himself. ‘I wonder if Daddy could do something about him?’
When Maggie finally phoned Belinda, ten days after the encounter with Noel, she interrupted a pleasant Sunday morning scene. Mother, Stefan and Linda were finishing a large, lazy breakfast while Belinda had slipped away to her study to make notes. Linda and Mother were admiring the style supplements together; Stefan basked in a dressing-gown that had been thoughtfully warmed in the airing cupboard. Occasionally, however, he popped to the window to check for lurkers with notepads.
‘What’s wrong, Stefan?’ asked Mother. ‘That’s the third time you’ve looked outside.’
‘Oh, nothing,’ he said airily. ‘There’s not a soul out there, no one to hear my prayer. Ha ha.’
Should he mention the youth who had followed him home three nights this week? Once, in the Habitat café, the strange, bald-headed boy had actually approached him and asked whether he’d just eaten a cookie or a pastry. ‘A cookie,’ he’d told him, watching the boy write it down in large fledgling shorthand. ‘With nuts.’ Since Friday, thank goodness, the boy had desisted. But when the phone rang, Stefan was still glad to see Linda answer it. It was astonishing how quickly they had all come to rely on her.
‘I’m afraid she’s working at the moment,’ she said to Maggie. ‘But I’ll be glad to help if I can. No, I’m afraid Mr Johansson is busy too.’
She replaced the receiver. ‘It was Belinda’s friend Maggie,’ she explained. ‘She rang off.’
‘Hooray,’ said the others, callously.
Any observer of this scene would have noticed that it took place in a spacious new dining room, painted a fashionable ochre, but formerly the dark, dusty book-dump that had served as Belinda’s office. For Linda had not been idle in the intervening week. Spotting that one of Belinda’s spare bedrooms was well suited for a study, she had promptly disposed of its furniture, removed its threadbare carpet, brought in a carpenter and a couple of strong lads, and gently transplanted Belinda to the first floor, where she had the benefit of better light and excellent shelves, and was permanently removed from the annoyance of the telephone. Thoughtfully, Linda installed for her a coffee-machine and a couch, and a cunning two-way baby-listening device so that Belinda could call for attention downstairs without all the bother of rising from her desk.
‘What are you working on?’ Linda asked her, every day. And Belinda would excitedly read her a bit from her analysis of Nabokov’s Despair, and Linda would marvel at Belinda’s brilliance and then bring a plate of thickly buttered muffins. No bill had been presented as yet, except for the amounts expended on equipment. Linda had decided to move in, however – an arrangement that suited everybody, especially with Mother suddenly moving in as well.
‘Look what your mother bought me!’ Linda said on the second Saturday, holding up a navy suit from Betty Jackson. ‘I’ve never had anything so beautiful! You don’t mind, Belinda? I mean, she’d have bought one for you if you’d been there. She got me this Estée Lauder foundation as well.’
‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Belinda replied. In fact, she considered it miraculous that Linda shared Mother’s interest in expensive tortured cloth and coloured, perfumed grease. It removed from herself the unbearable pressure to look smart and fashionable; it liberated a very needy (and misunderstood) aspect of her nature that hankered for elasticated waists and roomy cardigans. Here was a consequence of hiring a new cleaning lady she had certainly never anticipated when she formerly argued the cause of Mrs Holdsworth. She looked at Linda’s tight little suit and shuddered. Tight little suits induced claustrophobia in her. She wanted to rip constricting garments with gardening shears while screaming, ‘Let me out of here.’
It was now too late to tell Linda about the fish, unfortunately. But aside from the nice little trays of cod, prawns, bouillabaisse and goujons Belinda was silently tipping down the loo in between indulging in the ample and enjoyable snacks, she felt no praise was high enough for Linda. It was quite true. Wherever she had a vacuum, Linda went right ahead and abhorred it. Just like a force of nature. Linda really was, as she had said at the outset, completely on her side.
Thrown entirely into her work, moreover, Belinda was serenely happy. She had yearned all her life for such a release from daily cares, for hours on end to read and write, uninterrupted by the requirement to do anything manual, social, culinary or selfless. Ahead of her stretched an endless string of Virginia Woolf’s pure and rounded pearls. Viv phoned; she was told nothing about it. Maggie phoned; ditto. Belinda honestly didn’t care. Linda took care of breakfast, dinner, tea and sympathy. And what a bonus that she seemed to enjoy it! Belinda had always felt guilty at making Mrs Holdsworth do the housework; with Linda, she felt she was doing her a favour; she was helping Linda to be fulfilled simply by accepting everything she did.
Meanwhile, Linda also continued to show astonishing initiative. For example, after a week, a woman from the Today programme on Radio 4 phoned, asking Belinda to take part in a short discussion about making scenes in public places (the Garrick story had spread). But, blissfully secluded upstairs, Belinda knew nothing whatever about it.
‘What shall I do?’ Linda whispered to Mother, with the receiver pressed against her chest. ‘Exposure is useful to a writer, isn’t it?’
Mother made a noise. A sort of ‘tch’. ‘Belinda always says no to that sort of thing. She won’t even do book signings. If you ask me, she has a horror of the mob.’
‘No,’ agreed Linda, ‘I don’t suppose she’d do it.’
She pulled a face at Mother, who suddenly had an idea. ‘You do it, Linda.’
‘Me?’
‘In my opinion, you’ll do it better than she would. Besides, it was you who hit Jorkin.’
So Linda agreed. And the next morning, without mentioning it to Belinda, went by BBC car to Broadcasting House and by general consent acquitted herself magnificently.
Not expecting visitors, since none had come in fifteen years, Mrs Holdsworth was surprised when Viv Ripley came to see her on the second Friday. Viv had heard Linda on the Today programme and been outraged. She had tried to phone Belinda six times. ‘They said she was Belinda on the radio!’ she explained to Jago. ‘She’s impersonating Belinda on the public airwaves! She’s only been working there a week and look what she’s done!’
‘No, I’m not. I care about my friend.’
‘You’re not just sore Linda left?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Yes, you are. You’re jealous as hell. Giving up your job was insane.’
So she had sought out Mrs Holdsworth, and was now taking tea with that lady in her council flat in Battersea, where the smell of boiled sprouts filled the room to a height of five feet. Viv discovered that if you stood up and tipped your head back you could, in fact, inhale air smelling of something else. But unfortunately you couldn’t spend a whole visit pretending to admire the Artex swirls on the ceiling.
‘So, if you still have access to the house, Mrs Holdsworth,’ she said, ‘you could see what Linda is getting up to. I would pay you handsomely.’
‘How handsomely’s that, then?’ Mrs H, sitting down, lit a Dunhill menthol from a flat green box, an accessory curiously out of keeping with her general eschewal of all things debonair.
‘Fifty pounds now, and fifty more when you’ve reported back. Just think. You could buy a new scarf straight away.’
Mrs Holdsworth looked offended. ‘What’s wrong with my fucking scarf?’
‘Nothing at all. I just meant you might like another one.’ Viv felt she wasn’t getting anywhere. She tried a new tack. ‘I’ll come clean with you, Mrs Holdsworth. I am not only Belinda’s concerned friend, I am also Linda’s probation officer.’
The old woman took a deep drag on the cigarette, and narrowed her eyes. Viv was indeed a much better liar than Jago. The woman was wavering.
‘Bleeding probation officers don’t give you fifty quid.’
‘Linda is a dangerous woman, Mrs Holdsworth. Surely you noticed?’
‘I’ll tell you what, she unplugged my Hoover.’
‘Exactly.’
And so it was Sunday morning now. The Johanssons were happy in their well-organized new home; Jago and Viv were scarcely speaking; Mrs Holdsworth was boiling sprouts; and in Malmö, Ingrid Johansson watched the horizon through a barred window, and hummed tunelessly. Meanwhile Maggie was sitting grimly in her flat with the curtains closed while Noel rang her doorbell and rapped at the letterbox. The fateful role-playing moment had clearly arrived.
Rap, rap. Ring, ring. Rap. Ring.
‘It’s me,’ he called. Rap, rap. ‘It’s Leon!’
Maggie curled her feet under her, and tried to concentrate on Bridget Jones’s Diary. She grimaced and put it down. It was a book she never could get on with somehow. She’d had it open at the same page for three solid years.
‘Open up,’ continued Noel, cheerfully. ‘I know you’re in there. Nyow, nyow!’
‘Piss off!’ she shouted.
She had decided to have nothing to do with this experiment of Noel’s. Let her problem take twenty years to sort out; Noel’s short-sharp-shock technique was all too clearly a smokescreen for base motives. ‘Full transference’ was what he wanted from Margaret, he said. It was an ominous phrase. Call her a weary old cynic who’d been sleeping around too long, but she felt sure the energetic exchange of body fluids would be bound to come into the full-transference process somewhere.
‘Go away, I’m reading Bridget Jones’s Diary,’ she called. ‘I happen to have located a very funny bit, actually.’
But he knocked and rang until her patience ran out and she opened the door – only to be flattened by the full whirlwind force of Noel’s impersonation. Despite herself, Maggie was impressed. The only time she’d seen anything like it was at a Stanislavsky summer school, when the group had been advised to imagine themselves as experiencing nuclear fission while at the same time taking barbiturates.
‘Did you miss me?’ he said, bursting through the door in a cataract of luggage. Kicking a suitcase across the room, he plonked down a flight bag, a duty-free carrier, a lap-top briefcase and a large fluffy toy in the shape of a red racing car. ‘Present from Oshbosh. Do you like it?’
He sat down, ran a hand through his hair, and gave her a wide grin. She had to hand it to Noel. As an act, it was terrifyingly good. The toy had a price in dollars on it, and there were old, dog-eared Grand Prix stickers on the suitcase. Stanislavsky would have wept with joy. She suddenly remembered how huge Leon was – the man now perched awkwardly on her sofa was, like Leon himself, constructed on far too big a physical scale for her flat. His legs were twin telegraph poles. His shoulders under his leather jacket were like beach balls. She expected her furniture to crumple under his weight, like a child’s chair under a gorilla. She eyed a bowl of fruit on the coffee table, and prayed he wouldn’t peel himself a miniature banana.
‘Look, I know I wasn’t great,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve come to make it up to you. The truth is, I’ve been thinking about you all week long at Oshbosh, I couldn’t get you out of my mind.’
Maggie pursed her lips. Yes, it was a good act. He looked like Leon and sounded like Leon, and even dressed like Leon. There was just one problem: this speech of devotion wasn’t remotely reminiscent of Leon’s personality.
‘Why don’t you say something?’ he asked. He grabbed the duty-free bag and produced a bottle of Cognac. ‘For you,’ he said.
Maggie frowned as she took the bottle. When did she tell Noel about the Cognac? Leon had finished it off without asking, and said, ‘I’ll buy you another one.’ But she hadn’t remembered it until now.
‘Tell you what,’ she said at last, hardly able to look at him, ‘how about you go away and leave me alone?’
He looked wounded. ‘Oh, come on, Maggie. I said I was sorry.’ He crossed his enormous legs and hugged his arms across his enormous chest. Was he wearing padding?
‘Hey, I can’t have been that bad.’
‘I mean you,’ she said firmly.
‘What?’
‘Just go,’ she said. Her histrionic gesture towards the door was somewhat undermined by the big red fluffy racing car she clutched to her chest, but she still meant it. ‘I’m flattered you should go to all this bother. But honestly, just go.’
He gathered his things sullenly, hunching his shoulders protectively, like a bear who’d been smacked on the nose. He had to stay true to character, she supposed. She felt quite sorry for him.
‘Look, I’m off for a month of stuff,’ he said, as he gathered his things. ‘Boxing in Las Vegas, tennis in Germany, basketball in Sweden. Can I call you sometime? Or when I’m back? I’d really like to.’
‘I can’t stop you,’ said Maggie. Noel was a very cruel person, she was realizing. When you know how needy for affection a person is, you shouldn’t tease them this way.
‘Look, I really like you,’ he blurted. ‘I think I love you.’ He touched her arm.
‘Don’t.’
He cupped his hand and moved it to her shoulder. Then he stroked her face. ‘You’re lovely,’ he said. ‘I never met anyone like you.’
‘Don’t,’ she whimpered.
‘Why?’
‘You’re very hard, Maggie. Come to Malmö in March.’
‘Oh please, stop it. How can they play basketball in Malmö in March? They’d slip over on the ice.’
‘Basketball is indoors, Maggie.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
He left at last, and she watched him hail a taxi. ‘Wandsworth, the Arndale Centre,’ he told the driver, even though she knew Noel and Julia lived in the opposite direction, in Kennington. She admired his thoroughness, but was so pleased to see the back of him that when she returned indoors she fell straight asleep.
‘You’re putting on weight,’ observed Mother, that Sunday afternoon. ‘That’s no way to keep a husband, if you don’t mind me saying so. Don’t you want to watch The Clothes Show with us?’
‘No thanks,’ said Belinda. She’d been lying on her new couch reading a biography of Hans Christian Andersen and eating a Mars bar. A bag of mini Twixes was at her side. From outside, she could feel the reassuring tremble of the commuter trains as they thundered through the cutting at the end of the road. Her blanket was warm, and she was horizontal in the middle of the afternoon. She had never been happier in her life.
‘Doesn’t Linda do a lovely shark with peppercorns?’ Mother asked. She looked mildly alarmed at the memory of it, but then she always did.
‘Mm.’
‘What was it you cooked for me the last time I was here? Baked beans on something?’
‘Baked beans on cream crackers. You know very well.’
‘That’s right. You’d run out of bread!’
Belinda tried to keep reading, but Mother hadn’t finished with her yet. ‘Linda’s cleaned the bathroom floor. Did you know it was green under all that?’
‘No. Look, is there something in particular?’
‘No, no. Just to say brill with kumquats tomorrow.’
‘Great.’
‘Brill,’ Mother repeated. ‘Whoever would have thought it in your house?’
She went away, and Belinda rearranged herself under the blanket. Hans Christian Andersen’s story ‘The Shadow’ had been the original inspiration for her book – a story so troubling that she had never been able to forget it. It concerned a scholar from a grey north European country who took a holiday in Italy and discovered for the first time that his shadow had a personality. At midday it crouched near his feet; in the evening it stretched and lengthened and enjoyed itself. Then, one night, the scholar stood on his balcony and saw the shadow projected against the shutters of the house opposite. What if my shadow could go inside? he thought. Go on, shadow!
Of course, the shadow detaches itself, and the scholar goes home without it. But years later the shadow returns – now accomplished and worldly, standing upright, with its own clothes and jewellery, but unable to put on much weight. The scholar is helpless as the shadow takes over his life, forcibly swaps identities with him, and finally orders his execution. Belinda’s theory was that the story fell into a parental pattern – it was about the essential shock of parenthood. You give children your blessing to go off and leave you, to learn more than you ever did, and the next thing you know, they’re telling you what to do. Power abruptly transfers to the child. Or doesn’t, of course, if you’ve got a mother like Virginia, who remembers an innocent baked-bean supper catastrophe for the rest of her natural life.
Linda brought her a sticky toffee pudding, and some homemade biscuits for later. She also topped up Belinda’s coffee machine.
‘Thank you, Linda,’ she said, without moving. ‘You’re a marvel. Mother says the bathroom floor is green. They should give you an archaeology award. You should also get a medal for being the first person of my acquaintance that my mother approves of.’
Linda smiled weakly, but merely gathered some crockery and turned to go. At which point, with a shock like a punch to the stomach, Belinda noticed there were tears in her eyes again.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’ She could scarcely breathe. The effect of these tiny drops of moisture was devastating. ‘Is there something wrong, Linda?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve discovered something so upsetting about you that I’ll have to leave.’
‘No,’ Belinda gasped. ‘About me?’
All the guilty secrets she’d ever had whirled into her mind. The sin of stopping an ice-cream van once in childhood, when not wanting an ice-cream, had given her sleepless nights until she was thirty years old, but she’d always known that, crime-wise, this incident was rather small potatoes to anybody with an ounce of mature perspective.
‘When I think of all the things I was preparing to do for you,’ Linda said, ‘it makes me feel like a fool. Did you know I’d agreed to do the Late Review for you on Thursday? No, I thought not. I’ve been reading an Updike novel and I’ve seen a play with lots of swearing in it at the Royal Court, and – and – and now this.’
‘Now what?’
Linda’s chin was wobbling again.
Belinda put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Please, tell me. What have I done?’
‘Mr Johansson just told me—’ She sniffed. ‘He told me—’
‘What?’
‘That you don’t like fish.’
Belinda yelped with laughter.
‘It’s not funny,’ Linda snapped.
‘Yes it is. Oh Linda—’ She reached to touch her, but Linda stiffened. Her jaw jutted out. ‘The point is, you lied to me, Belinda. I’ve given you lots of fish because it’s good for the brain, and you didn’t tell me that you didn’t like it, and you swore you’d tell me if I did anything you didn’t like. You swore. But now I find this out, and I know you must have been laughing at me, and now you’re laughing at me again. I’m just so disappointed in you, I feel as if you’ve stuck a dagger in a baby’s heart.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, so am I.’
‘Don’t go.’
‘How can I trust you now? You might say you’re pleased I’ve set up a deal with a toy company, but really you disapprove. I couldn’t bear that.’
‘Have you set up a deal with a toy company?’
‘Not yet. I’ve got a meeting on Wednesday. But what’s the use in me carrying on if you can let us both down like this?’
Belinda made a decision. Being browbeaten by your cleaning lady on such a trivial matter was ridiculous. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I do like fish.’
‘What?’
‘Stefan was mistaken. I told him about a nightmare I had once, which did put me off for a while because I was wading through a pond with fish nibbling my legs. But in fact I adore fish and could eat it every day.’
Linda melted. Such a simple lie, but completely effective. ‘You’re not just saying that?’
‘As if.’
‘I couldn’t bear it if you were just saying it to appease me.’
‘No, no. Brill and kumquats, yum-yum. That’s what I say.’
‘Do you swear that you like fish? There must be something you don’t like? You can tell me.’
Belinda knew this was her last chance to mention shellfish, the mere sight of which set her stomach in a spasm, but she didn’t believe Linda’s assurances any more. She could not tell Linda that she abhorred langoustine, or that crab claws made her vomit. The woman might threaten to walk out again, calling her a Judas. ‘No, I love it all,’ she pronounced.
‘Octopus?’
‘Yep.’
‘Eels?’
‘Fab.’
Linda visibly relaxed. She had forced Belinda to lie extravagantly about a love of seafood. And, for some reason that Belinda could not fathom, this evidently counted as a triumph.
Fifteen minutes after Noel left Maggie’s, the doorbell rang.
‘Oh God, he’s come back,’ said Maggie, as she went to answer it.
‘It’s me again, Leon,’ said the man outside, holding a very small bunch of daffodils. ‘I wondered if you’d like to come out for a drink.’
‘Oh my God,’ she said. It was indeed Leon again. But the trouble was, it wasn’t the Leon who had called earlier. He was smaller and brainy-looking.
‘Where did you get that dreadful phallus?’ he asked her.
Looking down, she realized she’d been absently hugging the Oshbosh car. ‘Didn’t you just give it to me?’ she queried.
But she knew he hadn’t. This was quite obviously Noel, and his impersonation was terrible.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ he said. ‘Really, Margaret, if you don’t go along with this, how’s it ever going to work?’