Bella sat on the end of Molly’s bed and picked up the old toy polar bear. The poor grubby thing was flattened from years of being slept on. Having a sudden fast-forward, Bella imagined herself tucking this soft toy into Molly’s bed when the girl was away on gap-year travels. With Alex already away at university most of the time, this was going to be a lonely echoing house a year or so from now.
‘The thing is, Molly …’ Bella began, as Molly had been dreading since the Giles incident. This was not a discussion either of them wanted to have, but both had known it had to happen. Molly had been playing a crafty game of avoidance ever since Bella had walked in on her and Giles, but now, cornered on her own territory, there was no escape. She sat cross-legged on top of her pillows, as effortlessly supple as only the under-twenties can be, computer balanced across her flat-down thighs and a trapped expression on her face. She looked swiftly at the door the moment her mother sat down, considering the hopeless logistics of making a run for it.
‘OK, OK, Mum, I know! Please – we really don’t have to go there!’
Before Bella could say anything more, Molly put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. Her hands had the skinny sleeves of her pink top pulled over them, so her finger-ends poked out like little stubs. A current fashion thing, Bella recognized, the same way Moll and her friends all seemed to have their hair parted a mere few centimetres over their left ears and mussed up to a straight-from-bed look, though in Molly’s case it often was exactly that, no effort required. Bella had a flashback to Molly as an underweight baby, so delicately tiny at less than five pounds that everything she wore during the early months had sleeves that swamped her twiggy arms and she’d be constantly punching fists at fabric, battling to get her hands out into the air. Why did it seem like only ten minutes ago that Bella wondered if Molly would ever outgrow her wicker cradle? How did she so quickly become this long, leggy teenager who was all huge grey eyes and pout? And hormones …
‘No, I think we have to go there, Molly. You know I’m pretty liberal – Giles is welcome to stay overnight here whenever you like. Obviously I wouldn’t be happy if you were bringing home boy after boy … but …’
‘Mum! Just stop! This is like sooooo embarrassing?’ Molly was giggling, but she was blushing as well.
Bella could feel her own mouth twitching too. The mother-daughter having the boys-staying-over talk – it was a classic toe-curler, though on the plus side Molly wasn’t that far off eighteen and generally pretty sensible. Far worse would be having this conversation with an easily exploited sixteen-year-old.
‘Yes, it is a bit, isn’t it?’ Bella couldn’t disagree. ‘But let me just say one thing … It wasn’t what you were doing with Giles, you know that. You’re old enough to make your own decisions there.’
‘I know, I know … It was the your bed thing.’ Molly groaned into her hands that now covered her pink face. ‘I’ve already apologized for that. And I’ve washed and ironed all the sheets and things and put them all away.’
‘Well actually it wasn’t really that either,’ Bella continued. ‘Not entirely. Obviously I wasn’t exactly delighted, being completely travel-whacked and bloody amazed to see you at all. I do think my private space should be respected, so please don’t do it again. But I mean, really if you want to sleep with Giles, fine. Your sex life is your own business. He’s a lovely boy and so long as you’re careful …’ (More groans from Molly. Bella was almost beginning to think this was fun. How to torture your teen …) ‘No, what upset me was that you’d lied to me. Simple as that. You said you couldn’t go to stay with your father in Edinburgh because you were going to a party at Carly’s and you would be staying there. But that wasn’t true, was it? I really need to be able to trust you, Moll.’
Molly emerged from behind her hands. ‘Oh God, now you’re doing “disappointed”. I knew you would – you know that’s the one that gets to me.’ Her eyes started to look wet. ‘Why can’t you be like other mums and just say Giles is banned from the house and that I’m grounded or something?’
‘Is that what they’d say? Really? But you’re almost a legal adult.’ Bella felt puzzled. Was she too lenient? She wasn’t quite on a level with her own mother, who had made it perfectly clear (gleefully so) from the day Bella turned sixteen that the safest place for her daughter to have sex was in her own home. As parents went, Shirley was a bit of a one-off in that respect, because even in the easy-going 1980s, everyone else’s parents had seemed to be reliably old-fashioned in quite a comforting way: boyfriends in the house were to be kept to public family spaces at all times. Some daughters even had to be in by midnight, after which the doors to hell opened and late-night sinners would hurtle straight to damnation.
Bella remembered telling Jules on the school bus that she was allowed to have boys to stay overnight if she wanted to, and both had recoiled into horrified giggles at the very idea. All their friends had thought the idea completely gross too. No teenager wanted to have the parental seal of approval on their sex life. It would ruin the whole thing. Where was the thrilling secrecy? The rebellion?
The overly liberal attitude completely put Bella off taking any boy up to her room, even for an innocent conversation with them, knowing Shirley would be just the other side of the wall. She would be sure to be listening in and barely able to stop herself barging in before any possible action, with an exotic condom selection on a tray and then with tea and brandy only seconds after all was over. And imagine, as she and Jules had, breakfast the next morning. Shirley asking if they’d slept well … What a disappointment Bella must have been, boyfriends kept forever on the pavement side of the front gate; no devious questioning answered, no contraception advice sought. Her mother’s determined liberalism had surely been a factor in keeping Bella a virgin till she was nearly twenty. Or maybe that had been the idea – in which case, what a neat and sneaky double bluff.
‘But I did go to Carly’s. I was going back to stay there too, um … later … and it’s not as if … I mean you did come back a bit early.’
‘OK … look, it’s all right. We’ll leave it there.’ Bella propped the bear up against the end bars of the bed. He flopped down, exposing a ragged back foot where Molly had sucked it nightly when she’d been a toddler. ‘Just – honesty, that’s all I ask, Moll.’
‘Er … and that works both ways?’ Molly, safely off the hook, rallied quickly with something to say.
‘Of course it does. Why? I haven’t told you any lies.’
‘Right. So what about that Rick bloke? You said he was divorced and he like, wasn’t? Did you know? Truly?’
‘Molly, trust me, the first I knew of his wife still being on the scene was when she was standing outside the hotel room telling me I looked rubbish in black, OK?’
Molly smiled. Bella felt touched – it looked like womanly sympathy.
‘Poor Mum – what a cow!’ Molly said. ‘But you know, she might have a point. Black’s a bit harsh on you … Oooowwww!’ The bear hit her on her left ear and her shrieky giggle was joined by the sound of the doorbell downstairs.
‘I’ll go – it’s probably Alex, forgetting his key,’ Bella said.
Shirley looked worryingly wrong, somehow, very much not herself, standing on Bella’s doorstep clutching her vintage crocodile bag in one hand and a small suitcase on wheels (another one – was this house becoming a Terminal Five outpost?) in the other. She looked smaller, older. Her hair seemed wildly wispy and uncombed instead of the usual immaculate blow-dry, her blue patent shoes were scuffed and her orange paisley silk scarf definitely didn’t go with her flouncy red cotton coat. Was she ill?
‘Mum – come on in! Did you phone earlier? I didn’t know you were coming. Was there a message I missed?’
‘No, well, I didn’t know I was coming either, not till just earlier when I decided it was for the best.’ Shirley bustled into the hallway, parked the case at the bottom of the stairs and clicked its handle down with one well-practised flick of the wrist. She then strode briskly into the big kitchen and flopped with unusual inelegance on to the old leather sofa, her legs at don’t-care angles. Bella felt worried. Shirley’s posture was habitually of the finishing-school type. On a low sofa such as Bella’s saggy kitchen one, that should mean knees together with ankles crossed and slanting prettily to the left.
‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I needed to get away. Tea, darling, please? Or possibly something stronger?’ Shirley’s fingers twitched at the fringe of the old plaid throw on the sofa arm. Fidgeting was something else she didn’t normally do.
‘Er … well …’ Bella looked at the cuckoo clock over the Aga. It was doing its preparatory whirring, ready to spring out and tell them it was ten o’clock. Morning not evening, though it would be a very special plastic cuckoo that could tell the difference.
‘I suppose it’s never too early for a Bloody Mary,’ Bella murmured, opening the fridge, snatching out of her memory a drink that she could faintly justify at such a time. Her late father had been a drinker. Shirley had divorced him when Bella was nine and he’d reached the stage when he needed Scotch before breakfast to steady the trembling. That sort of memory made you wary of odd-hours alcohol.
‘No, no, not vodka! Nasty sly stuff. I like something you can taste, then you know you’ve had it. Pour a slug of brandy into a coffee for me, please darling. That’ll hit the spot.’
‘OK,’ Bella started as soon as her mother was a few sips into the brandy-laced coffee, ‘but why is there a spot that needs an alcohol hit at this time of the morning? You look a bit as if you’ve seen a whole castleful of ghosts.’
Shirley began to seem somewhat revived as the coffee and brandy kicked in. She patted her hair into place, her hand hesitant as if suddenly realizing she’d forgotten to comb it. This, Bella was worried to recognize, was probably true.
‘What must I look like?’ Shirley murmured. ‘I just wondered, Bella, if it would be all right for me to come and stay for a week or so. Just till … Well, just till.’
‘Till what? What’s happened? Is there something wrong with your flat? Have you got the men in again?’ Shirley was a great one for redecoration and her apartment – in a smart enclave purpose-built for well-off retirees – was forever being painted in some newly fashionable shade from a range of whites and neutrals. The changes were often so subtle that Bella really couldn’t tell the difference between the pre- and post-painting stage. ‘No wonder your wardrobe is such a hit and miss botch-up of colour,’ Shirley had said, the last time Bella failed to comment on the hallway’s colour change from Dairy to String. ‘You have no instinct for the tonal nuance at all!’
‘No. No decorators, not just now. I’ve … er … the thing is I’ve been – oh this is so silly!’ Shirley laughed lightly, finishing her coffee in one swift gulp. Bella topped it up from the pot and added another – but smaller – slug of brandy. She wondered if she should have one as well – this was going to be bad news, she could tell.
‘I’ve been arrested.’ Shirley managed to get the words out at last.
‘Arrested? Good grief, whatever for?’
‘Who’s been arrested?’ Molly strolled into the kitchen carrying an armful of her laundry. She dropped items as she headed for the utility room, leaving tiny, bright knickers strewn across the walnut floor like collapsed bunting on a yacht’s deck.
‘I have,’ Shirley admitted. ‘For shoplifting.’
‘Wow! Will you get an ASBO? Cool!’
Shirley laughed, cheered by her granddaughter’s admiring approval.
‘But … how come you were shoplifting?’ Bella asked, mystified. She was trying to work out whether it would be a better thing if this was a deliberate turning to crime or an accidental lapse of memory. For the sake of her mother’s sanity, she found herself coming down firmly in favour of the first option. Please, she thought, let it just be a new but short-lived hobby.
‘Oh it was all just a stupid mistake!’ Shirley looked a lot better now, almost as if she were enjoying herself. Bella suspected she probably was. ‘I tried on two dresses, bought one, and accidentally walked out of the store wearing the second one. That’s all. I simply forgot to change back into my own clothes. But they made me so cross! There was this ridiculous bossy woman in the security office, wearing one of those badges that make people feel important. She kept asking me if it was my age. If it was a lapse. And she kept calling me “my dear” as if I was some frail old thing in my dotage. I told her I was not her “dear”. And I absolutely didn’t have lapses. I was insistent on that! So then the police came and I’ve been charged with theft.’
‘Aaagh! Mum! Didn’t you think maybe she was trying to help you get off the hook? If you’d played the slightly forgetful card you would have been able to hand the dress back and simply go home.’
‘Bella! Are you mad? When you get to my age you’ll understand. Don’t you realize I’d rather be banged up in Holloway with a bunch of tarts and junkies than even pretend I’m going senile? It would be tempting fate.’
‘Good on you, Gran. Don’t let them push you into old-age madness.’ Molly plonked herself heavily down on the sofa next to Shirley. A small cloud of dust and cat fur flew up around them, brightly lit in the sun’s rays through the sloped glass roof.
‘But the price of not being pushed into dementia is that you’ll have to go to court and go through a trial and all the trauma that goes with it. Wouldn’t it have been worth playing the part to get away with it? I mean, it’s not as if you meant to steal it.’ Bella truly hoped not, anyway. Maybe next time she went over to Shirley’s she’d sneak a look in that massive triple wardrobe she had. Possibly there’d be any number of designer frocks in there, labels still on, security tags attached.
‘Oh, it won’t be that bad,’ Shirley laughed. ‘I’m pleading guilty. So much easier. I’ll tell them I absolutely didn’t intend to steal, but clearly I did it and I’ll apologize and let them do their worst. So you see, Bella, I just wanted to get away for a few days … well, it’ll be in the local paper this week and I decided I could do without the whole neighbourhood clacking around my door. Small-town Surrey doesn’t have a lot of excitement. Even the resident rock stars spend all their time on the golf courses. I know what it’ll be like; people will be dropping in to “sympathize”. I’ll have Lois Dobbs from opposite, knocking on the door with a Victoria sponge and a demand to confide. Well, I don’t want to.’ Shirley’s gung-ho mood suddenly evaporated, and she glanced out of the window at the garden as if already anticipating missing green outdoor spaces from a bleak prison cell.
‘Look – I don’t know a lot about the law,’ Bella said. ‘But I do know that if you plead guilty to shoplifting, you’re saying you absolutely did intend to do it. Premeditated, all that.’
‘That’s right, Gran. We did it at school,’ Molly chipped in. ‘You have to have meant to permanently deprive the shop of the goods. And you didn’t. So you have to say not guilty.’
‘No!’ Shirley was adamant. ‘If I say it was unintentional, it’ll drag on for months. And … and …’ She looked down at the rug fringe that she was playing with again and almost whispered, ‘There’ll be … medical reports.’
There was silence for a while, then Shirley said, ‘When you get to my age, you’ll understand that whatever the cost, you’d rather be found bad than mad.’
Oh, the relief of getting away for an evening’s respite from the problems that were collecting inside the house like a slowly gathering swarm. Bella went out just after eight, leaving Molly and Shirley exchanging opinions about padded bras as they finished supper together. Shirley was of the view that Molly should ‘maximize her assets’, as she put it, and Molly was saying she couldn’t be doing with underwiring and having a cleavage to flaunt. ‘I like my male friends to look at my face when they talk to me,’ she said, reasonably enough.
‘Ah, but what about the ones you’d like to be more than friends with?’ was Shirley’s argument. Bella, leaning on the bus shelter and fishing her Oyster card out of her bag, wondered if her mother was really suitable company for Molly. She’d have the girl looking at the Myla website within minutes of Bella’s absence, and be offering her nipple tassels and a feather-handled riding crop for her eighteenth birthday.
The River Fox garden wasn’t busy for a warm September weeknight. Some of the writers were already there and had dragged three of the long outdoor tables together in a row, bagging plenty of space for the group. The Thames – at mid-tide – was moving sluggishly and with a faint late-summer sheen of blue algae on it. A posse of Canada geese wandered on the garden’s grass, boldly demanding crisps from customers who were more scared of the birds than of the Please Don’t Feed The Geese notice that was up on the fence.
Jules – whose frequent poetry-competition wins well qualified her for the group – was there with Dina and Phyllida. Phyl wrote hugely successful historical thrillers under two different names and Dina taught creative writing at the local adult education college, was undertaking a very slow PhD in the subject, and had had a novel (ground-breaking, according to Dina) on the go for a good three years. Bella tended to avoid Dina, as any conversation usually ended with Dina denouncing all popular contemporary fiction as ‘mindless rubbish’, and with Bella pointing out that as writing was a full-time career for some people, it could be useful to write what people actually like to read.
‘I didn’t know you were coming tonight; you should have called, I’d have given you a lift.’ Jules broke away from the beginnings of an argument about the role of literary agents. She was sitting at the table with a glass of lemonade and a bag of pork scratchings. ‘I saw your mother arrive at your place earlier and thought you must be staying in with her. Or possibly going out with her.’
‘I wasn’t sure I was coming either, but once I decided, I definitely didn’t want to bring the car. I so need this drink.’ Bella climbed on to the bench seat beside Jules, getting a sharp splinter in her calf and spilling the top inch of her glass of wine in the process. (‘Small or medium?’ the barman had asked. ‘Large,’ Bella had snapped, before apologizing. It wasn’t his fault that she could soon be borderline bankrupt and homeless.) ‘These stupid tables,’ she murmured, pulling the wood out and dabbing at the tiny spot of blood that was left. ‘But … sometimes you just have to get away. It’s been a tricky few days. James has turned up and wants us to sell the house.’
‘Bleed’n’ ’ell!’ Jules spluttered her lemonade. ‘Has he not noticed that you live in it? Can he force you to sell?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve lived there on my own with the kids for over ten years since he left … but it seems that might count for nothing, because on paper it’s still half his. He hasn’t contributed at all though, so I’ll have to find out where I stand legally.’ Bella sipped her drink. ‘I suppose I should have seen it coming. This week, I’m feeling I should have seen a lot of things coming.’ She smiled at Marcus, who was joining the table with his wife Sally; the two of them were scriptwriters, working together on a follow-up to a successful sitcom series. Both had short floppy fair hair with overlong fringes and wore striped tops – Sally’s a Boden Breton, Marcus’s a cheery pink and white – with jeans. Was that what happened when you worked, lived and raised your children so very closely together, Bella wondered, the same way dogs and their owners start to look alike?
‘Things not going well?’ Phyllida chipped in. ‘Is it deadline hell for you right now?’
‘No – I finished a book a while back, thanks Phyl. I’m halfway through the next one. No, it’s just … well, home stuff. Everything going wrong at once.’
Phyl chinked her glass against Bella’s. ‘Well, you’re away from it tonight, my darling. Out among friends – you can leave all that stuff behind. And well done on the deadline thing. I live in constant battle with it.’
‘Goodness, don’t you churn them out! You and Phyllida both!’ Dina exclaimed. ‘Isn’t that more than one a year? But then of course …’
‘Yes, two a year,’ Bella told her. ‘But my Orchard Girls books are for a series, which makes it easier as I already know the characters. And it’s not as if I have to do much of the creating. For these big series, the plot decisions are made at editorial level and we writers just do a form of colouring in.’
‘Of course, you’re writing for the young. Remind me, what’s the age group you’re aiming at? And it’s essentially romance, isn’t it?’
‘About eleven to whatever age, really. There is an element of romance, but it’s very tame and safe. Girls get to that love-curiosity stage at such a wide age range,’ Bella explained, thinking at the same time about the word Dina had used: ‘churn’. Hard work, churning. The word reminded her of Tess of the D’Urbervilles as a milkmaid. Making butter would have given her wonderfully muscly arms.
‘So I suppose for them you’re a kind of jump-off point, leading them on to the chick-lit and bodice-ripper stage later!’ Dina laughed. Bella didn’t.
‘Oh come on now, Dina, surely anything that gets them reading has to be good?’ Phyl interrupted.
‘Well, within reason. But by eleven, of course, there’s C. S. Lewis and any amount of quality literature. I swear by Treasure Island, myself. Now that is adventure,’ Dina half conceded. ‘But don’t get me wrong! I do admire you, Bella – you do all that and the journalism too.’ Somehow Bella didn’t feel remotely admired. Dina was looking at her as if she was from another planet. Planet Chav, at a guess. So, she wrote about feisty adventurous young teens. So, when you put it like that, did Jacqueline Wilson. And J. K. Rowling. Both responsible for getting a whole generation of children absolutely besotted by books. It couldn’t be bad.
‘So how about you, Dina?’ Bella asked brightly. ‘Thesis all done?’
‘Gosh no!’ Dina laughed. ‘It’s a painstaking process! And of course the novel is only part of it. I’m at the stage of battling with the demons of character purity. It’s all terribly Chekhovian. My mentor has hinted about the Costa prize, but of course that’s way in the future!’ Dina pushed back her long mane of hennaed frizz and took off her glasses, rubbing the lenses vigorously on her long purple skirt. ‘I don’t expect to get a final draft worked in under another couple of years.’
‘Is your editor OK with that?’ Jules asked. ‘And what does your agent say?’
‘Ah … well I haven’t actually chosen an agent yet,’ Dina admitted. ‘My mentor feels one should be absolutely ready. I tell my students the same – the essence of creative writing is about the voice. And of course you can’t expect to find the voice until you’ve studied those of the great and good. Otherwise, to think one can write borders on impertinence. And of course there’s all the research. I may have to move to Moscow.’
Phyl leaned forward. ‘Dina, sweetie, you’re writing a novel, not changing the world. Just make it up.’
Bella bit her lip to stop herself laughing. Luckily, she was distracted by the arrival of Chloe and Zoe, who were picking their way across the goose-crap grass carefully, carrying drinks and bringing Saul between them like a prize.
‘Hello everyone!’ Zoe said cheerfully. (It had to be – Bella noticed the gold Z on a chain round her neck.) ‘I’ve brought someone to meet you all! This is Saul Barrett and he’s got an exciting proposition for us!’
Saul caught sight of Bella and smiled. She hoped she looked better than when he’d last seen her, all blotchy and sauce-smeared. For a second, she remembered the gentle touch of his thumb on her skin, and could feel her face going pink. She suddenly realized Zoe was in full flow and tried to concentrate.
‘… Anyway, Saul’s production company needs a group of people so they can each be made over: dress, hair, make-up, the lot. Colour counselling, you name it. He thinks we writers could be just the thing. If anyone’s up for it, that is! I mean, think of the publicity!’
‘Oh, the great media machine,’ Dina sniffed. ‘Shouldn’t one’s work speak for itself?’
‘Trinny and Susannah already did that group thing,’ Sally pointed out. ‘I saw the one about the dog-breeders, and wondered why they put them into bright satin frocks and stilettos. You can’t jog a spaniel round the park in that get-up. Plain silly.’
‘Ah, but this is a bit different,’ Saul told her. ‘It’s about the group bonding, living together for a short while and helping each other find their own solutions, rather than being lectured at by those who don’t properly understand how they live on a day-to-day level. It’ll be far more about the group than the presenters. They’ll be just the enablers, the catalysts. Which is why I thought writers. Articulate by definition, always got something to say. It should make great TV.’
‘What’s it called?’ Dina asked.
Saul hesitated. ‘Er … Fashion Victims. But don’t let that put you off. This is absolutely not about ritual humiliation by 360-degree mirror and big pants, I promise. It’s more about mutual support and so on.’
‘It’s a pilot then?’ Marcus asked, one media professional to another.
‘Yes, a pilot. Hopefully part one of six; we’ll see how it goes. I really want to start with a bang, so when Zoe suggested this group I thought we could talk it through, if enough of you are interested.’
‘Living together?’ Phyl asked. ‘Where, exactly? Because if it’s the Savoy, count me in!’
‘Well – that’s where TV magic comes in. The idea is to take a largeish house, have it look as if the whole group are staying there for the duration – in reality it’ll only be about ten days. And you won’t, I promise, have to live on the premises. It won’t take up anywhere near as much time as the programme will make out. Actually, I’m still trying to find the perfect location.’ Saul looked a bit worried at this point. ‘We did have an excellent one but it was suddenly sold and it all fell through … so if anyone knows a detached house with a fair bit of character, some good-sized rooms, ideally having one of those very large family-room set-ups, just let me know. Anyway,’ he said, finishing his beer, ‘um, that’s it really. I’ll … er wander off home now and leave you all to discuss it, because I feel I’ve interrupted your evening for long enough. If it’s a yes, and I hope it is, just give Zoe any questions you want answered and I’ll do my best to help. And there’s a pretty hefty location fee if anyone knows of a suitable venue …’
Oh is there? Bella thought, some cogs in her brain starting to whir. Now there’s an idea.