Leaving a snoring Nick to sleep off the excess of what must have been a hell of a lot of Russian vodka, I was up, showered and dressed early the next morning. For once I welcomed the now yellowing bruise over my eye: I was going to show that Saxton woman what for. How dare she gossip about my family and my friend – and in such a manner that her precious daughter was also party to the rubbish she’d been spouting about us to God knows who?
India, who last night had perked up over pizza and the knowledge that we were looking out for her, had retreated back into her unhappiness, and was trailing a stream of syrup in her porridge but making no attempt to eat it. I glanced at the kitchen clock – if I were to make any impact at the school gate and also have a word with India’s teacher about the situation I was going to have to get my act together. I knew I couldn’t rely on Sylvia for help any more: she’d been brilliant the last couple of days but she was off back down south to Surrey to finalise her wedding plans and I was going to have to get used to doing everything myself again.
I sighed. ‘Come on, India, eat up that porridge. We really need to get off to school.’ I strapped both twins into their travel seats and gathered up India’s coat, book bag and navy beret – but when India turned her big brown eyes up to me and I saw the misery there, it was very tempting to say ‘sod it’ and bundle us all back to bed. But then we’d have it all again on Monday morning. And my bruised face wouldn’t have as much impact three days on.
Five minutes later we were strapped into the car. I turned to look at India in the back, giving her an encouraging thumbs up sign before putting the car into gear and moving off. The school was a fifteen minute drive away, but the green light fairy was looking down on us and we made good time. I reckoned I’d be at a bit of a disadvantage with a baby seat in each hand – wouldn’t be able to express myself with my hands for a start – and had packed the double buggy so I could decant the twins into that as soon as we got to the school gate. Apart from that I had no plan. The school mafia appeared to be out in force and I congratulated myself on getting there in time. There did seem to be rather a lot of them, chatting, laughing, taking a crafty gander at another child’s book bag in order to rank its reading progress against their own, and I felt my resolve slip somewhat. Didn’t these people have jobs to go to? After several years back in the classroom teaching when Nick’s business failed, it still felt funny to be part of the playground mob, rather than on the other side in the actual classroom. A bit nervous now, I bundled the twins into their double buggy, my hands all fingers and thumbs as I strapped them in. Fin began to wail and Thea looked as if joining in might be a jolly good idea. Poor India was scanning the crowd, no doubt for the dreaded Adriana – hoping that she might, for once, be absent.
I could empathise entirely. I’d inherited a dreadful class in my very first year of teaching and, every morning, would pray that a certain Damien Sykes would be off poorly. Or skiving. I didn’t care, as long as the little shit wasn’t in my classroom strutting his stuff and causing mayhem. He invariably was. His mother wanted him out of her house as much as I wanted him out of my classroom.
‘Anyone seen Damien?’ I would ask the rest of the class, closing the register hopefully. My heart would plummet with the inevitable reply, ‘He’s swinging on the coat hooks in the cloakroom, Miss,’ or, ‘He’s hiding under the table, Miss.’ ‘Just once, God, just once,’ I used to pray, ‘give me the answer, “Damien’s left, Miss. Me mam says they did a runner last night. Gone to Australia”.’
Yesss!
I was brought back to the present by the realisation that all three of my children were crying. Heads were beginning to turn; eyes were taking in my bruised face; ears were seriously discomfited by two yelling babies and one snivelling six year old. Seeing India’s piteous little face as Adriana choreographed a somewhat erotic looking dance in the middle of the playground with another little princess while completely ignoring my daughter, my resolve returned and, giving the double buggy a perhaps harder than intended shake, turned in the direction of Sally Saxton and her cronies.
Where was a passing pit bull when I needed one? Sally shifted her oversized and obviously very expensive bag from one shoulder to the other and welcomed me with, ‘Harriet, what on earth have you been up to now?’
‘Sally, I need to talk to you about what Adriana’s been up to.’
‘Adriana? Up to? As in?’ Sally paused for a mere nanosecond after this volley of questions before coming back with a final, ‘I don’t think Adriana is tall enough to have given you that black eye.’ She smirked and added, ‘Although someone obviously had it in for you.’
‘Sally, I’m not here to talk about me, although from what I can gather you have been doing a lot of talking about me and my family lately.’ I gave her a hard stare, and was gratified to see two slight spots of colour appear in her pale cheeks. ‘Rather than talk about this in front of everyone, and particularly in front of all these children, would it be a good idea if we took the girls into school and then I can tell you exactly what’s on my mind?’
Sally gave me a hard stare back before gathering up Adriana and marching her towards the girls’ classroom. I followed on behind, stroking India’s hand – which was wrapped around the cold metal of the buggy’s handle – and soothing her with encouraging words.
The only real dealings I’d had in the past with Sally Saxton had been when picking up India from their huge neo-Georgian box of a house, or when Adriana had been at our house. We had done one lunch together when I’d left work at seven months’ pregnant with the twins, but Sally was a serial non-working ‘girly’ and we had absolutely nothing, apart from our daughters, in common.
‘So what’s this all about, Harriet? You seem very hot under the collar about something.’ Sally walked over to a wooden bench in the playground and sat down, without inviting me to follow suit. I parked the buggy, gave it a reassuring shake and, uninvited or not, sat down beside her. Although her black and pink Lycra gear declared her intent to go straight down to the gym, her sharp little face was subtly made-up and I couldn’t imagine her getting very sweaty if she wanted to maintain her dewy freshness. Her blonde hair was very neatly styled in a French plait and her nails, I noticed, were the fashionable shellac pink of the white middle class woman. She looked at her watch and then back at me once more, but Thea had started to cry and I had to take her out of the buggy and bounce her around while attempting to think of the right words to say.
‘Last night,’ I began, ‘India was very upset. We were out for a pizza and she was so miserable she could hardly eat.’ I moved Thea to my other shoulder and Sally glanced down at her watch once more. ‘India said that Adriana said that you said…’ Hell, I sounded like a schoolgirl myself, not a grown woman… ‘that you said that my husband had been having sexy, I mean sex, with the blonde lady – presumably you mean Mandy Henderson – and that my best friend, Grace, was very poorly and there was no way her partner was going to stay with her because she was old and her partner was young.’
I paused to see how Sally was reacting to all these accusations, but she looked merely bored. I put Thea back in the buggy and replaced her with Fin, whose grizzling was in danger of erupting into louder yells.
Sally stood up, glanced at her watch once again and said, ‘Harriet, do you really think we should be fighting our children’s battles like this? The girls are six years old, and you know what girls this age are like. I’m sure anything that India reported back to you about what I have – allegedly – been saying has been grossly misinterpreted and exaggerated.’ As both Thea and Finn began to wail in earnest, she moved a couple of steps backward and raised her immaculately threaded eyebrows. ‘You are such an earth mother, Harriet. Such a mother hen. I admire you greatly for your bravery in adding to your brood, especially at your age, but…’ She paused to give me the full effect of both a very wintry smile and, for some very bizarre reason, a flexing of her right biceps. Was she about to thump me, or was she merely getting in a bit of a warm up while I delayed her from her gym class? I decided the latter, and was about to put in my two penn’orth when she went on, ‘If we are to let our daughters reach their full potential, if we want them to grow into independent women, then I really do think we should let them fight their own battles, don’t you? Now, as I’m sure you can see, I have a ‘bums and tums’ to attend, and Georgio gets very cross if we are late.’ She looked me up and down before uttering what I assumed to be her coup de grâce: ‘Maybe you should join me at the gym, Harriet. Five children must surely have taken their toll on your pelvic floor.’
It wasn’t.
She hit me right between the eyes with, ‘And, Harriet, between you and me, your concern is being directed totally at the wrong daughter. If you spent less time fussing about a little playground tiff between India and Adriana and were a little more aware of what Liberty was up to, then I might get to the gym on time.’
And, with one last look of disdain at all three of us, she turned on her immaculate trainers and left in the direction of the main road where, I assumed, her four wheel drive monster was waiting beneath the Children: No Parking notice, ready to carry her off to the gym.
I put Fin and Thea back in the buggy and made my way disconsolately back to India’s classroom. Even the twins were quiet, presumably shocked into submission like their mother. They gave me sympathetic glances, but couldn’t quite meet my eye – embarrassed, I assumed, at my being such a pushover. I peered through the window of India’s classroom, but the girls’ paintings and spelling lists plastered over it – along with all the other paraphernalia of an infant classroom – were making it difficult to work out just where India was. I didn’t really want to disturb the class, concerned that once India saw me she’d want to come back home. Moving to another part of the window and squinting between a painting of something with a very big pink head and a notice for parents about a change to the swimming lesson the following week, my eye found Adriana, her curly dark hair caught up in the regulation navy headband. She was linked proprietorially to a laughing India as they sat together, hugging each other. I turned to leave, secure in the knowledge that my six year old was as much a pushover as her mother and, for the moment, there was little I could do to help either of us up off the floor. Depressed at my total mishandling of the situation with Sally Saxton, but even more so with the poisonous insinuation about Liberty, I headed for home.
*
Coffee. I needed coffee, and lots of it. And so, apparently, did Nick and Sylvia. While the latter had made an effort with artfully applied concealer, pink lipstick and a jaunty scarf tied around her neck, Nick would have been perfectly at home with the Big Issue sellers down in town. Unshaven and wafting alcohol fumes with every word he uttered which, I ascertained, were few and far between, Nick was gulping coffee as if his life depended on it. It probably did.
‘Hi, darling.’ Nick, manfully trying to appear normal, winced as his obviously pounding head only confirmed he was not. Sylvia wasn’t succeeding much better, her pallor reminding me of the avocado mousse I’d thrown out the day before because everyone, including myself, had voted it totally disgusting.
‘Coffee, dear?’ Without meeting my eyes, she poured me a mugful and launched into India’s problem. ‘What I think India needs is a dog. She’s at a very sensitive age and suddenly, from being the cosseted baby of the family, her nose has been well and truly put out of joint by the twins’ arrival.’ She paused, but only long enough for the idle thought that my mother-in-law really did speak in clichés to skitter across my brain. ‘You know she’s always loved dogs – she misses Bertie dreadfully now that he’s down in Surrey with me – and I think, personally, she’d be right as rain if her attention was directed on a little dog rather than that common little girl she is so besotted with.’
A dog? Was this woman for real? Did I not already have enough on without a bloody dog in the house?
‘Dogs are good for sad little girls. They’re good for families.’ Sylvia still hadn’t deigned to meet my eyes nor, I now realised, had Nick. In fact, never mind sodding dogs, there was a prevailing whiff of sheep. Both Nick and his mother had a distinctly sheepish look on their faces and, I reckoned, not just as a result of too much vodka with the Russian trannie.
I glared at Nick and thrust a fretful baby in his direction: I needed to talk to him about what Liberty could possibly be up to, and didn’t want Sylvia in on the conversation. He winced once more, but, gauging my mood, was sensible enough to accept his younger son without comment, bravely taking off Fin’s outer layer before hoisting him up on to his right shoulder. If Fin inhaled those vodka fumes he’d be out for the count in a couple of minutes.
‘I actually agree with Mum, Hat,’ Nick said, yawning. ‘We always had a dog at home when I was little, and now you’re not working there’s no reason for us not to have one, as far as I can see. You know the kids have been going on for ages about wanting a dog…’
‘A dog, Sylvia?’ I repeated, ignoring Nick and his totally inane – insane, even – comment re getting a dog. ‘A dog is good in what way? Will it come with a discount for the latest Karen Millen dress or vouchers to be exchanged at Asda? Will it empty the dishwasher and knock up a cheese soufflé in its spare time? Will it change nappies, find Kit’s lost library book – which, incidentally, Nick, has enough fines on it to cover the National Debt?’ I was in my stride now, and actually beginning to enjoy myself. ‘Or do you think, like most dogs, it will shed hair, bring mud in on its feet, pee on the floor and demand my constant attention?’
‘Bit like the rest of your kids, then,’ Nick murmured. ‘There’s hair bunging up our shower plughole and mud on the utility floor.’
‘My kids? Why are they always my kids? Well at least my kids don’t pee on the floor like your dog would do.’ This conversation was getting silly.
‘Erm, have you been in Kit’s bathroom recently? He still can’t aim straight after all these years.’
Sylvia looked up. ‘Typical man, dear. Nick was just the same at his age, and his grandfather never did learn the knack of the correct way to shake it. Could get a hole-in-one on the golf course no problem, but getting him to point Percy in the right direction was something I never had any success with.’ She smiled wistfully and, afraid she was going to divulge more intimate details of her late husband’s willy, I was just about to berate the hung over pair once more about their ridiculously irresponsible attitude to dogs when I was interrupted by a loud knocking at the back door.
‘I am not having a dog, you two, so please don’t go raising India’s hopes when she comes in this afternoon,’ I said as I went to answer the door. ‘Honestly, I’m not.’ And then, as an afterthought, ‘If you’re so convinced a pet is what she needs, go and put some leaves and twigs in a jar and tell her they’re stick insects. She’ll never know the difference.’
Amused at my own witty repartee and the look on the recovering drunks’ faces, I felt almost cheery as I opened the door.
‘Good God, Harriet, what on earth have you done to your face? It’s all black and bruised. It looks amazingly painful.’
‘Good God, Rebecca,’ I said, looking down at the object she was carrying. ‘What on earth have you done to your handbag? It’s all black and hairy. It looks amazingly like a dog.’
I was reminded very much of that final scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – my Granny Morgan’s favourite film – where, at the very last moment, the main players know they’ve just been set up. I knew, as soon as I saw Rebecca Martin standing at my door, that I was acting out a part in some plan hatched without my knowledge. Rebecca was one of my gang from my Midhope Grammar School days and, after meeting up with her again the previous year at a school reunion, Grace and I had seen her on a regular basis. She was great fun and, even when both Grace and I had been hugely pregnant, had continued to join us on a night out or been more than happy to make up the numbers at a dinner party if either of us had needed a single woman to balance out the table.
‘I assume Nick’s told you about Sam, the dog?’ Rebecca asked as she followed me back into the kitchen where the two plotters were looking decidedly shifty.
‘I think they were just about to,’ I said grimly, glaring at Nick and his mother.
‘So you know that I was in the new pizza place in your village last night?’
‘No.’
‘That I arrived just as you’d left?’
‘No.’
‘And that I’m off to the States for nine months?’
‘No.’
Rebecca was beginning to look a bit embarrassed, desperate even, and turned to Nick for help.
Obviously fed up with his role as underdog, Nick stood up, swayed only very slightly before handing Fin over to Sylvia, and ran his fingers through his thick, dark blonde hair.
‘Right, Hat, here’s the deal. Rebecca’s off to the States to see her girls. She’s been able to join up her new venture with a company in Chicago which means she can move everything out there for a few months.’
‘Just nine months, Harriet,’ Rebecca interjected. ‘I never thought I’d miss the girls so much when I agreed to their going out to be with Paul for the year. I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for them and, even though I think their father is a total wanker – sorry, Sylvia – at the end of the day he is their father and has a right to see them.’ She paused, and for one awful moment I thought she was going to cry. Rebecca Martin did not do crying. Even when we were eleven and a random hockey ball caught her full in the face, fracturing her cheekbone in three places, she hadn’t cried. ‘I thought nine months without them would give me the opportunity to do all the things I’ve not been able to do as a single mother, but they’ve only been gone six weeks and I can’t bear it without them. Anyway, I know Chicago is a couple of hours’ drive away from where they are with Paul, but he’s agreed to let me have them most weekends. It’s just that I want to be in the same country as them.’
‘And Nick agreed to have the dog?’ I turned from the black, curly haired creature that continued to slumber in Rebecca’s arms to the man in question who wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
‘And Mrs Doubtfire, of course.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, obviously I don’t need her now that I don’t have the girls with me. I kept her on part time – but there are only so many shirts she can iron, and the cupboards and drawers are so tidy I don’t know where anything is… if that makes sense.’ Rebecca laughed, and then tailed off as she saw my face. Not only were Rebecca’s tidy drawers making sense, so was everything else.
‘Hat, you need help. Look at the state of you.’ Nick came over to me and put his arms round me.
‘I need help?’ I snapped, batting him off. ‘Have you looked at yourself this morning?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Harriet, why are you so bloody stubborn?’ Nick, despite his aching head, raised his voice. ‘You have five children to look after. Five, Harriet. You know I’m not here a lot of the time to help, and Mum isn’t going to be up as much as she used to be. This is a great chance to have someone in we know is good and who will give you some time to yourself.’
When I still didn’t say anything, Nick raised both his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘I knew she’d be like this,’ he said, ignoring me and addressing his mother.
‘Give me just one good reason why you don’t want someone to help you with the children, dear,’ Sylvia asked, holding a hand to her obviously aching temple.
How could I say, ‘Because now that I’ve got my house back, Sylvia – now that I no longer have to share it with you – I never want to be in that position again.’ Turning to Nick and Rebecca and the still sleeping dog, what I did say was, ‘We can’t possibly have someone else living here. Sylvia’s old granny flat has just been converted back into the house. There’s no way I’m changing it back again.’ I was horrified at the very thought. ‘And Bones will eat that thing,’ I added, as our cat stalked in, ignoring us all, before heading – proprietorially – to his place in front of the Aga.
‘Who said anything about them living here? God, I wouldn’t want that.’ It was Nick’s turn to look horrified.
‘Do you mind if I put this dog down? He’s getting a bit heavy.’ Rebecca decanted the dog from her arms on to the kitchen floor. ‘He’s Lilian’s dog, really, not mine.’
He was so black and curly I couldn’t actually see where his eyes were. He reminded me of a hat once owned by my Granny Morgan, to which she’d been very attached, whatever the season. He continued to slumber quietly despite the change of position and the hard kitchen tiles. ‘Look, Harriet, I’m really sorry if you knew nothing about this, but Lilian really is a godsend.’
‘Lilian? Who the hell is Lilian? Is this someone else you’re trying to palm off on me?’ Why not have open house and take in every passing nanny, cleaning lady and rabbit? Throw in an au pair, a gerbil and a couple of trapeze flying stick insects and we’d just be adding to the circus that my family had already become.
Rebecca frowned. ‘Lilian, my nanny-granny? Oh, sorry, I’ve always called her Mrs Doubtfire, haven’t I? She certainly wouldn’t want to live with you. She has a perfectly good cottage up in Netherbridge, and will also be spending some time at my place, keeping it looking lived in while I’m away.’
‘And the dog? Where does he come into the equation? He looks suspiciously young and puppyish to me. I can’t stand dog hair. I don’t like dogs. In fact I think I’m allergic to them. Yes, I know I am. Definitely.’ Sam slept on, an occasional twitch of a curly black paw the only indication that he wasn’t actually Granny Morgan’s much loved hat.
‘Harriet, I have got to get showered and off to work.’ Nick sounded impatient now. ‘Make your mind up if you want this. Lilian will come in on a daily basis or just for a few hours. It will be only for the nine months that Rebecca is in Chicago. If you’re happy to struggle on – on your own – then that’s up to you. But Rebecca and Lilian need to know now, because Rebecca’s sister would love to have her.’
‘Well, if that’s the case, why isn’t she going there?’ I actually felt a bit miffed that someone else was after Mrs Doubtfire… like when you were a teenager, you might not fancy that spotty, tongue tied guy with the bum fluff on his top lip who’s been drooling over you for months, but you certainly don’t want him going off with anyone else.
‘Lilian can’t stand her,’ Rebecca said cheerfully, ‘so she’d really rather not go there.’
‘Oh?’ I was intrigued, and suddenly wanted this woman whom I’d never met to like me.
Nick threw what remained of his coffee into the sink and turned to Rebecca. ‘Sorry, Rebecca. I actually thought she’d jump at the chance of some help. I did my best.’
‘Hang on a minute. I haven’t said “no” yet.’ I indicated the still sleeping Sam with my toe. ‘What about him?’
‘Lilian and I sort of share him. She’ll want to bring him with her when she’s here, but I’m not asking you to have him all the time – and, as you can see, he does sleep quite a lot.’
‘Mmm… are you sure you haven’t knocked him out a bit just for my benefit? And, as I say, I am sometimes allergic to dogs.’ When they’d lived with us I’d always tried to keep Bertie, Sylvia’s geriatric sausage dog, in her part of the house.
‘As is Frances. That’s why Lilian got Sam: he’s a Cockapoo, doesn’t moult, is totally hypoallergenic and doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. It meant she could bring him to the house without worrying about Frances’s allergies. Your kids would love having him around.’
Sylvia looked smug. ‘Just what I’ve being saying to Harriet, dear. India is having a few problems at the moment and Sam will really cheer her up.’
‘Yes or no, Hat? Let’s get this sorted before I go.’ Nick stretched, showing a rather glorious expanse of firm, brown stomach, and Rebecca gave me a quick glance as she made a little silent ‘ooh’ of appreciation.
I laughed with her and said, ‘OK, OK… let’s arrange a time when we can meet her.’
Looking almost as sheepish as the hung over two ten minutes earlier, Rebecca said, ‘She’s in the car, waiting. I’ll go and bring her in.’ And then added, obviously pleased with herself, ‘She’ll be able to help you with the dinner party tomorrow. I’m looking forward to meeting that Russian again and, even more so, that very gorgeous Alex.’