Priorities, priorities! Izzie and Maddy were redefining theirs by the minute. With the threat of another interview hanging over them, everything else faded into insignificance.
“I had no idea we were going to be subjected to this kind of scrutiny,” Maddy complained, swigging strong coffee like it was going out of style. “These people will be wanting to go through my knicker drawer next. And as for giving up smoking! It’s the bloody limit! What other pleasures do I have in life?”
“Well, speaking as someone who has gone through your knicker drawer, I can see that would fill a whole issue of Country Lifestyle. Thank goodness it’s only us they’re interested in—we won’t take more than a double-page spread.”
It was Monday and they were due at Janet Grant’s house to find suitable outfits for the photo shoot. They decided to walk—a concession to clean living—and the crisp air nipped color into their cheeks and, less attractively, noses as they strode along. The whole journey took ages because Pasco insisted on jumping in every ice-covered puddle in his tiny red wellies.
The drive leading up to the handsome rectory was overhung with branches that threatened to whip them in the face if they strayed too close to the relatively mud-free verges. They hopped along, avoiding the potholes as best they could, and passed by a large and elegant bay window, bedecked with stickers—CND, Amnesty, Greenpeace, Musicians’ Union—and little stained-glass panels depicting cats, lighthouses, irises. The effect was like looking through a kaleidoscope. Inside they could make out a large table with several lumpy shapes spread around it. One of the lumps detached itself and waved—Janet.
“Come round to this door,” came a disembodied voice. “The front one sticks—we never use it.” Then Janet’s cheery, shiny face appeared round the corner of the house. “Come in, come in! Lovely to see you both. I’ve been looking out some bits and bobs.”
In the gloomy house, the clutter and dust failed to disguise the beautiful proportions of the arched hallway, and despite jackets hung on every doorknob and over the tops of open doors, the beauty of the paneled wood was undisturbed. A broad curving staircase with slender balusters was so encumbered with piles of books, clothes, papers, and crockery that only a narrow path remained up the middle of the worn runner.
Janet led the way into the kitchen—the room with the bay window and a strong smell of boiling marmalade. Here, added to the disorder, were two teenagers, a pseudogoth girl and a droopy, skateboard-type boy, with loose-fitting sweatshirt and enormously wide jeans. He reminded Izzie of a dripping candle. They eyed the visitors with silent hostility.
“Tamasin and Oscar,” trilled Janet. “My younger two. Cosmo and Jamilla are away at uni.”
Tamasin made a quick inventory of their clothes from the corner of her eye, Izzie noticed. Oscar blushed furiously and pulled a woolly hat down farther down. “Tammy and I had such fun this morning, sorting through my old things—”
“All your things are old,” hissed Tamasin, glaring at her mother’s plump rear as she bent over to pick up a laundry basket from the flagged floor.
“Well, at least I’m conserving the world’s resources, sweetheart. I know how important that is to you! So here you are. Take your pick.”
“Mother, you can’t seriously be proposing to lend your hideous clothes to—”
Izzie decided to take action and reached out to shake Tamasin’s unwilling hand before she realized what was happening. “I’m Izzie and this is Maddy. Lovely to meet you—and you, Oscar. Yes, your mother has kindly agreed to let us borrow some of her clothes for a magazine shoot we’re doing later on this week. They are perfect for the image we’re trying to project. I guess you can regard it as dressing up—rather like you’re doing with your goth look. Now, in ’78 on the King’s Road it was all about—”
An astonishing transformation took place. Tamasin sat bolt upright, her black-lipsticked mouth open like a child’s and her eyes suddenly bright. “You were there? Like actually there?”
Izzie decided to camp it up a bit. “Oh yes, naturally—we all were. Malcolm, Johnny, Jordan, Vivienne. You just bumped into people all the time. I remember one time with Jimmy Pursey in this changing room at Flip in Covent Garden. Well, I won’t go into that now . . .”
Oscar looked puzzled but more animated. “Jordan?” he croaked. “The one with the—”
“No, you cretin,” snapped Tamasin. “For God’s sake—we’re talking about important political gestures here. An empowered youth movement. Not some model with implants.” She turned back to Izzie. “Go on!”
Izzie knew she’d caught her fish and began to reel it in. “Some other time, maybe. It’s so kind of you to help us again, Janet.” She smiled at the older woman. “This is the second time you’ve baled us out—and I’ve got a feeling it won’t be the last.”
“Nonsense,” laughed Janet, looking unusually bashful. “It’s lovely to be able to help and to get a chance at playing with these adorable little children of yours.” Pasco was already clamped to Janet’s sturdy leg and was starting to investigate the basket. “Now, sweetie, what do you think would suit Mummy in here?”
Item after item, one scarcely different from another, was dragged out of the basket. All dung colored and shapeless, they could have passed for floor cloths, but Janet held them up like treasures. “Oh these dungarees!” She didn’t notice her daughter theatrically sticking her fingers down her throat. “They’re marvelous with this little cambric blouse. I’ve looked out some shoes too.”
She gestured to an amazing array of what looked like leather Cornish pasties.
“Cor! Have you contacted the Birkenstock museum? They’d pay a fortune for a collection like this!” Maddy goggled at the display that now decked the kitchen table and most of the floor. “I think we’ve struck gold.”
Half an hour later, Maddy and Izzie packed their choices into recycled plastic bags. With real emotion, Maddy and Izzie hugged Janet good-bye, aware of the calculating, puzzled gaze of Tamasin, who was clearly incredulous that anyone could be more interested in her mother than in her. They were just struggling down the drive with the bags when Oscar loomed up beside them. “I’ll help you—if you like. I can carry them for you. You shouldn’t . . . Well, I’ll do it—if you want.”
Maddy shot him a killer smile and he flushed violently. “Thanks, Oscar! You’re a darling.”
On the way back to Maddy’s house, he gradually opened up. He played in a band, he wanted to take up surfing, he read science fiction, he was hoping to find some work during the holidays and at weekends (Izzie made a mental note of that fact, just in case)—every teenage cliché falling into place with a resounding thud. But underneath the veneer of apathy, he was as kind, thoughtful, and solid as they would have expected a son of Janet’s to be. He mumbled a good-bye to them at the door, suddenly embarrassed again, and shambled off home. Inside, and at Maddy’s insistence, they carefully laundered the clothes on a delicates wash, with loads of fabric conditioner, then put them to dry over the Aga.
“We may have to dress like peasants,” complained Maddy, spraying the damp garments with the best part of her new bottle of Jo Malone Lino nel Vento, “but we don’t have to smell like them!”
The next day and with Maddy lunching with Lillian, Izzie’s project was to prepare for the Country Lifestyle interview. She took a long cool look at the house and garden. Pru had been right in her debriefing after the Daily Mail feature hit the newsstands. They really hadn’t been convincing enough.
She tried to imagine what Pru would say . . . “Think peasant—but sexy. More organic, darling. I want to smell the authenticity!” Okay, then—this called for some capital investment.
The out-of-town supermarket in Ringford prided itself on its out-of-season fruit and veg—“queer gear” they called it. Into her basket went everything that looked luscious and wholesome and she returned to Huntingford House in triumph!
An hour later the kitchen and hallway were bestrewn with galvanized buckets of eggs, bowls of earthy mushrooms, pots of growing herbs (plucked from the plastic and cellophane wrappers and plunged into clay pots of compost). Janet’s quilts and woolly wraps replaced Maddy’s suede jackets and pink Boden mac, and Izzie had carefully rubbed soil into the gleaming limestone floor.
“It looks like shit!” exclaimed Maddy delightedly as she arrived back. “You’re a genius! Let’s have a cup of coffee and then we’ll tackle the garden together once we’ve picked up the kids. Have we got anything to feed them?”
“Yeah—I did Tesco. Sausages, pizza, alphabet potatoes, pasta, and peas. Everyone’s taste catered for.” Izzie put the kettle on. “How did it go with Lillian?”
“She’s a funny old stick.” Maddy sighed, pulling off her shoes and wiggling her toes. “She’s so prim and proper—Simon used to reckon she needed a good rogering—but d’you know I think we may have underestimated her. It took two dry sherries to get her to loosen her stays a bit—and by the end she was quite pink in the face and giggly. Thanks.” She took a gulp from the mug Izzie put in front of her. “She earns a packet, it turns out, and there’s no way we could match what she’s getting, but I think she liked it here. She kept talking about that night with the team and the doughnuts, and I have to say I shamelessly played on it.” Maddy smiled smugly. “She starts on Tuesday.”
“Result!” Izzie punched the air. “This calls for a biscuit.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Maddy, reaching for her bag. “This calls for a fag.”
Ten minutes later Maddy set off to collect all the children, after Izzie had run through the drill at St. Boniface’s, and left Pasco helping Izzie prepare supper. With everything cooking away in the Aga, Izzie and Pasco wandered out into the almost untouched garden. Among the dormant shrubs, daffodils were starting to peep their heads, and purple crocuses and snowdrops nestled around the bases of the trees. Box plants and tatty lavender lined the brick pathways. Someone long ago had obviously designed it with care, but now the remnants of last summer’s perennials still cluttered the borders and slimy leaves clogged the bases of the hedges. “Just you wait and see, Mr. Pasco,” she said, nuzzling his ear. “It may not look much now, but by tomorrow, it will even impress Alan Titchmarsh.”
The children piled out of Maddy’s car a short time later and ran screaming with excitement up the stairs, leaving a heap of school debris in their wake. “Supper won’t be long,” Izzie called after them.
“Well,” said Maddy, dropping her keys on the sideboard. “St. Uglyface’s was an education. I can’t remember the last time I saw shell suits, and so many of them in one place. I must alert Vogue that they are staging a comeback. And what about that woman who looks like Jimmy Savile? Frankly some of them gave me an apocalyptic vision of what can happen when cousins marry.”
Izzie chuckled. “You snob! Better steer clear of Jean Luc then.”
“I’m sure I heard someone call a child Lacey-Marie. What’s that about?”
“I thought you were impressed by double-barreled names? We’ve got plenty of them at St. B.’s too you know . . . the trouble is, it’s their first names.”
Fed and replete, the children went out into the garden to burn off some energy, pursued by their mothers. “Right, I’ve got a plan,” said Izzie. “The magazine is bound to want to photograph your gracious garden, so here’s what we do . . .”
By the next morning, which dawned bright and sunny, they had perfected their spiel. One thing Pru had stressed was that they weren’t to be New Age in the orthodox sense—not Glastonbury and free love. They were to be in the vanguard of a New New Age, so New, in fact, that it was Old. Well, it had made sense when Pru had said it . . . This wasn’t the quasi-Eastern stuff people had been kicking around since the turn of the millennium—the yoga, the chakras, the yin and yang bullshit. This was to be a return to pagan European spirituality, with female wisdom in harmony with nature and in tune with the seasons. That was why Izzie knew the garden had to be just right. She’d seen photos of the veg gardens at Villandry in the Sunday papers and that, in a kind of tatty version, was what she had wanted to achieve.
They were lying in wait for the journalists this time, seasoned campaigners that they now were, like actors awaiting their cue. Izzie was in the back garden, with a cotton scarf tied round her head and a hoe in one hand. Maddy had rolls, bought from the deli that morning, warming in the Aga, ready to pop into a huge basket lined with dock leaves. As the Alfa crunched its way up the drive, Izzie threw herself into concentrated hoeing—realizing belatedly that she didn’t actually know what this entailed. But she swung the metal bit at the bottom to and fro a bit, trying not to damage any of their arrangement. Once she was reasonably sure she’d been clocked, she turned round and gave the newcomers a seraphic smile and a wave of welcome.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have lost track of time. When I’m out here, I just forget everything else. It’s so peaceful! Let me introduce myself. I’m Isabel Stock. You must be Araminta, and Giles, is it? Lovely to meet you. Shall we go into the house? I think Madeleine is still baking for the day.”
These two are a bit posh, Izzie reflected worriedly. Araminta was unhealthily thin, very fair, very county, although she looked like the sort who’d be allergic to horses. Giles was the beefy type, resplendent in thick cords, a waistcoat (he would have pronounced it “wesskit”) and the sort of horrible tweed jacket that country blokes wear shooting. He was lugging an aluminium box of cameras and seemed to do most of the talking.
“Smashing part of the world this. Used to have a bit of a bolt hole over Rousham way. Jolly cold in winter, though. Could never get the bloody fire going. Took a girlfriend down there one time—she had to skip with my dressing gown cord in the morning to get warm. Funny thing—never really saw her after that.” Funny thing, thought Izzie. Is missing the subject out of a sentence part of the curriculum in private school?
They went through the story again, with far more aplomb this time and took it in turns to bustle about like headless chickens, engaging in pointless domestic tasks—wiping mushrooms, pretending to churn butter (they’d tipped a few spoonfuls of marge in the bottom of the tub and produced it with pride after a couple of turns of the crank), prodding at the centpertuis, and slowly melting the beeswax. Pasco pottered around the floor, looking a bit girlie in one of Janet’s treasured baby smocks. They were both hoping he wouldn’t hitch it up to reveal his disposable nappy. By the time they provided lunch—goat’s cheese quiches and a gnarly salad, distressed to make it look homemade—they’d already posed for at least two rolls of film. It seemed to be going rather well.
As they made their way out into the garden, Izzie could hear herself waffling on about the product. “We believe strongly in natural remedies—organic, of course—and we use them on ourselves and the children—and the animals.” What the hell had made her say that?
“Oh, you keep livestock too?”
“Um—yes. Of course. Not much, you know, just some chickens and a goat or two.”
“Oh, maybe we could do some pictures with them later. That would be terrific.”
“Ooh, no,” said Izzie hurriedly. “The . . . the billy goat is very aggressive—doesn’t like men. He’d butt Giles soon as look at him!”
“So would I,” breathed Araminta fervently. “But he’s got a fiancée.”
It didn’t take long to set up the first shots in the garden. Against the background of apple trees, Izzie and Maddy posed decoratively, making sure that their petticoats showed below their dirndl skirts.
In the vegetable patch, the serried ranks of broccoli were wilting a little, even though Izzie had watered the florets when she’d stuck them into the ground. The leeks were standing up well, though, as were the carrots, bought at huge expense with leaves still attached and thrust into the soil in neat rows. There was a sticky moment when Maddy caught one of the red cabbages with the heel of her clog, and it rolled out of alignment with the others. Fortunately, Araminta and Giles were engaged in a rather heated private conversation of their own and didn’t notice Maddy busily trying to nudge it back in place.
The couple broke off and continued with the shoot in a slightly embarrassed way. They’d got a lovely scene set up, with Maddy holding a basket over one arm, while Izzie sat on a wooden bench, struggling to shell peas. What was it with mange-touts?
When Crispin arrived back with the children, he’d entered into the spirit of it all—if anything a little too enthusiastically. All collarless shirt and moleskin trousers (tied with string below the knee, presumably to keep his ferrets where he wanted them). He introduced himself as the gardener, and Izzie let him wax lyrical about the soil and the composting operation he claimed to have set up.
The children’s costumes were not quite so successful. Izzie and Maddy had laid out four outfits in Florence and Will’s bedrooms, and left instructions that they were to put them on as soon as they got back from school. Just like dressing up—what fun! The girls had complied reasonably well and looked ducky in their little pinafore dresses, but Florence appeared in her Barbie clippy-clop shoes, and Jess was waving a magic wand. The boys had got halfway there—Will had donned the cord breeches but had on his Toy Story check shirt and cowboy holster. Charlie had put on all the gear but had also found some hair gel and a pair of sunglasses—Men in Taupe. The children were all ravenous, as ever, and a mutiny was steadily brewing over the lack of Jaffa Cakes, normally a permanent fixture on the kitchen table. Wholemeal shortbread just didn’t fit the bill. They were pressed into staying still for the last few shots with whispered promises of as many Jaffa Cakes as they could eat, and Araminta and Giles pulled out of the drive at last.
Over supper—peanut butter sandwiches and a mountain of biscuits by way of compensation—Izzie voiced something that was worrying them both: the looming specter of the Easter hols.
“Well, I hate to say it, but once again state wins over private! We only get two weeks at St. Boniface’s and they can do the play scheme for the first week. My parents, God bless ’em, have offered to have them for the second, so I’m going to be able to work pretty much as normal.”
“Yeah, yeah! I know—pay more, get less. But can Charlie spell bugger? You see, we get a better class of swear words at Eagles. I’m just going to have to muddle through with the kids here. I mean, it works all right with Pasco, so it can’t be all that much worse, can it?”
Izzie shrugged eloquently and passed along the Jaffa Cakes. “We’ll soon see, won’t we?”
Geoff Haynes, the accountant Peter had suggested, was definitely more of a Geoffrey. Geoff was far too common for a man of Haynes’s imposing presence. Nor was he the stringy, greasy stereotype Maddy had always imagined accountants to be. And it wasn’t just his height—though he was a towering six foot two at least. He had the dark gray suit, perfect midnight-blue shirt, and cufflinks (always a sign of class) of a man who would cut a much more appropriate dash in a boardroom in Canary Wharf than on Ringford High Street.
He looked too young to be completely retired—he couldn’t have been more than fifty—but when Maddy had called him over the weekend, he had been evasive about the type of companies he had worked with in London, just referring to the bit of consultancy he did “here and there.” She’d come across types like him before, though, through work events with Simon, and gut instinct told her that he had been involved in some fairly blue-chip stuff. He was certainly more FTSE than face balm, and anyway Peter wouldn’t have put her in touch with a wide boy, would he?
In fact, Maddy suspected that Peter had already squeezed in a phone call to Geoff since his visit on Friday, and when Izzie and she met him the following week at Locations, a rather chichi joint in Ringford (or, correction, the only chichi joint in Ringford), he seemed a bit more briefed and ready for their sales pitch than perhaps he ought. Maddy just made a mental note to thank Peter when she got home.
Pen at the ready, she had knuckled down to listen to what he had to say. After a couple of hours and a couple of bottles of very drinkable Bordeaux, she had pages and pages of information about what the two of them needed to do to get the business kosher.
“I think, ladies,” he concluded as he stirred his coffee and flashed a fabulous set of teeth, “that you have a very interesting idea here, and if it would help I would be delighted to act as your consultant, if you will. Leave the tiresome details to me. You just need to concentrate on getting your product out, but we can arrange regular meetings, perhaps twice a month while things are getting under way and then take it from there.”
“But, Geoff . . . rey,” drawled Izzie, her face flushed from the effect of the wine, and pretty punch-drunk by the force of his dynamism, “you can’t be doing this out of a favor to Maddy’s stepfather. How much do we pay you for your services?”
“Let’s just see, shall we?” he replied. “I’ll very much take a backseat, and we’ll see how things pan out. Perhaps when you float the company, I can become a shareholder.” They all laughed heartily at this—imagine Maddy and Izzie on the stock market with their little pots of gunge.
Out on the street, he kissed them both on the cheek in a very gentlemanly fashion, and they all made a date to meet again the following week.
“He’s a bit of a dish.” Izzie giggled, taking Maddy’s arm as they walked off down the street. “That distinguished gray hair and those twinkly eyes. I could rather go for him.”
“You are a woman of eclectic tastes, Mrs. Stock. I thought you went for the bronzed agricultural type.”
“Oh, give over,” Izzie laughed and punched her, rather too enthusiastically, on the arm.
The following morning they met at nine thirty outside the bank and, with Pasco holding hands alongside, they made a beeline for the business manager. The whole ordeal was pretty painless, no thanks to Pasco’s attempts to dismantle the point-of-sale boards, and within minutes they had opened a healthy business account with the funds to date transferred from Maddy’s account. Izzie rubbed her hands with glee. “Once that fat checkbook arrives, it’s payday!”
By the next day, Lillian was ensconced in Maddy’s study. She had arrived like a gust of wind in a curious pale green mohair coat which, with her orange hair and one of Maddy’s cream pashminas, made her look not unlike the Irish flag. Within minutes she had unloaded a PC from the back of her car (“I filched it from Workflow Systems before the liquidators moved in,” she explained sheepishly), had handed an astonished Maddy a list of stationery she would need, and was beginning to put names and addresses into a database.
“Well, Hurricane Lillian is here,” whispered Maddy to Izzie when she arrived later in the morning. “I offered her a cup of coffee a few minutes ago, but she says she doesn’t have a break till eleven.”
“At least someone knows what she is doing around here.” Izzie took off her coat and hung it over the back of the kitchen chair. “I had a call from that business banker yesterday afternoon. She said she didn’t want to say anything in front of you at the branch yesterday, but Marcus and my banking record is so poor they are a bit dubious about allowing me to open another account.” She slumped into the chair, almost in tears. “They say I need a reference. Who the hell will vouch for me?”
Maddy stopped midway through filling the coffee mugs. “I don’t believe it. They can’t do that!”
“Oh, Maddy darling. You are so wonderfully naïve. Of course they can. I don’t think Marcus and I have been in credit since he was made redundant. Once the mortgage payments and all that go out each month, the bank has to fund everything. I almost wrote to them last year to thank them for our Christmas presents. She was very apologetic but certainly got her point over.”
“Well, I’m phoning Peter.” And before Izzie could stop her, she lit a cigarette—her first of the day, boy, was she doing well—picked up the phone, and was dialing.
Rather disconcertingly Peter confirmed everything Izzie had said. “They are powerful institutions, these banks. Listen, darling, leave it with me and I’ll make a few calls. Would Izzie mind giving me her banking details, and I’ll see what I can do?”
“Now sod them and listen,” said Maddy, putting down the phone. “We’ve got work to do. Here’s Lillian’s list—and we need a ton more Jiffy bags. I’ll get on with straining the next batch. Can you get down to that wholesaler outside Ringford and get the stuff from this list? Oh, Izzie, get—”
“A receipt!” Izzie laughed and slammed the door behind her.
Will and Florence’s schools both broke up for the Easter holidays the following Friday lunchtime. Bloody private schools, thought Maddy again, as she collected Will, plus his bin liner full of Easter cards and fluffy chicken pictures which she’d have to leave lying around the house for a time until it was safe to bin them.
“Maaaddy,” came a shriek from across the car park as she stuffed bags and the children into the car. Sue Templeton, the other disadvantage of private schools, loomed into view, with Josh and Abigail-the-angelic by her side. “I haven’t really seen you for simply ages. You seem to fly in and fly out these days. And who on earth was that chap who collected them last week in the corduroys tied up with string? Keep hearing about you everywhere. Hardly recognized you and Izzie in your . . . unusual outfits. Quite the country image you appeared in the Mail.”
She looked Maddy up and down. Her baseball cap to hide her filthy hair, baggy jeans, and fleece thrown on in haste after a morning (and most of the night before) spent slaving over hot wax and lavender oil, was a far cry from her normal sartorial elegance and it wasn’t lost on Sue. She seemed nonplussed.
“I’m itching to try some of your cream stuff,” she said, unconscious of the irony. “It sounds intriguing. Linda says she put some on Alasdair’s eczema and it’s made the world of difference.”
“Well,” replied Maddy, fervently encouraging the children into the car and fastening their seat belts, “you can’t beat nature and natural products.”
“Mum,” yelled Will from the backseat, “can we go to McDonald’s?”
“No, darling,” said Maddy through her teeth. “I’ve made some lovely fresh soup at home.”
“But we always go at the end of ter—”
“Come on, everyone,” she added hastily, slamming the car door. “Got to get back. Lovely to see you, Sue. I’ll be in touch.” And she was out of the car park like Damon Hill on speed.
Despite the hours they had put in during the last few days of term, and the help offered by Crispin and the ever-wonderful Janet, they were way behind with orders, and requests were still pouring in. The biggest problem was space. Izzie’s house was really not big enough to accommodate the mixing operation, though it would have been ideal without her children there, and now that Maddy’s children were under their feet demanding biscuits and juice every few minutes, Maddy’s kitchen was beginning to resemble a Victorian sweatshop.
Breaking point came one sunny morning a few days later, while Izzie and Maddy were up in Maddy’s bedroom checking labels for printing quality. The floor was strewn with sheets over which they were poring, when there was a knock at the window. Maddy looked up.
“The gutter,” Crispin shouted and gesticulated through the glass. “It’s finally come down. I’ll just go off to the merchant’s and get another. It’s going to rain tomorrow and you’ll need it.” Maddy gave him the thumbs-up and as he disappeared down the ladder went back to her checking. Several labels were faded where the ink had started to run out and she was marking these with a red pen, when she heard another knock. She looked up. There, face pressed to the glass, was Florence.
“Mummy, look! I’m up the ladder.”
“Oh, Christ, Izzzzie!” They both jumped up like greyhounds out of the trap. “Get downstairs to the bottom quick. I’ll try and get her through the window. Now, Florence, darling, just hold onto the top of the ladder—tight.” She tried to ease up the sash, but it had stuck, and as she tried to force it, she could see Florence’s initial delight at her adventure turning into sheer terror.
“Mummy, it’s wobbling.” Her bottom lip was wobbling even more.
“It’s okay, darling. Mummy’s here,” she shouted, “and Izzie will be right behind you any minute.” She took off her shoe and tried to nudge the top of the frame, chipping off the paint as she did so.
“Mummy, I’m scaaaared.” Florence was wailing now.
“Don’t panic. We’ll have you down in no time, and then we’ll all have ice cream.” What the hell use is Ben & Jerry’s at a time like this? she thought desperately as she abandoned the shoe and bashed the frame with the heel of her hand.
“It’s all right, sweetheart, I’m here.” Maddy could hear Izzie’s gently reassuring voice and saw her head appearing behind Florence on the ladder. “Now just do as I say, and it’ll be fine.” She watched as, carefully and slowly, Izzie helped Florence take each rung, one at a time, until they were out of sight.
Legging it downstairs, she shrieked, “Lillian, here quick! We’ve got a problem.” Lillian came rushing out as Maddy intercepted Izzie at the front door and took the howling Florence in her arms. “It’s over. You’re safe now.” She turned to them both. “That’s it. This is crazy,” she barked in her terror and relief. “We can’t do this here anymore. Lillian, can you put together a list of commercial estate agents and phone them up? We need premises and we need them now.”
Looking at house details had been one thing. Industrial units was something else altogether. The agents Lillian contacted all talked in square meterage, and both Izzie and Maddy were as clueless as each other about what 300 sq. m. looked like, despite the pile of details spread across the kitchen table. Nor were they exactly sure just how much they needed.
As usual Lillian came to their rescue. “Well, Maddy, if it’s any help, Workflow Systems was about two hundred and fifty, and you know how much that was because you visited us once.”
“I can hardly remember, and it was just when you moved in so you couldn’t see the floor for PC boxes and desks.” Maddy sighed. How proud Simon had been when he showed her round. “My little baby” he’d called it, and she’d tried very hard to feign interest. “It was only once, wasn’t it, Lillian? Do you think I should have visited more often?”
Lillian hesitated a fraction too long. “I don’t think so, Maddy. It wasn’t always a very happy ship. Pretty stressful actually.” And she changed the subject by picking out a rather dark photograph of a brick barn in a village just outside Ringford which looked unusual. “This one’s pretty cheap—they are offering them at reduced introductory rates to get people in as it’s just been converted. Shall I tell them you’ll go and have a look?”
The young agent from Griggs, Staples & Davis, in his light-brown suit, button-down shirt, cheap tie, and narrow shoes, didn’t seem to be quite sure how to deal with the two women who rolled up outside Blackcote Farm Business Park the following afternoon. He was even less sure about the five children who poured out of the two cars and ran as though possessed through the barn doors, screaming and shouting in the echoey space. It was a child’s heaven. A giant nothingness, just vast concrete floor and bare walls, around which Charlie and Will pretended to be planes, and Jess skipped, with Florence stuck like glue in admiration not far behind. A wooden staircase led up to a mezzanine above, with a balustrade overlooking the space below, so, Maddy presumed, the management could check up that the workforce were hard at it.
They looked around in wonder. “It’s a bit grown up,” said Izzie uncertainly. “Are we really going to be making enough of the stuff to need all this?”
“If the orders waiting to be done already are anything to go by, we certainly are.”
The agent seemed keen to hustle them out as quickly as possible, and once they had confirmed the rental, arranged to come to the house for them to sign for the barn the next day—he wasn’t going to risk a similar invasion of the office. When they finally got back to Huntingford House and dug out pizza from Maddy’s freezer, Lillian was ready to go home for the night.
“Have you got time for a cup of tea before you go?” Maddy asked, taking the wrappers off the margheritas.
“I really ought to get going. It’s salsa night tonight and I’ll need to change.”
“Lillian, you dark horse.” Izzie laughed incredulously. “I didn’t know you were a dancer!”
“Oh it’s just a bit of fun with some girlfriends, really.” She blushed, a mistake with her hair color. “We used to do line dancing, but I got fed up with the men there slapping my bottom and yelling yee-ha!” She giggled. “Anyway the phone has been red hot. Pru called to say one of the women’s weeklies is keen to do something on you as soon as you can. I said you’d call her tomorrow. Sue Templeton wants to fix a date for Josh—is it?—to come and play because they are off to Twois Valleys or somewhere over Easter. Now there’s a forceful woman, and Pru called again and said could you ring her about something else first thing. Oh and Peter called. What a lovely voice that man has—he was very enigmatic, but just said to tell Izzie ‘it’s all fine.’”
Just how fine didn’t become clear until Maddy had time later in the evening to call him back. “I’ve been a little underhand I’m afraid,” Peter explained. That would take some believing. “I didn’t pry, but the bank wanted confirmation that your business was going to be solvent enough that it wouldn’t put any strain on Izzie’s personal account, so . . .” He paused. “I have made a deposit into your business account as a sign of goodwill.” He heard Maddy’s intake of breath. “Now before you say anything, darling, it’s just a small sum to show confidence in your venture, and you can pay me back. From what Giselle has told me from her cuttings, that won’t take long.”
“Peter, I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, don’t say anything. Now we have both been thinking. What about the children? How are you going to cope over the holidays?”
“I don’t know frankly.” She explained about the unit and the need to get into serious production as soon as possible. “We could always employ them packing pots, I suppose, but I think Health and Safety might not approve.”
“Now you’re a bit more liquid financially, why don’t you look into a nanny again? Your previous one is probably tied up, but you are going to need someone—and, Maddy, take care of yourself. We both worry about you.” Maddy could feel the tears well up and she sniffed inelegantly. “You know,” he added gently, “Simon would be proud as hell of you.”
She said her good-byes as fast as she could before she collapsed completely, and poured a glass of wine from the open bottle in the fridge to ease the pain. Everything that had happened over the last couple of months had been so fast, so exhilarating, so exciting, and she realized how much she ached to share it with Simon. It would have been fun to chat about it to him over dinner, ask his advice, laugh with him about the press interviews, the meeting at the bank and with the estate agent. Who else would want to know? Who’d be interested enough to listen? She realized how tired she was, and sitting down at the table she laid her head in her arms. Almost every night recently she had woken to find either Will or Florence (usually wet) in her bed. It was comforting to feel their warm sleeping bodies next to hers, but she hadn’t had a full night’s sleep for as long as she could remember, and there was no one to take over in the morning, no one to ask first thing, “Please make me a cup of tea. I can’t move.”
Everything, she realized, from making sure there were clean pants to paying the phone bill was down to her. If she didn’t see to it, it wouldn’t happen. Peter was right: she had to get help. She looked at the clock. Nine fifteen, not too late to call. She pulled out her leather organizer, turned the pages, and found Colette’s forwarding address and phone number. Her finger hovered over the digits. Was it a viable proposition?
“Maddeee!” Colette sounded reassuringly thrilled to hear from her. “How is everything and those gorgeous children? Listen. I saw something about you in the paper.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “This beetch I work for has the Mail rag lying around. What are you doing? You looked wonderful but so theen.”
Maddy couldn’t keep the weariness from her voice. “Izzie and I had this mad idea and it’s rather run away with us. I have a study full of requests for pots of this gunk we’ve come up with, and we’re in danger of screwing the whole thing up because we can’t get the orders out.”
“What about the children? How will you cope with them?”
“Exactly.”
There was a temporary silence at the end of the phone. Maddy took a sip of wine and a long drag of her cigarette.
“Well,” Colette said finally, giving the word several syllables, “I would need to give a few days’ notice, of course.”
Maddy smiled to herself and felt her heart lift. “Oh, Colette, would you? I don’t even know about money. But it’s coming in, because I have a roomful of checks next door . . . but your bedroom is just the same, just needs a bit of a dust and Florence has made a little camp up there with a table and a tablecloth—it was the vicar’s wife who gave her the idea—but it’s all still the same. There’s no cleaner now but I’m a dab hand with the duster, you’ll be amazed, and Pasco’s walking, and Will’s lost three teeth, and—”
“Maddy, arrête!” Colette laughed, exasperated. “I’ll come up as soon as I can, and you can tell me all about it then.”
The following morning, over an orgy of toast and Pop-Tarts (which she’d always thought would make a great name for a girl band), Maddy played her ace and told the children about Colette’s imminent return. Will and Florence squealed with delight at the prospect of having their beloved nanny back, though Maddy was fairly certain anyone would have sufficed so long as it wasn’t their frequently absent and otherwise distracted mother. They piled onto her knee with glee, and in celebration she let them have a Fruit Winder. Now she knew she had really lost her grip on parenthood.
As they wandered off to watch CBBC, she finally located the ringing phone under the breakfast debris.
“Good morning, Mrs. Cosmetics Magnate,” Pru said warmly when she answered. “I hope you’re not playing mumsy today ’cos I bear good tidings. Lillian may have told you that Country Life want to talk to you both and I’m in discussions with OK! who want to do a little piece on their beauty page. Can I tell them next week sometime?”
“Er, sure.” Maddy absentmindedly nibbled a piece of leftover toast. “So long as they don’t mind picking their way through cooking vats, children’s toys, and dirty laundry.”
“Oh, I think that image will be ideal, so long as the toys are all wooden or windup. But there’s more. Wait for this. I’ve had an intriguing phone call from Elements.” For a minute Maddy was too shocked to take it in. That achingly trendy health and beauty emporium—there was no other word for it—had been one of her favorite London stomping grounds. She would spend hours in the Knightsbridge branch ogling the glass shelves, with row upon row of deliciously packaged goodies from all over the world but all equally now brands. Bath oils, creams, and lotions you wanted to sniff, feel, almost lick. What could they want with Paysage Enchanté?
“They are going softly softly, of course but want to know if you would be interested in supplying them. I played it terribly cool; you’d have been so impressed.” She was silent. “Say something, Maddy. Other clients of mine would kill for shelf space there, and you two go and get an approach!”
“How many branches have they got?” Maddy finally managed to squeak out weakly.
“Six. Three in London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Leeds. Shall we set up a meeting?”
“You have to be joking,” squealed Izzie, when she arrived half an hour later. “Not ‘so trendy, the carrier bags are collectors items’ Elements?”
“The very same.” Maddy giggled in delight, and they practically danced around the kitchen in their excitement. “We, us, the pair, les deux are only going to be stocked by the sexiest shop on planet Earth.” She pulled down two aprons from the back of the door. “Come on, girl, we’ve got work to do.”