Laura sat in the back of the car on the way home from the station, taking it in, their news. She seemed pensive. After a while she said, ‘Is there a drug that makes you see things in different colours and makes you happy?’
He took the day off on Monday to go down to Hastings. He got up at six and sat on the toilet. It was the best seat in the house, affording views across the valley. The oak tree had sprouted ginger leaves and in this secret early hour cast a golden aura. Horses hung their heads in the long wet grass. A red post van crept down the far hill, turning off its lights halfway down, acknowledging the day just come. It occurred to him that it might be one of the first days of summer.
He wanted to share it with her. He made tea then coffee in an attempt to stall her, but Astrid was not to be delayed. She was going to work.
She applied a number of different creams in a regimented order, make-up followed, hair somewhere in between, and she begrudged his presence, moaning as he passed behind her, trying to get sight of what she was about.
She was humourless about these procedures, terrified he’d see her back-of-thigh cellulite in a bad light – or, worse, a good light – or of being caught confounded by a thong and having to go at it two or three times, having bunting left and bunting right and something like parcel string up the middle. The bathroom door with its scraping drawl was a noise that put fear in her and, sure enough, she’d hear it the minute she began to daub fake tan on her lower legs and was arsehole to the air.
‘Will you just sod off, please!’ she screamed. There was no audience participation when it came to beauty, everyone knew that, but Nick seemed intent on getting onstage.
Downstairs, Nick and Roy got in each other’s way, waiting for the bride-to-be – for Astrid emerged wedding-day-ready daily, beauty being her business – and she came down the stairs radiant of smile, magnanimous in her evasions, thin-skinned and irritable.
‘Can he not spend a minute outside, that mutt?’ she said, clasping her pale skirt.
And with his almost human understanding, Roy sheathed his tongue, turned round and pushed the conservatory door with his head to let himself out. And then he’d invariably turn round again in that room, poke at the door with his head once more and reappear with tongue out and a great grin as if they’d not recognize him as Roy, the brown and white dog.
The pair bothered her on her way out, Roy with his spittle loose and free and Nick with the same line of questioning he’d pursued all the way home from the Croziers.
‘Blood means something, Astrid. Doesn’t it?’ he said. Grumpy because of the bags under her eyes that the eye
cream was no use for, she had imperfections top of her mind only and was dwelling on the vision of that great clod Katie, dusting off her shoes with the hair-colour wheel, and of Sally, the new girl with the perma-cold, hands as idle as her brain.
‘Doesn’t it, Astrid? I have to do it, don’t I? I have to make it right again. I can do that. It’s within my power.’
They’d been through it on the M40. She’d been enjoying her own train of thought. ‘Oyster silk? Champagne silk? Décolletage? Low back? Online or Selfridges? Or why not just go the whole hog! White?’ But he’d kept interrupting, harping on, just like his father in the car when they went to Dave’s for lunch.
And there they were now on the threshold of the conservatory with him grabbing at her and importuning her. So she agreed thoroughly, conclusively, and left him there, mulling it over in his socks and underpants.
By the end of the lane, in her mind she was already in Rye and taking big Katie aside and giving her a speech. You either got beauty or you didn’t. It was an illusion that used a smidgen of science, a dollop of magic and a shedload of willpower. And money. Katie, have you ever been hungry? For days. Katie, have you ever been bothered by the ridges on your nails? Katie, have you ever thought – surgery? Katie, beauty is not brassy; it’s steely.
Big Katie was a big mess. Nice girl, bad skin.
Then she was thinking of Sally with her flawless skin and her gormless gob. No matter what the punter said, with Sally the reply was a limp ‘Brill-i-anne’. No ‘t’. She had a rota of two customer-friendly questions: ‘Is that pressure OK for you?’ or,
‘Been on holiday this year?’ And she delivered these in a sing-song nasal voice thick with insincerity. But she was sincere. Sally was the most boring girl Astrid had ever met. She was the perfect cipher, the sort of girl women wanted sloughing their hard skin.
As Astrid sped past the beautiful small doll’s houses of Beckley, amid the chestnut trees with their candelabra alight, she thought how they’d woken that morning in each other’s arms and it came to her, out of nowhere it seemed, Maybe, just maybe, he loves me, as he says he does, regardless of ‘beauty’.
She’d tried so hard for so long to be perfect. Just like Linda, only what her mother took as a standard for home furnishings, Astrid applied to her body. Nothing can be perfect; only misery.
She would have to call her parents and tell them their news. She knew how they’d respond. Her mother would be tight-lipped and ask her if she was sure and she’d add ‘this time’ with her customary loading.
How do you know he loves you? Astrid guessed her mother might well ask her. One day she’d ask Laura the same thing.
Pulling into the car park with that thought uppermost, she looked in the driving mirror and saw she looked clean, straight and clear-headed, and the lovely silver car responded with all of its power, just as she wanted it to, and just for a moment, it came to her that she was the woman she always wanted to be. The woman she’d imagined she’d be when she was a kid. She’d achieved what she set out to do. She’d done it all.
She got out of the car and swung her bag over her shoulder, clicked the key button.
Because he can’t leave me alone. I can’t be five minutes alone when he’s at home. He hovers at doors or comes right in and I have to jettison the razor, legs half-shaved. He can’t leave me alone. He wants my secrets. He wants all of me; that’s how I know. He’s lost without me. He needs me.
And, walking into the spa, she left the door open and let in Nick and Laura and Roy and their home and she dumped her bag and coat on reception, something scruffy she’d never done before. Then she went back out and up to Jempson’s café and bought thirty doughnuts, and she came back and made a full jug of coffee. She assembled them, all the staff, notwithstanding the ladies with cricks in their necks waiting to have shampoo washed out, notwithstanding the poor woman on her knees with her eyes screwed shut, holding the paper knickers up her crack in the waxing room, ready for part two of the Brazilian.
She told them she was getting married.
‘Aw. Brillianne,’ said Sally.
And the others were more fulsome than truth could possibly allow for, being indentured to her really, and they set to billing and cooing and pandering to her with talk of hair extensions for the big day.
She wanted to tell them, There’s more to life than beauty. But they were young, and there was a time for everything. For now all she said was, Help yourselves.
Downstairs in the plasterboard-partitioned treatment rooms, on towel-clad gurneys, women lay pending beauty. Immobile, cotton pads on eyelids with lashes tinting, fingers splayed with varnish drying, face masks congealing, they lay still as still, breathing slow.