‘Hello. Whoisit?’
Dolly answers the phone. She has been sitting next to it all evening making arrangements with her friends, painting her toenails and occasionally glancing away from the television and towards the French vocabulary list teetering on the arm of her chair. The only reason she is in the room and using this phone is that her mobile has been confiscated at school. Laura was supposed to get it back, but she was too late to see Madame King the French teacher. Dolly has not yet decided to forgive her for this.
‘Mum, it’s for you. It’s Hedley.’ These are Dolly’s first words to her mother since she came in. Laura smiles in recognition of the truce, and reluctantly Dolly allows her mouth to rise a millimetre at the corners. But a call from her mother’s brother in Norfolk holds no interest for Dolly; she flops her wrist back and lets the telephone fall on the cushion beside her, shifting her long legs slightly to allow Laura room to perch on the edge of the seat to speak, while she continues to rake her fingers through her hair and chew gum. Fred zaps the television with the remote control to kill the sound, earning a grateful look from his mother.
‘Hi, Hedley, how are you? I’m sorry I haven’t rung you. I got your messages, but it’s been so hectic. Inigo’s off to New York soon to set up his new show, and someone’s leaked the title, which is bad news.’
‘What is the title of his show?’ Hedley asks, glad that Laura cannot see that he has been reduced to making telephone calls from the airing cupboard in order to have privacy from the tyranny of Tamsin his teenage step-daughter.
Laura sighs. ‘Hedley, honestly! What did I just say? I’m not supposed to tell you or anyone else anything about it.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter now because it’s already been leaked,’ Hedley points out.
Laura laughs capitulation. ‘All right, I’ll tell you. It’s called Death Threat, and the central image is the shadow of a giant rolling pin towering over a tiny pastry-cutter-sized Möbius strip. It was meant to have an embargo on it until the middle of March, as the show doesn’t launch until April—’ She breaks off, arrested by the muffled noises from Hedley’s end. ‘You sound very peculiar. Where are you?’
Her brother, trying to arrange himself for comfort as well as security on the second from bottom shelf, answers reluctantly, ‘I’m in the airing cupboard.’ He shifts a sprigged eiderdown from behind him and breathes, ‘Aah, that’s better. Isn’t it time Inigo moved on from Möbius strips, or should the plural be Möbii? I shall look it up.’ Hedley is always ready to be distracted by a bit of research. Laura cuts in, recognising the signs of her brother drifting away on a new tide of thought.
‘You can’t. It isn’t Latin, remember? It’s a German called August Ferdinand Möbius.’ Laura’s voice gathers exasperation. ‘You know that, Hedley, you’ve always known that – and why are you in the airing cupboard anyway?’
Fred, bored by what he can see is going to be an extended interruption to his television viewing, hurls a cushion at Dolly to liven things up. His twin shrieks as the blue nail polish she has been applying in squiggles on a base coat of pink skids across her hand and gloops onto her French exercise book.
‘Fred you stupid creep, don’t bloody do that,’ she howls.
Laura flails her hands, screwing up her eyes into menacing slits, hoping to mutely indicate terrible punishments if they don’t start behaving at once. Fred and Dolly ignore her and hurl themselves into a full-scale cushion bashing session. Laura can hardly hear her brother, and isn’t listening anyway, as her ears are straining to discover whether Inigo has heard the chaos from his cocoon of peace in the basement with the computer.
‘… and I thought this would be the best place to come to talk to you,’ her brother is saying. ‘Actually, it’s quite nice in here. Do you remember, we used to play Sardines here when we were young? I wish children now did that kind of thing. All Tamsin seems to want to do is stare at the television or talk on the telephone. I’d still rather play Sardines, wouldn’t you?’ Hedley sounds happier and more relaxed than he has done for weeks; hiding in the airing cupboard must be a good thing.
‘How is Tamsin?’ Laura asks, able to concentrate better now she has dragged the telephone, yanking the cord, out of the sitting room and into the hall away from the muffled thuds and squeals of the fight.
Hedley’s voice wobbles with suppressed frustration. ‘I cannot believe that parenting can ever be as difficult as my job of step-parenting,’ he says.
Laura is silent, remembering the outraged agony of her brother when his wife Sarah told him she was leaving. She had met someone else. ‘And it’s not even a man, it’s a female gym instructor,’ Hedley had bellowed, adding in disbelief, ‘And they’ve taken Tamsin.’
A year later though, Tamsin was back, with teenage hormones racing, a very different prospect from the child Hedley thought he knew. And Sarah has moved to a women only commune in Turkey to find her inner self. That was eighteen months ago, and she still shows no sign of coming home.
This is a classic instance of it; I’ve been trying to call you all evening but Tamsin wouldn’t give me the telephone. She had it locked in the bathroom with her from six o’clock onwards.’
‘Why don’t you get her a mobile?’ Laura asks, unable to stop herself being practical.
Hedley sighs. ‘Oh, she’s got one, but she’s run out of money on it and I’m in trouble for refusing to take her to get another card at the garage. It’s seven miles, for Christ’s sake. I don’t want to drive fourteen miles there and back at this time of night.’
Much goaded, he carries on, ‘I don’t seem to be able to get through to her at all – we don’t speak, she won’t look at me, we don’t even eat together any more. She spends every moment that she isn’t at school in the bathroom. She even eats in there – I found a plate of ancient peanut-butter sandwiches in the laundry basket this morning. I don’t know what to do about her. I understand that this could go on for years.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure it will be better soon.’ Hedley telephones Laura for advice three or four times a week, and it is clearly on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she will have Tamsin for a prolonged stay. A pink-faced giggling Dolly rushes past her up the stairs, waving the television remote control above her head. Fred follows, jaw set, furious. ‘You loser, Doll,’ he is shouting. ‘If you put that in the bath, you’ve had it.’
The thump and hurtle of the twins’ progress through the house is the same as it has always been, but there are other signs of impending teendom, and Laura is aware that life is becoming more dramatic every day – or certainly as far as Dolly is concerned. Taking her lead from Inigo, the biggest baby of all, Dolly hurls and slams her way through life. The tantrums over whether her jeans are clean or not are only eclipsed by mood swings over Dolly’s rights. These vacillate between tragedy – which is anything to do with her mother, and comedy – which is anything to do with her teachers. Fred is easier to predict, more like a satisfying one-act play than the full-blown opera in a new language that is Dolly. Mystifying. Perhaps through Tamsin, Laura can find a way to talk to Dolly too?
Cheered by this optimistic thought, she suggests, ‘Why don’t we all come to stay with you in Norfolk this weekend? Inigo could do with the break, and frankly so could I. We haven’t been to see you for ages. And I really mind that we don’t come there enough. I’ll talk to Tamsin a bit over the weekend and see if I can find out anything that might make her happier.’
Hedley appears to like this plan, but merely grunts, ‘What about me being happier?’ before adding more enthusiastically, ‘Actually, it’s a great weekend for you to come. I could do with some extra pairs of hands as we’ve got several hundred trees to plant.’
‘Oh,’ says Laura, not much liking the role of underling woodsman. ‘I think I might steer clear of that.’
‘What about Inigo?’ asks Hedley hopefully. ‘You could tell him it’s like going to the gym, really good for muscle toning and all that.’
Laura is doubtful. ‘You tell him,’ she says, adding, ‘Fred can help you too. Are you staying in the airing cupboard for the night?’ She moves the phone away from her head to yell, ‘THAT’S ENOUGH!’ up the stairs following a shuddering crash from the top floor.
Fred’s face appears at the top of the stairwell, rosy, his eyes cerulean, his expression worryingly angelic. ‘Mum, quick, come up here. Where’s Dad? There’s bright turquoise water seeping out of the washing machine. We didn’t do anything, honestly.’
Laura shouts, ‘See you on Friday, Hedley,’ and sprints up the stairs, or rather the first flight. By the second flight she is panting. Vowing to take up some form of exercise beyond not achieving yoga positions and watching other people walk their dogs, she hauls herself to the top of the house in time to witness the death throes of her washing machine. It has not enjoyed its role in her underwear dyeing project.