Blowing It Read online

  About the Book

  Sorrel is about to go off on her Gap Year. She sooo wants a home to come home to.

  Ilex, her brother, is trying to upgrade his flat and marry his smart girlfriend Manda. He’d like some immediate equity.

  Clover, the elder sister, has plans that involve a bijou second home in France. And she wants it now.

  If only their parents would be sensible. If only they would sell their large, rather grand but somewhat dilapidated home and hand over their inheritance. But parents aren’t always as sensible as their children. They are planning on blowing the lot…

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  About the Author

  Also by Judy Astley

  Copyright

  BLOWING IT

  Judy Astley

  As always, love and thanks to Jon: still flying with me (14 J and K) and surviving the turbulence.

  ONE

  I AM THE oldest woman in Top Shop.

  If Lottie had happened to be among a handful of customers in one of the smaller high-street branches this observation wouldn’t have rated a second thought; but here in the vast and bustling Oxford Circus flagship store, the realization that she was a whole generation away (and in a few cases, two) from every one of hundreds of customers was highly unsettling. Quickly she peered round, scanning across the many rails of bright youthful clothing, seeking another marooned mid-life soul. After almost two hours watching Sorrel trawl every rack and hanger in the place, she could do with another adult woman to exchange sympathy-smiles with; in fact, right now if she saw one she wouldn’t trust herself not to fall upon her and hug her. But there wasn’t one to be found among the sea of shiny-haired, Bambi-legged, chattering girlhood. Where, when you needed them, were all those hip fashion journalists who smugly claimed they were always in there, snapping up vintage lines and essential vests? Perhaps, Lottie thought in a mild panic, the world-as-we-know-it had ended, leaving other, more sensible women of her age corralled together in Country Casuals where they were considered to belong, whereas she was to be shipwrecked for ever among the teens and twenties, the texters and the gigglers, the shriekers and the twitterers. Hell may yet be an eternity of pink Day-Glo stilettos, shiny, sequinned halter-necks and skinny pre-scuffed jeans cut low enough to show the ogling public exactly who was and who was not a natural blonde.

  And it was so exhaustingly loud and crowded, being a half-term Thursday when every cute teenage minx in possession of effective spot-cover and glossy, flicky hair seemed to have descended on the store from many suburban miles around. In twos and threes these beautiful near-women slinked and sashayed between the racks of clothes, self-consciously over-animated while on the slidey-eyed look-out for that dreamed-of tap on the shoulder that could mean a contact-card from a model agency scout. Sorrel said everyone knew that the Oxford Circus branch was practically a super-model recruitment centre. According to her, one minute you could be quietly minding your own, deciding between the black lace-edged skirt and the white denim cut-offs, and the next you could be looking at a contract that would wipe your student debt right out.

  Wouldn’t it be funny, it crossed Lottie’s mind, if one of these scouts, bored and dizzied by this glut of youthful perfection, copped a look at her and thought, Aha – just what I’m after – a well-upholstered, wild-haired old hippie-type for that Vogue retro special? Tee hee, that’d be one in the eye for Sorrel and all the other beanpole, hair-tossing hussies.

  Lottie picked up a pale apricot frilled shirt and held it against her front. She’d worn something very like this onstage at the Woodstock festival, all those years ago (though in cheesecloth, so cheap it had shredded on the second wearing), over a fringed suede miniskirt. That was the excellent thing about being with Charisma – singing with a folksy soft-rock band didn’t leave you completely wiped out after the gig, though that might have been partly down to her only being eighteen at the time. There’d been plenty of energy left over that night for her and Mac to conceive Ilex in the backstage trailer. Clover, by contrast, had been made three years later in far ritzier surroundings at the George V hotel in Paris. Perhaps that was what had given her this hankering to buy a place in France, to go with her taste for Elle Decoration furnishings and detail-perfect clothes. If Clover was ever run over by a bus her underwear would be cooed over by an entire A & E department.

  In the mirror the shirt looked very small, cuddled up snug against the baggy bulk of Lottie’s loose linen jacket. She wasn’t what anyone would describe as podgy, but would her arms fit into those narrow sleeves? Possibly not; no, definitely not. It was labelled as size 12 but she doubted it was designed for a mature adult shape – more for someone whose arms were at their broadest at the elbow. Pretty though, and she’d try it on if she could face the beautiful, pin-thin little fox guarding the changing rooms but, feeling unusually uncertain due to her position as sole senior customer, she wasn’t up to facing a sneer and a smirk and the humiliation of having to be rescued from the garment when she got it stuck over her bosom.

  She pictured the guard-fox giggling later down her mobile to a friend. She knew exactly how the conversation would go:

  ‘And today there was this, like, woman? Right, like really, like elderly? And she thought she’d, like, try stuff on? Like, derrrr? I like told her, like, I was quite kind, I’m like, are you sure? This stuff’s, like, maybe a bit young? Why don’t you go down to, like, Jaeger?’

  And (like) so on.

  ‘Put that down right now. These aren’t for you.’ Sorrel swooped between her mother and the mirror, snatched the garment from Lottie’s hands and crammed it back into the display rack.

  ‘What’s wrong with it? I thought…’

  Sorrel posed, flicked and pouted (model scout: look now), hands on hips and hissed, ‘Mum, you’re not here to think. You’re not here to try things on. You’re only here to pay, remember?’

  Well, that told her. Lottie remembered there were rules (Sorrel-imposed rules) for this visit to the teen treasure house. Number one was Do Not Draw Attention to Yourself. Sorrel needn’t worry. Plumpish middle-aged mother-figures (even once-famous ones) in shops the world over were invisible until their purchase-laden daughters led them to the till and then, only then, they might be rewarded with a brief but glorious smile of triumph.

  ‘Because this is about my gap-year stuff. It’s about me not you.’ Sorrel did another bit of furious hair-tossing while Lottie wondered when any single second of time for any seventeen-year-old girl was ever not entirely about herself.

  ‘So have you found anything you like?’ Lottie asked wearily. Her feet hurt. It had been a mistake to wear heels but it was what you did when you were a Surrey lady, even an ex-hippie one, and went Up To Town. The pounding music, the bright lights, and the hectic citrus shades of the clothes were beginning to upset her senses. A headache threatened. She recalled with fond nostalgia the lush, tender darkness of Biba back in 1968 – her own seventeenth year – and the way that, as you’d walked past the wooden hat stands from which hung clothes in murky muted shades of plum and taupe, swansdown boas and ostrich feathers would waft out and tickle your face. Biba had smelled of secrets and decadence and patchouli. To
p Shop smelled of Haribo sweets and hair products.

  ‘I’ve found loads of stuff.’ Sorrel grinned suddenly. ‘It’s at the cash desk being added up. I just need you to come.’

  ‘And pay. Yes, I know. I hope you didn’t go mad, we did say a limit.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Dramatic eye-rolling and don’t-start-on-me hand gestures accompanied this. If anyone was casting for a new soap-star brat, they could do a lot worse. Posh, troublesome totty for EastEnders; a feisty Grange Hill revival. Sorrel would be perfect for either or both.

  ‘So can we go home now?’ Lottie asked, stuffing sheaves of receipts into her handbag. Sorrel gathered up her new possessions but showed worrying swivel-eyed signs of still being on the look-out for a missed bargain.

  ‘Because I’m feeling tired and … old,’ Lottie admitted, looking longingly towards the exit doors and the dull, normal street beyond. Gap year, she thought enviously. When did that become the essential must-have for school-leavers? Why can’t I have one?

  ‘Oh Mum, you’re not old!’ Sorrel laughed, taking her mother’s arm and leading her towards the handbags. ‘You’re not old at all, you’re just … vintage.’

  Mac waited his turn in the queue at the bank and tried to do the necessary sums in his head. Any way up, he kept getting answers that had disturbing minuses in them. He should bank on-line, apparently; it took all the problems out of it. It was what Ilex was always telling him anyway. That way he could, according to Ilex, sort out all his bills and money transfers and his entire financial life would be hassle-free. He’d like to ask Ilex if on-line banking could also make him a useful million quid richer and magically come up with some – any – kind of income to look forward to in his rapidly approaching pension years but he didn’t want to see that expression of exasperated disappointment on his son’s face, that ‘You had plenty of money once, what did you do with it?’ look. That was the trouble with Ilex’s thirty-something generation – they’d become too old too young, which had to be blamed on having been raised in the Thatcher years. Whatever the spendthrift shortcomings of their feckless parents, these strange young/old folk seemed to have a depressing eagerness for saving and investment. That pair of so-sensible grown-up words was completely alien to Mac, whose savings days had begun and ended with two years of the weekly purchase of National Savings stamps at primary school. That was when the state rather than the advertising industry decreed what you did with your pocket money. Back then, on Friday mornings just before milk and playtime, you lined up with the rest of the class (all thirty-nine of them) to hand over six-pence for a stamp with Princess Anne’s head on it. Or, if you’d just had a birthday or had swanky show-off parents, you paid a big shiny half a crown for one with Prince Charles on. Eventually these were traded for National Savings Certificates, which you forgot about till some time during your early twenties when you cashed them in to buy a clapped-out Mini. Mac had stacked up row after row of Princess Annes in his little book and could still clearly recall that plump toddler face with its surrounding mad mass of blonde curls. Her Royal Highness had never, in Mac’s opinion, quite got the hang of dealing with that hair. Prince Charles had looked altogether more serious (well, he was worth five times as much – where had the junior feminists been when you needed them?); perhaps even then the poor lad had felt oppressed by the burden of future expectations.

  ‘Are you just paying in … or …?’ A junior staff member was cruising the line of customers. With only one out of a possible six service windows staffed, she looked keen to cull time-wasters from the queue. Mac, mildly confused, considered what she’d said: ‘Are you paying in or …?’ Or what? How about, he thought, ‘Or … are you intending to stage a colossal armed robbery, which will involve police from three counties and top slot on the early-evening news but are unfortunately too well brought-up to use your sawn-off to shove your way to the front of the queue?’

  Or was it completely other as in: ‘Are you paying in awe? In awe of the uncontrollable debts the bank encourages you to run up on your sundry credit cards? The way the bank gets away with charging £27.50 for a 3p overdraft? In awe of other people who can, so capably, Manage Their Money?’

  Another one came to mind – Mac was on a roll now as he shuffled a few steps further up the line: ‘Are you paying in ore as in good old-fashioned metal ore – did freshly mined gold count as ore?’ He’d had a gold ingot once – something to do with tax avoidance, he couldn’t remember quite what. He and Lottie had used it to prop open the back door but Clover, who’d been about three at the time, had dragged it out into the garden and dropped it in the lily pond so he’d spent a muddy afternoon fishing it out, had it changed into cash and spent a wodge of it on one of the first-ever Range Rovers. Possibly not one of his best financial moves, but then which of them had been? Like the racehorse, the restaurant, the gallery and (most recently) the herb and salad business, it had seemed a good idea at the time. After all, you couldn’t really expect a man who’d spent twenty years fronting a progressive soft-rock band to become an overnight financial whiz, now could you?

  Mac’s turn at the counter came at last and he handed over an untidy handful of cheques to an adolescent boy who looked as if he was wearing his much-bulkier black-sheep brother’s going-to-court suit. Obviously fresh from the sixth form, Mac reckoned. He’d put money on it that the lad was temping for gap-year cash and would be off from Gatwick with a rucksack and a Lonely Planet guidebook before Mac’s next final demand arrived. How come the young grabbed themselves months of carefree travel whereas he now had to think twice about a cheap weekend in Valencia? How unfair – as Sorrel would phrase it – was that? Gap year, he thought; if bloody only.

  The boy yawned as he shuffled Mac’s bills for gas, electricity, American Express, Visa and half a year’s council tax.

  ‘Have you considered our on-line banking service, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I have,’ Mac assured him solemnly, ‘and I decided against it on the grounds of severe risk of identity theft.’

  There was a millisecond’s hesitation before the youth handed back the stamped counterfoils. The hesitation said only one thing: You sad, broke, balding, badly dressed old git. What kind of tragic, useless loser would want to steal your identity?

  He had, Mac conceded, got him there.

  TWO

  THERE WAS A low droning noise from behind the newspaper across the table. Slowly it dawned on Lottie (who was engrossed in the fashion pages and the minimal chances of her ever needing a strapless dress in yellow ruched satin) that Mac was reading something to her and that she was supposed to listen and take a suitable wifely interest. It was really annoying when he did this without first saying something to get her attention. She’d only tune in to the fact that he was talking to her at all when he was halfway through the piece and then he’d sigh in that exasperated way when she asked him to start telling her again.

  Lottie, finding it impossible to get her head round how simple rope-and-canvas sandals could carry a price tag of £400, chucked her bit of the newspaper expertly at the recycling box across the kitchen, leaned across the table between the rows of jars (honey, two marmalades, blackberry jam) and rattled the photo of Wayne Rooney on Mac’s back page.

  ‘Sorry, Mac, I was concentrating on something. Tell me again.’

  He lowered the paper a few inches and grinned across at her. ‘It’s that column where they do a funny bit each week about words that look the same but aren’t at all, “homonyms”, are they? I dunno. Anyway, it says …’ And in the short space while he took a breath she sensed those long-ago Listen With Mother comfort-words ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.’

  ‘“Pension,”’ he read. ‘“A pathetically inadequate amount of money, grudgingly handed over by either state or private fund, on which to live out one’s declining years in the kind of penny-pinching manner to which no one would wish to become accustomed.”’

  Lottie pulled a face at this unwelcome reminder as to what the future
might not hold in terms of funds. Had her parents’ generation thought like that? Everywhere you looked now, there was a piece of finger-wagging government bossiness about savings and investments and Proper Provision. Soon, they would all be told it was their duty as good citizens to die at sixty or be evicted to a north-facing hillside to face chill starvation.

  ‘Or,’ Mac continued, ‘“Pension – a simple yet charming guesthouse in sunny rural France, offering substantial rustic fare and a selection of fine – if robust – local wines.”’ He chuckled and turned the page. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ he said, before moving on instantly to become engrossed in Chelsea’s new striker.

  ‘No, no it doesn’t,’ Lottie said, shuddering slightly. ‘I really don’t want to think about the “P” word, especially not over breakfast.’ More precisely, it was the lack of pension she didn’t want to think about. The very thought made her feel mildly faint in exactly the way she used to feel years ago on the train to school when she hadn’t bought a ticket, only to see the guard making his way towards her with a look on his face that told her she was about to make his day.

  ‘It’s like that parable,’ she now found herself murmuring to herself, ‘the one about the foolish virgins.’

  ‘Virgins?’ Mac looked up. ‘What virgins? Where?’

  ‘Pensions,’ Lottie continued vaguely. ‘Those women in the Bible who didn’t keep their lamps trimmed or squandered their talents or something. The squanderers got told off for not being good savers, like we’re going to be when we’re old.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say we squandered our talents,’ Mac said. ‘We’ve done OK. We still live on it all. Just.’

  There was a silence while they considered their diminishing income and the demanding vastness of the house that income had to support. It had been a massive piece of luck that some of Mac’s songs had become such worldwide standards that they’d kept them going this long. But the day would surely come when opening a royalty statement would reveal ‘Total: £3.50’ at the bottom of the page. Lottie wondered what they’d do then: possibly the choices would be to gamble it on a horse or to buy Lottery tickets. Growing and selling fancy salad vegetables to the hotel and restaurant trade, as they currently did, but in so half-hearted and desultory a way that it was only half a step up from hobby-farming in what was once a glorious Gertrude Jekyll-designed garden, was never going to earn them more than beer money. In fact, it probably came to less than beer money, really, once Al, the part-time gardener, had been paid.