Every Good Girl Page 20

  She stood up and made her way to the back of the coffee shop, smiling regally at other customers. Nina had a quick look in her bag to see if she had enough cash for a taxi. Fine or otherwise, she didn’t think anyone whose body had taken the battering that Monica’s had should have to stand around in a bus queue. ‘Whyever didn’t you tell me?’ Monica suddenly appeared in front of her sounding furious. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I’d got chocolate all over my face? What I must have looked like, walking past all those people. They must have thought I was senile!’

  Nina laughed. The fury was profoundly reassuring.

  Joe liked department stores. There was a cosy sameness about them all. The ground-floor cosmetics palaces smelt just like all the world’s girls on hotel and office reception desks. The furniture departments all stocked the same outmoded sofas that no-one under sixty would ever buy. Menswear always had an apologetically small range of designer suits as if making a concession to the so-you-think-you’re-trendy market. The stereotype only rang true outside central London, though. Here, as he got off the tube at Knightsbridge, the choice was Harrods or Harvey Nichols. He hesitated for a moment on the platform and then took the Brompton Road exit for Harrods.

  Harrods had the pet department.

  Nina could tell that Monica was feeling very pleased with herself. She’d bought an elegant Italian suit in teal blue which would be perfect for the bridge club annual dinner. Nina was carrying the bag for her, but Monica kept glancing at it as if expecting Nina to put it down at any moment while she looked at clothes and wander away carelessly without it.

  ‘I wonder about a hat . . .’ she said. Then if there’s anything formal in the day some time, I’ve got a suitable outfit there all ready.’

  ‘Like a wedding, you mean?’ Nina suggested mischievously.

  ‘What wedding?’ Monica looked alarmed. ‘You don’t mean Graham? Has he said something? It would be just like him, going and telling you first. And it would be like you, too, not to be able to keep it secret.’

  They were in the middle of the carpet department where Nina was hoping to find a new rug to go with her basement repainting. Monica sat down heavily on a pile of tufted Berbers.

  ‘He hasn’t said anything to me, I promise,’ Nina said. ‘And anyway what’s got into you? Graham used to be the one who could do no wrong. Now he can’t get anything right. What would be so awful about him getting married? I’d have thought you’d like the idea.’ She didn’t think that at all and they both knew it. Nina was simply trying, as she so often had, to shift Monica’s view of Graham from small, vulnerable child to grown, capable man. It was hopeless, she should have given up years ago. Perhaps she should have quit back at the time when she’d visited the house, she remembered it vividly, with Lucy still baby enough to be in a sling, and found Monica at the kitchen table, carefully filling in Graham’s application form for the job at the hospital.

  Still slumped dejectedly on the pile of rugs, Monica had the air of someone who’d settled for the day. A smooth young male assistant, sensing that this was not an imminent sale, strolled by and looked at them. ‘If Madam would like the Ladies Rest Room . . .’ he suggested.

  ‘No Madam bloody wouldn’t,’ Monica got up suddenly and bellowed at him. The astonished young man took a step backwards and tripped over a carpet edge, tumbling gently onto a stack of Assyrian silk one-offs.

  Nina and Monica dissolved into giggles. ‘Quick, in here before we’re chucked out,’ Nina said, grabbing Monica by the arm and steering her through the doorway into the Pets department. In front of her, staring into a glass tank containing a pair of tiny tortoises, stood Joe.

  ‘Hello! What on earth brings you in here?’ she asked him. She felt quite shaken by how alone he looked, gazing at the two shambling little creatures as if he almost envied their paired-off captivity. ‘Oh it’s you,’ Monica greeted him with less enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes it’s me,’ he agreed jovially. ‘And actually I just popped in to see if they’ve got any hamsters.’

  ‘Hamsters?’ Nina repeated. Monica wandered off tactfully to watch a large blue parrot carefully picking at its claws. Nina was under no doubt that she’d remain just within earshot.

  Joe laughed. ‘Hey, you used to complain about me doing that, repeating words as if I’d never heard of them. Yes, hamsters. I was wondering about getting one for the flat.’ He shifted his feet around a bit. Nina remembered him doing that when he was being evasive. She grinned and came closer to him, saying in a half-whisper, ‘Is it because I so nastily suggested getting Catherine a kitten instead of letting her have a baby? Because if it is, trust me, a hamster doesn’t even come close.’

  Joe was laughing now. ‘Nothing to do with her. It’s for Lucy actually, so she’s got a hamster in both places. She likes to have pets and I quite miss them too, believe it or not.’ He patted his front. ‘I can feel the lack of Ghenghis to drag me out for walkies.’

  ‘You can walk him any time, feel free. Just come round,’ Nina told him. He looked over her shoulder to Monica, who was now inspecting a brood of lop-eared rabbits. He grabbed Nina’s arm and pulled her to the corner where fancy rats groomed their fleshy pink tails in a big glass tank. ‘It’s not just the pets I’m missing, you know. Will you come out one night next week for dinner? I’d really like to see you. What about Friday?’

  ‘More discussions about Emily’s gap year?’ Nina teased.

  Joe grinnned. ‘No. I don’t want to talk about the girls this time. I’d like to talk about us.’

  Nina frowned. ‘But Joe, there isn’t an “us”.’ She wished she hadn’t said that. It was unnecessary, just a petty dig. He was looking very unhappy. A year or two ago, when everything was hurting, she’d simply have thought to herself that it served him right. Those feelings had long gone. ‘I’ll come out with you some time soon,’ she relented with a smile. ‘But not on Friday.’

  ‘Oh. Something special?’

  ‘Possibly. Someone,’ she told him, and then wished she hadn’t said that too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mick was phoning at least twice a day. Sometimes he left messages on Nina’s answerphone, quite cheerful ones but with an edge, such as ‘Missed you yet again! Call me if there’s a spare moment in your busy life!’ He always sounded, Nina thought, as if he didn’t really expect her to be able to find one. Although she resisted it, she felt responsible and resented it. She didn’t want to be in charge of whether he had a happy time or not. Although she’d agreed to see him again, and she was happy enough to go out for a no-strings drink or to a film, these calls put her off ringing him back.

  Sally was furious. ‘You really shouldn’t have given him your number. That was crazy. Even if you thought you might want to see him again you should just have taken his. Now you never know, he might turn up at the house. He might turn out to be a stalker or a mad axeman.’

  Nina laughed, ‘You can talk! You’ve been out with more strange men over the past year than most people rub up against in a lifetime of rush-hour tube travel! And anyway I only gave him my number, not the address. And we are ex-directory.’

  Sally wasn’t convinced. ‘OK but just suppose he’s got a dodgy mate in the telephone business? He could have got hold of your address already. He might be lurking under that great thick wistaria that you never got round to trimming next time you come home late at night. He could be one of those men who carries one of his dead mother’s old stockings in his pocket in case he feels the need to do a bit of strangling. You really should take more care, especially with people like that loony on the Common hanging around. Perhaps he is that loony.’ She grinned. ‘Anyway, what did you get up to after that Knights Out disaster that made him so desperate to see you again?’

  ‘Nothing! Absolutely nothing! We went to a bar, put the world to rights over a drink like you do and then I took a taxi home. And before you ask, I didn’t tell the driver where to go until I’d got safely in and shut the door.’

  Nina and Sally were in Art
and Soul early in the morning before the gallery’s opening time, sitting on the floor unpacking boxes of greetings cards. The cards were hand-painted watercolours of beaches, with tiny shells and little fragments of striped fabric stuck on them. Quite a lot of the bits of decoration had fallen off, leaving a gritty heap at the bottom of the box.

  ‘What do you think these bits are meant to represent?’ Sally asked, holding up a square inch of blue and white fabric.

  ‘Deckchairs? Windbreaks?’ Nina suggested. ‘Titchy little hankies, the sort that men in cartoons tie on their heads in the sun?’

  ‘I think I’ll just stick some back on at random. No-one’ll notice.’

  ‘No-one but the artist. She’s bound to come in and check what we’ve sold. They always do.’

  ‘That’s true. It’s as if they can’t quite let go, a bit like driving a hundred miles to drop in casually on your child when he’s gone off to college, and then being surprised when he isn’t overjoyed to see you.’

  ‘I hope I don’t feel tempted to do that when Emily goes. She’d probably pretend she didn’t know me.’

  ‘You won’t, don’t worry. It’s mothers of boys who do that sort of thing. You know what we’re like, we just can’t believe our little soldiers can actually work a launderette or open a packet of biscuits without Mummy’s help.’ Sally was laughing, but then became more serious. ‘But then you see, they seem to be so much more loving than girl-children. They don’t insist they don’t need us and battle for their freedom from the day they’re born like girls do. So it’s rewarding and you just carry on letting them need you for as long as they’ll let you.’

  ‘Just as well I only had girls then,’ Nina told her. ‘I don’t honestly think I’d treat boys any different, and then they’d blame me for ever for getting it wrong.’

  Sally looked thoughtful. ‘It’s more to do with the way they treat you,’ she said. ‘In the end you have very little choice in it, you just take your cue from them.’

  ‘My mother, she thinks . . .’ Nina began, then hesitated, trying to recall exactly what it was that Monica had thought. What had she been most worried about, Graham’s moonlight wanderings on the Common or the possibility that he was meeting someone?

  ‘Thinks what?’ Sally prompted gently, putting the cards down and rearranging her large legs on the gallery carpet.

  ‘I think she thinks Graham’s seeing someone secretly. At least, he goes out at night looking shifty and says he’s going bird-watching out on the Common,’ Nina told her.

  Sally chuckled, ‘Well I won’t say “What do you mean ‘secretly’ at his age” because I know what their set-up is. But why does she think so and what is she planning to do about it? Send a private detective out to have him followed? Give him a clip round the ear and keep him in for a couple of weeks till he comes to his senses?’

  Nina stood up and stretched her stiff limbs. ‘No idea,’ she said, going through to the back room and filling the kettle. She felt slightly queasy, which she put down to having only had a half-ripe pear for breakfast, and in immediate need of a cup of milkless tea. ‘I think she should simply mind her own business.’ She stood in the doorway and looked back at Sally. ‘And I’m going to tell her to do exactly that.’

  Sally laughed, ‘OK go ahead, Graham will be right behind you!’

  Lucy seemed to be feeling strangely benevolent towards Sophie, considering the way Sophie had stolen the Barbados modelling job from her. On the evening before Sophie and Megan were to leave, Lucy wanted to go across the road to deliver a carefully wrapped goodbye and good luck present.

  ‘You don’t have to come, I can go by myself,’ she insisted to Nina, fending off any threat of being accompanied. Nina was busy hanging up a new emerald and sky blue blind at the front window of the basement, standing precariously on a chair and wishing she’d remembered that it was quicker and easier to attach all the cords before the final hanging, not after. She felt vaguely conscious of being watched as across the road, up at his study window, she could just make out Paul working at his drawing board. There were quick pale flashes as his face turned this way and that, so he might well be having a proprietorial stare up and down the road as he worked, just as Emily had thought. He probably thinks I’m watching him, Nina decided, climbing down from the chair and looking for her shoes under the sofa.

  ‘Sorry Lucy, but I’m coming with you – and I will be till they’ve caught that man,’ Nina said, heading her daughter off at the back door.

  ‘But we’re miles from the Common, and if you stay here and watch from the window you can even see me every bit of the way!’ Lucy protested.

  ‘We’re not miles from the Common, it’s just yards. Metres, if you understand that better. And besides, whoever it is has to use the streets to get there so he could be anywhere. So I’m coming with you.’ Lucy scowled and Nina became acutely suspicious. ‘What exactly is this present you’ve got for Sophie? Can I have a look?’ She reached for the package but Lucy snatched it out of her way. ‘No! Don’t, it’s fragile!’

  Lucy hid the package behind her back. Nina had caught sight of the label which read Not to be opened till you’re on the beach in multicoloured ink. Lucy had clearly spent some time working on this. The wrapping paper was hand-made too: pale blue paper painted with palm trees and sandy islands. Nina would have felt touched at her daughter’s generosity of spirit if Lucy wasn’t looking so decidedly shifty. They stood together at the door glaring at each other, Lucy with the gift still firmly protected behind her back.

  ‘OK.’ Nina relented, for whatever it was it was surely private between Sophie and Lucy, some giggly secret that was none of her business. ‘Let’s just take it over to Sophie and give it to her then. I want to wish her and Megan a happy time too.’

  Halfway across the road Lucy suddenly stopped. ‘Mum?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘What is it darling? Come on quick, we’ll get run over.’ Nina took her hand but it was like dragging at Ghenghis’s lead when he’d got the scent of a rabbit in the opposite direction. Feeling foolish, wondering if Paul could still see them from upstairs in his study, Nina allowed Lucy to pull her back to the pavement. ‘What is it, Lucy?’ She put her arms round the girl and pulled her gently against her. ‘Are you still feeling a bit upset that it isn’t you who’s going? Because if you are, it’s not so terrible. It would take a saint not to be the teensiest bit jealous.’ Especially, Nina thought privately, as Lucy had not been offered so much as an audition or a quick go-see since the day she’d behaved so appallingly.

  ‘No honestly, Mum it’s not that.’ Lucy pulled back and her large blue cat-eyes gazed up wide and wondering. ‘I was just thinking, I hope I can really trust Sophie not to open this present as soon as I’m out of the door. What do you think?’

  Nina laughed, ‘Good grief Lucy, only you can know that, she’s your friend. If you don’t want her to open it why are you giving it to her?’

  Lucy pouted. ‘I just am. Come on then Mum, let’s just go.’ Nina took note of the pout. Lucy, in a mood, looked alarmingly sexy. It crossed her mind that the word ‘jailbait’ was an ugly and badly thought-out term, as if any man perceiving sexual allure in a child was an innocent party, cajoled and tempted. If Lucy really wanted to continue modelling, she decided, it would have to wait till she was old enough to be doing the choosing about how seductive or not she could be.

  Megan opened the door looking unusually flustered. ‘Oh it’s you,’ she said rather rudely as if she was expecting someone else and was disappointed.

  ‘I’m sure you’re busy, we’re just here so Lucy can give something to Sophie,’ Nina explained. Paul clattered down the stairs towards them. ‘Don’t keep Nina out on the step!’ he admonished Megan, ‘Come in Nina and have a bon voyage drink!’ Megan glared at Paul but smiled at Nina. ‘Yes, do,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got my mind on the packing. Sophie seems to want to take all her army kit and I’ve got to find a moment to sneak her camo sweater and boots out of her case w
hile she’s not looking.’

  ‘At least you’ve persuaded her she won’t be needing her woolly balaclava,’ Nina commented, noticing it hanging with coats.

  ‘Oh, yes, after a struggle. She’d only gone and wrapped Paul’s Swiss army knife in it and hidden it in her bag. Can’t you just imagine the fuss at the airport?’

  Nina followed Paul and Megan through to their kitchen where an opened bottle of wine and two glasses were already out on the table. Paul fetched another glass from the dresser.

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ Megan said, pulling a bottle of mineral water out of the fridge. ‘He doesn’t seem to take any notice of this!’ she said to Nina with a grin, patting her round stomach. ‘He just thinks life goes on exactly as usual and then it’s born, magic! Even Sam sometimes asks me if I’d like a rest and pats the sofa cushions for me.’

  ‘That’s very sweet of him,’ Nina agreed. ‘Does he mind you going away with just Sophie?’

  Paul handed her a glass of Chardonnay. ‘Oh he won’t mind,’ he answered for Megan. ‘Sam and I will just hang out and do boys’ stuff.’ Megan made a face. ‘Like stay up too late, guzzling pizza in front of the box!’ she said. ‘Henry’s already been round, discussing the big-screen football that’s going to be down at the pub. They’ve promised to let Sam come with them to watch an afternoon match. All that smoky atmosphere and puddles of beer.’ She shuddered. ‘Still, you can keep an eye on them for me, can’t you? See they don’t starve?’

  Nina laughed, sure she was joking, but Megan looked anxious for some reassurance. She couldn’t be serious, surely? Did she honestly imagine one grown-up male couldn’t be trusted to manage alone with his own child in his own home? Paul sat smiling inscrutably into his glass, looking rather like a teenager with plans teeming in his head for when the parents are away. Nina wondered what those plans were. Possibly they were like the ones Joe used to have, something to do with while the cat’s away . . .