Best Supporting Role (14 page)

“Wow. I never thought I’d hear you say that. I really appreciate it. Having you and Mum behind me means such a lot.”

“Hang on . . . your mother wants a word. I’ll pass you over.”

“Now then, darling, you’re not to worry about a thing. Your father and I have decided not to go to Spain.”

“What? No. You absolutely have to go. You need a rest. I won’t hear of you staying.”

“But how can we go and leave you with so much on your plate? For a start, you’re going to need extra child care. . . .”

“Mum, stop fussing. I’ll manage. I’ve made friends with my new neighbor, Rosie. She’s lovely and I’m sure she won’t mind helping out from time to time.”

“But surely she goes out to work.”

“No, she has a new baby—although she does do a bit of work from home.”

“Oh, what does she do?”

Why had I opened my big mouth? “She’s . . . um . . . She’s in the hospitality business.”

“Nice. Your cousin April works in hospitality. Maybe she knows her. You should get them together. It’s always good for people in the same industry to network.”

“Good idea.”

“OK . . . Well, if you’re absolutely sure you can cope . . .”

“I’m sure.”

“And you promise you’ll call if you need money. Remember, there’s no shame in failing. You and the kids can always move in with us.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

But there was no way I was going to let that happen. I wasn’t a
kid. I was a mother with two children. In a few years I’d be forty. I refused to fall back on my parents. I had to do everything in my power to make the business work.

“And you’ll stay in touch?”

“When have I ever not stayed in touch? Mum, please, you have to stop worrying.”

She said that asking her to stop worrying was like asking her to stop breathing.

Mum and Dad left for Spain two days later.

“G
reat, so you’re going to start stalking Greg Myers?” Rosie said after I’d told her the saga.

“I’m not going to
stalk
him. I’m merely going to ambush him. And I was wondering if you’d mind babysitting while I did it.”

“No problem. And if you get arrested and sent to jail, I can adopt Dan and Ella if you like.”

“Very funny,” I said. “You sound like Steve. Why would I get arrested? All I’m going to do is hover outside the stage door after the show along with the autograph hunters and ask Greg if I can have a quick word with him. It’s pretty straightforward.”

“It sounds pretty straightforward. I still think it’s a risk.”

“This from the woman who is concealing from the entire neighborhood that she gets paid to do phone sex.”

Rosie said she took the point.

I called the theater box office and was told that
Death of a Salesman
finished at ten. For no reason other than fear that I’d get there late and my quarry would get away, I got to the theater at nine. After I’d located the stage door, I went to sit in the bubble tea café around the
corner. I ordered melon and vanilla. I calculated that it would probably be half an hour or so before Greg Myers emerged. If I were back at the stage door at ten, sharp, I would be in plenty of time.

When I got there, three girls—American, late teens, high on booze and anticipation—were already there.

“Omigod, do you think he’s just as hot in real life as he is on TV?”

“Do you think he’d autograph my boob?”

“Are you crazy? Of course he won’t autograph your boob.”

“What about my panties?”

“With you wearing them?”

“Sure.”

“Nah, he’d be way too embarrassed.”

“What if I took them off?”

“Might work—but not in ballpoint. He’d need a Magic Marker.”

“So when we meet him, what do we say?”

“The Brits all say ‘how do you do.’”

“How . . . doo . . . you . . . doo.”

“I think it’s more ‘how d’ya do’—and then you talk about the weather.”

The stage door opened and Greg Myers appeared—tailored jacket, smart jeans, open-neck shirt. As he came down the steps to the pavement, he waved and smiled at the girls. I took in the blue-eyed chiseled symmetry, the little-boy grin. He was definitely as hot in real life. As he reached the pavement, the girls surged forward, and surrounded him, squealing “Oh, Greg we love you.” They were stroking his hair, kissing him, reaching for his hands.

“Greg . . . Greg, please will you autograph my boob?”

“Will you sign my panties if I take them off?”

“Say something. We just adore your Briddish accent.”

“Was the school you went to just like Hogwarts?”

Greg Myers was doing his best to keep smiling as he tried to make his escape. Every time he moved a few paces forward, the girls were all over him again. I could see he was flustered, but he kept smiling. Then he lost it.

“Madam,” he yelled. “Will you please control your daughters.”

I looked around for the girls’ mother, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“They’re completely out of control. Will you please take them and deal with them?”

What? He thought they were mine? That I was their mother?

“No . . . you don’t understand. They don’t belong to me.”

By now he had barged his way through the girls, who were chasing him and still begging him to autograph their boobs and panties. “You call yourself a mother? These girls are drunk. Shame on you.”

“No, no . . . You don’t understand. They’re not mine. I was waiting for you because I wanted to ask if you’d be available to open our school summer fair.”

He ignored me, barged past and flagged down a taxi.

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” I called out after him. “And FYI, I’m only thirty-seven.”

•   •   •

“H
e thought you were their mother?” Rosie said. “That is hysterical.”

“No, it bloody isn’t. It’s terrible. OK, tell me honestly, do I look old enough to have eighteen-year-old daughters?”

“Of course you don’t. But it was dark. He only got a glimpse of you and he just assumed you were their mother. But if you insist on wearing those long cardigans and Crocs . . .”

“Funee.”

“OK,” Rosie said. “So where do you go from here?”

“Nowhere. The show finished its run tonight. After Greg got in the taxi, I spoke to those girls. They seemed to know his every move. They said he’s flying back to LA and he’s not due back here until July thirteenth, when he starts shooting a period drama at Pinewood.”

“Brilliant. So ambush him again.”

“Two days before the fair? Plus he’ll be busy filming. I don’t think so.”

“So that’s that it?”

“Pretty much.”

•   •   •

I
gave a week’s notice at the nonemergency helpline. It should have been a month, but the lovely Joyce in HR said she could see that I needed to get away as soon as possible and promised to pull a few strings.

On my last day, Maureen brought in a homemade coffee-and- walnut cake. She’d covered it in thick coffee-butter icing and piped “Good luck Sarah” on the top. That evening—having demolished the cake—we all went out for a curry. Tony the Fascist ordered egg and chips. We all got a bit pissed and Don put his arm around Maureen, which she didn’t seem to mind.

When the waiter came with the bill, I took out my credit card to pay my share, but everybody insisted I put it away. When I protested,
they shouted me down. By now it was nearly midnight and I’d told Rosie, who had offered to babysit again, that I’d be home by eleven. “I can watch your TV as easily as I can watch mine,” she’d said. “Will’s in his basket. It hardly matters where I am.” Nevertheless, I’d insisted on ordering her Chinese takeout to say thank you.

“I’m really sorry, guys, but I have to get going. I should have been back an hour ago. I just want to say, thank you for a wonderful evening. Maureen, thank you for the fabulous cake.”

I hugged everybody good-bye. They wished me luck with the shop and said how much they were going to miss me.

“And I’m going to miss you lot, too—not to mention all the daft callers.” By now there were tears in my eyes. I promised to stay in touch and let them know how the business was going.

As I headed for the door, wiping a tear from my cheek, I heard Maureen say: “She’s a lucky girl. What I wouldn’t give to be twenty years younger and have the chance of a fresh start.” The rest of them agreed.

Maureen was right. Risky as this project was, I was lucky to have been given such a great opportunity. Then, as I walked back to the car, texting Rosie as I went, the reality of what I was about to take on hit me. Until this moment, I’d been full of excitement and derring-do. Suddenly I was petrified. It was all I could do to stop myself racing back to Don, Maureen and the others, announcing that I’d been in the grip of some mental aberration and that I’d finally come to my senses and changed my mind.

•   •   •

T
he following day, derring-do restored after a night’s sleep, I called Mr. Mugford, the landlord.

“Mugford,” he barked down the phone.

I was determined not to let this man intimidate me. I put my case politely but firmly. “Nothing to do with me,” Mugford shot back. “Structural repairs are your responsibility.”

“Mr. Mugford, you know as well as I do that’s not the case. I’ve been over the lease with my solicitor and you are obliged by law to carry out all necessary building works.”

He mumbled something about needing to speak to his own lawyer. “I’ll get back to you.”

The hell he would.

“With all due respect, Mr. Mugford, you can stall as much as you like, but the bottom line is that the lease is about to be transferred into my name. If you refuse to pay for the necessary repairs, I won’t be signing. And I suspect that with the building in its present state, you won’t find people queuing up to take it over.”

Mugford grunted. “So how much are you looking for?”

Huh. I’d managed to reel him in.

“I won’t know the exact figure until I’ve had a quote for the work.”

“Two grand. That’s my final offer.”

“Three.”

“Two-five.”

“Done.”

Yesterday I’d done a deal with the aunties, today with old man Mugford. I decided that I was getting rather good at this negotiation lark.

Mugford asked for my bank details, which I had to repeat several times because the sour old duffer was hard of hearing. Afterwards I
panicked. How could I have been so stupid as to hand over that kind of information to a sleazeball like Mugford? But half an hour later, the money hit my account. When I called to tell Aunty Bimla, she could scarcely believe it.

“Sarah’s got the money from Mugford,” she called out to Aunty Sylvia.

Sylvia shouted back: “Tell her to make sure his check isn’t made of rubber.”

“Your Aunty Sylvia says—”

“I know. I heard. Tell her it’s fine. He paid by cash transfer.”

Aunty Bimla relayed the information.

“I still don’t trust him. Shirley used to say that man was so cheap, he wouldn’t spend Christmas.”

•   •   •

M
ugford insisted I sign a two-year lease. If he was paying out for repairs, he wanted to make sure it was worth his while. The good news was that I wouldn’t be paying rent for the rest of the year, as Aunty Shirley had paid him up front. Where she had found the money, I had no idea. It was only after I’d signed that I told the children I had given up my job at the nonemergency helpline. If I’d let them know while things were still up in the air, Dan would have started fretting. Being that much older than his sister and more aware of our reduced circumstances, he would have worried about how I was going to earn a living. Now that the shop was officially mine, breaking the news seemed much easier. I told them over dinner.

“So do you have a new job?” Dan leaped in, before I’d had the chance to explain about the shop.

“I do and I start on Monday. It’s going to be very exciting. I’ve decided to take over Aunty Shirley’s shop. Do you remember the time I took you there? We’d been to Harrods to see Father Christmas and we called in at the shop to see Aunty Shirley . . . and you met the aunties.”

The children nodded.

“They were nice and they gave us sweets,” Dan said.

“That’s right. Well, the plan is for the aunties and me to run the shop together. It needs doing up first, so we won’t be reopening it straightaway.”

“What does it sell?” Dan said. “I don’t remember.”

“Ladies’ underwear.”

“What, knickers?” Dan said, pulling a face. “Yuck.”

“Actually it’s mainly bras.”

“Double yuck. I’m not telling anybody at school.”

“One day,” Ella said, “when I’ve got boobies, I’m going to have a bra. I want a pink shiny one with tassels.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tara—you know, Cressida’s mum—well, she’s got one like that. I saw it on her bed. The tassels were black. And she’s got these tiny knickers with fur on the front that’s shaped like a heart.”

Tara? Marc Jacobs’ Tara was secretly a cheap slut? Good Lord. Who’d have thought?

“Can I have some like that?” Ella said.

“Some like what?”

“Knickers with a furry heart.”

“What? No. Absolutely not.”

“Why? They’re pretty.”

Until now, I’d been thanking God that my six-year-old daughter appeared—temporarily at least—to have lost interest in discussing her clitoris. Now this.

“I know, but they’re meant for women.”

“OK, so maybe I can have a pair when I’m bigger—like when I’m ten.”

“No, you can’t have a pair when you’re ten.”

“But why? Ten is practically grown-up. That’s so mean.”

“Jasper’s dad runs a shop,” Dan broke in, “and they’re rich. Will we be rich?”

“I very much doubt it. And anyway, Jasper’s dad doesn’t run a shop. He owns a car dealership and he sells Jaguars. That’s why they’re rich.”

“But could we be a bit rich?”

I couldn’t help admiring his persistence. “You never know. It’s possible, I guess.”

Dan cheered up. “OK, then I don’t mind you selling knickers and bras.”

“Thanks, Dan. I appreciate that.”

“So could I have a pair of furry knickers when I’m fourteen? That’s really old.”

“No, not even when you’re fourteen.”

“So when can I?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about when I’m thirty? Thirty’s really old. I’ll be almost dead.”

This conversation was getting tedious.

“OK, you can have some when you’re thirty.”

“Cool.”

With that, Ella jumped down from the table and disappeared. Ten minutes later she was back with her Hello Kitty notebook. Inside she had written:
I promis that Ella can have fury hart nikers when she is therty. Cross my hart and hope to di.

“Right, go on, you have to sign it.”

She handed me a pink glitter coloring pencil and I signed.

•   •   •

O
n Saturday afternoon both kids had birthday parties. Once I’d dropped them off, I drove to the shop. I wanted to take another look around and remind myself what needed doing repair-wise. I made a few notes and decided that since there was probably all manner of damp and decay lurking behind the old fittings and piles of junk, there was no point in getting estimates for the renovation work until the place had been cleared. I was capable of doing most of it on my own—all I needed was to hire a Dumpster—but the heavy stuff, desks, filing cabinets and whatnot, would be a problem.

When I got home, I Googled house clearance firms. Being Saturday, nobody was answering the phone. Eventually I found a bloke called Dave, who quoted me seventy-five quid.

“Ten o’clock Monday morning suit you?”

I said that it would suit me very well.

After speaking to Dave, I called a Dumpster company and arranged for a “five-yarder” to be delivered. This would take the rest of the junk, the stuff that was light enough for me to lift. I had no idea if a five-yarder was big enough, but the Dumpster guy said that as
soon as it was full, all I had to do was call and he would arrange for it to be removed and replace it with a new one.