Best Supporting Role (20 page)

Cue disapproving look from me.

“Ah . . . you don’t like the kids to snack at night?”

“No, no—I’m fine about them snacking, but Marmite and marshmallows? Really?”

•   •   •

B
y the time I got upstairs with Ella’s glass of water, she’d fallen asleep again.

I put the glass on the nightstand, kissed her forehead and glanced over at Dan, who was snoring, mouth wide-open. Enlarged adenoids, the doctor had said. Apparently he would grow out of it.

It must have been the kiss that made Ella stir. “Mum, did you bring my water?” she said, her voice thick with sleep.

I held the glass to her lips. She took the tiniest sip and fell back onto her pillow.

“Did you enjoy Hugh’s show?”

“Yes, it was great.”

“I like Hugh. He’s nice and he makes me laugh.”

“He makes me laugh, too,” I said. “Night-night, darling.”

Ella replied with a soft grunt. Dan let out another snore.

•   •   •

B
y lunchtime on Friday the painting and decorating was finished. I took everybody to Pizza Express to celebrate and made a tearful speech, thanking them all for their hard work. Afterwards I presented Rosie and the aunties with a bunch of flowers each. I gave Hugh a bottle of Macallan. He said that I shouldn’t have, since I’d already paid him. “Yes, but you’ve done a great job and you put in so many extra hours. I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate it.”

“Hear, hear,” said the aunties.

“I just don’t know what I would have done without you all,” I went on. “I’m so lucky to have you all as friends. As you know, I can’t afford to pay you, but it goes without saying that none of you will ever have to pay for another bra.”

“Wow . . . I don’t know what to say,” Hugh said.

After lunch Rosie went home. Hugh came back to the shop and went into the bathroom to take a look at a dripping tap. The aunties came, too. They insisted on giving the place one final going over with dusters and Lemon Pledge.

“OK, you’ve done enough,” I said eventually. “Go home and take it easy this weekend. See you on Monday. Don’t forget, we open at ten.”

“Like we’re going to forget,” Aunty Sylvia said. “We’ve been working here for forty years. And make sure you show up knowing how to fit a bra. We don’t want you all fingers and thumbs on your first day.”

I assured them that their instructions were burned into my brain. “First you measure around the woman’s trunk, directly under the bra.”

“Yes, but make sure she’s exhaled first,” Aunty Sylvia said. “That measurement needs to be as small as possible.”

“OK . . . then you measure over the fullest part of the bust. To calculate the cup size you subtract the first measurement from the second. A one-inch difference means the client is an A cup, two inches means a B cup and so on.”

“Bravo, poppet,” Aunty Bimla said. “By Jove I think she’s got it.”

Aunty Sylvia didn’t seem so sure. “And what are the signs of a badly fitting bra?”

“Easy, Aunty Shirley taught me this. First—there’s the quadraboob where the breast spills over the top of the cup. This was something I suffered from, but have since corrected. Oh, and even worse is when there are two extra side boobs.”

“And what does it mean if the bra is riding up at the back?”

“It’s too big.”

“And if the cups are wrinkling?”

“They’re too big.”

“Not bad,” Aunty Sylvia conceded. “You’re getting there. We’ll make a bra fitter of you yet.”

The aim of course was to be able to work out a woman’s bra size just by looking at her. I could hear Aunty Shirley’s voice. “I can take one look at a woman and tell her bra size—even when she’s wearing a coat.”

After the aunties had gone, I finished loading the rails with bras and panties. Then I turned my attention to the glass display cabinet under the counter. I covered the floor of the cabinet in a length of scarlet velvet that Aunty Sylvia had found, ruched it up a bit and arranged a selection of black satin basques and boned corsets on top. I’d just finished when Hugh reappeared.

“Tap’s all done,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag. “Washer needed tightening.”

I thanked him and he began loading his tools into his toolbox.

“Do you think the black and the red looks too tart’s boudoir? Perhaps I should tone it down a bit?”

Hugh said he thought it looked great.

“Typical bloke,” I said. “The sluttier, the better.”

His face turned red. He was so cute when he was embarrassed.

“What can I say?” he said.

There was a moment of high-octane silence. The next thing I knew, I was taking his hand and praying that this wasn’t too much too soon. After all, so far we’d only exchanged one kiss.

“Where are we going?”

“Shh.”

I led him into one of the fitting rooms and pulled the curtain across.

“OK, I get it,” he said.

“Too slutty?” I said.

“I thought we just established that I love slutty.”

With that, he started kissing me. Then he reached under my sweater and unfastened my bra.

As he ran his hand over my breasts, I pulled him closer. I felt his erection hard against me. “Wow,” I said, rubbing my hand over his crotch. Our kissing was deep and urgent. I was about to reach for his jeans zipper when . . .

“Poppet! Are you there? It’s only me, Aunty Bimla.”

The pair of us froze. Then I started fumbling with my bra fastener, which refused to work.

“OK, stay there,” I whispered to Hugh, finally getting a single hook into an eye. “Don’t move.”

I pulled the curtain to one side and stepped out.

“Hi Aunty Bimla. What’s happened? What are you doing back?”

“I got all the way to the station before I realized I didn’t have my scarf. . . . Ah, here it is.”

She picked her pink silk scarf up off the counter.

“Poppet, you looked flushed. Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

“You sure you’re not coming down with something? Apparently there’s a nasty bug doing the rounds. Maybe you should take some vitamin C and some zinc. I read this article in
Daily Mail
and apparently, it works wonders.”

“OK, perhaps I’ll give it a go.”

“Make sure you do. All right, poppet, see you Monday. Bright and early.”

“See you Monday.”

The door closed and Hugh poked his head round the fitting room curtain. “You coming back to finish what we started?”

I went back into the fitting room and we tried to get back into the mood, but the moment had passed.

“But we will do this again, right? . . . Not necessarily here.”

“Oh, you bet,” I said, planting a kiss on his lips.

We stepped back into the shop. Hugh finished packing up his tools. I looked around for anything else that needed doing.

“You know what this place could do with?” Hugh said.

“Whatever it is,” I said, wiping an imaginary speck of dust off the countertop, “please don’t tell me. I’m practically skint. I can’t afford anything else.”

“Fine. I won’t say another word.” He snapped his toolbox shut.

“OK, go on. What is it? . . . What have I forgotten?”

“A couple of chairs, that’s all—where people can sit while they’re waiting to be fitted.”

He wasn’t wrong. “I know. A couple of dainty filigree chairs would be perfect. But it’s too late now. The pot’s practically empty and I haven’t got time to schlep round more junk shops.”

“No need. I know the very place. I bought loads of stuff there when I was fixing up my flat. But we need to be quick. It starts at three.”

“What does?”

“The furniture auction.”

Apparently it was held every Friday afternoon in an old warehouse behind Waterloo station. “I promise you’ll be able to pick up a couple of chairs for fifty quid.”

“OK, but that’s literally all I can afford. And I have to be at the school by five to pick the kids up from singing practice.” Thirty or so children had been selected—Dan and Ella included—to perform “Hits from the Shows” at the summer fair in front of residents from a local old people’s home.

Hugh didn’t have his van today as it was being fitted with new tires. I had my car—because I’d had to bring in all the stock that I’d been storing at home—so I drove us across town. For once the traffic was fairly light and we made it in twenty minutes. The saleroom was dingy and dark. It smelled of damp and hot dogs. That hadn’t put the punters off, though. There were at least a hundred people there.

We just about had time to inspect the furniture before the auction was due to start. Most of it was junk. Eighties plastic sofas; government-issue office furniture, complete with gray filing cabinets and stained chairs; beds that looked like they had been recently occupied by corpses. He must have seen I was looking a bit crestfallen.

“OK, yes, most of it’s crap, but there are usually a few gems lurking.”

“Really?”

I was all for giving up. It was Hugh who spotted the chairs—three reproduction French “fauteuils” with rickety legs and stuffing falling out of the mauve, polyester satin seats. “Don’t panic, I know a bloke who can restore these. They’re modern repros. Play your cards right and you’ll get the three of them for seventy-five quid.”

“You told me I wouldn’t have to spend more than fifty. And then how much will your guy charge to restore them? With the shop opening on Monday, I won’t have time to do the work myself.”

“Yes, but what you’re forgetting is that you should soon have an income.”

I grunted.

I noted down the lot number—111. Hugh reckoned it would take half an hour or so for the auctioneer to reach that far down his list, so we decided to get a cup of tea from the hot dog van outside.

We sat drinking our tea on grubby plastic chairs, me suddenly a bundle of nerves about Monday. Would anybody show up? If only I’d been able to afford to take out an ad in the
Standard
to announce the shop’s relaunch. Would the theaters still come to me with their bespoke orders? I’d e-mailed them to explain that I had taken over from Shirley, reassured them that the aunties (of course I didn’t refer to them as “the aunties”) would still be providing the same impeccable service.

“It’s going to be fine,” Hugh soothed. “I promise.”

“You don’t know that. It might all end in disaster.”

“Sarah, you have to calm down. You’ve done your absolute best. Nobody could have done more. You need to have faith. And if it does all go pear-shaped, you’ll always be able to say you gave it your best shot.”

I let out a sigh. “I know. You’re right. I need to stay focused.”

Just then I heard the auctioneer announce lot 111.

“How did that happen?” I said. “I thought we had half an hour.” Then I looked at my watch. We’d actually been sitting having tea for more than twenty minutes. “Come on . . . the bidding’s about to start.”

We legged it back into the hall—me still holding my half cup of tea. People were already bidding. The auctioneer—a roly-poly bloke in a leather bomber jacket and sovereign rings—couldn’t have been less Sotheby’s. “OK, ladies and gents, what am I bid? Right you are—I have fifteen pounds from the gent here in the front row.”

This was my first ever auction. I turned to Hugh. “How much should I bid?”

“With cheaper items, you shouldn’t need to go up more than two quid at a time.”

“Seventeen,” I called out.

Somebody put in a bid for twenty.

My hand went up again. “Twenty-five.”

“Careful,” Hugh said. “You’re pushing the price up too fast.”

“Thanking you,” the auctioneer said, waving his hammer at me. But somebody was already making another bid. “Thirty from the luvverly lady on my left.”

I came back with thirty-three. The “luvverly lady” offered forty. I countered with forty-three. The woman immediately went to fifty.

“Sixty,” I cried.

“Whoa, steady on,” Hugh said.

“But I really want those chairs.”

The woman shook her head. She was out.

“Sixty. Sixty pounds I’m bid. Are we all done at sixty pounds? Yes?” The auctioneer brought down his hammer. “Sold to the lady holding the paper cup.”

“Yess!” I hugged Hugh. “I got them! That was so exciting. I can’t believe I haven’t done this before.”

“Well done,” he said, laughing. “But you do need to work a bit on your bidding technique.”

I told him to stop being a killjoy. I’d gotten them. That was the main thing—and for less than we thought.

“If you’d care to make your way to the back of the room,” the auctioneer said, “my assistant will sort you out.”

I finished my cold tea, dropped my cup in the trash and got out my wallet. The auctioneer’s assistant—a plump, fifty-year-old Goth
with purple hair and a tattoo of a bat on her upper arm—was standing behind a counter, saying “cheerio” to her previous customer.

Finally she turned to me. “Sorry to keep you waiting, love. Will you be wanting them wrapped?”

I said I didn’t think that would be necessary.

“Your call, but they’re pretty fragile.” A moment later a young lad—another assistant, this time in a long green apron—came ambling over, presented me with three porcelain bedpans and ambled off again.

“You did very well there,” the woman said. “As you can see, they’re genuine Victorian—none of yer repro rubbish. Look at the decoration—all hand painted and not a mark or a chip to be seen.”

“Excuse me?”

“So will that be cash or card?”

“Neither. I mean . . . I’m not with you. . . . These are bedpans.”

The woman looked confused. “Yes, you just bought them.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said, putting them down on the counter. “I was bidding for the reproduction fauteuils. I wasn’t bidding for bedpans.”

“Yes, you were.” She produced the sale list. “See . . . lot one hundred and seven—one set of Victorian bedpans. The chairs are lot one hundred and eleven.”

“Oops—I think we misheard,” Hugh said.

“You think? Bloody hell, what am I supposed to do with a set of bedpans?”

“But surely,” the woman said, “you saw the bedpans on the table next to the auctioneer?”

“No, our eyes were fixed on the chairs behind him.”

“Sorry, love, but we can’t take them back unless there’s some damage that wasn’t disclosed. It’s saleroom policy.”