Best Supporting Role (26 page)

•   •   •

B
y the time I got back, having told Rosie the entire Valentina di Rossi story over the rest of the sauvignon, the kids were in bed and Hugh had dozed off in front of the football. He woke as soon as I switched it off.

“Hey, I was watching that.”

“No, you weren’t,” I said, going over and planting a kiss on his forehead. “You were snoring.”

“I was?”

“Yep.” I sat down next to him on the sofa. “Sorry I was so long. Rosie and I got talking.”

“No worries. I read to the kids. Oh, and Dan asked me if worms bleed.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him that according to the
Boys’ Book of Facts
which I was given for Christmas circa 1989, they most definitely did.”

“I bet he was impressed.”

“He was. The only problem was that Ella got stroppy and insisted the book should have been called
The Children’s Book of Facts
, since it wasn’t just boys who were interested in knowing if worms bleed.”

I laughed. “Good for her. She’s got real spirit for a kid her age.”

“I know. Like her mother.”

We snuggled up. Hugh began playing with my fringe.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” I said. “I’m afraid you won’t be seeing much of me over the next couple of weeks.”

“How come?”

I explained about the competition and why I’d gone to see Rosie.

“I can certainly see why she’d be the perfect model. And just imagine if you won. How amazing would that be?”

“I know, but we have a serious rival.” I told him about Valentina, how talented she was and the story of how she and Aunty Shirley had fallen out.

“The woman’s clearly still furious. But you can see why she’s pissed off.”

“I know. Don’t get me wrong. I feel really sorry for her.”

•   •   •

T
he following morning, Mum texted me from the tarmac at Heathrow:
Wheels down. All come for dinner tonight and
bring Hugh!!!

I texted back:
Tonight?
You’ll be exhausted. Come to me instead.

She replied:
No effort to put chicken in oven. See you at seven.

I called Hugh and said that if he wasn’t ready to meet my folks and in particular my crazy starstruck mother, I would understand.

“On the other hand, her roast chicken is of the gods.”

“Say no more. And since I have a crazy mother of my own, I’m sure I’ll manage.”

•   •   •

M
um and Dad looked better than I’d seen them in years. Dad said it was just the tan and his blood pressure was still up and down. “But mostly down,” Mum was quick to point out. She’d put on weight and she was laughing and full of bustle. The light that had gone out was shining again.

We managed to get all the hugs and missed-yous out of the way before Hugh got there. He arrived with flowers for Mum, which hit just the right note. Dad pumped his hand and immediately started giving his views on the acting profession, opining that it wasn’t what it was, particularly since the likes of Gielgud, Olivier and Redgrave were no more. This hit slightly less than the perfect note, but to his credit Hugh didn’t seem remotely put out and even had the good grace to agree.

Mum, who was taking Dad’s remarks in slightly less good humor, suggested it was time to give everybody their presents from Spain.

There were sombreros, maracas and painted fans for the kids—olive oil and cured ham for me. Dad presented Hugh with a bottle of sherry. “Now, this isn’t any old sherry,” Dad said, as if he were presenting Hugh with some ancient Egyptian artifact. “It’s a Manzanilla. While we were in Spain, I became something of a Jerez
aficionado. The Manzanilla is a jewel among sherries. You’ll find it’s quite yeasty with woody and roast almond top notes and a nutty finish. Very different from the oloroso, which has an almost cheesy aroma and a more complex finish.”

Hugh thanked him and said he couldn’t wait to try it. Meanwhile Mum was giving Dad a look that said, “Enough with the tutorial already.”

“Hugh, do help yourself to another Gruyère spiral,” she said. “So, tell me about
Downton
. What was Dame Maggie like to work with? They do say she can be a bit prickly.”

“I was only playing a footman. We didn’t actually have any scenes together, but people said she could be pretty demanding.”

“She’s got such a presence and such an amazing face—those steely eyes that look everybody up and down. And of course when you were in
Jane Eyre
, you got to meet Dame Judy.”

“Again, I played a footman, so I only saw her from a distance.”

“I’m never too sure about her short hair. I can’t help thinking that at her age, it might soften her features if it were a bit longer.”

I was in no doubt that Mum was capable of carrying on like this for hours, and we hadn’t even sat down to dinner yet.

“And when you were in Hollywood, I don’t suppose you got to meet Claire Danes. I love her.”

“Actually, no, I didn’t.”

“So, come on, Dad,” I piped up. “Aren’t you going to show us your fandango?”

“What’s a fandigo?” Ella said.

“It’s a fan-dango,” Dad explained. “And it’s a kind of dance they do in Spain.”

“Yes, come on, Granddad, do your dance. We want to see.”

“No, I haven’t practiced for days and I’d need to get changed.”

“Go on, then,” Mum said. “Go and get changed.”

“All right, but it isn’t going to work very well on the carpet.”

Mum said he could perform in the kitchen, which had a wood floor.

Dad disappeared upstairs and returned five minutes later wearing a puffy-sleeved shirt, a waistcoat and a black hat with pom-poms. A red sash was tied around his potbelly. Then I noticed the stacked heels. A small, corpulent Jewish man of a certain age on his way to a fancy dress party. Dan and Ella were beside themselves.

We got up and moved into the kitchen.

“Right, what you need to understand,” Dad said, “is that a fandango is meant to be a dance for two people and there should be a guitar accompaniment. . . .”

“Come on . . . just get on with it.” Mum started clapping out a rhythm—the
palmas
, she called it.

Dad pulled himself up to his full five foot seven and a half—eight and a half if you included the heels. Hands on hips, he lifted his triple chin in an effort to reveal a chiseled jaw. This didn’t materialize on account of it being cloaked in jowl. “The stance needs to be proud and self-important,” he said.

Mum said he looked more like somebody had just shoved a poker up him.

More hysterics from the children.

Dad began stamping his stacked heels so fast that I was blinking in amazement. Then he started strutting and clapping with such skill and poise that I actually felt my mouth fall open. The rest of us
started following Mum’s clapping rhythm. Dan and Ella were yelling, “Go, Granddad!” More exotic hand flourishes, swaggering and prancing from Dad. Then he fell backwards over a kitchen stool and managed to knock a cup of cold coffee off the counter.

Hugh rushed to his aid, but the rest of us were paralyzed with laughter. All except Mum, who was tutting because the coffee had gone over the cream roller blind. While she made an emergency dash for the biological detergent, the rest of us told Dad how brilliant he was. “Tell you what—we should get you to do a turn at the school summer fair.”

“No way,” he said. “This is strictly for private consumption.”

Over dinner Mum continued to interrogate Hugh about the actors he’d worked with. On the rare occasions she paused for breath, Dad held forth about the latest DVD he’d acquired—the BBC’s
World at War
. It turned out that Hugh was a bit of a Second World War buff and had watched it, too—all twenty-six hours. I could tell that Dad was delighted to be able to talk to somebody to share his enthusiasm. After dinner Dad and Hugh continued to debate whether Churchill should have bombed the concentration camps. The children went to watch TV and Mum and I loaded the dishwasher.

“He’s lovely,” Mum said. “So handsome, and that voice! I could listen to him for hours. And he’s clearly smitten with you.”

“You think so?”

“Have you seen the way he looks at you? Of course he is.”

I suspected that she might be right about Hugh being smitten. He wasn’t the only one. But I wasn’t about to tell Mum that. At least not yet.

T
he aunties and I agreed that I should work on designing Rosie’s bra at home. There were too many distractions at the shop and since trade was slow, they said that they could manage perfectly well on their own.

I began by studying the old, yellowing books on bra design and patternmaking that the aunties had given me. I also bought a couple of more up-to-date manuals. Gradually I began familiarizing myself with bra vocabulary: the wings, the cradle, the bridge, the strap platform. I got acquainted with terms like
cup grading
and
cup apex point
. I also studied the darted-bra grading rules—reason being, I was planning to design Rosie a simple full-cup, darted bra, which I would modify into a nursing bra.

Since I knew what I wanted and I had some experience in changing an ordinary bra into a nursing bra, the design part didn’t take long. The bit I was going to struggle with was making the pattern. In preparation, I made space in my bedroom for my old technical drawing board, which I’d got down from Mum and Dad’s attic. I bought packs of squared paper, a flexi-curve—a protractor-like device that
made it possible to draw curved lines—a flexible ruler to measure curved seams and two sets of compasses, large and small.

I read and reread the manuals, tried to follow the instructions and intricate diagrams. Bra patternmaking seemed to be a cross between origami and trigonometry. Much of the time I was baffled and bewildered, but not as baffled and bewildered as I would have been if I hadn’t studied fashion design.

It took a few days, but once I’d decided that I sort of vaguely knew what I was doing, I called Rosie and asked if she could come round so that I could take some measurements. “No probs. Betty just popped in to see Will. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind taking him for a walk.”

I could hear Betty in the background. “Wouldn’t mind? I’d love to. Why don’t I take him to the park to see the ducks?”

“So Betty’s finally stopped looking down her nose at you for being a single mother?”

“It’s Will. Now that he’s a bit older, she’s started taking a real interest. Every time she sees him, she goes completely gaga. She can’t get enough of him. I tell you, what with her looking after your kids and spending the odd hour or two with Will, she’s a new woman.”

I agreed. Betty was a judgmental old gossip, but now that she felt needed and didn’t feel so lonely with us and the children around, the real Betty was coming out.

Rosie showed up a couple of minutes later.

“OK,” she said, pulling her T-shirt over her head. “I’m thinking emerald satin with a black lace trim.” She raked her hair with her fingers.

“For a nursing bra?”

“Too slutty?”

“A bit,” I said. “I think we should probably stick to cream or ivory.”

“Yeah, I guess emerald and black doesn’t quite say Madonna and baby.”

I picked up my tape measure.

“OK, so first I have to get your ‘over-breast’ measurement.” I explained that this involved starting at the “breast root” at her side and taking the tape over her breast to the breast root at the center front.

“Then I have to measure you around the back from breast root to breast root. After that, I can start on making the cup block.”

“The what?”

“The pattern.”

“Well, you certainly seem to know what you’re doing,” Rosie said.

“If only you knew,” I said, giving her a thin smile. “OK, I need you to raise your arms to your sides.”

She lifted her arms and I started taking measurements.

“So how are things with you and Hugh? You do know he’s in love with you, don’t you?”

“Mum said the same. Except she described him as being smitten. Said she could tell from the way he looks at me.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed. It’s sort of all gooey and doe-eyed—but sexier than that sounds.”

I wrote down both over-breast measurements on my pad.

“OK, if you turn round, I’ll take the band measurement.”

She turned.

“So are you in love with him?”

“I think I am.”

“God, I’m so jealous.”

“Oh, come on, Rosie. I did have a husband go and die on me and leave me with two kids.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just fed up with months of broken nights and having nobody to share it all with.”

“I know, hon. But your time will come. I promise. You just need to get back out there.” I wrote down the final measurement and told her we were done.

“Now that Will’s older and taking a bottle, you should let Betty look after him more. Plus I’m around. You’re hardly short of sitters.”

“I know. I need to make more of an effort.” Rosie sat on the bed and pulled on her T-shirt. “I’d be lucky to find somebody like Hugh, though. He’s gorgeous, reliable, loves your kids.”

“Yes, but we still have our issues.”

“Oh, come on . . . like what?”

“His attitude towards money, for a start. He doesn’t own his flat, or even his van, and he spends all his spare cash on travel. He doesn’t have anything set aside for emergencies. Plus this traveling bug worries me. I’m not the needy clingy type, but I really don’t fancy being abandoned while he goes off on foreign jaunts for months at a time. I know I’m jumping the gun, but it’s not impossible that a year from now we could be living together. I don’t want to be spending great chunks of it on my own. And getting back to the money issue—I was married to a gambler. I know what it’s like being with a man who refuses to take any financial responsibility.”

“OK, the travel thing I get. But surely that’s something you can discuss and negotiate. As far as the money thing goes, I think you’re way off. Hugh might be a spender, but he isn’t a gambler.”

“Maybe not, but he’s a jobbing actor who earns most of his money
working as a builder . . . in a recession. Granted he has an admirable work ethic, but that doesn’t guarantee he won’t end up out of work and in debt. Then he’ll expect me to bail him out—assuming I have the money. I can’t do it. I will not live like that.”

“But if the bra business takes off and you’re earning . . . and you love him—what’s the difference? What’s mine is yours and all that.”

“Rosie, you lived with Simon. You know ‘what’s the difference.’ You know how it feels to have a man sponge off you.”

“Hugh really doesn’t strike me as the sponging type, and second of all, there’s a difference between somebody sponging because they are genetically idle and a person in genuine need.”

“I get that, but the fact remains that Hugh is making no attempt to protect himself financially if he gets ill or the work dries up.”

“So,” Rosie said, “you dumped Steve because he was too boring and safe and too obsessed with financial security and now you’re turning into him. That man had more of an effect on you than you care to admit.”

“Rubbish. I dumped Steve because he was a control freak.”

“OK, whatever. Have it your way.” She paused. “Look, forgive me if I’m a bit confused here, but it seems to me that it’s fine and dandy for you to take a colossal financial risk by taking over a business which has been on its knees for decades. It’s OK for you to have zero savings, but when it comes to Hugh, you judge him by a completely different standard.”

“You’re right. Yes, I’m taking a huge risk, but the difference is that my risk is a one-off. For Hugh, living hand-to-mouth is a way of life. He will always be like that. I can’t live like that. The stress would be to much.”

“But you’re getting stressed about something that might never
happen. You’re panicking because one day, Hugh might, possibly, if things go very, very bad, need to borrow some money from you.”

She had a point. I didn’t say anything.

“You need to take a step back here. Tell me honestly, do you love Hugh?”

“Of course I do. I’m crazy about him.”

“Right. If you guys love each other, you have to work this out and come to some sort of compromise. You cannot let this issue be a deal breaker.”

I sat fiddling with my flexi-ruler. “Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it. You need to sit down and have a proper discussion.”

I let out a long breath. “You’re right. Maybe I am panicking unnecessarily. I’m sure we’ll be able to sort it out, but you have to understand that after Mike I’m so scared of making a mistake. . . . Anyway, as you so rightly say, Hugh hasn’t even said he loves me yet.”

I bent down, put my arms around Rosie and gave her a hug. “Thanks for being there, hon. Love you.”

Rosie grinned. “I love you, too. And thank you for the bra. So, you’re absolutely positive we can’t go for the emerald and black?”

I laughed. “Absolutely.”

Just then we heard Betty calling up to the window. “Hellooo, we’re back.”

Rosie left and I went back to my drawing board. I sat reading my next set of instructions:

From point of bust, arc out a line 11.57 cm, an arc 13.6 cm (this line will become the “Neckline Hem” of the bra cup) and an arc 7.13 cm (this line will
be curved to become the “underarm” hem of the cup). See diagram for start points of the arcs/lines.

Piece of cake.

•   •   •

T
hat night, I lay in bed thinking about Hugh and how much I loved him. Rosie was right, I would be a fool if I let this money issue become a deal breaker. We were intelligent adults, perfectly capable of talking this and the traveling issue through and coming up with a solution. It was nonsense to think otherwise. So confident was I that we would work it out, I made a decision. It was time to move our relationship to the next level. If Hugh was too chicken to tell me he loved me, then pretty soon I would have to take the initiative.

•   •   •

O
n Sunday afternoon, Dan had a playdate and Ella had a birthday party at the zoo. Hugh and I decided to go for a walk in Richmond Park. We headed for the Isabella Plantation. This time of year it was bursting with rhododendrons. Arms around each other, we strolled past the dazzling purples and fuchsias, remarking on the beauty of it all. After five minutes or so, we reached the lake. A group of children were throwing chunks of bread in the direction of a mother swan and her half dozen cygnets. Hugh and I sat on the grass, watching the gobbling and laughter. “By the way,” Hugh said. “Your Mum’s right.”

“What about?”

“I am smitten.”

“You heard that?”

“I was coming into the kitchen to get a glass of water.” He turned to face me. “In fact I’m more than smitten. I’m in love with you.”

Call me old-fashioned, but I couldn’t help thinking how much more heart-leapingly romantic it felt, him taking the initiative rather than me.

“You are?” I said.

“I’m crazy about you.”

“I’m crazy about you, too.”

Hugh’s face was one huge smile. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me on the lips. When we finally drew apart, we sat—me with my head resting on his chest—watching the sunbeams dancing on the rhododendron bushes. Couples went past, shouty children charged by on scooters, but we barely noticed.

“Come back to my place?” he said.

I looked at my watch and nodded. We still had a couple of hours. We practically ran to the car park.

He was pulling off my top before we got into the bedroom. In seconds we were naked. He pushed me back onto the bed, spread my legs and gently, slowly glided his fingers over my wet clitoris. Soon I was floating, feeling only half-present. I heard myself let out soft moans of delight as he increased the pressure. I cried out, begging him not to stop when he eased off again. Finally, he let me come. Afterwards, my hand guiding him inside me, I looked into his eyes and told him how much I loved him.

We lay in a sweaty breathless heap.

“Wow,” he said.

“Wow, yourself.” I glanced over at the bedside clock. “Crap. I need to get going.”

“Aw, stay . . . you’ve got ten minutes or so.”

“What if there’s traffic?”

He told me to stop fretting. “So if you’re late, what are the parents going to do, throw your kids out?”

“I guess not.”

For a few moments we lay there, me with my head in the crook of his arm, playing with his chest hairs. “You happy?” Hugh said eventually.

“Happier than I’ve been in years. In fact I can’t remember the last time I was this happy.”

“Same here. By the way,” he said. “I booked that trekking holiday in Morocco.”

“Great,” I said, aware that my tone was pretty flat.

“You don’t mind me going without you, do you? I’m going to miss you like crazy—not to mention the kids—but it’s something I’ve really been looking forward to.”

“No, of course I don’t mind. I told you. I couldn’t come anyway.”

“What’s the problem, then? You seem sort of discombobulated.”

“I’m not remotely discombobulated.”

“Sarah, I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re discombobulated. What’s going on?”

I sat up. “OK. I’m angry.”

“You’re angry because I’ve booked a holiday?”

“I’m angry at the way you spend money. Doesn’t it ever occur to you to put something aside? What would you do if you got ill? What are your plans for your old age?”

“Sarah, we’ve had this conversation. I’ve explained all this. It’s important for me to enjoy the money I earn. People save all their lives. They end up with a great pot of cash in the bank. Then it hits them that they’ve been so busy squirreling money away that they haven’t traveled or allowed themselves any real pleasure and now they’re too old and frail to start. I don’t want to end up as one of those people.”

“I’m not suggesting you save every penny, but you need something to fall back on.”

“I don’t get it. Why are my spending habits so important to you? I don’t want to appear unkind, but the bottom line is, it’s none of your damn business.”

“OK, suppose we decided to live together. Would your finances be none of my damn business then?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought.”

“No, of course you haven’t. Well, I have. Hugh, we’re in a recession. I know things are going well for you right now, but suppose for some reason your work dried up or you got ill, God forbid. What would you do?”

“By the same token, suppose your business goes tits up. What would you do?”