Every Good Girl (11 page)

‘I expect you know everyone here much better than Paul and I do,' Megan said, ushering Nina and Henry into the sitting room and towards the drinks.

Nina looked around the room quickly. As in most of the Crescent's Victorian houses, this was a room that had been two smaller ones knocked through. There were large french windows overlooking the back garden, and in the high brick wall at the far end of the garden Nina could see a small door which would have led out to the Common in the days before the Council had been round issuing all the residents with official padlocks but no keys. No curtains were up yet, and the plain cream walls bore the sad grubby oblongs of other people's taken-down paintings. The floor was a rich syrup-coloured parquet which must have been hiding its lustre under the former occupants' figured green Wilton for a good fifteen years. It was quite crowded, so this was either far less impromptu a gathering than Nina had thought it would be, or the entire Crescent was as downright nosy as she was. She recognized most people from simply seeing them going in and out of cars, gates and doorways over the years. One or two were fellow early-morning dog walkers; Nina could see posh Penelope in her caramel cashmere and guessed from the lifeless expression of the man she was talking to that she was lecturing, as ever, on the rather fascist topic of the compulsory spaying of mongrels.

Megan handed Nina a glass of white wine and grimaced apologetically at the state of the room. ‘Appalling
to ask people in while the house is still so shabby, but I thought it might be a good way to find out who were the best painters and decorators in the area. I thought that between most of the Crescent's inhabitants, I should be able to assemble a useful list of artisans. Do you find you all end up using the same people?'

‘To be honest I wouldn't know. Joe and I always did our own painting, though now I'm having Henry in to help. My brother's got quite a useful address book of plumbers and electricians though. I don't actually know what the others here do,' Nina said, laughing, ‘I must confess I haven't really been much of a joining-in type of neighbour. Just the usual hellos and goodbyes and Merry Christmas,' she admitted.

‘Oh well I hope that will change,' Megan said with a smile, ‘because haven't you got a daughter of about Sophie's age?'

‘I've got Lucy, she's ten.'

Megan grinned delightedly, showing a perfectly straight set of teeth as white as her dress. ‘Oh that's terrific. Sophie's nine. It would be lovely if the girls could be friends. We've got Sam as well, but he's only five and, well boys just want to kick a ball around and don't care who they see. Sophie hasn't met anyone here yet, though I'm sure that'll change when she starts school on Monday.'

‘Which one? Lucy's at St Clement's.'

‘Oh good. That's where Sam and Sophie will be going. Sophie's already decided she likes it, because they let the girls wear trousers. As you can see, she's hardly the frilly frock type.'

Unlike her mother, Nina was tempted to say. Megan had tiny, delicate wrists and shining fluffy golden hair, like a brand new Barbie doll. Joe would, if he was still around, be offering his services as complete house
renovator. He'd be reviving the old custom of borrowing cups of sugar, anything to spend time lolling on Megan's sofa gazing at her delicate features and making a total besotted fool of himself. Henry was hovering nearby, staring shamelessly at this vision of ultra-feminine loveliness. Beside her, Nina felt far too tall and clumsy. As she made neighbourly conversation with various guests, going over the grumbles by which they were linked (17's overhanging willow, the strange drainy smell outside 33, 19's perpetual builders), she imagined that her arms and legs were growing longer like Pinocchio's nose. She slid her feet out of her shoes and leaned against the wall, trying to feel smaller. It was the first time she'd ever felt uncomfortable about being tall.

‘More wine?' Paul Brocklehurst appeared at Nina's side with a bottle. He was the same height as she was and she was looking straight into his eyes. She'd never been able to do that cute looking
up
thing that she'd always despised small women for doing. It was something irritating that she'd seen when women were appealing to a man's strength. Even Sally did it. Once at the gallery, Nina had watched in astonishment as Sally, capable and independent as she normally was, had shimmied up to a browsing customer, eyes wide and helpless, and coyly proffered a coffee jar with a stubborn lid to be opened. ‘Thank you
so
much,' she'd then gushed, leaving the man convinced he'd achieved a historical engineering milestone.

‘How could you
do
that?' Nina had asked her.

‘The jar is now open, my nails and my temper are intact and it gives men simple pleasure to be asked. Easy,' Sally had explained. How pathetic of men to be so easily pleased, Nina had thought. She still thought it was something to do with eye level and putting
yourself in a diminutive position. She and Joe had been on the same level and she caught herself wondering if he, standing next to Catherine, would be tall enough to kiss the top of her head. That would be disgustingly cute.

‘Are you planning to do a lot to the house?' Nina asked Paul, watching Henry, across the room, grab an opportunity to slide into place next to Megan. She wondered if he was asking if she needed help painting
her
ceiling. One upward appeal from those delphinium eyes and he'd probably roll on his back to be tickled.

‘Not a huge amount. Structurally it's fine and the kitchen is bliss. The vendors slapped in a new IKEA one so it would look good just for selling and it happens to be one we'd have chosen, so that's all right. I suppose it's mostly just a matter of paint. Megan is good at colour. I'm an architect, more interested in form and function. And people. I'll be working from home, office upstairs,' he waved his glass upwards and drops of wine fell to the floor. He rubbed at them with his foot. ‘So I feel the need to meet the neighbours, find out who's around for the odd coffee and chat when inspiration deserts me.'

‘Henry's very reliable for that,' Nina told Paul. ‘He's a painter, the art sort so he's always up for skiving if you don't mind oil paint smeared all over your worktops and a lingering smell of turps. Goodness knows what he actually lives on. Otherwise it's the usual suburban morning out, evening home, not a lot of casual dropping in. We do have the odd barbecue though, and there's Bonfire Night on the old bit of waste ground next to number 19, and it's quite good around Christmas.'

‘You make yourselves sound like an antisocial
bunch. Last place we lived, everyone was forever in and out of each others' houses. Drinks, parties, Sunday lunches, all that.'

‘Sounds idyllic,' Nina said, suddenly envious. ‘Why on earth did you leave?' Paul's face clouded for a moment. ‘Oh this and that,' he said breezily. ‘Work, mostly. We architects, we have to move on to stay fresh.' There was something else behind his ordinary reply, Nina thought. If I wasn't directly on his eye level I wouldn't have noticed that.

Nina stayed longer than she'd intended and gravitated towards the kitchen. It seemed to be full of women and a high, squawking noise level, as if inevitably, having cruised the room, lone females should congregate together for comfort. She and posh Penelope sat at the table polishing off a bottle of oaky Chardonnay and grumbling about absent husbands.

‘Oliver went to work in Dubai. “Only for three months, think of all the tax-free lucre,” he said. And then he met a nurse.
On the plane out
, would you believe.' Penelope waved her glass at Nina. ‘They're having twins.'

‘Oliver and the nurse?' Nina asked.

‘No, our hosts, Megan and Paul. Poor buggers. Got a cigarette?'

Penelope looked past Nina, round the room and towards the door. She looked vaguely hopeful, Nina thought, as if there might be an outside chance that a replacement for the adulterous Oliver might be just beyond the fridge. Nina realized she'd been doing the same, scanning the gathering with the tiniest corner of her mind wondering if there might be an adventure worth having among the men not yet met. All of them, apart from Henry, seemed to be there as anchors for their partners. The husbands stayed in one spot,
discussing golf, BMWs and their cholesterol levels. The wives circulated, talking of education, au pairs, diets and tennis and then returned to partner-as-base. Some of them wandered into the kitchen, and sat for a while with the single women who could smoke without risk of being told off, before starting to look edgy, and sensing a need to go back and be sure of their men.

‘Where are all the lone men? All the ones abandoned by
their
partners?' Penelope was murmuring drunkenly. ‘Where do they
go
? You never see
them
drifting around at parties looking lost. I just know now that I'll never live with anyone else again.'

Nina looked at her face that in its lines and folds inadequately patched with make-up held all the signs of great disappointment and lost hope.

‘I don't know. Home to Mum, bedsits with Kentucky Chicken, or maybe they go straight back out into the fray again, like getting back on a horse. Perhaps they're all out there looking for another Mrs Right, in case it's worth a shot.' She giggled, thinking of Joe and the speedy moving-in of Catherine. ‘It usually is, and pretty quick.'

I'm not going to end up like Penelope, Nina vowed to herself, jolly and shrieking in party kitchens but with eyes like a bereft soul. I'm going to go on out and have a good time, like Sally. With Sally.

Graham took the balaclava that he used for night bird-watching and winter plane-spotting into the sitting room where Monica was waiting eagerly for
Crimewatch UK
to start. The balaclava was hand-knitted in finest alpaca, made to last by Mother when he was about twelve, had just taken up plane-spotting and was thought to be in need of protection from chills. Back then, it had been an embarrassing item,
swaddling his head and making him feel conspicuous. Now everyone at the airfields had them, bought from army surplus stores and worn with nonchalant pride. His own was softer though, comforting even when he just felt it nestling in his pocket, soft like a sleeping rabbit. He didn't put it on now, just held it so Mother would see it and assume he was telling the truth.

‘Popping out for a bit,' he said from the doorway. His shoes were by the front door, ready to be slid on fast before she thought of too many questions to ask.

‘Going for a drink?' Monica asked, barely looking up.

‘Well I might stop for just a pint, on the way back. There's a barn owl by the Common, just on the edge. I thought I'd go and have a look.' He took a deep breath, to stop himself rambling on. Keep it simple, don't over-explain. Then she won't get suspicious.
Crimewatch
was just starting and Monica lost interest in the comings and goings of her son. She didn't want to miss a second of the programme, being always convinced that she recognized most of the criminals and that she alone knew just how they should be punished.

Graham slipped out of the room and picked up his coat from the bottom of the stairs. She wouldn't come out now, he thought with a small gleeful grin, wouldn't see him going out in his navy blue jacket instead of the old Barbour he'd normally wear for owl-watching. He drove away from the house quickly, for once not putting on his seat belt till he was round the first corner, heading for the High Street. He just hoped he'd be able to stop grinning like an escaped madman before it was time to meet Jennifer. He also hoped, really really hoped, that she'd be there.

‘The parents are going out to lunch today to talk about my gap year. They're going out together,' Emily told Chloe as they sat in the sixth-form cloakroom avoiding compulsory midweek assembly.

‘Why?' Chloe asked, puzzled. ‘What's it got to do with them? It's your time off.'

Emily frowned. Chloe had picked up on the wrong sentence from the two she'd just been given. How dense. What mattered was the ‘together', but then why should Chloe be interested in that – she had two parents in the same house. Parents who went out together and stayed in together, taken for granted. ‘Don't know,' she said. ‘Maybe they want to give me shit-loads of money to do something wild. Perhaps I'm secretly a trust fund babe and they're working out how to tell me about it.'

Chloe inspected a spot in the mirror. ‘Hard to tell if it's zits or if the mirror's just filthy. It's not near enough to the weekend for sod's law spots,' she murmured, then turned back to Emily. ‘What
are
you going to do next year? I thought I might just work a bit then travel a bit, you know, what most people do I suppose. Unless I fail everything and have to do retakes.' That was something they all said, in case of exam disaster. It was like crossing your fingers, an essential calling up of good luck.

Emily sat down on the wooden bench beneath the
coat hooks. From the wire shelves beneath, fetid plimsolls and dilapidated trainers that no-one would ever deign to steal tumbled out onto the dusty floor. She kicked a shoe across the room where it clanged dully against a locker door. No-one used the lockers: the keys got lost and that meant a fine of one pound that nobody wanted to waste.

‘I'm going to get a nice job in Marks and Spencer and a Renault Clio and get that Simon to ask me to marry him,' she said.

‘Are you mad? Aren't you a bit ahead of the plot here? You haven't even got him to ask you out yet,' Chloe demanded, looking appalled. ‘We're clever women, power execs in the making. We just don't concern ourselves with mere till rolls and checkout rotas. And
especially
not with diamond solitaire engagement rings.' She looked at Emily closely for signs of laughter. ‘You are joking Em?' She shook Emily's impassive shoulder. ‘You
are
, aren't you?'