Every Good Girl (18 page)

‘Protesting too much again,' Sally warned as the gallery door opened. Nina looked up, prepared to welcome a customer and saw that it was Graham. ‘Oh hi, how are you?' she said, ‘Coffee?'

‘No thanks. I just came to talk about Mother. They're coming to check the house later this morning and then she can come home.' Graham had always been one for getting straight to the point, frill-free conversation, but this sounded like an accusation. Nina felt irritated. She hadn't told Graham about Emily and the man on the Common, because he'd pass on the story to Monica, who would worry and fret and keep harping on about it for months, long after everyone else had forgotten about it. So Graham probably thought she'd simply lost interest in Monica now that she was clearly well on the mend – she hadn't been to see her for two days, though she had phoned Graham and made sure that neighbours and the entire bridge club would be in attendance.

‘Yes I do know. Do you want me to collect her? You'll be at work then, won't you?'

Graham stood looking too big and awkward with his hands in his pockets. He looked around, eyeing the gallery's stock nervously. Nina noticed how he hardly turned his head but somehow flicked his glance around furtively, as if it wasn't for him to express any interest in this sort of thing. She thought of the arty knick-knacks her mother had collected over the years, the usual Dresden shepherdesses, the Staffordshire dogs, Meissen porcelain, all locked into display cabinets where the dust, the cat and clumsy fingers couldn't get at them. Graham, as far as she was aware, had never in his life bought anything of artistic interest. It had simply never been his role. She wondered if he minded about that, if he'd ever felt he'd missed out on home-building. It was tricky contemplating asking him, in case he then started to brood on something he'd never given any thought to.

‘She might need help getting dressed.' Graham addressed the floor and Nina recognized this from childhood: the avoidance of eye contact when he was asking for more than he was saying.

‘Are you sure?' Nina asked. ‘She seems just the same as usual, apart from furious that she's been kept in so long. She
says
she's absolutely fine, can't wait to get home and get on with life.'

‘Well she would, wouldn't she? She wants to be at home,' he persisted. ‘But she shouldn't be on her own. That's what they said at the hospital.'

Nina sighed, picked up a sheet of the bubble-wrap to fidget with and popped its air sacs one by one. The little explosions seemed to fill the hollow air of the gallery like gunfire. It was a satisfying noise. ‘What exactly are you saying, Graham? I have offered to have
her to stay with us for a few days, but she says she won't come because she wants to be back in her own place and back with you. What else can I do?'

‘All you
can
do is take her home, give her some supper and leave her to it, I should think. She's got the telephone,' Sally contributed briskly. Graham's body became even more hunched and defensive, now faced with two of them. He glared at Sally and waited in a sulky silence to bring out the words he really wanted to use. Eventually he said, ‘You could come and stay at the house with her.'

‘What? Oh Graham that just doesn't make any sense. I'd still have to go out to work, just like you do. And what about the girls? They'd have to come too.' Nina gave an explosive laugh. ‘She doesn't need two of us to look after her, she's got you and all her bridge and Townswomen's Guild pals. She'll be fine, Graham, don't worry so much. I'll call in whenever I can. Promise. If you're really worried, perhaps we could organize one of those alarm things that she could wear round her neck. In fact I'll do some phoning and talk to her about it this afternoon.' She reached out and patted his arm. He looked stiff and wary of the gesture. ‘Don't
worry
so much,' she told him. ‘Be careful you don't undermine her independence and turn her into an invalid. That's the last thing she needs. Look, I'll meet you at the house later this morning for the social worker visit, will that help?'

Graham left, and the gallery seemed full of unexpressed resentment. ‘Why
is
he so worried, do you think?' Nina asked Sally. ‘I mean those two have been rubbing along all these years without exactly overwhelming affection between them. So why is he so terribly concerned now? She's fine, she insists she is, though she says no-one believes anything you say once
you're past sixty. They'd have let her out after twenty-four hours if they hadn't got to make sure she was going home to suitable stair rails and stuff. It's like conditions for parole.'

‘You've really got no idea, have you?' Sally said, looking at Nina in wide-eyed mock amazement.

‘Well no I haven't. Tell me.'

‘It's not
her
he's worried about being properly looked after. It's himself.' Sally went and opened the door so she could light a cigarette. ‘It's a possibility of role reversal and he doesn't know how to deal with it. All these years your besotted mother has taken care of her beloved little boy's every need and now he's wondering who is going to grill his sausages for him just the way he likes them.'

‘It certainly isn't going to be me,' Nina declared. ‘If he can't grill a sausage at the age of thirty-nine . . .'

‘I know and you know. But you'll have to keep reminding him that he's a big boy now or you'll end up with two households to run and a very large extra child. Trust me, I do know. When you've got boy children it's hard to stand back and let them do
anything
for themselves. You so desperately want to be needed. Your mother has done such a thorough job of making herself indispensable that your great big baby brother can barely wipe his own bum.'

Emily lay in bed listening to the distant sounds of Radio 4 drifting up from the basement. Henry wasn't like proper painters they'd had in the house, the ones who whistled along tunelessly to whatever came up on Capital and left coffee cup rings all over the table. Henry brought his own favourite Charles and Diana porcelain mug for his tea, liked listening to
Gardeners' Question Time
and argued out loud with the panel
about when to mulch delphiniums and how to build runner bean wigwams. Emily usually enjoyed having him around, feeling that in the great war between adults who'd long ago taken every exam they'd ever need and teenagers who had them to come, Henry was on the teenage side. He'd admitted taking his own French A-level with a raging hangover and ‘borrowing' someone else's art portfolio to try to get into college – an attempt which had failed since the someone else's name was written neatly in the bottom left-hand corner of each drawing. Henry still kicked his shoes off and left them where they could be tripped over, had a fondness for Marmite on toast and only read newspapers that he could describe as ‘fun'.

Emily was starting to feel hungry and wanted to get up, eat Weetabix and watch Richard and Judy in the kitchen. Henry would be jolly (not because he wasn't sympathetic, but because he was convinced, despite being done over by Joe, that a good laugh fixed everything) and she wasn't sure she could face that. The TV would be under a dustsheet or even stored away in the big cupboard under the stairs. Every time Nina painted a room things got put into that cupboard, and only half the things came out again because Nina then had a splurge on obliterating clutter. ‘One day me and Lucy will be in there,' Emily said to herself as she climbed out of her bed. ‘I'm surprised that's not where Dad ended up.'

She went and showered, then searched around for clothes to face the day in. They had to be all-covering, all-enveloping. ‘How can you wear all that when the weather's getting warmer? You look like you're going walking up a mountain or something,' Lucy had said the day before when Emily had come downstairs in jeans, boots, a polo neck jumper and a snug fleece. ‘It
wasn't your fault you know,' her mother had pointed out with crass obviousness. ‘It wasn't a matter of what you were wearing, just a matter of where you happened to be at the time.' Emily knew all this, deep down inside. Truths like that raged round in her head tangled with the anger. Right now it was a question of keeping her body, her legs, even her hands private for her viewing only, just for a while.

The phone rang as Emily was trailing slowly down the stairs. She didn't dash to answer it as she normally would, even though she immediately worked out that at school by now it would be morning break time and that the call was probably Chloe or Nick (stupid bloody Nick, so much was all his fault). Eventually she heard Henry booming ‘hello' down the phone in the kitchen. She sat on the top step of the basement, listening while Henry chatted up Chloe, asking her how her love life was going. There were long silences when Chloe was presumably telling him. People did that with Henry. Every now and then he gave one of his big laughs, the sort that made you quite sure you'd just said the funniest thing he'd heard all day. It was a deep rumbling laugh, lovely but not as lovely as her dad's. She wished it was him painting the kitchen. She sneaked down the stairs till she could see Henry, lolling back in the big deep armchair (squashing its shroud of old sheet), with his feet on the kitchen table. He was wearing one blue sock and one black one.

‘Are you colour blind or just a poser?' she asked him, interrupting rudely as she came into the kitchen. Henry didn't move, just grinned at her over the top of the phone and continued listening. ‘The Princess has just come down, do you want to talk to her?' he said. ‘Of course she bloody does, you don't think she'd be
calling
you
, do you?' Emily tried being rude to him, but couldn't resist smiling. He was so like one of those outsize soft toys that people buy for babies, which they can't play with till they're far too old to want to. ‘And don't listen,' she hissed at him, taking Henry's place in the chair and shoving her own feet onto the table. Pulling a face, Henry tugged at an imaginary forelock and returned to his ladder.

‘Chloe? How's things? What have I missed?'

‘Nothing. What's there to miss?' Chloe grunted. ‘Though I think you might have used up your sympathy quota because I overheard a mention that your
La Peste
essay might be getting done while you're at home. Is it?'

‘What do you think?' Emily laughed. The essay had actually been done the day before, swiftly and angrily finished in a burst of mind-numbing concentration that effectively shut out any humiliating thoughts of the man on the Common.

‘I think you've done it and I bet it's brilliant,' Chloe replied, impressing Emily with her perception. ‘It's terrible when we have to work to take our minds off things, isn't it?'

‘Suppose so,' Emily agreed, feeling depressed.

‘Nick sends love. He thinks you've got flu.'

‘Fuck Nick,' she said. ‘Though actually no, I don't recommend it.' As she said this, Emily could sense Henry up his ladder turning to look down on her in wonder. She looked up at him and frowned. ‘I should have taken this call upstairs,' she said to Chloe. ‘There are some very big ears flapping down here.'

‘I'll come and see you after school – I'll bring a surprise, a nice one I promise.'

‘Lovely, just so long as it's not Nick,' Emily ordered, putting the phone down. She lay back in the chair and
gazed up at Henry, who sensed her eyes on him again and smiled at her.

‘What?' he said. ‘Wondering if I'll tell your mum what you've been up to with this Nick?'

Emily looked suitably scornful. ‘Stroll on, she'd be worried sick if she thought I was actually still a good little virgin. My mum's a Seventies
swinger
, or whatever they were called, don't forget. I expect you were a Sixties one,' she added with calculated cruelty, watching with satisfaction as an expression of mock pain crossed Henry's face. He sat down on top of the ladder. ‘Must rest the ancient aching legs,' he said. ‘And yes, I was that Sixties swinger. If it moved, you shagged it. One is not necessarily proud of that.' She laughed: he looked so weary it was hard to imagine him in active and hot pursuit of some short-skirted, plum-lipsticked girl.

‘What about now?' she asked quietly, wondering as she said it what she was really getting at.

Henry stood up and turned his attention back to the ceiling and started painting with care and concentration. ‘What a question! So rudely personal.
Now
, I've come to an age where discretion is all. A gentleman never tells.'

‘You mean, this gentleman isn't getting any,' Emily concluded with teenage brutality. Losing interest, she clambered out of her chair and started rummaging in cupboards for Weetabix. She made coffee for the two of them, then took herself off up the stairs to indulge her need to watch daytime TV in the sitting room.

Only half listening to a sofa discussion on how less than perfect bodies could find a way to wear translucent dresses that summer (don't even
think
about it, that's how, was Emily's damning conclusion), she continued thinking about Henry. She felt safe alone in the
house with him, but wondered, in a detached way, whether she should. It could have been anybody out there on the Common. That muffled voice and wrapped-up head could have been anyone at all. It could have been Henry or Simon or that new Paul man from across the road or Mr Clements from primary school. She tipped Weetabix off the spoon, halfway to her mouth, feeling slightly sick. At least it couldn't have been her dad: he was with Lucy, hauling her off that little sneaky brat Sophie and bringing them home. In theory, though, in nauseating, actual puke-inducing theory, it could be any man on the planet and every one of them. They'd all got that power to intimidate, to terrify, to
subject
. Just suppose they really spent all their time having to be careful to keep under civilized control, with the urge to break out only just under the surface. She looked at the TV screen where three over-groomed women sat chatting and smiling in sublime happy confidence, blithely advising women on how to make themselves look seductive.