Laying the Ghost (17 page)

‘Right. Well, he seemed a bit grumpy to me.
Not
delighted to meet me. Was he a great mate of your ex? He’s probably protecting territory or something.’

‘Friend of Alex?’ Nell snorted. ‘No! I think Ed considered Alex a bit of a tosser, actually. Alex once told him that education after sixteen was a waste of time for ninety per
cent
of the population unless they were doing something useful or practical. Ed teaches English literature so you can imagine how that went down.’

‘Hmm.’ Steve was practising, using the line of five red forward players and aiming the ball at the blue goal. It crossed Nell’s mind that Steve might have sided with Alex, not Ed. She didn’t know him well enough to be sure, but that didn’t stop her suspecting.

‘Fancy a game?’ Steve looked up and smiled at her. Those blue eyes again … She really mustn’t think of him like that. If Kate knew, she’d march her out to the local Ann Summers and make her buy that Rampant Rabbit. Or worse, send her a box of condoms, tell her to cook him a seductive supper and order her to get on with it.

‘Yeah, OK. Tomatoes with Ghost Spot and Sun Scald can wait a bit longer.’

‘Blue or red?’ Steve asked.

‘Manchester United or Chelsea?’ Nell said, automatically going to the red players.

‘Too obvious.’ Steve was already carefully lining up his team. ‘Let’s be Liverpool and Everton.’

How much later could it have been? It probably wasn’t the best moment for Mimi to come crashing into the studio. The tournament, best of ten games, had ended in a draw and Steve was giving Nell a final-whistle hug, nothing more, when Mimi, scowling and furious, stormed in. ‘Mum! What are you
doing
?’

Nell pulled away from Steve, laughing. ‘Hi, Mimi! Er … this is Steve – he teaches the self-defence classes I go to. We … were … well, playing football, you know, just having fun!’ She felt as if Mimi had turned into her mother and that she was the fifteen-year-old, caught out with a boyfriend. Ludicrous.

Mimi flung her schoolbag on the floor and glowered at Steve. God, Nell thought, it was only a quick end-of-match hug – it’s not as if we were swopping shirts or something. Something in Mimi’s expression told her it might not be a good idea actually to say this. She was probably hungry: she often came home from school trembling with low-blood-sugar starvation and frantically searched for doughnuts or biscuits.

‘I can’t get into the house!’ Mimi wailed. ‘It’s all locked up and the front door chain’s on, even. Why’s the back door locked?’

‘That’s because we’re out here,’ Steve pointed out, bravely, in Nell’s opinion. ‘If it was unlocked, any burglar could just walk in and nick your iPod.’

‘How d’you know I’ve got an iPod?’ Mimi glared at him, suspicious and wary.

‘Because you’re an affluent teenager. Of course you’ve got one.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not
in
the house. I’ve got it
with
me, for like lunchtimes and the bus and stuff? So – can I get into the house now, please? I’ve got homework to
do.’
She gave Steve a look of prim innocence, picked up her bag and stood waiting for them to turn back into grown-ups.

‘You’ll need this,’ Steve said, handing her a key. ‘There’s a new lock on your back door, a much better one.’

‘Thanks,’ Mimi said, at last cracking into something that was almost half a smile. ‘Are you … coming too?’

‘Yes, I’ll be right there,’ Nell said. ‘I just want to clear up a bit here.’

‘Fine.’ Mimi gave her a final glare and stalked off, leaving Nell sure that her daughter suspected that she and Steve were going to fall on each other in a passionate frenzy the moment she was safely in the house.

‘A post-match cup of tea?’ she offered Steve.

Steve laughed. ‘No, thanks. It’s time I was on my way. I’ll see you at the class on Tuesday, Nell. Don’t forget your blunt instrument.’

‘OK, I won’t. And thanks, Steve, that was fun.’

‘No worries. I had a great afternoon. Oh …’ He picked up the envelope from Nell’s computer. ‘I see you decided to contact him, then?’

‘Yes … well, it seemed a good idea. I’m still wondering if it really is.’ A bit of her wanted to rip the envelope out of Steve’s hands and tear it up. Another part wished she’d sent it many years ago.

Steve grinned. ‘I’m going past the post office; do you want me to shove it in the mailbox for you?’

It was a decision that would be out of her hands then, literally, Nell thought. She hesitated only one more second and then said, ‘Yes please. Thanks.’

‘So who was that then?’ Charles asked Ed. ‘He’s been banging away half the afternoon.’

Not a happy choice of terminology, Ed thought. The man was clearly taking the moron’s route to Nell’s heart. If the old saying was that men could be wooed via their stomachs, modern folklore surely had it that women could be won by way of a big power tool and a firm hand on a screwdriver.

‘He’s some friend of Nell’s and he’s been replacing her back-door lock and adding a bolt. Extra security, he said.’ He’d looked at Ed as if checking out what kind of a threat he’d be on a dark night, and whether he could handle the challenge. Ed was taller and broader but the man’s expression had said one thing: a scornful ‘
Nooo
problem’.

‘And what was all that hilarity then?’ Charles persisted, as if Ed had X-ray vision and as much curiosity as his brother. ‘All that laughing and yelling in her studio.’

Ed shrugged. ‘No idea. What Nell gets up to in the privacy of—’ He stopped. He was sounding like a jealous old grump. He
was
turning into Charles. He really should watch it. After all, it was good for Nell to be laughing like that. It had been far too long since he’d heard that. Yes, of course it was good. Really good.

* * *

‘I shouldn’t be coming to this. I’m too young for all your lot and that vile Polly Mitchell will think I’m a saddo, going out with my mum,’ Mimi grumbled as she and Nell walked down the road towards the Mitchells’ house. The purplish lights in their garden were almost fluorescent. It was like the landing spot for an alien craft.

‘You didn’t have to come,’ Nell told her. ‘You could have done what you usually do on a Sunday night and flop out on the sofa with your phone, the remote and a bag of satsumas.’

‘Don’t pick on me,’ Mimi moaned. ‘At least it’s not crisps.’

Nell wasn’t going to win, because there wasn’t anything to win. Why, then, did this feel like a fight? Sometimes teenagers made you so weary. All the same, she understood it was some kind of honour to have Mimi with her, especially given her loathing of Evie’s daughter Polly. Unless, as was likely, there was an ulterior motive.

‘Who’ll be there?’ Mimi asked with grudging interest. ‘I hope they’ve brought some good stuff.’

Ah – so that was it. This ‘mistakes’ night had the potential for treasures and bargains, though possibly not the sort a girl of fifteen would be interested in. Evie and friends weren’t exactly Topshop’s target customers – there wasn’t likely to be a lot on offer that Mimi wouldn’t turn her nose up at as being geriatric.

‘I think she’s invited about a dozen. Kate’s coming, and Isabelle from opposite, just friends, locals and that. Anyone she knows who isn’t a wise shopper, I suppose!’

‘Will
he
be there?’

‘Who?’ They’d now reached the Mitchells’ ornate iron gates, and Nell rang the security bell. Steve would approve – Don had got this place rigged up with all manner of burglarproof gadgets. If he could have got away with broken, jagged glass stuck to the top of his side walls, he’d have had the nearest bottle-recycling bin craned over the gates, bought a ton of cement and made it his weekend DIY mission in the fond hope of severing a villain’s artery. Nell shielded her eyes from the glare of the lights and looked at Mimi, curiously. ‘Who do you mean?’ she repeated.

‘That bloke.’ Mimi looked at the ground, mumbling. ‘The lock man, you know …’

‘Oh, Steve!’ Nell laughed. ‘No! Of course not – why would he want to come to an evening of women messing about with reject clothes and shoes? I’m sure he’s got loads better things to do!’

The buzzer went and Mimi pushed the gate open. ‘He fancies you, Mum. Just watch him, that’s all.’

‘Mimi – he doesn’t, OK?’ Nell caught hold of Mimi’s arm and stopped her halfway up the path. ‘But … if he did, would it matter so much? I’ve got to have a life as well, you know. I don’t see why all the fun should be Alex’s. God knows …’

‘No!’ Mimi shook her off. ‘No, Mum, it’s not that! It’s him, just something about the way he looks at you. It’s …’ She shuddered, dramatically overexaggerating. ‘It’s not
nice
.’ She shrugged, defeated by her lame choice of adjective.

Sex
wasn’t
‘nice’, Nell thought, not if (to paraphrase Woody Allen) you’re doing it right. It could be sleazy, sticky, sweaty, rank, raucous, ecstatically,
blissfully
filthy; anything but
nice
… Mimi didn’t know all this yet – God, at least she hoped she didn’t. Maybe they needed another talk … a backup one to the earlier birds-and-bees stuff. Why didn’t teenagers, like pedigree kittens, come with a starter pack containing a few essentials? Some comfort reading like Nancy Mitford’s
The Pursuit of Love
would be good for those miserable, can’t-face-anyone days, a big bag of minty chocolates (for same), some slushy, rom-com DVDs for when he only texts one-worders, skincare that works, zit-zapper stuff, plus condoms and detailed instructions on how to use them in case the school hadn’t quite got it covered. A book on how to read boys would be useful too, but no one seemed to have written that one. Perhaps the author of Kate’s
After He’s Gone
divorce-survival guide could give it a go as her next project.

‘Look, please don’t worry about it,’ she told Mimi as Evie opened the door. ‘Nothing’s going on. Steve just teaches the class and he fixed the locks, OK? As you would say, “end of”. Now let’s go and see if I can offload these
Joseph
trousers and that red jacket that just didn’t go with anything. I’m counting on trading them in for some cashmere.’ An evening out, she thought as she walked into Evie’s café au lait hallway. Not quite the defiant, survivalist glitz and glamour recommended in
After He’s Gone
, but it would do for a March Sunday.

Evie, as ever, had got everything brilliantly organized. At one end of her long, peachy sitting room she’d put up clothing rails and hangers for her guests’ contributions, and she’d set up a table full of didn’t-quite-work handbags. There were also many, many of the shoes that all women, deep down, know the truth about: if they hurt even a teeny bit in the shop, they’ll always hurt. This will never stop a smitten woman from buying them once they’ve sent her heart rate skyrocketing.

Kate was there, settled in a squashy chair in front of a coffee table that was covered with delectable Marks & Spencer’s party snacks. She was drinking a large glass of white wine and munching her way through the lot.

‘I should have brought Alvin to this do,’ Kate was saying, as she tried to force a lime green wedge-heeled shoe on to her foot. ‘He was a mistake.’

‘Just the one, Kate? All mine were,’ Evie’s sister Marie said, looking woeful. ‘All four of them. Some things I never got the hang of. He only had to walk past the bed and I was pregnant.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Like that.’

‘I had to do a bit more than that, but even so,’ Kate
giggled,
downing the last of her wine and holding her glass out to Marie for another. ‘Even so, it wasn’t hard. Well, when I say
not hard
, obviously I don’t mean …’ She and Marie collapsed with mirth.

Nell saw Mimi and Polly look at each other and raise their eyes heavenward. Such disapproval. Where did teenagers get this from? All the same, she was quite glad when the two girls, putting aside whatever differences they had in the face of mother-embarrassment, took themselves into the conservatory to watch Don’s seventy-two-inch TV and a pirated DVD of a movie so new it was barely cold from the cutting room, let alone yet out on general release.

‘And you could have brought your Alex,’ Kate said to Nell, now she was on the far side of the best part of a bottle of wine. ‘He was another mistake, wasn’t he?’

‘Well no, not at the time,’ Nell told her, pulling a pale blue cashmere sweater over her head. It was almost the right size. The sleeves were a bit short, but you could call them bracelet length, pull them up a bit further and it would look all right.

‘Well, they never are at the time,’ said Isabelle from no. 14, a woman who still put lipstick on every morning before breakfast so her husband (a golf-obsessed, dull specimen, by anyone’s standards) couldn’t accuse her of letting herself go. ‘It’s only later …’

‘No, really. I don’t at all regret Alex,’ Nell told them. The
bright
pink shoes were quite nice, too. In her head, though, she could hear her mother being sniffy. ‘Ankle straps. Tarty.’ She tried them on. Tarty was good – though she had also heard that straps like this made your feet look like trotters. ‘If I hadn’t married Alex, I wouldn’t have Mimi or Seb. I’d have missed out there.’

‘Yes, but you’d have had some with another one.’

‘No. No, I wouldn’t,’ Nell said, turning away from them, back to the rack of clothes. ‘Anyone going to try this Jigsaw dress on? I love this coral colour.’

‘Talking of which …’ Evie’s voice emerged from the depths of Isabelle’s never-worn emerald satin off-the-shoulder number, ‘Mimi looks OK. I heard she’d got some nasty tummy bug. Was it only the one day off school that she had? Polly said something about lucky her – missing a maths test!’

Nell stopped fiddling with the coral dress’s zip. ‘When? Last week? She’s been fine! She hasn’t been off school …’

Even as she said it she wished she hadn’t. Because, for some reason, Mimi obviously
had
taken time off. Why? The faces that were staring at her now, with questioning little smiles, were also dying to know. Whatever the reason was, she didn’t want the entire neighbourhood wondering about it, discussing how it was all starting to fall to bits at no. 19, now Alex had buggered off.