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Authors: Kate Glanville

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BOOK: A Perfect Home
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Claire took a deep breath.

‘The stain is behind the sofa. No one will notice,' she said.

‘I'll notice. Every time I walk in there I'll know it's there.'

‘I'm sure it will fade with time.' Claire tried to sound optimistic.

William ran his fingers through his close-cropped hair. ‘Can't you just try to look after the place a bit more?'

‘I do, I really do but …' Claire began, but he held up his hand to stop her like a policeman holding up a line of traffic. He picked up his wine glass and left the room.

A surge of rage welled up inside Claire and, picking up a fairy cake, she threw it towards the empty doorway. It fell short and rolled across the quarry tiles to where Macavity sat inelegantly licking his back leg. He sniffed it for a few seconds and wandered away towards the fish pie on the Aga.

Claire sat down as the rage turned into a familiar lethargy. After all these years the house was finished; William had made a beautiful home, and now Claire felt that he almost resented having to share it with his family.

She looked at the flowers on the table and thought of her grandmother's florist stall in the little northern mining town where she had lived. As a child Claire would sit on a stool in the corner and watch her grandmother making up bouquets and wreaths in the freezing early morning air of the market.
All the flowers have something to tell us,
she used to say.
They all have their own special message, their very own language.
Claire tried to remember – red carnations were for longing and white for faithfulness but what were yellow? She closed her eyes and could see the reels of shiny satin ribbon that her little fingers had longed to unravel and the rolls of pastel-coloured wrapping paper laid out on the trestle table. Her grandmother's soft northern accent filtered into her mind:
You don't ever want to be given yellow carnations, Claire. Only disappointment comes with those.

She slowly put the fairy cakes, one by one, into the tin. Had she become a disappointment to William? Or was the disappointment life itself? Ever since Jack had died he seemed to have become obsessed with the house, shutting her out, burying himself in DIY. It had been years since they visited Jack's grave together, she couldn't remember the last time William had even mentioned his name.

After a few minutes she heard drilling coming from the living room and then the sound of Ben crying upstairs. Emily appeared in the doorway, her long toffee-coloured hair tangled, her sleepy eyes half closed.

‘Ben's awake,' she mumbled.

‘I know,' said Claire. ‘I'll be up a minute. You go back to bed.'

‘Did Daddy have his ice cream?' Emily walked up to the table. She looked at the cupcakes and then at Claire. ‘Don't worry, Mummy. I won't tell anyone you made them.'

‘I'm starving.' Oliver stood beside them in his rumpled stripy pyjamas, the fisherman's hat still on his head. ‘Is there anything to eat?'

‘You've brushed your teeth. You'll have to wait till breakfast. Now go to bed please.'

‘I'll brush them again, I promise. I'll never get back to sleep without some food.' Oliver collapsed onto a kitchen chair as if weak with hunger, despite having eaten two helpings of spaghetti bolognaise and a bowl of ice cream for tea.

‘Have one of these, then,' she said, picking up a fairy cake.

‘No, I mean proper food,' he said wrinkling up his nose in disgust. ‘You know, like from a shop.'

‘Claire! There's chocolate all over the armchair. How did it get there?' William shouted from the living room. Claire looked up at the ceiling and tried to count to ten. She gave up at five. ‘And there are crumbs. Has someone being eating biscuits in here?'

‘Come on,' said Emily to her brother. ‘Let's go.'

‘I think I've trodden on a cake,' said Oliver, as he moved towards the door and flicked damp sponge off his bare foot in a spray of soggy cake crumbs. William stood in the doorway. The children squeezed past him.

‘Is there no end to the mess you all create?' he called after them.

‘They're children,' said Claire as she fetched the dustpan and brush. ‘It's a family home, not a show house, can't you just try and lighten up a little?'

‘Lighten up?' William looked incredulous. ‘All I'm asking is that everyone sticks to the house rules. Do you think my mother would have let me eat a chocolate biscuit in the living room when I was a boy?'

‘No, I'm sure she wouldn't.' Claire squatted on the floor sweeping up the cake crumbs. She resisted the urge to say that William's mother probably didn't let William or his father eat anything unless they were sitting at the dining table with damask napkins and wearing full evening dress.

William turned to go back in the living room then stopped.

‘Those cushions on the chesterfield?'

‘The new ones with the houses on them?'

‘Yes.'

Claire sighed. ‘Don't worry William, they're not staying there, they're going to the gallery for Sally's window.'

‘That's a shame.'

Claire looked up from her sweeping, surprised. ‘Is it?'

‘Yes. I like them. They're very good.' He smiled at her. ‘Well done.'

Chapter Two

‘Quirky vintage finds complement the classic furnishings around this stylishly refurbished home.'

William was late. Claire desperately scanned the playground to see if she could see him coming. A crowd of parents gathered around the school gates waiting for the children to come out of the classrooms and the fête to start.

‘What a splendid display, Mrs Elliott,' Mrs Wenham stood in front of Claire's stall, her jowly face heavily made-up, her steely grey hair perfectly coiffed, hairspray glinting in the afternoon sun.

Claire smiled back at Oliver and Emily's headmistress and tried to stop Ben from climbing up the table and lying across her display.

‘Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have a stall,' Claire said.

‘Here at Oakwood Primary, we like to support our parents' endeavours, however small.' She picked up a leaflet that Claire had hastily printed on the computer in the early hours of the morning. ‘I see you have a website. More professional than I thought.' Sally winked at Claire from her position on the cake stall next door. ‘Maybe you'd like to come into school one day and do a little bit of sewing with the children?' Mrs Wenham gazed at the colourful array of cushions, aprons, shopping bags, and tea-cosies. Heart-shaped gingham lavender bags hung from a collection of twigs in a jar and strings of pretty pastel bunting fluttered against the wire fence behind the stall. In the middle of the fence Claire had strung a long calico banner spelling out Emily Love in spotty letters.

‘Emily Love,' Mrs Wenham read out. ‘How quaint.' She moved on to the cake stall where Sally was trying to disguise the fact that her mouth was full of chocolate brownie. Mrs Wenham peered at Sally's face,

‘I think I'd better go and open the gates before you eat all the stock, Mrs Smith.' Mrs Wenham gave a little braying laugh and hurried away, her high heels clicking on the tarmac.

‘Condescending old goat,' Sally glared at the head teacher's retreating back. ‘She insisted that I go on this stall – what does she expect me to do, stand back and admire it? Surely she doesn't think I got to look like this on a diet of rice cakes and lettuce, it takes hard work. I'm like an elite athlete – they need to go to the gym all the time to maintain their physiques, I need to eat chocolate brownies and Tunnocks tea cakes to maintain mine.' With a wiggle of her hips Sally pushed up her cleavage and smoothed her bright red top over her generously rounded stomach.

‘What do you think?' Claire had come round to look at her stall from the front. She balanced Ben on one hip as she surveyed it, her head tilted, a critical expression on her face. ‘Maybe there are too many cushions on the right-hand side.'

‘It looks fantastic – look out Cath Kidston!'

Ben made a lunge for Sally's stall. Claire held onto him with a firm grip.

‘I wish William would hurry up.'

‘I'm sure he'll be here soon,' Sally reassured her. ‘I expect he's caught in traffic. Does Ben want one of these raspberry buns? I don't imagine they'll be very popular. I just can't think who made them.'

‘I can't think either,' said Claire. ‘But at least they tried. I bet you haven't contributed a thing.' Sally pulled herself up tall and pointed proudly to a lemon drizzle loaf. ‘Don't go casting aspersions about me, Claire Elliot, don't tell me I don't contribute.'

Claire's eyes widened in surprise. ‘Wow, Sally, that looks delicious. For someone who says they'd rather go through childbirth again than bake a cake, you've done really well.'

After a moment's pause Sally's pretty face creased into laughter.

‘Do you really think I could have made a lemon cake? I can't even put a fish finger in a cold oven without burning it.'

Claire picked up the golden loaf and looked at it. ‘But isn't that your handwriting on the label?'

Sally took it back from her and put it prominently in the centre of her stall. ‘Oldest trick in The Bad Mother's Handbook – buy the cheapest cake you can find in Tesco, take it out of its packaging, bash it up a bit on top, wrap cling film around it, stick on a hand-written label,
et voilà
– instant brownie points. I made sure Mrs Wenham saw me produce four of those from my bag, she even asked me to put one by for her to give to Mr Wenham for his tea.'

Claire shook her head at her friend. ‘I've known you for over ten years and you never cease to amaze me,' she said. ‘How do you do it? I'd never get away with that scam; I'm hopeless at telling lies.'

‘Are you?' Sally's eyebrows rose. ‘What about those mushy raspberry things?'

Claire raised her hands in surrender. ‘OK they're mine.'

‘I knew it.' Sally laughed. ‘Only you would use such pretty cupcake cases.'

Mrs Wenham's haughty voice crackled through the tannoy and suddenly people were pouring into the school yard. Within seconds Claire's stall was surrounded by enthusiastic mothers exclaiming with
oohs
and
aahs
of delight, snatching up items and clutching them possessively in case anyone else should get hold of them.

Claire still had Ben hoisted on her hip and with one hand she started slipping things into paper bags and taking money as a stream of sales began.

Emily appeared, begging to have her face painted, and Oliver sauntered over to tell Claire she owed the meat roast stall one pound for the burger he held in his greasy hands. Tomato sauce dripped from his bun onto a small tote bag that Claire had been particularly pleased with.

‘Look what you've done, Oliver,' Claire cried.

‘That's spoiled now,' said a mother from the reception class. ‘Can I have it for half price?'

A gust of wind blew and the Emily Love banner fell down onto the dusty tarmac where Claire's eager customers trampled on it in their fervour to get to the stall.

Where was William?

‘I'll take him off you now,' Elizabeth plucked Ben from Claire's arms. ‘Come along, Emily, lets get this face of yours painted. Here's five pounds, Oliver, now get those mucky paws away from your mother's stall and go and throw a sponge at a teacher or something.'

‘Thanks, Mum,' Claire called out with relief as her mother and the children disappeared into the crowd.

An hour later only three bags, an apron, and two cushions remained. Claire felt exhausted and hot as she sat down on the edge of a nearby sand pit.

‘Wow,' Sally came across to see her. ‘You were popular.'

‘Hello, ladies,' William appeared beside them looking handsome in a pale grey suit and lilac tie. He gave Sally a kiss on the cheek. ‘Looking lovely today, Mrs Smith,' Sally grinned at him, lapping up the compliment. ‘Red is definitely your colour.'

‘You're not looking so bad yourself,' Sally replied. ‘Is that a new haircut, Mr Elliott?'

Claire rolled her eyes.

‘When you two have finished admiring each other perhaps you could tell me where the hell you've been, William.'

He turned to Claire and gave her a kiss on her cheek. ‘I am
so
sorry, darling. The traffic was terrible all the way.'

‘Told you,' said Sally pointedly to Claire. ‘And I just had to stop off and pick up that replacement part for the hedge cutter. I hope I've not missed too much.'

‘You missed seeing my stall,' said Claire. ‘Not to mention looking after the children.'

William turned to look at Claire's stall beside him.

‘It looks wonderful,' he said. ‘Very nice.'

‘There's hardly anything on it now.'

‘Claire has been a sensation,' Sally said. ‘She's practically sold out.'

‘Clever girl,' said William.

‘Oh, Mr Elliott, how lovely to see you.' Mrs Wenham bustled up to William and put out her hand in greeting. William took it and then leaned forward to give her a kiss. Mrs Wenham simpered and drifted off to collect the floats, her fingers fluttering to her face.

‘Daddy!' Emily and Oliver ran up to their father; they had obviously forgiven him for his stern words the night before.

‘What a pretty fairy,' said William to Emily, whose cheeks glittered with sparkly butterflies and flowers.

‘I've got a scull tattoo,' Oliver rolled up his sleeve. ‘And a can of custard from the tombola.'

‘I see you're here at last,' Elizabeth glared at her sonin-law while she held on to a wriggling Ben; his tiger face was already smudged and in his chubby hand he clutched a melting ice lolly. William backed away from him a fraction. ‘It's such a shame you missed seeing Claire's work on display. It looked very impressive.'

BOOK: A Perfect Home
12.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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