Afterwife (30 page)

Sam flexed his bare right biceps, prodded it, checking its muscle tone. “And?”

“I’ve got to go to Muswell Hill.”

He fingered the bulge of his biceps with his left hand. “Not tonight?”

“Ollie wouldn’t ask unless he was worried, Sam.”

“My parents are coming to dinner any minute to run through the wedding. The chicken is in the oven. And you want to run off?”

Trying to placate him, she stroked his shoulders, smoothing over the little black dots where the hair was growing back after his shoulder wax. “We saw your parents last week.” Every bloody week! “And Freddie really is sick. I kind of have to do this.”

“He’s got chicken pox, not cholera, babes. You do not
have
to do this. Anyway, what’s going on with the French bird? Where’s she?”

She started a little at the mention of Cecille. She’d been trying to make herself forget about Cecille. It was best just to deny her existence. “She’s struggling a bit apparently. I may have to stay the night, I’m afraid.”

A low growl came out of the back of his throat, which may or may not have had something to do with the cigarette.

“It’ll only be one night.” She resumed her shoulder stroking. “Ollie’s back tomorrow.”

Sam stood up, flicking her hand away. “This is about you, not Freddie. Can we at least be honest about that?”

“Honesty?”
The word “Dominique” hissed on the tip of her tongue. “I’ll tell you what, Sam,” she began, only to be interrupted by the doorbell and Penelope’s shrill voice rising from the street through the open window.

C
ecille appeared at the door of number thirty-three looking disheveled, her normally smooth dark hair frizzed, a large white shirt sloppily half tucked into her brown leather belt. She looked like a teen on a bender, and for once, genuinely pleased to see Jenny. “Nightmare,” she said breathlessly. “Thanks for coming.”

“Has Freddie still got a temperature?” She had phoned her mother back again for advice—much to her mother’s delight—which amounted to a bottle of Calpol and a bottle of pink calamine lotion.

She bustled into the hall with her medical supplies, a little part of her hoping that in some small way her stepping into the crisis like this, taking control, well, it might right the humiliation of being discovered poking around Ollie’s chest of drawers for those letters. It might make things less embarrassing for everyone.

“You go and have a cup of tea or something, Cecille. I’ll take over,” she called over her shoulder, dropping her overnight bag in the hall and leaping up the stairs.

Freddie was a pathetic, spotty mess dozing on his bed. She put
her hand on his forehead. Hot. Where was the thermometer? Was this the thermometer? She picked up a plastic probe from the bedside table. It took a moment or two for her to work out which orifice it was designed for. She chanced sticking it in his ear. One hundred and two Fahrenheit. She scrambled into her handbag and Googled kids’ temperatures on her iPhone. Okay, yes, hot. She must definitely wake him up and give him medicine.

“Freddie, Freddie, sweetie,” she said, wobbling his shoulder gently.

He groaned and turned over in the bed.

“Freddie.”

“Mummy.”

“Freddie, it’s me, Jenny.”

“Want Mummy,” he muttered, eyes still shut.

“It’s Jenny. It’s okay.”

He opened one eye very slowly. “Jenny?” He looked puzzled, taking a moment to get his bearings. “Are you going to stay with me?”

“I’m here now.”

“Promise?” he said, blinking back the tears and trying to be brave.

“I’ll stay until Daddy gets home. Now I’m going to give you some medicine.” She poured a spoonful out, spilling pink sticky liquid all over his Spider-Man duvet cover as she did so. Using a bit of loo roll, she carefully dabbed the calamine lotion over his raw skin so that he looked like he’d been dunked in strawberry ice cream. She cupped his little hand in hers when he tried to scratch. “Try not to.”

Freddie began to cry quietly. “It hurts.”

“It won’t hurt soon. The medicine will kick in. Medicine is great stuff.” Jenny slipped off her shoes and lay down next to him. “Shall I read you a story? Then we can think about stories, not itching.”

He shook his head.

“Not even pirates?” Surely pirates would work.

He shook his head again.

“Tintin?”

“Tell me things about Mummy.” He dropped his head on her chest. It was a comforting weight, griddle hot where his skin touched hers. “Did Mummy get sick too?”

“Now that’s a good question. Because you know what? Mummy was the least ill person I knew.”

Freddie smiled.

“She got sick like you when she was a little girl. She had mumps and chicken pox and stuff. Everyone does, I’m afraid. But when she was grown up, she was ridiculously healthy. I don’t ever remember her with a cold. She must have had colds, I guess, but nothing ever stopped her. She didn’t moan about anything like that. Not even when she was pregnant. You know, Freddie, the night before you were born she was dancing!”

He smiled sleepily. “Dancing?”

“There was a big thirtieth birthday party, an old friend of ours from university. Most pregnant women about to give birth don’t go to parties, Freddie. They sit there with their feet up in front of the telly, moaning. But Mummy insisted on going. She hated missing a party. And she was convinced that you were going to arrive late anyway.”

He looked puzzled. “Arrive late for what?”

“The date the doctors said you’d come out of Mummy’s tummy. It’s called a due date.” She smiled, remembering it all, Sophie’s fecund magnificence. “I’ll never forget her dancing that night. She was
enormous
. And she was wearing this red dress and dancing with bare feet because her feet had swollen up and she couldn’t fit into any shoes.”

“So she danced me out of her tummy?”

Jenny laughed. “Yes, I guess she did.”

He lowered his lids dreamily. “I loved it when Mummy danced.”

“Everyone loved it when your mummy danced. She always looked so happy dancing, and that made other people feel happy too.”

“So did I pop out on the dance floor then? Like I was on
Strictly
?”

“Nearly! She made it to the hospital in time. Just. You came out about six hours later.”

“And then what did she do?” He scratched his leg. Again Jenny cupped his hand, held it firm to stop the scratching until the itch subsided.

“Daddy wrapped you in a blanket and Mummy cuddled and fed you.”

“Were you there, Jenny?”

“I was fetching your mummy a cup of tea from the hospital café at the moment you were born. I saw you when you were about ten minutes old, though.”

Freddie smiled. “You were almost there, then?”

“Almost.” This seemed to please him. Jenny ran her fingers through his sweaty fringe, remembering seeing Freddie for the first time, how shocked she’d been at his red raw tininess, his rabbit weight. She’d fallen in love with him immediately, completely.

Freddie yawned. “What was I like?”

“Very tiny, very beautiful. And you looked just like Mummy when you were born. Dark hair, little pin curls. Mummy’s nose.”

He frowned. “I wasn’t dancing?”

“You were a bit young to dance. You just wobbled your head.”

“I’d like to see you dance, Jenny.”

“Me? Dance?” She shook her head and smiled at the thought. “I am, sadly, a truly terrible dancer. Two left feet.”

“If you had two left feet one would be a right foot.”

She curled a bit of hair behind his ear as his eyes shut. “Clever socks.”

C
ecille snapped open a can of Coke and sat down at the dining table with a sigh. “I so worried.”

“He’s asleep. Temperature’s down. Please don’t worry anymore.” Jenny sat down opposite her at the kitchen table, admiring the way
Cecille’s fine boned hands circled the Coke can. Was it Cecille’s tiredness that was bestowing such a louche Gallic sexiness this evening? Or maybe it was something to do with the insouciantly unbuttoned man’s shirt. Yes, a man’s shirt. Jesus. Was it Ollie’s?

Cecille folded back one of the cuffs that was falling down over one of her hands, as if sensing Jenny’s gaze.

“So you think Ollie will get back tonight?” She dragged her eyes away from the shirt.

“Very late.” Cecille said, glancing up at the clock. “If plane’s on time.” She tipped back her head, sipped her Coke.

Jenny calculated that there was about an hour to kill before she could reasonably go to bed without appearing rude. She didn’t relish the idea of hanging out with Cecille, obviously, and cursed herself for having forgotten her book in her hurried packing. Perhaps she would phone Sam; yes, that’s what she would do. He would still be eating the roast chicken and probably wouldn’t pick up but it was an opportunity to leave a contrite message without getting sucked into further conflict. “I’ll go and dump my bag and make a call.” She hesitated. “Er, where should I sleep, Cecille?”

“I put you in room next to Freddie’s,” she said authoritatively, the mistress of the house. “You will have bad night, Jenny, I’m afraid. Freddie wake up a lot last night. Five, six times.”

“Oh, poor thing.”

“Yes, I know. Very hard.” Cecille yawned, exposing pink tonsils. “I’m not used to it.”

Jenny still couldn’t take her eyes off the shirt. She definitely recognized the blue-striped lining inside the upturned cuffs. Had Cecille just found the shirt in the washing basket and mistakenly thrown it on?

“First I will make something to eat. What you like?”

“Don’t go to any bother, really. Toast. Cereal is fine.”

Cecille wrinkled her nose at the idea of toast or cereal for supper. “I make steak.”

Jenny’s heart sank at the thought of sharing a proper sit-down meal with Cecille. Cecille wearing Ollie’s shirt. “Please don’t cook on my account.”

No matter, she returned to the kitchen after phoning Sam to find Cecille chucking a fist of butter into the frying pan. She fried two steaks for an alarmingly brief moment, before sliding them onto the white plates in a pool of blood, alongside some buttered French beans. Yikes. The steak was practically mooing.

“Hope you like,” Cecille said cheerily.

“Wow. This looks…amazing,” she attempted. “At your age I couldn’t cook at all.”

Cecille giggled, chuffed. “Beer? Wine?”

“A small glass of white would be lovely, thanks.”

“May I have some wine?” Cecille asked, suddenly bashful.

“You don’t have to ask me, Cecille.” She felt herself warming to Cecille, wanting to connect with her. An ill child stirred up a lot of emotion. And, yes, it was sweet, and responsible, of her to ask if she could have a drink. There was no sign of the catty superiority she’d seen that time with the letters. The rumors about Cecille were clearly absolute tosh. The gossip mill gone into overdrive. “You’re off duty now. I’m here. Have a glass of wine.”

Cecille poured out two glasses of wine, disappointingly small as politely requested.

“Cheers,” Cecille said, lifting her glass.

“Cheers,” said Jenny, digging into the bleeding meat. How ridiculous that it had taken Freddie getting chicken pox for her to have a proper conversation with Cecille after all this time, she told herself. “You are doing an excellent job, Cecille, by all accounts.”

Cecille frowned and stopped chewing. “What accounts?”

“Ollie. The mothers I know at school. Me.” She smiled. “For what it’s worth.”

Cecille shook her head and looked glum. “Not the other mothers, Jenny. The mothers don’t like me.”

“Oh. Why do you say that?” She shifted on her chair, feeling uncomfortably two-faced now.

“They look at me”—she narrowed and hardened her eyes—“like
zat
.”

“Oh, no. Really?” Then she remembered the slate-hard stare Tash had given her not so long ago.

“They jealous,” Cecille declared matter-of-factly, slicing a neat cube out of her steak.

Jenny spluttered into her wine. “Jealous?”

“About Ollie.”

Something tightened in Jenny’s chest. Damn it, Cecille was probably right.

“They want him, you know.”

Jenny smiled at the sweet adolescence of the word “want.” “Like who?”

“Lydia.”

“Lydia?”
She dropped her knife and it clattered to the table.

Cecille glanced behind her as if to check that no one was listening. “Lydia tried to kiss Ollie, Jenny.”

“I think you might have muddled up—”

“It was late, Jenny,” Cecille interrupted. She dropped her voice to a whisper, as if telling a ghost story. “It is weekend. After party. Suze’s party. You remember?”

She nodded. Suze’s party. The night Lydia and George had that terrible row. She leaned forward, not wanting to miss a word. “I remember.”

“They think I asleep. But I not! I not asleep! I come downstairs, and I see Lydia like this…” She pursed her lips, closed her eyes. “They only stop because I come downstairs.”

She covered her mouth with her hand. Not another one. “No!”

“
Yes!
And not just Lydia. Tash! Tash left bra, here, here in house!”

In her mind’s eye Jenny suddenly saw lots of bras, dozens, hundreds, different shapes and sizes, all belonging to different women, floating through the house like an army of zeppelins, through the hall, across the landing, into Ollie’s bedroom.

“You see now?” appealed Cecille, desperate that her point was not being lost in translation. “They are all jealous of me. Me, living here with Ollie. That is why they are so…cold.”

“I guess everyone is very protective of Ollie,” she attempted, still reeling from the revelation about Lydia. Lydia! “They were good friends of Sophie’s.”

“Sophie. Sophie. Everything always about Sophie,” sighed Cecille, resting her chin on her hands like a cherub. “So…so
frustrating
!” She gave Jenny a sidelong look, as if trying to work out whether to trust her. “I just want Ollie to be happy,” she added quietly. “He can’t be happy when he live in past, Jenny.”

“He needs time.”

“That is what I tell myself. Just wait, wait, Cecille, I say.” She wrapped her perfect small hands tightly around the stem of the wineglass with a heave of sadness. “But very, very hard.”