As Good As It Gets? (7 page)

‘I s’pose,’ Will says, draining his glass, ‘it’d be pretty rude of us not to go.’

‘I might be busy,’ Rosie announces, perusing the dessert menu.

‘Actually,’ I say firmly, ‘you won’t be, hon. It’s only one night and it’s not too much to ask.’

Sniggering again, Ollie leans towards Rosie and Will. ‘You know why Mum really wants to go? She thinks they might have
herbal buns
.’

Chapter Six

My mother-in-law calls at 8.07 on Wednesday morning, perfectly timed to coincide with the kids grabbing breakfast and my frenzied hunt for Ollie’s elusive trainers. ‘Hello, Gloria, how are you?’ I say, indicating to Will who’s calling.
I’m-not-here
, he mouths, accompanied by vigorous hand waving as if trying to actually rub himself out.

‘Is Will there?’ No pleasantries; no, how lovely it was to see us all on Saturday. Perhaps she’s still feeling prickly about us rekindling the memory of the
Sorrington Bugle
sleazebag.

‘Is everything okay?’ I ask. ‘Has something happened?’

‘Yes, I’ve found the perfect job for him. Can you put him on?’

I stare at Will.

No!
Will mouths.
I’ll call her later …
‘He’s, erm, out on his bike at the moment, I’m afraid.’

‘At this time?’

‘Yes, he likes to get out early if he’s … foraging. That way he gets the best stuff.’

‘Really? Does it
run out
, then, like at a jumble sale?’ She emits a dry, humourless laugh. ‘Well, never mind that. There’s a job here in the paper and it sounds ideal for Will …’

‘Thanks, Gloria, but I really think he’s fine, you know? I don’t want to keep bombarding him with suggestions …’

‘… They offer full training and excellent prospects,’ she witters on, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘I was worried when I saw him on Saturday. He seemed a little …
flat
.’

‘No, he’s fine, really – he’s great. So, um, what kind of job is it, just out of interest?’

‘Traffic warden. Sounds like there’s a shortage and, let’s face it, they’re always needed—’

‘Gloria,’ I cut in, catching Will’s eye, ‘I’m not sure he’d want to be a traffic warden.’

Will splutters his coffee.

‘Is that him, is he back?’

‘No, no, that’s Ollie,’ I say quickly, wondering at which point she’ll tire of being his personal career advisor: when he
does
find paid work, presumably. Another reason for him to ramp up the job hunt …

‘I think he should at least consider it,’ Gloria says, sounding put out.

‘I’m sure he will,’ I say, having difficulty maintaining a serious voice with Will miming throat-cutting motions across the kitchen. ‘Sorry, Gloria, but I really need to get off to work …’ I finish the call and kiss Ollie goodbye as he rushes off to meet his friend Saul, then head upstairs to find Rosie. Normally, she doesn’t need any chivvying to get ready for school. ‘Hon,’ I say, finding her hunched over her laptop on her bed. ‘You should be gone by now. It’s really late …’

‘Yeah-in-a-minute,’ she murmurs, eyes fixed on the screen. I can sense her mentally shooing me away.

‘What are you looking at? Is it a homework thing?’

‘No, it’s a fashion site …’

‘At twenty past eight? Come
on
, Rosie—’

‘I need to study this stuff,’ she mutters.

‘You mean you’re studying fashion? Is this for art or something?’

Ignoring me, she leans closer to the laptop. I peer over her shoulder. Models with haunted eyes and matted, dirty-looking hair are wearing baggy beige shifts in a setting which looks, to my untrained, un-fashiony eye, like a derelict psychiatric hospital. There are rusting iron beds, a sinister-looking trolley and, lurking in a corner, a concerned-looking man with Clark Kent spectacles and a clipboard. I glance at Rosie’s open notepad, in which she has written:
Key trends
.
Unstructured nudes in pale plaster hues …

‘What’s an unstructured nude?’ I ask.

‘Um, I don’t really know,’ she admits.

‘It sounds a bit worrying,’ I add with a smile.

Rosie sniffs and writes:
Washed-out colour palette.
‘Wow,’ I mutter. ‘The fashion industry must be populated by geniuses if this is what we’ve got to look forward to. Looks more like
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
…’

‘Huh?’ She turns to me.

‘Classic film with Jack Nicholson set in a psychiatric hospital. Brilliant, but not really known for the outfits. I mean, it’s not
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
…’ I break off, realising I’ve lost her. ‘Why are you looking at this stuff anyway?’

‘For the thing after school.’

Ah, the agency meeting. ‘You don’t have to swot, you know. They’re not going to quiz you about hem lengths and trouser shapes …’

She pushes away a frond of dark hair that’s escaped from her sensible ponytail. While Rosie enjoys rummaging through the rails in Top Shop, she’s never been remotely interested in cutting-edge trends. She errs towards the casual: jeans, baggy sweaters and pretty embellished tops. ‘Look,’ she says, sighing, ‘I’ll feel better if I’m prepared, okay? You’re always telling me that.’

‘Yes, for an English or history exam. This is different …’ I glance at her dressing table, on which she appears to have tipped out every item of make-up she owns. Not that there’s much; she only tends to wear it for a night out. ‘Remember they want you to look natural,’ I add.

‘Yes, Mum, I
know
. Why are you and Dad coming anyway? I mean, I’m not going to get lost, you know. And it’s not a family outing. It’s not like we’re going to Madame Tussaud’s …’

‘We’re coming, Rosie, and that’s that. No need to be so snappy.’

With another dramatic sigh she shuts her laptop. ‘Sorry. I’m just a bit nervous, Mum …’

‘Hey,’ I say, pulling her in for a hug, ‘it’ll be fine. And it’s no big deal, is it? It’s just—’

‘A chat,’ she chips in, mustering a big, brave smile, before grabbing her jacket and scampering off.

Back downstairs, I give Will a hasty kiss goodbye as I, too, should have set off by now. As I step out into the bright sunshine, I thank my lucky stars – not for the first time – that I have a job to go to.

I enjoy my drive to work, despite the strange whiff in my car – fermenting apple cores, laced with stale biscuits – which I think is a hangover from when the kids were little, and couldn’t cope with a ten-minute journey without a huge array of snacks, and which never seems to fade, no matter how vigorously I go at it with the hoover. In fact, driving is
blissful
compared to dealing with Gloria’s well-meaning natterings, and ogling ‘pale plaster’ tabards, which reminds me that our kitchen desperately needs a lick of paint. We went for bare plaster walls, seduced by pictures in a magazine where it seemed to evoke a sort of faded beauty, like a Toast catalogue. In fact, it just looks like we couldn’t be bothered to finish the room. We can’t afford decorators, and I’m holding off suggesting that Will does it, in case it further delays his return to the world of paid employment.

As I’m heading out of London, and away from the worst of the traffic, I soon make up for lost time, and by the time I pull into the car park at Archie’s, I’m all soothed. I have a quick chat with Freya and Jen, who run the visitors’ centre and shop, then trot upstairs to the light, airy office. Our website implies that our potato chips are hand crafted in our home kitchen, deep in the Essex countryside. It
is
the country, just about; i.e., we’re not quite on the Tube, and are surrounded by flat, scrubby fields, and the building I work in is a converted village school with a small, tidy garden in front. But this isn’t where our crisps are actually made. That happens in an ugly gunmetal-grey manufacturing plant, concealed by a dense row of conifers. It’s why we don’t offer factory tours. The public would come expecting to see a kindly granny carving Maris Pipers, and discover a terrifying slicing machine and several enormous vats of bubbling oil manned by twenty-odd employees.

I pull off my jacket, and consider texting Rosie to ask if she’s feeling okay about the model agency meeting – as she clearly isn’t – then decide against it. She’ll be at school, and anyway, the more I try to reassure her that it’ll be okay, the more terrified she’ll be. That’s a thing I’ve noticed about teenagers: how very
opposite
they are. If you want to put them off buying some terrible shoes, all you have to do is go on about how gorgeous they are.

I click on my computer and check my inbox. There’s a ‘missive’ – as my boss calls his perky team emails – from Rupert, AKA King of Crisps.

Wednesday, July 9

From: [email protected]

To: all teamsters

Subject: Just a few odds & sods!

Hi folks,

How’s tricks, my lovelies? Just a line to say thanks for all being so awesome! We’ve had a crazy time and you’ve all been incredible. No distribution probs lately, and we’re all set to take the world by storm, or at least the highlight of our crisp calendar
–
The Festival of Savoury Snacks!

Just a tiny thing. With a few new peeps having joined the team, can I just
–
sorry to be a pain here
–
mention a few words we don’t use here at Archie Towers?

I should point out that there aren’t actually any towers. It’s just one of those cuddly things that Rupert likes to say.

You know how pernickety I am!
he goes on, sprinkling exclamation marks around as liberally as his favoured hand-harvested sea salt.
Just give me a punch next time you see me, haha. Anyway, here goes:

• Instead of staff we say
  team
  (singular =
  teamster)
  
• Not company but
  family
  (i.e. you’re now welcomed into the bosom of the Archie family!)
  
• Not fry but
  cook
  (yes, I realise that’s technically what we do here, but we all know the connotations of the word ‘fry’ – i.e., greasy, artery-clogging and frankly pretty horrid. Which isn’t our bag here at Archie’s, right?)
  
• Not meeting but
  gathering
  
• Not supplier but
  friend
  (i.e., our potatoes come from our friend Mickey Hunter’s farm in Kent)
  

Okie-doke?

Love,

Rupe xxx

‘Sounds like someone’s said “fry” again,’ I tell Dee, who’s arrived pink-cheeked, having cycled from her village a couple of miles away.

‘Oh, Christ,’ she sniggers, removing her jacket and helmet and dropping a contraband snack (raspberry Pop Tart) into the toaster. Dee and I look after events, PR and social media together. I’m also in charge of updating our touchy-feely website. Rupert insists on lots of photos of ‘teamsters’ doing fun stuff together, to convey the message that we’re a happy gang, forever larking about, and never have to do anything as mundane as sit at a desk or attend a meeting. I’ve had to stage garden parties and bike rides to show what a jolly time we all have. However, despite the tweeness and Rupert’s relentless enthusiasm for making everything ‘fun’, I do enjoy working here, especially since – and I feel awful even admitting this – Will’s been at home. It’s my escape, of sorts. Is it okay to want to run away from your own husband? I don’t mean in a packing-my-bags, forever sort of way. But I’m aware that I cherish my time away from the house.

‘I still don’t get the family thing,’ remarks Dee, who’s fairly new here, as she makes coffee.

‘I thought it was weird at first,’ I reply, scrolling through the rest of my mail, ‘and I did try to point out to Rupert that we’re not really a family, in that we’re not a biologically related unit who all go on holiday together …’

She laughs. ‘How did he take that?’

‘He said that to him, we
are
family.’

‘Scary,’ Dee says, handing me a mug of coffee and proceeding to make the first of a barrage of phone calls with remarkable efficiency. At twenty-four, she is probably the most grown-up person I know. She buys scented oil burners from John Lewis and pounces on White Company bed linen at sale time. She knows what an Oxford pillowcase is, for goodness’ sake. She explained it to me. At her age, I was already a mother, so I probably
looked
like a bona fide adult as I pushed Rosie on the swings in the park – but our tiny flat whiffed of wet laundry and potties and stress.

‘Look what Mike bought yesterday,’ Dee enthuses, during a break in calls, beckoning me over to look at her phone. She has photographed a chrome standard lamp with a hot orange shade – that’s how proud of it she is.

‘It’s lovely,’ I say.

‘Isn’t it? And we’re choosing rugs on Saturday …’ She has just moved into a tiny, impossibly cute cottage with her handsome builder boyfriend who sent possibly the world’s biggest bouquet of red roses to our office on her birthday.

‘So how is it?’ I ask. ‘Living together, I mean?’

‘Oh, it’s great. I love it that we’re together more, you know? And it didn’t make sense to keep two places going.’

‘No, I understand that …’ I glance at Dee. Her hair is pale blonde, straightened and shiny as glass, and her elfin features are defined with a flick of liquid liner and a touch of lip gloss. She seems so young for cosy, rug-choosing domesticity.