Beautiful Child (4 page)

Matt woke up and peered out from under his duvet at the small electronic clock on his bedside table. It was 6.09. He groaned and turned over and must’ve fallen back to sleep again because the next thing he knew was the sound of a hammering on his front door downstairs. Who the hell could that be? How embarrassing in this quiet tree lined avenue of Didsbury, the suburb of Manchester’s thinking professional classes. This was where people liked to think of themselves as the middle class with a conscience. They used to vote Liberal Democrat because they’d fallen out with Labour over the Iraq war but now they’d fallen out with the Liberal Democrats over their support for the Tories so were going back to Labour. They read the Independent but sneak a look at their cleaner’s Daily Mirror when she’s doing the upstairs. In short, they didn’t do hammerings at the door.

He got out of bed and crept over to his bedroom’s large bay window. He pulled the curtain back slightly and looked down. It was his sister Susie. He threw a robe over the t-shirt and shorts he’d been wearing in bed and went downstairs to let her in.  

‘What are you doing here at this time?’ he asked as he stood to the side to let her through.

‘Nice to see you too!’ his sister replied. She was in full running gear and carrying a plastic bottle of water.

‘Have you run all the way from Bowdon?’ he asked as he closed the door behind her.

‘No, you tit. I’ve just been to the gym and I thought I’d drop in on my big brother so that he can make me my breakfast.’ She gripped his face. ‘You look a bit second hand this morning. Late night?’

‘No, I stayed in.’

‘How many bottles of wine?’

‘I just about remember getting through the second one.’ Matt admitted.

‘You doctors are all the same. You tell the rest of us to drink responsibly and yet you lot put away enough for all of us.’

‘Yeah, well, those are the breaks,’ said Matt who’d felt particularly lonely last evening and had used wine to help kill the pain. ‘Come through and I’ll put a pot of coffee on. Fried eggs on toast do you?’

‘Lovely.’ said Susie, following Matt into the kitchen. ‘Got some tomato ketchup?’

‘You know I don’t buy it,’ said Matt, ‘I hate the stuff.’

‘But what about your guests?’

‘Well when you’re a guest in my house you have to abide by my rules’ said Matt, smiling at her sulky face. ‘So didn’t Angus go to the gym with you? Or did you keep him up way past his bedtime last night?’

‘Oh do you know you’re so funny that you’ve missed your vocation and should be doing a turn at the Comedy Store in town,’ she said, turning up the corner of her lip to match the sarcasm of her words. ‘You know very well he’s only six years younger than me. It’s so bloody sexist. If it was the other way round nobody would bloody well notice.’

‘Ladies and Gentleman, appearing at my kitchen diner for one morning only, it’s Miss Germaine Greer!.’

‘Oh and they keep on coming.’ Susie was smiling the self-satisfied smile of someone who was in love and thinking of how gorgeous her fiancé had looked after they’d made love in the small hours. Sex always brought out the best look on Angus, like a naughty boy who’d been allowed to play an adult party game.

‘Well if you will be a cougar.’

‘And what would I be if I were the man and he was the girl?’

‘Lucky.’ teased Matt, ‘You know how it works.’

‘Well that’s where I rest my case.’

Matt laughed. ‘Your face! Relax kid sister, I’m on your side.’

‘That’s only because you’re a practicing homosexual with no moral code.’

‘I’m not practising!’ Matt protested. ‘I’m very well accomplished in my role. So anyway, what did you do with my future brother-in-law?’

‘He’s on an early flight to Malaga,’ said Susie, referring to Angus’ job as a co-pilot for a holiday charter airline based at Manchester. ‘Poor baby. He had to be at work at half-six. He’ll be back the middle of the afternoon though and then he’s got tomorrow off so we’ll have a nice cosy weekend together.’

‘How idyllic’

‘It will be,’ said Susie, noting the clear sound of envy in her brother’s voice. She didn’t like to come across like she was rubbing his nose in it but what could she say except the truth? She respected him too much for that.

Matt took a frying pan out of the cupboard and placed it on the cooker hob. He poured a little olive oil in and waited for it to get hot. He liked his kitchen. Everything was stored in an ‘island’ in the centre with only the sink, cooker, fridge, and dishwasher along the back wall. Susie was sitting at the diner on a high stool. She watched her brother pour them some orange juice into a couple of glasses and thanked him when he handed one to her. Matt thought about Susie’s kitchen which had Angus’ work roster pinned to the notice board and he wondered if his work roster would ever be pinned to anybody’s notice board.

‘So anyway,’ said Matt, ‘how’s the world of trailer trash?’

Susie had taken over at the helm of the family business some five years ago when their father retired. He’d built it up over thirty years and now Schofield Caravan Parks had eleven sites at locations stretching across the northwest from Buxton in the Peak District right the way up to the Scottish border. They were all a mixture of long lease caravans that people tended to make their permanent home and holiday caravans that people came to for one or two weeks at a time. There were also large spaces available for those who brought their own caravans with them. Susie had just done a deal with a national pub chain that was going to open on each of the sites in time for next season. All four members of the family had equal shares in the business but Matt had never shown any interest in running it. Susie on the other hand had been at her father’s side since she could talk so it had been entirely logical that he’d handed the reins to her. 

‘Don’t be so disparaging. Anyway, it’s booming and you should be grateful because the value of your shares are going up. A lot of people are downsizing because they can’t afford their mortgage payments and many others are staying in this country for their holidays this year and I agree with them.’

‘Well you would, it’s your business.’

‘Our business,’ Susie corrected. ‘We’re all equal partners. I’m just the boss.’

‘And despite your self-interest, do you think everybody should stay at home for their holidays this year?’

‘Yeah,’ said Susie, ‘support the home economy and all that.’

‘Remind me where you and Angus flew off to for two weeks last October?’

Susie narrowed her eyes at him. ‘ Malaysia.’

‘And where is that in the Great British isles?’

‘I would only let you get away with cornering me like that.’

‘I know.’ said Matt, laughing. ‘Because I’m your big brother and therefore allowed.’

‘Anyway, what are you doing with yourself today?’ Susie asked.

‘Charlie’s coming over later with the boys’ said Matt, ‘I’m looking after them for the day and probably the rest of the weekend.’

Susie gave him a stern look.

‘Don’t start, Susie.’

‘Matt, you’re heading into the back end of your thirties and it bothers me to think that you spend your Friday night getting pissed alone and then your Saturday looking after the kids of your totally irresponsible friend.’

‘Susie, they’re my God children and Charlie isn’t totally irresponsible,’ said Matt who leapt to Charlie’s defence like he always did. ‘ I could’ve gone out last night but I chose to stay in and that’s an important difference.’

‘But you’re a social bunny,’ said Susie, ‘you always have been.’

‘But I’m getting older, Susie,’ said Matt.

‘And you’ve not got many single friends left to run about with.’

‘Yeah, that’s right to tell you the truth.’

‘Everybody is coupled up and you didn’t feel like being the odd number at someone’s house for dinner.’

‘Sometimes I don’t mind, last night I didn’t feel like it.’

‘But like you said, Matt, you’re getting older and the picture of that house with the right man and a couple of dogs is fading.’

‘Susie, you’re talking as if I’m some kind of sad bastard who can’t get a date.’

‘That’s not how I see you,’ said Susie, ‘I know you can get a date.’

‘So?’

‘So I’m convinced you won’t get a date because you’re in love with your straight best friend.’

‘Susie!’

‘Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not in love with Charlie.’

‘I’m not in love with Charlie, Susie.’

‘Tell me like you mean it.’

‘Oh Susie, give up.’

‘You let him walk all over you. He’s earning a fortune being the resident GP on Sky News. He’s got a whole celebrity thing going on now as the dishy TV doctor.’

‘He was on Loose Women last week,’ added Matt. ‘But Susie, I’d clam up on television.’

‘Well what about his column in the Manchester Evening News? That all came out of the Sky News gig.’

‘Granada are doing a new medical TV soap,’ said Matt, ‘they’ve asked him to be medical consultant on it.’

‘And why didn’t they ask you?’

‘I don’t…’

‘…because everything that comes into the practice that pays hard cash goes to him.’

‘Susie…’

‘…whilst you get all the social work crap that has to be done out of the goodness of your bloody heart because he’s too busy raking it in at your expense.’

‘Susie, I’m not like you. I don’t see a pound sign in everything I do.’

‘Oh spare me the bloody socialist sermon.’

‘Susie, I’m a doctor, I treat sick people, and I’m good at it. I’m happy enough doing that without all those extras that Charlie is much more suited for.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Well you’re going to have to.’

‘Just like I don’t believe you about your feelings for him.’

‘Well you’re never going to get any other answer out of me than I’ve already given because it wouldn’t be the truth.’

‘Matt, I love you dearly, you’re the best big brother a girl could have but I’m worried that you’re going to end up a lonely old man because of your unrequited feelings for a straight man who’s never going to give you what you want.’

Matt buttered the toast and made sure Susie’s eggs were still runny, just how she liked them, before placing them on top. He handed them to her and said ‘Get tucked into them.’

Susie smiled.

‘Or else?’

‘Or else you’ll be wearing them.’

*

DI Tim Norris and his wife Helen didn’t have to worry too much about the pennies. They were both earning good salaries and despite Helen’s tendency to be frugal, Tim could always persuade her to agree to them splashing out on occasions like tonight which was their anniversary. So it was a great dinner in one of Manchester’s best restaurants where the clientele included soap stars, premiership footballers and BBC television presenters who’d moved up from London with the move to media city in Salford Quays. And they were both in their best clothes. For Tim that meant a Hugo Boss suit in camel with a dark chocolate coloured shirt with which he wore his cufflinks. Helen was in a simple black strapless dress with a neckline that was low enough to show off her long flowing curly black hair to full effect but with a hem that was high enough to make Tim, and probably every other man in the place, feel the strongest desire. She did have the most fantastic legs and he never stopped believing how lucky he was to have this woman on his arm. He was also relieved that any feelings that Sara Hoyland might’ve stirred up in him had passed.

‘If I have a dessert then I’ll never fit into this dress again,’ announced Helen after the waiter had presented them with dessert menus.

‘It’s our big night, baby,’ said Tim, ‘we’re celebrating. Six whole years.’

‘And to think I thought I was going to lose you last year when Sara Hoyland came back into your life with her little bombshell.’

Helen had never been the kind of woman who was jealous of her husband’s ex-girlfriends. She wasn’t the kind of woman who had to believe that he couldn’t possibly have ever been happy before she came along. That kind of attitude was for silly little girls and not grown women. But even Helen had been rocked by Sara’s revelation that she’d had Tim’s baby and given it up for adoption without saying a word to him. Helen hadn’t been angry with Tim for having kept it from her once he knew. She’d understood his reasons for that. He hadn’t wanted to upset her when they were in the middle of trying so hard to conceive themselves. Her distress had been caused by Sara’s deception that had broken Tim’s heart and because it spelt out loud and clear that Helen was the one with the fertility problem and that Sara had been able to give Tim what she couldn’t.

‘You would never have lost me, baby.’

‘It crossed your mind though.’

‘Helen, Sara was right’ said Tim. ‘If we’d got together all those years ago it would’ve only been because of the baby. Once I’d met you there was nobody else and never could be.’

‘But I heard you in the pub that night … ‘

‘…Helen, we’ve been through all this’ said Tim with a note of exasperation, ‘I didn’t mean what I said that night. I was muddled. It was just because of…’