Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles (15 page)

There was a sound upstairs.

‘Mother!’ I yelled.

‘
Chérie!
’ tinkled her voice from the bathroom. ‘How was your da-ay?’

I stuffed my earnings into the biscuit tin and went upstairs. The bathroom door was open. There was rose and geranium in the air, so there was still hope. ‘What’s happened?’ I said, bursting in.

Mother was in the bath. ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said, craning, when she saw me. ‘Little Julie has rung. She would so like you to go and see her this evening. At last she is better. I’m glad to see you before I go.’

‘You’re going out?’ I said.

‘In a few instants, yes. Now, Jack will be bringing Cyril and Marie back at eight o’clock. You can get the bus to Julie’s, no?’

‘Yes. Yes. OK. But what happened? The cake? The tea?’

‘Oh.’ She took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Constance, after all that trouble you went to. That man didn’t come at all. I was waiting and no – nothing. But I had a sandwich. They were very nice.’

‘You mean he didn’t turn up?’

‘No.’ She sounded offended, in a high-horse kind of a way, but not upset. ‘He didn’t turn up at all.’

I pulled the loo lid down and sat on it. ‘I don’t understand. He said he would come. I gave him the address.’

She shrugged and reached for the soap. ‘Men,’ she said.

I stood up. I had to ring Julie and tell her I was coming straight away. She would know what to do. I needed advice. Input. I was halfway out of the door when I thought to ask Mother where she was going.

She checked her watch, which was on the side of the bath by her head, and made to get up. ‘I’m just going for a quick drink with Bert,’ she said.

I nearly died.

Bedroom, 10.30 p.m.

Julie, apparently,
has
nearly died. ‘Daggers,’ she said. ‘My throat felt like daggers. Now it’s more…’

Chopsticks?’ I suggested.

‘Yes. Or toothpicks. You wearing a bra?’ she added.

‘Yep.’

‘Big improvement.’

Julie’s mum had made a real fuss of me at the door, telling me how thrilled Julie would be to see me. And she
was
thrilled. She’d been at the window, in her River Island daywear cotton drawstrings and a frilly T-shirt – and she did a Tigger-like bounce back into bed when I came in. ‘Company,’ she croaked. ‘Friendship. News from the great outdoors.’

‘Also homework,’ I said, handing her a copy of the previous week’s assignments (which she promptly chucked on to the bedside table).

There were flowers by the bed too, daffodils and baby’s breath. ‘Who’re they from?’ I asked.

‘Ade!’

‘Ade?’

‘The guy from the party. Just before I got ill.’ She wriggled her shoulders. ‘He’s so sweet. He keeps ringing. He brought these round, though Mum wouldn’t let him up. Luckily. Look at the state of me. He’s not embarrassed to show he cares. It’s so totally sexy’

Her mum came in then, with two cups of tea. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she whispered in a little-girl-lost voice.

‘You,’ her mum said, ‘are well enough to get your own next time.’

Now she was leaning back against the pillows, with the duvet tucked over her. She looked younger without her heavy black eyeliner. Despite the vase of flowers on her bedside table, the room had that musty closed-in smell of illness, of breath and skin and stale flower water. Balls of tissue decorated the carpet like giant confetti. A copy of
Sneak
magazine and a novel with a cartoon girl in a pink miniskirt and thigh-high boots on the front lay abandoned on the bedside table.

‘Goss,’ Julie said when her mum had gone again. ‘Scandal. Tell me everything. What’s been going on while I’ve been stuck here at death’s door?’

‘I’ve got news,’ I said grimly. I took a deep breath and told her everything. I told her about bad-mouthing Uncle Bert, about scrumpling up his phone message. I told her about taking the day off school and accosting Victor Savonaire. I told her about the preparations for tea. I told her about Victor Savonaire not deigning to turn up. And finally I told her about Mother’s ‘quick aperitif that evening.

Her expression went from glee to mild disapproval to encouragement to excitement to disappointment – to horror. ‘Uncle Bert’s taking her out again?’ she croaked. ‘Tonight? I thought you said on the phone you’d split them up?’

‘I thought I had too.’

‘I thought you’d sorted everything.’

‘I know. I know. I thought I had too.’

Her mouth went into a hard line. ‘Right,’ she growled. ‘Where’s that list?’

‘That list?’

‘You know, the matchmaking list.’ Her voice was really going now. ‘The one we made right at the beginning.’

I produced the page in this book where it’s reproduced. ‘Now – business. Hah! Monsieur Baker.’

‘No.’ I remembered the nipples through the thin white shirt. ‘Please.’

‘We’re not talking stepfather material. We’re talking get us out of this fix.’

‘No,’ I said again.

‘OK.’ Her eyes scanned the page, then, ‘Aha! What are we thinking? It’s here! The answer’s here! It’s obvious and the beauty of it is it’s all set up. You’ve set it up already, you brilliant thing.’

‘What?’ I bent to pick up a tissue off the floor by my feet. But I think I already knew.

‘The Chemist Guy!’

‘No.’ I felt my face go wooden. ‘We can’t do that.’

‘Why ever not? Con, it’s perfect. You’re already in there. Remember, it’s why you started working there in the first place. A back-up! Now we need it. And by this stage in the game, he knows you. You know him. It’ll be easy. All you have to do is invite him round.’

‘It’s not fair,’ I replied. I was pulling the tissue to pieces, scattering paper petals all over the bed. ‘It’s… it’s… not right.’

‘I thought you liked him?’

‘I do…’

‘Well, there –’ Her voice was beginning to fade and she took a glug of tea to bring it back – ‘you go.’

I couldn’t think of any concrete reasons to say no. I said there were no French connections. She said I was being too fussy. I tried to say more about how having got to know John (‘John?’ she interrupted. ‘Mr Leakey,’ I corrected.) made me feel uncomfortable about it. She said she knew Uncle Bert: that hadn’t stopped her. Wasn’t it better to be working with people we knew than with people, like my Savonaire bloke, who might be half French but who didn’t even turn up when you’d gone to the trouble of making cucumber sandwiches? In the end I found myself agreeing. ‘Arrange something fast,’ she croaked. ‘We don’t want another disaster like today’

I feel troubled. I don’t want to let Julie down – again – and I do want to find a new man for Mother and stop her seeing Uncle Bert. But I’m just not sure John Leakey is right. He is nice, really nice, and he talks to people my age like they’re ordinary humans not creatures from Planet Zog. I’ve seen him give small kids free lollies too – and not look cross when he has to get the jar down again to let them swap their banana one for a strawberry one. He’s gentle and clever and good-looking and, as Julie also reminded me tonight, he’s got a great arse. I just can’t see him with Mother. I don’t know why But the thought of it makes my stomach do funny panicky things.

I’ve got Julie’s face in my head, her eyes pleading with me. Her eyes are lined with black kohl, whereas this evening they were make-up free, and I realize I’m remembering her as she was the other day when she came to meet me at the chemist’s. And I’m remembering how horrible it was when she and Carmen had their backs to me on the radiator at school and how left out I felt, and how wonderful it was when I realized it was only Uncle Bert that was stopping us from being friends. But am I letting her manipulate me? Is William right that she likes things her own way? Oh God, what am I on about? Friendship is just so hard.

I got home at 9 p.m. and Mother got back at about 10 p.m. – so not a long aperitif at all. She was in a thoughtful mood, which I took as a good sign. Or not a bad sign at least.

We watched the news together and ate the rest of the cucumber sandwiches. More bombing. More politicians. And 200,000 people marching through the streets of London. That’s 199,999 people. And John Leakey My chemist.

Tuesday 11 March

Kitchen (hooray: complete with roof and fridge), 5 p.m.

I did it.
I dropped in today on the way back from school. Luckily the shop was empty. John was doing something with the photo processor; he’d dismantled it and had all the bits on the floor around him. He grunted when he saw me. ‘Jammed/he said. ‘It’s eaten Mrs Rayburn’s WI trip to Salisbury Cathedral. Twenty-four exposures wiped out in one.’

‘Could have been worse,’ I said. ‘Could have been Mrs Rayburn’s once-in-a-lifetime safari in Tanzania.’

He laughed, but as he was still frowning at the time, it came out like a ‘harumph’.

He jigged the contraption back together. When he stood up, there was black stuff on his hands. He bent to wipe them on a paper towel. He was wearing his jeans. ‘Did I underpay you or something?’

‘What?’

‘Midweek visit. We’re honoured.’ He seemed to have noticed something odd about me, because he was giving me a funny look. Then he said, ‘Didn’t know your school wore uniform in the sixth form.’

‘It’s not uniform and I’m not in the sixth form!’ I was outraged. Under my mac, I was wearing a pale-blue Aertex shirt (fifty pence) and a dark-grey pleated skirt (twenty pence, bargain bucket), which I felt suited me rather well.

‘You’re not in the sixth form?’

I’d been so insulted by his attack on my clothes-sense, I’d completely forgotten about all that, the deception on which our relationship was founded. It’s why you should never lie. People say you’re always caught out in the end, as if a lie grows and grows over time, rolling down the road after you, collecting debris until it’s so HUGE it can’t be ignored any longer. But actually it gets smaller and smaller, shrinking to something so tiny and inconsequential that it slips through a gap without you noticing.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘What I mean is, I am, but I don’t. Yes. Um. Well, you don’t have to. You don’t have to every day.’

‘You mean it is uniform, but you don’t have to wear it? It’s a question of choice?’

‘Yup. Yup. That’s it.’

His expression as he looked at me got even odder. I pulled in the belt of my pack-a-mac a bit tighter. I found my hands fiddling at my neck. ‘You’re a funny girl,’ he said eventually.

‘Anyway. The reason I’m here is to see if you’d like to come to my house for supper,’ I said.

‘Connie!’ He looked astonished. I think his cheeks may have gone a bit pink. ‘Are you worried I’m not eating?’

‘No. No. Well, you could eat something other than bacon sandwiches. But no. It’s just… well, I was talking about the job, my job here, with my mother, Bernadette, and she said how nice it would be to meet you properly. I mean, I know she’s been in once or twice…’

‘Has she?’ He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t remember. Oh yes! The lady with the beehive.’

‘The beehive? No. No, that’s Granny Enid. My step-grandmother.’ I smiled at the thought of how different Mother was to Granny Enid; what a surprise he’d get if that was what he was expecting. ‘I suppose she hasn’t been in much since I’ve been working here. I can buy what she needs. Which reminds me.’ I had a sudden inspiration and turned to the shelves. I pulled out a bottle and brandished it. ‘She’s about to run out of Neutrogena T/Gel Anti-Dandruff Shampoo!’

He ran it up on the till.

I said, ‘Yup. Neutrogena T/Gel Anti-Dandruff Shampoo. She lives on the stuff’,

He still looked unfazed. Had he forgotten the valentine card? ‘Four pounds thirty,’ he said.

I rummaged in my pocket. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Actually, I haven’t got enough. Perhaps I’11 get it on Saturday.’

‘You sure?’ he said.

‘Yeah. No problem.’ I laughed. ‘So. Ms Neutrogena T/Gel Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, that’s what they call her.’

‘Who?’

‘My mother.’ He looked at me blankly. I gave up. ‘So, will you?’

‘Er…’

‘Come to supper?’

He made a face, which I couldn’t read. ‘Yes. OK,’ he said. ‘When?’

‘I was thinking tomorrow?’ (Mother never goes out on Wednesdays. She watches
ER
.)

‘Let me just consult my hectic social calendar.’ He tipped his head back, closed his eyes for a second and then opened them. ‘Actually, I appear to have a cancellation tomorrow. I did have plans with Victoria Beckham and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson – just a bacon sarnie round my place; always Tara’s date of choice – but they’ve come down with chicken flu. So – amazingly, considering the short notice – I’m free.’

‘Good. Eight o’clock. You’ve got the address, haven’t you?’

‘I have. And, to eat, will it be –?’

‘Fish. Yes, I expect it will.’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘Just so long as it’s freshly delivered from Newcastle, that’ll be fine.’

I don’t think I’ve ever got on with an adult as well as I get on with John.

*

The good news back in our house is that Mr Spence has finally finished redecorating the kitchen. The bad news is that he has started on the bathroom. I could hear him singing as I opened the front door. ‘It’s fun to stay at the YMCA,’ he was yodelling like some over-ebullient goatherd. I needed a wee, so I went in. The window was wide open and strips of peeled wallpaper lay over the bath like drunken maidens. He was up a ladder, scraping the ceiling. ‘Would you mind giving me a few minutes to myself?’ I said haughtily.

‘Wotcha!’ he said, climbing down the ladder.

I gave him a withering look. And then I shut the bathroom door in his face.

My room, 7 p.m.

I’ve just told Mother about John Leakey coming to supper. I want to thank him, I said, for giving me the job. ‘That’s sweet,’ she said. ‘So I can leave you to it and watch
ER
?’ I told her she couldn’t, that she’d have to tape it. Then I felt odd about it all. I am doing the right thing, aren’t I?

I’ve just rung Julie. ‘Connie,’ she said, ‘you’re a star.’