Divas Don't Knit (22 page)

‘They’re ready whenever you are.’

‘Right. Tell them five minutes.’ She sips her tea. ‘So remind me, it’s Emily Pankhurst, right?’

Ed nods.

‘And Simone de Beauvoir.’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. Christ, I hate fucking interviews.’

She turns and smiles. It’s really strange; she seems perfectly normal and then she’ll move or smile in a certain way and you suddenly remember who she is, which is a shock, every single time.

‘Thanks very much, Jo. Let’s fix up another session soon – talk to Max. Right, Ed, let’s get this over with, shall we? And no pulling faces like you did last time.’

‘I’m sorry but she was so stupid I couldn’t help it. “When did you first realise you were beautiful?” Please.’

Grace laughs.

Maxine starts to gather up the cups so I collect the ones on the window sill along with some plates of half-eaten fruit and put them in the kitchen.

‘Thanks. Have you got your diary with you?’

‘Yes, it’s in my bag. Actually, where is my bag?’

‘In my office – you left it in the living room. I’ll just finish up in here and then we can go and get it.’

‘Are you off, then?’ Daniel hands his phone to Tony.

‘Yes, in a minute.’

He takes a step forward, but Tony mutters something about bandits at twelve o’clock, and nods towards Stella, who looks like she might be wanting another little word. He sighs, and smiles, and there’s a faint hint of something, a sort of mini-frisson as I start gathering up more cups, but I’ve got no idea what it means; he’s probably just being friendly, or he’s going to ask me for Ellen’s number or
something, I’m totally out of practice at this coded conversation stuff, I lost my decoder a long time ago, and it was never that reliable in the first place. Someone can ask Ellen out for a drink and she’ll instantly translate this into either I’d like to rearrange all your clothing in a non-Trinny and Susannah kind of way, or I’d like to talk about work. And she’s nearly always right, whereas I was always getting it wrong before I met Nick, particularly at university, where I crashed and burned so many times I practically gave up. But with Nick it was different. He asked me out for a drink, and pretty much never went back to his flat again, except to collect his clothes.

‘I hope you have a great time in Venice.’

‘Thanks.’

He smiles, but Stella’s hovering now, looking very irritated.

‘Daniel, could I have a word?’

‘Sure.’

He winks at me, and Tony hands him a coffee as I follow Maxine to her office, which is at the side of the house. It all seems very organised, with a year planner up on the wall covered in neat black writing.

‘It must be quite a job keeping track of everything.’

‘Yes, sometimes.’

‘What was that about Emily Pankhurst and Simone de Beauvoir, with Ed? If you’re allowed to say, of course, I don’t want to know anything that’s confidential or anything.’

She smiles.

‘Ed sits in on most of her interviews; we always have copy approval but it’s useful to have someone with her, and she was checking what she’s going to cover; what’s already out there, what we’re giving them that’s new, that kind of thing. They’re both scripts she’s talking about at the moment.’

‘Oh, right. Well I’ll definitely go and see them, if she does them.’

‘They’re pitching the French one as the Bogart and Bacall of existentialism.’

‘I bet Jean-Paul Sartre would be thrilled.’

She laughs. ‘Probably not, he sounds like a right bastard in the script. Did you know he left his whole estate to some other woman when he died.’

‘Did he? How bloody typical.’

She smiles. ‘So, what about next Friday? We’re away until Wednesday, but Friday would work, around ten.’

‘That would be lovely. Should I bring anything, apart from more wool?’

‘Whatever you think. She tends to really go for things when she gets into them, so bring extra, and we’ll pay you, of course, for your time and everything. I’ll send you a letter. We ask everybody to sign a confidentiality agreement. I hope that’s not a problem?’

She’s gone all steely again.

‘Of course not.’

‘Good. Do you have a day rate?’

‘Not exactly. It won’t be the whole day, anyway, will it?’

‘Probably not, but I’ll check with Ed and we’ll come up with something for you.’

‘That would be great. And I meant to ask you, can I say something, in the shop I mean, about the shawls? That wouldn’t breach confidentiality, would it?’

‘No, that’s fine, you can say she bought them. But if the press ask you about anything else we need you to put them onto me.’

‘Of course.’

‘Great. We’ll see you on Friday, then.’

Ellen’s watching telly when I get home, and looking much perkier than when I last saw her.

‘I’ve got a bottle of champagne in the fridge. I thought we could celebrate.’

‘Celebrate what?’

‘Your glorious new career. How was it?’

‘Extraordinary. She’s so beautiful it’s almost as if she’s not real, and then suddenly she’s normal again.’

‘Top moment?’

‘Watching her knitting in a rowing boat in the middle of the lawn.’

‘Sounds very Special. How was Daniel?’

‘Very busy, I didn’t talk to him much.’

‘You idiot.’

‘Ellen, seriously, I’m sure he was just being friendly last night.’

‘Maybe. We’ll see.’

‘They’ve asked me to go back next week for another knitting session, and she’s started on a baby blanket and she really seems to like it’.

‘Well, I’ll drink to that, and there’s something else we can be celebrating too, because they’ve found my weirdo stalker. And guess what? It was bloody Gary.’

‘Security Gary? Christ.’

‘I know. He was asking why I wasn’t in, Jess rang and told me all about it. He wanted to know where I was apparently, and Brian got suspicious and asked why he was so interested, and Gary punched him. God, I wish I’d been there. His nose was bleeding and everything, Jess said it was brilliant. And then he ran off.’

‘Have they found him yet?’

I think I might go and double-lock the front door.

‘Yes, the silly sod just went home – hardly master-criminal behaviour, is it? And then he hit two policemen, so he’s in
custody, and they reckon he won’t get bail. They take it really seriously when it’s police officers you’re popping. So it’s all sorted.’

‘Thank God.’

‘That’s got to be worth a glass of champagne, don’t you think?’

‘Definitely.’

‘So, about the Bitching thing tonight, is there some kind of initiation ceremony? Do you have to unravel a ball of wool and sing a special song while you stab yourself in the leg with a knitting needle, or anything like that?’

‘No, but we’ll make an exception for you, if you like. And no swearing if Olivia’s there, because she’s only sixteen.’

‘Then she probably knows more swear words than I do.’

‘Yes, but I don’t think her mother would appreciate you running through them with her.’

‘Who’s the quiet one again?’

‘Angela Prentice.’

‘I’ll concentrate on her then.’

‘She’s very shy; she hardly speaks at all really.’

‘Don’t you worry about that, I’ll soon get her out of her shell. I’m very good with shy people.’

Oh dear. I think Angela might be needing more than a piece of cake and a sip of wine tonight. Actually, I think we all will.

The weather’s gone absolutely freezing, with thick frost every morning, and the radiator in my bedroom doesn’t really work so I’m sleeping with two duvets and a woolly hat. But when I woke up this morning I was boiling hot and breathless, like I’d hurtled straight into menopausal hot flushing, which wasn’t exactly encouraging, until I realised I’d left my electric blanket on all bloody night. And feeling like you’ve been parboiled isn’t the ideal way to start the school run, and I forget Jack’s PE bag so we have to walk back to get it, which makes us late. So all in all it’s been a sod of a morning, and it’s only five to ten.

I’m standing behind the counter in the shop surrounded by pom-poms and knitted leaves for the window, trying to write a list of Things to Do Today without hyperventilating. Elsie’s gone right over the top on the pom-pom front, and now she’s moved on to knitting a Christmas tree, like one she saw in a magazine made from lots of little sleeves, in different shades of green, and she keeps muttering about fairy lights, because she says it’ll be Christmas before we know it and she wants to get a head start. Christ, I wish I could get a head start on something – anything really – instead of feeling on the brink of total chaos all the time. The past few weeks have been manic. Grace has finished her baby blanket, and I’ve knitted the border for her
and done all the sewing up, and now she’s making a baby cardigan while she’s in Paris having meetings about the Simone de Beauvoir film. And Ellen’s texting me daily because Harry’s jumper keeps going wrong, and she snapped one of her bamboo knitting needles, and had an altercation with the assistant in John Lewis because they’d run out of the size she needed, so I had to post some to her at work, which meant queuing up in the post office on Pension Day which took ages because everybody chats.

The local paper have done a piece on the shop, with a picture of the shawl Grace bought, unfortunately modelled by Elsie over the top of her mad cardigan: she was so desperate to be in the picture I just couldn’t stop her. But despite the mortifying photographs we’ve still had lots of new people coming into the shop, some from as far away at Maidstone, which is all very gratifying, and we’ve been pretty busy, although there are days when we only have three customers and one of them is Mrs Marwell, who comes in for a biscuit and a quick sift through the charity basket. Ellen’s badgering me to contact more papers and magazines, but I’m putting it off until after Jack’s birthday party, when I can either work out a way to persuade Elsie not to wear her bloody cardigan again, or work out how to keep her out of the shop for a day or two; maybe Martin can help me with that. He’s nearly finished the shelves, which look great, although he still wants to give them another coat of wax according to Elsie, but he’s away on a training course in Coventry so he’ll do it when he’s back.

I’m about to make a start on the new window display, after threading pom-poms onto transparent nylon thread, and stabbing myself in the finger repeatedly in the process, when Gran arrives. She’s wearing her Big Coat, which makes her look about three feet wider than she actually is.

‘Morning, dear. You look peaky, are you feeling all right? There’s all sorts of bugs going round you know. Mrs Denning
was only just telling me, that winter-vomiting one is back, and they’ve closed two wards at the hospital so she’s got her mother back home, which doesn’t seem right does it, not at ninety-six? She’s got no idea where she is, poor thing, she calls everyone Nurse, even Mr Denning, and he’s a big man, nothing like a nurse. Promise me you’ll put something in my milk if I ever get like that. Are you feeling sick at all?’

‘No, I’m fine, Gran, and you don’t drink milk.’

‘Yes, but if I was going doolally I wouldn’t know that, would I? Or you could put a pillow over my face. One of those ones off my spare bed would be good, they’re quite firm.’

‘Gran!’

‘Promise?’

‘No.’

‘It’ll set my mind at rest. I wouldn’t want to be making a spectacle of myself. Just promise me, there’s a good girl.’

‘All right. I promise. Now, can we change the subject, please?’

I wonder if you can be arrested for promising to euthanase your Gran with the pillows off her spare bed? I bet you can, especially round here.

She smiles and pats my arm. ‘You do look pale. Are you sure you’re not coming down with something?’

I don’t think I’ll tell her about the electric blanket – I’d only get a lecture.

‘I’m fine, honestly.’

She shakes her head, then looks at the pile of pom-poms. ‘Are you doing the window now? I’ll stop and help if you like. I’m not due at the Lifeboats until later and I don’t like the look of you at all: you’ll probably end up face down in the window if you’re not careful; it’s a tricky job to do on your own. Where’s Her Majesty this morning then?’

‘She’s in after lunch.’

‘I still think you should have told her, she’s got no call
pushing herself into photographs like that; she’s always doing it, you know. When they opened the new café along the front she was there, bold as brass, sitting at one of the tables by the door. And she’s never set foot in the place since.’

‘Maybe she wants to be the Zelig of Broadgate.’

‘Well, it’s a flaming cheek, whoever she thinks she is.’

‘Yes, Gran’

She goes upstairs to put her bag in the kitchen, and comes back with two cups of tea, humming Onward, Christian Soldiers.

‘I’ve just been thinking: you haven’t been putting that electric blanket on too high, have you?’

‘I’ll go and see if there are any biscuits left in the tin, shall I?’

After a bit of a struggle, and quite a few digestives, we manage to staple the burnt-orange velvet to the pegboard partition and then I staple the leaves on top, and then prop the tree branch in the corner, with more leaves dangling from it, along with some of the smaller pom-poms. Then I get cramp in my leg and have to clamber back out while Gran goes outside to have a look.