Happy Birthday and All That (16 page)

He backed the van up to the rear entrance. How he hated that stupid warning beeping it did when he reversed. Council regulations no doubt. No sneaking around in this baby.

He took the first load in. It was a pile of lino offcuts, weighed a ton. He was sweating like a pig.

There was Posy. Shit! What if Flora were there too and saw him like this? He knew he looked a mess. Probably stank too. He did his best to put the stuff down silently. It was tough. He nearly put his back out. He darted back out and hid by the back of the van. Inside he could hear them wittering on.

‘This is florists' cellophane,' Miriam was telling them, ‘just PVA it around some wire and you can make gorgeous fairy wings.'

‘I would never have thought of that.' It wasn't Posy talking, and it didn't sound like Flora.

‘I think we should get some of these sequins.' Now that
was
Posy talking. ‘And some of these feathers. They're beautiful. And some of these rainbow tissue circles.'

‘As treasurer,' said the first voice, ‘I think I should point out that we must try to stick to the free stuff.'

‘More lentils and cork collages it is then,' said Posy. She sounded really disappointed. ‘I suppose some of these fabrics are quite pretty. The fabric scraps are free, aren't they?'

‘Remember it's variety and texture that are important in collage activities for pre-schoolers. Pretty isn't what matters. It's the activity, not the outcome that the children benefit from,' Miriam told them. It was part of her job description to offer guidance to the scrapstore's members.

Posy thought that pretty was what mattered. ‘I suppose we could take lots of this wholemeal stuff and snip up some of our own tinsel and bits of wrapping paper.'

‘We'll have some more gold card in later today,' Miriam told them.

‘Great. Crowns again,' said Posy's accomplice enthusiastically.

‘Our driver should be back soon,' Miriam told them. ‘He sometimes seems to take the scenic route.'

Huh, thought Al. I'd like to see you humping this stuff around, waiting endlessly at factory gates for some jobsworth who saw you last week to check your ID and get permission from the MD to give you a bag of rubbish. Hell, he was sure it wasn't Flora in there.

‘Traffic was light today,' he said as he strolled in with a bag of polystyrene bits. ‘Hi Posy, what brings you here?'

‘St Peter's committee,' said Posy, as if that meant anything to him. ‘I wondered if I might see you. Frank told me you work up here.'

‘Mostly on the scenic route,' he said, with a wink at Miriam. Who had the grace to blush.

‘This is Ursula,' said Posy. ‘Ursula, Al' He looked her up and down. A mummy, a helmet-head, and possibly a Kraut with a name like that. Nothing for him here. He might as well get on with the unloading, then he could get off to make his preparations.

‘We'll definitely take some cellophane,' said Posy. ‘It's really lovely.'

Miriam made a mental note to suggest that the St Peter's committee members be offered places on the next ‘Play Today'
course; and she was sure that she'd told Al that they no longer accepted donations of polystyrene chips.

At precisely two o'clock Flora pressed the bell for Flat 11. She was certain that Al had said flat eleven, she had it written in her organiser (plus she never forgot things like that, or made a mistake) but the name on the bell was ‘Grimley'. She didn't think that was Al's name.

He buzzed her in.

She stepped neatly over the drifts of free papers, menus and leaflets and went up the stairs. The red and black lino was, she speculated, probably fifties, and now collectable. Flora had hated red and black together ever since an art therapist at the day centre where she'd done weekly sixth-former community service had told her that juxtaposing them indicated suicidal tendencies. Flora could not forget the story of the patient who usually drew beautiful and accurate pictures of freshwater fish one day complaining to the therapist that he couldn't get the pike he was working on to look right. The therapist, finding that he had used only red and black, asked for him to have emergency admission to hospital. She was told not to be so silly. When she came in after the weekend she was told that the patient had died after drinking bleach.

There were no windows and it seemed no air. Perhaps Al was the only inhabitant. Flora found number eleven at the top of the second staircase. Al opened the door when he heard her footsteps.

‘Flora, come in.'

She thought that Al looked clean, if a little crumpled. She detected a hasty attempt to tidy the place up. This was a good sign. He must mean business. Sometimes her clients were so deeply mired in their clutter that it would appear hopeless to almost anyone but her.

‘Coffee?' he asked.

‘Yes please.' He had just washed up the mugs. He hoped
she wouldn't want anything to eat. By the time he'd thought of getting biscuits it was too late. He currently had a policy of not keeping any food. If he was hungry, he would get something when he went out. He gave her the smarter of the two mugs.

‘Well,' said Flora. ‘I usually start by asking people what it is that they think wants fixing, how they want their life to be different. It often seems purely physical at first glance, a clutter problem, needing repairs done, just needing someone to help make an action plan. Once we've agreed on the way forward I can give you a quote and you can let me know if you want to proceed.'

‘This is mostly purely physical,' Al said, trying not to smirk. Lewdness, he realised, wouldn't get him very far with Flora. He was going to have to play this very carefully. Watch what he said, not let anything slip about Frank and Melody. Perhaps it would all be too complicated, if anything did happen, but then he couldn't really imagine Flora hanging out with The Wild Years. He would have to conduct the romance elsewhere. ‘Yes. Purely physical.'

She arched her already highly arched eyebrows a fraction.

‘I often bleed people's radiators whilst we are talking,' she said. ‘But I take it you don't have central heating.'

Wow, he thought, complimentary bleeding of radiators. What a woman!

‘So?' she said. ‘Where shall we start?'

‘Well,' said Al. ‘I moved in about a year ago, when Caroline and I split.'

‘Yes,' Flora nodded, all sympathy. ‘I know.' He wondered what else she might know about him; he might be on dodgy territory.

‘Well, it's over with Caroline, there's nothing I can do about that. And I don't want to,' he added hastily, ‘but I need to make it good for Finn. He's only three.'

Flora knew that Finn's birthday was actually a week before
Tom's and that he was four. She decided that this wasn't the time to correct him.

‘Caroline won't let him come here. Says it's too depressing. That he shouldn't see his dad living like this.'

Flora looked around. There was a sinister, unpleasant wardrobe. There was a table, ringed by a hundred thousand cold cups of coffee, a white bedside thing, stuffed with books, and the two black vinyl chairs that they were sitting on. These looked hideous and had green foam rubber poking out of gashes in their backs, but were actually very comfortable. There was a Baby Belling with two rings and what Flora took to be an oven. Al had an electric kettle (but she had noticed that it failed to switch itself off), a miniature fridge and a very dirty microwave. There were no pictures, just a hundred blobs of blu-tack and grey shadowy outlines where pictures had once hung. Above the basin were four mirror tiles. The picture Al would have of himself would be smeared, distorted and dissected. She guessed that the radio and music system were the only things that belonged to him.

‘Well it's certainly not a clutter problem. That makes you unusual,' she said.

‘Thanks. I'll take that as a compliment,' Al replied.

‘None intended.'

‘Come on, give it to me straight, Doc. I can take it.'

‘Well,' said Flora. ‘Have you considered moving out?'

‘That bad, huh?'

‘Well it's not irredeemable. We could transform this bedsit if you preferred.'

Al didn't want to say that he was strapped for cash, after all he was supposed to be paying her.

‘Can we try that? I want quick results. I can always take stuff with me if I move …' he realised that he should have said ‘when I move', to indicate that his future didn't lie in this bedsit.

‘Fine. Mind if I take a look in your cupboards?'

Actually he did mind, he minded a lot.

Flora opened the wardrobe and a binbag of dirty washing lurched out at her.

‘Don't worry. I've seen it all before.' There was nothing but books and CDs beside the bed. No food in the cupboard, just coffee, tea and sugar. The smell of the tiny fridge made her give a long, impressed whistle. The bed had no headboard (Flora considered this preferable to having a hideous one) and was covered by a duvet in a pale green and brown cover that seemed to be trying for autumn and spring at the same time.

‘OK. Here's where we start. The furniture is depressing. I will contact your landlord and arrange to have it moved or disposed of, there's probably an empty room or an attic or something. We'll draw up a list of the minimum you need and I will get it, in consultation with you. My clients don't usually have the time to come with me. We work to a budget. Everything will be new, clean, safe for Finn. We'll get a box of toys for him to keep here, and in consultation with Caroline, something so he can stay over. A pull-out bed that would fit under yours might be best, but something with an air of permanence, nothing makeshift.

‘You will have to paint. White or cream would be fine. I often suggest a sunny yellow, but you don't strike me as a very sunny yellow person.'

Al grinned in what he hoped was a cute and appealing way.

‘These are just the physical things, the surroundings, the backdrop. If we get these things right, the rest may follow. But you have to start using a diary, for all of your work, gigs, and particularly for Finn. Don't agree to anything unless you've checked it. Write everything down. Insist that Caroline tells you when any school or pre-school or doctor's appointments or whatever for Finn are. Then go to them. Go
instead
of her if she's busy. You have to act like you are responsible. Equal parenting, all that sort of thing.'

‘I am responsible,' he said. This was getting quite offensive.
He wondered if she would keep the pace up like this for ever, if this was a ‘first visit to a client' persona, or if she was always like this. If she was then he might have made a mistake.

Flora smoothed the golden tendrils away from her forehead. It was quite hot and stuffy in the room. She wondered if the window was painted shut, something else she would fix. She slipped off her jacket which was denim, lined with a Liberty print, and reluctantly hung it on the back of the chair. She got out her notebook, and Al caught a whiff of her alluring clean citrusy scent. How could anyone smell so clean? It filled him with longing.

‘There's a pub down the road,' Al said. ‘We could adjourn there.'

‘Fine. I parked just down the road from it,' said Flora. She really had had enough of his place.

Flora found it astonishing that people were in the pub on a weekday afternoon. Why on earth weren't they all at work? What could they possibly be doing? Perhaps, she surmised, she had stumbled into the shooting of a government ad for benefit fraud snitching.

‘What can I get you, Al?' she said.

‘No, let me.'

‘Really, I insist. You are the client.'

‘Oh cheers. Pint of Stella.'

‘Pint of Stella and a sparkling water,' she said to the barman. ‘Bit early in the day for me …' she told Al. ‘And of course, I am driving.' Al was utterly condemned.

They agreed the plan and an initial number of hours. Flora was to call in a few days later with some catalogues so that he could OK the replacement furniture. Al didn't actually give a damn what it looked like, it was, after all, just somewhere to get his head down, but he thought he wanted to see her again soon, even though he suspected that he was about to waste a lot of money. He said goodbye to Flora outside the pub, and then pretended to go into his block. He stood just inside the front
door for a few minutes, until he was sure she would be safely gone. Then he went back to the pub. Drinking just one pint in the afternoon was so unsatisfying, so pointless. He might as well carry on now, the evening was only a few hours away. He sat and thought about Flora. She had looked gorgeous. It was defintely worth a try. He wouldn't let on to Frank yet. What a tangled web, eh, he thought, as he drained his glass.

Flora had twenty-three minutes before her next appointment and a drive that would be fifteen minutes, at most. She sat in the car and looked over her planner for the next week. Then she made sure that her make-up was still perfect. There was a tiny smudge of mascara under her left eye that had to be dealt with. So it was that she saw Al in her rear-view mirror heading purposefully back into the pub. She wondered if his drinking was an issue that he would like her to help him tackle. It wasn't one that she had helped a client with before, or would ever want to. She thought of her father. How not to lead a life.

Flora thought it possible that Al had ulterior motives in hiring her. There was no way that she would get involved with him on anything but a professional basis. Profession, profession Al, she wondered if people made weak jokes about it to him.

If she could make things better for him though, be a means to restoring his relationship with his son, help him get his life back on track, then she would be pleased. She applied some of her favourite rosewater hand lotion. Her hands needed a lot more maintenance now, and she had noticed that they seemed to have taken on a permanent smell of lemon Cif. Her next client wanted help with organising a surprise fiftieth birthday party for her husband, as well as wardrobe and storage solutions. It was potentially a big job and Flora didn't want to smell like the cleaning lady. That night she would get on with her favourite part of any job, the making of an Ikea list for Al. She would not allow him to come with her.