Out of the Blue (2 page)

“Oh no, they’re on holiday again. I think they’re scuba diving
in St Lucia,” I said vaguely. “Or maybe they’re heli-skiing in Alaska. Or are
they bungee-jumping in Botswana…” Mum and Dad are pensioners, or rather what you
might call Silver Foxes or Glamorous Greys. They seem to stagger from cruise to
safari to adventure holiday in a variety of increasingly exotic locations. Well,
why not? After all, they’ve worked hard all their lives and so now’s the time to
have some fun.

“No, Sarah,” I said, “I really can’t remember
where
they are, they go away so much.”

“That’s because they have classic avoidant personalities,”
announced Katie with mild contempt. “The incessant holidays are the means by
which they avoid spending any time with us. I mean, the second Grandpa retired
from Abbey National, that was it—they were off!”

“Oh, I know darling, but they send us lots of lovely
postcards,” I said. “And they phone up from time to time. And Granny loves
chatting to you, doesn’t she, Matt?”

“Er…yes,” he said slightly nervously as he looked up from his
menu. “Yes, I suppose she does.” Lately I’ve noticed that my mother often asks
to speak to Matt on the phone. She loves chewing the fat with him, even ringing
him at school, and I think it’s
great
that they’re
developing such a nice bond.

“I do envy your parents,” said Sarah ruefully. “I’d love to go
away, but it’s impossible because I’m tied to the shop.” Sarah owns a
second-hand book shop in Dulwich. She bought it twenty years ago with her
alimony after her husband, John, left her for an American woman and moved to the
States. “Oh, I’ve a small anniversary gift,” Sarah added as she handed me a
beribboned parcel, inside which—Peter helped me open it—were two beautiful
crystal glasses.

“What lovely tumblers, Sarah—thank you!”

“Yes, thanks Mum,” Peter said.

“Well, you see the fifteenth anniversary is the crystal one,”
she explained as I noticed the red sticker on the box marked “Fragile”. “Anyway,
are we all present and correct, now?” she added pleasantly.

“All except for Lily,” I replied. “She says she’s going to be a
bit late.” At this I noticed Peter roll his eyes.

“Lily Jago?” said Mimi. “Wow! I remember her at your wedding,
she was your bridesmaid—she’s famous now.”

“Yes,” I said proudly, “she is. But she deserves every bit of
it,” I added, “because she’s worked so incredibly hard.”

“What’s she like?” asked Mimi.

“Like Lady Macbeth,” said Peter with a hollow laugh. “But not
as nice.”

“Darling!” I said reprovingly. “Please don’t say that—she’s my
best and oldest friend.”

“She treats staff like disposable knickers,” he added, “and
treads on heads as though they’re stepping stones.”

“Peter, that’s not fair,” I said. “And you know it. She’s very
dedicated and she’s brilliant, she deserves her tremendous success.” It used to
grieve me that Peter didn’t like Lily, but I got used to it years ago. He can’t
understand why I keep up with her and I’ve given up trying to explain. The fact
is, Lily
matters
to me. I’ve known her for
twenty-five years—since our convent days—so we have an unbreakable bond. But I
mean, I’m not blind—I know that Lily’s no angel. For example, she’s a little bit
touchy, and she’s got a wicked tongue. She’s also a “bit of a one” with the
boys—but then why shouldn’t she be? She’s single, and she’s beautiful. Why
shouldn’t she play the field? Why shouldn’t a gorgeous thirty-five-year-old
woman, in her prime, have lots of lovers and lots of fun? Why shouldn’t a
gorgeous thirty-five-year-old woman be made to feel desirable and loved? Why
shouldn’t
a thirty-five-year-old woman have
romantic weekends in country house hotels with Jacuzzis and fluffy towels? Why
shouldn’t any
thirty-five-year-old woman have
flowers and champagne and little presents? I mean, once you’re married, that’s
that; romance flies out the window, and you’re with the same old body every
night. So I don’t blame Lily at all, though I don’t think her choice of
boyfriends is great. Every week, it seems, we see her staring at us out of the
pages of
Hello!
or
OK!
with this footballer, or that rock star, or some actor from that new soap on
Channel 4. And I think, mmm. Mmmm. Lily could do better, I think. So, no, she
hasn’t got brilliant taste in men, although at least these days—praise the
Lord!—she’s stopped going for the married ones. Yes, I’m afraid to say she used
to be a little bit naughty like that. And I did once remind her that adultery is
forbidden by the seventh commandment.

“I didn’t commit adultery,” she said indignantly. “I’m single,
so it was only fornication.” Lily’s not interested in marriage herself, by the
way; she’s totally dedicated to her career. “I’m footloose and fiancé free!” she
always likes to exclaim. I must say, she’d be a bit of a challenge to any man.
For a start, she’s
very
opinionated, and she bears
interminable grudges. Peter thinks she’s dangerous, but she’s not. She’s simply
tribal; by which I mean she’s loyal to her friends but ruthless to her foes, and
I know exactly which category I’m in.

“Lily had twelve other invitations tonight,” I said. “She knows
so
many people!”

“Yes, Mum,” said Katie matter-of-factly. “But you’re her only
friend.”

“Well, maybe that’s true, darling,” I said with a tiny stab of
pride, “but I still think it’s sweet of her to come.”

“Very gracious,” said Peter wryly. He’d had a couple of drinks
by then. “I can’t wait for the dramatic entrance,” he added sarcastically.

“Darling,” I said patiently, “Lily can’t
help
making an entrance. I mean, it’s not her fault she’s so
stunning.” She is. In fact she’s jaw-dropping. Everybody stares. She’s terribly
tall for a start, and whippety thin, and she’s always exquisitely dressed.
Unlike me. I get a small allowance from work for the things I wear on TV and I
tend to spend it in Principles—I’ve always liked their stuff. Just recently I’ve
started to get quite interested in Next, and Episode. But Lily gets a
huge
clothing allowance, and the designers send her
things too, so she always looks amazing—in fact, she’s amazing period. And even
Peter will admit that she has huge talent, and guts and drive. You see, she had
a very tough start in life. I remember the day she arrived at St Bede’s. I have
this vivid picture in my mind of Reverend Mother standing on stage in the main
hall one morning after Mass; and next to her was this new girl—we were all
agog
to know who she was.

“Girls,” said Reverend Mother as a hush descended. “This is
Lily. Lily Jago. Now, we must all be kind to Lily,” she went on benignly,
“because Lily is very poor.” I will never forget, to my dying day, the look of
fury on Lily’s face. And of course the girls weren’t kind to her at all. Far
from it. They teased her about her accent and they laughed at her lack of
finesse; they disparaged her evident poverty and they made terrible fun of her
folks. They called her “Lily White”, which she loathed. Then, when they realized
how clever she was, they hated her for that as well. But I didn’t hate her. I
liked her and I felt drawn to her, perhaps because I was an outsider too. I got
laughed at a lot at school. My nickname was “Faith Value”, because they all said
I was very naïve. I was impossible to tease, apparently, because I could never
get the joke. I thought it was obvious that the chicken’s reason for crossing
the road was to reach the other side. I couldn’t see why that was funny, really.
I mean, why else
would
the chicken cross the road?
And of
course
a bell is necessary on a
bicycle—otherwise you could have a very nasty accident. It’s obvious. So why’s
that funny? Do you see what I mean? The other girls all said I was a credulous
sap. Ridiculous! I’m not. But I
am
trusting. Oh yes.
I want to have faith in people and I do. I give everyone the benefit of the
doubt, and I tend to believe what they say. Because that’s how I want to be. I
decided, a long time ago, that I didn’t want to be cynical like Lily. She’s the
suspicious sort, and though I’m desperately fond of her, I could never be like
that myself. That’s probably why my purse is full of foreign coins, for example,
because I never, ever check my change. Shopkeepers are constantly palming off on
me their dimes and their pfennigs and their francs. But I don’t care, because I
don’t want to be the kind of woman who’s always on her guard. I guess I’m a
natural optimist—I always trust that things will work out. I’m trusting in my
marriage, too. I simply don’t think that Peter would ever stray. And he
hasn’t—so I was right. And I believe you can make your own destiny, by the
strength of your mental attitude. Anyway, I rather liked the fact that Lily was
naughty, because I knew it was something I could never be. I remember, once,
when we were thirteen, making a dash for the town. We’d lied to Sister St
Wilfred, and said we were going for a walk. But we got the bus to Reading
instead—using my pocket money, of course—and we bought sweets and Lily bought
cigarettes, and she got talking to some boys. Then, on the way back, she did
something awful—she went into a newsagent and nicked a copy of
Harpers and Queen
. I wanted her to return it but she
refused, though she promised to mention it in confession. But I remember her
poring over it in the dormitory later, utterly entranced; she was fingering it
reverentially, as though it were a holy text. Then she swore out loud that one
day she’d be the editor of a magazine like that; and the girls all fell about
laughing. But now she is.

“Lily’s been in New York for a long time, hasn’t she?” said
Mimi as she broke into her bread roll. “I’ve seen lots of stuff about her in the
press.”

“Six years,” I said. “She was working on
Mirabella
and
Vanity Fair
.” And as we
ate our anti pasti I told them about her career, and about how single-minded
she’d been. Because I’m very proud of my friendship with her. And I told them
about the way she’d even left Cambridge early because she was offered some lowly
job at
Marie Claire
. But it was the start of her
long climb up the greasy pole, or rather shiny cover. She was determined to
reach the top—and now she has. Three months ago she became the first black woman
to edit
Moi!

That’s
Moi-Même!
magazine, of
course, commonly known as
Moi!
Or perhaps “Mwaaah,
mwaaah!” as Peter always likes to say. He’s a bit of a snob about magazines, he
thinks they’re utterly trite. He calls Lily the “High Priestess of Gloss”. But
chacun à son goût
, I say, and Lily’s brilliant
at what she does. Mind you, some of the stories are pretty silly. Not my kind of
thing at all. It’s all this, “What’s Hot What’s Not!” kind of stuff, and
“Grey—the new black! Fat—the new thin! Old—the new young!” But the magazine
always looks beautiful because the photography’s out of this world. And the
writing’s good too, because Lily says she can sort out “the wit from the chaff”.
Oh yes, Lily’s seriously successful. And yes, she’s got a wicked tongue. But she
would never do anything to hurt me. I know that for a fact.

Anyway, by nine Lily still hadn’t arrived, and we’d all
finished our starters and were waiting for the main course which in my case was
chump of lamb. And the conversation had turned back to marriage, and to Peter
and me.

“Fifteen years!” Mimi exclaimed with a laugh. “I just can’t
believe it! I remember your wedding day so well. In the university chapel. We
all froze to death, it was snowing, just like today.”

“That’s because it was a white wedding!” I quipped. Peter
laughed.

“But how amazing that this is your fifteenth anniversary,” Mimi
added. “Good God! I haven’t even had my first!” We all smiled at that, and she
gave her husband, Mike, a gooey look and said, “I’ve only just had
my
happy ending!”

“New beginning, you mean,” he replied. And I felt very strange
when he said that; very strange indeed. But at the same time I thought, yes,
he’s right. It
is
a new beginning. That’s exactly
what it is. They only got married last May. They both peeped at their
six-week-old baby, Alice, who was asleep in her car seat on the floor. I looked
across the table at my two “babies”, who are fourteen and twelve. And it struck
me again, as it has done recently, that Peter and I are completely out of step
with our peers. Most of them are like Mimi, they’re marrying and having kids
now. But we did that fifteen years ago, and it won’t be long before our children
leave home.

“You two got married when you were still at college, didn’t
you?” Mike asked.

“In our second year,” I said. “We just couldn’t wait,” I
explained. “Isn’t that right, darling?” And Peter looked at me, through the
flickering candles, and gave me a little smile. “We were madly in love,” I went
on, emboldened by the sparkling wine. “And good Catholics don’t live in sin!”
Actually I’m not a very good Catholic, though I was, then. I’m a sort of
Christmas Catholic now. I go to church no more than three or four times a
year.

“I remember when you two met,” said Mimi. “It was in our first
term at Durham, at the freshers’ ball. You looked at Peter, Faith, and you
whispered to me, ‘That’s the man I’m going to marry,’—and you did!”

“We were like Super Glue,” I giggled. “We bonded in seconds!”
At that Peter’s mother, Sarah, smiled. I like Sarah. We’ve always got on well.
And yes, she did have misgivings at the time because she thought we’d end up
divorced, like her. But we didn’t do that, and I’m sure we won’t. As I say, I
have faith in the future. Anyway, Sarah was chatting away to the children—she
hadn’t seen them for a while—and Peter was beginning to unwind a bit as we
talked to Mimi and Mike. We’d had a bit to drink by now, and were all feeling
mellow and warm, when suddenly there was an icy blast—the door had opened: Lily
had finally arrived.