The First Wife (10 page)

‘Oh, you tell me his name. Joe Smith?’

‘Smithson.’

‘See, that’s better because there won’t be so many of those. I find him on Facebook, and I add him.’

There were many things I did not understand about that statement, but I did not like to ask.

‘Then?’

‘Then,’ she told me, ‘anything could happen.’

23 December

They lived in a film world. The front path was lit up with starry white lights that hovered just above the ground, as if they were fairies. I was almost sure I saw one of them move, but when I walked up to it, ready to be amazed by whatever powers it had, I saw it was just a light, stuck into the ground, and the glittering must have been a trick of my eyes. I bit my lip, and told myself it was good to have eyes that could transform electric bulbs into fairies.

The biggest tree in the front garden was decorated with baubles and white fairy-lights, and had a star on top like a Christmas tree. This was less magical, because I had already seen the reality. A couple of weeks ago, when I came to clean, a man had shouted, ‘All right, there?’ from a ladder, as soon as I stepped onto the path. I did my best to react in the way a normal person might, and tried to smile and say, ‘All right?’ back to him, and, for once, it seemed to work.

I stopped next to him to watch what he was doing, which was ramming decorations onto this tree while yelling friendly, scatological abuse down the phone at a person he called Spike, and I made sure not to stare too much at the fact that he seemed to have total alopecia. There was not a hair on his head, not an eyebrow, and though I did not look closely enough to check, probably no eyelashes or bodily hair of any sort. It was fascinating.

If I had not seen him doing it, I would have imagined Harry and his wife decorating this tree together, laughing in their woollen hats and scarves like people on an advert. As it was, the tree did not seem magical at all.

The snow had lasted a couple of days, then turned to drizzly rain. Everything was soggy and boggy. The scene deserved to be covered in glittering whiteness; yet even with the downpour and the mud, it glittered.

I stood on the doorstep and took a deep breath. Grandma and Granddad had traditionally swapped roles for Christmas, so he would produce the entire lunch (always served at precisely 2.45 p.m.) with a flourish, while she and I would play cards and sip sherry and listen to carols on the radio while we waited. There was no one but the three of us, in the entire world. We would dress up for the day in our smartest clothes, and Grandma would squirt me with her perfume and brush ‘rouge’ onto my cheeks.

It was easy for me, now, to overlook the fact that the last couple of years had not been like that at all. I liked to remember the good times, when I was young and happy and cherished. With an effort, I turned my mind back.

Last year I had installed the two of them, bickering over a game of Snap, which was all they could manage, while I did my best to recreate the lunch of years gone by. Neither of them was impressed. Grandma barely recognised me, and Granddad could hardly eat. I knew, even at the time, that this would be our last Christmas together, the three of us. I had probably even hoped for it. If I had tried to imagine what it would be like this year, I would probably have pictured myself, in the cottage, cooking a meal for myself, and eating it with the carols on in the background, and a book propped up in front of me. The idea that I might be working as a waitress, in a house like this, would have scared me half to death.

I had dressed as appropriately as I could, given my old-fashioned wardrobe. It was going to be a while, I could tell, before I had the funds for clothes. Sarah had said, ‘Wear black and white,’ and I had cobbled together a lacy-collared white blouse with puffy sleeves, and a shiny black skirt with swirling black flowers embroidered onto it. It was a bit ridiculous: all I wanted was for no one to laugh at me. I had done my best with my hair, tied it back with an Alice band I borrowed from Mia, and conditioned it ruthlessly into submission.

I stared at the doorbell and tried to pluck up the courage to ring it, because I could not use my own key when I knew they were both there. I was petrified. I stood in the dark, my breath clouding around me, wishing my grandparents back to life. I would have given anything to bring them back to me, even in their squabbling, forgetful, sickly incarnations.

I did it, suddenly, on an impulse before I could stop myself. I was meant to be here at six: I was five minutes early but I thought that was probably all right. I stepped from foot to foot, irrationally hoping that something had changed, that they were not here, that the party was cancelled and they had gone away early. I did not want to see the man who had such a huge and strange effect on me, with his wife. I did not want to be their servant.

There were lights on inside. I could hear music, the sort of languorous music that might have been called ‘easy listening’ or might have been jazz. Footsteps approached. The door opened. Sarah Summer stood before me.

‘Lily,’ she said. She knew it was me. It was not a question. She was indisputably beautiful, with fine bone structure and a wide mouth like Julia Roberts.

I smiled at her. ‘Yes,’ I said, and then I stopped because I had no idea whether I should call her Sarah or Mrs Summer. It was going to be easier to call her nothing.

She was ushering me in and waiting for me to take my coat off. Her face was friendlier than I had expected. She was wearing tight jeans and a white shirt, with a beady necklace, and her hair was clipped back in a very ordinary-looking way. I was surprised at how casually she had dressed for her party.

‘Well,’ she said, as I followed her into the hall that I knew well when it was empty. It was strange to see her in it, and to know that she belonged here, and I did not. ‘You look fabulous, Lily. That is the classiest version of waitress clothes I’ve ever seen.’

I opened my mouth to explain but, unsure where to start, closed it again.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she continued. ‘Harry will be pleased. He said you were just the girl for the job. He says you’re wasted as a cleaner.’ She laughed and called up the stairs: ‘Darling! It’s Lily!’

I felt myself blushing. His voice came down from upstairs: ‘Thank fuck for that!’

Julia told me, just as I was leaving, that I ought to try to catch the eye of a rich man. ‘Not that you even need to try, Lily Button. Your hair will do that for you. If I could have changed one thing about my life, I would have given myself thick hair. Thick curly hair. You have no idea. Anyway, put some lipstick on,’ she advised. ‘And smile at people. And don’t forget us, now that you’re on your way up in the world.’

‘Julia,’ I reminded her, ‘I’m not on the guest list. I’m handing out drinks and canapes, for six pounds an hour!’

‘Canapés!’
she echoed. ‘See? Meteoric rise. You look lovely.’

I was worried, now, that I had overdone the make-up. All I knew about make-up was the rouge that Grandma had brushed with light spidery strokes onto my cheeks for special occasions, but according to Julia, rouge was now called ‘blusher’, and was not really necessary for me. Tonight I had put on some very light foundation out of a tube. I was wearing eye-liner, mascara and, on Julia’s instruction, lipstick. It was a brownish-red one. I felt like a little girl who was maladroitly trying to be a grown-up. All the same, Sarah Summer seemed not to be sniggering at my painted-on face.

When I stepped into the kitchen, I tried to hide my reaction. Apart from the first time I cleaned it, I had never seen it properly messy. Now every surface was covered, with layer upon layer of things. There were little puff pastry cases, and sheets of paper that looked as if they had been printed from the Internet, and there were supermarket bags everywhere, plonked down on each surface with three on top of the hob. The whole of one worktop was taken up by boxes of glasses, one of which was teetering, on the brink of falling to the floor.

‘OK,’ I said. I smiled. ‘What would you like the end result to be?’ I pushed the box of glasses so it was safely anchored and picked up the plastic bags from the hob, finding them a more appropriate place.

She laughed. Her face was so pretty. She was probably in her late thirties, but apart from the little lines around her eyes, she could have been my age.

‘Oh Lily,’ she said, ‘you are an angel sent from heaven. I did broach the idea of buying in some proper catering from one of the many fine eating establishments in this town, but Harry seemed to think there was something charming about us throwing it all together ourselves and being all “oh, just something we whipped up in the kitchen” about it. Needless to say, he’s not been planning to spend much time with the apron on himself.’

I took a blue and white striped apron from a hook and put it on. The strings went round my waist three times before they were short enough to tie. I wondered whether it was Harry’s.

‘So, these are recipes?’ I checked, picking up one of the print-outs. I touched one of the plastic bags. And these are ingredients?’

‘Just do whatever you can. I’m off to change. Can you believe, Lily, that we’re going away tomorrow? Look at the state of this place!’

‘It is a little bit mad,’ I felt brave enough to say ‘Shouldn’t you be packing?’

‘Oh absolutely,’ she agreed. ‘It is. Mad, I mean. We’ll do the packing at the very last minute. It all sounded like a good idea at the time. Don’t feel obliged to follow any recipe. Just make it up as you go along. Anything you can do that looks pretty on a plate and doesn’t poison people will be an unspeakable improvement on anything we might have done. When you come in after the New Year, the place will probably still look like this.’

She breezed out of the room. I picked up the first carrier bag, and started to unpack.

Ten minutes later, I was jigging on the spot to the raucous Christmas music that had been blaring through the house for the past few minutes, the tasteful jazz all gone. I was cutting up logs of goat’s cheese and putting it onto slices of baguette, then adding a sliver of red pepper out of a jar. The key was to arrange them on the tray so that they looked good. After this, I was going to do mushroom vol-au-vents.

‘Well,’ said a familiar voice. ‘You are a sight to behold.’

I jumped. He was standing in the doorway. I wondered how long he had been there.

He was wearing an expensive-looking shirt and jeans. Sarah had gone to change, but Harry Summer really was going to wear jeans to his own party. His hair was glossier than ever, and his high cheekbones and friendly, open smile made me want to stroke his face, though I hoped against hope that he could not tell this by looking at me.

‘Hello,’ I said, feeling the heat rising to my face, hating it.

He walked right over to me, put a hand on my waist and kissed my cheek. I held my breath to make sure I didn’t breathe anything nasty on him, and kissed the air.

‘Now we’ve met properly,’ he said. ‘And we are so grateful that you’re here, Lily. Neither Sarah nor I are much cop in the kitchen, I’m afraid. And look, you’ve nearly sorted us out already.’

His hand was still on my waist.

‘It’s no problem at all,’ I said. He made me feel like the only person in the world who mattered. I knew he must do that to everyone, and that was why he used to be on TV and everyone loved him. My face was sizzling, and I realised that Julia was right: blusher was unnecessary.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘a drink is called for. We can pay you in champagne.’ He looked at my face. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he added. ‘We’ll pay you money too.’ As he went to the fridge, he carried on talking. ‘My brother was extremely taken with you, as you know. A gorgeous young woman walking in on him in the bath is exactly the kind of fantasy he’d come up with, in an idle moment.’

‘Mmm.’ I did not trust myself to speak. He popped the champagne cork, holding it firmly to stop it flying across the room. I had, of course, never tasted champagne.

‘Or, if he wasn’t making it up, I presumed he was massively exaggerating. And then Jasmine took him back and we forgot all about the fact that our cleaner was supposedly a nubile young woman with pre-Raphaelite hair, who was funny too. He even badgered me for your phone number, the scurrilous old goat.’

I reminded myself not to let anything I was feeling show on my face, and I tried to look casual. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I said nothing, and started to set out the vol-au-vent cases on the surface, ready for filling. Harry handed me a glass of champagne, then picked up one of my goat’s cheese concoctions.

I had never imagined that anyone but my poor dead grandparents would ever think I was special. Now Harry was saying lovely things to me, and his brother had wanted my phone number. I wondered what Fergus would have said, had he rung me up.

‘Why can’t I throw things together like this?’ Harry demanded. ‘Or, why can’t one of us? You’d think that out of Sarah and me, one person, statistically, would not be a total disaster in the kitchen.’

‘It was your wife who got all the ingredients,’ I said. ‘And she left me all the recipes. I’m just putting different bits on top of each other. So it
is
her doing it, really. She’s the statistical winner.’

‘Oh Lord. You’re a diplomat, Lily. What the hell are you doing cleaning houses?’

I thought it was a rhetorical question, and so I did not answer.

He hung around the kitchen, watching as I cut up mushrooms and searched in the cupboards for a saucepan. I realised that I should have made the filling for the vol-au-vents first of all, before I started the baguettes. Neither of us spoke again, but I was conscious of his eyes upon me all the time. When I moved, he moved, too. He just kept watching. It felt strangely intimate.

‘Harry?’ said Sarah’s voice, and she appeared in the doorway. She looked at me, and the full champagne glass beside me. ‘Are you plying poor Lily with alcohol? Where’s mine?’

Her hair was piled up on top of her head, and she was wearing a red dress that draped and clung to her in a way that was just right. She was wearing make-up, but not too much, and she looked as if she had stepped directly from the pages of a magazine. I scrutinised her cheeks to see whether she was wearing any rouge: I thought she was, just a tiny bit.