The Hive (23 page)

And Heather suddenly had a vision of herself, in a room, under a cold cap. With lots of realism. And not any optimism. And being given Wednesdays. And then Bea having to cancel her golfing…And her whole body seemed to sink, down, down into the hard plastic chair. She felt sort of homesick somehow. She wanted Georgie. She wanted Rachel. She really, really badly wanted Guy.

By the time Heather got back to the car, having dealt with the pay-on-foot parking ticket, Bea was already on the phone.

“I know. Lucky escape. Anyway, I thought you’d want to know as soon as poss.”

Heather turned the key in the ignition and reversed out of the space.

“No, don’t worry. I’ll call her. I said I would.” Bea hung up.

“Who was that?” asked Heather as she pulled out onto the road.

“Only Colette.” Bea flicked through her phone numbers with her thumb. “You feeling all right now, love?” But before Heather could reply, Bea was holding her phone to her ear and her finger to the air.

“Hi, Clover. You’ll never believe it.
Benign!
I
know.
First time it’s ever happened to
me.
I
know.
I
will.
Aw. You’re lovely.”

Heather had not worried about her own death for years. It had simply not occurred to her, since she married Guy and had Maisie, to even consider it. Grief: that was her greatest fear. The loss of her daughter, or her husband—that was what kept her awake at night. And haunted her every waking second of her every conscious day. She couldn’t help it, she was almost ghoulish about it all. She had a sort of mental scrapbook, and when she heard terrible stories, like that little lad who got leukemia at nursery or that St. Ambrose family whose daughter drowned in Majorca, she stuck them away in there. And then when she couldn’t sleep sometimes, and she was feeling miserable anyway, she got them out and went over and over them and put herself in the middle of them and could work herself into such a state that the pillow was soaking and she was having to bite on the duvet cover to stop herself waking Guy, because she knew he’d only get cross with her for doing it to herself. But it wasn’t as if she could help it.

It made a change, in a way, over the weekend, having a whole new angle on the ghoulish fantasy. Her usual practice was to drive herself mad with images of Guy in a car crash—even though he was safety itself behind the wheel, it was always a car crash—and policemen coming to her door. Or Maisie in a hospital bed, and a life-support machine, and a switch. But instead, for a few days, she’d had Guy as a grief-stricken widower. And little motherless Maisie, living on roast chicken because that was all Guy could really do. And starting her periods and being too shy to say anything to anybody and nobody realizing and…Still, the good thing was she could go back to normal now.

Bea was smiling over at Heather, wrinkling her nose, but still had her phone to her ear. “Now then. On to the next thing. We Never Close! How are things looking for the Gourmet Gamble? Do you need anyone else to make any more dishes? ’Cause Heather’s got the afternoon free now…” She raised her eyebrows at Heather and nodded, inviting consent. “OK then. She’ll knock something up for you. No problem. See you later. I
will.
”

She hung up again, and turned back to Heather. “They all send their love. You
lucky
girl. Now then. Do you want me to call Guy for you, seeing as how you’re doing the driving?”

Rachel dug her raffle ticket out of her pocket, got in line and shuffled along with everyone else into the hall. It didn’t matter in the least what she got this afternoon; it was going to be her supper, even if Clover cooked it. The kids were out tonight, so there would be no I-don’t-like-this and I-don’t-like-that. And she was genuinely excited at the evening ahead of her. She was going to start on the Second World War drawing for the library now that she had managed to pinpoint exactly where they’d had the bomb shelter—she couldn’t wait to get down to that. And when was the last time Rachel had sat in her own house eating home-cooked food prepared for her by somebody else? It just was not part of the single experience. It simply could not happen in this post-Chris world. To be completely honest, it hadn’t happened as often as it should have in a world with Chris. But it had happened sometimes. And when it had, it had been lovely.

It was only now that she was no longer married—well, still in the process of divorce, but it was not a reversible thing—that she saw all this in sharp relief. How all the things that she and Chris had done for one another—just making a pot of tea in the morning (him), or washing the socks (her)—that had seemed at the time to be nothing more than part of the diurnal routine were actually acts of love. Of course, they hadn’t seemed like that at the time. Then, they’d just seemed like no big deal (the tea) or a total pain in the arse (the socks). But now, to her, they were romantic gestures that, in their sheer repetitiveness, reinforced the bond between them, renewed their vows in a practical way, over and over again. Until, for some reason, they didn’t anymore. And there was no bond. But it was only from here, from this bleak new world in which nobody did anything for her ever at any point on any day, that she could see it like that.

And even though the person who had made her supper tonight could have had no idea that she would be eating it—may not know that Rachel even existed—she could still pretend. Tonight she would go home, pop it in the oven, smell it as it warmed and kid herself that someone had gone to the trouble of making this dish just for her.

All the dinner tables were out, and each was covered with plates with raffle tickets stuck on them. The children were still in class but the place was packed and almost buzzing with excitement. Rachel made her way through to the first one, and saw Heather standing behind it in what was obviously some tip-top majordomo official Gourmet Gamble capacity.

“Sorry for staring. Only I used to know someone who looked just like you. Our kids were at school together.” She shook her head sadly. “Ages ago now.
Tempus fugit,
eh?”

“Aw, Rach, I’m so sorry. I haven’t been avoiding you, honest, it was just”—Heather’s eyes darted around the dining hall in what looked to Rachel like an almost paranoid fashion—“look, I can explain later.” She reached across the table. “But I’m so sorry. I’ve missed you, Rachel. I really, really have.”

“All right. Steady on.” She shook Heather’s hand off. “And don’t explain it all to me right now, for heaven’s sake. I need to concentrate. I have a rendezvous with a norovirus,” she said in her Ingrid Bergman voice. “Just don’t get in my way.”

Rachel moved on with her number 86. And there, on the next table, it was: fish pie. Her heart leapt in her breast. Yessss! Get in there! Only her favorite, that’s all. She took a second to acknowledge that her jubilation was almost tragic, and then dismissed herself. This, this fish pie in a Nigella dish hailing from Bubba’s own kitchen, clearly made by Kazia’s fair hand—Jeez Louise, the potato on top was actually piped—was the best thing that had happened to her for some months. This, here, was a genuine piece of good fortune. She had taken a gamble and she had won. At last—hello, everybody—Rachel Mason’s luck was on the turn.

She looked up from the yellow Post-it note and straight into the eyes of Tom Orchard.

“Oh. Hi. You OK?” There she went again—instant intimacy.

The headmaster carried the unmistakable demeanor of an innocent man recently condemned to death and yet to come to terms with it. “Mm. Yeah. Fine, thanks.”

“What you got?” Rachel turned her head round to read upside down. The label said
BANOFFEE CHEESECAKE
. “Owph.” And the handwriting was Clover’s. “Oh dear.” She sucked her teeth in sympathy.

His face was a study in misery. “I know. Looks delicious. Just what I fancied.” He looked down at his plate and shook his head again mournfully. “Excellent. Anyway. How did you do?”

“Yeah. Good.” She mustn’t sound too triumphalist—Christ, it was only luck after all and it could so easily have gone the other way. “Just, er, um, fish pie. That’s all.” She mumbled a bit, said it as casually as she could.

“Huh.” Tom bit his lip. “Congrats.” He picked up his dish and turned to leave. She found the stoop of his shoulders too miserable to bear. She had to act, and she had to act fast. What else were friends for?

“Hang on! Don’t go! Look!” Rachel rushed to his side and held her fish pie next to his banoffee cheesecake. She could feel that people were looking at them, but she didn’t care. The grumpy secretary had her head down and was studying the next table. It was impossible to know if she was within earshot but somehow it didn’t matter. At that moment, propriety meant nothing. And anyway, it couldn’t be more innocent. They were just mates. “Don’t you see? Neither of these dishes is much on its own. But if we put them together, well, we’ve got a pretty decent meal here. Between us.”

His face cleared. “Could we…? I mean, sorry, forgive me, but are you saying…?”

“Yes! We could! I am! There’s masses and the kids aren’t even in—pizza night with their dad.”

The grumpy secretary’s back stiffened.

“And, actually it would be really brilliant. There’s some stuff I wanted to talk to you about anyway…” It was time someone told him about Scarlett’s reign of terror this year, and no one else was going to do it. “Ooh! And I forgot! I’ve done lots of stuff since we last spoke. I’d love to show you my sketches!”

And at that, the grumpy face flicked back to administer a shocked and horrified stare.

“The sketches that I have done for the time line in the library.” Rachel enunciated clearly so that everyone round there could be sure to have the right end of the stick for once.

“So bring it round. Seven-thirty. We can share.”

Something hot, sharp and painful burned into the back of Rachel’s denim jacket as she swung cheerfully out of the hall. She knew exactly what it was without turning back—the piercing sensation of the grumpy secretary’s hostile gaze was nothing new. She shrugged it off as she made her way through to the entrance. Christ, can a single woman not even embark on some pro bono artwork for the school without reducing her reputation to tatters? They’re actually sick in the head, this lot—they think everything’s about sex, even when it could not actually be more innocent…

A mild drizzle had started to fall while she had been gambling her life away in there. She stopped to adjust the foil on the fish pie—couldn’t take any risks with that piped mashed potato—and looked out on the playground. Georgie was in the middle of the tarmac, and the middle of her children. Kate was balancing Hamish on her hip with an experienced ease, Henry was on Sophie’s back, George and Lucy were both looking into the depths of the same PE bag. They always stood out, the Martins; because they were so many, obviously. But also perhaps because they were always touching, connected: the only joined-up shape on a page of dot-to-dots.

She turned her gaze towards the gate, and felt the catch in her throat even before she realized what she was looking at: Chris and Poppy, heading for the car. She had never been there before when Chris met the children from school—why would she? If he was meeting them then Rachel was,
de facto,
elsewhere—and it was curiously fascinating. Like watching a live scan of one’s own internal organs—the very fabric of your being, going about its business, as you never normally saw it. For a moment, she was just riveted by the sequence of images: Poppy holding Chris’s hand, Chris tucking Poppy’s book bag under his arm, Poppy’s ponytail swinging as she nattered on. And then she started to interpret what she was looking at: it wasn’t just two people here; it was a whole relationship. And not just any relationship, either: it was a natural, vibrant, functioning, healthy one. The diagnosis was obvious, and most unexpected. It was against all the odds. A minor miracle. Despite all the trauma that had been inflicted here in recent months, everything seemed to be in reasonable working order.

She stayed in the doorway while Chris got in the car and drove away to pick up Josh. A subsection of a family—yes, of her family, as a matter of fact—was off for a subsectional family meal. She clutched the fish pie to her chest for safety, ducked into the rain and set off down the hill to home.

F
or the first time in months, the sun was shining down upon St. Ambrose. Spring had chosen to arrive unnaturally early and in just a week all the leaves had suddenly appeared—as if nature had got out its best set of Caran d'Ache and colored everything in.

Rachel kissed Poppy on the head and watched her skip through the gate. She, too, looked like she'd been colored in. They had played tennis outside in the park for the first time yesterday, and freckles had erupted all over her face. And she was laughing a lot more now. A season had passed and what was once painfully abnormal seemed to have become something approaching ordinary. Rachel took a deep draft of fresh, green air. Perhaps everything might actually be all right after all.

“What are they up to now?” Georgie was beside her, holding Hamish and scowling.

The sporty group, carrying a large pole in each hand, wearing a heavy boot on each foot, were setting off at a brisk pace towards the hill. Colette and Jasmine were taking the lead; Heather was very much at the rear.

“OK. I'm no expert. I may have this completely wrong,” said Georgie in a loud voice. “But are these people skiing?”

The group thrust onwards. “Hurry up,” Colette panted over her shoulder. “Bastard of a bikini wax at ten.” Heather, who seemed to be in a spot of bother with her pole, was lagging far behind.

“Is this normal? Skiing?” Georgie was almost shouting now. “Car park? In spring?”

Colette neither paused nor turned her head, but Heather stopped quite near them, in a muddle with a strap and looking pink.

“We're Nordic pole walking, actually, Georgie.” Rachel had rarely seen Heather so cross. “And it is said to be extremely good exercise. Clover? Will you wait? For me?”

“Ohhhh.” Georgie kept her voice up for all to hear. “Nordic. I see. That's why they're all so blond. Nordic. I say,” she bellowed to Rachel. “Their English is terribly good, isn't it?”

“Oh God.” Heather's wrist strap was now completely undone and her eyes were filling with tears. “They're going off without me.”

“Yuu vonnt catch upp vitt demm now,” said Georgie in a lilting Nordic singsong. “Day aahr hoff-vey down de piisst.”

Heather threw both poles down on the ground in a fury and crossed her arms in such a stroppy-kid fashion that Georgie and Rachel both had to laugh.

“It's not fair,” Heather added, for the full effect. “It's all 'cause of my lump. Bea still hasn't spoken to me since and now they're all trying to get rid of me, I know they are. This is the second time they've left me behind this week.” She sniffed dramatically.

“Well, you can't blame Bea, can you, Rach?”

“Nah, you can't blame Bea. Blimey, it was her aerobics morning…”

“…And it was only benign.” Georgie droned the last word with contempt.

Rachel yawned. “Be-oring, more like…”

“Be-no-lolz.”

Heather shuffled over to stand by them. “I've been silly, spending all my time with Bea and that. You know, I'm starting to think”—she leaned in and dropped her voice to a whisper—“they're not always very nice people.”

Georgie staggered back in horror, clutching Hamish to her chest. “No. You can't mean it.”

Heather shook her head. “They're really not, you know.
Geo
rgie, will you forgive me? Can I hang out with you guys more? With your group?”

“For crying out loud, how many more times?” Georgie picked up Hamish and stormed back to her car, shouting over her shoulder as she did so: “WE ARE NOT A BLOODY GROUP!”

Rachel smiled and called, “See you all at eleven-ish.” She had to get out of that car park, back down that hill and home to get some decent work done before coffee. But her feet, she noticed, had turned around—quite of their own accord—and were taking her back, yet again, in the direction of the school office.

Since the happy day of the Gourmet Gamble, she seemed to have been popping in most days to have a quick word with Tom. They'd each had so many ideas about the time line over the fish pie that the conversation was still going on. None of it was any big deal: she had wanted to know more about the Education Act when the school had been founded, and he had dug stuff out for her. She had found a description of the visit by the Prince of Wales and he was longing to see it. Each occasion was as minor, inconsequential and—honestly—completely innocent as the last. When her mum's neighbor produced the hat he'd worn to school back when England won the World Cup, well, of course she had to go running in with that. He just loved it—they both did. But the funny thing about little chats was that they seemed to breed. One just led to another, and on and on it seemed to go.

Rachel could see it happening with Heather, too, just from walking to and from school together this year: Heather would embark on some daft, meaningless micro-conversation about something minor and inconsequential one day, Rachel would follow up on it the next, and before they knew where they were, there was this dialogue between them; Rachel could envision it now, as she trotted across the playground in the spring sunshine: a thread that got longer and stronger every day and that, she could see, had been woven into the fabric of their lives.

Of course, as soon as their daily routine changed that thread would snap. She was hardly going to be good friends with Heather for the rest of her life. Imagine. You needed a few macro-conversations if you wanted to go the distance with someone, and she couldn't go macro with Heather. Christ, that would do anybody's head in. Although, when she thought about it, the only macro-conversations she had recently enjoyed had centered around the shagging of interns, and they hadn't been that great…Still. Her friendship with Heather was a temporary thing. Like a holiday romance. Without the romance. Or the holiday.

The classrooms were just settling down to their mornings as she passed by them and strode on towards the office. Towards her other no-romance, nothing at all. She just wanted to find out how the meeting of the governors had gone last night, because she knew Tom had been concerned about it. He'd said so when she dropped off her copy of
Possession
for him yesterday. Which he said he hadn't read on Monday, when they were micro-chatting about the Victorian sketches for the library and poetry came up and…

She smiled cheerfully in the direction of Mrs. Black—who didn't look up and didn't smile—and went straight through to the inner office.

“Good morning.” Tom looked up, and he smiled.

“Hi. Just wondered how you got on last night.”

“Nice of you. I think it was all fine.” He put his pen down and pushed back his chair. Rachel was struck by how much more at home he looked now, nearly two terms in. “They all seemed to be in general agreement with the Orchard budget so far. Your mother is certainly my strongest supporter. She was nodding and beaming at everything I said.”

Uh-oh. Rachel had an instant sense of unease. What's she up to?

“Though at the end the Chair asked if we could meet for a ‘private chat.' She's coming in later today.”

“Pamela?” Uneasier still. What is
she
up to? “You do know she's Bea's mum? And Scarlett's granny?” This was going to be about the bullying, she just knew it…

He laughed at her. “Yes. And I think I can cope. Hey.” He tapped his own chest. “Gold medalist at the Dead Brave Olympics, remember?”

He looked so confident, sitting there in the sunshine, linking his hands behind his head, feet up on the desk. But Rachel was worried. Properly worried. “Look, I'll just pop in later, see if you're still in one piece.”

Heather jostled her way through the crowd and got to the front of the cake table. Melissa was running it all on her own and besieged by customers this morning, yet she looked so calm, unflustered, elegant.

“Can I help you? Let me do something. Please.” Heather always preferred to be part of the team at these events—people had to talk to you then.

“I'm completely fine, thanks.” Melissa really smiled with her eyes. Heather loved that. “It's just great that you came. What can I get you?”

Heather looked down at the scrumptious cakes on display, and there it was: the very Malteser cake that had literally saved her actual life back at the car boot sale. She popped a bit onto a paper plate. “Did you make this?” She proffered her 50p. “You're amazing.”

“Why, thank you.” She chinked the money into the pot. “Ancient family recipe. Dating back—ooh—all the way to the discovery of the Malteser itself.”

“Wow.” Heather had never realized the Malteser was— Oh. She was joking. So witty, Melissa. Heather must be on her guard for that, if she was going to be her friend.

“Hi.” Colette was beside her, sticking her elbows in. “Melissa. What can I do? How can I help?”

Heather pressed back through the customers and into the room. She stood alone for a moment, coffee in one hand, plate in the other, and looked about her. People were crowding in this morning, of course. It wasn't every day that most of them got their noses into a house like this. Even most of the residents of this very street had never been over this threshold before. Melissa's arrival here marked a whole new dawn.

None of the gang was here yet. Rachel was bringing Georgie, so they were bound to be late. Who should Heather talk to while she waited? She wandered over towards Ashley's mum—looking like she'd lost a few pounds, daw, so pleased for her—who was by the window with Abby. And then she caught the snippets: acceptance letters, induction days, uniforms, buses. And, Oh no, she thought. No, no, no, no thank you. Not The Next School. Let's not ruin this happy day by going over all that again.

She so dreaded the next stage, it made her quite dizzy. The patterns on Melissa's retro rug started to leap up at her and she had to blink and take a moment to pull herself together. Ever since Maisie was born, she'd been dreading the next stage. That first day, sitting up in the hospital bed, had been so joyous, she felt sad when it became the second. She adored having a baby, and worried about a toddler. And on it had gone. Why did no one tell you this about parenthood? That all it was, when you boiled it down, was a dull ache of regret for what was flying past, broken only by the sheer terror of what was coming at you. The actual present seemed very hard to grasp. She could hardly bear to look at parents walking around the shops on a Saturday with great big hulking miserable teenagers. It felt somehow intrusive to even witness their collective private grief. And as for adults with adult children—how did anyone even begin to cope? She had trained her ears not to listen when the children sang that hymn at the end of every school year. That ghastly one, “One More Step Along the World I Go.” The very words made her shudder. It shouldn't be allowed, in her view—too graphic, crude. Insensitive. She might have a word with Mr. Orchard about it. Have another go at getting it banned.

Maisie still had one more year, thank God. So why torture herself by hanging round those tragic people who were already facing the end? It was like that day last summer when they were halfway through their holiday in Tunisia. She had come away from the pool for a minute to go into reception and check they had their places for the gala dinner, only to find it was changeover. And there were all these other holidaymakers—people she only knew in swimsuits and shorts and strappy dresses—standing in the air-conditioned gloom in jeans, socks, with their shirts tucked in, waiting to get on the coach, resigned. Heather forgot all about the gala tickets and rushed back outside. The very sight of those suitcases on trolleys in reception just made her want to splash wildly about in the sun while she still could.

She would do the same here—circulate in the sun on Melissa's flagstone floor. Study this amazing art on her walls. Look out of the French windows onto that pretty, sloping garden. Possibly sneak upstairs and just have a bit of a look…Ah, there were the others now.

“Hi, guys!” She was conscious of her voice being a touch too loud. “Isn't this just totes awesome?”

“Heth.” Georgie closed in on one side of her, a hand on her arm.

“Please.” Rachel pinned herself to the other. They forced her into the corner.

“We're all very glad”

“you've come over from the Dark Side.”

“And a very warm welcome”

“back.”

“But now, you know…”

“it's time”

“to stop”

“talking”

“like a complete”

“and utter”

“arse.”

Georgie slunk away from the kitchen in search of somewhere to sit in the sun and snooze. She had precisely thirty-seven minutes before getting Hamish, and she planned to use them wisely. The throng around Melissa and her tasteful cake table and her welcoming coffee stand was large and loud. Those wretched keenos had taken over the place, tripping over one another and everyone else in their desire to help. She had to get out of there before she was crushed by the mob. There was a note of wholesome collective positivity to the occasion, and frankly it was starting to play on her nerves.

She wandered into the warmth and peace of the pale, pretty sitting room at the front and looked out of the window onto the quiet of Mead Avenue. Just one solitary car drifted up and down the hill, slowing when it came to Melissa's house, speeding up a little before it turned and came back. Perhaps they were under surveillance. Perhaps Melissa was a drugs baron or a terrorist or a Russian spy. That would be amusing—if it turned out that she was, after all, too good to be true. Instead of being just plain old, boring old perfect.

Georgie turned and toppled into the depths of the yellow checked sofa, raised the sluice that held back the fatigue and let it flood through her bones. Every time was more extreme than the time before. Of course, she would get used to it, get on with it, get through it. She always did. But this one, she had a feeling, was going to be just that little bit more of a struggle.