Mum in the Middle Read online

Malcolm looked up and saw me looking at him through the glass and waved. I might have left it if he’d seemed embarrassed at his earlier bad temper but he appeared quite pleased with himself. Before I knew it, I had pushed open the door and was standing in front of him, trembling with indignation, but preparing to make a calm, carefully thought-out speech about working practices, ethics and man management.

  ‘I think you are bang out of order!’ I said.

  Malcolm finished the last mouthful of whatever it had been – clearly something with gravy – and put his knife and fork together. Then carefully dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Would you like a pudding?’

  ‘The boy’s an idiot,’ Malcolm handed me a menu. ‘The treacle tart is rather good or are you one of those annoying females who fusses about her food?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said primly, wanting to refuse him but suddenly realising I was absolutely starving.

  ‘Or the blackberry and apple crumble,’ Malcolm added. ‘I’m not supposed to, but I do.’ He looked up as the waitress appeared. ‘I’ll have that. With custard.’

  ‘It’s not a case of “one of my friends”,’ said Malcolm when the waitress had gone again. ‘He’s one of our biggest advertisers. Whether I like him or not is irrelevant. I don’t let friendships affect my newspaper. This other Johnnie-come-lately has apparently only been trading half the time Roger has, and as for being “award-winning”, that’s absolute balls. Never won a thing. He’s a known bodger and Roger says half his business is putting right what this other cowboys got wrong. Of course, he’s disgruntled to see him getting free coverage in an article full of inaccuracies.’

  ‘How do you know that’s all true, though?’ I asked feebly, already knowing the answer.

  Malcolm looked scathing.

  ‘Because I Googled Companies House, read reviews online and asked Grace on reception what the general opinion was. She knows everything about everyone.’ He leant back and scrutinised me. ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘I felt sorry for Gabriel – I’d hate it if someone shouted at one of my kids like that. He was only trying to use his initiative. And it was kind of him to help Jinni.’

  ‘Kind?’ Malcolm’s tone was pitying. ‘He’s a journalist – it’s not his job to be kind. He was just trying to pad the story out because he didn’t really have one.’ Malcolm sat up straighter as the waitress reappeared bearing two bowls. ‘But he’s not as clever as he thinks he is.’

  He dipped a spoon into the steaming fruit and custard that had been placed in front of him, put it his mouth and sighed with satisfaction.

  ‘I’m trying to educate him,’ he said when he’d swallowed. ‘My trainees do things properly and go on to better things. I’m not going to let some silly American boy be any different.’ He plunged his spoon in again.

  As I took my first bite of strawberry cheesecake, I remembered what Gabriel had told me about Malcolm being very well thought of in the industry and how his last intern had landed a job on the sports desk of the Daily Mail, and decided Malcolm probably took a fatherly interest in Gabriel and was simply trying to teach him the ropes.

  ‘Do you have children?’ I asked after a moment’s silence during which Malcolm munched.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t like them.’

  I smiled. ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  ‘I’m divorced,’ I offered, immediately feeling hot with embarrassment in case he thought I was making some sort of offer. ‘I wouldn’t get married again,’ I added hastily, to show I wasn’t in search of a husband.

  ‘Neither would I,’ he said with feeling. ‘They were all mad.’

  By the time we were on coffee, I’d learned he’d had two wives and a fiancée – the latter had left him because of his drinking and the fact that he was exceptionally rude to her mother. ‘Dreadful woman,’ he explained. ‘Always “popping in” for something. I was relieved when that one packed her bags.’

  ‘What happened to the other two?’

  ‘One died and one went off with a woman she played badminton with.’ Before I could express sympathy at his bereavement, he leant forward with a sudden wolfish grin. ‘I always knew there was something not quite right about her.’

  I shook my head, knowing there was little point in protesting. And there was something quite refreshing about someone who didn’t care what he said or how politically correct it was. I could see why he and Ingrid clashed.

  He startled me by mentioning her name as I was thinking it. ‘So what do you really think about this so-called hate campaign?’ he asked, suddenly serious again. ‘Coincidence or someone really so upset with incomers they’ll resort to vandalism?’

  ‘I like to think it’s coincidence,’ I said. There were some boys about that night – could have been them messing around and they broke it by accident.’

  ‘Like you do,’ said Malcolm dryly. ‘Accidentally throw a stone …’

  ‘They might have been throwing something at each other,’ I said, ‘and one of them ducked and whatever it was sailed past the intended victim and straight through the window.’

  Malcolm looked amused. ‘Sailed past the intended victim, eh? Want a job?’

  I laughed, feeling more comfortable with him now. ‘You know what I mean. And the slashed tyres, well they were the other side of town, weren’t they, and a couple of weeks ago? These things happen.’ I shrugged. ‘My next-door neighbour in Finchley got paint stripper poured all over his car.’

  ‘And who did it?’

  ‘Word was he owed money to some builders.’

  ‘Never a wise move’

  ‘But Ingrid seems to be the sort to make her feelings known with petitions, not physical damage.’ Even as I said it, I had a picture of her steely gaze.

  Malcolm nodded his agreement, his eyes still intent on mine.

  ‘Oh! There she is.’ I felt startled again as I spotted Ingrid on the pavement outside talking to a tall man.

  Malcolm did not turn round. ‘She gets everywhere,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, when Malcolm had paid the bill and we were standing in the street again. ‘That was very nice – and unexpected.’ He nodded and strode off across the road.

  I looked at my watch and followed. My plan to go to the butcher’s – I was not only going to use the shops but was considering going the whole Easter hog and ordering a turkey – would have to wait. Ahead of me Malcolm lifted an arm as if to silence someone and I saw Ingrid was now right outside his office. I grinned to myself as Malcolm disappeared through the door and out of view – clearly having no truck with whatever Ingrid had to say – but it was too late to pretend I hadn’t seen her.

  ‘Hello, how are you?’

  Ingrid appeared to straighten herself. ‘Oh Tess –’ She indicated the man next to her. ‘This is my son, David.’

  Ah The Wanky One. Telling myself I must keep an open mind, I stood up straight as well and held out my hand, looking directly at him, in the manner Caroline had instructed me to look at all males in her increasingly frequent collection of lectures with the umbrella title: ‘Why you still haven’t got a man’.

  Even though this one would not be my type at all, being, according to Jinni, self-seeking and hypocritical with no moral scruples, but I was still momentarily shocked by how good-looking he was, with his dark hair and eyes, tall frame and defined features.

  ‘How do you do?’ I smiled.

  He gave me a cursory glance. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said shortly, looking anything but.

  There was a tense pause. I was still extending my hand. I dropped it to my side, embarrassed. Ingrid threw me an odd look, which I couldn’t quite fathom and then David grasped her arm and propelled her away from me.

  ‘Just leave it, will you!’ I heard him say.

  I stood for some moments watching their backs go ahead of me up the street, stunned by his rudeness.

  Feeling horribly, almost
tear-jerkingly, alone.

  Chapter 6

  ‘And you’re complaining?’ Fran swept a layer of colouring books, pens, iPads and beakers from one end of the table, so I could put my coffee down. ‘The only time I ever get to be on my own is in the loo. And then one of them usually bangs on the door!’

  She began to sift through sheets of paper. ‘Freya brought home a list of all the stuff they need for their wild woodland project and now I can’t find it.’ She ran an exasperated hand through her short fair hair. ‘It was right here.’

  ‘Is the school good?’ I asked, pulling some of the lists and envelopes towards me and beginning to flick through them too.

  There was an order form for home delivery of paraben-free cleaning products, the guarantee card for a new washing machine, a programme of events put on by the Northstone Primary PTA and a letter home about head lice.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Fran, distractedly. ‘Northstone is great for kids. Jonathan was going on about moving nearer to London when he got his promotion but I said, no way.’

  ‘Well, now there’s the new train …’

  ‘Precisely! And so what if the drive takes forever anyway, he should try being here. At least he could listen to the radio in peace – oh shit, the twins!’

  There was a wail from above and Fran rushed from the room. Her three-year-old, Theo, appeared in the doorway and looked at me solemnly. ‘Mummy is knackered,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Tired,’ I corrected. I drew him towards me to give him a hug. He was wriggling away, wiping his cheek, as Fran returned with a toddler on each hip. She did look exhausted. I remembered her in her cottage near the High Street when my kids were young and she was working as a buyer for Harvey Nichols. And her expression if a sticky hand reached for any of the bright pots or crystal candle-holders she’d collected on her frequent trips abroad.

  Now this stylish family house a couple of miles outside the town was adorned with fingerprints, childcare paraphernalia filled the hall and the tiles beneath the table were littered with crumbs.

  ‘I’ve got Bella and Silas this weekend too!’ she groaned, depositing eleven-month-old Jac on my lap and shifting his sister Georgia to her other side as she filled a red tumbler with water for Theo. He scowled. ‘I wanted juice,’ he said.

  ‘Too much sugar,’ said Fran, briskly. ‘You can have some chopped mango and a carrot.’ Theo scowled a bit more.

  I looked at the three children and thought how gorgeous they were, with their big brown eyes and Fran’s blonde curls. Of course she was worn out, with four kids and Jonathan’s two teenagers from his first marriage staying every other weekend making six.

  ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving those embryos in a deep freeze …’ she’d said when she’d told me she was going to have ‘just one more’ after Theo. Knowing the years of despair she’d gone through before IVF treatment and baby Freya, all the while having to be the yummy step-mummy to Jonathan’s then-small children, I got that. But I was glad I’d done it early and mine were all grown up. So I could have, according to Caroline, the time of my life.

  I jiggled Jac, who was grizzling and straining away from me towards his mother, still warm and fretful from his afternoon nap. ‘Can you manage Georgia too?’ Fran plonked the little girl on my other leg and began to chop vegetables. ‘And I want a biscuit,’ said Theo darkly.

  Fran ignored this and pulled out a kitchen chair. ‘Sit.’

  Theo clambered on.

  ‘Hands.’ The small boy held them up obediently while Fran wiped them. Fastened to a blackboard behind her head was a page pulled from a magazine containing a list of the ‘best brain food for the under-fives’. One of the photographs beneath the headline looked suspiciously like a plate of liver. Good luck with that one, I thought silently, as Theo poked suspiciously at his carrot – a bunch of which were also illustrated.

  ‘Have you got a nutri-bullet yet?’ Fran asked me. ‘So much better for you than juicing because you get the fibre from the flesh and skin too. Slows down the fructose hit. I mix berries with frozen spinach, a pear and cherry tomatoes …’

  As she rattled on about the benefits of a daily avocado, beetroot and papaya paste, I glanced around at the granite work surfaces and the various stainless-steel lumps of gadgetry and thought about my own tired-looking kitchen with its wonky cupboard doors and chipped tiles. It was going to be my first project and I’d spent hours creating beautiful designs while I was waiting to exchange.

  But since I’d moved in, my budget for home improvements was dwindling rapidly. I needed to ask Jinni’s advice on where I might get a decent trade deal and find a fitter. She’d been over, in high dudgeon, when she’d discovered Ingrid had been on Twitter protesting against Jinni’s planning application, keeping up a diatribe against the whole anti-DFL thinking, for which she held Ingrid entirely responsible, while I nodded and gave the dining room its second coat of Morning Gold. Until Jinni eventually drew breath and popped home for a tiny brush – with which she expertly touched in around the light switches – and a bottle of Rioja.

  I filled Fran in on this excitement – I couldn’t bring myself to talk about my mother – and enquired whether she knew either Jinny or Malcolm or Ingrid, but she didn’t. Jonathan had met Malcolm once or twice and she knew Ingrid by sight after seeing her in the paper.

  ‘She led all the fuss when they cut the bus service,’ Fran said dismissively. ‘And she runs some blog called Fight from Within about how we should all lobby the local MP for change.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a bit busy for all that, frankly.’

  I looked at my old friend, tidying up the paperwork on the table as she searched for the elusive list, while her children shifted restlessly in my now-aching arms, remembering a time when she cared deeply about many issues. She’d banged the table and waved her wine glass at a bloke in a bar in Fulham, while rowing over international trading agreements, and then emptied the contents in his lap to illustrate her views on the falling pound.

  ‘So you don’t care about rising house prices and the DFLs taking over the town and pushing the youth off the property ladder?’ I enquired.

  Fran looked surprised. ‘Not given it much thought,’ she said, screwing up an envelope and making a pile of a few more. ‘I know it’s getting a lot more expensive to live here. Jonathan said house prices near the station have risen twenty-five per cent in the last year, but …’ she shrugged. ‘That’s happening all over the place. Who can afford London these days?’

  ‘But you haven’t seen any bad feeling – you know like that woman in the paper who had her tyres slashed?’

  ‘The people here are great,’ said Fran firmly. ‘You get a few moaning of course – and that Ingrid likes a demonstration. She was at the school handing out placards when the swimming pool closed – but nobody cares that much.’ She got a carton of almond milk out of the fridge and began pouring it into two lidded cups. ‘Theo – don’t mash it like that.’

  The small boy scrunched his hand into a fist. Mango pulp oozed out between his fingers.

  ‘Mainly we talk about our kids. When the twins are a bit older, I’ll help more with the PTA–’

  ‘So what have you been up to apart from the children?’ I asked. My opening gambit that I’d been feeling a tad isolated had been met with neither empathy nor any suggestion of a night out. ‘Lucky you,’ Fran had said dryly. Now she looked at me blankly.

  ‘Do you go to a book group or anything?’ I tried. ‘I did in the old house,’ I continued, recalling the complacent way I sometimes gave it a miss if it was cold out or there was something good on TV. ‘I was wondering if there was one here …’

  ‘Have you Googled?’ Fran said vaguely. Then as Georgia gave a piercing scream in my left ear, she held a piece of paper up in triumph. ‘Found the damn thing!’

  ‘Well no,’ I said. ‘I was wondering if we might–’

  ‘Wellingtons, that was it. I knew there was something major I had to buy. You wouldn’t believe how
quickly her feet grow.’ Fran shook her head. ‘Small children cost a fortune.’

  I thought about the credit card bill I’d opened that morning. ‘So do big ones.’

  ‘And I haven’t got empty jars, they all go in the recycling. They ought to be taking plastic anyway – suppose they fall over and cut themselves. I’ll suggest freezer bags.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re going to collect insects,’ I offered. ‘You can’t put grasshoppers or earwigs in a bag. They’ll get squashed.’

  Fran looked alarmed. ‘I was imagining wild flowers … They’re only year one.’ She shuddered.

  I looked at the clock. ‘What time does Freya finish?’

  Fran swung round. ‘Oh God. Now! And then she’s got her modern dance. I’ve got to go!’ She grasped Georgia, who screamed again. Jac burst into noisy tears. ‘Theo! Shoes!’

  ‘Shall I fetch her? Or stay here with the others while you go?’

  Fran was now darting about the kitchen scooping up children and changing bags, plastic cups and keys, looking wild-eyed.

  ‘We’ve got tumble-tots while Frey’s in her class,’ she said breathlessly as she pushed Georgia’s arms into a padded jacket and I tried to do the same to Jac, who went rigid and cried even harder.

  ‘Sorry it’s been rushed, Tess,’ she said, when we were eventually strapping children into car seats. She came round to my side of the car and gave me a brief, hard hug. ‘I miss you, I really do – I want to talk to you and catch up.’ She looked at her watch and shot back towards the driver’s door. ‘Oh Christ, Frey’s teacher will give me that look again!’

  I blew the children a kiss. Theo, banging a shiny green alien figure hard against the rear glass, returned it straight-faced. ‘We’ll get together soon …’ Fran was calling through the open window, as she reversed out of their drive. ‘When we’ve got more time …’ She stopped the car for a moment, stuck her head out and gave me a crooked smile. ‘When I have, anyway …

  Chapter 7

  I was beginning to need a few more hours myself. I’d been up since six and so far had achieved nothing but a lot of cleaning – there was still a fine layer of dust over the whole house from experimenting with Jinni’s electric sander –the posting of a new office interior in Bromley that had only got three likes, and a chat with Meg and Jim next door I couldn’t quite follow, about their problems with the water board.