‘It’s hard to think about it being like that here. I can’t imagine it being anything other than sweltering.’
‘Believe me sister: it can freeze your balls off. Ain’t that right, Trudi?’
Trudi nodded from the sink, where she was working through a pile of washing-up.
‘Are you from round here?’ Lara asked Trudi. The servant status Betty conferred on the woman made her feel awkward.
‘She has an apartment down in the village,’ Betty said. ‘Without Trudi, this whole theatre would grind to a standstill. She practically runs this place for James and me. And,’ Betty’s voice dropped to a whisper, ‘we lend her to Mr Molloy.’
‘Though he don’t want me doing stuff ’round the house.’ Trudi turned to smile at Lara, her stolid face suddenly animated. ‘He likes doing all that hisself. He just wants me run errands for him.’ She pushed a greasy strand of dark hair behind her ear with a hand adorned with nails so badly bitten they made Lara wince to look at them.
‘Betty, will you ever get out here and join us?’ James said, striding into the kitchen. ‘The grill is done and all we’re waiting for is you.’
Betty stopped her whacking and looked sideways at him.
‘You men,’ she said. ‘All you want to do is put food in your bellies. But what you don’t understand is that it has to be a feast for the
eyes
as much as the
mouth
. We’ll all be out in just one minute.’
‘Well can I at least have Trudi? I need a hand with the meat.’
Trudi looked over to Betty, who nodded her assent. Wiping her hands on a tea towel, she bustled off after James.
‘What an extraordinary person,’ Lara said.
‘Trudi Staines. She’s had a life,’ Betty said. ‘Would you believe she used to be a burlesque dancer?’
Lara couldn’t believe it. Weren’t burlesque dancers glamorous? Trudi was the opposite of all that.
‘Fell on hard times, poor lamb,’ Betty said, rinsing her hands and going over to open the refrigerator door. ‘Trouble with the law and all. There but for the grace of God …’ She reached in and rummaged. ‘Oh my, a half-full bottle of champagne.’ She winked at Lara. ‘Would you like a glass to pep you up?’
‘Am I so obviously in need?’ Lara brushed the last pieces of oregano from her hands then lifted her fingers to her face to take in the smell.
‘Oh honey,’ Betty said, handing her a brimming glass. ‘Seeing him again has quite unmanned you, hasn’t it?’
Lara looked sharply up at her.
‘Let’s just say, my darling,’ Betty went on, catching her eye, ‘I know that he was very much looking forward to meeting you again, after all this time.’
‘Was he?’ Lara said.
‘Oh yes,’ Betty said, tipping her glass back. ‘Stephen and I are very close. He’s like a son to me. But don’t you worry. I haven’t breathed a word. Even James doesn’t know. I, of all people, appreciate discretion. Gossip is so destructive, don’t you think? The only important thing in this life, honey, is love.’ She reached over and laid a hand on Lara’s shoulder.
The champagne felt sour in Lara’s throat as she swallowed.
‘Now then.’ Betty clapped her hands. ‘Where’s that little boy of yours?’
‘He’s still in there with the fish. He’s fascinated.’
‘Well, why don’t you go in and get him, and then we can all go out and join the others.’
Lara did as she was told, feeling overwhelmed by Betty’s authoritative, maternal manner. She had never been on the receiving end of anything like it before. Certainly not from the gin-soaked vessel of disappointment that was her real mother.
The food was duly served up and Lara managed one scallop. Her appetite seemed to have deserted her.
More used to spending her evenings at home with her children, she didn’t much like parties. Particularly parties full of strangers. And in any case, she was too distracted to push herself out there and make conversation. She knew she should, to propagate the Wayland image, the myth of the jolly, perfect English family – if only because by doing so she would perhaps be more able to believe in it herself.
But she couldn’t do it. Seeing Stephen felt like having a stick thrust in her bicycle wheel. The years that had passed, the lives they had lived apart from each other were like two divergent paths that she had thought would never meet again. And now here they were, not so far apart after all.
Luckily Jack, who was asleep in her lap, had her pinned to the porch rocker so she had an excellent excuse for not joining in. Instead she sat there, keeping an eye out for her family. As all too often seemed to be the case recently, Bella and Olly had clearly had some sort of spat. While Bella mooned about in a hammock, her brother worked the crowd in the same way that Marcus might, striking up conversations with the younger actors, clapping one or two on the back then moving on to the next group. Even by his own standards, he was exceptionally animated. She saw him go over to two boys with a guitar and in no time he was playing the thing himself while the others looked on and nodded with approval. But from time to time, he would pass by Bella, lean over and have a couple of words in her ear. From the look on her face, she didn’t like what he was saying.
Lara looked out for that lovely boy Sean and found him hemmed into conversation with James. She noticed that every now and then he glanced over at her daughter and on one occasion Bella’s eyes caught his. She hoped Olly wasn’t getting in the way with his stupid loyalty to that weak yes-man Jonny. But if he was, it upset Lara that Bella was being so compliant. She did wish her daughter wasn’t so passive, that she’d show a bit more gumption.
Passivity in a girl was the path to disaster, and if anyone knew that, she, Lara Wayland, should.
‘DO YOU THINK YOU SHOULD DRIVE?’ LARA SAID, AS MARCUS
lurched across the front lawn, slurring farewells to his new friends.
‘I’m fine,’ he said.
Lara wasn’t so sure, but as she could hardly walk straight herself, he was their only option.
The party was still going full tilt. Supervised by Betty, a couple of the younger actors had set up some speakers on the porch, and people were dancing to the Rolling Stones, their long shadows twisting and twirling in the moonlight. But the Waylands, still on British Summer Time, had begun to droop, and now they straggled towards their car, leaving the others strutting and whooping along like a lawnful of Mick Jaggers.
They turned into the lane where the cars were parked, and the bushes masked the throb of sound from the party, plunging them alone into the insect-clattering night.
‘Look,’ Bella said, pointing up. The sky was navy velvet, the stars stuck up there like sequins, stabbing the darkness with their glitter.
‘Look!’ Olly said, and a collective Wayland breath was held as they watched a light move from one side of the sky to the other.
‘A meteor,’ Lara said.
‘I think you’ll find it’s a shooting star,’ Olly said.
‘Aren’t they the same thing?’
‘Oh no, they’re very different,’ he said, ‘I think you’ll find.’
‘You’re so full of shit,’ Bella said. ‘They’re the same.’
‘They’re not.’
‘Fucksake,’ Bella sighed.
‘Can we unlock the car, please?’ Lara said. She was carrying Jack, who was still fast asleep, and her arms were beginning to hurt.
‘One second,’ Marcus said. ‘Just stop and breathe in, everyone. Did you ever have anything cleaner in your lungs? Aren’t you glad I brought you all here?’ He put an arm round Lara’s shoulders. ‘Isn’t this perfect?’
But Lara only felt as if she was half there.
‘Come on then,’ Marcus said at last, twirling the car keys round his finger. ‘Let’s get back to the dust palace.’
He fired up the engine and opened all the windows. ‘Might be some interesting wildlife at this hour,’ he said. Then, after driving a slow couple of hundred yards along the lane, he switched off the headlights.
‘Marcus, switch them back on!’ Lara said.
‘Why? It’s not as if there’s any traffic,’ he laughed. ‘I’ve always wanted to do this.’
‘But we’ll end up in a ditch,’ Lara said.
‘Stop it, Dad,’ Bella said.
‘Go for it, Daddy-o!’ Olly took off his seat belt and stuck his head out of the open window.
‘Olly, get back inside. This is really dangerous, Marcus.’
‘Don’t be such a bore, Lara,’ he said. ‘Live a little.’ Then he, too, poked his head out of the window and whooped.
Lara gripped the sides of her seat. The darkness closed over them like water. They might have been heading over the brink of a cliff, for all they could see. The car engine was so expensively silent that the only sound was the tyres as they rolled over stones and gravel in the lane, and the reflected blue glow of the dashboard turned Marcus’s gleeful face into a rictus mask.
A movement somewhere in front of them, out in the lane, drew all their eyes towards it. Two beady dots, at about the height of a man, glittered starlight at them.
‘WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?’ Olly yelled.
Startled, Marcus flicked the headlights on and they saw the rear ends of a doe and her fawn scurry into the hedgerow.
‘It’s only a deer, Olly,’ Marcus said with exaggerated calm, although he had clearly been rattled.
‘And look – we could have hit that,’ Lara said, pointing at a car parked about twenty yards in front of them. If they had continued in the dark, they would have met it head-on.
‘Shit,’ Marcus whistled.
‘Why do you never listen to a word I say?’ Lara said.
‘Because I’m a bad, bad boy, Lara. That’s why.’
The car didn’t appear to be attached to any house – there weren’t any on this stretch of the lane, and it was too far away from James and Betty’s place to have anything to do with the party. As they rolled past, they saw the driver’s window was down.
‘My God, there’s someone in there,’ Lara said. She couldn’t make out the features, but it looked like it was a woman, and she appeared to be watching them through dark glasses. ‘Sorry about that,’ Lara said, leaning slightly out of the window. ‘My husband was being an idiot.’
The woman didn’t stir.
‘She didn’t hear you, Mum,’ Bella said.
‘Creepy.’ Olly shuddered.
‘Let’s get out of here.’ Marcus put his foot down and drove as fast as the rocky lane would allow him, towards the main road.
‘What the fuck was that all about?’ Olly said.
‘Perhaps she’d had an argument with her husband,’ Lara said.
‘Perhaps she was a witch doing spells.’
‘Do you think she’s OK?’ Bella said, looking back.
‘Do you want to go back and check?’ Olly said.
Marcus swung the big car into the tarmac drive and round to the back of their temporary home.
‘Oh my God,’ Bella said as they opened the car doors. A rush of stifling night air swamped them, carrying with it the pungent rubbery musk that seemed to lurk in every crevice of this place. Only this time, the stink was intense.
‘You can almost see that smell,’ Olly said.
‘It seems to be coming from over there.’ Bella pointed back to the road.
Marcus stepped cautiously along the driveway to investigate.
‘Oh no,’ he said.
‘What?’ Bella said, her hands to her face.
‘Come and see.’
Leaving Jack asleep in the car, Lara joined the twins and, like soldiers on a manoeuvre, they crept towards the road.
‘Yuck,’ Bella said, holding her nose.
‘What’s black and white and red all over?’ Olly said as they bent over to examine the mangled corpse of a roadkill skunk.
‘So that’s what that smell all over the place is,’ Lara said. ‘That’s going to stink for days. Can’t we get rid of it now?’
‘And put it where?’ Marcus said.
‘And then Dad would stink too,’ Bella said.
‘Who said it was going to be me moving it?’
‘Perhaps the neighbours will know what to do,’ Lara said.
‘It’s too late now. Let’s leave it till the morning, then we’ll ask around if it’s still there,’ Marcus said.
‘That’s all right for you to say,’ Olly said, ‘Mr “my bedroom looks over the back”. What about me and Bella? If we open our windows, we’re going to suffocate. And we’ll suffocate if our windows are closed, too, won’t we Bells?’
Bella grunted and looked away, ignoring her brother.
‘Put the fans on,’ Lara said. In each room there was a noisy pedestal fan, possibly the only new items in the house.
‘All night?’ Bella said.
‘No, just till we go to sleep, then we can turn them off,’ Olly said.
‘Twat.’
Just then, Jack, who was out of sight in the car, screamed.
Lara pelted towards him. The car door was open, which was odd. She was certain she had shut it.
‘What is it, Jacky?’ she said, running round to undo his straps. She picked him up and he buried his head into her shoulder.
‘There was a nasty lady,’ he said, muffled by her sleeve.
‘What nasty lady?’
‘A nasty lady,’ he wailed, lifting his head so that his mother could hear every syllable. She looked around.
‘Look, Jack, there’s no one here. It’s all quiet. There’s no nasty lady. You must’ve been dreaming.’
‘Poor wee Jacko,’ Marcus said, coming up and stroking his head. ‘Did you have a nasty dream? Let’s get inside, eh?’
Olly went in first. As he switched on the fluorescent kitchen light, something scurried from the table to the floor, rebounded against the counter and ran for cover back under the table. Bella yelped.
‘What the hell was that?’ Marcus said.
‘Who left those cereals out?’ Lara said. The Reese’s Puffs had been overturned and whatever it was that had scuttled away had spread peanut-butter-flavoured corn puffs all over the kitchen.
‘Look, it’s a squirrel,’ Bella said, peering under the table.
‘That ain’t no squirrel,’ Olly said, joining her.
‘It’s not a rat, is it?’ Marcus said, staying well away. Since coming face to face with one in a stream when a child, he had always had a thing about rats.
‘Look, you take Jack up and shut the hall door on the way,’ Lara said to Marcus. ‘We’ll sort this out.’ She handed the whimpering little boy over to his father.
‘Will we now?’ Olly said. But she could see the trace of a triumphant smile on his face. He was going to be brave while Marcus chickened out.