Authors: Rosie Millard
“Don’t touch that! For God’s sake. Your mother will go crazy. Doesn’t she think you are meant to be in bed?”
George looks at her. “Do you mean, does she think I am in bed? Or does she mean to put me into bed? Or would she be glad to know I am in bed?”
Anya smiles at her small inquisitor.
“All of them. Take this,” giving him a chocolate truffle dusted with cinnamon. It and several others have been positioned on a beautiful Moroccan ‘heritage’ plate made by Berber herdsmen, which will be produced after the ironic pavolva. He tastes it gingerly. “Ugh. That is vile.”
“Alright, have this,” says Anya, giving him a HobNob.
“Yum. Can I have two?”
“Go on then. Now go to bed.”
He walks upstairs to the sitting room, and sits down quietly behind the sofa. George slips his Nintendo DS out of his pocket, and settles down for a long gaming session, munching his biscuits, discreetly out of vision. He slides the device onto mute.
Downstairs, Jane is watching her guests eat her food. As always, she is eating very little herself.
“This is amazing Jane,” says Tracey, waving her fork in the air. “Have you done it before?”
She smiles, pleased that someone has asked the right question. “No, actually, no. I haven’t. I like a challenge!”
“Gosh, you are brave,” says Tracey. “I would never do something new at a dinner party.”
Jane looks at Tracey. Still calls them dinner parties, how gauche.
Plus, she always has second helpings. It’s been years since Jane has allowed herself a second helping. She gave up second helpings as a New Year resolution about five years ago, and never looked back.
Jane has a fear of getting fat not dissimilar to a fear of getting cancer.
She studies Tracey. When did she last see her? Oh, yes. Before going off to meet that finance guy from the TV.
“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did you get on with your meeting with the television finance guru?”
Jane hopes, fervently, that the meeting was cancelled, that the plan isn’t getting off the ground, that the project has been abandoned. She smiles kindly at Tracey.
Tracey looks at her blankly.
“Don’t you remember? I saw you in the morning when you were trotting off to meet him? You were all dressed up in your suit!”
There is something not quite sisterly about Jane, Tracey decides.
“Oh, yes, yes of course. Well, I was off for a meeting with Alan Makin.”
“Oh, Tracey, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did it go?” says Harriet across the table. Harriet is wearing a very tight pink cashmere jumper which is stretched tightly over her breasts. It makes them appear rather like one of those security wrapped suitcases. She looks rather hot. She beams at Tracey.
“We went to hear the amazing Makin the week before,” says Harriet to the assembled table, “and Tracey caught his eye. What was he like?”
“Good. It was quite interesting actually.”
“Tracey’s going to be a television star,” says Larry. He nods across the table to his wife. “Tell them about it.”
Jane looks at Tracey very intently.
“Oh, it’s nothing really. He is doing a financial overhaul on me, for the programme, but it probably won’t come to much, if anything at all.”
“Really? You’re going to be on television?”
She is so very disappointed about this, but she covers it up beautifully.
“Wow. Well done you! Sounds like it’s quite a big deal. When’s it going to be on?”
“Oh, that’s nice of you, Jane, but really, it’s not a big deal. Actually, he’s really sweet.”
“He is? What, Alan Makin?”
“Yes.”
“Sweet? Really?”
“Yes, honestly. Once he gets away from all the celeb stuff. He has an office… I think he works very hard.”
“Oh, that’s disappointing,” says Jane. “I was hoping to hear he had a life of razzle dazzle.”
“Well, he does have an iguana in a case in his office.”
“No!”
“Honestly, he does. It eats crickets all day.”
“Tell them about the deal you’ve struck, darling.”
“Oh, Larry, please. It’s meant to be very hush hush.”
“Yeah yeah. This IS hush hush.”
Jane looks more intently than ever at Tracey. Her eyes are like those of a little beady robin.
“Well, er, since Larry has put me totally in it, thanks sweetie, the thing is that I’m doing a bit of, how shall I put it, counselling for Alan. He’s giving me financial advice, and I am giving him time to chat. That’s what he needs, he says. Me time.”
“That’s not all,” says Larry jovially. “He’s paying her for it!”
There is a silence around the dinner table. The Seventies music plays on quietly. A distant rattle from the kitchen is the only indication of human life there.
Jane’s eyes are so bright they look like they might self-immolate. Tracey looks down at her plate. She can’t help smiling.
“What, paying you? Actual cash?”
“Mm. Yes. Think so.”
“That IS astonishing.”
“Why?” pipes up Larry. “Tracey does have a qualification in counselling, actually.”
“Well, Tracey, you are a dark horse.”
Jane doesn’t much care for dark horses. She likes people to reveal who they are and what they are doing up front, so she can assess them, quickly, against herself and her achievements.
“So, how many times a week are you seeing him?”
“Oh, we haven’t really arranged it yet,” says Tracey.
There is a pause.
“Did I tell you that our son got into Burlington?” says her friend from the City suddenly.
The focus wheels and the conversation changes, like a dance movement, to talk about prep schools. Alan Makin, his iguana, his money and his arrangement with Tracey are forgotten in the grateful desire from everyone to discuss something about which they each hold a reasonably similar opinion, namely schooling, which is shaded only by whether they individually feel that Latin is considered obligatory, or not.
Jane walks into the kitchen to collect the lamb and pumpkin.
“All ready here,” says Anya, giving her the dish on a tray.
Suddenly, she finds the evening a bit less glittering than before. She’s not sure why. It’s the combination of Tracey being noticed by a television star, and earning money from it. That was annoying. First, she wins the Lottery. Now, she’s going to be on television. How did someone who has never actually achieved anything, certainly not in the way that Jane has done, manage to be so lucky, she wonders crossly. Also there is the phenomenon of her husband, Larry, backing her up so comprehensively. Patrick is never so loyal, she thinks. It eats at her stomach. The smell of the food is actually somewhat nauseating.
She returns to the table with the tray, coolly acknowledging the cries of appreciation it provokes. She glances at Jay through the steam rising from the dish. He smiles at her. She looks down at the food she has produced, demure.
She hopes he will acknowledge her earrings, the flowers in her hair, the ruffles around her neck, her slim, slim arms. She looks up at him again. He is still looking at her. She knows he finds her beautiful and she’s glad she has invited him.
Over the cheese course, Patrick is talking to Harriet about the problems of choosing what to put on the board. “It’s as Charles de Gaulle once said, you know.”
“No, tell me.”
“‘How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different types of cheese!’”
“Priceless.”
“It’s probably all that anyone will ever remember he said.”
They fall silent, imagining the horror of being remembered for a quip about cheese when in life you were famous for the act of rallying an entire nation, on your own, to resist Nazi rule.
Harriet heaps a biscuit with Brie, puts it into her mouth. This causes a few crumbs to land on the cashmere swaddled shelf of her bosom.
“More wine?” says Patrick, gallantly, as she tidies it up.
Jane eyes Jay. Indicates with her brows that she is going upstairs. She glances at the others around the table. The City couple seem to be getting quietly but progressively hammered on Patrick’s best red Rioja. Tracey and Larry are chatting to them about budgerigars. That’s a subject produced specially for a night like this, thinks Jane sourly. She looks at Jay again. Invisibly to anyone else, he nods approval to her and she leaves the room.
“Harriet, let me get you your fags,” he says. “Are they in your bag?”
“Oh, darling, don’t worry.”
“No problem. I’m going up to the bathroom anyway. How about an inter-course gasper.”
“Patrick, are you sure that’s okay? Sorry. You know I am the last smoker on the planet.”
“Of course Harriet. We love your addiction. Makes us all feel better about our own various foibles.”
Jay stands, edges around the chair, carefully pushes it in, moves around the table.
Upstairs, Jane is already waiting for him in the sitting room, standing by the mantlepiece under the mirror, with her back to the door, glimmering in her silver pleats. He crosses the room swiftly, turns her by her shoulders, kisses her urgently, fumbles at her breasts, pressing his palms against them. The Seventies music continues quietly. Jay starts swaying to the disco beat.
“Could it be that… it’s just an illusion… ” he murmurs.
“God, Jay, be quiet,” she laughs at him.
“Could it be that… in all this confusion… ”
“Shut UP.”
“Haai laaa haaaaiiii! Bur bur!” he says, clicking his fingers.
“Did I never tell you about my disco past?”
“Kiss me,” she says, slightly drunkenly. She exudes the aroma of lamb. So amused is Jay by his disco moment that he decides to overlook this, and give her what she wants.
He’d quite like it too, come to think of it.
The pair are reflected in the large mirror hanging over the mantelpiece. They are now properly kissing.
“Oh, God,” says Jane, pausing for breath, thinking about Tracey as a television personality and dismissing it in favour of thinking about herself, “I could have you right now, on the floor.”
He looks at her for a moment, pondering the option.
“Really?”
The conversation chat from the supper party downstairs sounds very lively. Nobody appears to be climbing the stairs.
Could he? Can he? He thinks he could.
“Alright then. You asked for it, gorgeous.”
“What?” She beams up at him, delighted. She knows she will love to carry this triumph within herself downstairs, the secret knowledge of such a transgression.
He beckons her to him, turns her by her shoulders to face the sofa, pushes her head down and hoists her skirt above her head. To his amazement, she is wearing pull-up stockings without underwear. This unexpected arrangement gives him a vast erection.
“Blimey, Jane.”
She says something, but he has no idea what, since her face has disappeared into a cushion.
He drops his trousers, grasps her buttocks and slides his cock into her. A muffled cry comes in response from the cushion.
Jay finds the whole scene so outrageously exciting that he comes after about twenty seconds. He finishes, and slaps her on the arse a number of times.
Everyone is still chatting merrily downstairs.
“Come on, stand up darling.”
“Alright, alright,” she says, trembling slightly, turning round, standing, adjusting her skirt.
“Christ,” he says, pushing her hair away from her flushed face.
“My God. An inter-course fuck. Inter-course intercourse. Have you ever done that before?”
“Hell, no! Could it be that it’s just an illusion?” he says, clicking his fingers, moving backwards out of the room, laughing.
“One important thing. Have you got Harriet’s fags?”
“Oh, fuck, no.”
He returns to the sitting room.
Jane smoothes her dress, goes downstairs, walks triumphantly into the kitchen to collect the pavlova.
A few seconds later, Jay bounces downstairs, joins the table.
“Here you are, darling.”
He tosses over a packet of Silk Cut.
Upstairs, reflected in the mirror, a pair of pyjamaed legs wiggles. It is George, behind the sofa.
“Ouch! Pins and needles.”
Chapter Eighteen Tracey
Roberta is at Tracey’s door. It’s time for Belle’s lesson. She feels like clicking her heels triumphantly on the doorstep, like Dorothy. Since she had the conversation with Tracey, things have gone very well with this household. Her position is secure, Belle is back on the books, and Tracey is even considering lessons for Grace.
The door is opened by Anya, who merely raises her beautifully arched eyebrows in acknowledgement of her arrival.
“Good evening Anya,” says Roberta.
Anya smiles in response.
“Good night.”
“No, Anya. Good night is when you say good bye. Good evening is when you say hello, in the night.”
Anya nods, briefly, storing the information.
“She’s ready for you. But I think there might be a problem.”
Oh no.
Roberta walks past her, into the house. Belle comes walking heavily downstairs.
“Hello Roberta.”
“Hello Belle. How are you today? I hear there’s a problem of sorts?”
“Nothing major. Only that we have to be quiet, apparently.”
Roberta cocks her head quizzically and follows Belle into the dining room, essentially a darkened junk room with a piano in it. She turns the light on and gestures at the piano stool. Roberta notices that Belle is wearing a long robe with a tasselled hood attached to it. She looks like something out of
The Hobbit
, thinks Roberta. Belle sits on the stool.
“So, Belle. What’s the story?”
“Oh God. Well. You know my mum is involved with that TV guy?”
“Er, no?”
Belle sighs. “You know, the man who does
Makin’s Makeovers
on telly. Alan Makin, whatever.”
“Yes. Well, no, but go on. And?”
“Well, he’s come round. Tonight. He’s upstairs!”
Belle points dramatically to the ceiling.
“So we have to be quiet. Mum’s earning a lot of money doing this TV show with him.”
“How interesting.” Hence the sudden arrival of money. Roberta feels slightly disappointed that it is probably the presence of Alan Makin, not her phone call regarding Belle’s future, which seems to have brought about a change in Tracey. Well, maybe they both came at the same moment.